Waqua

An ethnicity of theAquris species.

Waquan aquris are typically located off the coast of one of the larger islands of the Leosus Ring World, and they typically spend more time underwater than on land. Long ago, during their tribal ages, they would sometimes visit the land to hunt or to hide from predators. Now they mainly live underwater because they built their homes beneath the waves. Evolution has not caught up to their current forms and might never will, so they still retain a humanoid body shape and ability to walk on land at the cost of worse underwater propulsion compared to fully aquatic creatures.

Waquan aquris normally have a greener skin colour than other aquris. They also have larger fins at the cost of some land locomotion. They tend to also have slightly larger ears than other aquris.

They tend to dislike land based peoples, even other aquris if they mostly live on land. They are quite likely to make fun of other species who cannot breathe underwater for needing to resurface every few minutes, and even many land based aquris tourists sometimes visit their areas which can frustrate the people that live in the area. They often spend large amounts of time participating in simulated battles where they practice various tactics and doctrines of battle underwater. This makes them seem quite tough, but land based nations can barely threaten them anyway. It would be possible to build a submarine but the waquan military spends a lot of time perfecting counters to submarines. Other aquris cultures might be able to fight them, but other cultures also practice on land. This also means that Waqua will never be able to invade a land based nation competently as long as this doctrine remains. They are perceived as great fighters and others might think they have a warrior culture, but this is not the case in reality.

They have also made good use of large, aquatic tamed creatures even in war. This was until much later where sufficiently advanced technology has ruled them truly obsolete. Later still, as the ring world was unifying into theLeosus Federation, Waqua was quite late to join because of their negative perception of land based cultures, but eventually the sheer benefit of unifying caused them to join the federation. They were one of the last few nations to join. 

Many of their structures are filled with water so that they can handle the heavy water pressure from above and to allow the aquris to float if they want. Some might have pressurised rooms filled with air so that they can eat, or in some rare cases, structures built to handle land based species if the waqua will tolerate them, but any tourists will be largely limited to some few air pockets where they would reside. Buildings with air pockets need to obtain the air from somewhere, in some cases they would simply filter it similar to a submarine and in other cases they pump it from the surface with particularly large structures.