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Name: Naw'Ilar
Biology: The Naw'Ilar are a tall humanoid mammal species standing between 6 to 7 feet. They naturally have a strong bioelectrical field, and are able to conduct electricity without issue to a greater degree to other humanoids. Notable features would include their bipedal digitigrades and feline characteristics of varying degrees of intensity. Their physical appearance shows the strongest resemblance to members of the Cathar species, though bigger ears and more extreme animal characteristics. All Naw'Ilar have pure yellow eyes accompanied with purple fur of various shades. They are sexually dimorphic, with females being slightly shorter than their male counterpart while having rounder faces and body shapes.
Breeding: All Naw'Ilar breed sexually, with one male and one female needed to produce an offspring. The species is able to hybridize with other similar species, but Naw'Ilar genetics are purely dominant when deciding the appearance and general features of the hybrid. Because of this, interspecies relationships aren't entirely frowned upon despite their caution to other species. They reach full maturity by age 20, and remain fertile until about age 75 with their average lifespan being up to 134. Gestation takes up to 1 year, after which the offspring is born.
Strengths: They are naturally bulky, and often display greater feats of strength compared to basic humanoids. As stated previously their body's aptitude to produce strong electric fields can also help them conduct outside electrical energy received, though not perfectly, and they will be harmed by constant exposure to higher electrical currents and fields just like any other species.
Weaknesses: Due to their strong bioelectrical fields, their bodies are heavily reliant on electromagnetic radiation (light energy) to keep it from weakening. Their body's electrical field acts as pseudo shielding, and when not having sufficient energy to maintain itself as strong as it usually would the body is weakened significantly. Lack of exposure to electromagnetic waves results in a weakened immune system and even coma or death if prolonged. Naw'Ilar can survive up to a week without electromagnetic energy being present in their immediate area, and survival past that point is doubtful at best, leading to Naw'Ilar taking an extreme liking to things like artificial lights when exploring planets that lack sufficient energy they need.
Diet: They are omnivores, though have a preference toward meats over vegetation.
Behavior/Temperament: They are very expressive and open about their emotions and feelings, more often than not letting actions describe how they feel in the moment. Open communication is something highly valued among Naw'Ilar, as to not have drama or turmoil over bottled up feelings. Their open communication is also a side effect of their own way of communication, where messages are sent out in general rather than to specific people, and they are somewhat confused by other species and their need to keep secrets or lie to people they care about.
Communication: Naw'Ilar communicate through the use of common or Ryl, but are able to use bioelectrical fields to communicate between others of the species. This is done by modulating the electrical waveform they generate in order to relay messages to nearby Naw'Ilar (Up to 3 meters). The electrical waves used to communicate aren't controlled, and any Naw'Ilar within range can pick up the message sent out.
Culture: Naw'Ilar are militant and wary of strangers, but are open to help from other species as needed and aren't nearly as prejudice as their ancestors. Naw'Ilar do not have any deity or religious belief, other than the force. While Naw'Ilar can be force sensitive, not all are so potent in the force as to do much more than visions in their sleep occasionally. Their view on the force isn't religious, but they don't really view it as a tool either. The force simply exists, and some people can use it while others cannot.
Being a militant species that used to be in constant war, gladiator battles are something practiced all over Dom-Barren. Willing fighters would participate in deathmatches for the amusement of others, and said deathmatches are totally legal as far as the Naw'Ilar Republic is concerned. Rich families will even go so far as to sponsor gladiators, making the tradition a legitimate job for those who dare risk their life.
Naw'Ilar society, even after their civil wars ceased and they found full control over their planet as a unified force, highly values combat proficiency while also valuing things like art, music, etc. All Naw'Ilar have to participate in a draft when they reach age twenty, and serve their military force for four to five years at a time.
Their military force is named Chee Jela, or "War sword" in Ryl. While blaster combat is useful and sometimes superior to swordplay, Naw'Ilar are primarily trained in the latter while given basic training in shooting. Melee combat is preferred rather than blasters due to the gained benefit of stealth when using a sword, dagger, etc. Calling back to their hunter origins, military squads are all melee fighters that use electric waves to speak to one another without alerting enemies of their presence or exact positioning. These squads have five distinct roles for each member to fill, with those being the following: leader, medic, assault, sharpshooter and engineer/slicer. A squad has six to eight members each, usually with two to three in the assault role or two medics for the team. While they have specialized roles, each member is first trained as an assault then later have the option to specialize further so that all squadmates can defend themselves adequately and all go on offense as needed. Most assault members of a squad are in their first few years of training, though some choose to not specialize into one of the other combat roles.
Naw'Ilar names come in three parts. Name order goes as follows: surname'firstname hometown. An example would be Re'Van Co'vi for someone coming from the city of Co'vi. If a Naw'Ilar is born in space or away from a settlement, the parents will often name the child after one of their hometowns or a hyphenation of both of them.
