Appearance

At a glance a ngrau looks like a cream coloured gorilla with big cat's head. Measured from head to toe, Ngrau body is covered in a thick coat of fur in a patterned combination of white, cream, orange, brown, to black. The most common ones are stripes, spots, rosettes. The Ngrau measure at 2,5 to 3 meters. However, since they walk on all four, a ngrau's head is usually positioned either at the same height or slightly lower that of our universe's humans. On average a ngrau may weight around 150 to 250 kilograms.

Ngrau forelimbs end in a hand with three forward facing fingers and one opposable thumb. They alternate between fist-walking and palm walking, depending on the speed they want to achieve. Like their hands, Ngrau feet have four toes on them. Unlike their hands, their big toes are vestigial and aren't movable.

Biology

Like the majority of the species in the galaxy (baring human and the star jellies), the ngrau's genetic carrier are strands of complex molecules that twist counterclockwise. Aside of their mirrored molecular make-up however, The ngrau has disturbingly terran body structure. In fact, they have almost all the requirement to be classed as mammal. The only difference between ngrau and terran mammals lies in their reproductive system.

All the ngrau are completely hermaphrodite. While they can technically inseminate themselves, the incident rarely happens naturally since their ovulation and spermatogenesis cycle are mutually exclusive.

It's also frowned by their society and deemed as worse than incest (it kinda is...).

Family

Ngrau are mostly monogamous and though it is not illegal in their law, most ngrau societies disapproves sex outside or before marriage.  Being hermaphrodite, the ngrau does not have gender roles like in many other species.

All attested ngrau language have two words for parents, a "mother" who is the one who give birth to them and a "father" who is... well... the other parent. Unlike human concept of mother and father, a ngrau mother can be their sibling's father. In fact, this is often the case, since a ngrau couple usually has their children at roughly the same time (with a gap of around a month or so, due to different cycle).

History

The largest problem in determining ngrau actual history is finding out which parts are legend and which parts actually happened. It also doesn't help that the part that sounds fantastical are the one supported by evidences. According to their history, all ngrau and xlai can trace their ancestor to two gods, which they admitted were basically a ngrau and a xlai with various super power.

Government

Officially, the entire ngrau civilization is an autocracy with a Sovereign at the apex. In practice, it's impossible to centralize the process of governing several billions of people spanning across hundreds of star systems, at least not with their current technology. Each ngrau planet has their own local ruler who found their way into their position through various means. Some ngrau planets are ruled by crazed despots and while some others have a functional representative democracy.

There are no other noble family than The Royal family. So they practices exogamy by marrying to commoner. Once every five years, a civilization wide contest are held to pick the consorts for royal family member who have passed their coming of age. The contest tests the candidates strength and agility by pitting them against each other. These contests are considered sacred by the ngrau and no one, not even the royal family member, is allowed to cheat or alter the result of the contest to their favour. In the course of ngrau's history few member of royal family have been caught of doing such crime and they were summarily executed.

Due to this artificial selection, the royal family members are the pinnacles of their species' physiques.