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Humans |
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Homeworld: |
Terra, Sector 0 | |||
Ecology: |
Nitrogen-Oxygen-Water (H:A:0:7) | |||
Biology: |
DNA I | |||
Languages: |
Standard Imperial Anglic dialects, others | |||
Human Contact: |
n/a | |||
FTL Status: |
2199CE - Indigenous macrojump | |||
Current Status: |
Residents of various Known Space states | |||
Environment |
Ideal |
Tolerance |
||
Atmosphere: |
.20B O2 | .12-.30B O2; CO2 < .02B | ||
Temperature: |
295K | 275-305K | ||
Gravity: |
1.00G | .15-1.20G | ||
Other: |
Humidity 40% | Humidity 10-99% | ||
Humans are the most numerous race in Known Space. Since achieving an interstellar civilization four and a half millennia ago, Humans have colonized nearly twenty thousand worlds across a twelve hundred light year sphere and remain the most influential - though hardly the most cohesive or advanced - interstellar species.
Humans are upright bipedal quadrapods with arms ending in hands with five digits, one an opposable thumb, and with legs ending in feet with five essentially vestigial digits. Adult Standard Human males average 1.7-1.9 meters in height and 70-90 kilograms in weight. Females average 5-10% smaller in stature and 20-30% lower in mass. Human residents of varying gravitational environments many deviate up 50% from Standard, and Human Variants have different characteristics as described. The Human head houses the brain and is the focus of most sensory input, containing two front-set eyes and two ears. Two nostrils for olfactory sensing and respiration are set in a nose above the mouth. Human olfactory senses are not particularly strong, with visual and auditory senses predominating. Standard Humans have substantial hair covering the upper head, but sparse or non-existent body hair covering a smooth-skinned body of shades varying from pinkish-white, through brown to black. Human males have external reproductive organs; the female organs are internal, but females have more apparent secondary characteristics, including breasts and wider hips.
Human children are born live from their mother, usually singly, after a nine month gestation. They reach sexual mature by 10-14 and full size by 16-20 standard years. Human family practices vary, but most cultures tend toward a small family of parents and their children, though extended familial relationships are common. Most children become independent by age 18-23, though career and family practices vary greatly according to the myriad Human cultures in Known Space. A natural Human life span is 80-100 years, but various age extending technologies can extending life to 300-500 years, with regenerative and genetic therapy (see also Variants) treatments extending life into the thousands of years. With full access to life extending technologies, Human life expectancy averages just over 1,000 years, though rare individuals have persisted for over 4,000 years.
Human clothing and cultural practices vary in the extreme, from Ishmahili Ibrahimites, who insist on full body covering for both sexes and limit access to most gene therapy and cybernetics, to accepted Federation of Orion practices, which tolerate nudity and full body modification: cosmetic, genetic and cybernetic. Almost 85% of Humans are Standard, with no more than cosmetic cyborgization and conventional nanomed enhancements. Nearly 10% of Humans belong to one of twenty-plus identified Human genetically engineered Variants and over 5% of Humans have modified themselves with significant cybernetic enhancements.
Humans evolved from bipedal savanna-dwelling omnivores. Environmental stresses from a series of ice ages beginning around three million years before present led to rapid speciation and to the emergence of modern Humans around 200,000BC. These modern Humans migrated out from their tropical origin, displacing other humanoid species across their homeworld's continents and emerged as the sole Human species by the end of the last ice age, approximately 10,000BC. Thereafter, Humans quickly developed an agricultural society, establishing towns by 8,000BC and the first true early metal age cities by 3,000BC.
