I hope to draw a picture or two of these guys soon! Until then, I hope the description will suffice. If all else fails, chant the phrase "big blue dragon sea-slug thing" in your head several times and use your imagination.
Name of the race/empire: Nulra/Klaressan Confederacy
Age: 783 years
Physical description: When in a comfortable posture, an average Nulra sits a little over 6 feet tall, but almost half of that height is a curved neck and the rest is a large, vaguely humanlike torso that meets the floor about where the hips would, if they had hips. (Straightening their neck would get them closer to 7 or 8 feet, but that's typically uncomfortable.) From the base of the torso, the remainder of the body flows backwards in a long tail, I'd say about 8 feet, the bottom surface of which, called the foot, serves as their method of locomotion. Think giant slug. However, they do have an internal skeleton that provides a skull, spine, ribcage, and one pair of arms. They have four fingers per hand instead of a human's five, and their hands typically rest on the ground when relaxed. Their face looks reptilian or dragonish in shape, but their skin is smooth and gooey. A tympanum (eardrum) is faintly visible on each side of the head. Their eyes are large, expressive, and of the sclera-iris-pupil model like ours; the pupil is round, and the color of the iris can be pretty much anything in the rainbow. Their sticky skin is mottled blue in color, darker on their backs and paler on their fronts. Hues of blue range between aqua and indigo based on ethnicity. An array of thin tentacles grows from the back of the neck in pairs, like a mane; these tendrils typically wave and curl gently as if they have minds of their own, but the Nulra can control them to some extent if desired. The tendrils also involuntarily change color with the Nulra's mood: most of the time they are blue like the rest of the body, but they turn purple when the Nulra is embarrassed or aroused, red when angry, and navy blue or black when depressed.
With regards to clothing, fabric that does not excessively cling to the moist skin is a major concern. Most Nulra drape their upper bodies in light clothes meant to adorn rather than conceal (neither sex lactates, so there's nothing interesting there), but females nearly always cover their tails with a swath of fabric, the decorative properties of which vary by culture and occasion, in order to hide their reproductive pores. Because of the way Nulra move, their foot is in near-constant contact with the ground, and covering more than a third of the surface area of the foot with fabric or another foreign material would render them pretty much immobile. To show one's foot is considered inappropriate, particularly a male's, and to expose another's foot is sexual harassment.
Behavior: Nulra are much more defensive than offensive—in fact, their color-changing tentacles are widely understood to have been originally meant to scare large predators away, since their backs are so vulnerable—and though they have had their share of conflicts throughout their own history, their general attitude since opening the door to space has been reserved and most interested in peaceful but curious observation of the other races. They are in some respects similar to the Curabitur in that they often impersonate other races to observe them from within, including races that have not yet discovered interstellar communication or travel. See below for how they do it and the results thereof. However, they also realize that they are a younger race than the Curabitur, and they generally try their best to be humble and unobtrusive regarding their place in the galaxy.
Technological level: Their method of FTL travel revolves around the control of linked, short-lived wormholes. They are quite comfortable with the technology by this point, but where they truly excel is in the realm of holograms. Nulra holograms trick not only the vision of the observer but the other senses as well, most impressively the nerves that gauge touch, texture, temperature, and resistance via a highly sophisticated neural interference matrix. An unknowing person who "touches" the hologram will swear they touched an object. However, it is still only an illusion...you could try to punch a Nulra hologram and your fist would sail right through, but your arm would be in extreme pain for several minutes, as if you'd just slammed it through a brick wall.
Only after perfecting this technology roughly 500 years ago did Nulra begin to infiltrate other races, but while it's used religiously when observing young planet-bound races (because Prime Directive and all that), most Nulra today think it rude to "fool" a fellow space-faring race that knows of their existence, so unlike Curabitur, they don't typically use the tech around other advanced races except in cases of espionage.
Fame: They have colonized only a couple of planets aside from their homeworld, Klaress, but have visited hundreds more. They're not the most well known, but among the races that do know of them, perceptions of them usually keep along the themes of "Them nosy little cowards, prying into people's business and then shying from conflict...", "They seem wise beyond their years and deserve our high respect," or "Those damn holier-than-thou probing pacifists."
Name of the person/being/character: Legally, Uthrirannel-nelkoriko-ranuth Makhne-ran (7435-5141-37 MN-3). Colloquially, Bodjek (roughly equivalent to "Rocky").
Age: 81 years, equivalent to a 32-year-old human.
Position: Ambassador for all intents and purposes, but he's actually a high-ranking member of the Klaressian Confederacy's international education board.
Description: His skin is medium blue, and his eyes are a rich fuschia color. He seems to be in good health, but he's not suited for combat or other athletic stress.
Personality: He seems to be good-natured and typically level-headed, but he can take things too personally when it comes to propriety. He apologizes a lot. He also shies away from any kind of flirtatious interaction; although he is supportive of others in love, his own romantic history has been largely miserable.
