Telluria

What follows is the full, unabridged write-up for Telluria. Those sections that had not been included originally are colored differently to set them apart.

Races

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There are four primary races in the Tellurian League: humans, dendaro, gau, and what most other races call the whistlers, as their own name for themselves is largely unpronouncable. Humans you are largely already acquainted with. So, that takes us to the other three.

Dendaro

The dendaro are a space faring race in Shadow Telluria. They tend to be roughly 7 to 8 feet tall, and 4-5 feet wide, usually covered in a light layer of fur. Gender is the typical male/female, with the typical genitalia and mammary glands. They are omnivorous, and most have teeth similar to humans. Their legs often look a bit short on their frame by human standards, and their arms a bit long. There are several different sub-breeds of sometimes startlingly different appearance (likely due to their inherent shapeshifting ability), and a wide variety of cultures that have developed. The advanced technology has allowed things to homogenize to a degree, but there is still a bit of regional pride, especially on the home planet of Dendar. While all sub-breeds are able to inter-breed, children will almost entirely take after one parent or the other, though may carry the genes of the other parent to pass on to children. True half-breeds are infinitely rare. The planet itself is mostly ocean, with one large continent that is mostly in the northern hemisphere and several small island chains.

The main sub-breeds are as follows:

• Savanja - Living primarily in the wide tracts of plains, deserts, and scrub lands, these dendaro bear a strong resemblence to rodents, with their round ears, and jowly countenance. Their fur is typically brown, leaning towards the lighter end of things. They tend to make common delegates to human based world, as the humans tend to find them "cute". Lentaro Dojangi is a savanja dendaro.
• Arban - The Arban come from the wooded coasts of the continent. They tend to look much like the savanja, though with darker colored, and sometimes patterned fur (spotted, striped, etc). They are typically taller, slimmer, and longer haired than the savanja, also, being adapted for more temperate woodland life.
• Barzali - Coming from the equatorial jungles, the barzali look much more simian than most dendaro, with prominent jaws, sloped foreheads, tusks, and four (yes, you read right: four) arms. Fur tends to be dark brown or black. They are considered to be the most primitive of the dendaro, with good cause, and are fairly anti-social and misanthropic. ("Little funny human wants his arms ripped off, eh?") These guys make other dendaro a little edgy.
• Poloi - In the vast arctic regions of the north live is where the poloi originally hail from. They tend towards the taller end of the spectrum, usually 8 to 9 feet tall, and are covered in thick white fur. They look more ursine than other dendaro, and have many more sharp teeth than is generally standard.
• Marna - The marna come from the island chains, are are perhaps the most unique of the dendaro. Being primarily semi-aquatic, they have both lungs and gills. They are taller than most dendaro, up to 8 or 9 feet, but also much, much slimmer, perhaps half as wide across as others, with streamlined features. They are also hairless, instead having grey or black, rubbery skin. Think small, anthopomorphic whales.

These sub-breeds represent broad catagories, and over the years, the borders have melted a bit. Still, those families that have long existed in a given region different from their native land slowly develop towards the new terrain.

While a thorough examination of the various sub-cultures of the dendaro would be very long, a few brief comments can be made.

Those in the more temperate regions, such as the arban and the savanja, have long family lines from more feudal eras, and tend towards more eastern philosophies in terms of metaphysics. The savanja are more buddhist-esque (interconnectedness, reality is illusion, etc.), while the arban lean a bit more towards shinto-style beliefs. The other three sub-breeds have more tribal organization, and lean towards the more theistic beliefs. In the age of technology, this has become less spiritual, and more habit other than anything else. Only in the much smaller communities does it have much strength, though the less theistic religions tend to be doing better as there's less emphasis on supernatural beings, and more emphasis on internal beliefs. However, as access to Amber grows, and alternate realities are brought about to the fore, some believe that a religious renaissance may be around the corner, which has some a bit worried. The last thing Telluria needs is prophets wandering the stars.

