Xanid

The Xanid are a race of Insectoids native to the planet of Xanth, an arid and highly inhospitable rock in the Dir-Xan system. This planet is barely made livable by the fact that another sentient species, the Vheln have tame this wild world.

The Xanid are an upright insectoid species. Unlike many of their counterparts, the Xanid have only 2 arms and two legs. They sport a hardy black carapace and their soft parts and joints have different colors by individual depending where they originated from on Xanth. These colors tend to glow much like a terrestrial firefly but has no known use or practicality. The Xanid have no compound eyes and are only equipped with 2 pupiless eyes that have the ability to blink. Each Xanid have four antennae and several external mouth parts.

The story of the Xanid is really the story of the Vheln. These two species' fates have been entwined with one another since the time of their existence. With their world hot, arid, and barely even livable, the hardly sapient Xanid search for a species of animal they could tame to ease their lives. This search came in the form of the Vheln, a small but versatile species of reptiles. The Xanid bred them to do their work, from simple task such as tilling the land to harder more complex work like farming. The consequence of this act whether unintentional or not cause the Vheln to become sapient. The Vheln literally became a "slave" race under the Xanid who used their new found intelligent labor as best as they possibly can. The Xanid used them through out history as laborers, soldiers, and perhaps even lovers, anything to squeeze work out of them and to propel their species into a new level of dominance.