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I'm just wondering if there's any more extensive background available for some of the CA's races beyond what's listed on the website. Primarily, it's the Operators and the Shasvastii I'm looking for. From the little I've read on them, it seems that the Operators are a part of a corporation. Am I correct to assume that the Operators are literally corporate drones, bred to live and die for corporate profit? That's how they seem to be described on the site. Which then makes me wonder, does the EI's domain practice a form of interstellar capitalism? And what exactly are the Shasvastii? I can't tell. Some look like insects, others look almost reptilian. Are they supposed to have gender at all either? The descriptions make it sound like they don't actually have gender and that the female looking ones just look that way for disguise purposes. Is that right?

Shas are actually hermaphroditic from birth (2nd edition revised, p. 92-93) with a period called the Dheviis, just after their equivalent of puberty, in which they (individually, consciously) decide what their gender will be. This is irreversible so no, it's not convenient camouflage and it's a meaningful gender definition. Just not from birth on. (There's actually a few terrestrial animals which do similar things in the reptiles, somewhere I believe).
Shas actually obsess over gene-therapies to adapt members of their species to different situations (again 2nd rev 92-93, get the book! ) which is probably which makes different units look so different from each other too.

The exrah are basically your stereotypical evil space corporation (to the point of boredom, IMO) without much of a twist to them

The thing with the EI is that it leaves subservient species (partly) to do their own thing, as long as they aid in it's own quest here and there. The EI wouldn't care much about 'interstellar capitalism', that's just something it's fine with the Exrah doing in their spare time

Huh. Thanks for the info. Interesting about the Shasvastii. But exactly what sort of lifeform are they? Are they supposed to be reptilian?

So I guess I was about right in my assumption of the Operators/Exrah. I wonder if CB has any plans to expand their ranks. They could make a subunit of Exrah Legal Department drones! Then we'd have combat lawyers!

The shas home is long gone (It might have been their entire galaxy, I forget).
It was destroyed in some kind of stellar cataclysm. Many of their colonies also were destroyed by this.

To this end, they now seek out to have their spawn on ANY inhabitable world, to lessen the chances of that happening again. That they can generally adapt to any world means that their definition of "habitable" is a broad one.

Shasvastii are hermaphroditic, and many will carry a seed embryo-pod inside them, which will hatch when the 'parent' is killed or incapacitated.
As to what the shas ARE (reptilian, etc) we don't know.
They have changed their forms to suit many worlds, and I doubt the "current" shasvastii look much like their original forms anymore, except in the most general terms.

They can live on hot or cold or icy or desert worlds, so traditional terrestrial based animal comparisons aren't that valid.

The female looking ones, tend to have the -naish suffix, and this indicates they have undergone surgical or other changes to better fit into their roles as infiltrators.

ALL of this fluff is in the rulebooks.

 Barzam wrote:
Huh. Thanks for the info. Interesting about the Shasvastii. But exactly what sort of lifeform are they? Are they supposed to be reptilian?

So I guess I was about right in my assumption of the Operators/Exrah. I wonder if CB has any plans to expand their ranks. They could make a subunit of Exrah Legal Department drones! Then we'd have combat lawyers!

'Reptilian' is an Earth-specific term, it's meaningless when discussing ET species. Reptilian-like is another matter...

Unfortunately CB have said that the Exrah models don't sell well enough to justify expanding them to a full Sectorial (sub-faction) on the tabletop. :(