A prey species on their home planet, the Trinocs invented the first faster-than-light drive in galactic history — and then, terrified to discover a galaxy full of meat-eaters, tried to preemptively conquer as much of it as possible. The Trinoc Empire maintained a near-monopoly on FTL for centuries but eventually crumbled as its subject races reverse-engineered the secret. Today, Trinocs are widely scattered in small communities across the galaxy, sometimes revered and sometimes resented for their imperial past.
Trinocs are spindly centauroid creatures, about five feet tall and five feet long, with four thin legs, two arms, and a triangular head with an eye on each side, giving them 360-degree vision to watch for predators. They evolved as grazing herbivores similar to Earth gazelles or deer, living in small herds of closely related individuals and hunted by much more powerful animals they could escape only through headlong flight.
Once caught, a Trinoc had no chance of personal survival — but, if it delayed the predators, it could buy the rest of its herd-family time to escape. As a result, they evolved a kind of species-wide split personality: normally nervous and quick to flee, they became suicidal berserkers once injured.
Further, as Trinocs evolved intelligence — largely under pressure from clever predators — they evolved a third psychological mode, one of hyperfocused attention to a particular problem.
One of the first “technologies” Trinocs developed was the brewing of plant-based potions to control their sudden shifts from coward to berserker to savant. Trinoc rulers learned how to enforce an artificial calm upon themselves while keeping most of their populations passive and drugging others into kamikaze shock troops. As their technology improved, the Trinocs exterminated most of their predators — with disastrous ecological consequences — and developed a global government called the Narcotic Council. The Council ruled by systematically drugging the population, first through the water supply and later through towering pheromone factories that pumped the requisite chemicals into the atmosphere.
But with typical Trinoc paranoia, the Narcotic Council feared their planet would be destroyed by a solar flare or rogue asteroid, so they invested massively in space flight — leading to the invention of FTL. Elements of the Trinoc space fleet used the new technology to escape the Council’s control, fleeing to new planets with undrugged air and water, and ultimately returned to liberate their home world.
But the new Trinoc government, the Admiralty, also discovered alien worlds where predatory animals had evolved intelligence and civilization— a terrifying prospect. The initial response was to commit genocide from orbit. As the Admiralty encountered more carnivore and omnivore civilizations, however, it decided that mass extermination was wasteful and that it should try to subjugate alien species instead. Since Trinocs feared to land ground forces on hostile planets, they preferred to rule from orbit, letting client races run their own worlds — and even colonize new ones — as long as all space travel and interplanetary trade remained under Trinoc control.
In the long run, of course, it was impossible to keep faster-than-light technology a secret forever. Some species were too clever and persistent, and some local Trinoc governors were too lenient or corrupt. What’s more, the Empire became increasingly reliant on its thrall species as ground soldiers, technicians, and even bureaucrats, making the leakage of technology all the greater.
Eventually, enough subject races built FTL spaceships and rebelled that the Trinoc Empire collapsed. Some former vassals massacred their overthrown overlords, while others enslaved them for their scientific talents. The Trinocs who survived formed insular communities that kept their heads down and made themselves useful to more powerful neighbors.
Today, the Trinocs are dispersed widely across the galaxy they once ruled. Most live in small enclaves on other races’ worlds, acting as insular castes of scientists and technicians, sometimes respected but all too often as second-class citizens. Others spend their entire lives aboard starships, living as merchant clans. A few have fled to distant worlds to live on their own, far from predators. And there are always rumors of Trinoc factions plotting to somehow resurrect their long-lost empire, although this is often just a pretext for other races to oppress them. Indeed, many Trinocs believe their own experience shows that imperialism is ultimately bad for everyone, even the overlords.
Living in fear of other species, many Trinoc communities have returned to the ancient techniques of the Narcotic Council, believing that survival requires drugging their populations into compliance. But most Trinocs despise this kind of pharmaceutical tyranny and jealously guard their mental self-determination. The motto of this majority : “Neither masters nor slaves, but finally free.”

