Tonagi

Name: Tonagi (Tone - Ah - Gee, Hard "g")
Created By: Dennnis Washburn and Jay P. Hailey
Short Summary: A violence prone interstellar race of Lemur-Chihuahuas
Description: The Tonagi average 35 - 50 pounds and rarely top 3 feet long. They resemble a even mix of Lemur and small yappy-dog. They have Dark pointed faces With snouts and little fangs. They are covered in short golden fur (Senior males occasionally have a mane around the head.) they have long prehensile tails, and lemur like feet and hands, except the hands have opposable thumbs. Their skin is black underneath their fur and this shows on their faces, hands, and feet. They are hyper active and energetic, and usually quite loud.
Typical clothing, styles: The Tonagi don't wear clothes usually but are fond of jewelry as obvious displays of wealth and influence They also often wear belts or bandoliers used to hold extra pieces of equipment.
Biology: The Tonagi are carbon based life forms with Iron based blood. They are arboreal scavengers, omnivores, and predators. The Tonagi like to hunt bugs and small mammals.
The Tonagi are easy prey for predators such in the jaguars and tiger catagory, their intelligence is the main defense mechanism, as well as light weight and rapid movement through the trees.
The Tonagi are omnivores with a slight preference towards carnivorousness. They have good binocular vision but it's short ranged. They have a good sense of smell and hearing, all above human norms. They are very good at hiding.
The Tonagi reproduce rapidly and must use careful technological means to curb their population.
Location: (8/-28.1) The Tonagi homeworld is within the Zak Sphere of Influence. They are a client race of the Zak. They are nearby the Kurr Association. The Kurr Association and the Tonagi share a frontier and fight sporadically. The Tonagi and the the Zak are on the edges of the Kliges'chee Implosion Zone and like everyone else on the edges are having a land rush to get new colonies and allies in the former Kliges'chee zone.
Population: The Tonagi population has approximately 3 billion beings total. Most live on the Tonagi Home world, but the Tonagi star fleet maintains bases and colonies across Zak space. The Zak keep careful control of Tonagi population, since the Tonagi could outnumber the Zak badly in a few generations.
Languages: The Tonagi language sounds like a yappy-dog cursing you out very thoroughly. There is one main Tonagi language, even though they claim that regional accents are quite thick.
Government: The Tonagi government is a complex set of nested alliances between power blocks all fighting for power. The Zak have installed a military dictatorship on the Tonagi which on the surface would seem to resolve several issues of stability. It merely hides them.
Current Technology Level: The Tonagi are only marginally inferior to the Federation technologically, but are equal to the Federation in terms of shield and weapon technology of the 2370s. Their torpedoes seem to be equivalent but of a different type.
In other areas, Entertainment and medical technology, the Tonagi are solidly behind the Federation. In terms of communications and computer technology the Tonagi are uninspired.
Economy: he Tonagi economy is diverse, and scattered. It makes up in versatility and flexibility what it lacks in efficiency. The Zak have forcefully created a large sector in the Tonagi economy devoted to serving the Zak culture and military. This has benefited both races.
Military: The Tonagi Military is dispersed and hard to pin down. They spend a lot of time fighting for dominance amongst themselves, The typical Tonagi unit is a pack of heavily weaponed and shielded light cruisers. The Tonagi specialize in small fleet tactics, and their battle groups can take down individual ships of much larger size, using tactics reminiscent of a wolf pack.
History: The Tonagi history is very long and very confused. Much too little exists in original sources anymore. The Tonagi climb to stellar technology was very long and suffered an almost endless round of setbacks.
The Tonagi had the extreme bad luck to run into the Zak almost immediately out of the gate.
After a brief but very fierce war, the Zak conquered the Tonagi utterly. The Zak hovered on the cusp of exterminating the Tonagi and still do, only by very seriously and sincerely submitting to the Zak have the Tonagi survived this early first contact.
Now the Tonagi are junior partners and a client race in the Zak Empire, but they're still alive.
Culture: The Tonagi culture is based on the concept of a very fluid and mobile social dominance. Small tribes of Tonagi fight for dominance with in their tribe hotly, leading to numerous small cuts and contusions. No Tonagi's status is better than his last fist fight with a rival.
Modern Tonagi culture is somewhat more stable, although it doesn't seem so to the casual observer. Modern Tonagi Spat, fight, wrestle and bite each other with a cosistent background of harsh languge and wild abandon. This makes them *seem* utterly incapable of coherent action This appearance however, is false.
Modern Tonagi focus this energy largely into a sort of cultural level of wrestling for dominance. With different organizations having battles over dominance and the right of senior positions.
