Humans (Cosmoria)

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Humans (Embla plumbata), or Marsálfar, are a species of carbon-based bipedal humanoids originating on the planet Olaris in Aylathiya. With significant populations across most of Cosmoria, Humans are widely known as one of the most expansionist species in Cosmoria. They consistently rank amongst the most populace species therein. Consequently, Humans are quite diverse, with somewhat significant phenotypical differences across many populations.

Humans are bipedal vertebrates with a tough endoskeleton composed of protein strengthened by calcium compounds. Their brains and the majority of their sensory organs reside in a case of bone resting atop their shoulders. On their two arms and two legs are generally five digits, although some populations have six. Humans, while originally having large amounts of hair, have lost the majority of their hair as they evolved, with most of it remaining on the head and crotch, with certain, usually male, individuals retaining significant amounts of hair across the rest of the face and body.

Humans share their home system of Helyar with another species known as the Kya. Due to the Kya's marine environment, Humans had a leg up on them, resulting in Helyar being dominated by Humans for most of its history. As of late, the Kya's sovereignty over Helyar has increased greatly, with many considering it to belong to them as Humans have largely abandoned the system.

Features

Humans metabolize organic carbon-based compounds using oxygen as the principle electron acceptor in this metabolism. They use water as their solvent and their internal fluid is slightly basic compared to pure water. Other prominent elements include nitrogen and phosphorous as both are used in abundance in their double-helixed genetic material known as DNA.

Generally, Humans are a bidepal species that range in heights from 1.5 - 2.0 meters, with 2 legs used for motion and 2 arms. Each arm is capped with hands that generally possess 5 digits used for grasping and using tools. They have 2 eyes with pupils that come in a range colors but generally are brown, blue, and green. Other colors, such as purple, yellow, and cyan are common among certain populations of Humans as well. Their nose set slightly below and between these eyes and above the mouth which is used as a sensor for smelling and for breathing.

Variation

Human genetic diversity is the topic of much interest in scientific communities across Cosmoria. Tinkering from rulers such as Mother Sachitel, Eve, and the Neo-Terran Party contributed greatly to introducing large numbers of new traits. While intellectual abilities are essentially constant across different populations, appearance varies much more. The most varying aspect of Humanity, and arguably the aspect they themselves care most about, is culture. Consequently, groups from different worlds, while sharing common physical characteristics, are far more similarly culturally to each other than to outside groups.

Society

A large contributing factor to the widespread distribution of Humanity is their tendency to live in complex social groups. This tendency creates an array of groups divided by all manner of common traits. Such groups often break away from broader society to form independent communities, a direct cause of Humanity's rush to colonize space. Furthermore, it is this same tendency that creates the phenomenon of Mars, the pan-ethnic Human identity made manifest in Cosmoria. Sapient such as the Ror Units, Bahattes, Lyncisians, and Zythyns have all been able to integrate into Human society and into this Martial identity.

Science and Thaumaturgy

Mastery of both physics and Thaumaturgy has greatly changed Human society. In the past, Human civilization relied heavily on Thaumaturgy, creating a caste system in which those that could use it became tremendously powerful. Under the Triumvirate Civilization, Thaumaturgy waned in importance, giving rise to a technological revolution that diminished the power of the Thaumic elite. With the rise of science came a new elite, usually those who owned the large machinery or facilities it took to build the technological marvels found throughout Human society. Conflict between the users of Thaumaturgy and the owners of machinery have created a great deal of conflict.

Nachleben are powerful beings that are the result of High Technology. These entities, which included the Kaiser who ruled Humanity for thousands of years, have a great deal of influence in the politics of humanity. These beings are usually tremendously intelligent and, as machines, are virtually immortal. On the opposite side of the Nachleben are the Overlords, ultra-powerful Magi whose Thaumic potency allows them to dominate entire civilizations. Examples include Father Zaphenim, the creator of Humanity. Overlords exist on an entirely different level than the Nachleben and are relevant on the scale of all of Cosmoria. Wars between civilizations ruled by the people and civilizations ruled by Nachleben or Overlords are another great driver of history.

Politics, Trade, and Government

Humans are not very loyal creatures, the ability to quickly change allegiance between groups, so long as friends and family do so as well, creates a highly tumultuous political environment. For many species, Humans are seen as unstable or impressionable. Other species view the deeply-bound identities found within Human societies intimidating, many will throw away their lives for goals that other species simply do not understand. At the juxtaposition between incredible shiftiness and remarkable steadfastness, Humans have created a large variety of governments to manage the vast empires they have formed throughout history.

Currently, the vast majority of Humans live within the Greater Martial Consilium, a vast empire ruled by the Imperator, someone who is believed to be the representative of Mars in Cosmoria. Other populations live within the Commonwealth of Aggregate Aylathiya

Origin

Zaphenim had spent a lot of time pacing through his elaborate mansion as of late. Situated near to the core of the Lux Aeterna, Zaphenim had spent years perfecting everything about it. From immaculate carvings sprawling throughout its entirety to luxurious finishes representing rare materials from across Cosmoria, it was truly a labor of love. One particular hallway in the vast complex was designed to appear infinitely long, the rules of the Lux Aeterna allowing for this to effectively be so.

Spaced a few meters apart were ornate podiums about as tall as Zaphenim's waist. Studded in blueish-white Osmium, the rarest non-radioactive metal in Cosmoria, the cylindrical podiums each had on top of them an artifact, some substance or object that was more than simply the atoms that made it up. From bizarre anomalies Zaphenim did not yet understand to simply rare and beautiful crystals, the artifacts were the pride of Zaphenim's mansion.

