Tag Archives: Earth

Xentoran Cooking

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While biologically and historically omnivorous, Xentorns are a philosophically vegetarian race, as such they have no surviving recipes for any sort of flesh.

The Xentorn race, spread through Galfarra, and even somewhat into the Milky Way and Vorton galaxies rely on a wide array or foods as do many such races, but there is a common theme among their foods.

Traditionally this race grazes throughout the day on various foods in light meals and snacks. In this respect various pies, especially custard, fruit, or egg are quite popular; as are fruits and berries in raw or simple cooked form (e.g. boiled and spiced).

The single, traditional, Xentoran daily meal is a time for family and friends to gather and have a mini celebration and as such mimics, in small scale, the feasts of a temple gathering.

The family and guests gather in the household common room on cushions with low tables set close to hand. Or, for those associating heavily with other races often, they may gather in more local means such as in a dining room around a table. Regardless of setting, the meal is served in specific courses.

First comes a small, warm tayæ, a dish in small hand bowls eaten with a spoon and consisting of one or more stewed berries mixed with a sauce made of mild spices (typically described by Terrans as reminiscent of mulling spices) in a mix of a rich cream and/or butter (traditionally made from a plokëo, one of many Xentoran fruits similar to the coconut of Earth but just as often from an animal milk), and a syrup made from nectar or honey. This is served with a very small glass of a simple, weak wine or with water with a bit of fruit juice squeezed into it.

Next will come the raìsu, a cold soup made from pureed melons and nuts, and often features olkaeri, a fruit many have said is what one would get if a fig and date were crossed. This is eaten scooped by a soft pita or naan like bread. No drink is typically served with this course.

Next is the main dish, or yaero. Xentoran cuisine flourishes on the experimental and adopts new preparation methods and ingredients readily. The most consistent thing about a yaero is that it will be an experience, whether for good or ill.

Favourite themes in the dishes, though, do crop up out of long racial habit. On Xentor, and as a result, often elsewhere, the main course will rely heavily on foods similar to the dozens of species of tyheari, a family of fruits very similar, and potentially related to the plantain or banana of Earth and known to be related to the Ilzwik hathbok fruits. Other popular foods are various sweet tubers, and various things best described, in English, as figs, dates, and coconuts. These along with nuts, legumes, various rhubarb like plants, and vegetables will be cooked together. There are various family recipes, successful yaeroa of the past that were recorded for making again, but no really widespread recipes.

Xentoran cookbooks do contain a number of tayæ, raìsu and faeriea recipes, but for yaero it will merely give suggestions and advice such as one in a currently popular book Xentoriae Laeysô Junillash Qaelù [A Xentoran Take/View of/at Junillian Foods/Cooking], “a reasthê’s flavour and aroma is brought out and enhanced if you sauté it cut into small cubes then marinate it overnight with a mix of equal parts threasedi oil and a hearty Plotreadi beer”.

Many different kinds of drink might be served with a yaero, but most often it will be a refreshing, cool, mellow flavoured ale, any complimentary variety of wine, or coffee.

Finally is dessert, or faeriea. Xentorns do not, traditionally, eat sweet faerieaï. They prefer a final course that is spiced. Rarely to the degree of a strong pepper, though it is not unheard of; instead it will be more along the lines of nutmeg, cinnamon, mace, grishokna and the like. Popular faerieaï include seasoned custards, squash or tuber pies (Xentorns who’ve visited Earth often feel quite at home with a slice of pumpkin or sweet potato pie, for example), and similar preparations. This course is most often enjoyed with some kind of tea or naewi, a drink made of unsweetened cocoa mixed with milk from certain fruit nuts and juices from chilies.

A drink rarely found off of Xentor, but highly prized when it can be gotten is daesriu, a popular drink to enjoy with faeriea that consists of fermented milk (plant or animal is equally likely) sweetened with honey and flavoured with various herbs from mint and ginger families then served ice cold. It is, deservedly, noted for its ability to aid in digestion or to soothe digestive issues.

A Xentorn living alone, who cannot enjoy a meal with any friends or family will, normally, not have one – instead lightly snacking for all her food in a day. Some will prepare a lone five courses and enjoy them in private celebration of the day, usually as a self congratulation for a personal achievement, but many Xentorns find any solitary meal, regardless of reason, depressing so will find other means of self-congratulation.

