SWarr Background:
Terran Humanity, frightened by the size and power of the Ziru Sirka, determined to expand and grow strong, beginning a dark path. Genassist was created to genetically alter Terran and alien lifeforms for food, later expanding operations to create altered Humans and uplifted animals. Genassist pioneered artificial wombs and Tuber colonies. On worlds with hostile environments, test-tube colonists were altered to thrive; on benign worlds, colonists were normal. In either case, they were educated by tapes feeding the subconscious mind, teaching what was desired. A side effect was a lack of cultural sub-divisions. The colonists saw themselves as Terrans first, last , and always. The complex interweaving and varying loyalties, friendships, and interactions of a full culture was bypassed, creating ‘tuber zombies’. Other colonies were set up, of various types:
1) Military colonies – bases permanently staffed by non-transient personnel, partly as a garrison, partly as bureaucratic/political administration.
2) Economic infrastructure – mining, agriculture, etc. Usually sponsored by the UN, sometimes companies.
3) Émigrés – dissidents, would-be pioneers, and cultural sub-groups seeking to protect a cultural identity, or to create a new one, refugees, relocated ghetto dwellers, and so forth. Some were voluntary colonists; many were not.
4) Prisons/Gulags – Criminals, homeless, ghetto-dwellers, and occasional political prisoners (defeated politicians, protesters, activists, lawyers, etc.).
Many colonies were founded in what later became Magyar, Reaver’s Deep, and Iwahfuah sectors, before the rise of the Aslan Heirate. As the Terran Confederation consolidated it’s hold on the former Vilani Imperium, atrocities and abuses piled up. Eventually, Admiral Hiroshi Estigarribia was forced to create the Rule of Man, usurping power from the Terran Confederation. This reduced the pace of war crimes and tyranny, but by no means ended it. Several colonies in Magyar sector, of various types, fled in hastily converted habitats, rightly fearing slavery, purges, and pogroms.
Meantime, the Zodia colonies – primarily of North American, Australian, and Japanese extraction, with a smattering of other nationalities – had been founded in soon-to-be Aslan space. The newly formed Aslan Heirate eventually contacted them. Intentionally far from Human space, and with little to no contact with Terra, the Zodian colonies befriended the Aslan, some of whom chose to settle in the colonies.
Many Zodian Humans became culturally Aslan, and others formed a fusion of cultures.
The Zodians had access to the GenAssist technology, and, as the Aslan culture became more prevalent, many desired to be more like them. Thus a Human/Aslan hybrid project developed. While DNA modification of extant creatures is very limited, requiring surgery rather than gengineering, succeeding generations could be modified to a larger degree, until the final form came to fruition. The project took approximately 50 years to result in a viable form, capable, by design of dominant inter-fertility with Humans. Unfortunately, inter-fertility with the Aslan was quite limited, producing only ‘mules’, when it worked at all.
The hybrids were named “S’Wai’yorh”, Trokh for ‘thought-shaped’, frequently mispronounced as “Swarr”. The majority of volunteers for conversion were of Japanese extraction or culture, but many Zodians, of all heritages adopted and raised S’Wai’yorh children, acted as surrogate parents, or donated genetic material for testing and production. This allowed a larger and safer gene pool.
The S’Wai’yorh were a bipedal felinid form, with humanoid legs, rather than the digitigrade legs of Aslan (For those who have seen Frank S. Shewmake’s Worlds Beyond RPG, look up the Swarr, they were the inspiration. WB is a Traveller knock-off with a lot of interesting material, much of which I am adapting for use in my game).
A’rKa’durr was selected as the ‘homeworld’ of the new species, and they began colonising it before the gengineering project was completed.
About 10 years after completing the S’Wai’yorh project, the Zodians found that they had new troubles. The refugees arrived, bringing word of events in the (unknown to the Zodians) Second Imperium. Nonetheless, the Zodians welcomed their brethren, settling them with the S’Wai’yorh on A’rKa’durr, as it had the greatest capacity for the influx.
Elements of the Terran Confederation Navy, operating under illegal orders from Terra, had begun rounding up colonies, building slave labor pools and taking children to raise as soldiers. This was all part of a conspiracy of various elements of the UN to retake “their” empire back from Estigarribia’s successors. When they found that several colonies had gotten wind of their operations and fled, they determined to find them, prevent word getting back to Dingir and Hub, and carry out their original mission.
Eventually finding A’rKa’durr and the refugees, they attacked. Naturally, their victims lacked sophisticated military technology, and so were hard-pressed to resist. Out of 3 million refugees, 1.5 million Zodian Humans, 800,000 S’Wai’yorh, and 93,000 Aslan, only 2.7 million Humans, 450,000 S’Wai’yorh, and 27,000 Aslan survived. The planet was reduced to near-un-inhabitability due to liberal use of nuclear weapons.
Aid from the Zodians arrived just in time to prevent complete genocide. The Terran fleet was destroyed, but at great cost to the rescuers. The Zodian economy suffered great upheaval due to the losses, both in combat, and in aid to the A’rKa’durr survivors. Since no one was certain if couriers might have escaped, the Zodians decided A’rKa’durr had to be evacuated, and the planet abandoned. Any returning Terran expedition would find a dead world, hopefully with no trace of fleeing survivors. In order to further the deception, the planet was bombed further, reducing it’s biosphere to complete un-inhabitability by any complex organism.
The Zodians offered refuge, with some trepidation, but the survivors declined, preferring to get further away from the Imperial madness. Most of the survivors of A’rKa’durr, including 15,000 Aslan chose to go.
2 years were spent repairing, rebuilding, refurbishing, and replenishing the colony ships, mostly by those going, while the Zodian colonies began a military buildup which ultimately proved unnecessary, as the Zodian worlds were not recontacted by Humaniti until after the renaissance of the Third Imperium.
Eventually, provisioned and ready, the colonists left, heading spinward.
Before reaching the Rift, they precipitously discovered a point singularity at a jump point. 2 ships are known to have survived the misjump, which took months to complete and stranded them so far from known space that no recognisable stars could be identified. Even known extra-galactic quasars could not be found, leading to great speculation (never resolved) as to their new whereabouts. Unknown to the colonists, much of their travel was also spent at high-sublight velocities, leading to extreme time-dilation effects, further muddying the waters.
