Human

Humanity are one of the most common people in known space, originating from Earth in the Sol system. They are notable for creativity, adaptability and a tendency to be obsessed with creating or finding an identity.

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 evolved and out competed all rival species on their homeworld. Much of their history is marked by internal warfare and destruction, threatening their species continued survival at multiple points. Their unity comes in the late 21st century when a new religious movement arose and began dominating society with a religious belief in their destiny to conquer the cosmos. Uniting under the Solar Empire, their discovery and utilization of W-1 via a lost precursor stockpile propelled them into the cosmos. Beyond all other powers, humanity's lust for power was immense and they had little desires to hold back.

Upon encountering the Ruzkahni Directorate and engaging in a concerned peace, massive numbers of religious refugees flooded into the Directorate, eager to depart the increasingly monolithic presence of the solar cult. Bringing their ancestral faiths to the Directorate where they found a new home. In the next centuries, humanity would be marked by increasingly risky decisions, including the creating of a life-hating AI, and have now resulted in their society splitting into two separate domains.

Society

Human society is hard to quantify, while the humans of the Galactic Coalition advertise themselves as highly democratic and valuing individuality, the Humans of the Federation are instead focused on aristocratic empowered few and embrace a stratified society of highly divided classes, where the different social divisions take individual pride on their role as much as their individual. Finally the humans in the Directorate hold much of their ancestral traditions brought from Earth and identify strongly with remnant religious and ethnic groups but consider themselves strongly rokhandan, rather than 'Terran' or 'Solar' which has become an insulting term within them. A notable feature of human society is an obsession with finding a personal identity.

Beliefs

Humans have a diverse number of religions and religions tend to play a public part of their lives. Within the Coalition, the secretive Solar Cult is the dominate religious belief, holding an intense, special destiny of humanity and relying on the words of certain classes of priest to guide peoples reverence to their assortment of divinities. The humans of the federation are more prone to staunch-anti solarism, considering it backwards and are prone to develop personal codes and religious beliefs and most of the individual great houses have syncretic micro-religions. Finally those in the Directorate often embrace evolved versions of ancient human faiths.