Be forewarned: invitation to a Xentoran meal can be a truly fantastic experience, it being equally likely to be utterly horrible as profoundly enjoyable. As with all people, there’re varying degrees of competency, skill, talent, and instinct for cooking among Xentorns. And as in most beings, there is a varying degree of awareness of this. Unlucky individuals have reported waking years later to nightmare remembrances of a disastrous yaero. Others have likened various yaeroa to sexual and/or spiritual bliss. As with any race of humans, the average Xentorn knows her limits and will stick to what she is good at, and saves extremes of experimentation for herself or for certain of the less pleasant Xentoran celebrations.

Please note, too, that no part of a Xentoran meal will, normally, include any drink stronger than 10%ABV, as anything stronger is usually deemed to overpower the flavours of the food or to numb the palate. Exceptions exist in the form of adopted customs on various worlds, and individual tastes.

Some final notes regarding traditional diets of the Xentorn people: a common item for midday snacks is a readseuo, a deepfried starchy vegetable on a stick eaten with various condiments.

Also no commentary on Xentoran food is complete without mention of the widespread stereotype that Xentorns neither enjoy nor are competent in creating distilled beverages. Which, after extensive study is partially deserved.

Xentorns do not seem to have any racial aversion to distilled drinks, though they are slightly more wont to avoid high proof liquors, being 15% more likely to find drinks over 25% ABV to be unpleasant, or to enjoy them only sparingly. Not a significant margin, really, and this stereotype is more deserved by the Glokirthe people who seem to be quite loathe to drink anything much over 5% ABV — despite this they are popularly depicted as boozers and drunks, proving many things about popular perceptions and entertainment, one is sure, but will leave to the xenopsychologists and sociologists to work out.

The stereotype of being poor distillers is rather accurate, however. While it would be ridiculous to say that they never developed the technology of distillation, they never seem to have applied it to beverage making – only to purification methods and medicine production. The only distilled beverage made on Xentor that might pre-date their exposure to other races (though evidence for this is thin at best) is kearuiea. This liquor is generally 20-35% ABV and is made from the kaerophi nut, a plant so similar to the Earth hazelnut that xenobotonists have spent centuries trying to determine if the two plants in fact, share a common ancestry. It is also the only distilled beverage from Xentor that is often considered to be any good, all others being deemed rotgut or little better. Some Galfarran bartenders have been known to give a different, more expensive drink, on the house, to someone so down on their luck as to order a Xentoran liquor that isn’t kearuiea. The drinking of these distillations is also a popular dare at many parties among Junillian youths.

Mars

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Mars, 2001, with the southern polar ice cap vi...

Formerly the Federazione Democratica di Marte.  As of 27.1.34@6.00 it became, officially The Democratic Federation of Mars to comply with measures in the Confederate Congress aligning member worlds with the official use of Standard.

Mars was first established as an independent nation when war on Earth had escalated during the last half of the 21st century.  They were an autonomous colony, already, when the American Second Civil War broke out, the terraforming stations having reached full production.  Recognition of Mars’ independence was one of the last acts of the faltering United Nations.

During the worst fighting, on Earth, of the third world war and at the points of greatest political uncertainty Mars’ population increased substantially as refugees sought asylum from various leaders and governments causing it to became a power second only to Luna.

Unlike Earth’s moon, however, Mars’ importance waned as the governments of Earth settled back into a semblance of order and by the time of the Treaty of Tycho, Mars was only important for its microchip and glass production, these are still, in fact, its primary export and industry.

This loss of importance, and population, is due to its less than spectacular climate.  The air is still thin as compared to Earth’s or any of the habitat domes and stations throughout the Solar system, though it is breathable (it has, in fact, a substantial population of both Chilean, and Tibetan descent as people from Andes and Himalayan mountain regions tend to find the atmosphere and temperatures more tolerable).  It did have a brief vogue from the last decades of the World War to the first decade of the Terran Confederation as a tourist destination.  Before and since it has had a minor popularity as an exotic skiing locale.

The Martian constitution was used as a template for elements of the Confederate Congressional Charter, especially their Bill of Basic Rights and Privileges.  In the past century the Martians have also found themselves as one of the key customs ports in the Solar system, but a tertiary one to Luna port and the various stations around Jupiter and in transplanetary orbits.

