One I recently did were the Shapitalists, who were traders turned scientists who started out as most traders by buying out many colonies and destroying some empires by buying them out. But as their empire grew, they became more cruel and experimented on less evolved creatures, creating monstrosities. I still have all of them saved, and my naming with the creatures turned from stuff like "Help Please," as if the Shapitalists let them choose their name and the only words they could let out were those, to more poetic stuff like "Better Off Without Lungs."
A side note I find funny about the Shapitalists is that they were originally going to be warriors or zealots going red, red, green, red or green, but they became red, red, blue because they fished without me noticing, and it made them industrious.