Lore Setting (Species)

Races

Humans


The excitement of space exploration has died down, kind of like the gold rush in old times. Everyone was really excited about expanding into space, building colonies and finding opportunity and adventure but that died down quickly when we realised we're still jerks and getting on a rocket didn't change a damn thing. Most humans are now born off earth, in colonies set up on other planets in the solar system and space stations.

Earth still exists but it’s a bit of a dump now as it’s mostly run by megacorporations. It all started there but now it’s a bit run down like old town centers that become a bit dodgy and crime ridden not unlike a cyberpunk dystopia. Alien tourists still go there to see the sights and famous human landmarks like: “this, children, was the birthplace of McDonald’s” (which has grown and expanded across the galaxy). Other species have a dim view of human beings, despite our ability to adapt and evolve to survive anything (or maybe even because of that) we’re seen as cockroaches of the galaxy. As a species, we’ve also taken to transhumanism, which is the practice of enhancing yourself through technology. It’s become common practice and it is rare to find a human without augmentation marks of some kind on their body.

Helicids

Like humans evolved from primates, these guys evolved from snails in their home world. They are basically a more vertical and tall snail-like race, shells and all.

Helicid culture is dominated by trade. They have a reputation as traders and merchants. Due to the Helicids not being physically adept, they tend not to be violent, and can even seem overly-pacifistic and cowardly to other, more militant species. The helicid homeworld is remarkable for having done away with warfare as an institution of the state, as the helicids lack the romantic view of war found in the galaxy's more aggressive species. They think aggression is pointless and everything can be worked out in a profitable deal.

From wikipedia: “Gastropods are capable of being either male or female, or hermaphrodites, and this makes their reproduction system unique amongst many other invertebrates. Hermaphroditic gastropods possess both the egg and sperm gametes which gives them the opportunity to self-fertilize.

Within the main clade Heterobranchia, the informal group Opisthobranchia are simultaneous hermaphrodites (they have both sets of reproductive organs within one individual at the same time).”

As a result, the idea of parenthood and families is different than that of most species where many helicids start off as “single parents” before joining with others to start a family and if often seen as a sign of pride, choosing to have a child before you find a mate is seen as a sign of independence, both financial and social, showing you have gathered enough wealth to provide for your offspring on your own without the help of your family or a mate. This is seen as the beginning of the second stage, or adulthood in helecid culture.

In helicid culture, an individual passes through 3 stages in life. After childhood and mandatory universal education they enter the “Intern” stage, which is spent often, but not always, with the family unit, where they learn about their family’s trade by working with them in “internships”, with a trade of their choice, freelancing or traveling salesmen (sailsnails?), their instinct driving them to yearn for and seek out experience. The “Merchant” stage begins when an individual feels ready to seek out or make their own fortune. This is generally where a helicid will start a business, have a child, and start to look for potential mates, preferably with children of their own as agreeing to be part of a big family again demonstrates wealth and financial security. During this stage they begin to save money to help their parents enter the 3rd stage of helicid life: the Retiree stage. This is where their offspring, if they have amassed enough wealth during the merchant stage, return home for a ceremony where they buy their parents business, be it a large company, a small convenience store or their fishing boat, allowing them to retire and spend the rest of their remaining life in comfort and leisure. This is a moment of great pride for any helicid parent.

Most cities on the helicid home planet, the garden world of Huldra, originated as settlements atop massive migratory trees where resources were widely available so there was little conflict over them. Rather, early hilicidian merchants who braved the wilds and traveled to other “tree villages” were seen as heroes, often returning with traded goods and stories of other tribes, many characters and heroic figures in early helicidian mythology adhering to this archetype.

It’s also this entrepreneurial spirit which propelled them to space exploration. The promise of precious alien ore and materials to sell and trade with other species greatly accelerated the helicidian space age.

It was during this time that they also created the race of Myorjiin as a form of low risk off world labour force. However after 10 years they began to show signs of self awareness and with the help of the federation became recognised as a species making the work they were designed for illegal as it was now technically slavery. While helicidian ideals (and law) consider working for free or making someone work for free and by extension slavery, against everything they stand for, many mega corporations that initially funded space exploration and the creation of the A.I. labour force went bankrupt so some helicidians still harbour a strong resentment towards the species, with talk of some entities even trying to legally revoke the Myorjiin’s status as a species.

