About Protected races
By Darin Konidar
There are people who don't know much about the Protected races, that's why I wrote this.
I will begin with what Protected races actualy are. Protected races are races that are protected by the Koldir empire, in other words, us, we protect them, becouse they haven't developed inter-stellar travel of any kind yet, this does not mean that they haven't been to other systems yet, as our wormhole-bases are also accessable by the protected races that have developed a rather decent space flight.
We protect these races, becouse we think they should be able to experience the interstellar madness by themselves, and shouldn't be harmed until then.
I will now continiue with the most advanced protected race as of yet, the Slitherenes, or as they call themselves "Slithanes", they are an intelligent species, much like ourselves, they have a long, thin body, with no limbs, except a tail, which they use to great extend, they use their head and tail as much as we use our hands. They have a scaly skin, which is dry and has quite a bit of grip to it. A Slithane head is flat, with eyes on the sides, none-visible ears, razor sharp fangs, and a forked tongue with which they smell. If you get bitten by a Slithane, you'd better go to the nearest doctor, becouse they can inject a lethal neural-venom, which shuts down your nervous system.
Their technology is fairly crude, they use step-based rockets to get into space, and use well developed ion engines to move through space. Their weaponry mostly consists of missiles, explosives and heat-rays. Their combat ships are also outfitted with energy shields, which we now use too.
Their civilization is a highly political one, meaning that they change leaders quite oftenly, atleast once every 4 years, even though their empire is being ruled by a single ruler, assassinations in political areas are quite common, and back-stabbing is an everyday thing, though if you're not a Slithane politician, you're safe on their planet, as they have somehow managed to get out all the criminality from the planet, we still don't know how, nor do they know themselves, some say that they think they'll be seen as politicians, and people who aren't such, don't want to be such.
Well then, that where the Slithane, our closest ally if you could say that about a protected race... Now then, next up is a very strange Protected race, one of which we still know very little, namely, the Treeans.
The Treeans live on a planet, which from orbit looks green, and rich in plantlife, however when it's scanned, it appears to be completely devoid of minerals or valuable resources, still, out of curiocity, several science expeditions have been done on that planet.
The first time a Koldir landed on the planet, they immediatly noticed that the ground was increadibly hard, it seemed just as hard as the Elhorns (the horns located on our elbows), another odd thing, was the trees, they had a single trunk, which was long and slender, though had a bit of a thickened part near the branches. It had two branches comming from the Trunk, and every branch had exactly 5 other branches, in between which was a sail-like membraim, the tree was about 2.2 meters tall. When a scientist felt the tree, he said "It feels more like touching thick skin than touching a bark" after examining the bark more closely, he found out that there were little holes all over the bark, he thought this might be to absorb fluids or such.
This first expedition was done by two scientists, they cut down one of those trees for closer examination in a lab on the 'mother ship', they already noticed, that when cutting it, a lot of red fluids were released, and slightly off of the middle, was a yellowish white circle.
While examining the tree, they made a most intriguing discovery, this tree wasn't actually a tree, it had been a more animal-like lifeform before evolving into a tree-like lifeform, as the tree had a spinal cord, ribs, a skull, which had sunk into the ribs rather than staying above it, in the two Branches were arm-like bones, and in the 10 smaller branches, were finger-like bones, however, there were no signs of any muscles. They then examined closer to the surface, just under the skin of this strange lifeform, were hollow chambers, which went over the entire skin, this is where the small holes ended up in, though there was nothing pointing at it being used for absorbing anything realy.
Later studies pointed out, that these holes and chambers made sub-sound through the wind passing by them or going through them, also the little holes in the skin can change in size somehow, changing the sound.
The greatest discovery though, was the brain, yes, they've actualy found a brain, and it was even larger, and more complex than that of us, this would mean, that theoretically, they are actualy smarter than us!
When the scientists came back to the planet though... they were never seen alive again.... though they were seen back again. The searching party that went for them, found them lying dead, but peacefull with their hands on their chest in front of the exit of the shuttle, which scientists now presume to be done by the Treeans, after that, no Treean was hurt anymore, nor was any Koldir hurt.
We hope to be able to communicate with the Treeans someday, for they must be intelligent, peaceful and lawful creatures...
This is all for this part, see the other parts for the other Protected species, and at the last part, there might even be a map of where which protected species lives!
It provides all the blind spots I need as power is diverted to turn your ships around. And with my current defenses, you shouldn't get much of a chance to scream either! 