The Human home system was far beyond the typical rimward border of the Grand Federation of Races, but only 285 light-years from the Heshar homeworld. After the Heshar gained ascendancy, they often transplanted groups of non-affiliated primitive races to act as their agents within the Grand Federation. Between 3,600BC and 800CE, the Heshar transplanted seven Human groups, totaling some 90,000 individuals. These transplantations had no substantiated effect on native Human development. Transplanted Humans proved well suited to diplomatic and military missions within the Grand Federation and the Heshar sponsored the settlement of several million Federation-born Humans onto the Sector 365 world of Zhantlas in 860BC. Thereafter, the Heshar engineered the acceptance of Federation Humans a Secondary Race under Un'aa'graum, Dantum and Khabaderan patronage. Small numbers of Federation Humans remained widespread on many Grand Federation worlds and various factions of Humans fought on both sides of the War of Liberation, though most remained loyal or at least neutral towards the Heshar.
On Terra, Human civilizations developed from at least five separate origins in the early metal period. Warfare within and between regions remained common, and Humans from the European continent developed a balkanized pre-industrial society capable of crossing Terran oceans around 1500CE. These Europeans colonized or subjugated much of their world over the following five centuries, as Terra emerged into the Industrial Age. Two world-wide wars in 1914-1918CE and 1939-1945CE, the latter ending in the use of primitive fission bombs, brought the English-speaking nation of the United States of America to world dominance, a position that became unchallenged after the collapse of the communist Soviet Union in 1991CE. American dominance waned in the 21st century as China remerged as a dominant Asian and world power. Attempts by other Asian nations (the Easterners) to contain China led to the devastating Last World War in 2052CE, which established the Terran Commonwealth, the first united Human government.
After the Last World War (see the Detailed Chronology for further information of the period 2052-6777CE), Humans began serious colonization of their solar system, starting work to terraform the worlds of Venus and later Mars, and launching a total of five interstellar ramscoop Cityships to Atlantis at Alpha Centauri and Libertas at Tau Ceti (not including the rogue Eastern Battlestar). Human society fragmented in the 22nd Century, with the interstellar and solar colonies exerting their independence from the authoritarian Commonwealth. However, after Atlantis developed macrojump drive in 2199CE and revisited the Solar system, the various Human governments agreed to form the Terran Confederacy in 2206CE.
Humans encountered the Alimeen in 2226CE and that race joined the Confederation in 2247CE. After fighting two small-scale wars against the Easterners at Vulcan and Amaterasu, the Terran Confederation was confronted with the M'kkiae, fighting an ultimately genocidal war against the race in 2251-2262CE. After the war, Humans began a period of substantial interstellar settlement, establishing over 130 colonies within 100 light-years of Sol by 2335CE.
After achieving Early Microjump Era technology in the early 24th century, and developing the first life therapy (Homo Nobilis) transformation, Human society suffered a period of cultural, economic and religious turmoil that cumulated in the Secession War of 2335-2355CE, a conflict that effectively ended interstellar travel for centuries and knocked Human society back into the Fusion Age, or as far as the Pre-Industrial Age on some isolated colony worlds.
Humans regained interstellar capability, first in the Alimeen-associated Kalmar Pact via gravstar vessels in the late 25th century and then through redeveloped macrojump drive developed on Atlantis in 2538CE, but much of Human space remained in a dark age for centuries. The Solar system, then still the home of the bulk of Humanity, did not redevelop Macrojump Era technology until the 28th century. A unification drive led by Rogar Farrar, originally Baron of Pasadena, unified North America by 2714CE, all of Terra by 2740CE and the entire Solar system by 2776CE. In 2789CE, at the conclusion of the Pact War, Rogar was crowned Emperor of Humanity, a titled justified in full after the conquest of the Hachiman Empire in 2804CE.
