Zhurfer

Created by: Garry Stahl
Appearance: Starbase 600 game
Number of Members: some 4 billion
Nature of Members: Zhur -- Humanoids with the parts in the expected places. Human to eight places, there are differences and crossbreeding would be difficult, but fun to try. Zhur tend to shades of gray in skin tones, with hair in the black and brown ranges. Eyes are blue, from dark blue to ice blue. 
Organization: Barely. Cooperations mainly. You want to do something or get something done you either find the right Cooperate, or build it. The idea of nation states has a brief period about 300 years ago. People in funny hats with harsh opinions harshed the Zen. They Literally tried to hold a war, and no body came. This gave nations a bad name and they kind of faded away.
Government: Near invisible direct democracy. Your body is your vote and votes come up all the time. There is no legislative body. Every issue that faces people, community to the world is put out there. Laid back or not there is high participation. Debates can be lively.
There is an executive AKA Papa Funk or Mama Funk as the case may be. The main job is to keep the world running, oversee the Coast Guard, very important, and the Star Service. Computers do most of the heavy lifting.
There is no formal judiciary. Disputes are taken before the local Wise Dude, or Mama (Official title). They arbitrate. The very rare criminal matters are dealt with on a community basis.
Culture: The Zhur are professionally laid back. As they said to the Abraham Dannon crew, "We don't have peace conferences, we have love conferences." It is difficult indeed to harsh their Zen if you will. Hot and bothered does not seen to be an element of their personalities. You can bum one out, but they just do not get angry.
The Zhur are known for a very laid back, some, would say stoned approach to just about everything. Once is clear that violence is in the works they pull together remarkably quickly. 
Economy: Full energy economy. The basic unit of exchange is the "Shell". The actual currency is seldom seen but occasionally minted for important events. The Dannon visit got a Steel Shell minted. The physical coinage aside, again, your body is your debit card,
All heavy industry is off world. Not only are most resources on the planet devilishly difficult to get at, they don't want the ecology harshed either. Life is a beach, work is in orbit or the asteroid belts.
Game Role: Something different.
World Role: Life Baby.
Relative Influence: Minor, a single planet.
Public or Secret?: Public
Publicly Stated Goal: Getting Funky with as many people as possible.
Relative Wealth: One star system, an active local fleet.
Race Advantages: Friendly to a fault.
Special Abilities: None. A Zhur that cannot swim is looked at like a freak. 
Race disadvantages: I said to a fault.
Relations: Currently a UFP member.
Area of Operation: 4/-12.1
Headquarters Location: Zhurfer -- A world of mainly small islands tens of thousands of them. The largest is in the range of the Big Island in Hawaii, down to things like Midway. Life is a beach. 
Public Face: It's time to get funky!
Notable Members: Mary Reline -- The current Mama Funk. She has been Mama Funk for 20 years now. No one considers that she is either falling down on the job or taking overt advantage of it to run against her.
Joey Kane -- Papa Funk when the Abraham Dannon first dropped in. He retired some time ago.
History of the Race: The Zhur are clearly a transplant race. Their world has two major genomes, themselves a hand full of plants and animals, and the rest of the world. The Ane have indicated they might be Horvernal survivors. While no genetic material from the Horvernal was ever available, the genetic drift time line 1 million years +/- 100,000 years, fits the time period to make them Horvernal survivors or a colony. The Zhur possess no history from that era.
Somewhere in that time the race, if the origin theories are correct, the Zhur psychologically moved away from conflict as a valid method of solving issues. They maintained weapons, animals that want to eat you do not reason, but they stopped fighting each other, or wanting to fight each other even if strongly opposed. This is rare in humanoid populations and has the social science types scratching their heads and calculating like mad.
The planet has existed largely in a state of unchanging more or less Polynesian style economy for the majority of that history. An easy world of lightly clustered islands. Technology of any degree greater than iron age is a recent development being only one thousand years old.
The big push was the effort to get into space. Metals are rare and hyper valuable. When scientists indicated that the rocks in space were mainly made of metals, the reason for the push was plain. Nations came together to get into space and get the rocks. When the nations wanted to have fights about it, people walked away from nations, but not the technology. Those advocating for war were seen as mentally ill, and treated as such.
With space had, and easy access to metals they quickly moved into subspace theory and starships. The urge to find more people to party with was strong. The First Contact was the Uhptite, friendly enough, but stiff (reserved). They made friends anyway. Their second contact was the Abraham Dannon. A fortuitous event with the Klingons and Romulans so close. Having decoded the subspaces messages of the Klingon they knew the neighbors did not have Zen and armed themselves appropriately.
Category:Races
Category:UFP Space
Category:Far Sector
Category:Epiphany Trek