Oolo!

The Oolo! (And yes, you have to use the exclamation point every time) are a race that can be affectionally described as floating gasbags with tentacles.   The Oolo! are, for lack of a better term, humanity's best friends in space. Unlike many aliens, the Oolo! do have a practice of legends and mythology, presented with a strong historical bent. But it just never really occurred to them that fiction for pleasure was a thing. Lying, sure. Deceit serves a purpose. But writing a book about a world and people that never lived? Never.   When they found out about our long list of "legends", they could not get enough. It actually started a sort of cultural movement on their homeworld. The Oolo! are producing their own fiction now, but they are just horrible at it. Pale imitations of human works, though they are getting better at it over time.   But they are still big fans of humanity. Shame that they can't touch us without killing us (they sweat what is, to us, a potent toxin. Contact with us also gives them a nasty rash).   Oolo! society is a pod-based structure of small nomadic communities. The turbulent weather of their home planet makes hearing anything basically impossible, so the Oolo! instead communicate via bioluminescent lights on the end of their appendages, and occasionally leaving a ‘trail’ of pheromones that other Oolo! can see/smell/feel.   Oolo! have learned the concept of the human handshake. Humans, in return, have learned an approximation of part of the Oolo! ‘happy to see you’ greeting, which is holding one arm above your head and the other arm slightly below chest level. The Oolo! are tickled pink seeing us try to speak their language like that.   It is increasingly common for human stations to have floors set side for Oolo! visitors, creating rest stops and centralized meeting places for nomadic Oolo! groups. Oolo! have trouble on planets, unable to terraform any but the rarest of worlds into something they can survive on for any length of time due to their very specific living conditions. Instead of colonizing worlds, the Oolo! build more ships, and occasionaly orbitals and megastructures.   Human mining and resource gathering operations on planets provide them the chance to greatly expand their planet bound resources through trade. In return, they have traded us a fair amount of tech and are assisting us in the construction of our first orbital megastructure. Construction has been ongoing for 60 years, and is expected to last another 80, but after that it should last basically forever.   Their social structure is reflected in their space travel, which focuses on small personal craft designed to dock with both each other and larger equipment carrying ‘family craft’, acting as a swarm fleet instead of single large spacecraft. Oolo!, due to their 3D awareness and several limbs, make excellent pilots. Occasionally Oolo! will split off into Warbands, using single-person attack craft that dock with a central Bandship for FTL insertion and extraction. Oolo! military tactics involve high speed ‘jousting’ the enemy, flying by at high speed and firing off a barrage of attacks at knife fighting range, leaving little time to intercept the attacks and trusting their speed and maneuverability to protect them. Oolo! often die in these attacks, but the ones that survive claim tremendous honor for their prowess.   There are few things that an Oolo! enjoys more than prestige.