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The Precursors

The Precursors were a technologically advanced race who occupied all of known space until about a million years ago, when they abruptly disappeared. They built the network of inter-system gates, engineered the race of Miners, and left behind various other interesting artifacts. Little is known about them; what remains offers no clues as to their biological makeup or culture.

Seeding

Some races which appeared to have originated in entirely different star systems have been discovered to share basic biochemistries and genetic material -- it is believed that the Precursors manipulated the development of life in several systems, seeding them with lifeforms from a common pool.

Two major groups of related lifeforms are recognised: carbon/water-based oxygen breathers (which include the sentient humans, Toymakers, Kathrals and Leetheelee and their biospheres), and floating carbon/ammonia-based gas giant dwellers (such as the Flsfth, and their biospheres). Some consider the engineered anaerobic silicon/water-based Miners to be a third group, but most classifications categorise them as a single race.

Known sentient races

Humans

Humans arrived at their home system in a generation ship. Because of damage done to the vessel's starmaps, the location of the ancient Earth which they claim as their world of origin is unknown -- some believe it to be entirely mythological, and the ship to be a clever hoax. Since they were clearly seeded by the Precursors, their claim that Earth's system contained neither a gate nor any traces of one is considered highly dubious.

Toymakers

The Toymakers are a peaceful race with advanced nanotechnology.

They are symbiotes. Toymaker Brains are large mollusc-like creatures which mostly remain stationary, and Toymaker Hands are small, dexterous monkey-like creatures. Brains manipulate Hands and communicate with each other using sprays of pheromones. Hands are not themselves sentient, and their constant screeching and chattering has little meaning.

Toymakers were the first to discover the Precursor gates and use them to travel outside their system. They helpfully educated other races they encountered as to their location and purpose, and encouraged them to join the great galactic community -- after spending a few decades monitoring them to make sure that they were the sort of people they wanted to have as neighbours. Then they met the Kathrals. Horrified by the violent tendencies of the first Kathral representatives they encountered, the Toymaker explorers intended to keep the secret of the gates from them. Unfortunately, they were captured and tortured into revealing all they knew. Thereafter, the Toymakers hurriedly informed as many remaining systems as they could about the threat that was about to descend on them. The ensuing Kathral Invasions lasted hundreds of years before most systems developed adequate defenses.

Kathrals

The Kathrals are a hermaphroditic, humanoid race of warriors.

Leetheelee

The Leetheelee are aquatic creatures with advanced biotechnology. They have genetically engineered themselves to be amphibious, and often use their technology to produce variants of themselves more suitable for other environments. They are known for sending aliens ambassadors re-made in their own image.

The best doctors in known space are Leetheelee.

Flsfth

The Flsfth live in gas giant atmospheres. They invented the stasis field which makes ships with modern impulse drives usable by soft, squishy people. They control most of the inter-system trade in known space.

Miners

The Miners appear to have been created by the Precursors to mine minerals for them on airless moons and asteroids. They are tough, thickly carapaced, vaguely humanoid silicon-based creatures who don't need to breathe, and survive by eating finely crushed rock.

They are intelligent enough to operate technologically advanced equipment and perform other complex tasks, but they are not very creative and have difficulty forming original ideas. Co-operation and conformity are important to them, and individualism is an alien concept. The few original cultural ideas that Miners have ever had are collected as rituals which are performed regularly and repeatedly at large gatherings. They seem to find these performances reassuring and enjoyable.

Miners reproduce by budding, but their young are not considered people until they are able to walk unaided, and are frequently eaten unless they are specifically designated to reach maturity -- they are considered a delicacy. Some Miners can live for hundreds of years; they die when their innards begin to degrade and crystallize, eventually turning completely to solid rock.

When the Precursors disappeared, the Miners who were left on worlds without the correct mineral composition to sustain them died out. On other worlds, they adapted to the local conditions, and survived until they were discovered by the younger races exploring their home systems. Almost every system has Miners somewhere. There are doubtless some that have not yet been rediscovered.

Miners are frequently employed in space-based construction projects, and of course in the airless mines for which they were designed. They are usually paid in minerals, which they eat. It is speculated that if no-one had ever offered the Miners payment, they would gladly work for free. The Kathrals keep their own Miners as slaves, and they don't appear to be particularly interested in revolting.

Miners divide themselves up into tribes on the basis of their world of origin. Some tribes are huge and some are tiny; few of them have anything in common except biology. The precise biology also varies; depending on a particular tribe's mineral diet for the past million years, it might produce giant Miners, midget Miners, frequently spawning Miners, long-lived Miners, or other variants.

Most tribes consider other tribes to be faintly disturbing. Miners generally don't bother to learn other languages, except what they need to know in order to understand the instructions of their employers. Experienced employers know that employing more than one tribe on one project inevitably leads to inefficiency and dissatisfaction.

Occasionally, a freakish mutation causes the birth of a thoughtful, curious Miner who wants something more out of life than the endless tedium of drilling, digging or welding (although this happens extremely rarely, since young that are seen exhibiting too much curiosity are promptly eaten). Such Miners usually don't last long among their fellows, and set out into the wider universe to find something more interesting to do.

Librarians

The Librarians are energy beings who live in the coronae of stars and absorb pure radiation. They collect and give out knowledge. Various conspiracy theories suggest that they are either surviving remnants of the disappeared Precursors, Precursors in their new evolved form, or Precursors who have devolved into something less useful. If any of this is true, the Librarians aren't telling.

SpaceOpera

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