Xon

The Xon were a sapient race native to Centauri Prime.

Biology
The Xon were a physically powerful race with very little civility or social development past the barbaric tribal stage. Even after their encounter with the Centauri, they accomplished very little advancement in anything but weaponry during the hundred years of their conflict. Their bodies resembled the Centauri superficially, but without the scalp crest and far more muscular. Their nails and teeth were even sharper and more pronounced, and their ability with language was somewhat impeded by their prodigiously feral overbite.

Background
The Xon evolved the continent of Xonos on Centauri Prime around the same time as the Centauri developed on the neighboring continent.

The Centauri Historical Guild noted the first contact between the Xon and the Centauri as an incident in which a fleet of Centauri exploratory vessels came upon a Xon city on the cost of their continent. This primary meeting did not go well and when the ships returned to Centauri waters, they carried with them a hidden Xon force of savages who proceeded to attack and burn everything in their path.

While they were dealt with in short order by overwhelming Centauri soldiers, that fi rst assault heralded a continuous attack by Xon forces from their own shores. This state of affairs continued until the damage from the intermittent but always terrible raids by the Xon became too damaging to ignore. Steeling their martial forces against the Xon, they first drove all the invaders from their shores and then took the fi ght to the Xon on their own continent.

There, the armies of the Centauri met with much greater numbers and force of arms than the lightly equipped raiders had led them to believe.

Once the Centauri struck the Xon on their home continent, there was no possibility of peace between them. The battle that began as a reprisal for raids became a full fledged series of territorial wars with one goal coming swiftly into the minds of both people – the total eradication of the opposing race.

This period of the Centauri’s history is its bloodiest and most violent, but from the ashes of these terrible wars rose the greatest of their warlords into the role of the First Emperor and united their many countries and families into a single, mighty nation.

The Xon were wiped out during Emperor Kiro’s grand Centauri-Xon War (War of 20 Million Deaths in 1258) and after another decade of ceaseless hunting, the last one was slain in captivity by the hand of Kiro himself. The Coutari used to end the life of the last Xon is still on display in the Imperial Summer Palace on Selini, encased in a block of stasis glass gifted to the Emperor by his three Technomage advisors. The brutish race that came closer to destroying the Centauri than any other creature past or since was wiped from existence.

Other races lamented on the extinction of the Xon such as the Vorlons and the Technomages.

Culture
The Xon were described as fierce warrior creatures. The Xon were a predominantly physical people and while they are certainly civilised, the finer points of society and civilisation were unimportant enough to these warrior/hunters to leave undeveloped. A warrior people born and bred and had the instincts of a predator.

Terminology

 * Miamo Presca: Drinking a tall glass of miamo, presca style preferred, is a rejuvenation of spirit that is only partially related to the mood affective found in its formula. Miamo was a drink first discovered by the Centauri in the hands of the Xon when they first arrived on the primary continent in the fifth century of Earth current history. According to the Centauri Historical Guild, barrels of miamo were first looted from Xon pirate vessels and distributed to the crews of those brave Centauri sea captains charged with defending their people from Xon savagery.
 * The Loroth Flu (water): Not truly a flu in the typical sense of the word, the Loroth strain is an unfortunate side-effect of the brutality inflicted upon the Centauri by the Xon near the end of their war with them. Not content to become extinct as they should, the Xon tried to inflict some of their own diseases on our population centres through tainted water supplies. This terrible ailment is the only strain to survive to the present, but its occasional outbreaks can still be quite life threatening.


 * Xonach: The native language of the Xon. Very few Xon ever learned to speak the language of the Centauri and when they were annihilated so few Centauri bothered to maintain their knowledge of Xonach that it became a dead language after a single Centauri generation.

Appearances

 * Babylon 5: The Parliament of Dreams (1994)
 * Babylon 5 Centauri Republic Fact Book