Pelted
The Pelted are races created by human scientists blending animal DNA with their own genome to create sentient human-animal hybrids. Following their exodus from Earth, they went on to form the Alliance, later joined by both Earth and the Eldritch.
The core races of the Alliance are truly races: they can interbreed. In fact, the major races were created by selective breeding during the Exodus, and helped create the cultural differences that can be seen now in the different races.
The Races of the Pelted
First Generation. These were engineered by humans on Earth.
Second Generation. These were segregated into cultural groups during the Exodus.
Third Generation. These were engineered by the Pelted themselves.
Physiognomy
Note:
- Four Digits: claws
- Five Digits: nails
Apparently there is a 'claw bed type 2' which gives one to wonder. [1] I'm going to guess that one is semi-retractable and the other is fully-retractable; since Kellen has the Type 2, I should look through that story to see if there's any reference to his hands and decide based on that.
Faces
- Stratum 1
- 5+ animal teeth
- more likely to have manes than hair
- ears usually set back from face
- usually born with bifurcated lips
- Stratum 2
- 3-4 animal teeth
- blunted faces
- still more likely to have manes, but first eyebrows start showing
- ears still set back from face
- Stratum 3
- 1-2 animal teeth
- fur is finer and shorter: hair is more hair-like and less mane-like
- eyebrows common
- ears closer to face
- Stratum 4
- no animal teeth
- Type A: no fur at all
- Type B: Some very fine fur
- Hair is finer, like human hair
- ears close to face
Bodies
For the digitigrade species (or the digitigrade members of species with both plantigrade and digitigrade members, like the Harat-Shar and Hinichi). These are also known as primary load-bearing member muscular (as opposed to the plantigrade stance, 'primary load-bearing member skeletal')
Nominal
- Nominal Body Type A (short, muscled)
- Nominal Body Type B (short, less dense, builds muscle less easily)
Attenuated
70% more prone to posture and bone problems than the nominal body types [2]
- Attenuated Body Type A (tall, muscled/dense)
- Attenuated Body Type B (tall, rangy/thin/willowy) (rarest healthy body type) [3]
Retrograde
There is exactly one retrograde body type, Retrograde Body (sometimes known as Dwarf Body). Digitigrade individuals with the Retrograde Body Type are throwbacks to the original designs, which were about three feet tall. The Retrograde Body Type is the actual rarest body type, but it's not a normal or standard one; healers consider it a disability because of the many health problems that are genetically linked to it.
History
I should probably move the "pre-formation of the Alliance" history block from Alliance over here.
When the Pelted speak of their second generation, they are usually referring to the races that segregated themselves during the exodus and went on to colonize their separate worlds, the Hinichi and the Harat-Shar.
The third generation, then, are the species created by the Pelted themselves, following in the footsteps of their human makers but determined this time to do it right. They created three species before they stopped. The first of these was the Glaseah: centauroids with such a weird mix of animals it's amazing they look at all coherent. They are short, squat, skunk-like individuals with a high esper rating and unflappable dispositions. The Pelted who made them created a language for them, chose a planet for them, designed a culture for them and imprinted it into their dreaming minds while they were floating in their decanters... and then, when enough individuals had been prepared, the Pelted put them down on their world and stepped back to let them develop on their own.
Within a generation, the engineers realized they'd made an enormous mistake. In a knee-jerk reaction to humanity's most egregious reason for creating them, the Pelted went too far in the other direction: the Glaseah had no sex drive at all. When stealthed observers saw no children being born, they decided to reveal themselves to the species they'd gone through such trouble to plant... only to discover the Glaseah were unsurprised by their arrival. Fooling espers—even before decanting—apparently doesn't work very well. So together the Pelted and the Glaseah worked to solve the reproductive crisis as best they could, and the Glaseah were admitted into the Alliance with barely a nod to the fiction created for their birth.
The Pelted's second attempt was the Ciracaana. As before, they were designed and created in sufficient numbers to sustain themselves, a planet was found for them and a culture and language created for them. This time the experiment took and the Ciracaana flourished until the Pelted returned to make "first contact" with them... only to slip in negotiations and reveal their real relationship. Some of the Ciracaana took this better than others, and the result was not... exactly... a civil war, but more a civil... disagreement. Some Ciracaana were disgusted by their faked-up origins; others didn't care that it was faked up, it was theirs now and they were keeping it. This resulted in the situation Carevei observed in "The Elements of Freedom," where there are modern tech cities with Ciracaana who've chosen to embrace the Alliance, while "native" Ciracaana cleave to the way of life that has come to work for them.
There remains in the culture a great tension between these two groups, and even within them; of people who've made choices but remain aware of the path they didn't take, and who question it, as well as people who steadfastly believe in their own choice and believe the rest of the species is stupid for not having joined them. The current detente is uncomfortable, which is why the high-tech Ciracaana keep to their two modern cities and the natives avoid them.
The final attempt at creating artificial aliens resulted in the Phoenix, tall bipedal avians who were seeded on a low-gravity world where they could fly. They had no problems colonizing their world, but they completely ignored the culture and language that the Pelted attempted to encode in their subconscious minds... instead, in less than a generation, they spontaneously evolved their own ideas and beliefs, very alien ones. When the Pelted returned to their world, they were so taken aback that they decided to come clean about their involvement. The Phoenix didn't care at all; as far as they were concerned, the Eye at the Center of the Void had used the Pelted as its tool, and they regarded the Pelted as no more than midwives, if that. They truly were the aliens the Pelted had been attempting to create with their experiments.
At this point, the Pelted gave up the genetic engineering of new species. They had done their best to approach it more ethically than the humans who'd created them and they were glad of the three species that now existed because of their decision... but in the end, they were too aware that they were experimenting with people. The success of the Phoenix only underscored their uncertainty, because they had no idea how they'd gotten the Phoenix to work...![4]