Authiik

A variety of authiik, showcasing the various possible hair, eye, and skin tones present in the species.

## Biology

### Age of Maturity

9 - 12 Earth Years (Capable of Reproduction)15 - 17 Earth Years (End of Growth)

22 - 24 Earth Years (Full Maturation)

### Distinctions

Mechanical durability, immune-system deficient, not sexually dimorphic.

## Other Info

### Affiliations

Allies: Orion Confederation, Old Bomure EmpireEnemies: Old Neyanta Empire, Apsic Empire

### FTL Travel...

26889 BCE

Authiik are a non sexually dimorphic humanoid species native to the planet Udyana, and are the oldest surviving civilization in the known galaxy. The earliest examples of spacefaring authiik were alive approximately thirty thousand years ago, as of first contact with the Orion Confederation in 3005 CE.

## Basic Information

Ancient authiik on their home world of Udyana were primarily considered to be predators, not unlike paleolithic humanity. They hunted large prey species and even other large predators for sustenance and sport. Plant material provided them with glucose and other nutrients that they require, but cannot not obtain through meats. As they require meat to survive and eat plant matter almost exclusively for its glucose and fiber content, their digestive tract being unable to extract much of the nutritional value of plants, they are obligate carnivores.

The average lifespan of individuals once averaged 25 Earth years due to many factors, including the sharp, jagged and rocky nature of the terrain on their cold home world. The practice of animal husbandry allowed them to come together in larger groups, letting groups care for members more effectively in the event that they become sick or injured. Authiik skeletons dated to after this shift showed an average age closer to their mid thirties.

AS their technology advanced, they spread across the habitable areas of their home world, dominated its ecosystem, and built cities, states, and nations as many species have through the course of the classical period.

Before making it into space, a majority of individuals were genetically engineered to remove undesirable traits, which finalized the removal of any and all sexual dimorphism, making the two sexes externally identical. This event was the breaking point for a massing global tension that resulted in nuclear war. From a base on the planet's moon, they expanded to a new colony where they met the bomure, who made them a client state of sorts.

After founding a third colony, they discovered the human species. The authiik made slight modifications to their DNA in an effort to use them as soldiers, but the experiments could not be put into practice before a war with the neyanta began. A number of ships fled the galaxy and slowly returned over time, discovering a new colony called Mabatshar and making periodical checks on their old worlds, which were bombed sterile by neyanta warships.

Ever since then their evolution has weakened them considerably. There are few hostile microorganisms to fight on the planet of Mabatshar, which features very little native flora and no native fauna, and none in the carefully controlled environments of starships. As a direct result their already weak immune system has atrophied into oblivion. Their current total population across both their colonies and known to be living on starships and alien worlds is estimated to be around 117 million.

## Biology

### Genetics

Authiik are a diploid Udyana-eukaryotic species with no homogametic sex. They use neither an XY or ZW sex determination system, instead researchers have assigned the letters U and V due to their extremely slight differences, though some prefer the letters F and M to refer to their role in male and female development.

A UU chromosome pair will always result in a genetically female fetus, and a VV pair will always result in a genetically male fetus. The sex of UV individuals will typically be determined by environmental factors such as the body temperature of her mother, her diet, or her precise hormone balance, especially early in the pregnancy. An egg and sperm cell can be either U or V, resulting in some complexity when determining the potential sex of fetuses.

In much the same way as the human X chromosome, only one chromosome can be dominant in a cell. This results in the battle between the U and V chromosome in heterogametic individuals, ultimately resulting in a dominant U or V chromosome that will set the gonads and reproductive system on the path to developing into testes and a penis, or ovaries and a uterus. In cases where neither chromosome becomes dominant, with a roughly equal number of U dominant and V dominant cells, the individual will be neither physically male or female.

Ten percent of UV individuals, 6.25% of the general population, will be sexless, meaning they were born with no uterus or penis and underdeveloped, undifferentiated gonads. These individuals require hormone treatments beginning in their teens and continuing into old age to induce pubescence and allow them to develop normally, otherwise they experience similar symptoms to elderly authiik with no sex hormones. This includes fatigue, low sex drive, reduced muscle mass, lack of natural lubrication in the vagina, mood swings, and depression.

Roughly half of males and females are homogametic, and the other half are heterogametic. Heterogametic individuals are over nine times more likely to undergo sex change operations than homogametic ones, almost one fifth of the heterogametic population. This is thought to be due to a mismatch between the sex of the body and the sex of the brain, a condition similar to human gender dysphoria, though this is less of a mourning of the social aspect of their sex, of which there is none, instead they mourn the reproductive capabilities they wish they had, which is easily remedied.

UV (Female): 45%
UV (Non-sexed): 10%
Female: 45%
 UV (Male)
UV (Male): 22.5%
UV (Female): 22.5%
UV (Non-sexed): 5%
Female: 72.5%
 VV
UV (Male): 22.5%
UV (Female): 22.5%
UV (Non-sexed): 5%
Female: 22.5%
 UV (Male)
UU (Female): 25%
UV (Male): 22.5%
UV (Female): 22.5%
UV (Non-sexed): 5%
Female: 47.5%
Female: 46.875%
Neither: 6.25%

### Internal Anatomy

Their body plan is similar to that of humans, as a bipedal species with four limbs. Two are used to walk upright, and the other two are used to interact with their environment. Limbs end in hands and feet with eight digits, and are jointed both at their mid point and where it attaches to the appendage. Extending from the pelvic region to the skull is a vertebral column whose upper half functions as the attachment points of the thoracic cage, which surrounds and protects important organs, including the lungs, hearts, stomach, liver, and upper kidneys.

