Adapted for an extremely tight orbit around their system's life-giving star, the Jubata are a diminutive species who, even factoring in the lurid headcrest which constitutes about two thirds of their height - reach scarcely to the average person’s knees. Instead of two legs they are supported on three, whose effect is to offset a top-heaviness that would otherwise render them unable to stand completely upright. Having only very frail, prehensile limbs, they are a species for whom feats of athleticism or speed were historically next to impossible, although aided by nimble ‘fingers’ they are beginning to develop quite the reputation for reckless bouts of flying. A people practically unheard of before the war, this conception of the Jubata is informed entirely by a few hotshot pilots who, although each now killed, were perhaps the first of their kind to achieve any lasting fame. In doing so they created an image which is completely at odds with the pastoralist lifestyle favoured by their relatives back home, where intense beams of light have created various kinds of giant albino turnip to cultivate. Interestingly for an agriculturalist people, their settlements are located almost exclusively on mountain tops, where the dirt is even sparser than in the still rocky lowlands and where extraordinary effort has to be invested in eking out harvests. It is thought that in this way they avoid some of the constant mental pressure which comes guaranteed alongside the most ancient of their social strictures.
There is a custom in Jubatan society of banishing loud-mouths to the steppes surrounding villages and towns, not so much to make them permanent outcasts but rather in an effort to teach them to be quiet. A popular philosophy of their peoples' devising is that, in place of an afterlife, individuals will instead be survived by the impression that they make on others. In part this is because physical memorialisations are invariably burnt up by the rays of the nearby sun, but is rooted also in the inflexibility of the Jubatan mental process. The fallout of this belief is that all observations or turns of phrase are attributed to singular inventors, and that when somebody references a belief or quotes the words of another person, those that hear it will think instantly of the ideas original proponent. It is in this way that the living can have their memories overshadowed by the dead, and means that most are very careful of reusing old cliches out of fear that their one hope of being immortalised will be subsumed into the ever growing remembrance of an ancient individual. For that reason most of the living are highly contemptuous of the deceased, picturing them as having had a much easier time in trying to come up with a novel concept to be eternally associated with. An additional impact of this has been to reduce public places to near total silence, and to unintentionally isolate the species within their mountaintop serenity. This is because they now tend to find loud noises acutely distressing, meaning that very few have ever successfully integrated into galactic society. Of those that have, a common tool is to rely on earbuds that reduce the potency of sounds, although even these cannot totally cut out the hubbub, instead insulating them in a false sphere of undifferentiated static - making them unresponsive to others. Although in general a sedentary one, it is believed that contact with off-worlders has affected mild changes in their society, perhaps even some of the first since the initial flowerings of intelligence on their world.
Barren of trees and shrubs, plantlife on their home planet takes the form only of tubers, although these vary quite substantially in size and have differentiated to fill a lot of the niches common to other worlds. Bland tasting, these are sources of food with scant nutritional value, necessitating that the Jubata eat semi-constantly throughout the day to tide themselves over. Instead of having meals they snack between chores, not often going for longer than half an hour without eating. Other sources of food are difficult to come by, affording the simple yam an uncontested role to play as a terse lifegiver in their myths, who form a prominent part of life in the town even despite the totality of their non-spiritual convictions. In most stories the turnip is a begrudging bestower of life energy onto their people, and is venerated as the first living inhabitant of their mountain homes. Lots of them feel bad for having supplanted rooted vegetables in terms of intelligence, viewing themselves as being related in some ephemeral way, although there is no genetic basis for this belief. Popularly turnips are considered quiet but mindful thinkers, and eating them is often cause for a few minutes of introspection - contributing to the solemnity of Jubatan settlements. In most places these would be considered religious beliefs, but to these people they are the results of a very careful scrutiny, representing the peak of an understanding of the natural world. A quasi-religious figure does exist in their society, but they are the person who long ago came up with the way of preserving somebody's likeness through memory. While it is unlikely that this figure (if they were even an individual) established the current way of thinking, they are nevertheless remembered kindly by those who have already found a way to be immortalised, knowing that it is because of them that they will live on. There is not really a spiritual element in this, but more so a prominent focus on personal legacy. A soul isn’t something that is commonly believed in, and the Jubata don’t exactly fear the loss of their self through dying, but instead wish to be thought of kindly into the future for the lasting good that they have accomplished.