Jurvain

Jurvain soldiers boarding a human starship

The Jurvain are a humanoid alien species that resemble tall, skinny, hairless bipeds with pink-to-purple skin and three eyes. They lay eggs to reproduce, and have a limited sort of hivemind that they call the "Commonality".

Jurvain Technology

Jurvain are behind humanity in some areas, but ahead of them in others, but overall they are roughly on the same technological level. Their starships tend to be bulkier than human ones, and usually resemble squat oblate spheroids with four or more projections around the rim. This very slight resemblance to a reptillian species from Earth has led humans to refer to them as "Turtle Ships". Jurvain starship main armament consists of Hellbore Cannon, which use powerful magnetic and gravitational fields to contain a fusion explosion in the breech of the weapon but allow it to propagate down the barrel, producing a focused burst of high-temperature plasma and radiation which can be devastating at shorter ranges. Their defensive shield technology is generally superior to that of human ships, often enabling them to survive long enough against the longer-ranged human starship weapons to get into Hellbore range for a devastating broadside.

Jurvain Society

Thanks to the limited hivemind of the Commonality, Jurvain society is unusually harmonious and unified in purpose. Their economic activity is organized around huge cooperative commercial conglomerate corporations known as "Chaebols". Their language has baffled human scientists by being nearly identical to Korean, a mystery whose explanation has driven more than one researcher insane.

Jurvain Magick

Like the Magick employed by human and other mages, Jurvain magick relies on the innate ability of all sentient beings to shape reality by their collective beliefs. But because of their group-consciousness hivemind, the collective power of the entire jurvain species to solidify their common consensual reality, it is very difficult for an individual Jurvain mage to overcome this powerful resistance. Multiple jurvain mages, or those of the entire species linked by the hivemind, can do acts of magick far more powerful than any single human mage could master, even an Oracle, but individual Jurvain mages tend to be extemely feeble compared to their human, K'Nes, or Arachnid counterparts.

Jurvain History

The Jurvain made contact with the humans fairly late, in the 2100's, while both were fighting to expand into Arachnid-controlled space in what had once been the Horadrim Empire. Initially somewhat willing to cooperate against the common Bug enemy, once the Third Civil War broke out within the Earth Federation, the Jurvain took advantage of the chaos to invade several systems on the fringes of Human space to secure their flank against the Bugs. Once Arthur Clarke ended the civil war, he pushed back against the Jurvain and defeated them. The fundamental incompatibility of human and Jurvain social structures precluded annexing the Jurvain into Human society, so instead they were essentially quarantined on their existing colony worlds and forced to become a puppet state of the Federation. With the Federation shattered by the Caal invasion, the Jurvain have once more asserted their independence and are seeking to guarantee their future autonomy from human control.

Season Eight Alternate Timeline

When the Vin Shriak invasion devastated the Federation, the Jurvain made an aliiance with the Eastern Bloc and invaded Federation space once more. Tricked by Andrea Treschi and Vin Dane into bearing the brunt of the losses in the ensuing war, the Jurvain were betrayed by the Eastern Bloc once the Federation was defeated and were themselves conquered in turn and once more returned to puppet-state status.

Behind the Scenes

The Jurvain are inspired mainly by the "Skinnies" in the original Starship Troopers novel by Robert A. Heinlein. The concept of the Commonality is borrowed from the Taelons from Earth: Final Conflict. Their language is Korean as a sort of elaborate in-joke, since Marcus Johnston was living and teaching in South Korea when he was writing about them.