Melnorme

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Template:Infobox Star Control race The Melnorme are a fictional race of beings featured in the second installment of the sci-fi Star Control computer game series.

The Melnorme are a race of merchants, primarily in the business of buying and selling information. They will provide history, current events, fuel, and technology in return for biological data and the locations of certain colorful worlds known as Rainbow Worlds. They use large Trader vessels to seek out, contact and strike deals with potential customers. Though in possession of a great deal of powerful artifacts and better grasping the events than any other race, the Melnorme come across as mostly benign and harmless. Trading with them is not required to complete Star Control II, but makes the game vastly easier to finish.

The Melnorme are highly secretive of themselves and their origins, and while they are technically ready to divulge such information, the prices are ludicrous. The race's psychology, homeworld, and goals are all a mystery. They are known to have based their culture entirely on equivalent trade and reject the concept of charity, and place a great emphasis on colour, to the point of basing their own names on different shades (the one pictured is Trade Master Greenish).

The race itself is not talking, but their similarities have led many to believe that the Melnorme are the descendants of the Mael-Num, a race formerly part of the Sentient Milieu that disappeared, believed extinct, after the arrival of the Dnyarri. This link was later confirmed outside of the game by the game designers.

The Melnorme are found around every huge star in this part of the galaxy, and will only leave those stars when they detect a ship is out of fuel so it can sell it some.