Attribute Modifiers:
ST -2 [-20]
ST+3 (only when berserk, -40%) [18]
IQ 12 [40]
HT -1 [-10]

Secondary Characteristic Modifiers:
Basic Move +2 [+10]
Hit Points -1 [-2]

Advantages:
360 vision [+25]
Acute Taste & Smell x3 [6]
Extra Legs: 4-legged [+5]
Single-Minded [+5]
Versatile [+5]

Disadvantages:
Berserk (9) [-15]
Chummy [-5]
Cowardice (9) [-15]
Fearfulness 4 [-8]
Intolerance: meat-eaters [-5]
No depth perception [-15]
Reputation: former galactic overlords (-2 with almost everyone; +3 with species that did well under the Trinoc Empire, a large group) [0]
Quirk: Personality Change (coward to berserker to single-minded savant) [-1]


Common but optional traits:
These traits are NOT part of the racial template but are included as suggestions for individual characters
Gadgeteer [+25 or +50 points]
Talent: Artificer [+10/level] or Mathematical [+10/level]
Phobia: meat-eaters [-15]
Reprogrammable (for ordinary Trinocs living under a Narcotic Council) [-10] or Code of Honor: oppose all forms of brainwashing & mind control (for Trinocs living free of a Narcotic Council) [-5]
Social stigma: Second-class citizen [-5] or Minority [-10] or Valuable Property (-10) or Subjugated (-20)
“The Trinoc Empire should be restored” or “No species should ever have dominion over another”: either can be anything from a Quirk [-1] to Fanaticism [-15]

The four species known as the Quartet collectively dominate the galactic economy. A loose alliance rather than an empire, the Quartet protects and promotes peaceful trade. A web of interstellar treaties governs everything from the protection of intellectual property to the suppression of piracy, from contract law to first contact protocols. Many other species have signed on to these accords over the centuries, creating what is often called the Galactic Common Market. But the core of the system remains the Quartet races, which are widely respected, albeit often resented for their influence:
the Triphibians, small manta ray-like creatures that can swim, fly, and climb trees;
the Sessiles, huge soft-bodied sea-dwellers resembling an upside-down jellyfish;
the Armstrongs, lion-sized stealth predators with fluffy grey bodies; and
the Striders, tall armless bipeds with beaks and prehensile tongues.

Striders
A highly sociable species with a strong instinct for cooperation, the Striders founded the Quartet and remain its institutional backbone to this day. They are herd animals, evolved from tree-browsing herbivores with an ecological niche similar to Earth elephants. An adult female Strider stands nine feet tall — most of it leg — and weighs over a thousand pounds, with thick, hairless skin in various shades of pale red and orange; males are noticeably smaller and brighter. The head and torso form a single unit, with two eyes and a sharp beak at the front. The two pillar-like legs attach to the head/torso at a neck/hip joint directly behind the jaw. Striders have no arms, but they evolved long, prehensile tongues to grab leafy branches and pull them into their beaked mouths.
Striders never wear clothes for modesty and rarely need them for environmental protection — their hides are highly protective — but body art is common, especially tattoos but also piercings and body paint in some subcultures. Females generally wear tattoos signifying their herd and status, while males’ tattoos signify the herds and other groups they have frequent dealings with.
Females form 95 percent of the population and typically spend their whole life in the same herd, forging tight social bonds that make Strider society highly stable. The smaller and scarcer males move frequently from herd to herd, acting as ambassadors to ensure genetic and cultural mixing. Males are natural diplomats and rarely fight except when cornered; females are more combative but only resort to lethal force against creatures they see as dangerous to the herd — which they then stamp out with a grim thoroughness that can degenerate into genocide.
Both genders have evolved to be highly social and collaborative, in part because they have only one manipulative limb, so tasks that a two-armed creature can do easily alone require two Striders working closely together. The Striders’ greatest strength is that this instinct for cooperation extends beyond their own species. Males can make themselves welcome in a wide variety of cultures, while females often adopt intelligent aliens as part of their herd. The most commonly incorporated races are the other three members of the Quartet, but other species are not uncommon.
The Striders had invented steam engines and were vigorously industrializing when they first encountered alien life. Warships appeared in the sky, dropped shuttles full of troops, and told the baffled Striders they were now thralls of the Trinoc Empire. But the Empire was already in decay, having lost its monopoly on faster-than-light travel and grown dependent on thrall races. In particular, most of the ground force deployed to conquer the Striders were Armstrongs, a species conquered by the Trinocs just a few decades before.