#### Skeleton

The authiik endoskeleton is chitinous and flexible due to concentrations of resilin. Effects of this skeletal composition include:

* Authiik chitin skeletons are far lighter, roughly only 21% the weight of that of a skeleton composed of bone. For example, A fully grown authiik at the average height of the species, 147 cm, or 4'10", weighs 27.36 kilograms, or 60 pounds on average. If their skeleton was composed of bone, they would weigh roughly 40 kilograms, or 88 pounds.
* Required caloric intake is high as maintaining chitin in addition to auxiliary and redundant organs requires more metabolic energy. Recommended caloric intake for authiik is approximately 3000 calories per day, 50% more than is recommended for a human despite their smaller size.
* The flexibility of authiik bones means they are harder to break, thus making impacts more painful, but less deadly.
* The healing speed of the chitin skeleton means fractures, should they occur, repair themselves faster. This regeneration rate made cancers more common until the species was subjected to extensive gene tailoring, which made cancerous mutations, not to mention all other types of mutation, much less likely.
* Age-related complications affecting the skeleton are much less common, as less of the bone's structure is composed of calcium compounds that may wither away as an individual ages.

Their stature and odd proportions, with small torsos and long legs, as well as their featureless skin and smooth, flat faces, has led humans to compare them to frogs.

#### Nervous system

Within the authiik vertebral column is the spinal cord, a long bundle of nerves that extends from the brain in the head, through the spine, and into the secondary brain found in the pelvic region.

The primary "head" brain is contained within the cranium, and is responsible for deciphering sensory input, motor control of the upper body, maintaining a primary copy of short term and long term memory, producing and deciphering speech, thought and decision-making, controlling attention, abstract thinking, behavior, problem solving tasks, physical reactions, personality, coordination of complex motor movements, and coordinates with the secondary brain for the maintenance of balance.

The secondary "pelvic" brain is spread through the sacrum and hip bones, and is mostly responsible for balance and reflexive reactions in the lower body, backup storage of long-term memory, and in the case of the destruction or injury of the primary brain, the secondary brain assumes the function of primary whose cerebrum becomes inactive while the smaller cerebrum of the secondary becomes active. Reaction time to four of the main five senses, all aside from touch, becomes roughly three times longer and the individual's mental capacity diminishes.

While this is an extremely energy-intensive method of ensuring survival in the case of brain-damage, fractured historical records from authiik archives claim that this was common to most advanced life on Udyana, and was likely a structural foundation that was set hundreds of millions of years before the authiik ever existed.

Those who are second-brain active have a number of distinct personality quirks, that emerge either when the cognitive centers of the authiik brain, equivalent to the human prefrontal cortex, has been damaged, or the head-brain has been freshly wounded. The most obvious are becoming especially flighty, impulsive, and timid, especially when stressed or confronted, as well as forgetfulness and mild short term memory loss. Due to this, a common Ukitii insult meant to portray shy and indecisive individuals translates roughly to "working from a backup", comparing second-brain active individuals to individuals who exhibit those traits by default.

This impairs information retention, memory formation, decision making, and communication until such a time where the primary brain is healed or repaired enough to be awakened.

#### Cardiovascular System

Their primary heart is located in the upper right side of the chest and features four chambers, the right atrium receives blood from the tissues of the body that has been deoxygenated. The right atrium pumps blood to the right ventricle, which passes the blood to the lungs. Upon returning from the lungs, the blood enters the left ventricle, from which it is pumped into the left atrium, where it is circulated around the body.

Their second heart is smaller, closer to the center of the chest, and has only three chambers. Two atrium and a shared central ventricle. This heart normally stays dormant, as the reserve brain does. Its efficiency is lower, as the shared ventricle allows some amount of deoxygenated blood back into the arteries. The heart is stimulated and begins pumping upon the release of adrenaline-like compounds, which lowers the stress on the primary heart. If the primary heart is not functional, this heart is responsible for pumping blood.

The second smaller heart is not strong enough to supply sufficient amounts oxygen to the body, with shortness of breath, constant exhaustion, and the inability to perform physical activity for long periods of time being common.

In addition, major arteries have valves placed periodically that are capable of sealing off arterial blood flow and dilating small blood vessels in damaged areas of the body in the event of catastrophic injuries. This largely prevents deaths by exsanguination and allows brain injuries especially to be less severe when paired with the pelvic brain, as one can continue using other areas of the first brain with assistance from the second.

Authiik blood uses hemocyanin proteins to carry oxygen. This gives it a blue shade when oxygenated, and is colorless when deoxygenated. Due to this, their flesh is purple.

The authiik lungs are fan shaped and highly compartmentalized into seven individual pockets, allowing for injured lobes to be closed off and not impair the function of the rest of the lungs. They are responsible for drawing oxygen from the air they breath and transferring it to the hemocyanin in the blood for use in metabolic processes.

An authiik entirely lacks a lymphatic system. Which assists greatly in moving white blood cells and antibodies to effectively fight any infections off. This, in concert with having little bone marrow, a lack of hair follicles capable of growing fine hair, and possessing no tonsils leads to leads to their extremely weak immune system.

As with most vital organs, the kidneys feature an additional pair of smaller organs nearby that assist the primary organs with their function in times of stress or excessive damage.

#### Reproductive System

Authiik testes and ovaries rest below the kidneys, with a second pair below and behind the urinary bladder.

