The Early Era
The early years of the Unggoy's exploration was largely peaceful, now freed from the dangerous weathers of their homeworld, they colonized the nearby methane rich worlds of Tala, most of them had far calmer weather than Balaho and therefore safer to live on while starships were built in orbit.
While exploring the edges of the system, a Unggoy exploration team discovered a large object floating in space, the giant key shaped object emitted eezo traces, deciphered Prothean texts from the outpost refers to them as Mass Relays and was an FTL Device capable of reaching hundreds of light years. Using the instructions from the ship, they opened the Relay and sent a ship to the other side. There, they ended in another system, hundreds of light-years away from their home and their screens show several more relays, inactive.
However, despite the galaxy seemingly for the taking, their infrastructure was insufficient, they barely had a hundred ships and only ten could actually be called warships, despite vocal protests, the exploration was temporarily halted and more ships were made while eezo was mined from the belt in great quantities. The population in the colonized worlds exploded, as Geronticide became less necessary and families laid record clutches while advances in technology dropped infant mortality to only 1%.
After two decades of relentless construction, the era of exploration has begun, opening relay after relay, they began settling the worlds near it. Despite being merely forty worlds under their hands, with five of them garden worlds, all of them were heavily settled and mined for precious minerals and ores, two of those worlds were eezo rich and shipbuilding industries expanded. In less than three decades, the population exploded up to 3.9 billion from the small 320 million when the ruins were found.
Trade flourished and worlds became rich, with Mass Effect-domed cities filled with a methane atmosphere a common sight while farms filled dotted the worlds to feed the massive populations.
During this era, the Unggoy formed the Commonwealth as their central government. With every representative sent from every world, they convened on matters of the state.
One of the strong points was the size of the fleet, ever since the discovery of the facility, the Unggoy had been building up a major naval fleet just in case of an encounter with an unknown species. With nearly three fleets, largely composed of frigates and the new built cruisers, many believe that enough military starships was built. Between building infastructure on the worlds, mining and additional civilian maritime, the military slowly dried out of funds as the relatively non-violent and mercantile culture of their race trumps over increased militarization against phantom threats.
For a while, the Unggoy were now in a golden age, free from the terrible chains of their world and allowing them to truly flourish as an Interstellar Civilization.
Fate, however, had another plan.
Codex: Unggoy
Hailing from the Methane-rich world of Balaho in the Tala System, the Unggoy are a race of bipedal (occasionally quadrupedal) vertebrates. A fast breeding species, they are similar in nature to arthropods though different in terms of physiology.
They are on average five feet tall when standing on two legs but only four feet when using all limbs, and are poor combatants but makes up with surprising strength for their size. Although they are capable of walking with their two legs, using their forearms gives additional bursts of speed. While carrying their weapons, they do so by firing with one hand and moving with three limbs or using both making their mobility slower but much more accurate. The former is oftenly used by basic troops armed with fast firing submachine guns while heavier weapons such as Machine Guns, Rocket Launchers and Grenade Launchers for the Latter.
Their skin is covered by a thick exoskeleton, that makes them highly resistant to blunt trauma and shockwaves, but it does not protect from gunshots.
Their blood is colored blue, due to the methane based proteins in the blood as well as high-copper content. When spilled, it is oftenly bio-luminescent and mildly flammable.
Most Unggoy have flat-three toed feet with another toe in the back of their feet, though others may have four toes in front. They have large olfactories, giving them an amazing sense of smell while sight and hearing are average on galactic standard.
Unggoy breed prodigiously, with nearly 40 eggs in a six month incubation period before laying. The eggs have different color patterns based on genders, with patterns of black, blue, violet and gray stripes for male eggs and yellow, red, pink and orange for females.
Before leaving their homeworld, Geronticide was necessary with only three or four eggs allowed to mature to prevent further scarcity of food and other resources in Balaho's winters. Even then, death toll was enormously high, with corpses of plague victims and hunger routinely burned to prevent spread of diseases.
Today, it is no longer necessary, with whole clutches raised, but all families must provide a large number of their eggs (10 in peacetime and 20 in wartime) to the military in order to prevent overpopulation and ensure a steady stream of recruits in the armed forces. Almost all of the eggs given are male, with females being levied only if a whole clutch is given.
Many in Citadel Space, with the exception of the Turians, are appalled by this but the Unggoy simply shrug and tell them that it is better than killing children.
In theory, a Unggoy female can become pregnant twice a year and allow their population to expand exponentially. In practice, there is usually a lapse of five years or more due to most parents preferring to have more children only when the last batch had matured.
The average lifespan of a Unggoy is around fifty years, with some extending up to sixty ir seventy via medical treatments.
Their growth and maturity rate is also among the fastest in the galaxy, alongside Salarians and Vorcha, Unggoy takes around four years before being fully matured and sexual maturity is at three years. This makes overpopulation a real problem if unchecked and to prevent this, the populace a newly founded colony is not allowed to breed for an entire decade, both to accommodate more coming from the overpopulated Core Worlds and prevent stretching resources delivered from other worlds until the colony is self-sufficient. Punishment is taking the clutch away from the parents while they are banished from the colony.
Unggoy are a very social race, more so than any other known species. Whole communities raising children is common and the concept of individual housing is seen as eccentric at best. This means, than morale is dependent on numbers and with the exception of highly trained operatives trained to handle working alone, mean that Unggoy attack comes in droves.