Micars Empire

A star nation of the Hyperion Federation.
  Faction of extreme xenophobic race (or they were anyway) whose homeworld of Micars was attacked during its information age by an alien civilization. They lost the attack, so they retreated to the nearby gas giant of Xaolia, building huge habitation stations in its dense but calm gas clouds. This would effectively hide them, and the gas can be harvested for resources. All this would give them their specialized tech in megastructures and macroengineering. They would also make great terraformers with the help of the Saelians.
  Although the Micars Empire is an empire, the leaders are benevolent towards the people - they must be to be a member of the Hyperion Federation.
  The Micars Empire represents the Drath species to the HF, which are capable of flight, quite notably. This makes the drath one of the more mobile species to the HF, though this ability comes at a high price of forcing the drath bodies to be incredibly light, and weight was often saved by making their bones hollow. As such, they are likely to be broken from heavy forces and the drath have more sensitive pain receptors. It is also very difficult for them to be stable in the air making it almost impossible to use a weapon while flying, though some people can control weapons to a decent degree when they have very little recoil. This would not work at long range and also makes them highly vulnerable to nearby enemy infantry (as they produce a sound while flying)The Empire was a relatively large regional power by the time the first HF ships encountered the drath starships. The Empire was a slightly older nation which had time to expand from Xaolia and establish a number of colonies on many nearby worlds. Many feared them, but with the HF Dyson Sphere Alpha project, the Empire saw too much benefit in joining the HF and thus joined. To improve cohesion and relations between its members, though, the HF was forced to influence the ideology of the Micars Empire. Though the modern Micars Empire still retains the same name and still have a highly imperial government, they are forced to be more benevolent to their people, as it benefits their nation far more to remain as a HF member nation. Also the HF massively reduced the xenophobia of most Micarsan cultures after they joined the Federation.