Transmats

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Transmat is simply the Terran term for matter transmission devices.

Transmats are not unique to the Terran Confederation, but they are a very rare technology, such that it often seems they are — they’re certainly the only race to currently use them so extensively.  Most races that ever develop this technology tend to either never adopt it or else quickly abandoned it.  The reason being, simply, that they’re exceedingly dangerous.

Various means and methods for matter transmission do exist throughout the galaxies, though all methods come down to a technique by which the relationship between energy and matter is exploited to allow some form of carrier wave to carry the matter across an intervening distance.

The danger of transmats comes in the fact that there is absolutely no simple, no-harm-done accident.  When a matter transmitter goes wrong, it goes horribly wrong.

It has been suggested that, perhaps, minor mistakes do occur and in fact many who distrust transmats insist they happen with every transmission.  Hence, for example, many top shelf vintners and chocolatiers refuse to allow their products to be moved by transmat; determined that it damages the flavours — most connoisseurs agree.

The other barrier to widespread adoption is that most sentient beings are in some fashion spiritual and/or religious.  Of the worlds that will trust a matter transmitter, fewer still will use it to transmit living beings; the Terran Confederation and the Golfadre, both of the Milky Way galaxy, are the only races known to routinely transport themselves and others in this manner.  The barrier is the very serious question: can a matter transmitter also transfer the soul?  Even among the tri-galaxies’ less religious and even atheistic populous there is the question of: how do I know it’s me that comes out the other end?

In the TC these people are considered backward luddite alarmists in both cases.  Among the Golfadre it is explained that the soul and the mind, already being energy, simply travel along with your mass and this seems to satisfy them.

It should be known that all forms of the technology are exceedingly sensitive to signal degradation so have common limitations.  All are subject to unobstructed line of sight, various experiments with reflectors and repeaters have been attempted but are not successful at sufficient rates to have been adopted even by the most careless of societies.  There are distance limitations as well, if transmitted at or near light speed using something like an electromagnetic wave the general limit is between one and thirty light seconds distance; this makes the technology viable for surface to moon or surface to space station transmissions plausible, given sufficient measures to reduce atmospheric disturbances to the signal (the TC precedes all atmospheric transmissions with a laser burst to clear a path, for example).  Greater distances may be achieved, but at a marked loss of reliability if the matter is converted into faster than light energies (e.g. tachyons), also the gains tend to net few because while upper limits have been as great as a light hour there becomes a short-range limit — the signal never reconstructs properly under ten light minutes (the reasons for this are not yet properly understood).

A curious note in support of those who question the ability for the devices to deliver souls, spirits, intellects: non-organic goods transport with a full 30% greater reliability and non-living organic materials (e.g. leathergoods, foods, etc.) transport their own 30% more readily than living creatures. As an example, the TC has established transmat routes from Luna to the Jupiter, but will only transport goods and materials via this system. All living cargos must still travel by the stations on Luna, in Trans-Luna-Martian orbit, on Mars, to the Trans-Martian-Jovian orbital stations, and then to one of the Jovian satellites or orbital stations due to the safety concerns.

While various popular science fiction depictions of transmats will have them able to collect and deposit a subject anywhere all incarnations ever discovered by archaeologists and in present use require the subject to be sent by a transmitting device and reconstructed by a receiving device — in virtually all cases the technology was designed so that the same device could serve both functions.  In the Terran Confederation, these devices are known as transmat capsules.

Luna

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MoonLuna, officially The United Federation of Lunar Communities, is the Terran Confederation capital world and home to one of the most populous cities in the Sol system:  Tycho.

This world is the principle natural satellite of Earth, the major habitable world of Sol (it should be noted for non-Terran readers that the TC does not follow the convention of naming their systems after the major planet, instead choosing to name the star and then using that to name the system), and was initially a colony of a defunct world government known as the United Nations prior to the full onset of their World War III.

Tycho was founded by these early settlers in the very late 20th century of their old Gregorian calendar.  Due to a rapid trend by various nations to develop and eventually implement orbital offensive and defensive weaponry, the UN decided that it would be best to strengthen the treaty designating the moon as neutral ground and property of all Mankind by establishing a civilian colony.