Female authiik have relatively standard mammalian reproductive anatomy. Aside from the fact that they have four ovaries, necessitating the formation of "V" shaped fallopian tubes, the womb, cervix, and vaginal canal, along with the external features of the vagina, including the urethra, clitoris, and labia are considered to be unremarkable.

Male authiik are externally identical to females, with the labia, clitoris, and urethra being the same in all dimensions. Differences lie in the vaginal canal, which is where the penis is found when not erect. It develops from the same tissues that would make up a female's uterus during fetal development. As the urethra is not a part of the penis, it serves only as a passage for sperm cells into the womb of a female. The testicles are found in the same locations as female ovaries, inside the body and near the kidneys.

Arousal is primarily achieved by stimulation of the vagina or contact in erogenous zones being made with an intimate partner, with symptoms including an increased heart rate, taking deeper breaths, slight swelling of the nipples and labia, production of natural lubricants in the vagina, and a blush in the face and shoulders making the skin turn a deeper blue. This is a trait males and females share. Male arousal can further result in erections if the right conditions are met. It requires external stimulation of the vagina and pressure from the outside.

### External Anatomy

#### Skin

Authiik skin is a pale shade of blue or green, with dark purple patterns appearing in certain areas of the body, including around the eyes and on large joints such as the hips, elbows, shoulders, and knees. These marks have been likened to bruises, but are a result of natural pigmentation that serves to reduce glare on the skin reflecting light from the snow and sun that causes flash blindness.

Examined up close, the skin is extremely smooth and dry. They have only 130 sweat glands and 16 oil glands per square inch (6.45 square centimeters) of skin, and entirely lack body hair. What hair they do have is quite coarse and serves more overt functional purposes. This low number of sweat glands makes them sensitive to hot temperatures. Symptoms of overheating include panting, migraines, and exhaustion.

While an authiik cannot grow fine hair, such as that found on the limbs, torso, and within the nostrils of humans, the coarse hair atop the head serves to shield the top of the head from the sun, and the brows and lashes prevent debris from entering the eye. The rate of growth for their head hair is roughly 3.26 centimeters, or 1.3 inches, per Earth month, every year growing 39.1 centimeters or 15.4 inches.

#### Face

Their face features a small mouth, a narrow, flat nose and large eyes whose outer points face upwards at a significant angle when compared to the inner edge. The iris can be shades of silver, blue, green, and sometimes purple, though this is extremely uncommon. Their retinas are sensitive to similar wavelengths of light to humans, but shifted slightly towards the infrared spectrum. Overall, it is accepted that they see in a trichromatic color space only marginally altered from the human standard.

The mouth features an assortment of teeth that suggest a diet of meat, consumed for protein and fat, supplemented by plants, consumed for their glucose, an absolutely necessary part of maintaining their skeletal health. One quarter of the mouth features one incisor, a trapezoidal tooth referred to as a "semi-canine", two canine teeth and three semi-molar teeth for a total of 28 teeth.

These teeth are also chitinous, but feature no resilin and a mineral-rich covering making them harder than any other substance in their bodies. These teeth are infinitely replenished, and each tooth is replaced every 8 to 10 years. This means that at any given time an adult authiik is likely missing between one and three teeth.

#### Torso

An authiik torso contains the majority of the body's organs, from the heart and lungs, to the stomach and liver, and to the bladder and kidneys.

Externally, authiik have little to no dimorphism between the sexes. Male and female bodies have no obvious differences barring special circumstances such as arousal or ongoing pregnancy. Both feature very wide hips with an obvious gap between the thighs due to the natural thickness of their pelvic bones to make space for their secondary pelvic brain.

In addition, males also have the capability to produce an appreciable amount of breast tissue, though much less than a female. The breasts of a female will become larger and begin producing milk over the course of a pregnancy and will remain active until such a time as the infant is weaned, at which point they will return to their default size. This can occasionally occur in males as well if they are in close proximity to a pregnant or breastfeeding female for extended periods of time, occurring most often in fathers of newborns. If the father does not participate in breastfeeding, their breasts will return to normal size within three Earth months of the child's birth.

The navel is found at the waistline and between the abdominal muscles, and once served as the attachment point for the umbilical cord while gestating.

#### Limbs

Authiik have four limbs, two arms used for interacting with their environment with four-fingered hands, while their legs end in four-toed digitigrade feet. This lends itself to jumping and sprinting speed but, as there is far less surface in contact with the ground, they are easier to knock off balance.

### Life Cycle

Their life cycle is not unlike that of humans. An egg is fertilized via sexual intercourse and is carried for approximately 5 months before giving birth to a live child. These children are slightly more developed than a human fetus would be at this stage of pregnancy. Roughly equivalent to a 7 month old human fetus. This higher rate of development is constant throughout the growth period.

They are capable of walking within 2 Earth years of birth, experience pubescence around the age of 8, and are capable of reproducing between the ages of 9 and 12 (when physically equivalent to a 15 to 16 year old human). Growth slows after this point. An authiik is not fully developed until at least the age of 15, though some can grow until the age of 17 (physically equivalent to an 18 to 20 year old human), this is not common.

An authiik will continue to age until they die. An ideal lifespan for them falls into the 100 year range, but due to the status of their immune system, this number is often much shorter. The current state of their medical care can extend the life of individuals well past 125 years, though in the past they are believed to have been able to sustain an individual well into their 500s, and an extremely small minority are born with a gene that prevents aging entirely.