History: The Naw'Ilar evolved from a roughly humanoid feline species on the forest planet of Bradden, living in tribes for much of their early development, and steadily became more sentient as the years went on, getting to their current state as a product of their environment and what they needed to be to survive. Early on, to help communication while trying to avoid predators, the Naw'Ilar developed a nonverbal form of speaking between one another through use of electric fields. Their affinity for bioelectrical fields and electrical waves also stemmed from what they hunted. Their major diet included fish and other water dwelling organisms in addition to vegetation and small animals, but rather than developing aquatic traits of their own they ended up with keen senses and the ability of bioelectrogenesis and electrolocation. They would send out minor electrical waves that would give them information on the organisms under the water to aid in locating and catching said organisms. Their bioelectrical fields would evolve to be both defensive and versatile for the purposes of hunting or being hunted, but have since become obsolete due to the advancement of technology and food production.
Breaking from their tribal roots, the Naw'Ilar joined up into many city states and countries after a few hundred years of sentience. Wars were fought for territory, control, power, and the like for thousands of years. Civil war after civil war, with the final war against their own kind actually being called "The Four Hundred Years War", for starting and stopping several times between the two major world powers at the time Co'Vi and Fel'Ran without ever signing a peace treaty until the war became so detached from its roots that neither side knew what they were really warring about.
Even after the four hundred years war tensions were high between the Co'Vi and the Fel'Ran peoples before all Naw'Ilar finally became united against a common enemy fifty or so years later. Said enemy were aliens, their exact species being lost to history, but soon after their discovery of the Naw'Ilar people they gave them "peace between one another" by quickly and decisively ending whatever conflicts were going on by creating their own. The alien race present on Bradden sparked up their own war, attempting to contest control of the planet. Near immediately a resistance effort was formed and fought back against the new threat. The Co'vi, Fel'Ran and many other Naw'Ilar people took up arms to defend their planet and remove all trace of foreign presence on Bradden. While resenting species not their own, they used technology from their invaders to travel the cosmos on their own.
The united front against invasion, or the Resistance, gained planet wide recognition as keeping their planet their own. This sparked nationalism on a grand scale, and soon The Resistance turned into their government. This government was a republic, with the starting representatives being the founders of the resistance. Later representatives would be Naw'Ilar belonging to the different social classes to get equal representation in government and to help address all issues of the planet that need to be addressed.
As soon as space travel became open to them the Naw'Ilar took the opportunity to explore the planets near them. It seemed as though they were late to the party as far as technology was concerned, so their initial conflict driven way of gaining tech from other worlds was quickly snuffed out. Soon to follow, their distrust of alien species also faded in time as they gradually got more adjusted to being able to travel the galaxy at large. They had never needed a spoken language before, always talking through electrical waves, so to find out that most sentient species spoke verbally was a bit strange to them to find out. They didn't even have a verbal language to speak of, but adopted basic and a variation on Ryl from the Twi'lek people. Ryloth being in close proximity to Dom-Bradden, Twi'leks were actually the first to give the Naw'Ilar their actual species name. Naw'Ilar came from two Ryl words, Nawara which meant "Speaker" and Ilar which meant "Dust" or "Ash", since the Naw'Ilar previously barely spoke. Their language was ash, or nonexistent previous to that point.
Many Naw'Ilar became mercenaries, bounty hunters, traders. etc. with a few going down the road of the Jedi after they understood the galactic society as a whole and became integrated into it. As more and more Naw'Ilar went off on their own they somewhat lost touch with Dom-Bradden Naw'Ilar. Five hundred or so years after discovering space travel with the help of being invaded, the Naw'Ilar began adjusting to life in space and other sentient species existing in the galaxy though they are still not fully accustomed, even now several more centuries ahead, to where some may exclusively speak in Ryl if they speak at all or others may have similar difficulties being social due to their extremely open nature introducing topics at the wrong time or place.
Planet: Dom-Bradden
Technology: Naw'Ilar have technology on par with most other species in the galaxy.
Intent: I felt like a species based on the concept of bioelectrogenesis would be really interesting to both write for and roleplay with, seeing as though Bioelectrogenesis is an unexplored concept in sentient SW species as far as I know. That, and the fact that Dom-Bradden was a rainforest planet with a complete blank slate were more or less the major draws of writing the species. Reintroducing the Nav'ir back into the narrative as their earlier selves would be the reason I'd be submitting this for review currently. I very much enjoyed the species, and I know that others did also last timeline, so I would want to pull them back into the fray both for my own enjoyment in writing for them as well as others' that have used and written for the species in the past while giving new people access to them and their own potential stories. I feel as though giving them a full timeline run could potentially add to outer-rim based stories and in general just be fun for people that feel like roleplaying a giant purple cat (wo)man.
Credit to the artist for the image used, and specific credits to Netflix and Dreamworks for the use of Galra from Voltron as a frame of reference for their appearance
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