**First Appearance:** #book6 Alien race, silicone-based life forms, essentially made of crystal. Their life processes were very slow, it would take them minutes to formulate and then communicate a single thought. A group of colonists from [[Tau Ceti]] landed on the Iolanian homeworld and proceeded to destroy them. The colonists never realized the Iolanians were alive, they thought they were just rocks. A researcher learned the truth some years later, inadvertently. By then it was too late and they had all been turned into decorative objects. The colony failed and was abandoned.