Breeds
From Crimson Lien Wiki
There are 8 main breeds in The Bubble. I'm going to list them in the order that the residents of The Core consider them to be "discovered"
Contents |
Pure Strains
- Homeworld: None; every world in The Core
First and easiest, the Pure Strains are your basic humans, and they can all trace their ancestry from one of the 53 worlds of the original Bubble, and you'll find them pretty much everywhere outside the Core too. Pick a random human from anywhere in the bubble - be it the Core, Rim, or Outliers - and you've got a pretty good chance that they'll be a Pure Strain. And there's even more of 'em in the Core. It's not like us mutated breeds aren't welcome in the Core. They just don't like people from the Outliers. And, considering all the mutated breeds come from the Outliers... Well... Yeah. We're not all that welcome in the Core.
Quillians
- Homeworld: Quill
The Pure Strains don't want you to know this, but they didn't discover the Quillians. The Quillians discovered THEM. And the Pure Strains don't even have the distinction of being the first breed the Quillians discovered. Within about 50 years of the Gene War, the Quillians were fixing jump points and expanding out into space from their homeworld of Quill. See, these guys are smart, and I'm talking SMART. My navigator's considered a dumb one, and his IQ is 140. They also look pretty weird too. Their arms are as long as ours, but each one has two elbows. The top one bends the normal way, but the bottom one, the one closest to the hand, bends the opposite way. If they weren't so clumsy, that would give them quite a bit of agility. Their legs are the same as their arms, but it's the bottom knee that bends the normal way and the top knee that bends backwards. And if that wasn't enough, they're totally bald, and I mean /totally/. I dated a Quillian chick in college, and... Well... Anyway. Also, their ears are about a foot tall, and pointy. Like I said, they look weird. but the girls can be cute. No, really.
Whenever I talk about scientists, I'm usually talking about Quillians. They figured out how to fix the jump points, and they figured out how to clean off a world so we can recolonize it. They're also really nice guys, generally. You wouldn't know they were smarter than you by talking to them; they're not stuck up or anything like that. And they could easily have just enslaved the Gluts, who are in many ways inferior to them, but they didn't, they just treated the Gluts -- and the Pure Strains -- and everybody else -- like friends. I hear that one of the smarter Quillians is trying to classify all the mutations of all the known breeds, giving each mutation a number value, so he can prove that all breeds are mathematically equal as human beings. And like I said, my navigator - and best friend - is a Quillian.
Quillians aren't all perfect, though. Like I said, they look kinda weird - Except the girls can be cute. And like I also said, they're clumsy. And they're not all there in the common sense department. They have no problem calculating imaginary numbers or square roots, but ask one to balance his budget and he'll run screaming. Or, more likely, he'll program a computer to do it for him. It's fun to watch them in a restaurant deciding how much to tip.
Gluts
- Homeworld: Glut
The Gluts pretty much got the worst deal of all known breeds. They're thick-headed. Hell, they're just plain dumb. They walk slow and they talk slow, and their reaction time is pretty much nonexistant. The Pure Strains will tell you that the Gluts, along with the Quillians, were discovered first. Of course, what actually happened is that the Quillians discoverd the Gluts first, and then discovered the Pure Strains. The Gluts and the Quillians, for the 50 or so years they had alone before finding the Bubble, formed a fairly symbiotic relationship. The Gluts, for all their stupidity, are pretty good people and very loyal if you treat them like equals. They're also strong, both physically and mentally. They're tough to trick, so long as you don't talk about numbers or physics. The Quillians may have figured out how to fix the jump points, and even fixed a couple on their own in the early days, but it was the Gluts who made it possible to expand Humanity the way it has over the past 500 years. As much as the Gluts owe to the Quillians for not enslaving them, the Quillians owe back to the Gluts tenfold for just existing.
Bollians
- Homeworld: Boll
About a hundred years after the Quillians and the Gluts joined the Pure Strains in the Bubble, or 150 years after the Gene War, the expansion of the Bubble by the Quillian scientists and Glut workers openend a jump point to the world Boll, and the breed of humans who lived there: the Bollians. The Bollians are - What's the best way to put this? - Totally, completely, absolutely gorgeous. They are - without a doubt and as a group - the most beautiful Human Beings alive. They don't live very long, only about 50 years or so, but from birth to death they are just stunning. Other than those two things, though, they're pretty much Pure Strains. The uglier ones can even pass for a Pure Strain if they wanted to. And unlike the Quillians and the Gluts, they can actually interbreed with Pure Strains and some of the more normal breeds. So cross your fingers, maybe one will take a fancy to you. Don't count on it, though; they tend to stick with their own. I mean, wouldn't you?