Myorjiin

“Myorjiin” is the hilicidian word for “Golem” Basically a race of machines built by the Helicids for deep space labour that developed self awareness and rebelled. They're super logical and efficient. They want to be seen as equals to other races. For example, they have no sense of humor or irony or anything like that, but they're constantly trying cause they wanna fit in so they make these weird jokes that no one gets or they have little sense of tact. They just want to be seen as "no different from the organic based life forms”.

There are 3 different “brands” of Myorjiin. The 2 biggest companies that mass produced units were obviously competitors, with Mender Co. being the industry leader and Loga Corp. making cheaper but less sturdy models in a deliberate attempt to compete and put pressure and dwindle Mender Co.’s market dominance. Kind of like Sega and Nintendo in the 90s. The 3rd kind are the “boutique” models, made by specialised luxury manufacturers.

Most of them are around 200 years old, with the “youngest” in the species being the last one manufactured before the ban on the helicidian homeworld. This means they’re not super advanced androids though, they’re just machines of labour. Still efficient, but not hyper advanced synthetic beings. They’re kind of big and clunky, mostly designed for heavy labour in space. and basically 200 year old machines and they’ve had to develop OS support and replacement parts themselves but since the original software stopped updating 2 centuries ago it doesn’t always run smoothly. This is a cause for concern ans at this point they’re not sure how to move on as a species.

They come in different shapes as different models were made for specific functions such as heavy lifting, mining, even defense.

They identify by their serial/license numbers like ORL-2007 or AJM-7251 but also adopt a “social” name of their choice so it would read KWO-7752 “Agatha”.

As they were built for deep space labour, the ships they’ve designed for themselves don’t have cabins or interiors with life support, they latch on to big engines that are attached to cargo modules like R2-D2 and just kind of “ride” them, like bikes.

Oshunians

This is a fierce warrior race like the Klingons in Star Trek or the Krogan in Mass Effect and they used to command a vast empire. They're short-tempered and their honour is very important to them so "duels of honor" (like old-timey pistol or sword duels on Earth) are still common. They're always getting into bar fights, or telling old war stories and showing scars. Despite all this, they're not jerks: if you prove your worth or honor or toughness in a fight they'll become friends with you real quick.

They are also quite small and they look adorable, something that really annoys them when other races point it out. They’re still really strong and can kill a grown human with their bare hands easily, they just look really cute and cuddly at the same time.

Their homeworld of Tiamat is covered in vast oceans with bits of harsh rocky terrain protruding out of the seas. On large enough bits of dry land, springs and lakes form but it is not very common. On big enough “continents” though, you can find vast caves with mineral deposits and vast “moss fields”. As such, early oshunian tribes were divided in between saltwater and sweetwater dwellers, as well as nomadic “Ice Water” tribes of the planet’s north and south poles. As they evolved, but didn’t really have a lot of land to go into or at least had a large body of water constantly nearby, their species is intertidal, like some crabs on earth:

“The intertidal crabs can breathe easily both in water as well as on land. When in water, the gills help in respiration. On land, the cuticles near the legs of crab help in the absorption of oxygen.”

With little space for mass agriculture, their culture evolved around fishing and marine hunting, and boasting and asserting yourself by bringing in the bigger quarry for your family or tribe was a common way to assert dominance and status. As a coming of age ritual, an oshunian would have to bring in something big enough to feed their family, proving they can go out in the world and start a family. Often in succession disputes, this is how tribal chiefs were chosen. Nowadays the ritual is mainly symbolic, though more traditional families still adhere to real hunting.

This is also why they developed as a seafaring species, building vast navies to go from island to island to conquer and establish power and ownership of resources like ore and precious metals in the vast, mineral-rich caves. The “sweetwater tribes” are the minority but are generally wealthier, having gained access to the mineral caves earlier and developed small scale fish farms in inland lakes and pools, therefore creating a bit of a class divide in earlier oshunian society. Some animosity still remains, with saltwater oshunians regarding their sweetwater counterparts as snobbish, elitist and soft pansies, and sweetwater oshunians regarding saltwater dwellers as oafish and crude (to other species though, they’re all tough). Personal strength and combat skills are also very important in oshunian culture, not only because of the “I got the bigger fish” culture mentioned previously, but because after the initial naval battles between crews and their ships, there usually comes boarding said ships or landing on shores, so powerful and shrewd warriors are valued in their society, and having evolved to kill things bigger than them, they are fierce, with many disputes being settled in duels of honour. Brawls are also common and seen as a natural, even healthy way to resolve conflicts. A large culture of piracy also manifested because of this. As many early oshunians turned to sailing as a career at some point in their lives, piracy is not that much of a leap, and many pirate clans exist to this day.

