Udogawa

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Name: Udogawa

Notes: An ancient species, the Udogawa once ruled a massive interstellar empire that predated even more well known examples. However, from unknown reason, in the ancient prehistory that was their era, something caused the collapse of their society. The implosion was great enough that it reached the point where, for a long time, the ancient Udogawa was considered unfounded myth and rumors made-up by spacers to while the times. Eventually, though, enough archeological evidence was uncovered to prove their ancient existence and the Udogawa were then reclassified from a 'fantasy race' to an 'extinct species'.

While theories continued to fly around about the Udogawa and why their civilization fell to such an exponentially great degree, the universe turned and life went on. In recent years, however, there was an exponential explosion of information regarding the species after a Pan-Independence Union explorer, gathering data for star charts they would later sell, discovered a disabled hybrid generational/sleeper ship that has survived the fall of their civilization that was on a degrading collision course with a previously uncharted star. After towing the ship into a safe orbit, they summoned an associated city ship they often worked with and had more experience with running similar recovery operations.

Once teams boarded the assumed dead ship, they found what was left of the generational areas, mostly exposed to the vacuum of space though enough remained that a small community of a human sub-species that had evolved in the isolation aboard the ship remained, and a viable population of Udogawa in stasis pods. After careful examination and consideration, it was decided to awaken the slumbering survivors and transfer them to a city ship as their ship couldn't support an awakened population and it was quickly degrading to the point where even the remaining stasis pods would fully fail.

After awakening, a unique strength of the Udogawa was uncovered - each child is born with full access to genetically encoded memories. This means that, no matter their age, each individual member of the species has generations of memories, a situation that makes Udogawa a strange mix of maturity and immaturity. As this is something they are born with, their is no psychological screening like that used by the Trill for symbiote host candidates, meaning there are sometimes Udogawa who can't handle things. Unfortunately, their ship was launched prior to the fall of the ancient Udogawa civilization, so no one aboard knows what happened in the end.

Though not unusual, Udogawa have a massively slower physical maturation rate. This means that one someone else would assume to be a pre-pubescent child could, in fact, be decades older. However, their emotional maturity generally, on average, only matches their physical development, meaning it matches their appearance. Combined with their genetic racial memories, this makes Udogawa a rather.....unique species for others to deal with and a lot considered them an acquired taste as most are rather eccentric individuals by modern comparisons.

Since their revival, the surviving Udogawa have agreed to membership in the Pan-Independence Union. Their have been groups of the population that looked at other factions for potential migration, but they are currently waiting for their numbers to raise to a level where they can more safely split apart without risking decreasing their population count in one place to unviable levels.