The plan was put forward and on 10 July 1997, the first supplies capsules were launched to be followed over the ensuing months by various payloads of materials the settlers would use to build their colony.  On 3 February 1998 the first of three shuttles were launched, carrying engineers and workers to augment the work already being performed by robotic means in constructing the habitats and homes, and work on the three large transports that would carry the initial 600 colonists began.  On 19 November 1998, the Moon’s first permanent residents stepped off of LT1 “Pegasus” to be greeted by, Damjana Phillips, the chief of Lunar Construction who would be returning to Earth with her crew when the LT1 headed back to earth in December.

It grew rapidly as a major stepping off point for some of the earlier solar colonisation efforts through the 21st century and even faster once the wars on Earth began reaching a crescendo, especially for various religious refugees.

When the peace treaties that would end the over century of warfare that was WW3 were to be negotiated, drafted, and signed, Tycho was chosen as the place for those government leaders and representatives to meet as Luna had taken on the role that Switzerland had in previous generations.  During these negotiations, known as the Tycho Conventions, the Terran Confederation was born and the first Confederate Congress selected.

Today Luna houses many major cities, is a central hub of Terran culture and fashion, and various of its principle cities have taken on roles that had once been held by New York City, Paris, London, and Los Angeles.  The Confederate Congress meets there in Convention Dome, and the various bureaus that maintain the confederate government are also housed here.

People from Luna are often referred to as Loonies, a term extracted from old science fiction stories, and also one used to describe the fact that many Terrans don’t see the people who live on Luna as entirely sane.  Loonies, themselves, prefer the term Lunan or Lunar with Lunan being the official term by an act of the Confederate Standards Bureau in 8.3.34@3.23, though no effort to curb the popular use of Loonie has succeeded.

Lunan culture has reminded various historians of what is known about pre-WW3 Hollywood, including their argument that the Lunan accent is similar to what was known in the 1980s as Valley.  However, unlike the Valley accent of that bygone era, there was a heavy influence from French, Indian, and Japanese members among the founding settlers so it should be noted that similarities to many other accents exist and the Valley connection is largely a matter of opinion; certainly their slang is not as much a match for that late 20th century sub-culture (it should also be noted that this is the accent favoured by all ages, classes, etc. of Lunan society rather than being a youth sub-culture as history tells the Valley group was).

Luna thrives on the modern.  Nearly all interstellar and extra-Confederate goods are processed through Sol system and Luna is the central port of call for most of this traffic (Ganymede, Mars, and the MJ-trans3 Station sharing the remainder), and so many things not found in the rest of the Confederacy can usually be found here.  Trends and fashions come and go by the month, even by the week or the day.  Certainly by the year.  It is the greatest insult a Loonie of any age can give someone to say they look ‘tyrd’, ‘out-moda’, or ‘so-yestard’ or that something they said is ‘from an hour ago’.  Lunan hair styles change more often than the weather on the blue-green marble that hangs in its skies, LunaPop is a musical genre that thrives on technological instruments and software aided vocal or audio effects and strives to break the mould with each new song, the stereo-cinemas are crowded by the latest special effects thrillers, and anyone caught reading a book, even off a datatablet, would be laughed at mercilessly to the point it is joked that being caught with an actual bound-paper book on Luna is grounds for being thrown out the nearest airlock.

Milky Way

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The Milky Way is the youngest of the three major Galaxies, though it is the second largest.

The importance of this Galaxy is, relatively, recent as it was not at first realised it housed two intergalactic wormholes, and in close proximity to one another at that.

The Galaxy is home to Earth, Kivan, Mugdar, Tylassia, Magvin, Ilzwik, and many, many more major worlds, though an important note is that exceedingly few of its known native peoples have achieved anywhere near the technological advancements of Glafarra or Vorton.

Little is ultimately known about the peoples and worlds of this Galaxy, in the wider scope of things. This is due to no large scale galactic government or galaxy wide recognised power. The Terran Confederation, and Mugdarran Empire probably span the most distance but only a few hundred parsecs between their furthest flung outposts, the Mugdarrans and Kivanians by most measure control the most systems numbering some five hundred stars or so, and those three combined with the Sweytzian Alliance make up some of the strongest economic powers, but only just.  All of these even combined are not nearly as large and influential in the broader Milky Way as Alluria in Vorton; their power, control and influence mattering very little beyond, at most, their side of the galactic core.

Historically the Milky Way has been a harvesting zone for the traders of the more advanced races of the Vorton and Galfarran galaxies out looking for cheap or free goods, though some did deal directly with the Milky Way worlds and at honest rates.