One such artifact was probably by far the most unusual however. A large flask of quartz glass sat underneath a lamp that was effectively a miniature star. Contained within the flask was a solution of saline water, nutrients such as phosphorous, and an untold number of microscopic organisms. In aggregate, they gave the water a green tint; their bodies so small that their effect on the macroscopic scale was indistinguishable from just adding pigment to the water.

Zaphenim created a series of lenses by bending space time using Thaumaturgy. These concentric lenses, of various sizes, worked to magnify the microscopic creatures to larger than Zaphenim's head. Here he was able to study them, documenting every detail from their reaction to certain proteins or which light level they preferred.

"What animates them?"

They were made out of ridiculously complex molecules that he had never seen anywhere else in his centuries of life, and yet, the substance that seemed to power them was a simple sugar. These bizarre creatures somehow converted light into sugar and would die without a light source.

"There are no gears, no wires, no motors..."

Months of trying to answer this question yielded almost no information. Whatever that allowed them to transmute light into chemical energy was far too small for even Zaphenim to resolve. He has been trying to figure out how to study the complex molecules, but without a clear way to visualize them, Zaphenim's magical ability was all but useless in synthesizing these substances. As for their origin, he was even more clueless. A loan world orbiting a black hole of all things was covered in a meters-thick layer of water made viscous by its high concentration of these small... there is still not a good word for them.

"Creatures... beings... chemical machines... organizations..."

The last word in that sequence is what Zaphenim decided on, their complexity prompting him to coin a word meaning "organized." Some process arranged these things into the complex form they were in. Zaphenim had a sudden idea. He scooped a decent number of these cells into a secondary flask and gave them a great deal of nutrients. Once they had built up a significant mass, he killed all of them by using his magical ability to sever them. He spent days going through the flask with his microscope, killing every cell in it without denaturing the molecules that made them up.

His thinking was simple; if he filled a container with all of the things that composed these cells, whatever they were, the cells would reemerge given a significant enough amount of time. This would surely explain their origin. With that experiment, Zaphenim left it in progress. He assumed that such a phenomenon would take a long time, what with the violation of entropy that it was. Physics came far more naturally than biology to the angel.

After a few days of waiting, Zaphenim returned, eager to see the laws of biology unravel before him. When he got to the secondary flask, it was still as dead as it was. In fact, the ultra-violet radiation did a number on many of the proteins, leaving Zaphenim with not new life but a solution more dead than when he started. Zaphenim stared into the flask for all of thirty seconds before suddenly smashing it onto the ground. He had enough of this infuriatingly complex material; he had enough of this mansion he spent months in trying to learn about the universe. Bolting out of the door, Zaphenim's journey to the edge of the Lux Aeterna was similar to a sudden increase in density. As he left the Lux Aeterna, he appeared as though he were falling instead of traveling laterally, the Lux Aeterna effectively spitting him out like a heavy oil sinking below water.

After several moments, he found himself in Cosmoria. It was as grand and empty as he remembered it, not a single other soul seemed to call it home. He had wondered for years if those machines were like him, aware of the universe and capable of moving about, or if they were just chemistry-based automata. Zaphenim bent spacetime once more, not to create lenses but to create a bubble, propelling himself forward well in excess of the speed of light. Even at these speeds it took some weeks to get anywhere worth visiting, meaning that Zaphenim always had time to think. All he could think about was how the simple rules of physics somehow allowed for seemingly infinite complexity; what were essentially fractals as far as Zaphenim was concerned. As he moved towards a random star that seemed interesting enough, he thought about how potentially there could be simpler or even more complex cells that could tell him how the green sludge functioned.

The small nameless star Zaphenim flew to was quite unremarkable, but since ultraviolet light seemed to harm these cells, a star that hardly emitted any must be better for them. After nearly two weeks he reached the star, which appeared quite strange once he was a few thousand astronomical units away. It seemed to have a large dim hoop around it. As he grew closer it became a disk, a structure of unparalleled size that quite frankly put his life's work to shame.

History

Humans are considered to have emerged in 1 CE, as Father Zaphenim created them. Zaphenim created them to be potent users of Thaumaturgy, capable of exploring the more abstract facets of reality like he could. This is the reason they have very large brains relative to their body size as well as highly concentrated brains. Where many species have distributed or brains small compared to their body size, human brains use twenty percent of their total energy. This was no problem for the original population, whose powerful abilities made foraging or even outright creating food a simple task.

First forming civilization in 73,000 BCE, Humanity would begin asserting the authority they once had over nature. Vast continent-spanning empires would reshape the natural world as entire forests were razed to make way for farmland and inconvenient species were driven extinct. In about 72,000 BCE, Sedrua encountered Humanity and "uplifted" them, granting them virtually unlimited materials from a small asteroid in exchange for loyalty. This would last over 40,000 years as Human civilization developed very slowly. Around this time, Humanity's progenitor, Moonmoon would be born, granting the gift of Thaumaturgy to the primitive world.

Human Magi, or users of Thaumaturgy, would soon craft primitive breathing apparatuses and propel themselves to nearby habitable worlds. Albedo would be the first settled followed by Petra and Thalsiedeln. These planets soon had vast populations as the Magi ruling class deported millions to work the fields on these new worlds. As Humanity came under the control of the Triumvirate Civilization, they would be united under the province of Anthrovia.

The collapse of the Triumvirate Civilization in 1 CE saw Humanity, a now-advanced interstellar species, quickly ascend to take power. With help from a handful of outside nations, Humans formed Erstes Konsortium, cementing their power over dozens of stars. After losing over half of their population during the Ma'eau War, Humans rebounded to a place of galactic prestige by the formation of the Dominion of Astraeus. By this time, largely due to Martial Civil Religion, or the worship of both Mars and the state who was believed to be its embodiment, species from across Cosmoria would be considered "Human." In the present day, almost every species common in Martial Space is considered in some way Human, although to external species "Human" refers strictly to the biological category.