Humankind - An Overview
Chains of nodal connection between stars are sometimes referred to as “starstreams”, a term coined by the first subspace traveler, Blasky Yao Hsiang. However, the phrase “starstream” can be somewhat misleading. Although the Node connections between stars do form a sort of chain, if plotted through ordinary space-time, a human ship traveling in subspace will not be crossing those regions of space as a physical object. The only evidence of the ship’s passage in ordinary-space time is series of gravitational pulses, which indicate the presence of the vessel in subspace. Although a sufficiently sensitive scanner might be able to determine the mass of human fleet in motion or the number of vessels traveling together, those vessels cannot be contacted or intercepted in ordinary space-time.
All forward and maneuvering thrust aboard a human vessel is otherwise created by simple mass-to-energy conversion, the principles of which are understood by all star-faring races.
Physical and Social Characteristics: Humans appear to have undergone several conflicting stages of evolution on their home world. Bipedal, they walk erect with a locking knee and a hip structure evolved to allow maximum elevation from the ground and minimum exposure of skin surface to direct radiation from their sun. This suggests a period of development in an arid, hot grassland region. However, the smooth, often hairless hide and subcutaneous fat of the human body would also suggest a “water” phase at some point during their evolution, when humans may have lived a partially aquatic existence. In any case, the resulting modern human is a curious beast; height in the adult human ranges from 100-200 centimeters, while mass ranges from 50-150 kilograms, and a variety of superficial differences can be observed in pigmentation. Since these differences constitute so little variation in DNA there is no practical difference between one “race” of humans and another.
Humans are divided into two sexes, male and female. There are some morphological differences between the two, but most other sentient species cannot tell the two human genders apart. (Since there are only minor differences in physical capacity and behavior between male and female humans, this seldom causes problems of more than a comedic variety.) The exception to this rule would be the Hivers, who seem to have a natural advantage in identifying male and female members of any species, perhaps due to their sensitivity to airborne estrogen. Hivers have been known to target females first in ship-to-ship boarding actions, which can have unpleasant psychological effects on human crews.Humans tend to form family groupings based on a single breeding pair, one male, one female, and their offspring from current and past pairings. A human female can produce several offspring during the course of her breeding career, although gestation and birthing of human infants can often be fatal without proper medical support.
Recent History
Due to certain peculiarities of human physiology and psychology, life on the human home world became very unpleasant in the post-industrial age. The expected lifespan of the average human being was enormously increased due to advances in biology and medicine, but the breeding behavior of the majority of humans was not adjusted to take this into account. Many humans also refused to modify their industrial consumption and pollution.
Accordingly, from the beginning of the so-called “Industrial Revolution” onward, humans began very rapidly to both overpopulate and environmentally devastate their own home planet. Certain unfortunate distribution philosophies created a steadily growing number of humans with little or no access to vital resources, while others remained wealthy, overfed and wasteful. The impoverished fringe population rapidly grew, despite the pressures of starvation, disease and environmental toxins on their proliferation, until they outnumbered the so-called elite of the “developed world” by a factor of ten. The resulting planetary wars and limited nuclear exchanges were even more gruesome and destructive than the effects of overpopulation and careless industrialization had been; a sizable percentage of the homeworld’s native species were lost, as well as roughly 70% of the human population.
During the Reconstruction Age, a philosophical shift was observed in the surviving population of humans. The newly emerging Consortium governments more easily signed armistices, environmental protection accords and peace agreements. War in general was no longer universally revered as the most valuable and noble of all human endeavors, as had often been the case in previous centuries. A tendency toward cooperation and mutual support was encouraged.
With the discovery of the Node drive, a motive for further cooperation among the various human Consortia was found, and the available resources of several governments were pooled to fund the research and development of the first interstellar space ship. Christened the Nova Maria, the ship made several successful Node jumps to and from nearby star systems before the first deep space colony was planned.
As the Nova Maria boarded its passengers for launch, intent on the first adventure of space colonization for the human species, tragedy struck. A Hiver nesting fleet, consisting of a dreadnaught and several support vessels, arrived in the human’s home system. The planetary defenses of the human race, which had never before encountered another star-faring species, were negligible, and easily brushed aside by superior Hiver firepower. The Nova Maria was destroyed in the first volley with all hands lost, and the human home world was bombarded from space for 48 hours afterward, resulting in massive devastation and catastrophic loss of life.
