Index -> Playing the Game -> Race -> Zhikanii

When you choose Zhikanii as your deck�s primary race, your homeworld permanently gets +1 production at the end of turn 6.

Zhikanii Racial Profile

The Zhikanii are a race of pragmatic (evil) and capitalistic (selfish) slugs.

A Zhikanii stretched out is about 6 feet long, but most 'stand' at about 2-3 feet off the ground. The Zhikanii have relatively large mouths with numerous omnivore teeth and thick lips. They have large monochromatic eyes with little 'eye-fringe' eyelashes and a pair of antennae.

The Zhikanii body comes in shades of green, blue, gray, or brown. They have a stripe of a different color running down their face and body tube. Zhikanii manipulate objects through two stubby arms with three fingers. Their tails end in what looks like a small flame - a red, orange, and yellow cluster of smaller prehensile tentacles.

Zhikanii are asexual, lacking any gender. Still, most are regarded as male by the humans they encounter.

Zhikanii ships are circular and roughly symmetrical. Human xenologists believe that this is the result of a Zhikanii cultural aversion to turning their back on friends or enemies alike.

While relatively alien, the Zhikanii have adopted mannerisms that many humans can identify with: they smoke, drink, curse, haggle, and joke around. The great vices of Earth, alcohol and tobacco, have made their way across light years to meet a booming demand on Volcanis.

Zhikanii History

The sluggish Zhikanii hail from Volcanis - a cool, tundra-like planet with incredible tectonic and volcanic activity under its crust. This is due to the shifting tidal forces of the planet's seven moons. The end result is a planet of cool plains of smooth volcanic rock, hot lakes and lava rivers. Volcanis is powered by its own geothermic energy; the sun, for the Zhikanii, is a nightlight at best.

Prehistoric Zhikanii were solitary herbivores, feeding off of the fungus and algae that live in pockets about the surface of the planet. The nature of Volcanis' geography is such that life is clustered. Lush pockets of life grow around the geysers while thousands of miles of cold plains are entirely barren. And so it was that Zhikanii were driven to civilization, not for mutual protection against predators, but from the need to figure out who had dibs on eating what.

Zhikanii are physically quite docile. They are neither aggressive nor capable of inflicting much harm. Zhikanii are creatures of slow metabolism and long lives. Asexual, they reproduce by splitting of "spawnlings" that are genetically similar to the parent but with a tiny mutation factor each time. The Zhikanii could care less if they are called male, female, or "other" by aliens. Sexual reproduction, they argue, is a waste of everyone's time.

The end result is that there are about 30 different Zhikanii breeds. Each lineage is descended from one of 30 founding Zhikanii that modern Volcanian archeologists traced back to the sparse survivors of a volcanic eruption. While each individual has differences that they can use to distinguish each other, to other aliens, all Zhikanii tend to look alike. Telling two members from the same breed apart is near impossible.

Currently, nearly every Zhikanii has the last name "Negghz," ever since their king decided to adopt everyone. A few change their names but, in general, all the Negghzes are entirely unrelated to each other.

Primitive Zhikanii society was, as one historian put it, "lazy-feudalist." The Zhikanii that had been at a place of resources the longest claimed ownership of them, declaring himself and his successor-spawnlings King. Since fungus and algae grow themselves, the Zhikanii never really had to work. Even the non-royalty had few material concerns.

Still, they enjoyed having "more," so many Zhikanii used their free time to innovate new ways to have more food. It didn�t take long for the great motivators of greed and laziness to make the Zhikanii a race of creatures obsessed with both being productive and exerting as little physical effort as possible. This dialectic drove the entirety of Zhikanii technological progress, from the wheel to the labor-saving robot worker. In the meantime they discovered war, capitalism, and self-interest. These three elements became the hallmarks of modern Zhikanii society.

Before the Kej arrived, the Zhikanii were overflowing their planet and settling the planets of their star system. Each Zhikanii youth was expected to either stake his own claim or create something new that would make others do what he wants. Once the gateways were understood, if only on an operational level, the Zhikanii went galactic. The added prosperity caused the King to overstep his bounds and he was overthrown. Since then, the Zhikanii "government" has been non-existent. The race exists in a state of anarchy - various corporations and rich individuals hold all the power in a ruthless food chain.

Check out the strategy guide for the Zhikanii.