This gene is submissive and must be activated through gene therapy. The number of living individuals that have undergone this treatment is between 10 and 15, and the number of individuals who are capable of receiving this treatment is approximately ten times that number.

### Sleep

The authiik sleep schedule is shifted slightly from the human standard, falling asleep roughly two hours before sunrise and waking after roughly six hours. They will spend 12 to 13 hours at a time awake. This sleep and a healthy dinner is extremely important to authiik mental function. In order to inscribe especially important information learned during the day onto the pelvic brain for backup storage, an authiik needs to consume plenty of glucose to provide the energy needed. The spinal cord is used as a high capacity one-way connection by the head-brain in order to form these backup memories and their associations.

### Genetic Diversity

While the gene pool of humans has been likened to a puddle, that of the authiik is a damp spot in comparison. Modern humans, *Homo sapiens sapiens*, are descended from a handful of species of the genus *Homo*, those being a majority African humans, but also the European Neanderthals and the Asian Denisovans, each existing hundreds of thousands of years ago and since having grown to a galactic population of over thirty billion spread across over thirty worlds.

By contrast, the modern authiik have not only been genetically stagnant since nearly thirty thousand years ago, but are also descended from under three hundred thousand of these already similar individuals. This number has merely increased roughly twentyfold in that time largely due to resource and space restrictions. This combined with the factor of the atrophy of their already weak immune system makes them highly susceptible to biological attacks.

## Culture

### Landscape of the Home World

Udyana is a jagged and rocky planet orbiting a yellow dwarf star with little vegetation, most of which is comprised of gray-green moss and lichen-like plants and tall, slow growing trees. At the planet's warmest, the world is temperate and dry. At its coldest, the ground rests beneath dozens of meters of permafrost at all latitudes above the 50th parallel, and most above the 40th.

Snow and ice are ubiquitous, with blizzards occurring in all seasons but summer, and near-constant in winter. Seasonal temperature variation on Udyana is more extreme than Earth's due to a slightly higher axial tilt.

The following applies primarily to the authiik remnant government, based on the planet Mabatshar and its fleets of starships and orbital stations. While the new authiik state of Alyavaloka shares a cultural heritage with the remnant authiik in the Old Authiik Domain, there are significant differences between the two groups.

### Values

Before the homeworld was abandoned, the core of the authiik survivors' culture was becoming notable. individuals were driven by the world around them to make an impact on the world. Military service was praised, as was ambition and fertility. This was put into words via a common saying. "Vama valaumiitii vatisha." Literally, it translates to "child remember effect", but is often translated as "Lineage, Legacy, Legend" to match the alliterative nature of the saying in Ukitii.

### Religion

As with humans, early authiik used magic, deities, and spirits to explain phenomena they observed without the tools to study them in detail. As centuries passed, the many faiths across Udyana coalesced into a handful of dominant religions. The largest of these that survives in some form today is called Ka'aizha, or "The One Divine".

Modern theologians agree that the religion was warped as a tool to turn the populations of rival nations against one another, changing the interpretation of various passages in holy texts to place the goodwill of The Divine in those who resisted scientific progress. Some statements include that The Divine never intended the authiik to leave Udyana, that the authiik were never intended to interfere so directly in changing their forms, and that they were not intended to create life of their own. These statements opposed space travel, and both genetic engineering and artificial intelligence research.

The corruption of the faith has led many that are so inclined to discard it in favor of a free-form spiritualism without dogma or religious texts.

### Cuisine

Due to their high calorie requirements, an authiik consumes at least four full meals in a day, eating roughly every three hours. A large breakfast, a pair of lighter midday meals, and a large dinner. Snacking is used to augment one's diet after lighter meals.

Modern authiik diets consist mostly of cloned meats with plant based condiments and grain products to provide carbohydrates and glucose. Base liquids for such condiments are most commonly meat stocks, as this provides additional protein. Herbs and spices used for seasoning are rare and, as carnivores, the authiik sense of taste is underdeveloped. They are more capable of tasting sweet flavors than anything else. It is believed that this aided their evolutionary ancestors in locating glucose-rich plants.

A common gourmet dish, not commonly found due to a spacefaring lifestyle or life aboard half-buried starships on Mabatshar is "real" meat. That is, meat not cloned in a factory, instead hunted for or raised in small professional farms.

A wide variety of sweetened teas, coffees, and juices are consumed by the authiik on a regular basis, seen as an essential part of meals that may stand in place of plant-based food items for their glucose content. There are times considered to be especially important to have a brewed drink of some kind. Before or during breakfast, in the mid afternoon sometime between the first and second lunch, and with dinner. Whether seed-based coffees or herb-based teas are consumed is largely down to regional preference.

Intoxicants, from alcohol to recreational drugs, while not illegal are very rarely consumed or produced by authiik as their livers have little effect breaking down many of those compounds. This makes both their effects and after effects more intense last much longer, up to many months after an event. Death due to overdose among the small fraction of those who do partake is extremely high, so the risk is rarely considered to be worth taking. One very notable exception was a common herb family known as "De'uma", which produced a very mild sedative effect when smoked or made into tea, and became popular among nomadic communities in the past, and a resurgence in popularity among rebellious teens and young adults in the modern era before their departure from Udyana.

### Music

The authiik musical scale is similar to a human musical scale, coming to be codified on udyana hundreds of years before leaving their homeworld. The system used is a 12-tone equal temperament system, likely due to the fact that the ancient authiik used a base-12 numeral system, and the authiik living at the time were looking back to the culture of The Domain for guidance on how to conduct a nation in much the same way that medieval and renaissance humans looked back at Rome and Greece for inspiration.

