Kimmigan

The kimmigan are a species of hooved mammals, having long abandoned their homeworld of Alba due to repeated global nuclear wars rendering it completely unlivable. They initially fled as a group of intelligentsia as part of two major exoduses. One becoming the powerful Alganna Eternity, made up of the elites of their society, the other many centuries later migrating to the Ruz'kahni Directorate, joining as a roving clan.

Physical Description

The bovid, antelope-like kimmigan vary dramatically from region to region. With those of the roving-fleets of the Directorate maintaining their extreme spacer-slenderness, while most in the Alganna having somewhat adapted to life within planetary gravity again. All of them bias towards being tall, thin, and delicate, with the females significantly smaller than the males. The more spacer the kimmigan, the less horns and antlers they possess. While still herbivorous with opportunistic omnivorous digestion, many have adapted to a diet of densely packed nutritional bars, pastes and high-energy cereals and processed proteins. Though they enjoy more natural foods as somewhat unhealthy treats, due to atrophied herbivorous digestive systems they only indulge in moderate amounts of fresh food and a love for highly processed foods are a uniting factor between the kimmigan people.

Heritages

Kimmigan heritages were diverse from the beginning, making up the ethnic elites of their homeworld, each ethnicity are highly morphically divergent with different builds, antlers and appearances.

• Selari Tall and elegant, they have broad antlers with many points among the males, they consider themselves to be the bearers of great wisdom and descended from the religious elites. They resemble most antler-baring deer.
• Chkarri Powerful and sturdy, they were born of the harsh climates of the frozen south of their world. They believe themselves to be the even-handed barers of justice and law and value honor above all other things. They resemble elk, reindeer and moose.
• Kinani The diminutive kinani are small and wide eyed, but not skittish. They are known for bravery and courage and are far less self-serving than the rest of the kimovihni. They resemble dik-diks or pudus most strongly. They descend from many islands of their homeworld.
• Shevnikti Sly and manipulative, the shevnikti are famed for their ability to manipulate social situations and carry many cultural ritual practices. They were born of the wetlands in the great taigas and were those who started the Great War that ended their society. They resemble tusked deer and fanged deer.
• Nagari The only heritage not born of elites, they were common laborers. They believe they are the most pragmatic of their people and take pride in their origins as of the lower class. The nagari are most similar to pronghorns and antelopes.

History

Alba, their homeworld, lost somewhere in the Gadiimkimi Dark Sector, was once said to be a beautiful place. But war came to it, and two movements began. One, made up of the wealthy, the social elite, insistent that they'd survive the journey as they were the best of society, used their massive resources to construct generation ships and flee to the stars. Yet, the scientists and laborers under them saw this as continuing the worst of their society, and in secret, worked on prototypes for these ships that would not carry the elites. But those with the conviction and devotion to carry on what they saw as the best in their society. Within fifteen years, as the inevitable war raged and devastation was imminent, the ships left. One carrying the elites, with resources and art to be an ark of Kimmigan society. One instead was piloted by a religious, scientific minority and desperately filled their ships with as much supplies, and people, as they could. In 710, they both left.

Both claimed to be guided by the star of Seta's light, but took radically different paths and would end in radically different places. One would arrive to their destination in 1644, declaring it New Alba, and would soon go on to found the Alganna Eternity through conquest, becoming one of the first great powers of space and see their hardship as a signal of their superiority. The other struggled for centuries longer until reaching the Directorate, rejoining galactic society in 2133. Both are deeply effected by their time in the void. Those of the Directorate maintain themselves as primarily nomadic traders, still flying their over-one-thousand year old ships and are an uncommon, but present space-species, with pirates, naval forces or roaming traders often coming from the Directorate kimmigan. Today, the two groups of their people have almost nothing in common but ancestry.

Society

There are two distinct sides of Kimmigan society, those of the Alganna, and those of the Directorate. The Alganna believe in strength, destiny and their own power. More resembling their ancestors, their culture in many respects is not dissimilar to the territorial herbivores of their evolutionary origin. They possess an innate desire for territory, mates, and power and are strictly male-dominated. This is not to imply that the females are a lesser caste, but female Kimmigan wish to be a mate of the most powerful male available and in general, a dozen or more women mate with a single male. They would say they enjoy the fine things in life. Their chefs invent new foods, their domains tend to be luxurious to an extreme, and even their servants are pampered. This comes from one of the few things they share with the Directorate Kimmigan--a feeling of strength through survival. You may as well enjoy life to its fullest, as disaster is only kept at bay by your own power.

For the Directorate Kimmigan, austerity has instead replaced indulgence. The Kimmigan of the Directorate have little time or interest in indulgence, as they instead see each of them as a part of the survival of the whole. Even the carbon-plating of their vessels are made from the hardened ashes of their ancestors, and a Kimmigan ship tends to have names carved into it in a religious conviction to remember who came before. Their strength is their survival, and choosing to survive is power. All Kimmigani, from both sections, tend to associate their names with one of the migration vessels in their past. Keeping it as an honorific only for extremely formal-greetings. Kimmigani naming schemes are short and tend to be highly personalized. They traditionally alter their names as they reach adulthood, based on career and personal wants. Example Names:

Beliefs

The kimmigani say they were guided by Seta, a divinity in their culture to their new home, they historically believe that there is a special purpose and a guiding force in the cosmos, but are not universal in the form that they take. The Kimmigan of the Alganna believe have created a deep and complex religious system known as the Eternal Cycle, something absent from the beliefs of the Directorate Kimmigan. Believing in a form of strict, scheduled lives based around this cycle. Those of the Directorate have maintained a belief in Seta, and have expanded their reverence to a spiritual connection to their ships, owing to their history of repurposing the bodies of the dead into tools for ship repairs during their hard journey. To the kimmigani, a starship is not just a machine, they are family and homeland wrapped up into one.