Lealings:
The Faliran Empire were a set of space explorers roughly on par with humanity, and they had discovered multiple planets with life… including, due to their far greater proximity to the Dark Star, more than one with life with the potential to be highly intelligent. Most notable, however, were the creatures on Lea-IV… a group of sentient humanoids resembling sugar-gliders living in huge forest biomes.
The level of guilt the Faliran felt about their own past, and wiping out untold other species with the potential to become sentient in their own ascension, colored their decisions heavily here. There was some debate what to be done about them, but the eventual consensus was to watch over them, ensure no random geological or astronomical event lead to their extinction, but ultimately not interfere until the species was advanced enough to detect them. Then, once the creatures welcomed help, they would provide if it asked. The race seemed highly intelligent, but only about ten thousand years old… their civilization was still in a hunter-gatherer stage, and compared to other species they had observed their species was defined by a high degree of cooperation, forming complex social structures.
Their observations were cut off, however, when their empire was attacked by the Kthid. The Falirans were a difficult conquest and took years, but the Empire knew that they were losing long before they did. They were careful to remove all records of the alien species they had discovered, leaving nothing behind for the Kthid to find… but the Faliran observers stationed on Lea-IV had no ship and no way to leave the world any longer. They were trapped here.
They are still part of the hive mind… they can tell that there is a Queen that still lives, somewhere, because without her the hivemind would largely collapse into chaos. They can feel her out there somewhere. After some discussion, they arrived at a bold plan… the Faliran scientists revealed themselves to the Lealings, and for the last several decades years since the fall of the Faliran Empire to the present day they have been bootstrapping a spacefaring society out of the intelligent but unadvanced, Lealings.
Lealings have wings but they cannot fly – they use their wings to glide between the trees they called their natural environment, the massive forests that cover most of Lea-IV’s equatorial regions with trees that can reach two kilometers tall in their quest for sunlight. They live slightly shorter lifespans that humans, and are herbivores that subsist mostly on natural sugars from fruit and flowers.
Stereotypes: The average intelligence of a Lealing is actually considerably higher than that of a human, but most would be considered ditzy. Their natural environment has so much input into their senses that needs to be considered, every single member of the race would be considered to have a rather extreme case of ADHD by default… their attention and thought process flitting between concepts and actions as quickly as possible.
Derogatory Terms: Gnats, Clips, Bat-brain, Ditz
John Drake's Stories 