Deeple

Created by: Garry Stahl 
Appearance: Starbase 600 game and "Ships in the Night" (Most First's Deeple batman, and they are the hooves pounding the decks.) 
Number of Members: 8 billion or there about. 
Nature of Members: Humanoid deer people. (Sue me, I was over drawn at the interesting names bank that week.) Deeple run 5 foot tall on average. Deeple have slight muzzles, cloven hooves and are fur covered. They don't have antlers. Their normally red coats are lightly spotted with brown and white. They are agile, and can find foot and hand holds in all but the smoothest surfaces. A Deeple will free climb a brick wall the way Humans use a sidewalk. They are mammals, and bear young one at a time. Females have pectoral mammaries less prominent than those on Humans.
Deeples are pacifistic by nature. They much prefer to run and hide than confront someone. They can drill themselves out of that, but it is an effort. Unless their backs are to the wall they are never steady fighters. When their backs are to the wall they are vicious. 
Organization: Extended family, super family. 
Game Role: Someone for Federation bleeding hearts to angst over. 
World Role: Acceptian client race. 
Relative Influence: For a client race major. They are the major drivers of Acceptian technological advancement. 
Public or Secret?: Public 
Publicly Stated Goal: Not be eaten. 
Relative Wealth: Minor, the Acceptians own everything important. 
Group advantages: Bright innovative minds. 
Special Abilities: A knack for seeing the right technical solution to just about any problem.<BR>
Group disadvantages: Non aggressive to a fault. 
Special disadvantages: Acceptian client race. 
Those who favor them: Acceptians seeking solutions to engineering problems.
Those opposed to them: Acceptians that see threat in any client races that does something better than they do. 
Area of Operation: Acceptian Empire 
Headquarters Location: Agrarian the Deeple home world. 
Public Face: Brilliant, twitchy engineers. 
Notable Members: None mentioned.
History of the Organization: Deeple are descended from hooved herbivores that developed tree climbing as an evolutionary adaption. Bipedalism followed as did fine manipulation. Large brains and sentience came after that.
Since early in their history the Deeple have had to adapt to changing conditions. Since evolution doesn't work that fast they had to develop technology. Technology let them overpower the predators. Technology allowed them to expand into otherwise inhospitable environments. Technology allowed them to farm the unfarmable, and thus increase their populations. Being weaker on average than even Humans Deeple leverage their brain even further. Agrarin, their home world was a peace-ridden productive paradise.
Before the coming of the Acceptians the Deeple lived in attractive efficient arcologies, and the fields went on forever. Every possible inch of the planet was farmed. Forests grew wood and nuts, fields waved with grain and every vegetable under the sun. Vast kelp farms filled the shallow parts of the sea.
The two things the Deeple did not have was space travel and war. Early in their history they outgrew war. It was non productive, it cut into populations and destroyed the food crop. Never mind that beyond competition for mates, and predator elimination, the Deeple had never been into aggression to start with. What "military" the Deeple possessed was the equivalent of the Army Corp of Engineers, civil engineering and disaster control. They sort of practiced with weapons in case any predators showed up.
Then the predator did. Only instead of eating them the Acceptians offered trade. Seeing no space infrastructure at all, the Acceptians talked the Deeples into building it for them. And while they were at it a space port on the ground. By the time the Deeple stopped worrying when the eating was going to start they realized that there was more than one way to consume. The Acceptians owned them to the last leaf.
Once Deeple engineers had been taught subspace engineering they took to that technology as well. Soon Deeples could be found in every corner of the Empire building and maintaining the technology that made the Acceptians masters.
The non aggressive Deeple don't realize that they drive the technological engine of the Empire. Even if they did they would be unaware of what to do with that power. In the 1600 years the Acceptians have owned them they are comfortable in their chains and wouldn't know what to do without the Acceptians. 
Category:Races
Category:Acceptian Space
Category:Epiphany Trek