Gox

Serving as the prime peacekeeping force of the Middle Ring, the **Goxn** of the **Ixaran Directorate** were one of the three founding races of the Galactic Assembly. Their culture, a unique blend of martial traditions and technocratic values, served them well in the Xani War, which they decisively ended by annihilating the Xani capital planet with a redirected asteroid, effectively committing total genocide.

Native to the swelteringly hot planet Ixara, Goxi are admired for their efficiency and dedication to their work, and will often occupy leader roles when in multi-species groups. In the centuries since the collapse and restructuring of the old Ixaran Empire, Goxn have come to known as the most generally reliable species.

Despite this, many Goxi (particularly the older ones) still have an imperious view of the rest of the galaxy, and believe themselves the superiors of other sapient races, remnants of the nationalistic mindset instilled by their predecessor state's authoritarian rule.

## Physiology

Goxn are a people whose physiology is most comparable to reptiles on Earth. They usually stand around 2.5-3 meters (8-10 ft) tall on two, muscular, digitigrade legs. As such, they tower over members of any other race save the Lithric or elderly Ar-Akurani. Their hands each have four thick fingers, including one opposable thumb, each tipped with talons. Their body is covered by leathery skin and chitin-keratin scales that merge and ossify into plates in some areas, serving the same function as calluses on Humans.

Their large, slit-pupiled eyes are adapted to the low light conditions of the forest floor, but struggle to adjust to sudden changes in brightness.

Due to their stiff tails, Goxi do not swing their arms when they walk, instead tucking or simply letting them hang by their sides.

Ixara's nitrogen-oxygen ratio sits at roughly 70-30. As such they can't comfortably live in the 80-20 atmospheres amenable to other Assembly races and need to wear breather masks to compensate.

Their mouths are lined with up to 28 teeth in pups and 42 teeth in adults. Since most of these teeth are poor at chewing, most of the grinding work is done by their thick, stiff tongues. Embedded beneath their gums are several venom glands that connect to ducts in their canines. These glads secrete a neurotoxin, which, while neither fatal nor long-lasting, will cause numbness and mild muscle paralysis, which ancestral hunters used to immobilize their prey. In the modern day, 10% of all Goxi have lost their ability to make venom.

### Life Cycle

#### Infancy and Juvenility (0 - 20)

Goxn are aplacental viviparous animals, meaning that fertilized eggs hatch inside the mother and are birthed live, similar to sharks on Earth. The first 30 days of a Gox's pregnancy will consist of 10 to 15 embryos developing in the womb, after which the embryos will have gained enough motor function and awareness to begin competing for space and nutrients within the womb, and begin to cannibalize each other. This process lasts another 30-40 days until there is only one pup left in the womb. At this point, it is birthed live. This cannibalistic nature makes multiple births highly unlikely.

Gox pups are born aquatic creatures with gills, underdeveloped limbs, and a powerful swimming tail that takes up more than half of the pup's body length. They will spend up to two years in this stage, during which the gills will develop into lungs, the tail will shrink, the limbs will strengthen, and its thin and smooth skin will thicken into scales. During this stage, the pup is physically sexless, meaning that even though their sex is imprinted into their DNA, they have no gonads, only a cluster of dormant proto-cells within the area where they eventually grow.

Barring any developmental issues, a pup will be fully independent of the water by the time they are 3 years old.

#### Puberty (20-30)

Starting at roughly 20 years of age, and lasting 6 years for males and 10 years for females, the pup's body will begin to transition into that of an adult. It is during this time that a Gox's gonads fully form, gamete production starts, and sexual dimorphism begins to manifest.

Males experience rapid (frequently painful) bone growth, and muscle gain; it is not uncommon for a pup to grow several inches in height over the span of a few days. In many cases, bony growths will oftentimes pierce through the skin in various areas around their bodies, most often around their jaws/chins, or down their backs

Females' do not undergo these changes as rapidly; puberty generally lasts twice as long as that of males, during which time they generally grow to be taller, but more slender and gracile, than the males. Most notably, from their necks will begin to form an articulated, cobra-like hood, whose inner membrane is brightly colored and patterned. This is primarily used as a sexual display and a defense mechanism.

#### Adulthood (30 - 180)

Once sexual maturity has been reached, a Gox will typically live up to 180 years by Human reckoning. As Goxi are monogamous by nature, it is common for mated pairs to have 4-5 children between the ages of 50 and 150, with considerable age gaps of 10 years or more between each sibling.

