Thabbo are large, powerfully built, shaggy humanoids native to the Triangulum Galaxy. An average Thabbo stands just short of two and a half meters tall and masses around 250 kilos. This great bulk gives them incredible raw strength. Thabbo are roughly two and a half times as strong as humans, punch like sledgehammers, and their rifles are equivalent to anti-tank rifles or light crew-served weapons.
They are much more social than humans, and their group bonds are much more pronounced. Where a tightly-knit group of humans may spend a lot of free time together, an average Thabbo social group of five or ten members will live and work together, and spend nearly all of their free time together. With their friends behind them, Thabbo are often extremely confident and nearly fearless; few things can stand up to a half dozen Thabbo even in a good mood.
While the average Thabbo is less intelligent than the average human, their exceptional members are every bit as intelligent as their human counterparts. In fact, the more intelligent Thabbo usually possess a level of insane creativity far in excess of most humans and many Gliror. These exceptional individuals are the cornerstone of their species’ technological progress.
The Alliance Troubleshooters have made these “Geniuses” a top priority for assassination in counter-Thabbo operations. Killing a Genius has often been enough to stop a Thabbo offensive in its tracks; without the Genius the leadership cadre is sometimes left floundering, while killing a squad leader merely results in a temporary power struggle while his lieutenants fight for supremacy.
In their presentient state, Thabbo were pack hunters going after exceptionally large and dangerous prey. A typical pack was five to ten members led by the strongest, meanest member.
Things haven’t changed much in the intervening millennia.
Thabbo are strong believers in the adage “might makes right.” Most disputes are settled through duels of sorts. The parties publicly declare their grievance and do battle in full view of the community.
The few outsiders who have studied Thabbo society in any detail discovered the Thabbo only engage in true dominance fights among relative equals; badly-unmatched fights end either in the stronger party dismissing the weaker with relatively light violence (and great amusement for those present) or by killing them outright. A worthy foe will be fought into submission, and nearly always allowed to live as a subordinate.
This is sometimes used as a means of changing social groups. A Thabbo who hates his current clique will sometimes challenge a slightly stronger Thabbo of another clique in order to be “captured” by the others. If he wins, he can also often use that as an excuse to join the other group; he did prove himself worthy of their respect.
Thabbo are hermaphroditic and require a partner. Many of their social duels end up with the winner becoming the “male” partner afterward. This is seen as a means of strengthening the species. Since unworthy foes are either sent scampering or killed, most Thabbo will only mate with relative equals. They are live-bearing and typically have small litters of three or four, with a gestation period of sixteen months.
Thabbo have a much better sense of smell than humans. They can track by smell, and are nearly impossible to poison through food or drink.
Their diet consists largely of meat, usually raw. Thabbo are much less picky than Gliror, and will subsist on offal and jerky without complaint. The main requirement is that they’re served meat in great quantities. This includes other sentient beings, including humans, Gliror, and other Thabbo.
Overall, Thabbo technology is a few decades behind the Alliance. Thabbo prefer large, brutal weapons like sledgehammers, enormous clubs, anti-materiel rifles, and light machine guns. What they lack in finesse and efficiency, they more than make up for in raw power. However, the work of individual Geniuses is often disturbingly advanced. This includes the sudden localized appearance of technologies nobody even knew the Thabbo had imagined, much less knew how to manufacture. Technologies the Alliance or Gliror haven’t yet mastered are also encountered with alarming frequency.
As usual, Thabbo infighting and petty squabbling are their most dangerous opponents. A disturbing new device appears in Thabbo hands, is used briefly against civilized people, then disappears along with the tribe using it in inter-Thabbo violence. A few top Alliance intelligence officers have run simulations based on what they know of Thabbo internal and external politics and discovered if their models are correct the Alliance only sees six percent of these breakthroughs, with the rest lost to their endless civil wars before anyone else noticed. This would also explain some of the bizarre residual effects on worlds abandoned by the Thabbo for whatever reason. While they have yet to do anything as spectacular as the disappearance of the Umael Hod in the final moments of the Celestial Host War, the remnants of a few of their more energetic activities more closely resemble asteroid or cometary impacts than anything most species would do intentionally.
The day they ever learn to cooperate beyond the tribal level will be a terrible one for the rest of the galaxy.