The only scientific survey of species, races, and worlds was done by the old Federation in Galfarra approximately fifty thousand Earth years ago and was cancelled after only about one century. At that time it would seem that easily half the known inhabited worlds had sentient or proto-sentient life, and most of them were still working out things like fire and bronze. An exceedingly small number had reached any form of industry or space flight, and perhaps a dozen with faster than light capacity were met.  Various unofficial ones have been done by the worlds that would later become the Sweytzian Alliance in the past hundred to two hundred Earth years, and due to the greater speed and range of their ships they represent the most complete modern survey compared to any other races’ attempts in the Milky Way, notably the Terrans and Gargorna.  In recent decades professors at various universities have been striving to compile astrographical, botanical, biological, sociological, etc. knowledge from all the starfaring races and attempt to cross reference, reconcile and collate it all.  The several dozen powerful computers and gifted members of two rather extraodinary races, the Haderwo and Bv’ktra, expect that they should finish the data they started with in about an hundred-fifty Sweytzian years (three Sweytzian universities house the heart of the project due to proximity to the Galfarran wormhole as the Haderwo and Bv’ktra feel that to set foot on an alien world would endanger their spirits’ purity and deny them a place at their gods’ side in the Great Beyond).  Given the rate new data is coming in, but thanks to a second half dozen groupings of bots, computers, and dedicated individuals that data should only add fifty more years to the project and then afterwards be near instantly incorporated as all systems related to the project could work together on only that new information.

Merchants continued to travel into the system routinely after the original survey ended, but they did not engage in much research or record keeping beyond what goods were most easily got where, and what races were liable to kill strangers.  An interesting note from several chocolate traders is that Earth (known by several different names at the time) contrary to the norm was quite friendly to traders of all sorts in various regions but became progressively more hostile as they reached greater technological growth, it is also worth mentioning that approximately ⅓ of the human races found within that part of that spiral arm of the galaxy followed a similar trend.  This has puzzled xenopsychologists and xenosociologists alike for millennia and will likely earn the first one to present a viable theory an immediate professorship.

The Milky Way, namely its planet Earth, is know to be the original source of coffee and chocolate; early Aslith traders frequented more than a few planets for their fish; and Ilzwik was then, as today, prized for its cazax, that amazing plant ivory which is so heavily used in industry for being twice as hard as diatanium alloy and a tenth the weight of diamond, which is proof against most dangerous radiations.

Today only a quarter of the known sentient races (known sentient races is up to nearly three times that ancient survey’s count, by the way, and new ones are periodically discovered) do not have space flight of some kind and most of those who do, also have some form of interstellar capability of their own devising.  If one factors in races that have gained space flight and interstellar travel through trade the number who do not possess these abilities dwindles to between ten and fifteen percent.

Some of those remaining races vary in advancement from early stone to some form of industrial stage. Some of these are openly traded with and others are only visited to harvest trade goods depending on their disposition toward strangers and aliens.

Also of note would be that some races of pre-stellar advancement or pre-space advancement also gained these technologies by becoming incorporated into a larger society. The biggest examples being the Mugdarran Empire’s nearly two dozen worlds containing primitive Honorable Protectorates, which is a translation of their term for a race that faced them with honour but proved too weak by their standards to properly defend themselves and were granted inclusion into the Emperor’s domain (for further information see entry on Mugdarran Empire). The other notable example would be the Terran Confederation, but theirs is a unique case as theirs is exclusively comprised of annexing Terran colonies that left Earth in their pre-warp era, many of them had lost communication with Earth and so are referred to as lost colonies. To date there are still forty five generational colony craft’s fates unknown and twenty three early warp (denoted by both Terran and non-Terran historians not as the end of warp being a markedly bigger gamble than it still is, but rather as the invention of interstellar communications technology by Terrans so as to know the fates of those ships) colony vessels. An interesting curiosity is the adamant belief among most Confederates not living on worlds on the immediate border of the Sweytzian Alliance that Sweytz is one of these lost colonies.

Of the interstellar races known at the time of the long ago survey none still exist. Two’s fates, the Unlzwano and Goldasti were witnessed going extinct by a merchant scout who saw their star (it was a system where two habitable worlds evolved sentient life) go nova and there have never been signs that they utilised their interstellar capacities to colonise other worlds and apparently no ships equipped to found a colony remained, and the race is in no discovered record having sought asylum among any other peoples.