Only the legacy of humankind’s suicidal past eventually saved their home world from complete destruction. After nearly 36 hours of struggle, the curators of the planet’s former ICBM arsenal finally managed to reactivate their remaining stock of ancient missiles, which had been stored for decommission in the silos of the North American and Asian continents. A total of 3,000 fission and fusion bombs were launched at the descending Hiver fleet, destroying its full complement of destroyers and causing serious damage to its dreadnaught.
Thereafter, the remains of Hiver fleet left orbit and limped on to parts presently unknown.
Rebuilding from this devastation has taken the human race several years. Although the human home world is now lightly populated and there is little pressure to expand, certain peculiarities of human psychology have re-emerged from their slumber. The human race has re-learned its historical taste for war, and SolForce (the united human military) never lacks for willing volunteers. Most human spacers have bitter memories of the Hiver attack, and are old enough to have lost friends and family in the fires, floods, and chaos that followed. Accordingly, although the official motto of their Space Corps is “Per Ardua Ad Astra” — “Through Hardship, the Stars” — the unofficial motto of humans in space is “Repensum est Canicula”: “Payback is a Bitch”.
The Discovery of Subspace
The first subspace traveler, Blasky Yao Hsiang, was a solar physicist assigned to the Sol Prima research station. Early in the year 2371, Blasky was assigned to perform the first penetrating scan of Sol’s deep core using an experimental high-energy resonance beam. One of the station’s hardened research pods had been fitted with the ring-shaped scanning array; the pod was launched from the station with Blasky aboard to operate the controls, while the rest of the station’s 18-man crew eagerly monitored their screens. The moment that Blasky’s scan was initiated, however, the tiny research bell disappeared from view, and was no longer detectable by any means available to the Sol Prima monitoring station. Fearing that the scientist had suffered a catastrophic equipment failure or lost power, the station quickly dispatched a rescue team to search for his bell and the precious scanning array, hoping to recover the man and his equipment before a decaying orbit could drop both into the sun’s corona. After several minutes of frantic scan-and-search, Sol Prima received a feeble signal from Blasky’s pod. The scientist’s calm voice was heard from a distance of over 800 million kilometers; in less than ten seconds, he had been miraculously transported from a close orbit of Sol to a close orbit around the nearby gas giant Jupiter. For the next two hours, as his team of solar scientists desperately attempted to find some means of reaching and rescuing their comrade, Blasky made a series of burst transmissions to the nearby Storm Watch probe in Jupiter’s orbit. The full-length recording of these transmissions is still played to first-year students of Node mechanics, and can be a highly emotional experience for those who have never heard them before. As Blasky’s probe slowly descended into Jupiter’s atmosphere, the scientist gave a highly detailed account of his experience in subspace, describing the gravitational “current” which seemed to pull him away from Sol’s orbit with blinding speed. He expressed his regret in having expended so much fuel fighting this astounding gravimetric pull, and speculated that his pod might have traveled much further had he not engaged thrust to fight the current within the “starstream”. When Blasky could add no further detail to his description of subspace, he calculated the volume of fuel he had expended in resisting the gravitational flux, and the distance and direction he had traveled. His tentative conclusion was that the force acting upon his ship had been the gravitational pull of the nearby star Wolf 359; later experiments in subspace travel proved him correct, as Wolf 359 was the nearest node in Sol’s subspace chain.
After carefully re-checking his data, including the level of energy he had used to initiate his solar scan, Blasky ejected his data core with the ship’s tracking beacon attached. He died several minutes later in the crushing depths of Jupiter’s liquid hydrogen sea. The amazing discovery and tragic death of this remarkable scientist became the planet-wide impetus for a return to manned space exploration; it was often argued in the months immediately following, that the budget cuts which had forced ISA to place an unmanned probe in Jupiter’s orbit, rather than a manned research facility, had cost Blasky Yao Hsiang his life.
