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Orions are tall with green skin and generally dark hair. They have an extremely advanced metabolism and their bodies are usually muscular and well defined. Males typically where their hair long and braided. They have a patriarchal society and female Orions are rarely seen. In general they wear very little clothing. This is because the males have an elaborate system of tattoos of great cultural significance. Almost all of their bodies display these tattoos which describe family heritage and standing in society and is therefore a source of much pride.Most of the Orions make their living as traders, trading mostly in stolen goods in the form of jewelry, trinkets, and many forms of hand weapons. A few of the more powerful pirate captains trade in disrupter technology and some other advanced technology. The Syndicates control a few planets including three in the Rigel system, the lost home world of their empire is located here. Most of these worlds however have much poverty and little technology, the new homeworld is located in the orion system. The power of the Syndicates lies in the remaining city ships. These huge vessels, although no longer capable of interstellar travel, serve as vast space stations and ports for the many Syndicate vessels that are in operation. Many of these huge vessels do not even lie within a star system but remain dead in space where their massive transwarp engines finally gave out. It is from these secret bases that the Orions launch their pirate attacks.
Rigel is a system of four stars with thirteen planets, six of which are populated. Rigel II and Rigel IV are identified often with the name of Rigelians Colonies which are part of the Federation. Rigel V is inhabited by a Pre warp humanoid population very similar to Vulcans. Rigel VI and VII Rigel are two planets in close orbit that are inhabited by the Orions. Rigel VIII, called Orion, is the origonal home world of the Orions, a humanoid race of 5.4 billion, it has two moons, but it lies within Federation controlled space. Because of this the government chose to relocate its capital to New Orion , the fourth planet in the Orion system, which is located in Orion territory.The Orion Trade Syndicates are all the remains of the ancient Duthulhiv Empire. They are named after the galactic arm from which the Duthulhiv based their empire. The empire was quite large and stretched about 30 percent down the length of the Orion Arm. They believed that it was destiny that their empire would follow the path of the arm to the center of the galaxy where their religious doctrine spoke of an entrance to a heavenly new existence. However, the empire was quite cruel and enslaved many of the more primitive cultures that it came across. Eventually the empire crumbled as the empire began to depend more and more heavily on its robots and slaves.
With the fall of their empire, a path of poverty and barbarism was left as the only evidence of their once superior empire. The technological level of the Duthulhiv was quite great. They administered their great empire with megalithic city ships with crews of 100,000. Most of their impressive technology fell into disrepair, but a precious few systems still remain. Although their transwarp ability was lost, the Orions still have warp ships as well as some working transporters, tractor beams, and disrupter type weapons. The Orions have had some contact with almost all of the interstellar races in this region of the galaxy. They often use this knowledge to their benefit, playing races off of each other to their benefit, or withholding information they think might weaken their position.
The Orion Colonies are allegedly neutral toward the Federation in external matters. They tend to encourage privateers (pirates), however, on an informal and unofficial basis.