Six show signs of having died out in various wars. One of these, the Ottops, were wiped out by a wholly unknown foe. Depictions of their destroyers in the archaeological finds indicate a race never seen in the Milky Way except in exceedingly scattered legends. A superficial resemblance has lead some fringe groups to be convinced that they were Dichidians, but this is deemed exceedingly unlikely given what is known and understood of Dichidian behaviour – they neither kept the world, nor show any signs of touching any of the million worlds they would have passed along the way.  A likelier theory, until outraged members of that race point out they had barely reached beyond their own twelfth moon at that time, is that it was the Chardosi of Galfarra whose home is the third closest to the Galfarran side of the ‘hole.  As it is known that their world had been openly traded with off and on at various points in their history it is deemed plausible that some ancient warlord had traded for some ships that might have been used in the campaign, though the Chardosi insist that, even were this true, there were at least five hundred more interesting targets they would have hit too, or instead and this is presented as proof of the invalidity of that theory.

Among the rest there are many that seem to have simply died out.  One, the Jah’ari whose world was dying and their star growing cold who claim to have found a way of leaving their galaxy. Though it is uncertain if they did so through one of the wormholes, recent examinations of the worlds of the Dead Zone (the several hundred parsec region around the Vortonian end of that ‘hole where lies thousands of dead systems and stars) give inconclusive evidence of this.   A few quite simply vanished. Of these only two, the Pollithri and Marstre, left the slightest clue to what happened to them and those hints are even more mysterious than the rest who vanished without trace. The Pollithri’s nearest neighbours, the Yitresti traded with them though, apparently only for goods and never for technology as they still do not even have space flight and refuse offers to trade it for their highly prized Illutrex fruits which refuse to cultivate properly off of that world for reasons suspected to do with peculiarities in the radiation emissions of their stars.  According to Yiresti legend the Pollithri brought a strange device to the Yiresti’s third moon and in a magical ritual that reached climax during The Loozad (a sacred alignment of all three moons, the binary planet pair, and both stars in a perfectly straight line) which opened a door to a new universe they had built for themselves which the race entire all walked through and vanished and the machine with them. The fate of the Marstre is even odder, as the only clues to their fate are in what they left behind which seems to involve a detailed plan for the race entire to descend into an unknown hole in their world. Careful study has found no subterranean civilisation past or present and no cave, borehole, or sinkhole in that world’s crust match the description of the one in the plan. And the record was clearly left behind due to no longer being needed, and not as a final record as it is very vague about things and refers only to “our new paradise” in what is admitted to be a translation that is nearly half guesswork but still proves it was meant for people who already understood its meaning and purpose.

Of other notes, it appears that, save for the very rare pirate or smuggler, Vorton lost track of the Milky Way around the time of whatever disaster befell the Dead Zone, which is quite believable as astrographical evidence suggests that event was a centuries long death of an entire star cluster … the Dead Zone being littered with black holes, various late stage stars, and as many shattered remains of worlds and systems as it has corpses of such. During that period it would have, likely, been impossible to reach the wormhole in any safety. This loss of contact and falling of all things related to The Milky Way and Galfarra to distant legend is gauged to have been within the era when the Earth was first developing river valley civilisations, and the Kivanians were beginning to make forays into space.

It is also worth noting that several worlds on the opposite side of the galaxy from Sweytz, and Earth seem to bear legends of striking similarity that there was a great race of strange beings or gods depicted varingly as purple skinned, purple furred, or purple scaled, but always purple, standing (depending on legend) between one and four metres tall, and which were vengeful, dangerous and ‘came from beyond the stars’ via some kind of celestial vortex. Oddly the legends vary on one detail most shockingly, while all do indicate that another race of gods, these pink, benevolent and helpful stopped the purple from destroying, apparently, everything, here the similarity immediately stops.  Some say the pink race destroyed the purple and vowed that the universe was now safe; others that the purple were driven out and banished, supposedly forever, though they often seem to doubt this and suspect the purple ones of plotting a return; and finally those who believe the purple ones were only foiled in that single attempt and are destined to return one day. Many xenoanthropologists suspect that this is a legend born from cultural contamination from one of the earlier interstellar races, or is a strange twisting of the historical meeting of some of the older lost ones who are known to have mutually destroyed each other and could have fit the description.  There are also a few races that yet live who are younger but also could serve the legend, and as ever there abound theories that this was a transuniversal or extragalactic race and their vortexes were the means by which they travelled those boundaries and periodically makes a short lived fad among holocinemetographers, holoserialists, comic book authors, science fiction writers, and their analogues on the nearly seven thousand million worlds that have ever heard of that legend to any degree.