As a last note, it's worth noting that the dendaro are natural born tinkers, having an uncanny knowledge of "how things work". It isn't so much a logical sequence of cause and effect, but rather just an intuitive grasp of technology. It's been this knack, as well as thousands of years of development, that has aided them in developing their technology. This ranges from electronics and quantum physics, to mechanical appliances. This doesn't mean that they could go into a totally foreign environment (like Amber) and make guns that work. That would take a long, long time of trial and error. But, when encountering technology foreign to them, they are quite handy and figuring out what it does.

Gau

The gau are thin and anthropomorphic, averaging five feet in height and probably 75 pounds. They are completely hairless have round heads with pointed chins, large black eyes, subdued noses, and small mouths. (Sound familiar?) Skin is typically either white or some shade of grey. If the dendaro are the tinkers, then the gau are the researchers. Though there are many exceptions to the rule, the gau as a race seem to possess this subtle curiousity. They love to observe and learn. In terms of game stuff, they are also have relatively high Psyche compared to most others in the shadow. Most gau have something akin to the extraordinary psychic sense in the creature rules, and a rare few mystics have even developed the power of their mind into a local sort of sorcery that is much like the clichí "psionics". The gau are hermaphroditic, and are capable of conceiving at will.

Whistlers

The whistlers (sometimes also called pipers) are the "other shapeshifters" of Telluria, and have been long antagonists of the dendaro. The whistlers are best described as amoebic, being large black blobs with eyespots and a few orifices that they use to communicate. Their own language is an intricate series of hoots, whistles and clicks, but they can speak Thari and other languages just fine, though it has a flutey sound it all times. They've also developed shapeshifting to a degree, mostly for the purposes of developing hands or other manipulating limbs, but some have gone so far as to make vaguely anthropomorphic shapes, or even more. Even among the other races the whistlers are barely trusted, but none possess the loathing that most dendaro possess. The whistlers have a rather bizarre system for "genders". As best as the other races can tell, there are about a dozen different genders, with various combinations possible for conception, which seems to just be fission off of a chunk to make another whistler. Some have even postulated that the whistlers exaggerate the process just to confuse others. If you've ever read Lovecraft's "Beyond the Mountains of Madness", you'll be familiar with a similar race: The shoggoths. These are not nearly as powerful as shoggoths, but it's a similar idea.

There are other races in Telluria, but they don't have as much of a presence in terms of government or technology compared to the main four.

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Up until a few centuries ago, humans had not reached too far into space, and so it was primarily just the gau, dendaro, and whistlers, each in their own sets of governments, kingdoms, and the like. It was a rather motley collection, all things told, with each race having divisions in governments, reorganizations, re-uniting, and the like. There were many internal wars among the dendaro and the whistlers, and sometimes between the dendaro and the whistlers. The gau mostly just watched and wrote theses on the philosophy behind war and the conflict.

Then, humans came on the scene, bound and determined to teach these savage non-humans how to get along, and tried to do so by subjugating the other races. As soon as other races realized how much they could learn from the enlightened human state, everything would be much better.

The other races essentially replied, "Eh, no."

War raged for over a hundred years, lines being quickly drawn along racial lines, and mostly being focused on humans. Even the gau found themselves having to defend themselves. ("Oh, dear how positively dreadful. Where's my fan? I think I'm perspiring. Gads! They're shooting! Shoot back! Shoot back!")

Things would have gone worse for the humans if there hadn't been conflict between the dendaro and whistlers at the same time, as well as the gau not quite knowing how to actually wage war. At last, peace negotiations began, and from it came the Tellurian League (named after the planet where the treaty was negotiated and signed). A central government sprang up, forming a way to mediate concerns between the races and different local governments.

Over the years a sense of nationalism has pervaded the League, in large part due to the relentless and subtle propaganda provided by the government. With the increase in national identity, the encouragement towards more rational thought and the abandonment of silly concepts as religion has increased. While these trends had already been at work, the efforts of the League Council have exacerbated things.

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The main planet on the trading routes from Amber is Telluria. It's relatively low-tech, with provisions made for those coming in by ship and caravan. There is only a marginal population that lives there, largely military/government to make sure that word of places like Amber doesn't spread too heavily. The League Council also has their meetings on this planet.

The planet has one large sized island, about half the size of Australia, being largely a ring of mountains with one port inside a bowl shaped valley. The rest of the land there is small islands, often used by government officials and high ranking military officers for private retreats.

