The Aquilarans are an aggressive species with specific environmental needs and a high birthrate. They are determined to expand their holdings to relieve their overcrowded population. Arguably the most technologically advanced of the great powers, the Aquilarans often trade their expertise for favorable diplomatic concessions while maintaining a small but very effective fleet.

Aquilarans are aggressive, competitive, carnivorous, and highly innovative. Their world hosted many diverse communities and each community has been largely free to rule itself as it sees fit until only modern centuries. As such, individual groups of Aquilarans often have varied cultural values, however, one cultural tradition is universal... dueling.

Aquilaran societies are generally merit-based hierarchies, however, if a subordinate wishes, he may "duel" for increased status with his immediate superior. This duel is a mixture of physical combat, posturing, and most importantly, telepathic assault. Aquilarans possess a moderate telepathic ability to impose emotions, illusions, or assaults and this has long been their preferred method of establishing a pecking order. Thankfully, Aquilaran telepathic abilities can only impact other Aquilarans, a fact, that Aquilaran scientists are striving to change via genetic or cybernetic augmentation, but have yet to achieve.

With this competitive foundation, one would expect that Aquilaran history would be marked by vast autocratic regimes, but thankfully, because each and every Aquilaran is competing with any and all others, this has kept such autocracies short-lived and small in scale. Meanwhile the diverse Aquilaran communities continued to tinker and create new technologies. The first "air-suit" allowed the Aquilarans to stay above ground longer than a mere seventy two hours and gave the community an advantage over their neighbors, but then someone developed a better armor penetrating bolt-gun to counter this, and so on and so forth, driving an ever-increasing rate of technological brinkmanship.

It wasn't until the Aquilarans observed a alien space probe enter their atmosphere that they looked at each other... and reconsidered their lack of unity. As long as the Aquilarans were alone in the universe, they were quite content to feud amongst themselves and revel in their individuality. The alien probe in question left the Aquiloo system before the Aquilarans could properly analyze it, and today it is unknown who sent the probe... it is generally assumed though that the probe was Ukaros in origin.

This event sparked a political renaissance amongst the Aquilarans, who for the first time began cooperating en masse and applying their brilliant and inventive minds collectively to explore space. The end result of this exertion was that the Aquilarans launched a small flotilla of ships as an expedition to explore their region of space... and they quickly found what they were looking for... signs of other intelligent life: the Ukaros and the Tothk.

Unfortunately for the Aquilarans they were not able to make peaceable contact with either of these races, as every attempt to do so was ignored or was met with hostility and violence... it appears that both the Ukaros and Tothk assumed the Aquilaran ships to be a "trick" or an ally of the other and refused to engage. The Aquilarans were able to observe that the Tothk and Ukaros were mired in a centuries long conflict on an interstellar scale, and that unfortunately, the Aquilarans were cosmologically enveloped by an alien battlefield.

The primary goal of the Aquilaran Hierarchy and its leaders is to expand their territory to allow for their large population to relocate from their overcrowded homeworld. During the Monroe Wars the Aquilarans opportunistically attacked the Terran Republic and seeing that war between the Terrans and Ukaros seem inevitable, they are planning on attacking whomever seems weaker. Other than conquest, the Aquilarans are also pursuing a diplomatic strategy with many of the minor powers near their territory, hoping to one day incorporate them. Finally, the Aquilarans are also pursuing genetic engineering techniques in hopes of adapting their race to a greater variety of environments.

Generally the Aquilarans can depend on their advanced technology and excellent reflexes in open environments to give them an edge in battle... this is an important advantage for them to maintain because they have less territory and resources then the other great powers. Should disaster strike the Aquilaran fleet, they fully understand that they could be overrun before they could recover from their losses. As such, Aquilaran diplomats and commanders are very careful about planning engagements.

As the original inventors of practical FTL drives, the Aquilarans were embarrassed when Terrans radically improved upon the technology just prior to the Monroe Wars. Today, the Aquilarans have spent considerable resources reclaiming the mantle of "fastest ships" in the galaxy... albeit only by a small margin. Still, this allows the Aquilarans to rapidly position their forces. Which again, lends itself to carefully planned and precise engagements.

Aquilaran ships themselves are always designed to evade and maneuver more than sustain direct damage and their weapon systems are usually designed to attack enemy vessels in unorthodox ways. Fully embracing hit and run tactics and asymmetric warfare, the Aquilaran fleet is the ultimate first strike weapon and has some of the best pilots in the galaxy; capable of daring and devastating raids that could end a war in moments. Unfortunately the general fragility and limited quantities of ships means that in protracted battles the Aquilarans will be forced to retreat.

The Aquilarans have thusly, created a relatively small and elite fleet that acts as a fantastic deterrence to invaders, but they must be extremely careful and judicious in its use, lest their glass cannon... shatter.