The Empire of Humanity was ruled as a constitutional dictatorship with the Emperor as head of Government and with nominally self-ruling member worlds. Nobilis leaders, many hundreds of years old, remained in charge of planetary or regional fiefs on many worlds and achieved formal status as a genetic Nobility throughout the Empire. Expanding beyond the old Confederation borders and colonizing new world in the 29th century, the Empire of Humanity adopted some spacefaring races as members, including the conquered Swarm. By the early fourth millennium, the Empire had successfully achieved a post-material economic transformation and developed a universal Early Microjump Era culture. In 3236CE, the expanding Empire encountered a Grand Federation expedition at Heshar, beginning contact between the two states. Relations with the Grand Federation remained strained, and the Heshar War of 3413-3418CE was the first of several conflicts that the Empire won at the expense of the stagnant Grand Federation. The Four Federation Wars fought between 3462CE and 3854CE established a border at least five hundred light years coreward of Terra and brought many former Grand Federation Races, most notably the B'dr'rak, Kith'turi, Cargomen and Yerman, into the Empire of Humanity.
By the 39th century, the Empire of Humanity had entered the Quantum Age, redeveloping worm drive and stasis technology in Known Space for the first time since the fall of the Heshar. With the exception of a border war with the Dragons in the 43rd century, the final nine hundred years of the Empire of Humanity was a period of unprecedented peace and prosperity, with Humans expanding to colonize nearly twenty thousand worlds within a spherical expanse roughly twelve hundred light years across.
The War of Disintegration began in 4753CE and the political, religious and cultural disputes that started the war were quickly overshadowed by the spread of the Mech Plague, which effectively destroyed Quantum Age technology and many of the technologies necessary for Interstellar Age civilization. The Chaotic Era that followed the fall of the Empire was a period of balkanized collapse, wholesale death and often genocidal slaughter. The Dragon Sphere stepped into the vacuum of the fall of the Empire, occupying over 600 Human worlds before the 4837CE nova of their home system ended their further expansion, and later, Rootjalik and Khabaderan expansion resulted in the enslavement of dozens of additional Human worlds.
Over the next two millennia, Human interstellar societies gradually remerged and expanded. The Solar system and nearly half of the Central Region worlds became part of the fundamentalist Ishmahili Ibrahimite Terran Khalifate, while most the rest of the Central region and large portions of the Rimward Region became part of the Bengali Dominions, a Nobilis-dominated successor state to the Empire of Humanity. The Star Kingdoms Confederation, a fairly tolerant, though hierarchical, interstellar conglomeration, preserved civilization in the near trailing region, and the Federation of Orion, a multicultural democratic state, eventually stabilized much of the further rimward region. The Mendam Codominium, a state jointly ruled by Humans and Khruzi maintained a bulkward against Dragon aggression on the spinward frontier and the Zhantlas Union, a far coreward multi-racial state, provided a conduit to the nearby Grand Federation of Races. In central coreward space, the Merchant Guild dominated interstellar trade until the reemergence in the seventh millennium of interstellar states such as the Realm of Antares and the eventually dominant Ertan Directorate. These seven major governments account for 4,100 worlds and 5.7 trillion Humans. Dozens of smaller Human states and other recontacted worlds account for an additional 4,800 worlds and 8.4 trillion Humans with regular interstellar contact.
In the 68th century, Humans are the most numerous Known Space Race, with an estimated twenty trillion members, including Variants, cyborgs and even Heretics. Humans still occupy over 16,000 former Imperial worlds, though over 5,000 of these surviving worlds remain effectively uncontacted. Human relations with other Races vary, often according to Human government or religious sentiments. Humans remain uniformly antagonistic toward the Dragons, Rootjalik and Khabaderans and rarely have good relations with the Eenikiti. Federation Humans - whether descendants of the original transplants or more recent expatriates - number in the tens of billions and remain an influential Secondary Race under Un’aa’gram, Dantum and Tze’t patronage. Humans have spawned a number of intelligent Races, including Goblins, Casaps and other former Servant Races and the Risen machine Race.
A second Human area of settlement, known as the Cygnian Realm, exists near Deneb on the spinward side of the Dragon Sphere; these Humans, apparently descendants of the Hachiman Battlestar, have allegedly settled several thousand worlds, but Known Space cultures have no reliable information about the politics, disposition or culture of the Cygnian Realm.
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