Armstrongs
The Armstrongs are ambush predators who operate in packs, relying not on speed — they actually run slower than humans — but on stealth tactics, clever traps, and the extensible arms that give them their name. The average Armstrong is an inconspicuous grey-furred lump about a yard in diameter, rather like a living puffball, with eight eyes and a mouth on the front. They have four short legs and two arms: one human-sized, the other a massively muscled, multi-jointed affair capable of suddenly extending to snatch prey ten feet away.
Armstrongs are shy with strangers, even strangers from their own species, but they are brave, cunning fighters and fiercely loyal to their hunting pack. Like canines on Earth, they proved capable of extending this pack loyalty beyond their own species — first to the conquering Trinocs, who used them as slave soldiers, and then to the Striders, who treated them much better. The Striders, for their part, were initially leery of these alien carnivores but, once convinced the Armstrongs had no appetite for Strider flesh, soon adopted them into their herds.
The Armstrongs quietly helped the Striders steal Trinoc technology. The Striders helped the Armstrongs organize an underground liberation movement. 80 years after the conquest of the Striders, the Trinoc Empire erupted in one of its final civil wars, and the two races took the opportunity to ride together in revolt. They swiftly liberated the Strider homeworld and drove the Trinoc remnants from the surrounding stars, then launched a decade-long campaign to free the Armstrongs. Soon after, they explored beyond imperial space and discovered the planet shared by the Sessiles and Triphibians.

Sessiles
The Sessiles are a race of aquatic invertebrates that drift with the current as juveniles but attach to the sea-floor as adults. Adults are radially symmetrical. The main body is a soft disc about three yards in diameter with eight eyes, eight manipulative tentacles, and eight mouths evenly spaced around the rim. Tiny “roots” extend from the underside to ingest minerals from the sea-floor. Extending upwards from the body are dozens of bouyant tendrils, which sift the water to feed on plankton. (Their appearance has been likened to an upside-down jellyfish).
It is unusual for an underwater species to develop a technological civilization, and rarer still for a sessile species to evolve intelligence in the first place. But the Sessiles’ ancestors formed symbiotic relationships with a wide array of smaller, more mobile creatures, excreting a nutritious “milk” in return for protection from predators and parasites. Effectively, they began taming and selectively breeding other animals before they developed speech. These interactions stimulated the evolution of intelligence — not only in the Sessiles but in one of their symbiotes, the Triphibians.

Triphibians
The smartest creatures that swam around the ancestral Sessiles were the Triphibians. This race roughly resembles Earth manta rays, with a wingspan of 4-5’ feet, a long thin tail, and a cluster of protruding mandibles that act as manipulators. Triphibians are actually air-breathers, nesting on land, but they are capable of flying well out to sea and diving deep underwater in pursuit of prey, somewhat like an Earth pelican. A naturally sociable and curious species, they prefer to live in large colonies but are willing to explore great distances on their own in pursuit of new resources, living space, and trade partners.
Over time, the Triphibians came to rely on the Sessiles’ milk as a major source of nutrients not otherwise abundant in their diets and learned to protect this food source from threats, guarding juvenile Sessiles as they drifted, guiding them to choice settlement sites, and even transplanting mature rooted adults to better locations. In turn, the Sessiles rewarded the most helpful Triphibians with extra milk and grooming. The two species were both intelligent enough to, in effect, domesticate each other, stimulating each other to develop ever-greater intelligence and the ability to communicate.
The two species co-evolved into a Stone Age civilization, with the mobile Triphibians bringing stones, bones, and coral to the more dexterous Sessiles, who made them into tools for both races to use. Triphibian communities adopted Sessiles and treated them with religious reverence as a source of technology, nutrition, and wisdom, while the the Sessiles relied on the adventurous Triphibians to explore the wider world for them and bring word back.
It was at this stage in their development that the two races were discovered by the newborn Strider-Armstrong alliance. Already enthusiastic about inter-species cooperation, the Striders and Armstrongs saw the unique potential of this symbiotic relationship, made contact with the Sessile-Triphibian society, and began teaching them advanced technology.
[continued in next post]

