Benzite
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In the fictional Star Trek universe, the Benzites are a humanoid race from the planet Benzar and members of the United Federation of Planets. The Benzites first made their appearance in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Coming of Age.
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Appearance
Benzites possess smooth, hairless skin; it may range in color from bluish-purple to green-blue. A thick protrusion of the Benzite skull extends down over the face, displaying a prominent nasal lobe and brow. Two fish-like barbels droop down from above the upper lip. Benzites are highly resistant to poisons and other noxious substances. They can digest and derive nutrition from almost any organic compound. All Benzites from the same geostructure are physically similar, so much so that they are indistinguishable to a non-Benzite. This is because each geostructure tunes all of its birthing chambers to the same settings.
Until recently, Benzites needed special respirators in order to breathe the air found on Starfleet vessels and most Federation planets. In 2370, a breakthrough in birthing chamber technology allowed them to dispense with the respirators. Adult Benzites who could make use of the modification returned to the homeworld for a spell in the chambers. (Newborn Benzites are actually identical to the old Forebear species. Through birthing chamber development, they become the Benzites as we know them. The Federation exempts the Benzites from its usual strictures against genetic enhancement technology because their own social taboos tightly control its use.)
Disposition
Benzites are cultural conformists; almost all of them devotedly follow the millennia-old Doctrine of Andragov. To Human observers, Andragov's principles seem more like an efficiency manual than a philosophy. In order to achieve, one must follow a system. Benzites compose daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and decade long objectives and use a scoring system to mathematically determine whether they are successes or failures. Their emphasis on measurable achievement should not be construed as a lack of emotion; Benzites care passionately about their scores and their standings in comparison to others. Low-scoring Benzites may go so far as to commit ritual suicide. Ritual suicide, once common in Benzite society, is a tradition in flux. Competing philosophies argue over its usefulness as a consequence.
Benzites are highly competitive, preferring to work alone in order to claim credit when they achieve an objective. They find failure deeply shameful, and may conceal the results of their work until they are sure they are right. They'd rather act than react. Thoroughness is a high virtue. Things that can be measured are good. Tightly defined, exacting processes breed success. Benzites in Starfleet must work to downplay certain of these traits. They struggle to learn how to work as team members, to share preliminary results, and to respect the chain of command, acting only when instructed to. Benzite officers hunger for commendations, medals, and positive performance ratings. They respond to contests with fanatic zeal, going all-out to win any and all available awards.
History
The Benzites descended from a vastly different, now extinct, species, remembered only as "The Forebears." The sacred myth says that the Forebears fell from the sky in the wake of a catastrophe that slew the gods. Deprived of the milk of the gods, the Forebears were dying. They could not survive on Benzar, but they made children who could. Those children were the Benzites. They could breathe the world's air and take sustenance from its plants and animals. Before they died, the Forebears built the first birthing chambers.
The Benzites eventually made copies of the birthing chambers. Many generations later, they grew wise enough to make improvements to the chambers, which would make the people developed in them stronger, faster, and smarter. The wisest of them all, Andragov, devised the rules of life by which achievement could be encouraged, measured, and recorded. Inspired by his doctrine, Benzites built the great crystalline cities called geostructures.
The Golden age ended and violent wars broke out when it was discovered that a quirk of Benzite biology allowed any individual's organs or limbs to be transplanted into another individual's with no fear of rejection. Geostructures went to war with one another to capture victims for organ harvest, until scientists altered the birthing chambers so that people from one geostructure could not use organs from someone raised in another. A second virulent outbreak of warfare occurred when birthing chamber scientists found ways to "improve" on Benzite anatomy, breeding warriors with armor plates, poison sacs, spiked knuckles, and other martial modifications. After two hundred years of mutually destructive warfare, the geostructures banned these procedures.
The Belaxalar geostructure built the first warp drive in 2350. First contact with a Federation vessel occurred in 2360; by 2365 they were engaged in officer exchanged programs with Starfleet. When the achievement-oriented Benzites decided they wanted Federation membership, they lobbied hard for it, gaining admission in 2369.