The Tonagi military is organized along very chaotic seeming lines, since many factions, groups, regions and companies, if they can afford the expense, field military forces.
These fight with other in endless rounds of what might be called Mock Combat. Starships maneuver for position and use light weapons to establish dominance in a sort of simulated battle/counting-coup arrangement.
Small units of Tonagi Military will engage in long range stunner duels, or hand to hand combat.
All this amount to constant, and intense battle training. It's not unheard of for a mock battle to become very deadly serious. 
The Tonagi view the universe the same way. Each new race is a competitor for social status who needs to be slapped around and shown who's boss *right now*.
And most of the Tonagi will agree that it's the Zak....
Tonagi fights are characterized by quick, furious assaults accompanied by cringing, flinching submission. The Tonagi like to sell a surrender very broadly, and a Tonagi confronted in person by an angry Human will fling themselves to the floor and scream "SUBMIT!" loudly and repeatedly.
Most surrenders are only temporary, though. As soon as the immediate battle is over a Tonagi is back on his feet happily going about his business. He may seek revenge or a rematch very quickly. Even as soon as his opponents back is turned. A Tonagi who is injured severely or badly frightened will surrender more permanently. Such a Tonagi will be fawning and saccharine at his new boss, trying to curry favor and protection.
Tonagi are intelligent. Some are quite calm and rational. But mostly the are loud and emotionally involved in their social struggles.
Relations:
The Tonagi are used as stalking horses and deniable forces for the Zak. They view every treaty as a temporary set of suggestions, and your pull with them is only as good as the performance in mock combat of the last Starship crew to happen by.
The Tonagi harry the Kurr Association, patrolling for isolated ships and forces small enough to attack with a reasonable chance of success. 
The Tonagi make it known that of the two, they consider the Zak more powerful than the Kurr Association and so the Zak call the shots. No one knows what the Tonagi might do if this balance of power visibly changed for the Tonagi. 
The Kurr Consider the Tonagi vile pests and serious military threats to be dealt with as harshly as possible.
Other races in contact with the Tonagi consider them vile and annoying. It is certain that without the support of the main Zak battle fleet that the Tonagi would soon get themselves into a battle they could not handle.
The Tonagi make wonderful commerce raiders and patrolling harrassers. They avoid large scale ground combat as assiduously as possible.
Advantages: The Tonagi are quick, dexterous and cunning. They can climb almost anything natural, quickly. They can climb less friendly surfaces more slowly but more surely than a Human. Playing a game of keep away with a group of Tonagi will make a Human wish for a phaser very quickly.
The Tonagi are good at tactics and generally have a larger bag of tricks to pull from more quickly in battle then the average Starship Captain.
Weaknesses: The Tonagi are smaller and weaker than most galactic races, a realization that may give them something of a racial complex when it hits home for them
When confronted sharply, a Tonagi will tend to fling himself on the floor and shriek "Submit!"
The Tonagi annoy members of most other sentient races, occasionally to the point of violence.
Their habit of considering an abject surrender to mean "You have surrendered while I am looking" has given them a reputation of being treacherous and tricky.
Home System Details: No home system details have been created yet, although an arboreal forest is the likely home ground for Tonagi. 
Typical Starship: The typical Tonagi Starship is a 275 - 300 meter cigar shape with a torus at either end. The Tonagi Engines, Bussard scoops and associated machinery, which, on other races ships are in nacelles, in the Tonagi ship wrapped around for more armor protection.
They have large Impulse drives and excellent Inertial Dampening.
Scans will reveal the Tonagi ship to be totally compartmentalized and heavily redundant. It can be kicked around very severely and retain some capability. To utterly cripple one will take much more shooting than a ship in their weight class ordinarily would.
The main weapons pod is forward on the forward end of the Spinal, but auxiliary weapons sprinkle the hull.
The Tonagi use mechanical warp speed missiles and heavy disruptor cannons.
Some Tonagi can mount *heavy* anti-ship missiles, (Which can be tough enough to survive a full anti-ship broad side and still hit their target) or smaller nuclear force seeking missiles which can have strange effects on enemy starships.
Special: In ST-OM the Tonagi are a client of the Zak race.
Campaign Role: To hound PC starships with hit and run attacks, but never stand up and offer straight combat unless they think they can win.
To offer comic relief as a GM does his best impression of a Yappy Dog as a space going race, To be annoying, yet sometimes dangerous and other times, helpless.
Category:Races
Category:Kurr Space
Category:ST-OM
Category:Epiphany Trek