[continued from previous post]
The four species soon gravitated towards specialities in their combined civilization. Triphibians, with their exploratory urges and innate sense of three-dimensional space, proved excellent space pilots and explorers. Sessiles, with their patience and fine motor skills, tended to become technicians and engineers. Armstrongs, with their natural combat skills, provided ground soldiers, frontier scouts, and first-in colonists. Female Striders policed, administered, and led their new multi-species herds, while male Striders acted as natural ambassadors binding the whole civilization together. These tendencies are far from absolute: There are Armstrong mechanics, Strider soldiers, Sessile bureaucrats, and Triphibian politicians, for example. And all four species contributed, in different ways, to science, commerce, and the arts.
Together, the Quartet races carved out a territory amidst the chaos of the Trinoc Empire’s final collapse. They had the good fortune to be located on the frontier of Trinoc space, far from the fierce fighting over the former imperial core and with plenty of room for peaceful expansion. The Quartet launched no wars of aggression but proved savagely capable of self-defense, so rival civilizations largely learned to leave it alone — or better yet, trade with it instead of fighting. Over the centuries, as Quartet colonies and influence grew, interstellar trade agreements and defense pacts evolved into a galaxy-spanning common market.
Today, a typical Quartet herd consists of five to 100 individuals of all four species. However, a significant minority of herds comprise only two species — typically only Striders and Armstrongs or only Sessiles and Triphibians — and a few herds are single-species. Most herds are involved in some sort of “family business,” their members working together on anything from a farming colony to a starship crew to a military unit. A traditionalist herd is led by the eldest female Strider, the Herd Matriarch. Some herds select their leaders by majority vote, albeit with older individuals typically granted extra votes.
Multiple Herds — anywhere from a handful to hundreds — join together in Meta-Herds, which likewise use a variety of matriarchal, elective, and mixed systems of governance. Meta-Herds federate into even larger entities, and so on up to the galaxy-spanning alliance that is the Quartet itself. It is a loose and sometimes shambling system, often slow to respond to crisis and inconsistent in its daily policies, but its flexibility and diversity has made it the greatest power in the galaxy — for now.

Attribute modifiers:
ST +10 [90]
DX -1 [-20]
IQ +2 [40]
HT +2 [20]

Secondary Attribute Modifiers:
Size Modifier: +1
Basic Move +3 [+15]
Will +1 [+5]

Advantages
Charisma +1 [+5]
DR 3 (tough skin, -40%) [+9]
Sharp Beak (can’t use when holding things in tongue, -50%; Armor Divisor 2, +50%) [+1]
Subsonic speech [+10]
Reputation: most powerful species in the galaxy (+3 with almost everyone, -4 with enemies of the Quartet, a large group) [0]

Disadvantages
Bloodlust [-10]
Chummy (-5)
One Arm: Prehensile tongue {flexible +50%, weak -25%) [-17]
Sense of Duty: herd [-5]
Pacifism: aggressive self-defense* [-5]

* You only fight to defend yourself and your people, but you have a broad definition of “self-defense.” You may preemptively attack any individual, group, or (in some cases) even species that has used deadly force against you and your people in the past, and you may use maximum force to end this perceived threat.


Common optional traits:
These traits are NOT part of the racial template but are included as suggestions for individual characters
Ally Group & Duty: Herd [variable]
Fanaticism: Herd [-15]
High Pain Threshold [+10]
Honesty [-10]
Selfless [-5]
Truthfulness [-5]

Attribute Modifiers
ST +6 [54]
IQ +2 [40]
HT +1 [10]

Secondary Attribute Modifiers:
Size Modifier: +1
Basic Move +3 [+15]
Will +1 [+5]

Advantages:
Charisma +3 [+15]
DR 3 (tough skin, -40%) [+9]
Sharp Beak (can’t use when holding things in tongue, -50%; Armor Divisor 2, +50%) [+1]
Subsonic speech [+10]
Talent: Smooth Operator +1 [+15\
Reputation: most powerful species in the galaxy (+3 with almost everyone, -4 with enemies of the Quartet, a large group) [0]

