The School
Contents
Racial Description
The School, as it is known in short, can be simply described as a hive mind of sentient, intelligent fish. Their home planet of Clupedas is almost exclusively a water planet, with only a few remote islands dotting its immense ocean. Due to the relative lack of land, Clupeda only developed marine life, most of it resembling the fish life of Earth. The School was no different from any of the other fish, but somehow either through evolution or alien intervention (School historian are still unsure which of the two hypothesis are correct, although some zealots have attributed to divine intervention), a schooling fish resembling Earth sardines developed intelligence far above the ones of other sea creature. Individual intelligence, after hundred of thousands of years, developed into a telepathic hive consciousness and this was when the civilisation known as the School first developed. Much like humanity, the history of the School was often punctuated by wars between the different nations that popped up, but eventually one of the larger schools took complete domination of the planet and formed the School of Clupedas proper.
To understand School society, it is important to first describe the single elements that make the fish: although the School is a hive consciousness, each separate fish is distinct from the whole. The singular fish resemble sardines, although the eyes appear smaller. At the current level of technological advancement, each individual member of the School wears a tiny cybernetic suit that enhances their telepathic capabilities, along with providing tiny grasping appendages (previously any manual task had to be completed by each individual fish grasping an object with their mouth collectively: although this enabled them to complete complex tasks, even this took a relatively long time to create the most basic of constructions).
One of the first technological developments was the production of industrial robotics, which propelled the School into a Golden Age of technological development. Now able to construct technologies and buildings in a much shorter time-frame, the planet was quickly industrialised. Due to the limitations of their form, without these industrial robotics, it would have been impossible for the School to attain the scientific level that they now possess, or even dream of being able to travel beyond their own planet. It also marked a radical change within the culture of the School from merely attempting to survive to being able to control their own destiny and even look further than that. It is clear that without the advent of the industrialisation and the robotised production of goods the School would have been planet-bound and would have remained a relatively primitive specie.
Individual fish go on to form schools which more or less are the equivalent of any other lifeform. These lifeform-schools all share a common background/behaviour and communicate with the outside world as one: it is not unusual for aliens to communicate with the School through one of these lifeform-schools and outsiders are usually invited to consider these schools as an individual body, rather than as disparate individual fish.
Lifeform-schools are telepathically linked to their greater settlement or spaceship schools, which are united similarly to their nation schools and so on until the entire School of Clupedas is formed.
Space flight is a tricky subject for the School, as their ships need to be filled with water in order to function, adding considerably to the weight of the ship. During the early exploratory period of their own solar system, the ships usually had provisions for certain areas to be sealed and then the water within them to be purified and used as fuel if the necessity occurred.
Home Planet
The home planet of the School is almost completely water based. Although rich in food, with many algae farms having been created by the School, minerals are usually hard to get and either have to be extracted from the water itself or found either within deep sea vents or near to the few islands that dot the water scape. The planet is similar to earth, with two distinct poles, although the School has managed to colonise most of the water, from warm to cold. A few land-based creatures exist but they tend to be small. The government of the School is primarily based on the hive-mind consciousness: the self is less important than the whole, although there are a few lifeform-schools that tend to make the larger, more important decisions. Although originally these lifeform-schools gained their status by conquest and strength (they tend to be larger schools that could dominate due to their life), they are now essentially immortal and tend to rule for life: this is because even though individual fish die, they are almost always replaced by new fish, meaning that the consciousness of the lifeform-school lives on. Strangely, even though they are essentially immortal, lifeform-schools are still apt to forget about past events. Predation does still occur within the planet, with the School being the target of many sea-borne predators, although technology has alleviated the problem posed by them.
The Story So Far
Systems
School System
Known Wormholes - 1, no survey
Ocean Planet Clupedas - Class III Population 11 billion, food rich, mineral poor
New System 1
Known Wormholes - 1, no survey
Ocean Planet ? - no colony, food rich, may have indigenious species
Qualities
Telepathy [+2]: The School is both able to telepathically communicate with each other as well as with other species, along with having limited Empathic abilities.
Industrial Robotics [+2]: The development of robotics was an important step towards the technological advancement of the specie and has enabled them to construct previously impossible projects. These advances in robotics have largely been limited to industrial automatons which (although advanced) are strictly non-sentient since sentience beyond the confines of the hive consciousness is anathema to the School.
Drawbacks
They are fish [-2]: A lot of limitations are imposed on the School due to the fact that they are fish: they require water to survive, they are individually weak and their standard reaction to potential dangers near them is to swim away. As well as that, a loss of part of the whole is usually felt by the entirety of the School.
