Editing FederalSpace:Peoples (section)

=== Commentary ===

'''yorrick:''' Yeah, the idea of genetically modified humans fits so well into what Star Trek actually portrays--lots of humanoids with funny foreheads who are a lot like people with a few mental/physical quirks and somehow eat the same food as we do.

'''Shadowjack:''' That's the idea. :)


'''Ragnarok_Engine:''' If you lean back towards "stealing blatantly" from Trek rather than "strong inspiration", I'd follow the lead of SFB and include the Trek cartoon in your canon. Another militaristic race for the Klingons to face off/make uneasy alliances with, a race of weird methane-breathers coming out from under the thumb of colonialism and mistrusting outsiders, more blatantly non-human looking Federation crew members... What's not to like?

['''Shadowjack:''' Indeed!]

Hell, I was always extremely amused by the lethal blood feud betwen the Lyrans and the Kzin (Mirak) in SFB. The two races looked very similar to outsiders, but woe betide you if you suggest to a member of either race that they might be related.

['''Shadowjack:''' Which in this setting they ''would'' be—the parent species, whichever it is, made their own genetic variants…]

The Federation never had a whole lot of direct contact with either empire, but Klingon diplomatic records indicate that every attempt between the Lyrans and Kzin to come to a face-to-face accord has broken down into hand-to-hand combat. Official Klingon Diplomatic Service protocols state that if ever at an event where both Kzin and Lyrans are present, ''never'' stand directly on the sight-line between the two diplomats. :D


'''yorrick:''' Idea: The future space empire used Neanderthal DNA as the basis for its super-soldiers or slave laborers or whatever, due to (a) their physical strength and durability and (b) their genetic code just different enough from ours to make biological attacks and gene hacking less effective at first.

But some of those Neanderthal warriors learned that their distant ancestors were exterminated by the ancestors of humanity, and when the Empire collapsed they created their own militaristic society based on the premise that humanity is the Ancient Enemy that committed genocide. Some individual humans may be okay, but as a species you just can't trust them.

'''Shadowjack:''' YojimboC posted an informative explication of what is known of actual Neanderthal/Cro-Magnon relations, which unfortunately isn't actually relevant to ''this'' page, so I didn't post it. I do think that this idea would make for a reasonable isolate community, somewhere. There are echoes here of things like neo-Pagan groups and the Basque separatist movement. Elsewhere, there would simply be resurrected Neanderthals (or a few genes) mixed in with the other races, and no particular prejudices either way. 



'''Gregor:''' listing aliens from Diane Duane's trek novels: Naraht (the Horta member of the crew); the Hamalki (crystalline-looking spiders from ''Wounded Sky'' that were very badly rendered as the Traveller on the ST:TNG episode "Where No One Has Gone Before"); the Sulamid; the Ornae, Lahit, and the ";At" (who I believe originated in a Zork-like interactive fiction game well before ''Doctor's Orders'' was published);etc.

Edit: Ah, it most likely the Kobayashi Alternative that I was thinking of, and just the Ornae


'''jsnead:''' The Traveller route works well here - perhaps 200,000 years ago, some ancient species took humans from Earth (which is one of only a handful of worlds with intelligent life) and spread it across the galaxy. Vulcans, Klingons, Orions, Humans, & etc are all siblings, but they have been separated for a long time, long enough to develop their own cultures, which were made more alien to one another by virtue of the fact that the ancients genetically engineered some varieties.

Now, extend this a bit further to more than just humans. What happens if evolved intelligence is quite rare. So, the ancients to this with humans and with another species - a reptilian one (assuming wacky parallel evolution). This species was engineered & evolved into: Gorn, Cardassians (who might also be a human/reptile hybrid), Selay, Saurians (from TMP), Rigelians (the beaked Chelarians from TMP), Hunters (from the Gamma Quadrant, who then engineered both the Jem'Hadar & the Tosk.

Then you have a few oddities like the Founders, the crystaline Tholians and the silicon-based Horta (who might well be part of another silicon-based galactic dispersal, that also included the silicon creatures from Excalbia in ''The Savage Curtain''. I think you could get the number of worlds that initially evolved sentient life down to half a dozen or so and posit an exceptionally powerful and widely traveled species that set out to spread intelligent life across the galaxy around 200,000 years ago. 

You have Earth, Reptile World, & Rock Creature world as the most well known worlds.

'''Shadowjack:''' See how hard it is to get away from Alien Space Gods? :D However, this is fantastic demonstration of what you can get away with, letting each species do its own genetic engineering…


'''Meriss:''' The Trill. What seriuosly, maybe some nutjob wacko corperate headcase decided he didn't like talking to Computers all the time and genemoded a biocomp, then found out that only somone with a very specific body chemisry could use the biocomp. Bioroided the Trill and they and their biocomps are now breeding true.


'''Shadowjack:''' I really want to know what kind of ship the Gas Giant Zeppelin Squid flies. Or if they do.

'''Tom McCambley:''' These must be the Hoothi and their intergalactic space dirigibles!

'''Aramis of Erak''': the gas giant dwellers are a Travellerism... Jgd-il-jagd, in JTAS 24... (1983). Tho Phil Masters might have drawn them from elsewhere...