Tatrilli
Tatrilli were the third species to join the galactic community. They were discovered in their stone age, following a climate catastrophe - a massive meteor impact some centuries back - on their home planet. Their planet was one of the first planets with life discovered close to the galactic community as it existed at the time, and was the subject of a fair amount of research. Because their numbers had been so reduced from the meteor impact, it took several years after arriving on the planet before the galactic community realized they had found another sophont. Having realized this, there was suddenly a very large and, thanks to the climate catastrophe the planet was having, pressing question of what to do about them. Many tatrilli were in a perilous position as the large trees that they depended on as an aborial species were dying out.
In the end, the galactic community established contact with several groups of tatrilli and provided them with techonolgy to help cope with everything happening to their world. Some of the groups, largely ones that had already been displaced recently, opted to leave their world entierly, although most opted to stay on the planet they knew and incorporated the new technologies offered by the silent ones and click worms into their lives. Part of the conditions that the technology was granted under was that it was not to be used to harm others, and that was largely followed, but no one really knew what the fuck they were doing and the time following first contact was somewhat rough.
Biology
Life Cycle
Tatrilli are quadropods with prehensile tails that specialize in arboreal movement but are capable of walking on two or four legs. They are primarily herbivorous, eating mostly fruits, seeds, and nuts, but will branch out and eat small quantities of both meat and leaves.
Many tatrilli cultures recognize five possible life stages: larva, juvenile, adult, kwin, and elder. A kwin is a somewhat rare life stage that only around 10% of tatrilli will go through that is capable of developing eggs. Kwin's do not brood their own eggs, instead laying them in an adult's brooding pouch shortly after fertalization, where they will hatch into a fairly undeveloped larva, who will remain in the pouch for about a year and a half. The first time a larva emerges from their parents pouch they will just stick its head out, and over the next few weeks will start to leave the pouch completely, generally for short periods of time. Once they have left the pouch for the first time they will start to be recognized as a juvenile. After a period several months, the juvenile will leave their parent's pouch for good.
Culture
Pre meteor
Tatrilli evolved living in troops of a couple hundred individuals who would sleep together in large wooden structures they constructed in the canopy. These troops would split up during the day into smaller families to gather food around the troop's territory. A family consisted of around eight adults, a single kwin, their children, and their elders. Families were generally fairly consistant about adult membership, but it wasn't uncommon for adults to try moving to a new family. Upon coming of age it was noraml for a young tatrilli to change families. It was much rarer, but still not unheard of, for an individual to change troups. Different troops would have different internal politics, and there were sometimes large families that were not part of a greater troop, but this general structure was quite common historically.
A family would almost always have a single kwin at a time. Should they age into an elder, die, or become otherwise displaced, another adult would develope into a kwin. This would often be a more dominent individual, either socially or physically, but different troops and families had different metrics for choosing, and physiology would sometimes make the choice for them. Kwins develop dramatic striping in their feathers, molt the long display feathers that adults have, and undergo hormonal changes that would make them more prone to aggression and possessiveness.
There were, further from the heart of the rainforest that tatrilli evolved in, groups that practiced other lifestyles, including simple agriculture, active hunting and fishing, and boating. These activities were rarely exclusively what a community would rely on, but in places where there were less naturally occuring fruit they were not uncommon to see.
Post meteor
The meteor struck the ocean on the other side of the planet from the rainforests where tatrilli were primarily located. Being arboreal, they had not spread their range as far as early humans had. The climate effects of the impact, however, were severe, and being half a world away from the impact was not enough to protect the species from it's effects.
Directly after the impact came acid rains, debris in the atmosphere completely blocking the majority of the sunlight, and a decade long impact winter. The planet's tropical jungles did not fare well with these changes, and the tatrilli, largely dependent on the jungles for substanance, experianced a drastic reduction in numbers.
There were a number of ways the suvivors adapted.
Almost all surviving tatrilli suplimented their diets with more meat. Weapons origionally crafted for intertroop conflicts and self defense against preditors became hunting tools. Snares and traps, historically used only upon occassion, became mastered.
Some were fortuante enough to live in an area that were less effected. The rainforests were certainly doomed, but they didn't all die off at once. These regions became far more crowded and competitive in this time, even with dealing with comparitively less changes troops living in these regions still needed to supliment their diets to adjust for their smaller territories.
In other regions, where the largest trees died out, new strategies had to be developed. Groups that had already had a history of things like fishing, fire, preserving food, and agriculture were at a major advantage, and these technologies spread quickly across the surviving population. Trade boomed in these regions as groups started to grow more specialized. Some trading hubs were established and were some of the first points of contact with the greater galactic community, after which point they quickly grew into towns, and some of which are still around, albeit having gone through a massive amount of changes in the thousands of years since.
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