• Welcome to the new COTI server. We've moved the Citizens to a new server. Please let us know in the COTI Website issue forum if you find any problems.
  • We, the systems administration staff, apologize for this unexpected outage of the boards. We have resolved the root cause of the problem and there should be no further disruptions.

Celirans - a Minor Race

Golan2072

SOC-14 1K
Admin Award
Marquis
(OTU or atleast OTU-variant)

The Ancients had an interest in Humanity; what kind of interest, and for what reason, no one knows. But they have taken human from Terra and planted them on many worlds, sometimes genetically modifying them.

One of the less known and more bizzare of these genetic experiments are the Celirans. They were, apparantly, an Ancient experiments of trans-species genetics; fragments of pseudo-reptilian (Droyne? 'Shadows'-Race?) DNA were inserted into their genome (sp?), giving them a strange appearance and a strange biochemistry. They might also have been modified to fit their low-gravity world and the warm swamp-forests of its near-polar regions (the equator is a scorching and uninhabitable desert), possibly as a part of a colonization project by the Ancients. Celirans are only partially interfertile with other Human subspeices, bearing unfertile offsprings; only TL12+ genetic techniques could modify the hybrid zygote to allow for a fertile offspiring.

Physiology: Celirans are, on avarage, 150cm tall (not including tail) and weight an avarage of 50kg. They posses a thick, muscular tail which could carry their weight on their lower-gravity homeworld (but not on Size 6 or more worlds). Their body, generally Human in form (they are genetically-modified Humans after all), is covered with gentle, flexible, greenish scales. Their eyes are typically a bit larger than 'baseline' Human eyes and typically of a yellowish hue, with nictating membranes and slit pupils, defending their eyes from biting insects and allowing them to see well in their worlds' dark swamp-forests, respectively. They have thick, oily hair on their heads (in black to dark red in color) and the males have a relatively low amount of facial hair. They walk with a slight bend forward to compensate for their tail.

Psionics: A peculiarity of the Celiran genome has made for a strange phenomena: Celiran males have a very loe PSI potential (even if trained), while females have a statistically higher-than-Human-normal chance of having a high PSI potential. This had a profound effect on their society as all of their three major cultures was controlled, atleast in its early era, by PSI-capable female "priestesses" or "shamans". Unlike the Zhodani, however, the more traditional parts of Celiran society see Psionics as a sacred thing, which should be controlled by elaborate rituals. Modernization (they are TL8 in the current Imperial year of 1115) has changed this somewhat, but there are still lingering superstitions regarding the use of Psionics in the Celiran race, which are quite a religious people even today.

History: There were, apprantly, atleast three main Ancient facilities on Renya, the Celiran homeworld or Renja (pronounded "Ren-Ya"); One was near the South Pole's tropical and subtropical areas, the second was near the Northern equivalent area, and the third was near the equatorial deserts (probably on the border between desert and dry savannah). After the Final War, the primitive celirans inhabitated the areas around this facilities. The two tropical civilizations adapted well to their wet, densly-vegetated homes, eventually developing tree-villages and tree-cities; their main form of early agriculture was fishing. The third civilization arose in the dry savannahs, possessing a nomadic lifestyle and eventually domesticating a certain local pseudo-reptilian beast as both a beast of burden and a meat source; they eventually became traders carrying goods between the Northern cities, but were unable to cross the equatorial deserts to reach the southern civilization.

The common thing between all three cultures were their religions, which were quite similar, and initially based on female shamans who tried to contact the "Mother Goddess" (possibly inspired by a half-ruined Ancient AI burried in a bombarded ruin, possesing PSI powers but quite malfunctioning, and thus sending out strange PSI-signals; it finally ceased functioning about 10,000 years ago, when the Celirans were late TL0, but it didn't effect religion much, as "She" was only seldom active even beforehand). However, different conditions resulted in three main cultures and religions. The dried swamps of the south lended themselves to the raising of rice (one of the species imported by the Ancients from Terra to Renja), which led to a more and more centralized form of government, a theocracy ruled by the Matriarch and her (PSI-capable, but using their "sacred" powers only rarely) Priestesses, leading to the invention of most TL1 techniques and to the rising of the first true cities of Renya 5,000 years ago, built from baked mud-bricks.

-- To Be Continued beyond TL1 later on --
 
Well interesting. Another thought is that they are uplifted Teropods. A thought or possibly mixed with them. Maybe one of the things I just thought is that the anchients are actually from earth originally too and are teropods who have acheived technology and decided ot remove all evidence of their inhabitation of earth.

For the answer to the burnign question what is a teropod go here. http://www.prehistoria.piwko.pl/gal_theropoda.htm
 
The real problem is that the Teropods (as all other dinosaurs) were gone for almost 60 million years before the Ancients have appeared in the scene.
 
Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
There are races older than the Ancients that travelled the stars...
"There are being in the Universe, older than my race or your race; the oldest of them are the Shadows - we have no other name for them"
- Delenn, Babylon 5
 
THE FIRST STARFARERS
We place the age of the universe at more than fifteen billion years.
The oldest stars in Charted Space are dim red dwarfs some ten billion years old.
Intelligent life first appeared in Charted Space more than two billion years ago.
Intelligent life first began sublight travel between the stars more than a billion years ago. Short-lived beings found sublight travel tedious and frustrating and contented themselves with confinement to a few star systems. Longer
lived races ranged far and wide using generation ships, cold sleep, and even electronic personality transfers.
The first jump drive was an unrealized dream until only 300,000 years ago. By a fluke of evolution, a single supergenius was born to the pastoral Droyne, and under his leadership this ancient race travelled extensively throughout a region nearly 1000 parsecs across. The race
worked wonders throughout Charted Space and then
destroyed themselves in a wide-ranging war that shattered worlds and destroyed civilizations.
Today, the Droyne live in independent communities on many separate worlds. They avoid entanglements and political disputes; they live peacefully with their neighbors; and their hand-built jump drives are the best that can be found anywhere.
MT Referee's Manual, page 9 ;)
 
Sigg,

MT also introduced the 'Sparklers' a psionic jump drive using race that predated the Ancients.

Leave it to Traveller to contradict itself, huh? ;)


Have fun,
Bill
 
2-4601,

With the northern and southern 'temperate' regions isolated from each other by the equator-gridling desert, wouldn't there be quite a bit of genetic drift between both branchs of Celirans?

Even with some cross fertilization, humans on Earth produced 'racial' types. Look at Eurasia and the differences there despite all the efforts of the 'horse barbarians'. ;)

More isolated peoples drifted even further. 40K years of relative isolation produced the Australian aborigenes and hobbit-like Tasmanian islanders for instance.

What would 300K years of no contact between north and south produce on Renja?

Have fun,
Bill
 
Hi Bill.

Traveller is nothing if not consistent - it consistently contradicts itself
file_22.gif


The "sparklers" never made it into canon though, they were going to be a major player in the Zhodani/Droyne alien races book companion adventure by DGP, but alas that remains as just a few comments in an article or two :(

And whose to say that they didn't achieve their psionic jump drive after grandfather created/discovered jump space ;)
file_23.gif


Prior to his invention of jump their psionic teleportation drive may have been limited to sublight speeds ;)
 
Originally posted by Bill Cameron:
2-4601,

With the northern and southern 'temperate' regions isolated from each other by the equator-gridling desert, wouldn't there be quite a bit of genetic drift between both branchs of Celirans?

Even with some cross fertilization, humans on Earth produced 'racial' types. Look at Eurasia and the differences there despite all the efforts of the 'horse barbarians'. ;)

More isolated peoples drifted even further. 40K years of relative isolation produced the Australian aborigenes and hobbit-like Tasmanian islanders for instance.

What would 300K years of no contact between north and south produce on Renja?

Have fun,
Bill
Also keep in mind "cultural drift", based on the different available domisticatable (sp?) species of animals and plants. an Earth example would be the impact of rice (which requires the joint effort of many people to raise) on the East Asiatic culturues as opposed to the influence of wheat and rye (sp?; could be raised in family-sized parcels) on the middle-eastern/european cultures.

I like where this is going; it would be very refreshing to have an alien race with more than a single culture and a single genotype.

And at what stage would contact between the two cultures be possible? I was thinking about the near-desert nomad subculture findiong a way to cross the deep desert using large carts (shading the passengers and carrying alot of water) drawn by domesticated desert pseudo-lizards.
 
Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
The "sparklers" never made it into canon though...
Sigg,

Knightfall.

The Progenitors are the Sparklers. DGP was going to recycle them for the job. They'd even penciled them in as the reason behind that psionic Core Route map Grandfather left for the Zhodani to find.


Have fun,
Bill
 
2-4601,
One of the things that bugs me most is when alien races are things like a uniform color, head shape, etc. I would at least differentiate between the three groups with a phenotype difference of some kind. Maybe different tail lengths and thicknesses (based on the environment), and some gradations in color of the scales.
 
Bill,
sorry, I should have said the sparkler's psionic jump drive never made it into canon ;)

I have a theory that the primordials/sparklers travelled by teleportation drive at fast STL speeds for hundreds of thousands of years before the Ancients appeared on the scene - think of it like a psionic version of stutterwarp, but limited to STL.
Thus equipped they were able to travel far and wide, their minds linked in their living ships.

When Grandfather finally discovered them he made investigating their migrations one of his priorites, and he had something they did not - a means to travel FTL.

At some point the primordials must have encountered one of the Ancient scouting expeditions, learning the secret of jump space in the process.

There's a bit more to the story, but I've derailed this thread enough...

Cheers.

Mike
 
Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
sorry, I should have said the sparkler's psionic jump drive never made it into canon
Sigg,

I'm the one who should apologize. I thought you hadn't known about Knightfall. :(


Have fun,
Bill
 
Originally posted by Fritz88:
One of the things that bugs me most is when alien races are things like a uniform color, head shape, etc.
Fritz88,

Very good point. Look at the variations among humans for example and we have far less variable bits on average in our genome too.


