species created by: TheiaTheGondia
Summery:
The Laurasians (Homo lauresiensis) were the ancestors of the parahumans, they originally evolved on earth sharing a common ancestor with later homo sapiens, but they were taken by the ancient Vaalbarans to the M81 Galaxy to be used as slaves and after the Vaalbarans society collapsed the Laurasians left on thousands of worlds evolved into the many parahuman species we know today.
Origin
The Laurasians evolved on earth around 1.1 million years ago in what is now russia and existed there as hunter gatherers for 100,000 years before the Vaalbarans discovered them and began to transplant them onto other planets in the milky way galaxy to use as slaves. However as the Vaalbarans already used the Theral and Ornithians as slaves in the milky way the Laurasians were not utilized much until they colonised M81.
The laurasians were of equal intelligence to later homo sapiens and looked very similar however they have a more stocky build with wider shoulders and were shorter.
During the colonization of M81 a million years ago the laurasians were seeded on many planets by the Vaalbarans and after the vaalbarans fell at the hands of the colonials the Laurasians flourished and used the remaining Vaalbaran technology to create a galaxy spanning empire.
The empire lasted for 10,000 years however conflict between Laurasian settlements inevitably brought it down and the Laurasians were once again isolated on their individual planets, this lead to them evolving into many different species with different appearances and ways of life, this is the origin of the parahumans we know today, from the Nuna to the pakune to the Vendalah although the Vendalah were the only parahuman species to retain the technology from their Laurasian ancestors.
The modern parahumans
in the modern day parahumans exist all over the galaxy. There is an estimated 10,000 species of parahuman across the M81 Galaxy, but technological advancement is rare as fossil fuels don't exist on parahuman worlds as they were seeded with life much more recently than Earth was and the species of fungi that consumes rotting wood was introduced during the initial seeding of these worlds. For this reason parahumans either had no industrial revolution or they needed to find some alternate fuel source for their machines such as charcoal but this often lead to their planets become desolate wastelands and only a few parahuman species succeeded in developing industrial technology without bringing about the extinction of their societies.
other parahuman societies progressed using magic but this also was rare because unlike technology that can be used by everyone with access to it magic requires that every operator have a detailed knowledge of sorcery, this would be like if every person to drive a car needed to know how to build one for it to work. Magic is not very user friendly and requires a detailed understanding of the phenomena for anyone to be able to use it.
many parahuman species resemble homo sapiens to some degree, some examples of that would be the Jarans and Nuna however parahumans can take many forms from the human-like Jaran to the aquatic mermoids to the monkey-like pakune.
parahumans are also forced to share the Galaxy with many species of Theral, Ornithian, and many other species who have evolved in the M81 galaxy since the Vaalbarans seeded it, and there are even some truly alien species in the galaxy that aren't related to earth life at all.
Abhumans/metahumans/transhumans
Abhumans (also known as transhumans or metahumans) are species that were derived from humans but have either gone through enough genetic engineering to disquallify themselves as a normal species of human, or have been mixed with nonhuman biology (like the gondia and mermoids), or they are otherwise been changed to the point they cannot be part of the normal homo genus, abhumans can either be derived from parahumans or homo sapiens, abhumans from both groups are lumped together for convienence
Abhumans are often derogatorily referred to as "mutos"
The human collective unconscious
the human collective unconcious is a link between all humans in the universe that allow ideas to be spread between the subconcious of humans/parahumans, it also allows people to reincarnate after they die as thier "soul" is transfered from one individual to the body of its descendant