There are 12 tones grouped together under different "zherutii", each receiving their own note letter. These letters are be, ma, pi, ve, tii, da, na, re, leh, zha, yo, and sha. Each zherutii begins at a multiple of 23 Hz. 1Be at an equivalent to F0 at 23 Hz, the low threshold of authiik hearing, 2Be at 46 Hz, 3Be at 92 Hz, ect.

In the past, orchestral music was the most popular music, played with groups of dozens of people playing one or more of dozens of different wind, string, and percussion instruments performing long and complex arrangements.

Modern authiik music is played by small bands of three to five, and the most popular instruments are the dazharma and dazharte, five string, octave-paired string instruments treated as culturally equivalent to the guitar and bass guitar. These instruments were contemporary with similar instruments that were both smaller and larger and with both more and less strings, but the dazharshuta family was the one that best endured in popularity.

Octave pairs were almost always played together by couples, with the dominant partner taking the rhythm-driven bassier of the two while the submissive one played the more melody-focused treble instrument. This was thought to aid in synchronization and cooperation. In the case of the dazharshuta, solo players most often choose the dazharma, playing both parts with tapped melodies in the two complete octave ranges that its 24-fret neck allows for.

On the fleets, the cruiser *Shabita* of the fifth fleet was known for having exceptional luthiers. The largest number of chordophone musical instruments came from the sixth and seventh decks of bay two of the forward section, as did those of the highest quality.

### Family

The authiik family unit often begins small and grows quickly. With a 5 month gestation period, individuals becoming capable of reproducing between the ages of 9 and 12 Earth years (17 to 23 Udyana Years), safely at 14 (27), and the tendency for families to stay in one place for generations, this is to be expected.

At the beginning of an authiik's life they are born into a household that may be composed of only themselves and their parents, or they may be born into a large home, with siblings, many cousins, their parent's siblings and their cousins, up for as many generations as there is room for them to live. Their situation may not change for as long as they are children or adolescent, but they must make a decision upon finding a partner.

When an authiik enters into a romantic relationship, the family on one side or the other may extend a hand to the new couple to live in their home, provided there is room for such a couple to live and room for their potential children, should they be planning to have any.

If no room is made, or the couple chose beforehand to live on their own, they begin a new family unit and change their names to reflect their status.

#### Intimacy

Hugging and and the touching of faces between members of a family is normal and commonly used as a greeting among close friends as well. The practice of extensive physical contact within families likely developed for the same reason it had in humans. For pheromone detection, allowing an individual to sense genetically different mates, and potentially also the spreading of herd immunity, allowing mates and social groups to share antibodies to prevent past sicknesses to spread through the group.

This prepared them well for the limited hostile microbial life on their planet. but moving off of it and lacking many organs or even analogues to organs considered to be necessary to combat infectious disease left them poorly prepared for alien diseases.

A romantic relationship between authiik is intense and permanent. Physical contact is maintained at nearly all times, whether that is touching and holding of hands when standing near one another and huddling together when sitting.

These relationships most often begin in late pubescence. A period of extended contact or an experience that the pair goes through will cause them to closely bond, resulting in romantic feelings in both. For example, Zhobiidaya and Maiitana, now both members of the Udarita family, were friends in secondary school before entering a cadet school used to train young cosmonauts. They became romantically involved during this training course, and upon its conclusion Maiitana moved into Zhobiidaya's bedroom in the Udarita household.

It is extremely rare for a relationship to end in circumstances other than death. The death of one usually results in a permanent change in the personality of the other, if not their later death due to damage to the chordae tendineae in both hearts caused by the extreme emotional trauma.

This behavior is only the case in neurotypical authiik. There exists a condition that removes their loyalty to their mates, and while this is often detected early causing many to avoid such individuals for the purpose of finding partners, if it is only found out after an extended time, this can cause similar shifts and potential damage to their partners. This has been described poetically as "learning to forget someone who never existed".

### Names

An authiik's name is a personal thing. Many live by names they have chosen to represent themselves with, such as the leader of Alyavaloka's name, Nishtaka Xaiti Zhot, which roughly translates to "Great Purifier", or literally "great one who purifies". This, she claims, represents her goal to exact revenge on the neyanta civilization for their transgressions against the old authiik civilization. Another notable individual, Katashni Tixai Zhot, is the former's name in reverse when using the authiik alphasyllabary, which she claims represents her opposition to Nishtaka Zhot Xaiti's regime.

In situations when interacting with family, their given personal name is often used interchangeably with the one they chose for themselves, should they have one.

Their full name may be quite long. The typical name is composed of a personal name, whether that is the one chosen by them, or the one given to them by their parents, as most are. This is followed by the name of their family, which is chosen upon beginning a new residence. Third is the name of their parent's residence, which is used mostly to identify one's lineage. In total, a name can be as short as four words, or longer than a dozen depending on the length of the two family names.

These names are often translated as "[Personal Name], Member of [Family Name], Child of [Parent's Family Name]" despite the fact that Authiik lacks articles of any kind. A more literal translation would be "[Personal], [Family] member, [Parent's Family] child".

### Sex and Gender

The authiik species has three broad sex categories and five typical chromosome phenotypes, none of which are obviously distinguished from one another in physical ability or form as they are not a sexually polymorphic species. As shown in the Anatomy subsections "Reproduction" and "Torso", the only differences between the male and female sexes is that males tend to be very slightly taller, roughly four centimeters on average, have a penis and testicles in place of a uterus and ovaries. Otherwise, the external vaginal anatomy is mostly identical.

