Homeworld: None (Sterilized during their war with humanity)
Other Worlds: Jubilee Station and the Trader Belt.
The
Traders earned their name through commerce, but they earned their
place at the galactic center through innovative navigational
techniques. Early Traders mastered higher mathematics that allowed
them to envision and interact with hyperdimensional space. Using
these techniques, they were among the first races to travel to the
stars. They soon found other races, even ancient empires, and but
rather than swap blaster fire with these new species, the Traders
chose to swap trade goods.
When those ancient empires fell, the Traders discovered that the
only humanity, a new-comer to the galactic scene, competed with them
for dominion over the galactic center. If a few battles had gone
differently, if luck had favored the Traders, history may well have
gone in a very different direction, but instead, for their foray into
empire-building, the Traders found their homeworld destroyed and
their race scattered across the galaxy.
Today, Traders ply the stars with their great and vast arks, vast
dreadnoughts that house entire cities of Traders within them,
including housing, restaurants, hospitals, industry and ship-repair
facilities. These great arks collect together into great “Guild
fleets,” which used to act as roving industrial centers and
corporate headquarters, but with the destruction of their homeworld,
these guild fleets have devolved into extended clans, serving to
guard and protect the remnants of the Trader people. Traders have
only one permanent settlement: Jubilee Station, a huge space
station/space colony in the Trader elt that acts as a permanent
Trader marketplace, a home for myriad alien cultures, and a point to
which all Guild Fleets return every 20 years for their grand Trader
Jubilee, where they swap stories, star charts, and even family
members, and then set off to explore something new.
Traders blend humanoid features with strange and alien traits to
create an alluringly exotic combination that many other aliens find
both intriguing and repulsive. They mostly resemble hairless,
green-skinned humans with liquid black eyes, and wear tight-fitting
skin-suits that underline just how feminine or masculine the more
attractive members of the species might be. Beneath and along their
supple, dark-green lips lie the tell-tale signs of the “Trader
grin:” a thin black line that goes from their mouth down their chin
and deep into their cheeks. When a Trader isn’t politely offering
another alien a close-mouthed smile, their faces split open to reveal a
split pair of mandibles lined with rows of teeth; their unhinged jaws
allow the to gulp down slithering, still-living prey, like leather
eels. Self-conscious Traders hide this feature behind a face mask or
filter mask.
A Trader’s intellect truly sets him apart from other species.
While no smarter than other species, they
think
faster than everyone else. For them, seconds drift by as slowly as
minutes do for others.
They read a page at a glance, and they speak a language called Klik,
which allows them to convey a minute’s worth of conversation in a
mere second, and at an exceptionally high pitch that’s barely
audible to normal species. Most Traders master Galactic Common at a
young age, and even prefer its poetry to the dry logic of Klik, but
they’ll sprinkle Klik into their conversations in a series of
seemingly unimportant clicks or short, high-pitched, stuttered whines
that seem nothing more than an odd affectation to other species but
is, in fact, an entire second layer to a conversation mostly
incomprehensible to anyone but a fellow Trader.
Traders suffer from frailty. They have
delicate physiques and their life aboard starships make them prone to
disease. To compensate for this, Traders have mastered the arts of
cybernetics and robotics. They often sport spidery and baroque
cybernetics, and rather than battle their foes directly, they make
heavy use of robotic assistance.
Traders
usually prefer to be Diplomats or Smugglers, both of which allow them
to bring their superior deal-making skills to the fore.
Trader
society frowns upon Con Artists, but Traders who choose to go this
route tend to be very
good. Traders make excellent cyberneticists, and such often end up as
Scavengers. Finally, Traders don’t generally engage in war, but
they do worry about their own safety, and so some Traders become
Security Agents.
Most
Traders have the Wanderer background; Traders who grow up on Jubilee
Station
have the Humble Origins background. Those who run Trader arks or
guild fleets have titles and are thus Aristocrats.
