Zambarau Concord

The Zambarau Concord is a cosmopolitan group of civilizations that make up a sphere 26.8 light-years across encompassing 24 solar systems.

Races
The Zambarau

The Zambarau Concord was founded by a civilization called the Zambarau. Their home planet, Datum, is a large, rocky planet closely orbiting a yellow main sequence star and has a thick carbon dioxide/argon atmosphere. Temperatures reach as high as 400 degrees centigrade so there is no liquid water, just lakes of molten sulfur. Life uses the molten sulfur as a solvent but is still carbon-based, the biggest difference is that in their proteins hydrogen atoms are replaced by flourine atoms (these flourocarbons are much more stable than proteins at such high temperatures).

When life first forms the early proto-cells do not have the resources to compete yet so they co-operate (usually by sharing genetic material). On Datum this co-operation never stopped (due to the harsh environment) and today the whole planet is dominated by a single macro-species. All life has the same genome and the characteristics of each organism are determined by which genes are expressed. There is no evolution, just the sharing of useful genes and mutations. Because of this single geneome animals 'grow' off plants rather than via reproduction. Another result of the development of life as a single macro-species is that the macro-species has become so complex it is concious. A planet-sized hivemend would be impractical because of the distances involved so the Zambarau are a connected group-mind of many individuals.

To help them survive in their environment Zambarau can grow a complex silicate/metallic shell for protection, but they later found they could use this technique to build simple tools and machines as extensions of themselves. These tools were used to build more complicated tools and soon the Zambarau had become a full-blown technological civilization.

History of the Concord
Once they had developed interstellar travel technologies Zambarau spread out to find company (a strong instinct for them) and made a lot of money in providing for a number of small civilizations (insignificant in galactic terms) that had yet to develop interstellar, sometimes even interplanetary, travel. The Zambarau specialised mainly in banking, investment, information storage and processing, as well as terraforming at a later date (though this would take decades or centuries).

Naturally all of these civilizations wanted in on the technology and infrastructure of the (in their eyes) highly advanced Zambarau, so the Zambarau Concord was drawn up.

Signers of the Zambarau Concord had to accept a number of strange terms such as reductions in bureaucracy and coersion, as well as turning the poulations of whole planets and solar systems into giant regional workers co-operatives (???). But the conditions these civilizations were really interested in were the free flow of information and a defensive pact between all members of the Concord.

The Zambarau Concord overall has had quite a non-violent history and only has a small (but very professional) army, relying on treaties, economics and armed neutrality to get through most conflicts.