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Nath-el
Last Updated August 3, 2026
Excerpted from “A Catalog of Races of the Starmourn Sector”.
The Nath-el are a highly communalistic race whose members don’t tend to place much importance on the needs of the individual. One of a handful of insectoid races known to us, they are ruled by a Queen who exercises absolute authority over their territory.
At a Glance
| Homeworld System | Faleon |
| Homeworld | Jerzah |
| Capital city | Narisiriz |
| Lifespan | 85 years. |
| Diet | Omnivores with a taste for anything sweet. Big fans of fermented vuu honey. |
| Temperament | By other race’s standards, they can be a little intense and frenetic. |
| Strong likes/dislikes | They don’t tend to like being alone, and prefer to live with many other Nath-el around them when possible. Their youth has an unfortunate tendency towards drug addiction, leading to very strict anti-drug laws on Jerzah. |
| Family structure | They don’t have or recognize permanent families, as such. Parent/child relationships are much less important to the Nath-el than to other races. Once a child is deemed reasonably self-sufficient, the community-at-large becomes responsible for their well-being. |
| How do they treat the helpless? | Not well, but it’s not out of malice. They’re simply very communalistic, and if an individual can’t contribute, what good is he? |
| Notable rituals | The Nath-el do not place great importance on ritual. They’re a highly practical race focused on doing something because it works and produces a desirable result for their culture, not on doing something for the sake of tradition. |
| Entertainment | For all their perceived energy and sometimes frantic nature, they prefer minimalist entertainment. They have a form of staged live entertainment that consists of rhythmic thrumming combined with something like very slow dancing that involves transitioning deliberately between static, held poses that, when combined with the thrumming, tells a symbolic story. They call these, translated into Galactic Standard, “Pattern Plays.” |
| Government | While they are not telepaths, they share such a strong common understanding that there is no need to debate who should lead their people. It is simply known, and it is always a female, ruling as Queen. She wields absolute power over her territory. |
| When did they achieve spaceflight? | 32,000 years ago. |
| Allies/enemies | They hate the Sa’hak-ren, who destroyed a budding Nath-el Empire about 1400 years ago. They’re also not fond, at all, of the Nabia, who have long preyed on the tendency younger Nath-el have towards severe drug addiction. They believe the Oteel – who are largely enslaved by the shapeshifting Fatar – are their evolutionary cousins. |
| Economy | The Nath-el manufature some of the very best AI tech, particularly suited to massively parallel tasks like self-correcting missile flight path solutions or coordinating the operation of a nanoswarm. |
| Religion | The Nath-el believe there’s a ‘spirit’, for lack of a better translation, that embodies everything that “is known” about their race. They call it the Nath-et, meaning, roughly, ‘All Of Us.’ The Nath-et isn’t a personified, personality-filled being, however. They view it as part of their spiritual existence. The Nath-et represents everything about the way things ‘should’ work in Nath-el society. It’s viewed as the inevitable culmination of their race’s evolution. |
| What’s their architecture like? | They’re known for building Hives, which are the favored dwelling places of those who can afford to live in them. Hives are essentially huge communal pods that sit above the rest of the city they’re in. |