Humans

/ˈhjumənz/

Stats

XP Available at puberty: 200

Attributes: WIL +1

Body class: B

Physical Overview

Humans are the most recent offshoot of the great apes of Earth, and the up-and-coming superpower of the Orion Arm. In terms of personality, humans are unusually stubborn - they often persist in their beliefs far past any level of sense would indicate they should stop. Whether this is a blessing or a curse is in the eye of the beholder, but if nothing else, it may well be humans' defining factor.

Humans are bipedal and walk upright, and use their two five-fingered hands to manipulate objects. They are warm-blooded and largely hairless, except for a few parts of the body.

Blood

Humans have red, iron-based blood to supply oxygen and energy to their cells. While it normally clots safely after injuries, there are a few major arteries which can cause them to bleed to their death.

Senses

Humans are often considered to have five senses, though what counts as a 'sense' is a little fuzzier than a simple definition allows, and the number of senses a human has is much higher by some counts.

The senses of sight and hearing seem to be the most crucial to modern humans. Visual information coming from two lensed, irised, and individually rotating eyes capable of sensing three different wavelengths between 400 and 700 nm. Humans have a hearing range of roughly 20 Hz to 20 kHz, and are capable of distinguishing sound location with high accuracy thanks to their specially shaped ears.

Reproduction

Humans reproduce sexually, with the males contributing genetic material to a fetus which grows in the female's womb. Usually, both parents contribute to raising the offspring produced, but not always.

Genetic Oddity

All other known races throughout the Orion Arm Network - Bactarans, Vorans, Guigu, Symtraya, as well as all the plant and animal life from their worlds - have one unique gene that controls a key, irreducable piece of biochemistry. This gene suggests a commonality of all of those lifeforms, possibly implying a panspermia-based origin for all those species. It is possible that such a hypothetical panspermia was made possible thanks to the warp bridges, though the hypothesis does not explain how a gene-carrying life form could have survived bridge travel without a BTD.

Life on Earth, however, does not have this gene, and appears to have a unique abiogenesis compared to the other species in the Arm, presuming the panspermia hypothesis is correct. This uniqueness is an ongoing area of study and speculation.

Culture

Family & Relationships

Some humans are monogamous, though this is largely an aspect of culture and religion, and modern humans can often choose from a variety of relationship and family unit types. Indeed, non-monogamous relationships and families grow in popularity as time as a result of a number of factors, not the least of which is the reduction in the power of religion over the cultural zeitgeist. This trend towards nonmonogamy is most prominent in colonies beyond Earth.

Religion

Humans practice a number of widely varying religions, but the most prominent are Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Humans that choose to leave Earth and settle elsewhere have a higher tendency towards atheism than the population that stays on Earth. One notable exception is the population of the Venus settlements, which is heavily Buddhist.

Language

Humans primarily communicate verbally using sound produced in their throat and passed through their mouths; the shape of their mouth (throat, tongue, roof of the mouth, teeth, and lips being the primary sound manipulators) can be changed to produce different sounds.

Humans also have written languages, which are nearly as varied as the spoken languages. Most written human languages can be written easily using simple drawing utensils like pencils; the few that require more specific tools are dead languages, such as Cuneiform.

Language Families

All human languages are considered to be a part of the language world of Earth, even if they've evolved further on other worlds.

Humans have created a dizzying array of languages and families over the generations, but as humanity takes to the stars, they start to consolidate. The European, Slavic, Sino, Native American, and Indo-Iranian language families are the main divisions of language for humans, with European (English and Spanish), Slavic (Russian), and Sino (Chinese & Japanese) being most common among the people that will be found in Afterverse.