Fra'al

Fra'al
Capital	Unknown
Official Languages	Fra'al Lexicon
Power	Minor Power
Size	Unknown
Head of State	Council of Satraps
Head of Government	Council of Satraps
Governmental Structure	Nomadic Decentralized Council
State Religion/Ideology	Mercantilism, Piracy
Demographic	Fra'al
Military Force	Fra'al Forces, Fra'al Fleets

The Fra'al are an elusive and mysterious xenos species usually found on Segmentum Obscurus. Very little is known about them, though the Imperium of Man mostly knows them as both raders and as merchants.

Contacts with the Imperium

It is widely believed between the Ordo Xenos that Humanity's first contact with the Fra'al goes back to the time of the Dark Age of Technology, though more details on that are beyond scarce. The first recorded contacts with the Imperium were during the Great Crusade. Apparently, the Astartes Legions fought many Fra'al outposts and spaceships. At the very keast we know that the Salamanders, White Scars, Word Bearers, Death Guard, Night Lords and Alpha Legion fought them during the Imperium's expansion. We even know that the Fra'al were powerful enough to cause frequent casualties for the astartes, with many of those wounded being entombed in Dreadnoughts.

Post-Heresy, Mankind has rarely found them, though they can be frequently be heard of as piratical raiders, attacking civilian vessels and lightly-protected militar vessels for whatever resource they could find. They can also be found as merchants, doing business with Rogue Traders, selling their weird alien tech and whatever valuable resource they managed to stole on a previous raid. In fact, this trade is one heavily watched over by the Inquisition, considering that it's done inside the borders of the Imperium.

Society

The Fra'al are a nomadic species, though it is believed that they held a small empire within the Gothic Sector. While being both an empire and nomads at the same time might sound counterintuitive at first, and has caused a decent amount of skubbed debate, keep in mind that this has happened in real life. Many empires have been created with the basis of nomadic populations, and many nomadic elements have been able to coexist alongside the rigid structure an imperial state needs. The best example of this is the Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan, though we can see lesser examples with Attila's Hunnic Empire and many other smaller Eurasian states.

Other than that, not much is known of the Fra'al's society. We know that they are a psychic species and that their technology is oddly advanced, but other than that, the lack of contact with the Imperium offers little chance of knowing them. Aside of their taste of messing with humans at every chance they get, but to be fair, that's a hobby shared with every denizen of the galaxy, humans included.

Technology

The Fra'al's technology is considerably advanced, and in many aspects it is superior to their imperial equivalents. Their most important discovery is the Ether technology, with which they constructed their feared Fra'al Battlecruisers. This monsters are rarely seen, but they are rightly feared by any other space faring species that has found them before. The Ether technology powers their Ether Cannons, weapons that throw beams of pure corrosion that cannot be blocked by neither void nor power shields. This basically means that the target's innards start corroding from the inside out, which can cause such funny things as breaking the Warp Engines and causing a small warp tear inside of the ship, or making the oxygen generators break, suffocating everyone inside. For the most part, though, this serves to burn down the ship's shields so as to attack them with barrages of lance fire afterwards. This technology is so good that Chaos is trying to replicate it, it is that effective. Suffice to say, the Adeprus Mechanicus desperately want to get their hands on one of this ships, to try and study them, and go to great lenghts to find and capture them if possible.