Creature:J'sai

The J'si are a technologically-advanced mammalian sophont clade native to Pthua'i, a desolate planet in the outer rim of the Milky Way Galaxy. As a result of Pthua'i's fragile biosphere and scarce resources, the J'si Commonwealth has generally shunned arbitrary violence and prefers to advance through honest trade and peaceable co-existence with other civilizations, although they are not afraid to use military force when necessary to defend their way-of-life.

Origins
The J’si evolved on the moderately desolate world of Pthua’i (Standard Classification: T-2), the second civilization to arise on said planet. The first civilization, the reptilian Daiukhro, destroyed themselves in a global thermonuclear war a few decades after discovering how to split the atom. The far distant ancestors of the modern J’si, social semi-aquatic proto-mammals that dwelled within the marshlands of Pthua’i, survived the conflict, but inherited a world corrupted and rendered barren by the fallout of the atomic hellfires that extinguished the Daiukhro. It would be 50 million years before the descendants of the aforementioned proto-mammals, the now anatomically and behaviorally modern J’si, first discovered the secrets of agriculture, thus beginning a relatively rapid rise from barbarism and savagery into a technologically-advanced starfaring civilization.

Despite most of the wounds inflicted upon the planet by the Daiukhro’s conflict being healed by the start of large-scale complex J’si societies, the early J’si agriculturalists nevertheless had it rough. Pthua’i was then undergoing a climate shift due to a few peculiarities in the planet’s orbital mechanics, thus for many J’si dwelling in the fertile regions of the planet, life was nasty, poor, and short. Regardless, the J’si agriculturalists had a surplus of food, enabling a population explosion among them, allowing for increasing specialization and division of labor. These factors cascaded until city-states began emerging across Pthua’i, initially independent of one another, but soon coming into contact with one another. These city states were clustered around the river valleys of Pthua'i, that fed into the shallow seas that dotted the planet.

Pre-Modern Era
One of the notable cultures to develop during the Era of City-States was the Xaela'qu. The Xaela'qu emerged around the Xa'ela River Valley, and soon came to dominate their neighboring cities via a series of favorable trade connections, with said connections also serving to spread the Xaela'qu way of life. The Xaela'qu are notable to modern scholars for developing a primitive form of republicanism, for developing an efficient bureaucracy, and for their accomplishments in the arts and sciences; large-scale civil engineering projects and the study of philosophy flourished among the Xaela'qu, and these factors, combined with favorable climate shifts (due once more to the aforementioned orbital peculiarities), enabled massive prosperity. The legacy of the Xaela'qu lives on in the modern J'si Commonwealth, with the various successor states of the Xaela'qu coming to dominate global affairs in the decades before planetary unification and the establishment of the J'si Commonwealth.

Later J'si pre-spaceflight history was marked by the emergence of the nation-state in the sphere of international politics, and by the rise of industrial societies. From the years 3080-3110 of the Standardized J'si Calendar (Based upon the approximate years since the fall of the ancient Xaela'qu Republic), the J'si nation-states were brought into a global conflict, the Thirty-Year Slaughter, which was one of the first widespread uses of mechanized warfare and more importantly military aircraft, over access to spice. The war ended not with a bang, as the Daiukhro's resource wars did, but with a stalemate and an armistice and an easing of relations between the great powers once they realized the futility of their strife and armed squabbling.

The next decades saw another benign climate shift, one that led to immense prosperity and production of spice. The quality of life among the J'si was quite high, and the nation-states of Pthua'i were vastly interconnected. Globalization was the order of the day, and the thoughts of many turned to planetary unification. Indeed, such a concept was more feasible than ever due to strides and breakthroughs in the realm of computing. But there were still several barriers to the beautiful dream of a united J'si people.

Modern Era
More expansion coming soon

Biology
The J'si are a bipedal sophont clade of mammalians with short and slender bodies well-suited for their hyperactive metabolisms. J'si heads are possibly their most notable characteristic, due to their disproportionately-large heads (from a humanocentric perspective) and elongated craniums. J'si are noted for the aforementioned hyperactive metabolism which allows them to function on just one Earth-hour of sleep per Earth-day. Their minds and bodies work faster than most sapient races, thus enabling their (relatively) rapid technological progression. The drawback of this active metabolism is a short "natural" lifespan of around 50 Earth-years, but this has been recently mitigated by advancements in the medical sciences, with modern J'si having the possibility of living indefinitely, should they so choose.

Other advancements in medical sciences have also altered the nature of J'si reproduction; "natural" reproduction, via the laying of clutches of eggs, has given way to the growing of J'si in vats depending on the needs of the Commonwealth at the time. Indeed, the traditional method of reproduction is largely viewed among J'si as quaint, distasteful, and crude, an aspect of a primitive age long gone.

The modern J'si method of reproduction has made enhancing the J'si clade much easier; biomechatronic cyberware (oft colloquially referred to as "bionic" or "cybernetic") enhancements are the standard, for an example (albeit one of many), didactic neural-modules (quantum microchips containing vast databases of factual information) are implanted within newly-grown J'si, so as to speed up the educational process. Because of the prevalence of biomechatronic cyberware, the J'si could be described as a sophont clade comprised of cyborgs.

More expansion coming soon

Behavior
J'si are oft stereotyped as uniformly dutiful and stoic, and obsessed with politeness, virtue, and work to perfectionistic degrees; while not an absolute truth by any means, there is some elements truth to these claims. J'si psychology tends toward a sharp separation between "work" and "play", albeit one that isn't absolute. The distinction, culturally speaking, has actually softened in recent centuries due to mass unemployment due to automation and the subsequent implementation of a universal basic income within the Commonwealth in order to offset this. After all, there's little difference between work and play when labor isn't a necessity for the average J'si citizen to survive.

More expansion coming soon

Society
The J'si live in a society known as the J'si Commonwealth. The J'si Commonwealth is a (largely) post-scarcity direct democracy where the citizenry use computer networks to vote directly on most matters regarding the state; most of the bureaucracy has been automated as well, so as to achieve optimal efficiency in administrating the Commonwealth. The J'si Commonwealth is relatively-small compared to other interstellar nations, only controlling a few hundred worlds and only inhabiting half of them. However, inhabited J'si worlds are covered in dense infrastructure and marvelous wonders of scientific and technological progress. The adage "tall, not wide" comes to mind when describing space controlled by the Commonwealth.

More expansion coming soon

Technology
The J'si Commonwealth is a Type I civilization on the Kardashev Scale, one rapidly approaching Type II; they are also classified as a high end Tier 4 / non-expansive Tier 3 civilization on the Technological Tier Scale. Industrial technologies include mass/energy conversion and matter/antimatter power sources. Teleportation and replication for advanced material sciences are also possible. Also of note is the widespread use of quantum computing, to the point where quantum computing is common in personal computer terminals. As mentioned before, mass automation of menial labor and the development of matter converters capable of the synthesis of organic and inorganic materials via rearrangement of subatomic particles has enabled the denizens of the J'si Commonwealth a nigh-utopian post-scarcity standard of living. And the presence of biomechatronic cyberware enhancements is commonplace.

More expansion coming soon