Editing The Culture (section)

== Other civilizations ==
*The Idiran Empire - a race of tripod like reptiles that evolved on a deathworld, forcing the Idiran race to evolve into a tall, armour-plated, biologically immortal warrior race. Their religion is an odd form of racial solipsism; only beings with souls are considered sentient, souls can only exist in an immortal body, therefore only Idirans deserve to exist. The Culture, with its (unarguably) actually sentient Minds and Drones, are seen as the exemplars of sacrilege, hence why the Idirans declared a Jihad war against them. Despite being roughly equal to the Culture technologically and having superior allies, they ultimately end up losing the war (prompting the other galactic civs to coin the term "don't fuck with the Culture") and tone down their xenophobic tendencies over the following centuries, ironically becoming more Culture-like in the process.
   
*The Homomdan Empire/Polity - The only race outright stronger than the Culture, not including the Sublimed. They view themselves as the space police who need to keep any one force from growing too fast too quickly to maintain "balance", but they aren't malicious about it and have pretty lenient limits. They're pretty cool with the Culture on the whole, and when the two got into a border skirmish (which the Culture were fighting at the same time as the Idiran war) they ended up as friendly trading partners afterward.

*The Sublimed - technically not a race but are encountered by virtually every spacefaring society. The Sublimed are the end stage of almost every civilization, representing ascension into an energy based being residing in an adjacent dimension. The technology to do so isn't actually that complicated, but only a Mind level AI or sizeable planetary community can Sublime and still maintain any meaningful presence. They're effectively capable of doing anything they want, but don't tend to interact with the material universe, save for seemingly random and inscrutable actions (like flinging moons at the planets of civilisations that hunt the local variety of space whale, or keeping people away from memorial planets of dead civilisations with weaponized barriers of spacetime). Many civilisations have tried to enter the Sublime without subliming first. Almost all attempts result in failure, and the tiny number that enter and come back aren't mentally capable of describing what it's like. The Culture is considered unusual because it's had the ability to Sublime for millennia, but hasn't - the Sublimed themselves consider them the equivalent of a party guest that stays a bit too long. The Culture, conversely, finds it a bit too convenient that most civilisations sublime everyone at once, implying coercion of some kind. Even when a Subliming goes well, the local galactic community have to make sure that less advanced civilisations don't make a rush for the abandoned remains of the civilisation and disrupt the local order. 

*The Empire of Azad - an autocratic monarchy of humanoids based in an isolated part of the galaxy and the most [[/tg/]] relevant. They have made contact with other galactic civilisations, but all have been technologically inferior - the Culture is the only civilisation they have encountered that are more advanced, to a ludicrous degree. Their main shtick is having three sexes (males as workers and soldiers, females as trinkets and breeders, and an "apex" sex that controls everything). The other more important feature is the game of Azad: A ludicrously complicated board-game played on football pitch sized boards, it plays like a real life version of Civilization writ large (the specifics are left deliberately vague). The complexity of game simulates the skills needed to rule the empire, so the winner of the regular tournament becomes the Emperor. Male and Female Azadians are allowed to play, but are never allowed to get very far due to the apex sex being the only ones allowed to hold offices and having access to specialised schools and learning drugs. The Culture encounters them during a period of aggressive expansion, which isn't a positive thing as Banks intended them to be a dark reflection of parts of our own civilisations. The Culture sends a professional game-player to participate in the tournament (in an unofficial capacity), effectively acting as a proxy war between the Empire and the Culture. 

*The Affront - a race of gas-dwelling octopus-like beings that can be best described as a cross between a jolly British colonial aristocrat and your average [[Dark Eldar]]. At best, they are considered to be boisterously good-natured (if they become your friend, you're in for life) and, at their worst, monstrously sadistic; one of the first things they did when they achieved genetic engineering was to [[Slaanesh|alter their females and young males to only feel terror and agony in any sexual situation as a means of population control and because the older and more powerful males considered it more fun that way]]). It's not that they can't understand the concept of morality, but rather that they take the idea of pain building character to a rather grotesque extreme. This attitude carries over to their other race relations, with less powerful races being considered as fair game and more powerful races to be placated enough to let them keep doing terrible things. Even worse, the Affront seem to thrive on the negative attention they get from their neighbours, even changing their name to the Affront from whatever they were called originally. The Culture is put into a difficult position with them, as they are too advanced to be readily manipulated and don't pose any threat to the Culture to prompt military action. This doesn't last long.

*The Chelgrians - A civilisation of five-legged cat-like predators. Their society was historically dominated by hereditary castes, with all the social issues that would imply. They're unique in that not only a part of their civilisation sublimed independently of the majority (named the Chelgrian Puen), but they also keep in regular contact with their living descendants, who universally revere them. They are also a rare example of the Culture getting things really wrong with their Special Circumstances interventions, as their attempts to dismantle the caste system from within Chelgrian society led to a devastating civil war that killed 5 billion Chelgrians. The Puen were not happy when the Culture fessed up and contrived to balance the books by destroying a Culture Orbital that contained an equal number of lives. It failed for a variety of reasons, and the Culture responded by sending a Terror Weapon (a nanocloud assasin) to murder the conspirators in ways that would make a Eversor blanch.

