Stellaris Spec Bio - N'kori Cultivators
(My worldbuilding and concepts for this empire have also been posted on Reddit 2 years ago. A lot of this post repeats it. It is a bit outdated relative to current Stellaris updates, but stands on its own.)
Empire screen lore blurb:
The world of Kori'ka is named for the great tree whose roots dominate its biosphere, with continent-sized branches and foliage that forms the base of a rich, thriving food chain. The plantfolk N'korii are the reproductive structures of the tree, having evolved sapience and intelligence to more effectively spread Kori'ka's seeds across the galaxy. Not all modern N'korii wholly devote themselves to this purpose, believing it is within their capabilities to forge a new path.
The tree known as Kori'ka is in fact a vast population of one species, intertwined enough to be considered a single entity. The system's star Leira produces high amounts of short-wavelength radiation (UV and above), and the leaves of Kori'ka shelter the life below from the harshest of these rays.
Kori'ka works opposite to the Earth trees we're accustomed to, in which the dominant sporophyte stage holds the gametophyte inside itself. Instead, the massive tree-like structure of Kori'ka is the dominant gametophyte, and the asexual sporophytes are N'korii, born of fertilized seeds from the tree itself. (They have no sexes or genders to speak of.) This is the lore reason for their ability to create Gaia Seeders on new worlds.
The empire uses the Syncretic Evolution origin. The syncretic species are fungoids known as the Kor'kiiri, inspired by the intimate mycorrhizal association of fungi with plant roots in our world. They are not members of the same species as Kori'ka and the N'korii, but co-evolved with them in a tight symbiosis.
Their Inorganic Breath trait provides early access to exotic gases, helping create Gaia Seeders. Mycorrhizae help plants uptake nutrients, so they're Agrarian as well. The -2 traits were chosen out of mechanical limitations, but my best lore reason is that they're much more effective at creating organic products than amenities (Repugnant), and there are simply more of them per "pop" unit, increasing the empire size (Unruly).
The sapience of Kor'kiiri has been a big question in my worldbuilding process. My mind changes on this sometimes, but for now I will say that they're not quite sapient in the humanoid sense, more like an intelligent "animal" species that have always been the close companions of N'korii. Comparable to parrots, maybe. Their resource creation stems more from their biological processes than the actual performance of jobs.
Politically, the N'korii are friendly disciples of nature (xenophile spiritualists) who seek to use Kori'ka's rejuvenating seedlings to improve the biodiversity of the galaxy's many worlds, focusing on terraforming technology to rehabilitate even the most inhospitable planets.
Linguistic note: plurals are denoted by double vowels.