## History

### Pre-FTL

The history of the Gox civilization is bathed in war. Ixara is the planet with the highest concentration of leviathan-class organisms in the galaxy. While the Goxi are tall, they are diminutive next to the planet's apex predators. It was their intelligence that gave them the edge over the competition; rapid technological progress was the one advantage that allowed them to rise to dominance on their world, and since then has been a pillar of Gox society. One of the manifestations of this is the development of electronic computers, and from there the first true robots, only a few decades after the industrial revolution.

Mellenia of intermittent warfare, and culminating in a single globe-spanning Unification War, slowly merged various city-states into larger and larger units. Near the end of the industrial revolution, the major city-states of Ixara had merged into various gigapolises scattered around the planet

The biggest of these, namely Aranxil, Ikoris, and Æokhen, each with a population of over half a billion, soon secured . When the first hyperspace-capable ships were built 80 years after the end of the last Unification Wars, the three superpowers reluctantly and cautiously spearheaded a global political movement known as United Ixara. Aranxil, the biggest and most powerful of the gigapolises, was named capital of the United Ixaran Empire.

### First Contact and the Xani War.

*Main Article: Galactic Wars*

It would take the UIE another few years after the discovery of FTL before it would encounter other sapient alien species. Their first contact was in the form of a civilian ship belonging to the Democratic Novarian Republic Gateway-ing into a UIE-controlled system, pursued by a unknown attacker. After destroying the hostile ship for its unauthorized and weaponized entry into Ixaran territory, cautious contact was established between the UIE, the DNR, and their allies the Great Disseminule.

After an extensive explanation of the war against the millenium-old Xani Hegemony, the UIE agreed to enter the war on the side of the Novarians and Akurani. The sudden arrival of the naval juggernaut that was the UIE turned the war from a one-sided massacre into a proper war, as the UIE had experimented weapons technologies that neither the Xani nor the other two had fielded till then, such as particle lances and automated starfighters. This small alliance would eventually evolve into the Galactic Assembly

Still, the military might of the Xani was nothing to be trifled with. It took the combined forces of the three nations nearly half a year to break the siege on Novar, and another seven years to reclaim the systems the Xani had taken over.

In 1298 CE, the Xani, seeking a swift surrender from the allies, made an example out of a Gox colony, sterilizing the planet with a Neutron Purge. Up to this point, the UIE had been acting on a doctrine of deterrence and support, but when news of the purged colony reached the ears of populace, they demanded blood. The Admiralty, with the 3rd Emperor Zastor Vexus's blessing, switched stance from deterrence to genocide, ordering apocalyptic orbital bombardment campaigns on known Xani worlds and abducting millions of Xani to be executed live on Ixara.

Just as the other two allies were preparing peace talks with the Xani, the UIE navy successfully blockaded the Xani homeworld, where most of their population had now evacuated to. It was here that the UIE unveiled their own superweapon, the Planetbuster Array, which cracked the planet open and rendered the Xani functionally extinct.

With the genocide complete, the UIE officially declared the war to be over in 1224 CE, though it would continue to covertly hunt down surviving Xani across the galaxy for decades to come.

After the war's conclusion, the three young nations decided to formalize their alliance with each other, forming the beginnings of the Galactic Assembly.

### Schism and Restructuring

Some time after the war with the Xani, the 4th Emperor, Ixaraum Vexus Ontar, came to power. She is often remembered as an unpopular, weak and vascillating leader whose reign saw political upheavals in the colonies that splintered the UIE into several warring factions. The 30-year-long **Ixaran Schism**, as it came to be known, saw nation's 29 major colonies coalesce into twelve rival factions. The emperor was content to let the Gox people destroy themselves in a civil war if it meant she could reassert her control over them again. With the emperor unwilling to act, her son, Admiral Ixaraum Vexus Karth, with the help of a special team managed to unite the warring factions and depose the emperor, citing her willing inaction as a forfeit to her rule.

In the aftermath, the leaders of the 12 factions and Vexus, decided that having a single designated ruler would no longer benefit the nation moving forward. The UIE was restructured into a tiered aristocracy. The nation's territory was divided into 13 semi-autonomous sectors, each with its own Director, and each only loosely administratively bound to Ixara; thus, in 1321 CE, the Ixaran Directorate was born.

## Culture

### Identification

**Pendant:** In the days of the Unification Wars, Goxi had a tradition of wearing some form of adornment to show their allegiance to the gigapolis they were born in. This tradition had mostly died out during the days of the UIE, but was resurrected during the Schism and appropriated into a official system of identification during the early years of the Directorate.

All Goxi at birth are given pendants crafted from a special resin, the composition of which is a fiercely guarded state secret. Emblazoned and painted onto these pendants are the official symbols of the planet the child is a citizen of. Inside this pendant is a microchip that government offices can use to identify citizens, much like the passports that Humans use.