This has led to a practice of cloning this small set of primary sex organs for those who wish to swap their reproductive capability, most often in cases where a same-sex couple has chosen to reproduce. Such operations are not frowned upon or discouraged as the authiik do not socially distinguish between males and females. These operations are simply viewed as matters of preference or practicality, or comfort in the case of transsexual individuals.

The extent of their external similarities is due partly to extensive genetic tailoring by generations of people living before they ever left their home planet in any real capacity, as the traits that might have been considered "harsh" or "rugged" by authiik standards was removed, disabled, and bred out along the process of genetic engineering. While their males would have been considered to look feminine to a human, as the males of the species were quite traditionally feminine before this, the process of genetic engineering for largely cosmetic reasons removed many of the slight traits that might be indicative of an individual's sex.

It has been said that they are difficult, if not impossible to tell apart unless you are also an authiik. This is not helped by the fact that all clothing is unisex and that nearly authiik languages throughout history lack grammatical gender, as well as gendered pronouns. In the modern Ukitii, the word "Ma" as a first-person general pronoun, equivalent to "me" and "I", and "Tiye" as a general second and third-person pronoun, equivalent to "you", singular "they", and "it". There was a modifier of "am" to make a word refer to a group rather than a singular entity, so "ama" and "amtiye" translated to "we" and plural "they"

When first contact with humans was made and the authiik were introduced, or perhaps reintroduced, to the concept of gender via gendered pronouns in human language they began identifying themselves and others as neutral "they" or "them" in conversation. It took time for their people to adjust to the concept of gender and dimorphism, regarding individuals in sexually polymorphic species as something entirely separate and not sharing a species at all.

### Language and Communication

The authiik communicate in the same way as humans, producing a voice by forcing air through a passage at the top of the trachea and shaping it into words by articulating the tongue and lips. The language they speak is known as shamanii authiik ukitii, or "the standard authiik speech". It was created to facilitate communication between multinational militaries. As all citizens are considered to be enlisted in the modern day, all authiik speak it near exclusively.

A phenomenon has emerged where small parts of fleets will develop accents specific to only that handful of starships. This is due to a fleet's organizational structure, these starships will conduct transport and communication with one another almost exclusively in units known as sections, and will rely on reaching out to other vessels in the fleet only if something is urgent and necessary, such as an outbreak of a deadly pathogen picked up during a surface survey. In those cases, an unmanned transport will be moved across the space between the ships after being loaded with medical supplies.

See: Standard Ukitii

### Military

It was out of the military that the language now common to all authiik was created to serve as a lingua franca for multinational military operations. The advancement of the neyanta into authiik space ensured that the vast majority of survivors would be former military full-timers.

#### Ground/Defense Forces

Among the authiik there is no distinction between the civilian and the serviceman, as they are one in the same. Which you are called depends on how much time you devote to training.

Full-timers, what may be called the armed forces on Mabatshar and in the Pratishaya Territories on Temno, are individuals who spend the majority of their life in active service to their state. More than half of the days in a week are devoted to training with only minimal time spent away with family or working smaller jobs to make ends meet.

Part timers, or militiamen, would be the opposite of the full-timers. Periodic training courses and firearm ownership are mandatory to maintain citizenship, which comes along with government issued housing and rations of food, water, and other necessities. Due to these factors, the vast majority of authiik are at least competent in marksmanship with their weapon of choice, which usually comes in the form of a select fire carbine or semi-automatic precision rifle alongside a supplementary sidearm.

#### Air/Spaceborne Forces

Authiik use a similar set of classifications for military vessels as humans. Small craft capable of flight in both atmosphere and vacuum are used in planetary invasions, and are brought from place to place by multiple categories of larger ships.

These have been called corvettes, destroyers, and cruisers by human observers, but the authiik terms for them more closely translate to scout, escort, and carrier. The latter of which features a large number of storage bays in its dorsal bow. These were once used to store fuel and fighters, but the scavenger's mindset that has entered into the military since their self-imposed exile has mandated that these be either filled with raw material and spare components that damaged vessels may be repaired with, or be used as a production facility for amenities for the fleet.

## History

### Foreign Intervention

As with a handful of other known species, the authiik are thought to be descended from genetic material spread by an original humanoid species up to 4 billion years ago. Around 1.8 million years ago, another intelligent species caused the split between the authiik and exai. Which was the original species is unknown. They reached anatomical modernity around 370 thousand years ago, and entered the neolithic as animal husbandry and agriculture were invented 42.5 thousand years ago.

### Life on Udyana

A clear record of authiik history clearly extends to the time just after their great war, local calendar year rana zhoxara 1523, or "after the domain", abbreviated with the characters Ra and Zha, written by humans as "RZh". This epoch has been defined as the fall of the largest empire the planet would see for the next thousand years, one whose institutions stood for nearly 400 years and one that had a profound impact on the culture of their entire hemisphere and beyond.

#### Early History

Much of early authiik history in the central continent, spanning from the invention of writing to the fall of The Domain, was lost due to poor record keeping, looting, and destruction of major cities by the combined forces of their enemies.

Around the year 6 BZhSh, butauva zhoxara shula, or "before the domain's death", powers surrounding the domain made contact with one another and began making plans for a coordinated attack. The allied peoples to the east of the domain's eastern edge on the rounded peninsula and the beast riders south of the great river valley were both concerned with being the next target of expansion for the ailing empire. It had been unable to continue expanding, and as such its slave-based economy began to shrink. This caused an increase in taxation simply to keep the government running and a shortage of laborers to expand the nation's infrastructure.