*The Morthanveld - An equivalent level species to the Culture comprised of water-based Spiniforms. Their primary form of communication is shooting subtly altered molecules of water at people (no really). They are on good relations with the Culture but tend to be cagey of them, partly because they know exactly what the Culture are capable of and what Special Circumstances try to do. They are also seen as a responsible civilisation and so are given oversight of one of the Shellworld Mega Structures left behind by an ancient civilisation. They don't reside on ring like Orbitals but instead construct gargantuan rings of overlapping, insecting toroids in a dyson sphere around empty stars. The largest of these "Nestworlds" contains more sentients than the entire Culture combined.     

*The Saal - a humanoid species living on one of the middle levels of a Shellworld - think of a planetary form of a Russian Doll, spheres inside spheres inside other spheres. No one knows who built them or why - theories range from a network of shield emitters to protect the galaxy from extragalactic threats or a cage to enslave everyone instead. Regardless, the original builders aren't around anymore. The Saal attained an early industrial monarchy technologically but were fully aware of there being space bound civilisations beyond their world. Their ancestors were placed on the Shellworld as a form of punishment for unknown crimes. They suffer a rather bad case of regicide, leading their surviving prince to find his sister - who just happens to be a Culture Special Circumstances agent. They're desperate to find anything that will give them an edge technologically which leads to them digging up things best left alone...

* The Sichultean Enablement - another humanoid species. They've only had FTL travel for a short amount of time, but are trying to do anything to jump tech levels as fast as they can. As a society, they appear to be a capitalist-based democracy, albeit with some odd cultural practices. The most notable is the process of Entagliation: a form of indentured servitude for a variety of civil infractions like debt or contract breach, and marked by elaborate tattoos all over their bodies. This wouldn't be too controversial in itself, except that it's usually wildly disproportionate to the crime (indefinite servitude and diminished autonomy/civil rights for a finite crime), as well as potentially applying to any children or descendants, culpability be damned. In these cases, the tattoos can be applied on a genetic level in the womb.

* The GFCF - Short for the Geseptian-Fardesile Cultural Federacy. Small fairy-like beings with a lesser tech level to the Culture. They are, essentially, an entire race of Culture Fanboys, imitating their favourite civilisation in numerous ways (but not quite getting it right). The Culture itself is rather baffled at the whole thing, despite normally liking other civilisations being more like them. Turns out that they're not as innocent as they'd first appear, nor as powerful as they think they are - one Culture ship wipes out an entire armada of their ships in several seconds.

* The Pavulians - a herd species of quadrupeds with two prehensile trunks instead of conventional limbs. Fairly religious and generally deferential to older authority, as befitting their evolutionary history as herd animals. An otherwise unremarkable species, save for one incredibly dark secret: They send their citizens to Hell when they die... Okay, it's a virtual hell, and what's sent is a mind-state captured at the point of death, and then placed in a perfectly accurate simulation of what their people consider Hell to be (often crafted with the assistance of "creative" consultants). As the galactic community at large treats mind-states as being equivalent to the real person they were when they were alive, it's regarded as a needed social tool by its advocates, but a despicably unnecessary act by most everyone else. It isn't helped by the fact that the general public don't know for certain if the hells actually exist, nor by the fact that hosting the data farms necessary to keep all the mind-states and separate hells running smoothly is a very lucrative trade. The Culture publicly disapproves of the Hells, and is a covert participant in the entirely simulated wars to contest the issue.

*The Gzilt - a race of minorly reptilian humanoids who were almost one of the founding species of the Culture, but declined at the last minute. Like many other species before them, on reaching a certain level of ennui they decide to Sublime, leaving all their tech and territory to other species as a kind of civilisational will. Their culture is organised into clan-like regiments based on periods of compulsory military service, and a permanent reserve status on leaving active duty. They have one religion based on a holy text that appeared randomly in their pre-history. The book had a variety of technological and social shortcuts built into the religious language, as well as listing several prophecies that then happened to all come true. The book's seeming infallibility lead the Gzilt to a certain arrogant civilisational mindset, seeing themselves as the favoured people in the galaxy, despite many other civilisations having similar occurrences or - in the case of the Sublimed and Minds - being actual godlike beings. There's just one problem: The Book was a social experiment by a rogue alien scientist into manipulating the development of young races, which worked just a little too well. As this revelation is the kind of thing that could cause enormous civil wars, not to mention botching the impending Subliming, the remains of the Gzilt military attempt to destroy the secret before they ascend.       

*The Iln - oh f*&$ no! A race of “aero, spiniform, mid gas level giants (read a kinda squid with a shell…maybe based off Banks Dwellers from The Algibrist)” that lived some 800 million years prior and were chiefly known for destroying “Shellworlds”.  The did this with presumably their machines that, though about the size Prius, had the firepower to easily take on say, 15 + capitol ships in one blow with little to no effort and tend to create antimatter (the go to power source of most Involved) spirit bombs that implode said shellworlds.

*The Vail - a really unknown race in the Cultures universe who’s claim to fame in the construction of the Shellworlds some 1.3 billion years prior.

*Hegemonising Swarms - Basically the Culture's pet term for Grey Goo. Occasionally a self replicating weapon is unleashed in a war or someone's Roomba gets the wrong sort of Malware and begins harvesting all matter it can to make more Roombas that continue to do the same and will (in theory) keep going on until all the universe is Roombas. Contact has a special division to deal with these flare-ups called Restoria, or less formally Pest Control. As with many things in the Cultureverse, they happen often enough to not be a surprise to most involved Civilisations nor usually a great threat.

[[category: Literature]]