Human

Humanity are a common people in known space, originating from Earth in the Sol system. They are notable for adaptability, hardiness and and a tendency to be obsessed with creating or finding an identity. While human government is not a notable presence in the galactic stage, human spacers have spread far and wide and possess a good reputation in nearly all parts of space.

Physical Description

Humans are upright hominids with sparse body hair with notable growth on their heads, the groins and underarms, and on the faces of males. Humans have distinct primary and secondary sexual characteristics that divide their males and females. They are plantigrade, have five toes on their feet, and five fingers on their hands. Their bodies bias towards symmetry. Humans are notable for good eyesight and a highly developed olfactory sense and come in a number of skintones. In the modern era. Humans are particularly notable for taking advantage of their exposed skin for bodily decorations and dyes.

Heritages

Unlike Feni, modern humans are descended from the single species Homo Sapiens Sapiens with small admixtures from now-extinct close relatives. This single species has split somewhat ever since attaining FTL capability, and now includes:

• Terran The most common and the terrestrially evolved state of humanity.
• Voidborn Due to the rapid expansion humanity underwent, a vast number of humans have spent generations away from gravity's pull, leading to a morphology of fragile-boned, long, lanky humans with large eyes, with more dexterous feet and water-retaining skin. While not universal, a common variation in the population are returned tails from their former rare vestigial form and more developed sinuses for easier navigation in the scent-rich environments that often lack strong light sources.
• Transhuman While any species can be splicers, humans are particularly common to have entire populations heavily spliced and altered to fit environments, in humanity these are known as transhumans. Some of these are in the pursuit of identity, some are adaptations to highly diverse environments. In some cases, these human can resemble other species, in others, they seem so morphic it is hard to qualify them in relation to known life. Humans pursuit of individual identity has led to a remarkable diversity in the broad transhuman population.

History

Humanity is composed of a single undifferentiated species, having out-competed every closely related species on its homeworld of Earth in very distant prehistory. Human society on Earth throughout history took on a very broad and diverse range of societal and political models, although over the past four centuries it's mostly solidified into one of three main models:

1. Representative democracy with limited market controls
2. Syndicalist corporatocracy; rule by economic entities
3. Dictatorship by central committee (now largely defunct on Earth itself)

Humanity's history in space only truly started halfway through the 20th century, when a small, wayward expedition craft of The Alganna Eternity suffered a malfunction and was downed over the North American continent with all hands lost. The major powers of the time launched into a fast-paced race against one another towards the stars, and the alien technology was disseminated mostly through espionage and sometimes direct (though small-scale) conflicts. By the year 2000, the three major human powers had established their first extraplanetary bases on Earth's moon; in 2015, the fourth planet of their system (Mars) also received its first human settlers and was in the early stages of terraformation. And by 2040, the first human extrasolar colony ships arrived at Proxima Centauri, beyond easy contact with home. It was only in 2055 when one of those three main powers succumbed to its own inefficiencies and collapsed both politically and economically. The two remaining blocs, in trying to take advantage of the opening, soon found themselves engaged in several proxy wars against each other. The United Nations, a multinational peacekeeping organization, tried and failed to keep the fighting on Earth through the formation of the UN Space Affairs Committee.

Unknown to Sol at this point, human contact with living aliens had already happened. A scout ship of The Ruz'kahni Directorate had found the humans of the Proxima Centauri colonies blissfully unaware of the chaos on their homeworld, and in 2063 the Directorate's first purpose-built first contact team arrived to a Sol system in chaos. The Feni approached the issue systematically by first approaching the colonists of the hydrogen and helium extraction operations centered on the gas giant Jupiter and its moons, then moved inwards towards the asteroid belt mining stations, and then Mars. Piece by piece, the fighting gave way to ceasefires in astonishment that aliens, humans found, were not only real, but closely resembled their most beloved species of pet.

Peace did not mean cohesion, however. The UNSAC claimed some degree of control over human colonies, but its power was obviously limited by the willingness of the member states back on Earth, which were now highly engaged in trying to maneuver for whatever advantage they could from the Directorate. As the diplomacy exposed how deeply the political enmity ran to the first contact party, the Directorate eventually resolved to offer either sanctuary or aid to any humans willing to leave their political divisions within their home system, which was received with more enthusiasm than had been expected.

Over the following decades, humans spread throughout the stars, and mostly either became Directorate citizens or have founded independent colonies. Earth itself over the next two centuries became an object of history; a world with its resources depleted and its divisions too deep to meaningfully overcome. The Sol system has largely remained at peace, even if it's an uneasy one, but the powers on it were never able to gain the level of control over humanity's extrasolar colonies as they retain over their colonies within the Sol system. There is thus no central human government, and almost all human colonies remain independent to this day.