Isra Tree

Template:!Species Tree InfoboxOne of the many origins of life in Cosmoria, the Isra Tree is the general name for the group of species which exist in Florathel descended from the Isra of ancient Carlea. The Isra ruled the small trading state of Erlas, spinning off colonies to the many surrounding worlds. Usually, these colonies brute-forced their environment to suit them or simply built contained sections of their native environment to live in, but sometimes their new homeworlds were just different enough to result in a difference. The species of the Isra Tree were genetically engineered to fit their new environments. Otherwise, they would all be almost identical to the Isra of almost three hundred thousand years ago.

History

The first forking incident of the Isra Tree came in the form of the Oralat. Eons ago, after the repeated depredations of the Rukelian Empire, the Woni, the "liberation" brought by Vijaya, and finally the Lareas Alliance, a large group of Isra left Carlea, never to be seen again by the society of the time. They faded into legend as "Those Who Walk Beneath The Dragon's Wings", and were mostly forgotten. In actuality, the exodus fleet arrived in the far reaches of the Xeros System decades after the blinding torches of their engines shut off. First modifying themselves to suit the lower gravity and thinner atmosphere of Darakett and eventually leaving behind their physical bodies completely, the Oralat, as they called themselves, were only rediscovered in the modern day when a Marakat expedition discovered the system beyond the rim of Cosmoria. The few remaining flesh-and-blood Oralat greeted the expedition's crew, and the mystery was solved.

During the Dark Times, the Isra slowly evolved, bottled up on their home planet long enough to forget why. By the time the Twenty-Four Companions sealed the Bore, they knew themselves as the Varla. So began the second forking. As Ectabana expanded, Varla colonies sprung up across Florathel, from Darvikus to Yalai. They predictably diverged away from the baseline Varla species, and that baseline was almost completely destroyed at the end of the Alshunaman Rebellion with the bombardment of Veladris. With the lack of a baseline, the Carleans, Darvikans, Tancredi, and Cluelflago spun further apart. Carleans grew in size in the low gravity and thickened atmosphere, becoming the largest sapient species in Cosmoria. The Darvikan wing was engineered completely out, becoming vestigial in the planet's higher gravity. Today, the four species are still capable of interbreeding, but it usually requires medical intervention to make absolutely sure that no problems will develop.