Animated Portrait Set
One set of fully animated portraits.
They twitch, and blink, and look around, and breathe, just like vanilla portraits.
The set comes with male and female variations, head variations, crest variations, partial and total synthetic evolution, and psionic evolution.
The base portrait is available for selection both in Aquatic and Arthopoid species class.
The synthetic and psionic variants can also be selected separately.

City Set
One custom city set to go with the portraits.

Personality Room
One custom personality room to go with the portraits.

Custom Trait
In order to better replicate the mechanics of the Seelikor's Empire, I've created a custom trait, Apex Predator. This is selectable on start, but I've set it to NOT be randomized (so you won't have random AI species spawn with it).
The trait significantly increases the power of land armies and the political power that your species has as Elites (since they're literal giant monsters), but it also greatly increases their food consumption, and makes them de facto unsuitable for any task that ISN'T being Elites (their happiness thanks at other social strata). This trait is also the opposite of Familial: the happiness of all Apex Predators is inversely proportional to their number. When you pick this trait, you will start as a ruling minority, with randomized slave species on your planet as intendured servants, chattel, and livestock.
If the mechanics of Apex Predator are too much of a hassle, you can simply avoid the trait (modify the Dreadreef, or create your own separate custom empire); the AI will not use it unless you make it.

Custom Empire
The portrait set comes alongside a custom empire (the Dreadreef), which is paired with a custom name list (Seelikor), a custom star system (Blighted Light), and personalized diplomatic greetings and insults (Deep Terrors). If you want other custom empires of yours to use the same diplomatic phrases as the Dreadreef, select the custom empire, and then create your own by modifying it (it will preserve the flag).
Alternative, any xenophobe empire whose main species has the Apex Predator trait should also default to the same flavor.

If the empire is not appearing in your list, it's possible you're missing one DLC related to its basic traits. In the case of the Dreadreef, this is what you require:
Overlord DLC (Subterranean Origin and Cave Dweller Trait)
Aquatic DLC (Aquatic Trait and Shipset)
Apocalypse DLC (Barbaric Despoilers Civic)

If you wish to play the Empire as provided, but lack the necessary DLCs, you can go to your steam workshop folder, find this mod's folder, go into prescripted_countries, and remove and/or replace the DLC-locked features manually. Once you do, the Empire should appear.
Mind you, the mod as a whole does NOT require any DLC, only the custom empire (so portraits, city set, names, etc. will all always be available to you by default regardless).


The portraits come with a custom empire (which can spawn), but they themselves are set to NOT be used randomly by the AI.


Pretty much everything. No vanilla files have been altered, and the additions are purely graphical.


If you use the base set and go through a full synthetic evolution, the portraits will have a more limited diversity of looks (as compared to taking the machine portrait from the start). This couldn't be fixed without going into editing some vanilla files, which would have severely reduced compatibility.
Note that going full synthetic will default portraits to the vanilla class initially. Once you have completed the Ascension's situation, you'll be able to create a template of the species with the appropriate portrait.