The Ptah, part 2

The Ptah were a most fascinating species!  So, so dramatically different from their original form.  Every single Ptah was a warrior, though they never, ever warred.  They retained the stoic, fearless nature of the Sa, as well as the silence.  It was silence to others, at least -- the Ptah communicated amongst themselves telepathically.  They developed a social class system that directly correlated to their various martial disciplines.  There was a Guardian class:

A Brawler class:

My favorite were the Assassin class, who would sometimes ride Rahi mounts:

Then there were the larger, even more serious and dedicated Elite class:

And finally, among the Elites there were the most shining (literally and figuratively) examples of Ptah culture, honor, and values, the Royals:

Make no mistake, though.  The Royals were not kings or leaders of any sort.  They served no higher purpose in Ptah society than any other class.  They simply had to take their lives quite a bit more seriously (as if that were possible).

The Ptah formed orderly societal communes -- towns, if you will.  Still Sa at heart, they continued to scavenge, though with much more pride.  However, instead of multiplying so readily after reaching a certain physical size, a Ptah would continue to grow for many years, and then he (she? it?) would suddenly stop injesting raw materials, except as needed for fuel and bodily repairs.  The Ptah would never create offspring, and thus, their numbers no longer increased.

The Great Beings had successfully transformed an uncapped population of nuisances into a proud, honorable, respectful and respectable, planet-wide peacekeeping force.  Oh, but there was a catch.  Always a catch, there, is.  The electromagnetic "treatments" the Great Beings had employed, somewhat of a digital genetic therapy, had to be continually re-administered, else the Ptah would slowly begin to devolve back into Sa.  To lessen the burden, the Great Beings had treatment transmitters created at regular distances in a grid around the entire planet.  Each had a fixed range of effectiveness, and they were arranged such that there wasn't a footprint worth of land where a Ptah could stand and not receive the treatment.  Each transmitter required only a modest amount of energy to power it, but with an enormous global network of them in operation, the cost in resources was prohibitive.  The Great Beings together decided the experiment was no longer worth their effort, and they took the transmitters offline, vowing to figure out some other way to deal with the Sa population problem, whenever it became a problem again.