Ascendancy's Races

Being 4X games, Ascendancy doesn't give much detail on each races beyond part of their culture and history, which mentioned at game's introduction. This article try to cover those information as much as possible.

All of these races are sentients. Their technology left open to player's choice and every races have access to same tree of technology. These technology including interstellar travel, cloning, energy weapons and terraforming, among other.

Arbryls
The Arbryls are tree-people who evolved on a huge eden planet containing only plant life. They are peaceful, slow-moving, and highly intelligent. They are not used to conflict and their philosophy is towards isolationist. They can usually be found standing perfectly motionless for huge amounts of time, thinking their tree thoughts, pondering the world.

The Arbryls can disrupt the flow of space. They can block all star lanes entering their colonized systems.

Balifids
The Balifids evolved on a hospitable but competitive world where they developed the ability to disarm and win over their competitors. Other creatures instinctively feel protective of Balifids. The Balifids have a huge capacity for fun--they take nothing very serious and are friendly and curious. Despite their naive and harmless image, the Balifids are deeply intelligent and highly perceptive. They survived as a species because of their keen awareness of the outlook and motivations of other creatures.

Balifids are disarming diplomats. They can force all aliens to make peace with them.

Capelons
The Capelons are masses of flowing fibers who can rearrange their bodies quickly to assume any shape. They evolved on a highly predatory world where their camouflage and shape-shifting were useful for catching their scarce, elusive prey before competing predators could. They eventually developed the power to repel competing predators as an extension to their camouflage ability, making themselves so unnoticeable that the threatening being forgets what it was thinking about, allowing the Capelon to make an escape.

They can make all their colonies invincible for one day.

Chamachies
The Chamachies are able to discover major breakthroughs quickly when under duress - stress heightens their scientific abilities and amplifies their determination, much like adrenalin heightens physical abilities. In the past a huge, highly advanced alien vessel passed through their system. The aliens discovered that the star lane energy points in that system had drifted into an unstable configuration, and that the forces released from the cataclysm would destroy everything in the star system. This sent the Chamachie society into a frenzy of scientific and technological advancement.

The Chamachies are brilliant scientists. They can immediately achieve any discovery they are pursuing.

Chronomyst
The Chronomyst are a deeply religious and philosophical race who spend much of their time in trance-like meditations exploring inner space. When one with their god, they can float through time and space at a different rate than that experienced by those not ascended. They have discovered a way to use this to access star lanes and accelerate through them.

The Chronomyst can change the rate of time passage. They can move quickly through star lanes.

Dubtaks
The Dubtaks are a race whose entire scientific knowledge was primarily stolen from other races. They are opportunistic and seek alliances through which they can attain more knowledge without actually having to research anything themselves. They evolved on a world full of aggressive, competitive life. If a dangerous animal was set down anywhere on the planet, it would be consumed in seconds. Although they are not especially aggressive themselves, they survived by excelling at hiding and watching. Their senses cover a vast spectrum of phenomena, so they can tell that something is headed their way. They move like the wind and can fit in small holes and cracks easily.

The Dubtaks can copy scientific research from other races.

Fludentri
The Fludentri evolved on a world covered with ocean. They are composed of polymerized liquid. When a Fludentri is injured it regenerates in seconds, its fluid anatomy knitting together immediately after physical damage occurs. A Fludentri dies only when its entire body is disrupted at once.

The Fludentri are resilient. They can repair all damage to their ships.

Frutmaka
The Frutmaka evolved near a black-hole on the same planet that gave birth to the Swaparamans. Long ago they drove the Swaparamans from their mutual home world. The Frutmaka move with glacial slowness. They are near-sessile fungal animals that obtained high intelligence early in their evolution. Their fustration at being fully aware and helpless while they were being eaten alive by predators gave way to the development of a latent telekinetic ability. Modern Frutmaka have a formitable ability to teleport objects with the force of their wills. Combining abilities, they can teleport large objects across huge distances.

The Frutmaka are able to repel. They can warp alien ships out of their colonies stars.

Govorom
The Govorom evolved on a barren desert planet. In order to survive they learned to preserve and nuture the scant resources of their world. They do not have an organized society, they live apart from each other, each being a caretaker of a small region of the planet. The regions they care for are ever-changing and are not agreed upon but handled purely by intuition- each Govorom knows instinctively where its region lies. Given an already-hospitable planet, they are able to transform it into a paradise.

The Govorom are nature-goddesses. You can turn your least populated colony into a rich world.

Hanshaks
The Hanshaks can communicate telepathically with other sentient life. The Hanshaks are few, but they are renowned for their wisdom and intuition. After an early technological surge, they dismantled their cities and returned their world to its natural state, developing a culture devoted to enlightenment and living symbiotically with nature. They have managed to retain a knowledge of technology in their druidic society.

The Hanshaks are telepathic communicators. They can talk to all other races from the start of the game.

