The kuath are a near baseline human people in the territory of Vokun Space. The kuath live at an essential neolithic level in coastal settlements. What is most interesting about them is the symbiotic relationship they have with marine invertebrate collective intelligences that the kuath know as Naga Ma--Dragon Mothers.
Vokun probes had suggested a primitive planet with little to offer beyond resources to be stripped away. When their attempts to move the small native population to reservations was resisted by humanoid monsters rising out of the seas, they realized their was something more going on. Destructive scanning of the brains of captive kuath revealed the existence of the Dragon Mothers.
Vokun submarine attacks proved unable to bring the Dragon Mothers to heel. Only the threat of mass driver bombardment finally effected their surrender. The terms of their capitulation was to be paid in slave warriors: bio-armored soldier.
Physical Characteristics: The kuath are dark-skinned, typically dark-haired, humans with endosymbiotic projections of the Dragon Mothers. (Among other places, these appear to stimulate areas of the brain associated with religious awe.)
The Dragon Mothers themselves are self-organizing colonies (perhaps superorganisms) of single cellular organisms capable of differentiating into a variety of forms. Colonies may extend for kilometers. Their intelligence is vast, but their thought "slower" than humans', and alien. There are numerous "factories" within their mass where they experiment with independent drones and probes of various morphologies.
Psychological Characteristics: Kuath come from a world at essentially a Stone Age level of technology. They are worshippers of the Dragon-Mothers (aquatic super-organisms native to their homeworld) and bio-armored slave soldiers of the Vokun Empire.
Place in the Empire: The kuath serve as shock troops for the vokun. The Dragon Mothers found adolescents were best both psychologically and neurologically for serving as soldiers in their armored suits. (The Dragon Mothers appear to care for the kuath deeply, if in an alien way, but do not conceptualize human life as much different than their other creations, except that human's are more independent and therefore interesting.) They reluctantly agreed to provide a quota of soldiers to the vokun to save their world and synthesized a mix of psychoative chemicals for the kuath, both to ensure they fulfilled their role and to minimize their physical and psychological suffering
Names: Kuath have a singular, gendered personal name.
Examples: Male: An-Tuani, Cham-Ka, Hulan-Yi, Konaga, Ngata, Sun-goro, Tanathi, Waruahi; Female: An-San, Chanya, Dara-Ja, Miri, Shu-sheng, Susi, Ulathi.
Backgrounds: Priest, Tribesman.
Classes: Any, though Warrior is the most common.
Attributes: Standard.
Special
Connected to the Dragon-Mothers
Kuath have endosymbiotic projections of the Dragon-Mothers within their bodies. Most of the time, this will have no game effect, but it does allow the Dragon-Mothers to manipulate them more easily, and could be used by anyone with access to advanced medical tools to differentiate a Kuath from other baseline humans.