Why All the Humans

Why All the Humans?
== In Game ==
== Epiphany Trek ==
Generally, Epiphany Trek is not as over run by humans and near-humanoids as ST-OM. I prefer to populate my Trek worlds with more alien aliens and more wondrously different people to encounter.
Species get spread around through the mechanism of second generation space travel. Space travel is very old. It comes and goes in waves. So various species have been seeded throughout the Galaxy in this fashion. Sometimes evolution moves then on. 
YAGLAs do weird stuff for YAGLA reasons and that spreads races around.
There are many Human similar aliens, but few true Humans.
== ST-OM ==
Once upon a time there was a race called the Rishans. They were weird and strange. By definition.
Please go Read the Rishans Page. I'll wait.
Okay. Dennis Washburn, the creator of the Rishans specified that they were the Original Human Race. This is why the Human form reoccurs as a motif for the Rishans. It was their natural form.
The Rishans Spread across the Galaxy and remade it. Slow and grinding at first, their "Terraforming" Capabilities became better and better, until, near the end of the Rishan's reign, it became, like all of their technology, miraculous.
The Rishans came to understand their minds and found them flawed. The reasons for this are lost to history, but all attempts to transcend this flaw failed. The Rishans created their own successors. Humans as seen in Star Trek. 
These humans are idenntical in external and physical form to the Rishans. But the minds of modern humans are alien to the Rishan mindset. So much so that they are incompatible at a root level. These are "Humans 2.0"
The Rishans terraformed with a will. They were profiligate, careless and casual about terraforming.
They created class M worlds left and right. Sometimes for reasons we might understand. Sometimes not. 
That also made variations on the theme. 
And they made people. Not only did they scatter Humans 2.0 across many of their class M worlds, they also made other types of people. Vulcanoids. Klingonoids. Andorianoids. Furries. Strange ones. Humanoids of all sizes, shapes and descriptions.
The Rishans felt thhat their own form was perfect. A sort of commentary of narcissism and self absorption. 
But they also believed that competition bred creatures with better survival traits and skills.
So the Intent behind all the humanoids is that they would all compete and refine each other. The winnners of competition would be more survival worthy.
It is unknown how the Rishans would react to multi-race alliances, and the act of making friends and communities as a cooperative survival mechanism.
It is Safe to Bet that their response would not be coherent by the lights of modern sentients.
They'd probably approve of the growing number of "Half-Breeds" and "Multi-racial" people. 
After the Rishans, several waves of human and humanoid people scattered across the galaxy. They settled numerous worlds, all mysteriously compatible with their own forms of life. They some times found other humans living on other worlds.
Sometimes they incorporated these people into their own empires. Sometimes, In the case of the El-Aurians they moved interesting primitives and cultural groups to uninhabited class M worlds to presserve their cultures.
The Upshot of this is that one is not exploring a galaxy that is wild and in a state of nature. The Galaxy, by metaphor is a garden that has been abandoned and grown wild.
== Out of Game ==
When Gene Roddenberry sent to central casting for non-Human actors, he got Flipper, Lassie, and Mr. Ed. It comes down to the simple fact that in the days before cheaper-than-dirt CGI what any science fiction show had to work with was Humans. So you painted them interesting colors and applied appliances to try and make your very Human actors look different, with a varying degrees of success. Most of the time the budget didn't even exist for that, so you got very Human looking humanoids.
Second, people identify better with a character who has a face they can identify with.
== ST-OM ==
Star Trek is a Fantasy. Scattering humans and humanoids liberally through ST-OM (Although not to the point of excluding any other cool races) Allows me to present human populated worlds as metaphors for various countries and various stereotypes of countries. Also it allows me to build characters with more directly understood drives, goals and emotions.
Note, I frequently use Orions as "Other humans" because while seemingly of different biochemstry to be golden, ruddy, gray or green, they have faces, body languages and emotions essentially identical too humans. The Orions in Jay-Trek are "Exotic" humans from the frontier.
Although it may seem that adding hordes of earth-like worlds, worlds very earth-like because they were made to be that way, and hordes of humans all over reduces the potential for wonder and alien-ness in ST-OM, I disagree. If you run the numbers, I could add 30 million new class M worlds to the Galaxy and the Galaxy would barely notice. The ratio of new class M worlds to already existing stars is 30 million over 400 billion or 0.0075%
The Size of Space.
Jayphailey 06:07, November 22, 2009 (UTC)
Category:ST-OM
Category:Epiphany Trek