Sceen

The second most advanced race in the Zambarau Concord (after the Zambarau themselves), Sceen were also the first race that the Zambarau came into contact with as they had a thriving interplanetary civilization which was giving off all sorts of electromagnetic emissions that could be detected by the nearby Zambarau. The home planet of the Sceen was Sephamagore, which allegedly had a fairly constant temperature of about -170°C and a very high mass, resulting in a very high gravity and a very thick atmosphere of 92% nitrogen and just 7% oxygen. This thick atmosphere, however, provided protection against radiation given off by the large blue star (and its white dwarf companion) that Sephamagore orbited. The low concentration of oxygen (which the Sceen breathe) is not an issue for the Sceen as the atmosphere is very thick (so there is still a lot of oxygen per cubic metre of air) and the Sceen have a famously slow metabolism.

The Sceen are crab-like omnivores. Their bodies are ellipsoid, 2 metres across and 1.5 metres wide and 1.5 metres tall and are encased in a silvery-blue shell (to blend in with the vegetation on Sephamagore, which is a silvery-blue to reflect ultraviolet light from the blue star). Their large bodies help to reduce their surface area - volume ratio so that they can retain more heat in their cold environment, this larger size, however, is slightly negated by the higher gravity of their home planet. Out of the centre of their undersides comes eight limbs, each set of four limbs pointing outward in opposite directions. Six of these limbs come down as legs while the front two form manipulative limbs each with only two, claw-like, digits (if they had lots of thin 'fingers' Sceen would not be able to pick things up very well because of Sephamagore's high gravity). The Sceen have two eyes coming out of the tops of their bodies and pointing in opposite directions, these eyes are on small stalks and can swivel around extremely quicky, as their eyes are soft and exposed they can be withdrawn into the shell of the Sceen for protection. Finally, the mouths of the Sceen are between their manipulative limbs in a separation between the two sections (top and bottom) of their shell.

To survive in their cold, low energy environment the Sceen have a very low metabolism and therefore move and think painfully slowly (though their eyes can move a lot faster). An adaptation that they evolved to combat this was the ability to spit a long string of extremely sticky, viscous mucus. This adaptation could be used for a variety of things, such as lowering oneself down Sephamagores' many high cliffs or latching onto faster prey. It is considered quite comical by other species to watch the Sceen hunting (which they sometimes do for sport), seeing several Sceen attatched to a much larger animal by a string of sticky mucus, the animal writhing around while the Sceen, who appear not to be moving (though they are moving very slowly), are just being dragged around like rocks trying to get as much grip with the ground as they can, clattering against each other as the animal trys to pull free!

The Sceen became more intelligent as they had to think up new strategies in hunting when their primary prey developed a mutation that gave it a coating that was very hard to stick to. As Sceen civilization developed they took advantage of Sephamagore's huge natural gas reserves, gradually destroying the planet's environment. By the time the Zambarau reached them Sephamagore had become near-uninhabitable and the Sceen lived in colonies around their solar system. The Sceen have developed surprisingly advanced AI and robotics to make up for their own slow reaction times. The crowining acheivement of their computer sciences in quantum computers, when the Zambarau made contact most of the Sceen's quantum computers had a computing power of 30 qubits, the Zambarau were impressed by this, as they were very poorly developed int this field, preferring to think thinks out for themselves on their massive neural networks.