Ok, rewrote everything:
The Vaec EmpireType of Government: Despotic Monarchy
Important Holdings: Verdakha, the home system, where Verkha, the home planet, is located: pop. 10 million
Envida, closest system to Verdakha, houses the Royal Shipyards: pop. 8 million
History:The Vaec people are metallic beings, roughly the shape of a mythological centaur (but
much larger), that feed directly on electrical currents for survival. This unusual setup was brought to existance by the extreme conditions on their home planet: most of the planet's surface was formed by a highly conductive heavy element, and possessed vast "seas" and "rivers" of electrical discharges created by both the thermoelectrical reactions below the crust and the planet's own electromagnectic field. Verkha has a fairly heavy atmosphere, but Vaec are unbound from it - they can perfectly live on a vacuum, being exposed to severely low or high temperatures and extreme amounts of radiation, provided that they have connection to some sort of power supply. It must also be noted that populational growth on the Vaec race is extremely slow, and the total current population numbers of the empire (23 million) are considered fairly high by their standards.
Use of Artificial Intelligences is very common on the empire, and all the AIs are replicas of Vaec minds. In fact, their whole computer systems are modelled after their own neural systems. All Vaec individuals have extremely high intelligence for human standards, and are able to analyse vast amounts of data at the same time, and in very shorts periods of time - each of them being what could be called the best of a human and a computer put together. They communicate through intrincate visual signals, using color patterns on their chest power reserve as charachters, words, sentences, and sometimes even whole speeches (for a single pattern).
They reached for the stars fairly early, being able to ignore most of the life-support dillemmas encountered by the human and similar races, and quickly engaged on an expansionist campaign that reached it's peak as Her Majesty's Domain extended over almost one tenth of the galaxy known as Milky Way (known to them as Dalha, or the home of stars). As large an empire as it was, though, it met a hard fall as the Leveller front reached their systems. Made weak by internal corruption and the lack of true combat for centuries, the Vaec Empire lost system after system to the hostile aliens, and was eventually contained to it's two home systems - Verdakha (our home's star) and Envida (the morning star) - where the Leveller campaign was halted by the much higher concentration of Vaec forces.
Many years passed since the Leveller gave up on the Vaec systems and, having rebuilt her pride and military strength, the Queen now sees the new galactic situation as the perfect ground for the rebirth of the empire. It's time for conquests, for the El Darihen (the black sun of gods) has risen.
Military:The Vaec fleet makes extreme use of drone technology. Ships that for other races would be considered corvettes, and maybe even destroyers, are commanded by AI and remlinks. The main ship of the fleet is the Karvterah Class Cruiser, almost a kilometer in length and operated by 230 Vaecle (the 'male' Vaec - their 'females' have a strong predilection for research instead of fighting) Each Karvterah carries four destroyer class vessels attached to it's outer hull, and several ships that could be classified as gunboats are housed inside the cruiser's bays. They also carry two hundred Leqtar (roughly translated as "Smashers") - the AI controlled infantry units.
All Vaec ships and infantry units are made of a material similar to the Vaec own body, but orders of magnitude stronger, and then can be reshaped as the mission objectives require, and repairs are conducted automatically by the ship AIs.
Most of their weapons are electrical in nature, and they make heavy use of Free Electron Beams and other beam weapons. This does not mean, though, that they do not use more 'standard' weapon systems, such as plasma launchers, conventional and nuclear missiles, and the eventual antimatter warhead. A typical Vaec taskforce is comprised of three Karvterah Class Cruisers, supported by their own auxiliary craft.
Advantages: Extremely fast response times, no need for atmospheres, fast communications, highly refined fold drives, pure weapons strength.
Disadvantages: Dependency on AIs and remlink controls, dependency on the existance of electrical currents, internal corruption and personal agendas, lack of fleet diversity: they rely completely on the Karvterah design.
[This message has been edited by Styxx (edited 11-29-2001).]