A shortage of funding caused a reallocation of trained soldiers to the land armies to enforce the law and collect taxes from the borderlands, but this came along with a reduction in the number of vessels present in the navy, and as such, piracy expanded to fill the gaps. The pirates played an important role in fulfilling communication across the empire's enemies, though likely for different reasons than the small nations surrounding The Domain.

Prioritizing the military over the nation's infrastructure was certainly a factor in The Domain's decline, as while the sizes of armies increased, the communication speed suffered as the condition of roads declined.

Above all, the system of governance used in The Domain had grown bloated and complicated. With the large numbers of smaller conquered provinces each given some small degree of autonomy, a formerly democratic nation that had grown into more of a dictatorial oligarchy, and religious and spiritual shifts causing new classes of people to arise with some of their own political influence, the government had become slow to make any decisions of note. As such, they often prioritized things that those recording meetings commented as being worthless, or wastes of time. Excuses to have meetings on a schedule without making decisions. They never confronted much of anything substantial at that time.

By the next summer the plan had taken shape, and the attack commenced.

The peninsula tribes forced into Domain lands north of the mountains, drawing their mobile armies away from the heartland. The Domain took this as an excuse to attack and conquer them, which hopefully would have caused an influx of slaves and resources to extend the life of their economy for another few decades, but the goal was to open the way for the southern beast riders to push northwest into the river valleys and towards the coast. The massive mobile armies of mounted soldiers were easily able to deal with the relatively small number of garrisoned soldiers in the small client states in the southern empire, who joined in the attack as an act of rebellion due to the recent increases in taxation and being forced to put up their food supply as tribute causing starvation among the middle and lower classes.

The combined forces of the beast riders and rebelling client states were able to force northwards into The Domain's heartland and reach the capital by water. Tens of thousands of soldiers followed the river into the capital, facing little resistance due to the recent decrease in naval strength, and the capital fell quickly. The rest of the river valley served as the new bread basket for supplying the armies as they broke up the rest of the empire. Choked off, isolated pockets of The Domain stopped fighting and quietly set up their own smaller kingdoms, and eventually this occurred in the north as well, which stopped fighting and moved its capital.

The Domain would shrink over time as it failed to govern its external territories, and eventually it would totally cease to exist.

#### After the Domain

Major technological milestones that occurred after the fall of The Domain include gunpowder, discovered and created around the year RZh 200 and the steam engine in RZh 1029. Electricity was noted as being "in widespread use" in RZh 1185 when half of all homes had electrical lighting and climate control systems. The internal combustion engine was invented and began spreading worldwide in RZh 1291, initially powered by refined petroleum products but far later in history retrofitted to function on either hydrogen/oxygen gas mixtures or grain alcohol-based synthetic fuels, and uranium fission was achieved in RZh 1372 when six separate nuclear detonations ended the Third World War of Udyana. These bombs were subsequently banned after further testing of larger weapons to prevent the extinction of the authiik species.

Following the Third World War, Ukitii was created to facilitate communication between speakers of different native languages in multinational militaries. The language would become required learning to graduate secondary schooling, later ending as the only language spoken by authiik in the galaxy due to it being taught by computers.

Unmanned orbit was achieved in RZh 1403 with a spacecraft called Uvira Paxa Zhot, or "Little Flier", which was remarkably similar to the Soviet Sputnik I space probe. A spherical satellite with six radially mounted antennae meant only to send a repeating radio signal to confirm it had reached a safe and stable orbit. Crewed missions to Udyanin orbit and unmanned missions to Udshaxiva were completed in the RZh 1420s, and a manned landing on Udshaxiva was completed in RZh 1428.

The surface being rich in alumina made it a promising site for mining colonies. Blueprints were drawn up for machines that would harvest metals, silicates, and heavy hydrogen atoms from the Udshaxivan regolith and allow the easy construction of settlements on its surface from aluminum and glass manufactured on-site. These would not be produced for decades.

RZh 1431 was the year the microprocessor was invented on Udyana, marked the beginning of the authiik information age and the beginning of exponential growth of the potency of computer systems

The authiik's first interactions with other planets in the system included probes sent to Shanehdi, an ice giant orbiting closer to the system's sun, Dvanha, and remotely controlled rovers sent to the other two rocky bodies in the system, Ramani and Danurdara. Each similar in appearance and composition to one another but with vastly different atmospheres. Ramani was smaller than Udyana and had a thin atmosphere of nitrogen and sulfur dioxide, and Danurdara had a thick atmosphere nearly 23 times denser than Udyana's composed of carbon dioxide, oxygen and ozone, but was near Udyana's size with only slightly higher surface gravity. Long range probes visited the system's three outer gas giants before the first of the colony sites on Udshaxiva and Ramani were completed in RZh 1480 and RZh 1497 respectively.

Tensions began rising as gene editing grew to become common in developed areas of the world from RZh 1482 onward. The dichotomy between the religious and nonreligious was growing wider and wider, with the passive middle ground growing less populated. An old philosophy held by many cultures on Udyana began to rise to public awareness again, and many braced themselves for its consequences. It stated that whenever an entity held a sphere of influence, whether that is a massive empire and their satellite states or a more democratic regional alliance, another entity just outside their sphere would rise to their challenge, resulting in a large-scale conflict to end an age.