Time (Terran)

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While, as with any civilisation, the Terran people have used any number of calendars and measures of time through their history, there are two that can be specifically thought of as specifically Terran rather than simply one of its cultural or religious groups.

These would be the old, defunct Gregorian system, and the modern Universal Standard system.

Gregorian: Before the Tycho Convention gathered to found the Terran Confederation most nations and planets used, to varying degrees, the Gregorian system. Some worlds did attempt to adapt the clock and/or calendar to their own planet’s orbital and rotational periods, but based these very heavily on this Earth system.

At the smallest common unit was the second. Colloquially it was 1/86400 of the day, but officially was:

the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom.

Either way 60 of them was the next sized unit, the minute. 60 of those to an hour, and 24 to an Earth day.

The notation for time had two varieties called the 12hour or 24hour clocks.
The 12hour clock used a denotion of AM or PM for morning or evening respectively and noted the hour using 1 through 12. Thus 1:30pm for one and a half hours after midday.
The 24hour clock dropped the AM/PM electing to count the hours as 00 though 23. So 13:30 for the above example. Minutes in either system were 00 through 59, and while either system had a preceding 0 for a single digit hour as optional, minutes and seconds were always 2-digit, and units below seconds were denoted decimally so 1:30:45.123456 might be seen.

The calendar was based on a solar/lunar cycle system and counted the time before or after the estimated birth of the Christian deity Jesus. Events after this event were left merely as a numeric year, or might be specified with A.D. From the Latin Anno Domini, The Year of Our Lord being the common translation. After Christianity fell out of major political influence during the century of the first two world wars C.E. was used instead and meant Common Era. Events preceding the birth were B.C. or B.C.E. for Before Christ or Before the Common Era.
The year, as with the Universal Calendar is based on the Terrestrial orbit of Sol.

This was achieved through estimation, however. The year was measured as 365.2525 days, and was tracked as 3 years of 365 days followed by one of 366, called a Leap Year except on centennial years that weren’t a multiple of 400.

The lunar element was in the subdivision of the year into 12 months as the approximate number of lunar cycles from full moon to full moon in one year. These twelve months had either 30 or 31 days, except the second which had 28 or during leap year 29.

The notation had virtually no standardisation. But the methods involved spelling out or abbreviating the month’s name, and giving the day and year as numerals, or by giving the month a numeral value and listing it all that way using various symbols for seperation. Often the first two digits of the year were omitted, and what order the numerals were placed was very regional.

Some examples:
1 February 2134
Feb. 1, 2134
01-2-34
2/1/2134

The system is no longer used for any official purposes but some religious groups do still use it to track holy days.

Universal Standard: Also called simply Standard or decimal it was first proposed some 43 years before the Tycho Convention founded the Confederation by Dr. Otto Smith of Universidad de Amazonis Planitia on Mars as a new calendar system that left behind the religious trappings that had led to the horrible wars that were still ravaging parts of the cradle of Mankind, and as a compliment to the decimal clock that had been gaining momentum for the previous fifty years as a result of the numbers of people who had had to adapt to it for military purposes.

The Universal Clock is, essentially, the same one proposed during the French Revolution centuries before even the first of the Big Three. It proposes the day be divided into tenths, and the accepted form used a division of those tenths by hundredths, then those to be further divided by an hundred. Lacking any proposals for an alternate name, and in the interests of tradition they were called hours, minutes, and seconds.

The length of a day, thanks to modern astrometric capabilities and the creation of the major time servers at each major System Hub means all clocks can adjust themselves to accurately subdivide the Terrestrial rotational period accurately into the required pieces.

The calendar elected to divide the year into ten, again for tradition’s sake the word month was chosen. These were declared to be 37 days on the odd months, and 36 on the even. The exact length of the calendar is automatically adjusted by the System Hubs throughout the year to keep 365 days precisely the span of that years Terrestrial orbital period.

