What can you tell us about species on developing worlds?
TL;DRDeveloping worlds host self-aware, tool-using species protected from interference by the UEE's Fair Chance Act, and the Osoians, who communicate through light and color displays, are one example, though their final design can't be discussed yet.
We have a few of those. For those who don't know what a developing world or developing civilization is, it's one that is inhabited by a species that is self-aware, you might call it sentient in some works of science fiction. They use tools, they're developing technology, they're moving forward onto a path that seems to indicate that one day they will join us in space. And the UEE has this law in place called the Fair Chance Act that prohibits interference from any of the developed civilizations. Basically, this was put in place to prevent another massacre of Garron II, which was a genocide of the developing species on the planet Garron II conducted by a terraforming company that had ties to the Imperator Linton Messer XI. And it was the last inciting incident that led to the fall of the Messers and the end of the Messer era. We have a couple of developing civilizations. You might have just read about the Osoians because I published a Galactapedia article on them. We can't get too much into their final design, but we do know that they communicate through light and color displays like cuttlefish. Fascinating and very hard for us to parse because we use our mouth parts to speak.
I will throw out a fun behind-the-scenes trivia thing. When the Osoians first appeared in the Lost Generation story, I had done a rough sketch that I showed to somebody on the team of what I was sort of thinking they looked like, and I was told to, quote, never ever show that to the animators, end quote.
They would cry.