The Kanzati are bipeds who are semi-aquatic. They stand about two
meters tall, and to Human eyes are lightly built. They are
streamlined and do not have body hair, instead they are coated with
fine scales which range from light blues to greens, in random
patterns. A few patches can be black, white or rarely other colours
such as purple.
The four kanzati eyes can extend on stalks up to five centimetres
long, although they have limited directional vision. An kanzati can
does periodically check around itself using the eyestalks. When in
the water, the eyestalks are kept retracted, and covered with a
protective third eyelid. There eyes are usually yellow, although red
or blue are not unknown. Green eyes are blind, and indicate a kanzati
psychic (they're born blind).
Pure carnivores, the kanzati are adept hunters on either land of sea,
able to swim quickly with webbed feet and tail, and with six-fingered
hands manipulate complex tools and use weapons for hunting on land.
Their three-jointed, slim hands do not have claws, but their
streamlined heads with flexible necks have a razor-sharp set of 3-4
centimetre long fangs. The Kanzati are perfectly happy in Terran
environments. However, the Kanzati homeworld is humid and they can
have problems with arid environments. In space, they use confined
water bodies which also act as part of their environmental reserves.
A Kanzati can spend up to fifteen minutes underwater thanks to an air
sack and the ability to hyper-saturate other tissues with oxygen, but
are air breathers who need to recover for several minutes after a
long dive.
The Kanzati have a low birth rate, thanks to a complex interaction of
five separate sexes which can produce at certain times offspring from
most groupings of three sexes, as long as the fertile periods
overlap. They can be artificially stimulated, and indeed have to be
off Kanziiar (the Kanzati homeworld) and it's environmental clues.
However, there are usually still only 3-4 children per ten adults per
Kanziiar year (approximately three Terran years).
Because of their low birth rate and despite their one and two-third
century natural lifespan, made two centuries by medical treatments,
the Kanzati use both a smaller servitor race, the Kana, who stand
perhaps a meter tall and have two eyes, as well as stubby tails but
otherwise look rather like immature Kanzati, and semi-intelligent
machine servitors. The machines are not intelligent as such, but can
be very good at a narrow range of tasks. The Kana are fairly
intelligent, and are integrated into Kanzati society, typically one
or two Kana will live in a community for each Kanzati doing menial
tasks and doing a lot of the child-rearing.
One in ten thousand Kanzati is a green-eye, a blind psychic. The
Kanzati diplomats, the "green-eyes" have both a detailed spatial-
sense which allows them to navigate the world around them, they can
also tap into the emotions and surface thoughts of both other Kanzati
and aliens. While hardly a universal translator, it explains their
roles as high-powered and well-paid mediators and diplomats within
Kanzati society. Some also have telekinetic and even pyrokinetic
powers.
Kanzati government is loose, with nothing between city-states and the
Kanzati central coordinating body, the Kanzati Archonship. The Archon
is appointed for life by a vote of the leaders of the city-states,
and his council (who can override his decisions outside a time of
active war with a simple majority vote although they themselves
cannot make policy) - who are elected one per habitable world /
system command by a popular vote of all the inhabitants of the area
in question.
The city-states themselves vary wildly. As long as they keep up
certain basic laws and rights guaranteed by decree of the Archon,
each city-state or Domain setting has the right to set it's own
internal structure. Some are run by feudal families, others by
capitalist or communist regimes. A few others, owned by the military,
use a strict military structure. The Fleet itself is run by it's high
commander, the Archon himself, through a board of five admirals. They
cannot, by charter, interfere in Domain internal matters except for
those domains the military runs itself and from which it draws a
large minority of it's officers, or by direct order of the Archon.
Domains themselves are denied access to weapons which could harm
starships, and the same goes for civilian starships. While light
personal weapons are available without any checks to adult Kanzati,
heavy weapons and the latest in projected-energy firearms are also
restricted to military and internal security forces. Stunners (which
only affect Kanzati-type nervous systems) are also available and
widely used, simply knocking the target out for a few minutes.
Dawn Falcon