Traditionally, pups are considered citizens of the planets they were born on. Pups born on moons and asteroids are considered citizens of the local Gox-controlled planet, and have their pendants marked accordingly. If there are multiple such colonies within a single star system, the parents get to decide which colony the child will be registered under.

In the case of truly offworld births, like on starships travelling in between stars, the government requires the parents to register their newborn child as quickly as possible, preferrably at the next Gox-controlled planet they visit.

**Names:** Gox names are also ways of keeping track of one's birthplace. Goxi have four names. First is their Locality, marked by the place where they were born with the suffix *-um*, then their Tribe Name marked by the *-en* suffix, Surname, and their Given Name. For example, the name **Ixaraum Lodh-en Vexus Karth** names a Gox named Karth of the Vexus branch of the Lodh tribe who was born on Ixara.

However, due to colonization efforts and restructuring of the UIE into the Directorate, tribal affiliations have become increasingly difficult to track, and most families decided to abandon their tribe names entirely. Nowadays, only those with solid genealogical evidence to support a claim to ancestry can legally add a tribe to their names.

### Society

Ixaran society is a rigid structure, where citizens are treated as cogs in the machine of state; cogs with differing needs and desires, perhaps, but cogs all the same. Each citizen is expected to fully commit to their jobs, obey their superiors, and protect their inferiors. Gox children are taught from a young age to prioritize the group over the self; to pursue personal goals only if it doesn't disadvantage your peers. Lone wolves and individualists are generally looked down upon.

This means that Goxi often grow up with strong inclinations toward public service and teamwork, even outside of the Directorate. They are taught to acknowledge all of their mistakes, and seek help in rectifying them as soon as possible. Because of this, other species generally see Goxi as reliable and forthright; the kind of people you would want at least one of in any group effort.

As their martial culture suggests, the military is the pillar of Ixaran society, suffusing every part of it other than the government. The corps of engineers that maintain Ixaran warships also oversee civilian infrastructure. The armies that defend a planet from invasion also serve as that planet's police force. Weapons manufacturers that create artillery batteries and armored vehicles also make the household appliances found in every Gox home, and interplanetary commerce / trade is mediated and expedited by the Navy's checkpoints and patrol fleets.

#### Government

The Ixaran government is a hierarchical meritocracy-aristocracy. Ixaran law sets aside 9 distinct strata of citizenship that confer their own responsibilities and benefits. These laws are optimized for Goxi, and progression through citizenship tiers is optimized for Gox children as they grow and develop. A citizen's promotion or demotion to another tier is determined by a superior of a higher citizenship tier

**Tier 0: Residence** - This tier of citizenship is assigned to individuals that live in the Directorate, have yet to make their labor contribution to the state. Children, tourists, and unintegrated xeno immigrants occupy this tier of citizenship. They are not required to work for the state, and the government will only provide basic subsistence support.

**Tier 1:** **Partial Citizenship** - Residents that have registered with the census office as citizens of the Directorate will begin a mandatory 5-year public service period where low-level job positions will be made available for the citizen to occupy. This may be menial labor, internship at a local business or research firm, or even serving in the military. This citizenship tier was implemented with adolescent Goxi in mind, and is intended to prepare them for the rigors of adulthood. The government will provide these residents with greater support, such as increased calorie allocation per month and a basic living wage.

Citizens in this tier are assigned up to three Gox supervisors who record and assess their performance. Poorly-performing residents may have their probationary periods extended, but premature termination can only be done at the resident's request.

**Tiers 2 - 6: Full Citizenship** - Residents who have completed their 5-year service will be granted full citizenship and access to the widest array of job prospects among any citizenship tier. As Goxi in T2 are usually in their late thirties, their wages and living conditions are sufficient to comfortably support a small family. Tiers 3 through 6 grant increasing wages and standards of living, and Tier 6 citizens usually have the largest families.

**Tier 7: Academic Privilege** - Many Goxi that work in STEM fields may decide to take up research endeavors. In either case, citizens whose study is registered and approved by the government are given temporary T7 citizenship that lasts until the researchers publish their study. The benefits they receive for this tier are intended to support the researchers for the duration of the project.

Exceptionally long or indefinite research projects, such as demographics studies, are wholly sponsored by the government, and the researchers for these projects are not afforded T7 citizenship.

**Tier 8: Leadership Privilege** - The highest tier of citizenship is reserved for 30 people: the highest leaders of the Ixaran Directorate. This includes the 13 Directors, the Head Ambassador to the Galactic Assembly, and the Admiralty. In addition to the highest standards of living available to the Directorate, they are given the power to lead the nation as well as all the responsibilities that entails.