An emperor would come from one island and, with the help of a navy and alliances, would sail to conquer others. Today, the oshunian world is governed by a high council whose representatives come from “nations” descended from these old empires, powerful clans and regional tribes, and the role of “emperor” is given to an elected official. He is mainly a representative, as the council makes the decisions and passes laws, like a president and congress.

Their naval tradition has served them well in the spacefaring age and as soon as they could build spaceships, they built a navy to “conquer the stars”, but their imperialistic tendencies did not sit well with other species and they quickly found themselves in a war with the Vesta, who were able to push them back and force them into a peace agreement.

Helmet Guys

They are the oldest race in the galaxy but now there are only a few left. They always wear helmets and space suits and no one knows what they look like and are never seen in groups of more than 3 at a time. They make the other races kind of nervous but they keep to themselves so people just tolerate them. They almost never speak to other races and when they do it sounds like a synthy voice processor because they don’t speak with sounds to each other and they only VERY occasionally do business with other species, and their deals make no sense to outsiders. They’ll trade incredibly precious materials for seemingly useless junk, causing some traders to stay away because it’s “too good to be true”. No one knows where their home system is, or really anything about them at all.

Vesta


Generally very stoic and calm, ethereal, other races can sometimes see the Vesta as snobbish. They have a really rich culture and produce amazing art like epic 3 day long operas, painted murals that stretch for miles, a form of ballet so beautiful and intricate and difficult, that it consists of a single movement by 900 people and lasts only for 10 seconds. All their art is amazing so they're always dressed immaculately but because of this sense of discipline, they have a pretty strong military too. They are tall slim creatures and I’m thinking of giving them tails maybe?

The Vesta believe the universe runs on ideas. Before a building can exist it must first take shape in the mind of an architect and a person is only a collection of memories and desires. It is what drives their spirituality, their science and their art. They believe the 5th dimension is imagination, where we have mastery of time, space and matter. We can think up images, places, sounds, people, entire cities that stretch for kilometres, all inside this little space between our ears. We can give these things weight, texture, taste smell, anything, limited only by how imaginative and thorough we can be. We can build monuments and watch them become ruins and fall to dust thousands of years later because we control the 4th dimension here as well! We can revisit and get lost in memories, imagine potential futures, go back to specific key moments in our lives and make different decisions and THEN speculate on (and therefore create, at least in our minds) futures alternative to our own! This is why mental discipline is so valued in Vesta culture. Imagining a vast forest is impressive but if you can picture every tree in it, smell every leaf and know every creature living in it, then it becomes more real. We can’t represent any of this in our physical 4D world, except through art and what we create. We can only express these constructs and ideas as “crude forms of art”. A painting of a place you remember or the blueprints for a building you want to make. A song that tries to capture and explain heartache or characters in a play that you wrote and gave personalities and problems to so they’d have to work out real-life problems. We, as crude 3-dimensional beings (we can’t even perceive time in a non-linear fashion so maybe we’re 3.5 dimensional?) treat it as art or imagination only because we don’t yet understand how to understand it as real because our definition of real is still very primitive.

But they are also dealing with civil conflict in their homeworld for resources. Their homeworld consists of vast deserts and immense mountain ranges with oasis large enough to become small seas. There are naturally occurring gas pockets throughout the planet and due to harsh desert winds with thick clouds that can generate lightning, “firestorms” are natural disasters that can occur from time to time.

Yami

This species is a nomadic “caravan” comprised of gigantic beings roughly the size of small moons. They are millions of years old and mostly reside within nebulas, where they rest and feed and reproduce before they leave again in search of a new home in the nearest nebula. They communicate through body language, touching, micro facial expressions (not so micro to us) and a rudimentary form of telepathy. They were first encountered by human science vessels who proceeded to establish communications by mapping out their movements and expressions. No one (including the Yami) knows if they are naturally occurring life forms or if they were made. They have shown themselves to be friendly and even at times curious about other species but they rarely leave their current nebula or “caravan” alone. Most vessels are now equipped with scanners and light signals that enable communication between them and the other galactic species