The Shiseki

An unusual crab-like species conquered by the Ackálians in the twenty-sixth century, the Shiseki have proven invaluable to their masters as traders and even soldiers.

Shiseki Biology

Individual Shisheki look, to Humans, something like giant spiders or crabs, with long spindly legs supporting a compact body. Specific "castes" are biologically specialized for different tasks - warriors have large fighting pincers, breeders have immense bodies, and workers have manipulator hands.

The Shiseki are a hive species. They communicate among via what might be considered a natural form of radio (they use translator devices to talk to other species). Over time, the network of individual minds gradually evolved into sentient "meta-minds," each "mind" defining a single hive. The hives, in turn, "link" together to form one overall Shiseki group mind.

A Shisheki hive is a sentient being, but the members of the hive are barely smarter than cats. The more Shisheki are linked together, the smarter they get - a group of 100 has INT 3, 200 have INT 4, and so on up to INT 12 when a thousand are connected. In hives larger than 1,000 individuals, the whole community does not link together at once, except on special occasions.

Sekra, The Shiseki Homeworld

Located in the rimward region of Ackálian space, Sekra is an Earthlike planet of stark beauty - towering mountains, wide tundras, deep forests - and a biosphere carefully controlled and farmed by the Shiseki. It has nine small continents, three of which have isthmuses linking them together. Commerce between the various continents and islands has made the Shiseki skilled mariners.

Sekra is the economic and industrial heart of the Ackálian Empire. Ten billion Shisheki work tirelessly in the planet's factories and farms, serving the Ackálians. Careful management has prevented any severe environmental damage, but with the Ackálians constantly pushing for more production and bigger projects, the Shiseki may soon have to start "cutting corners."

Shiseki Society And Culture

The Shisheki are the economic mainstay of the Ackálian Empire for two reasons. First, their hive mind makes it easy for them to establish smoothly-functioning planetary trade networks and bureaucracies. The Ackálians have transported groups of Shiseki to many of the planets in their Empire to improve the efficiency of the government and the economy. Second, they're hard workers who don't seem to object to being pushed around by their Ackálian masters - to a hive being, "freedom" is a difficult concept to understand - so they end up performing a lot of jobs the Ackálians don't want to do themselves. Shisheki hives are potentially immortal, even though the lifespan of individuals is less than 30 years. Some of the bigger hives, already hundreds or thousands of years old, make plans for very long terms - centuries or millennia. A hive's actions sometimes seem strange, or even counter-productive, but what other species can't see is the long-range goal the hive is working toward.

Thanks to their hive minds, the Shiseki have a much higher degree of societal unity than most species. They "talk" out and resolve serious differences as soon as possible, to keep from disrupting the orderly conduct of society. There's a lot of pressure to conform to "group opinion," which sometimes squelches originality, free thinking, and innovation. As a result, despite the age of their society, by themselves they only achieved an ATRI 8 level of technology. (Since their conquest they have improved to ATRI 10.)

At present, the Shisheki seem content to serve as labor for the Ackálians; in exchange the Ackálians have planted Shisheki colonies on several worlds in their empire. If the hives ever decide the Ackálians are no longer useful to the Shisheki, the consequences could be astounding.