Sirius' idea has prompted me to produce the Sanguins, a technologically advanced race of vampiric birds. I was originally going to produce pacifist egalitarian jellyfish to build tall, which would have been a much nicer play-through. They share their worlds with large furry Blood Beasts, huddling in their primitive wooden villages. Seen here massively over-producing food, but I'm going to play without farms for RP purposes so I don't have much of a choice there.
For extra fucked-uppedness, the wealthy aristocrats among the Sanguin employ their own kind as slaves, for they are too decadent to enjoy life in which they must work for a living. Thus Sanguin society is one part sentient livestock, one part horribly mistreated workers, one part landed gentry. The landed gentry is the smallest group. The Sanguin are slow breeding; I had a concept that this might make research faster, which it kind of has, but it also had the effect of causing the blood beasts to outbreed them and slow Sanguin growth to a halt. Fortunately curtailing Blood Beast breeding rights has fixed this. If I start to run low on food, I'll return breeding rights for a time.
Speaking of faster research, I'm on only two planets and churning out a metric buttload of society and engineering research. Sanguin are great researchers and learners, and as a result I've got two level four brilliant researchers producing tech. I discovered that an ancient, dark religion on my world is in fact interstellar in origin. My scientists managed to track down multiple pieces and use them to unveil a prophecy that our race is meant for greatness. Being godless materialists, we promptly sold this tale to religiously themed mega-corporations, and then used the credits to buy data from a conclave. Then I spent a lot of influence to put a leader in charge who's agenda is increased research. All of this combined is giving us almost 50%+ research rates in society and engineering; we're churning out a tech each year and still having research time to spare.
The only nearby race aside from some fallen empires happens to share our climate type (artic for me, tundra for them). I'm sure nothing horrifically violent will result from that. The race themselves are actually amazing tho. Check this out:
The fucking faerie butterfly hive mind! My only regret is I won't be able to integrate them as slaves since I'm told they'll die without their collective. They would really add a splash of color to my worlds. I tried to cut them off from expansion but they went around and apparently found an ancient mine producing 14 minerals! Since that's basically as valuable as a world unto itself, and the world is also quite good, I've put a hold on any colonization efforts in favor of researching and then building destroyers. I think I'll take their world with the mine and then turn them into a tributary. That will give me access to their resources without slowing down my research. Once I have terriforming up and I'm enclosed on all sides then I will likely return to conquer them. Although... I am a race of vampiric slavers. Isn't a tributary gestalt consciousness nothing but a single vast, planets spanning servant?