The Xengar are a race of small, rodent-like creatures, each being approximately the size and shape of a huge rat. They have a single pair of dexterous, long-fingered hands, disproportionately large black eyes, and powerful rabbit-like hind legs. Xengar are neither male nor female, as their reproductive spores linger within every hair follicle upon their furry bodies. They procreate via “superficial contact.” By an action as simple and unintentional as brushing up against one another, any two Xengar can exchange the appropriate genetic information required of “cross-fertilization,” causing both to become impregnated.

Needless to say, the Xengar procreate at an alarmingly exponential rate. Their gestation period lasts for only a few short weeks, and they reach sexual maturity within a month after birth. In less than a year, a dozen Xengar will multiply into thousands. Within a decade, billions more will be born—and their numbers, if left to accrue at their own natural pace, will continue to swell until every last available resource in their environment has been consumed to the point of extreme scarcity.

Xengar neglect their progeny upon birthing, abandoning their litters like most other races do to their own bodily excrements. Not that a Xengar would ever understand such an analogy, as their digestive tracts are engineered by nature to recycle all metabolic wastes, processing every last nutritional resource upon ingestion into either energy of bio-matter. They simply eat, grow, and then multiply; although, most of their kind never live to see their second day.

There once was a time when the Xengar were confined of their native planet, Xengar XXX. There they remained relatively contained, as the much larger predatory creatures of their homeworld consumed the vast majority of their offspring. They were a staple to the food chain of the planet’s ecosystem, and about only one in every 10,000 Xengar infants live longer than a single standard year.

To compensate for their relatively short life expectancy, the Xengar evolved in such a fashion that their young learn at a greatly accelerated rate: their small albeit compactly powerful brains are almost fully formed upon birth. The Xengar learn and soak up new information like a dry sponge placed in warm water—and it is for this very reason that they caught the attention of the Union’s Enlar administrators.

The Enlar, seeing their potential, generously introduced the Xengar to the miracles of spaceflight, allowing the volatile race of rodent-like organisms to expand beyond the bounds of their homeworld for the very first time. The intelligent Xengar quickly mastered the art of interstellar travel and, almost overnight, spread like wildfire to every hospitable planet within their reach. Introduced to new resources and now beyond the ravenous clutches of their natural predators, the Xengar species thrived and multiplied until they soon became the most populous species in the known universe.

Today, quadrillions of Xengar live across scores of hellishly overpopulated worlds. Within mere months after colonizing a new planet, its natural resources already become so scarce that its capacity to sustain life is stressed to the breaking point. Food is the most valued commodity to Xengar civilization, as most of their species die from simple starvation.

Xengar also constitute the bulk of the Union’s “living resources,” for most of its starship crews are almost entirely of Xengar. Their vessels are enormous to accommodate for its ever-expanding onboard population, and are always commanded by a committee of Elder Xengar. Nevertheless, their massive volumes are usually crammed tightly packed with its myriad crewmates, and so their countless offspring are often “recycled” into the life-sustaining foodstuffs provided to the ship’s older crewmates.

Though the average life expectancy for a member of their species is less than a single standard day, an adult Xengar can live for centuries. The longer a Xengar lives, the more distinguished he becomes in society—and, because of their prodigious capacity to learn, Elder Xengar are also amongst the Union’s most distinguished scientists and administrators. Some of them, namely the Legendary Xengar Precotix, are said to even surpass the intellect possessed by the most brilliant Enlar minds.