Have fun,
Bill
 
Originally posted by Employee 2-4601:
And at what stage would contact between the two cultures be possible? I was thinking about the near-desert nomad subculture findiong a way to cross the deep desert using large carts (shading the passengers and carrying alot of water) drawn by domesticated desert pseudo-lizards.
2-4601,

Had to say. It depends on how 'thick' that equatorial desert belt is. Flip the problem on its head and look at it.

Instead of a desert, make it a world-girdling ocean with only two continents at the poles. Making matters worse, the locals can't use sails(1) and instead must row across the seas. How far can they row while still carrying the food and water they need for a round trip? (Remember that last bit)

We can help the locals by placing island chains at which they can resupply. The islands on our ocean world would be oasis on your desert world.

The locals must think 'round trip' because they don't know what is on the 'other side'. The Europeans during the Age of Exploration already knew they would find food and water where they were heading. China, India, the Spice Islands, all those places were known to exist and had been visited by other routes. The Europeans knew they could resupply for the voyage home once they got there. For the most part the Europeans knew already about their destinations, it was the routes that were unknown.

Compare that to what the Celirans know. As far as the southern Celirans know everything 'above' a certain latitude is desert. You could reach the other pole and find nothing but sand. The northern Celirans know just as little, head south and you'll find sand.

Sure, if you know the world is round, that it orbits your sun, the effects of latitude on temperature, and all those things you can theorize there must be another temperate zone like your's on the other side of the world. However, the Celirans are going to be exploring before they can come up with those theories. Besides, are you going trust your life and the lives of your exploration party on a theory? Starting in the southern inhabited zone, you'd have to travel some distance north while watching tempertures rise before you begin to see them fall.

So, how wide is your desert and how many oasis are there? Answer those questions and you'll answer how easily your two branchs of Celirans find each other.

Have you considered this bit? Females are powerful psi, right? Would really gifted and powerful female be aware of the Celirans in the opposite hemisphere? The Celirans could be in regular psionic communication millennia before the two branchs physically meet.

Depending on how powerful the priestesses and shamans are, routes could be established across the desert between certain known points. The routes would be established and supplied much like the cache method used by early Antarctic explorers.


Have fun,
Bill

1 - I added that bit to make the example 'fit' your desert world better. Until you reach a certian TL you can't 'sail' across sand.
 
Originally posted by Fritz88:
2-4601,
One of the things that bugs me most is when alien races are things like a uniform color, head shape, etc. I would at least differentiate between the three groups with a phenotype difference of some kind. Maybe different tail lengths and thicknesses (based on the environment), and some gradations in color of the scales.
That's the exact reason why I said that I like where this was going. All Aslan are of ONE culture. All K'Kree. All Droyne. All Zhodani and Vilani and even (to a lesser degree) the Solomani and Vargr.

There are three very distinct groups of Celirans, with tails ranging from long, thick and muscley (north), though a semi-atrophied (sp?) tail but stronger upper body (south) to a flat but muscley tail (near-desert-dwellers; it helps in running, lizard-style, rather than climbing). Skin pigmentation ranges from bright green (north) through greyish-green (south) to dark brown-green (near-desert).

All subspeicies are interfertile (similarly to dog or cat breeds); however, they have mostly remained distinct even in their modern, STL-colonizing era due to cultural, political and religious reasons.

And remember that each area had several sub-cultures and even several genetic groups, but those melded togather far more easily due to modernization than the inter-regional differences. Yes, they share many characteristics (for example, their religions tend to have a "mother goddess") but differ in many others (three completely different religions - one centralized in the south, one more "network-like" in the north, and an informal "wise woman"/shaman version in the near-desert areas - all worship a very similar goddess, but in very different ways).

There would probably also be a fourth culture/genetic group of Spacers - keep in mind that the Celirans haven't discovered Jump Drive on their own, and thus Renja's system (and the neighbouting ones too, thanks to STL sleeper ships) got ALOT of interplanetary development; the Celirans who got used to living in spacecraft (usually in zero-G or rotation-"gravity") have developed their own culture, somewhat similar to the near-desert one, quite nomadic.
 
Originally posted by Bill Cameron:
Have you considered this bit? Females are powerful psi, right? Would really gifted and powerful female be aware of the Celirans in the opposite hemisphere? The Celirans could be in regular psionic communication millennia before the two branchs physically meet.
Thanks for pointing this out - that's a very interesting idea! And that would make things a little more interesting culture-wise too: Priestess/Shamans, with their millenia of contact with their sisters in remote areas, would probably be far more tolerant to other cultures and even religions than the masses (males and weak-PSI females - remember that not ALL females have strong PSI, they just have a slightly better-than-avarage chance to have PSI, and male rarely have PSI), which is the reverse of many Terran situations.
 
By the way, Celiran PSI is far more frequently in the spheres of Telepathy, Calirovoyance (sp?) and (to a lesser degree) Awareness than in Teleportation or Telekenesis (sp?).
 
Back
Top