Cyclodorean

## Cyclodoreans

The **Cyclodoreans** (pronounced /saɪ.kloʊˈdɔːɹiəns/ [sai-KLO-DOR-ee-ans]), also called **crustaceans** and **crabs** by foreigners, are a species and civilisation of humanoid crustacean beings originally native to the planet Cyclodorea. Since the Ultravoid consumed their planet, killing most, and their empire's First Citizen Dungeness Pertinax murdered most of their surviving people to keep his riches to himself and was at last killed for it himself, Admiral Ames is the only Cyclodorean known to be alive.

## History

The Cyclodoreans lived on the planet Cyclodorea, presumably for aeons, and was an advanced, space-faring people, even having built spaceships able to travel into and out of a black hole like the Ultravoid.

When the Ultravoid sucked Cyclodorea into itself the planet was split apart and the Cyclodoreans Senators tried to seek refuge in the vault under the Senate Pavilion. However, the ruler of Cyclodorea, First Citizen Dungeness Pertinax, having made his way inside the vault, prevented many Cyclodoreans from entering this saferoom, and they were killed, either as a result of the cataclysmic event, by Pertinax or by each other fighting one another. Inside the vault, Pertinax greedily hoarded his gold treasure.

When Admiral Ames returned to Cyclodorea from a mission of having tactfully acquired resources from neighboring planets, he found the Ultravoid instead of his home world. He scanned for life signs but found none. Believing that First Citizen Pertinax had gotten everyone to safety, Ames dispatched a number of away teams to search for survivors and Pertinax, however every single one of the squads met their ends due to the incompetence of their leaders. As Ames learned of each of the squads' demises through the Voidrunner Rei's reports to him as she found their sites of death, he began to doubt Pertinax more and more, although he kept a facade up of believing they died with honor, protecting the empire. In the end, however, as Ames finally discovered the whereabouts of Pertinax in his vault under the Senate Pavilion, where Pertinax had guarded his hoard of gold, going so far as to shoot and murder all Senators and other citizens, who only wanted to seek refuge in the vault. When Ames got there with Private Grimclaw and Yeoman Ro, Pertinax shot and murdered Ames' two crewmembers. After this, Ames finally shot Pertinax, killing him. Since killing his emperor, it seems that Ames is the last of the Cyclodoreans alive.

## Anatomy

Cyclodoreans are extremely tall, humanoid crustacean beings, resembling humanoid crabs or lobsters. They have two large, round, black eyes, located at the end of two very long stalks. Their arms are very similar to those of crabs, and their fingers, though claws, number four on both hands. Their bodies are covered by a chitinous, exoskeletons, which can have several different colors, the most common being a sandy yellow, reddish brown, orange or a mix thereof. Some Cyclodoreans' exoskeletons have splashes and patterns of a secondary colour, sometimes blue.

Like fiddler crabs, Cyclodoreans have one arm and hand, the left one, larger than the other one.

## Society and culture

### Government

#### Empire

The society of the crustaceans of Cyclodorea are inspired by the society and culture of the old Roman Empire. The names of their people are Greco-Latinate, and several proper terms for things in their government and society have names that are direct adaptations of names for groups and institutions from the old Roman Empire.

The crustaceans of planet Cyclodorea were advanced, having achieved at the very least interplanetary space travel and spacecraft able to travel into and out of the Ultravoid, a black hole. Their government was an empire with a single monarch referred to as "the First Citizen", as well as various senators. How this system worked is unknown, though the fact that the First Citizen is referred to by Ames as "our ruler" makes it doubtful that it was a constitutional monarchy.

The senate of the Cyclodorean Empire worked at the Senate Pavilion, located at the Mirrorsea. They also have a "Minister of Environmental Security."

One of the major purposes of the Cyclodorean Empire, according to Admiral Ames, was to aid the populations of other planets.

### Military

*Main article: Imperial Armada of Cyclodorea*
The Cyclodoreans had a military, officially called the Imperial Armada of Cyclodorea, which sported highly advanced technology, including interplanetary spacecraft termed Scuttlecraft.

The Imperial Armada worked on a ranked system, with one one of the highest being that of "admiral". The Armada was also divided into many divisions, such as the Maverick Fleet.

The Armada included an elite force known as "the Cruestorian Guard," a name adapted from a unit of the Imperial Roman army called "the Praetorian Guard", mixed with the word "crustacean."

## Trivia

* Since most things to do with the Cyclodoreans and their world are inspired and based on Greco-Roman cultural elments, it is possible that the *-dorean* part of the species' name is a play on the Dorians, one of the four major ethnic groups into which the Hellenes (or Greeks) of Classical Greece divided themselves, along with the Aeolians, Achaeans and Ionians.