Kambuchka
The Kambuchka evolved in the dense, fog-like atmosphere of a large planet. They see by feeling the atomic vibrations of their surroundings on their convoluted membrane bodies. The Kambuchka cannot move quickly in the atmosphere of their home world, so they evolved the ability to detect faraway living things, both to help them find food and to help them avoid predators.

The Kambuchka can sense life forms from far away. They can see all alien home stars.

Marmosians
The Marmosians are from the inner world of a hot sun. Their mating pheromones evolved into a general purpose array of complex mood-altering scent molecules that allow them to manipulate the base emotions of other creatures. They learned to use the predators of their world to protect their territories, and they tend to repel attacks by causing their enemies to fight each other.

The Mamosians can create hatred. They can cause alien species to strongly dislike any species at war with them.

Mebes
The Mebes are large single-celled creatures that evolved on a warm, sunny world. They roll around collecting food on their surfaces and absorbing it into their bodies. They breed rapidly by sexual reproduction. Two Mebes exchange genetic material, they each divides to produce a new Mebe.

The Mebes are good at populating. They can increase the maximum population of all their colonies.

Minions
The Minions are a species of artificial life-machines that serve the purposes of their extra-galactic master-species. Eons ago, the master species seeded the ancestor-units of the Minions on a planet chosen to accelerate their developmental programs. Their ultimate programming lay dormant throughout their history until reawakened by their cosmic masters. No one knows anything about the location of the masters or their purpose.

The Minions are masters of invasion. Their planetary invasions will always succeed.

Nimbuloids
The Nimbuloids arose on a planet with a thick, reactive type atmosphere. They are composed of gases, and move through the atmosphere by chemically attracting and repelling the molecules of the gases in their environment. They see reality in terms of the intersecting flow of what they call currents: the karmic forces that, they believe, determine destiny. With great effort a Nimbuloid can transform matter from solid to gas and back.

The Nimbuloids are extremely productive. They can boost the progress on all their colonies projects.

Oculons
The Oculons have only the extremely acute sense of sight. They evolved on a thin-atmosphere planet orbiting a bright sun. Their culture is strongly astronomical (they are essentially living telescopes) and they have amassed a great deal of knowledge about the galaxy. They are more mystical than intellectual, and are considered superstitious by other races.

The Oculons are ancient astronomers. They can see all star lanes.

Orfa
The Orfa are grazing animals that evolved on a hostile world. Their bodies are very dense and tough, and they are as happy in a pool of lava as pigs are in a wallow of filth. They prefer vegetation and a diet of complex organic molecules but they can subsist on raw minerals. They are not harmed by the radiation, heat, cold, chemicals, or physical buffeting of any known planetary body, nor do they require an atmosphere.

The Orfa are unfazed by hostile environments. They can build on black planet squares.

Shevar
Little is known of the Shevar. They are sorcerers, masters of dark forces from another universe. They are an inorganic lifeform—--they follow most definitions of life but are composed entirely of inorganic substances. They are able to harness an anti-energy that draws in and consumes energy and life force. It is believed that the Shevar came from another universe with different physical laws. They experimented with their arcane arts until they opened a way into this universe, and the pathway they opened led to a planet teeming with life. This was an unimagined bounty to the Shevar and they utterly devastated this world, feeding on its life force.

The Shevar are power-sappers. They can wipe out the power of all alien ships in systems they occupy.

Snovemdomas
The Snovemdomas evolved as pack-hunting predators in woods and tundra plains on a very high-gravity world. Snovemdomas are about the size of a bear, and their stocky build is deceptive since they are quick and graceful in motion. To the inhabitants of the other worlds, they appear to be imposing and massive. On their own world, the Snovemdomas prey on much larger and tougher creatures, bringing the prey down by overwhelming it with numbers and speed. Their bodies evolved strength and lightness (too much mass being detrimental in high gravity), and their bones are made of a hollow but nearly unbreakable force-distributing honeycomb lattice.

The Snovemdomas are mighty and tough. Their ships all have double-strength hulls.

Swaparamans
The Swaparamans evolved on the first planet of a binary star system. The dual-star configuration influenced the development of duality inverse-reality structures that continually build in the minds of the Swamparamans like electricity charging a capacitor. Once charged, the Swamparamans can release their stored potential. They evolved on the same world as the Frutmaka, but were driven from their home world. A tiny number survived and were able to flee in space vessels that they patched together in secret.

The Swamparamans produce extra power. They can double the power of all their ships.

Ungooma
The Ungooma are a species of adaptive-intelligence beings that evolved as thought-parasites and later developed their own means of thinking and taking control of animals, using the bodies and minds of their hosts for their own needs. They are tiny, and their intellect is derived from the combined thoughts of many thousands of distinct composite personalities which they have. They currently no longer possess the ability to take over a host, but they retain the vestigial ability to exert a limited form of mind control at a distance.

The Ungooma are mischievous. They can bump all ships in star lanes backward to their stars of origin.