Disadvantages:
Chummy [-5]
One Arm: Prehensile tongue (flexible +50%, weak -25%) [-17]
Pacifism: self-defense only [-15]


Common optional traits:
These traits are NOT part of the racial template but are included as suggestions for individual characters
Patron & Duty: friendly herd [variable]
Code of Honor: professional diplomat (-5)
Cultural adaptability: xeno-adaptability (+20)
Empathy [5 or 15]
Language Talent [10]
Social chameleon [+5]
Curious [-5]
Xenophilia [-10]

Attribute Modifiers: none

Secondary Attribute Modifiers:
Basic Speed +0.75 [15]
Basic Move -2 [-10]

Advantages:
Perception +2 [10]
Combat Reflexes [15]
Extra Legs: four-legged [+5]
Fearless +2 [+4]
Injury Tolerance: No neck [+5]
Sharp Claws [+5]
Silence +1 [+5]
Fur [+1]
Extensible ambush arm: Arm Strength +3 (one arm) [+8]; Long x3 [+30]
Reputation: Quartet members (+2, almost everyone; -3 with Quartet enemies, a large group) [0]

Disadvantages:
Cannot kick (all four legs) [-7]
Sense of Duty: pack [-5]
Sleepy (1/2 the time): [-8]
Shyness (mild) [-5]
Truthfulness [-5]
Quirk: Catnap anywhere, anytime (-1)


Common optional traits:
These traits are NOT part of the racial template but are included as suggestions for individual characters
Ally Group & Duty: Herd [variable]
Acute Senses [+2/level/sense] or Perception [5/level]
Danger Sense (+15)
Additional Fearlessness [+2/level]
Additional Arm Strength [+4/level]
Stubborn [-5]

Attribute Modifiers:
ST -3 [-30]
IQ +2 [40]

Secondary Attribute Modifiers:
Size Modifier +1 [+0]
Hit Points +5 [+10]

Advantages:
360 vision [+25]
Does Not Breathe: gills only [0]
Extra Arms x6 (flexible +50%, short -50%, only 3 can grapple any given target, -25%) [45]
Extra Mouths x7 [+35]
Enhanced Tracking x1 [+5]
High Manual Dexterity +1 [+5]
Injury Tolerance: no head or neck [+12]
Pressure Support 1 [+5]
Single-minded [+5]
Reputation: Quartet members (+2, almost everyone; -3 with Quartet enemies, a large group) [0]

Disadvantages:
Bad Sight: nearsighted [-25]
Increased Consumption 1 : 6 meals a day [-10]
Increased Life Support: aquatic [-10]
Invertebrate [-20]
Sessile [-50]
Weak Bite x8 [-16]


Common optional traits:
These traits are NOT part of the racial template but are included as suggestions for individual characters
Ally Group & Duty: Herd [variable]
Compartmentalized Mind (+50/level)
Gadgeteer (+25 or +50 points)
Versatile (+5)
Combat Paralysis (-15)
Low Pain Threshold (-10)
Shyness (variable)

Attribute Modifiers
Strength -4 [-40]

[b]Secondary Attribute Modifiers[/I]
Size modifier -1 (4.5’) [0]
Perception +2 [10]

Advantages:
Absolute Direction: 3D [10]
Amphibious [10]
Doesn’t Breathe (oxygen storage x25) [10]
Enhanced Move 1: water [20]
Nictating Membrane 1 [1]
Winged Flight [30]
Pressure Support 1 [5]
Speak underwater [5]

Disadvantages:
Chummy [-5]
Curious [-5]
Ham-Fisted [-5]
Impulsiveness [-10]
No Legs: undulates along ground on wings [0]
Short Arms [-10]


Common optional traits:
These traits are NOT part of the racial template but are included as suggestions for individual characters
Ally Group & Duty: Herd [variable]
Additional Perception (+5/level) or Acute Vision (+2/level/sense)
Daredevil (+15)
Versatile (+5)
Overconfidence (-5)
Short Attention Span (-10)