The name Universal Standard is, naturally, because it is intended to be the standard time for all of the Confederation. Due to the exceedingly variable duration of extraterrestrial worlds, as well as spaceships and starships, space stations, etc. it was decided that the Terrestrial orbits and rotations would be the measure of time throughout Mankind and that no timezones need exist. The hour was calculated as 1.0 when The Constitution was ratified as and the date as 1.1.1.

The Universal months were given names for purposes of making saying the date easier, though numerals are to always be used when writing, and were given the Latin for First through Tenth. The clock and calendar were declared to be one and the same so correct notation should always be date, numerically, separated as year.month.day@hour.minutes or if greater accuracy is required .seconds or even further.

Colloquially the date is left out of the time in spoken conversations, but this is inappropriate usage when speaking in official or formal capacities.

The single time unit to be absolutely unchanged between either calendar is the week, a unit if 7 days. The week held more importance in the Gregorian eras, but even under modern circumstances a middle measure between day and month is useful and while it has been suggested that six might be a better choice the proposal always lacks support so the old measure remains.

Humans

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Humans are a bipedal, omnivorous, mammalian race of mostly hairless primates. The origin of this species is unknown as it shows every appearance of having multiple planets of origin and seems native to all three known major galaxies.

The Human race is not unique in not having a single known homeworld, and even going so far as to seemingly have evolved on multiple planets, but it is one of only a few dozen that can lay that claim on at least one world in all three major galaxies, and at least one minor one. Many theories exist, the most popular being that certain worlds were seeded with similar DNA chains by another, older race and this led to parallel evolution of the species. This is popular in it’s explanation of minor genetic discrepencies leading to certain quirks particular to the humans of different galaxies or planets. Notably handedness, which in Galfarra is nearly always left, but in the Milky Way, and Earth especially, right is the dominant hand. Also, the genetic chain for red hair is closely linked to the gene for skin pigment in the people of Lorithen in the Vorton Galaxy resulting in its dark skinned members being nearly all copper or orange haired. Another one is subtle differences in organ placement. Terran Humans being mirrored in a few respects, like the appendix, compared to all Galfarran Humans, and nearly completely when compared to the only other native humans of the Milky Way on the small moon of Plindreth near the galactic core.

As is often the case Humans can breed with varying degrees of dificulty and success with many other species of similar biology, anatomy, etc.

Professor Serena Cole

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Bithdate: 26 Okkono 287
Birthplace: Dublin, District of Ireland, Republic of Earth, Terran Confederation, Milky Way
Current Residence: Outside of Ptholid Village, Namenlose Province, Sweytz, Sweytizan Alliance, Milky Way

Biography: Serena was born to Irishwoman Coleen Cole neé Brennan and Englishman Thomas Cole and is the youngest of three children.

From an early age Serena showed a remarkable talent for mathematics and memory. She was certified a genius, a lightning calculator, and shown to have a photographic memory when given her pre-kindergarden examninations by Beueau of Education officials at age four.

When she was six years old her parents moved to Sweytz because they had ben contracted to build a replica of a great historic monument in one of that planet’s provinces. Over the ensuing years her parents were working on that and numerous other projects that were requested of them while they lived on that world Serena found herslef excelling in academics and even was enroled in the formost university of the region, Delthakk University, at age eleven.

At this same time her parents were preparing to return to Earth. Serena elected to stay behind and was left the house her parents had designed and constructed and in the care of their neighbours and a very powerful household computer servent affectionately dubbed Cici. In another three years she’d earned a Professorship in mathematics and physics through various discoveries regarding the shape and nature of wormholes and the completely new field of mathematics she’d developed to describe her findings.

Her findings have led to a great deal of debate in academic circles, though it cannot be denied that her calculations do work very well to describe all known natural wormholes and accurately predict all issues that had been encountered in any attempt to generate one artificially. The debate largely has to do with her findings regarding the nature of time, history, how wormholes function with regards to this dynamic and complex model of time, and her expanding hyperspace by a full dozen dimensions beyond the usual accepted.

In Dekdua of Sweytzian year 306 she married the young dancer, and a childhood friend, Georgia Ellen Blue-Evans and together they now have twin daughters Kaelee Ginger Cole-Evans and Dejah Fiona Evans-Cole who were born in Ĵaudo of 307.