The Fold
Na'dahkra
Masters of the Fold
Trade becomes obligation, and obligation becomes rule
Species
Na'dahkra
The Na'dahkra are agile, furred, digitigrade sophonts — hyper-capitalists who build empire through dependency, trade, outsourcing, luxury, and manipulation. They draw less influential species into the Fold, assigning military, structural, artistic, and economic roles inside an imperial order built on leverage.
Society & Technology
The Fold
The Fold is the Na'dahkra socioeconomic order — part empire, part market, part hierarchy of obligation. Their society is aristocratic, charismatic, shrewd, and legally sophisticated, with ethics and law bent around status, leverage, ownership, and expansion. The Fold rarely fights its own wars — though the Var Ghuul, once its military client, are a standing reminder that obligation can be refused.
Ships
Fleets
Na'dahkra fleets look wealthy, constructed, segmented, and imperial — stargate-linked logistics, ornate command forms, outsourced military strength. Their real power is not the ships; it is the routes, dependencies, and contracts behind them.
In play
Across the eight aspects
These labels describe strategic tendencies, not hard limits. A “Weak” aspect can still become powerful through technology, alliances, player choices, and species-specific abilities; a “Very Strong” aspect may still come with costs, bottlenecks, or narrow specialization.
Population· Very Strong
Expansion through incorporation, dependency, subject peoples, and workforce integration across the Fold.
Exploration· Neutral
Competent and economically focused; they seek valuable regions, resources, routes, and opportunities.
Research· Neutral
Practical and profit-driven, aimed at useful returns rather than pure scientific leadership.
Military· Weak
Not built for prolonged large-scale war with their own forces; they rely on clients, leverage, and outsourced strength.
Culture· Neutral
Widespread and luxurious, but often tied to status, commerce, and consumer hierarchy rather than deep cohesion.
Economy· Very Strong
Their defining advantage: trade control, resource leverage, monopolies, dependencies, and wealth generation.
Construction· Neutral
Steady and functional, optimized for trade, production, infrastructure, and economic control.
Diplomacy· Strong
Sophisticated, manipulative, and closely tied to economic power.
Exotic matter
Entanglement Resin
Entanglement Resin is the exotic matter associated with Na'dahkra Stargate travel. It anchors the Fold's methodical expansion, turning routes, gates, and distant systems into infrastructure that can be owned, priced, and controlled.
FTL
Stargates
Na'dahkra expansion is slower and more methodical than human colonization, but it lays down durable economic topology. The Fold turns infrastructure into leverage: routes, gates, contracts, and dependencies all become tools of empire.
Trade
Na'dahkra trade is empire. Stargates, contracts, client species, luxury, debt, and infrastructure turn commerce into political control. The Fold expands by making other civilizations dependent on routes, resources, services, and markets they cannot easily replace.
Planetary preferences
The Na'dahkra prefer megaforest worlds, dense jungle worlds, high-biomass terrestrial planets, warm garden worlds, and biologically rich planets with thick breathable atmospheres, abundant organics, rare dyes, luxury flora and fauna, and canopy-heavy ecologies. Savannah worlds, temperate terrestrial worlds, humid super-Earths, biologically active moons, and planets suitable for slave-managed extraction or agriculture are acceptable. Barren deserts, low-biomass worlds, airless rocks, extreme cold worlds, lava worlds, and deep ocean worlds are poor fits unless operated through subordinate species or artificial infrastructure.
Stellar preferences
The Na'dahkra favor F and bright G stars, especially luminous systems that support lush biospheres, luxury ecology, and visually rich aristocratic worlds. Their own biological preferences are narrower than their empire's reach: through client species, slave species, and corporate subsidiaries, the Fold can exploit many systems the Na'dahkra themselves would not naturally favor.
Special Win Conditions
Galactic Monopoly
Control all critical special resources so other species depend on Na'dahkra economic power.
$ymbiosis
Infiltrate trade routes and skim resources from them.