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Well, to start with, I'll just put up a short description of each race, for a quick refresher for old readers, and a nice intro for new ones.
Algians
Algians hail from the predominantly oceanic world of Maonessa. They are aquatic, oxygen-breathing mammals who can walk and speak on land and in open air, but who require frequent dips in the water to maintain their blood circulation. Their fluidic, mediative physical nature also informs much of their society, and most Algians, especially native Maonessans, are very moderate and diplomatic, polite and honest to a fault, and well-practiced Devil's Advocates. They are, on a whole, a very easy-to-get-along-with people.
Which is probably a good thing, considering that they, as the economic and political leaders of the Interstellar Commonwealth, are very much the people with their fingers on The Button. Many of the other races, including the other Commonwealth members, are not comfortable with the amount of power that the Algians hold. Many of their own people, specifically those who were born and have led lives far from the homeworld and other Commonwealth core worlds, would like to see greater integration into the society the Algians helped to craft.
Adult Algians stand at slightly over a meter and a half tall, and have silver-blue rubbery skin. They have cetecean-like heads, but with a variety of expressive facial muscles. They walk on webbed three-toed feet, and have twelve fingers and two thumbs, which can flatten and expand to act as flippers when in the water. Their voices sound like a mixture of whalesong and bird chirps, and they tend to speak very slowly compared to most other races.
Carepakeh
The Carepakeh are a race that Terrans might initially call insectoid or arachnid, but are in fact neither, owing to the fact that they are vertebrates, though they maintain a chitin shell somewhat akin to an exoskeleton. Carepakeh are broken up into three life stages/social castes, these being female Workers, male Drones, and female Queens. All Carepakeh begin life as Workers, a fraction of these will later enter cocoons and become Drones, and a very small number of Drones will then later become Queens. This caste system is integral to Carepakeh society, which, for being such a populous culture, is very homogenous. Their homeworld's original name has been erased from all records, and is now inhabited only by the Empress/Emperor (see below) and their retinue. Most Carepakeh live on artificial habitats called webworlds, similar to the space station complexes of Terrans.
The Carepakeh were once an expansionist, optimistic race with a race-wide belief in a manifest destiny to unite all other starfaring races under their guidance, bringing the universe into harmony. However, a period of political turmoil combined with a succession of wars with the Algians and Hamechels have turned this once-proud race toward isolationism. This period has caused vast cracks in the once-singular Carepakeh culture - many long for a return to the glory days, while just as many wish to abandon their conquistador worldview and seek true harmony among the other starfaring races.
Workers are, as their name implies, the manual laborers, miners, minor officials, entertainers, and footsoldiers of the Carepakeh. While many progressive Queens have given their Workers full rights by the standards of other races, some are still kept in what amounts to indentured servitude. Drones are the captains of industry, the managers, the officers, and the high advisers, held, as a group, with at least as much respect as the Queens, if not with the same power. Queens, of course, are at the top of the social hierarchy, and rule over their Broods of children as more or less benevolent dictators. It is a matter of faith among the Carepakeh that there is an Empress or Emperor, a single individual who has advanced beyond the Queen stage to become the sole ruler of all Carepakeh, but this being has never been directly observed by any outside her or his Imperial Guard and Speakers.
Hamechels
A felinoid race from the planet Hartess. They display a great deal of sexual dimorphism, with males standing easily two meters tall even as adolescents, while females are rarely taller than the average Terran female. Males have distinctive mohawk manes that extend from between their eyebrows to the base of their spines, have much larger teeth than females, and have much greater upper body muscles mass; females have slightly longer hair on the scalp, much lither bodies than males, and tend to have much larger leg muscles. This suggests that, in the evolutionary past, females were the hunters of packs early Clans, while the males were the protectors, fighting off other predators or scavengers. Hamechels have a wide variety of fur colors, from mottled camouflage patterns to stripes, spots, or flat colors.
The Hamechels are a wildly culturally varied people, a result of strong factionalism among the different Clans that has ended with their inclusion into the Commonwealth in the year 1983. They are therefore not as homogenous as the Algians, their co-founders of the Commonwealth, and are harder to pin down with any particular characteristics. One thing that all Hamechel cultures share, however, is a love of storytelling unparalleled in any other race. They are naturally a very passionate people, and the ability to tell a tale with a healthy dose of drama, metaphor, and raw power is a point of pride amongst Hamechels. It is the center of their society, history, and morality.