Among the imports taken from shadow through the planet, Telluria is known to have a fondness for books from other shadows. This is largely so that they may learn of other shadows, and the possible causes of dissolution of the league.

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About 20 years ago, an archaeological team uncovered ruins of a once advanced technological civilization on an old and abandoned planet. Deep in the bowels beneath this ruined city of pyramids and towers was a vast cavern with a Broken Pattern in it. The name "Dark Horse" came about because one of the researchers, a human named Alan Smithee, claimed that he saw a horse of some sort, "black as the void of space", lead him into the ruins to where the Broken Pattern was. They'd heard those visiting dignitaries from other shadows mention such artifacts of power, but they had hardly suspected that they'd have one in their backyard.

They immediately did a big cover-up, and filed it in their Special Project division. This is where the government files anything that they cannot explain and don't want to let out to the public for fear of causing fear. A sort of Tellurian X-Files, and yes they started at 1.

They did a fair amount of research into it, first sending condemned prisoners, and the mentally ill patients into it. Those that survived were monitored, and a few actually managed to escape through shadow.

Oops.

A hundred volunteers were then allowed to walk the Broken Pattern. Each were trusted and secure members of the military intelligence community. Ten lived, and were unofficially dubbed the Dark Horse Bureau. These consisted of 3 dendaro, 2 whistlers, 1 human, 1 gau, and 1 velchoran. (a small but hardy race of monkey-like lizards). Since then a few others have walked it and lived, but for the most part the League has curbed further initiation until they understand what they have uncovered.

One other note, which some are a little thrown off by, are the hieroglyphs on the walls of the ruins. Many depict the inhabitants in every day life activities. The inhabitants looked fairly human, but appeared to be quite large, and had the heads of various beasts (like many Egyptian gods). Some have gone so far as to propose that perhaps the dendaro are the living descendants of the creatures.

To add something else to things, the newer hieroglyphs portray a war against some encroaching sort of darkness that would absorb the people of the city. Some of the rogue minds among the "ancient dendaro" camp have gone so far as to suggest that the darkness is the early whistlers, perhaps experimenting in the more extreme explorations of shapeshifting. Who knows where they got such strange notions, though

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I haven't been too cutting edge in terms of sci-fi technologies, but thought I'd cover a few common ones.

These technologies do work:

FTL Travel and Communication

All the major races, and some of the minor ones, have developed their own form of superluminary drives, and with the collaboration of the dendaro and the gau, significant advances have been made. Also, a network of computers extends through the planets known as the League-net (yeah, more propaganda). It tends to be a prime lurking grounds for a few rogue AIs.

Nanotech

This does work, but is strictly regulated. Small matter compilers exist in larger cities, but production of free travelling nano-machines are not allowed.

Cybertechnology and Virtual Reality

This works, of course. In fact, most FTL crews function via a cybernetic interface.

Genetic Engineering and Cloning

This exists but is generally only done in secret labs in obscure corners of the galaxy. People seem to distrust genetic alteration (especially, despite all odds, the dendaro, though the whistlers don't see what the fuss is about).

Energy Weapons

Though slug guns still exist, the more commonly weilded weapons are beam weapons of some type. Also, energy blades exist, however these are not sold in many locations as the number of self-inflicted fatalities and injuries associated with these is just mind boggling.

Tractor Beams

These are available only on the largest of ships, given the energy requirements needed.

Zero-Point Energy

This is essentially the ability to draw power from the fabric of existence. I'm a little sketchy on it, but I always thought it sounded cool. The following URL has information about it.

http://www.jse.com/haisch/zpf.html

It is the foundation for the technology behind the FTL drives. Cold fusion is typically only found in outlying, primitive communities. You can imagine how strange Amber seems to Lentaro. It's like a bad episode of Star Trek.

Gravity Manipulation

Most vehicles that require any travel above ground utilize gravity manipulation, to hover, fly, enter orbit, etc. Also, on many spacecraft an artificial gravity is generated as well.

Artificial Intelligence

These are very rare and well hidden from the general population. A few rogue ones are listed in the Special Projects files.

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These technologies do not work:

Transporter Technology
Holo-Decks
Food Replicators
Time Travel