Diplomatic Briefing: Qin
Societal Basics
The Qin are split into six houses, which are essentially a combination of caste, labor union, and political party. All houses are important socially and politically, providing a critical role in society, with no "useless" houses whose sole goals and services are unnecessary for societal well-being.
On a personal scale it is more or less unknown what the Qin actually look like, and we have seen little of their hobbies or other recreational means, although they seem to have some sorts of games, competitions, and other group-building activities. They grow their own pets, but with commerce to Qinshui, Earth octopuses have become a popular pet for Qin, and several companies have made a small fortune selling fishtanks, feed recipes, and other related products to the Qin.
The Six Houses
Listed below are the six houses using the common Aeon name for each house, the English translations (as provided by the Qin themselves), and their functions in Qin society. Lle-Ji was the house to make first contact with humans and is the primary source of Qin knowledge, while Lle-Llau is confirmed to be anti-human. Reasons for this are likely related to Aberrant attacks on Qinshui or possibly just long-standing xenophobia.
- Lle-Brib, the House of Speech: Journalism and Internal Affairs
- Lle-Llau, the House of Walls: Defense
- Lle-Ji, the House of Roads: Exploration
- Lle-Sosh, the House of Wheat: Resource Extraction
- Lle-Av, the House of Beasts: Bioengineering and Biotech
- Lle-Tha, the House of Servants: Miscellaneous Labor
Qinshui
Qinshui is a broadly terracompatible world inhabited by the Qin. Atmosphere is breathable without aid for indefinite periods, but biological life is not compatible with human genetics. Qinshui's temperatures tend to be cool (~10-20 C on average) and the climate is wet compared to Earth normal, with near-constant rains and everpresent fog. Qin bioengineering has adapted the world to their norms, and is universally apparent in their cities, which lack hard angles and flat surfaces and have the curved, organic look common to bioapps. Qinshui's entire ecosystem is fully integrated with their biotechnology, and many of their bioapps apparently have full life cycles and ecological niches. All Qinshui life lacks endoskeletons, and many lack exoskeletons as well, using gas bags, hydrostatics, and other methods of propulsion, lift, and movement.
The City of Meetpoint
The city housing the human embassy has been named "Meetpoint" by the Qin and is the only city humans are allowed in with (limited) supervision, due to "safety reasons". Most of the time Qin guides control what human guests can or cannot see, and only Meetpoint is considered "fully safe". Meetpoint is a fairly large city, covering several hundred square kilometers, with the embassy on the coast, allowing for sports such as sailing or fishing. Like all other Qin cities, Meetpoint is entirely grown, and the buildings are capable of self-sustaining, enacting their own repairs and maintenance in all but the most serious cases of damage, in which case a member of Lle-Av must intervene.
Technology
Qin biotechnology is more advanced than terrestrial equivalents, and is generally grown to fill an ecosystem niche as already stated. Qin biotech is generally universally symbiotic, and either the Qin are much more tolerant of bioapp formatting than humans are, or their biotechnology is significantly easier to handle, as most Qin use extensive amounts of biotech augmentation, integrated with their biosuits, external, or both. The release of Qin human-symbiotic biotech such as the Qin Math Polyp and other commercial technology have lent credence to the idea of more advanced techniques reducing tolerance footprints.
Biosuits
Three types of biosuits have been commonly spotted, with minor variants, presumably due to differences in role and integrated biotech.
Diplomatic
The first and most common is the "diplomatic" suit, which is seen used by almost all Qin staff in the Embassy and near-universal in the city of Meetpoint. These suits are intended to emulate human features, and generally provide a facsimile of human which manages to look alien without being disconcerting, implying that the Qin are aware of the uncanny valley and have managed to avoid stepping into it.
These suits are fairly competitive with fit human athletes in physical prowess, but not intended to compete physically with any significantly augmented threat, and only "protected" against everyday wear, tear, and some level of abuse that allows the Qin inside to survive small arms fire, as seen in at least one xenophobic terrorist attack on a Qin ambassador. Qin normally integrate various bioapps in these suits, for whatever role they seek to take on.
Bodyguard
Bodyguard suits are the second most common type, used by certain Qin for heavy lifting, emergency response, and obviously dignitary defense. They are more heavily built than the diplomatic suits, made up to resemble the plate armor of a human knight or a modern battlesuit, armed with light integrated weaponry and with the capacity to integrate more. Bodyguard suits are extremely resilient to environmental conditions and have been tested against xenophobe terrorists a handful of times, with the suits holding up exceedingly well against small arms fire, incendiaries, and improvised explosives.
If fully integrated with psychokinetic field generators, electrokinetic EM barriers, and military-grade Qin bioapps (information on these is obviously limited, but they presumably exist), as well as physical enhancement modules, a bodyguard suit could quite effectively match or exceed an enhanced Legion operative in physical ability, which MSgt. Gerho demonstrated on Khantze Lu Ge in the heroic actions which brought him his posthumous promotion.
Warrior
There is very little information on Warrior suits, as they are almost entirely exclusive to the anti-human house Lle-Llau. What is known is that they are the standard encounter suit for Qin soldiers and integrate heavy biotechnological weaponry into their form, and they are designed for movement speed and firepower rather than humanoid appearance. Very little other information is available. Given what a tooled-up bodyguard suit could do, though, a fully-specced out warrior suit may be able to match light VARGs in terms of durability, firepower, and maneuverability.
Bioships
The Qin have starfaring vessels, all powered via biotech drives rather than conventional fusion thrust. These drives are essentially generators which use and amplify the Telekinesis aptitude on a broad scale, creating powerful reactionless thrust. However, they are less efficient both per-unit-volume and per-unit-mass than fusion drives in terms of pure acceleration, even though they have their own limited benefits (such as effective 360 degree thrust vectoring with no loss in acceleration strength, and no stresses on the pilots), and human fusion drives are one of the many intriguing and desired hardtech systems for the Qin.
Weapons-wise, armed Qin vessels have been spotted using electrokinetic lances, pyrokinetic plasma weapons, telekinetic vector beams and kinetic flechette arrays, as well as guided missiles, and are, from what long-range spectroscopic analysis implies, armored in pseudochitin. Their structures should be only comparably tough to modern biotech, but the Qin's mastery of engineering psychokinetic aptitudes means that they probably further defend their vessels with psychokinetic shields.