Hamechels, as the most physically powerful and martially experienced of the Commonwealth races, dominated that polity's military, both in numbers and influence. However, they are more than just the soldiers of the Interstellar Commonwealth - the Hamechels are the polity's cultural soul, and their outgoing and adaptable nature allow them to form positive relations that the diplomatic but somewhat distant Algians might not be able to.
Klashnoi
The Klashnoi of Nor'kass are the youngest starfaring race in the galaxy. They are a very physically imposing people, with the smallest of them standing at two and a half meters tall, with thick, pebbly skin, a nasal horn, and bone crests that extend from the back of the head to cover the neck. Despite their fearsome appearance to most other races, Klashnoi are typically very phlegmatic, though this is a generalization - plenty of veterans of the T-K war will tell you otherwise.
Klashnoi have historically been divided into twelve Tribes, whose existences extend as far back as any reliable Klashnoi history tells. Since the forming of the Confederation, these Tribes have become less like nations and more like unions or political parties, drawing together Klashnoi of similar skills and goals. The three most populous and influential of the Tribes are the Sun Horn, White Tree, and Stone Seer, with the others being far less consequential (just don't tell them that). Status and respect within a Tribe is an important part of a Klashnoi's life, though as more progressive elements within the race gain greater influence in the cultural and political scene, it is not unimaginable that the Tribes may be phased out in time, in preference of a more individualistic society.
On the whole, Klashnoi are a very cautious people, rarely jumping into anything lightly or without spontaneously. Some might say this has stunted their growth culturally and technologically, but on the other hand it means the Klashnoi are a very resilient and tough people. They are just as inventive and adaptive as other races, they just tend to be very perfectionist about whatever it is they are doing, be it developing a new technology or wording a speech. This trait also tends to make Klashnoi seem isolationist or stand-offish, but they simply enter into alliances and friendships with the same attitude.
Krioli
The bright, outgoing, and passionate Krioli are Commonwealth's heart to the Hamechel's soul. Kriolon, their homeworld, is a harsh and unwelcoming place, wrought with year-round icestorms and destructive volcanic activity, and seemingly the only safe and stable place is in the extinct lava tubes and massive cave systems in which the Krioli built their first and oldest cities. This perhaps informs the Krioli outlook on life - the world is a dangerous and unsure place, and so it is the responsibility of those who live in it to help each other out as best they can, to built a community that can thrive in such a world. The Krioli managed to do this with very little of the factionalism and paranoia that typically arises from survivalist cultures, and they now seek to build that same kind of community throughout the rest of the galaxy.
Krioli are shorter beings, rarely taller than a meter, with a superficially primate-like anatomy. They are marsupial-like in that women carry a child in a pouch for the first two months of life. They have three fingers on each hand and a thumb on either side of the fingers, all of which end in short, thick claws, ideal for climbing on rock faces and holding purchase on unstable ground. They have a prehensile tail, and rather than cranial hair a system of "dreadlocks" which are also prehensile, and much stronger and dexterous than their flimsy appearance would imply. Krioli have a third gender, common in Kriolonian biology but unseen anywhere else in the galaxy - dimales, as they are called, do not produce sperm, but rather an enzyme which can remove genetic defects from their female partner's eggs. This explains the extremely low stillborn and SIDS rate among Krioli, and therefore their huge, healthy population.
As previously mentioned, Krioli life is entirely based around community. They tend to have lots of friends, and form huge extended families which may or may not be comprised of actual blood relatives. They like densely packed, close-knit living situations, making them ideal starfarers - this is offset by a race-wide agoraphobia which, though it can be overcome, can hamper a Krioli's first steps into space. That said, they also like to expand and move around a lot, and there are more Krioli living in the United Nations and the Klashnoi Confederation than all other traditionally-Commonwealth races put together.
Saryans
Terrans
Tekks
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"The universe's most essential beauty is its endlessness. There is room and resources enough for all of us. Whether there is room for all of our passions is the question, and the problem that we work tirelessly to find a solution to."
-Qhameio Allir Nlafahn, Commonwealth ambassador, during the signing of the Kriolon Treaty.
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