Enciclopedia Xenobiológica 

Species: Qen

Homeworld: Paa’Q

Size: 1m tall, 45kg

Color & Markings: The amphibious Qen are a humanoid species that feature an interesting number of evolutionary convergences with terran whales. Distinguished by their pronounced head, the Qen have a water-smooth skin of gray and sea green, and are able to breathe both above and below water.

Reproduction & Development: On the "Island World" of Paa'Q, the Qen are shore dwellers -- never living more than a kilometer from the shallow, freshwater ocean that encircles the planet's 700,000 islands. Living in tight-knit fishing communities of 1-2,000, adult Qen pair off in different matings over the course of their life, and will stay with the resulting family until those children reach an independent age of 12. Reproduction is sexual, generating a series of 15-20 eggs that are incubated in small, warm tide pools. Of those, 1-2 hatchlings will successfully emerge at the end of the summer tidal months.

Diet: Pescatarian

Lifespan: 55-75 years.

Language: Triepal

Social Structure: The Qen can be a delightful people to be around: Clever, amiable, and quick with a salty joke. But they are also famously independent and proud, and prone to violence when threatened or insulted. This has resulted in an unending series of uprisings and rebellions, over the last three years, as the Empire has moved to conquer and colonize the planet Paa’Q. The Qen have very quickly, and very ably, adopted asymmetric warfare against the Empire and its troops. Cells of Qen self-organize to quickly learn the Empire’s technologies, and make life miserable for uniformed humans. Qen are remarkably good at stealing small arms and matériel, and transforming them into hundreds of daily bombings and I.E.D. attacks. This three-year rebellion has caused incredible headaches for the Empire, and an endless series of re-evaluations on how to make the troubles stop, and why humanity is even bothering in the first place.

Intelligence Rating: Intensively debated within Mumbai's Chatterjee Institute. Since testing began three years ago, estimates have varied from Kilo to Papa.

Interaction with Humans: For the most part, the Empire was content to leave Paa’Q alone, since its discovery 111 years ago. The planet offered zero resources of note, and the pre-industrial Qen were (and still are) uninterested in becoming part of a larger “Empire“ -- so Familia planners mostly left the planet to itself. This Laissez-faire relationship changed quite suddenly, three years ago, with the discovery that the Qen had once been a massive technological force. Their culture had apparently fallen into a Dark Ages 400 years ago, from which it never recovered. As near as archaeologists can piece together, a series of massive, Spanish Flu-like outbreaks ravaged the planet, reducing the planet’s population to 1/300th the size, resulting in a complete loss of civilizational institutions. Commerce, industry, medicine, and travel all disappeared, along with basic literacy. Within a generation or two, the Qen had reverted to a post-Iron Age society.

This shocking revelation was made when a human team of marine biologists discovered the existence of massive, abandoned, underwater cities on Paa’Q. These cities had once housed tens of millions, and featured construction techniques unknown to humanity. In the explosion of subsequent archaelogical “digs,“ Familia scientists also discovered spacefaring-level technologies, including a strikingly original version of [- - - - - - - — - - - -— - - - - - - — - - - - - - - — - - - - — - - - - - - — - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - — - - - - - - - — - - - - — - - - - - - — - - - - - - - - - - - - - ] (Redacted: Imperial Censor MJK:29 [Clase “La Familia”])