Tristans
- Homeworld: Trista
About a hundred years later, or 250 years after the Gene war, the Bubble expanded to come in contact with Tristan Space, which at the time was about a half dozen worlds and has since grown to maybe a dozen or two. Besides the Quillians, the Tristans are the only known breed to actually think to try to fix the jump points and expand. Also like the Quillians, the Tristans are very different from Pure Strains as far as mutations go. The Tristans actually make the Quillians look normal. They have an extra arm and an extra leg. The arm comes out the middle of their chest, right where the neck connects. The leg comes out the back, where a normal person's butt is. They also have three of most other things that we have two of: Eyes, nostrils, ears... Yeah, they're a weird bunch. That's about all we know about them, though, becasue they're pretty secretive. They won't let anybody on their homeworld, and they're pretty shy about even letting anybody see any of the worlds that make up Tristan Space. And you NEVER see a Tristan outside Tristan space. In fact, I don't think anybody - any non-Tristan, that is - has seen the planet Trista since before the Gene War. Luckily - at least until recently - there hasn't been much reason to bother them. That's changing though, with the discovery of Hapra on the far side of their space. It'll be interesting to see what the Tristans do about that, and what the rest of the Bubble does about whatever the Tristans do.
Zorpans
- Homeworld: Zorpa
Another 100 years passed, and in around 350 AG the Zorpans were discovered. The Zoprans are funny. They are absolutely, totally great at making money. If there is a way to take a prospect and make money at it, a Zopran will take it and make money at it. I've tried to get several Zoprans on my crew, but for some reason none of them have accepted my offer. I don't know why. Maybe that's a good thing, though, because other than their financial security, they're pretty unsavory, and for all their cleverness they can be quite cold-blooded. You could say, actually, that they're just plain mean. But don't say it to their face. Their particular abilities caused them, within a decade of finding the Zopran homeworld, to take over the entire black market of the Bubble. And they hold it to this day, uncontested. You want something done that's a bit outside the law, you go to the Zoprans. You want to turn your trading career around and make some big money fast, you get one of them to trust you. Then you keep that trust, or your body will be found six months later orbiting a remote moon. I don't have any ties with the Zorpan bosses, but I'm open to offers if you happen to know any. Oh, and don't get me wrong, here: Plenty of Zoprans are nice, respectable businessmen - if such a thing actually exists - but even them I'd be wary of.
Oh, and the Zoprans are easy to spot. They have square bodies with thick muscles. They have greasy hair, nonexistant necks and they tend to enjoy wearing suits. Yeah, I know it's a mobster cliche. I'm just telling you the way it is.
Rigidians
- Homeworld: Rigidia
Another 100 years passed, and in the year 448 AG, the Quillian engineers and Glut workmen brought the jump gate to Rigidia online. The Rigidians have the distinct... distinction... Of being the breed that I personally am a member of. We pretty much look like Pure Strains, except our hair's always short. The hair on our heads usually won't grow more than a couple centemeters, and our facial hair's limited to about a millimeter or two. Most of us just shave our faces, but I keep my beard because it gives me that rogueish look. Oh, did I already mention that? I'm sorry. Anyway, other than the hair thing, we're just your typical humans. We can cross-breed, too, like the Bollians. Not that anybody's knocking my door down. We're a new enough breed that there are very few 3rd generation Rigidians in the Bubble. My parents were born on Rigidia, before it was found. They can remember what they were doing the day the Quillian ships started calling. I was born off-world, so I'm a first-generation offworlder. I don't get to Rigidia that much. Hell, I don't get to Yulthia, my birth-world, all that often. But that's the life of a trader.
Polkians
- Main Entry
- Homeworld: Polk
In the year 500 AG, a mere 23 years ago, we found the Polkians. The planet Polk was mostly an ice planet before the Gene War. The Bomb that hit Polk Prime not only mutated the Polkians, of which there weren't many, but caused the star to warm up a couple percent. The ice on Polk melted and, pretty quickly, the planet went from world-girdling ice fields to world-girdling ocean. In one of those lucky twists of fate, the Polkians were excessively well-adapted to their new home. They've got gills. They've got webbed feet, and they've got sleek bodies. Hell, I'd go so far as to say they're half-fish, except they can also walk around on land and breathe air. It's not exactly common, but you will see the occational Polkian in a spaceport or planetside on dry land, but generally they stick to the oceans. Some of them have actually migrated to some of the more oceanic worlds of the Bubble but - in general - they just stay home. Maybe as time goes on they'll mix with us more.