Thraxan

Bright cyan-blue and unmistakably insectoid, the Thraxans call mantises to mind in both shape and stance. The head carries two red compound eyes and a set of antennae, and long, sharp spines run the length of each arm. Their hands close into two fingers apiece, while their forelegs taper to two toes.

Thraxan society holds peace, loyalty, and gratitude at its center, a communal outlook shaped by how short each life runs. Reaching maturity, aging, and dying inside a year lends the people urgency and toughness, and they bend to fresh problems with remarkable speed.

Their minds are wired for sharp reasoning and quick problem-solving, a gift that has driven their civilization forward fast. Fresh languages, new skills, unfamiliar knowledge, they take it all in at a rate few other species can match, though that racing intellect sometimes skips over small or ordinary details. By their own account, their culture lays no blame and keeps its gaze fixed ahead.

Native to Thraxa, the Thraxans are a sentient, insect-like people who, at some stage in their past, mastered spaceflight. Their path crossed the Graysons' when a broken Nolan, reeling from his clash with Mark and hunting a place to die, instead rescued a Thraxan vessel and its crew. Thankful, they carried him home to Thraxa, where he grew close to their queen Andressa and fathered a son, Oliver Grayson.

Some time on, a Thraxan called Nuolzot went to Earth for Mark with a false tale of a coming meteor storm; his real goal was to reunite the young hero with his father. The reunion drew a Viltrumite strike team of Vidor, Thula, and Lucan, sent to seize Nolan. Many Thraxans fell in the attack, Nolan was hauled away, and Kregg cautioned Mark to make Earth ready for Viltrumite rule. With Nolan gone, the survivors rebuilt with Mark's help, and since Oliver's half-Viltrumite blood freed him from their swift aging and would have left him alone among them, Andressa handed the boy over to Mark to raise on Earth. The people's heaviest curse is that racing life cycle: quick to mature but rarely lasting a full year, aging so fast it wears on the mind and brings creeping memory loss.