Quote:I don't see why - if one assumes that one of their design goals was to maintain cross-compatability with the base strain, then that continued fertility makes perfect sense.
On the genetics I honestly don't know your resources here. The thing about the most genetically modified race being compatible with humans sits wrong with me. I think its to the point we'll just disagree on it. Not that I'm trying to stop you, its a cause issue for me.
Quote:I was thinking more along the lines of 'bioweapon hell' than 'glowing glass', but the idea of them taking any excuse to emigrate was there in the background, yeah.
I think you need to sit down and work on the interactions between races now. Start off with how the groups interact. For instance the Felines have trashed their home world and I doubt they got along afterwards. So make a good portion of them somewhat nomadic, yes they have faction home worlds, but some of them are going decide that not being around them is a better idea look what happened last time.
Please note that I said that the Imperials had no native FTL technology - since being contacted, they've bought a number of working drives from the Cats and Feudalists, and are expanding into the systems immediately surounding their own. Their home system is two jumps out from Sol, which makes for a fairly serious contest for ownership of the system in question.
As for the 'technological advancement' question... The Cats, as covered earlier, had an extremely sophisticated technology at one point, then lost most of it and are currently clawing their way back up. The Paladins have limited themselves from further advancement in many fields because they are, as a society, unwilling to take the neccessary steps - their technology hasn't changed for quite some time. The Imperials, thanks to a couple lucky breaks with the local biota (a tree-anologue whose wood compares favorably with many modern composite materials, and a flower that knows how to repair its own DNA) and a visionary scientist or two, have managed to cobble together a 1950s-era nuclear technology and go moon-hopping about seventy years before they really should have if they were going the same way Earth did.
Mrg. That's not really satisfying, is it? Hm. How 'bout this - there is indeed a roughly 1% variance in the rate of technological advancement between worlds... and, overall, Earth is well towards the 'fast' end of the bell curve. The seven Powers we've been discussing are the societies that were advanced enough to build or copy the technology needed to begin establishing interstellar spheres of influence. There are more than a few worlds that weren't so far along...
Ja, -n
===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"