It was true when the outland states allied to take The Domain's capital city, it was true in each of the three world wars, and proved to be true again when two global superpowers were at one another's throats, and someone made the first move. A move for which everyone suffered.

### Fourth World War

A large number of states on Udyana had allowed nearly unlimited access to genetic tailoring. Initially this was used to cure genetic diseases and physical deformities in fetuses, but it eventually became best known for aesthetic modification. This ultimately resulted in the end of what little sexual dimorphism was present in the species, with only manual examination and pheromone cues left to assist in telling apart the sexes.

A regional religious alliance in another part of the world viewed this obsession with genetic engineering as the authiik as a whole going against the divine plan, and believed this and the exploration of space would cause the end of days. Skirmishes began on the borders of nations with these opposing worldviews, they began blaming natural disasters on the actions of the "heathen" nations, and finally a high-profile launch to carry the first of the crews and machines required to begin automated construction of a settlement on Danurdara was shot down by terrorists, leading to the outbreak of war.

The war was slow and grueling, and as soon as one side gained a real upper hand, the banning of nuclear weapons was ignored and both sides used them to prevent their losses. Udyana's major cities and natural resources were destroyed in a global thermonuclear conflict that didn't last until the end of the calendar year. Conflicting reports survive from those that have undergone both stasis and aging-prevention treatments whether the first bomb was detonated by the confederated faction or the religious alliance, or even whether or not one or the other had bombed themselves first to manufacture reasons to escalate the issue. The surviving authiik from that time do agree, however, that it no longer mattered. All that was left was a small number of allied nations that were neutral in the conflict who were capable of fleeing the planet for the settlements on Udyana's moon, Udshaxiva.

These sub-lightspeed vessels would be known as "The old fleet", a number of vehicles intended to take the initial colonists to danurdara once the colony was complete. They would take it upon themselves to intensify their search for a new world that they could use to grow and flourish. More than half of all authiik perished in the war and even more were doomed to stay, as the slow sublight vessels could not be run continuously and many broke down without access to the repair facilities on Udyana, and the colony on Ramani, while self-sufficient, could not expand to support handle such an influx of new colonists so quickly.

The vast majority of both survivors ferried to the complexes and those living there had been those of the genetically tailored variety of authiik. As they reproduced, the unmodified population bred into the majority modified population. This made the Neo-Authiik the only surviving population of their species, and due to their heavily modified DNA their evolution was effectively halted, making them the last breed that would ever exist.

A suitable planet was found in RZh 1583, after 60 years of searching and developing FTL drives while isolated on the moon, and they were able to leave after another 29 in RZh 1612. This was the maiden voyage of the *Tvaza*, a small ship with many thousands of stasis pods capable of warp travel by utilizing exotic matter skimmed from Shanehdi's magnetic field.

### Post-Departure

In RZh 1684, they arrived at a planet they named Pratishaya, meaning shadow or dusk. The world was dark and cold, orbiting in the ninth position around an orange dwarf star and heated by its own intense volcanism, driven by a massive moon that orbited very close to the planet. Dark, dusty rings made winters extremely harsh, and the foliage was dark. They began a new calendar epoch known as "varita praka", or The New Dawn, literally translating to "new light first".

Over the years more vessels arrived from Udishaxiva and the settlers built the world into a thriving colony of tens of thousands of individuals. They never tried to expand from there until first contact was made with a reptilian alien species who called themselves the bomure. They are reported to have helped advance their FTL technologies and allowed the authiik to pursue interstellar travel in reasonable amounts of time.

The colony of Uviirina was colonized in VP 39, this one much wetter and warmer than Udyana and certainly more than Pratishaya. Most cities on the planet were domed and climate controlled as the planet had hyperactive microorganisms, even by human standards, in addition to naturally fast-growing flora. Open-air colonies would be overgrown in only one or two years local time, but the authiik living there likely wouldn't live long enough to see that happen. These two factors combined made domed settlements a much more effective way to set up their colonies as they could keep their interiors sanitized while also keeping the native plant life out.

After remaining in space for a number of decades, they began attempting to reestablish contact with what was left of civilization on Udyana, which was recovering from a nuclear winter. The radiation from the war had killed off what remained of the unmodified cancer-prone authiik by VP 212, but due to the state of the world's ecosystem, the population of Udyana had trouble breaching 800 million. The colonies on Udshaxiva and Ramani had grown immensely, though they had not managed interstellar travel without Udyana's assistance.

In VP 240, they discovered a star system with intelligent natives they called the yumaneh, a word used in a popular science fiction franchise that describes an alien species with inferior technology, on a planet they named Yeritii. These would later be called humans, and their planet would come to be called Earth. The planet was well suited for authiik colonization at the time due to the ongoing ice-age, but the intelligent natives gave them pause. Their leadership instead decided to observe them for scientific research about what their own development as a society might have been like.

In VP 289, first contact was made with the neyanta, a vaguely feline species with aspirations to conquer the bomure's empire. They were told by the bomure to prepare for a coming conflict, and so they did.

### Preparation and Collapse

The authiik have always feared intelligence outside their own. The bomure were trusted only after proving themselves to be useful, and it was their directive that led the authiik to prepare to either fight or flee.

Their first response was to begin conditioning and modifying the yumaneh for use as shocktroops. Their larger size made them more adequate as soldiers than the small authiik would be. This involved adding some of their own DNA to the yumaneh genome to increase their intelligence and allow for them to receive orders and modify them as the situation demands.

Their second was to begin massively ramping up production of military vessels, including *Yatana*-class cruisers and *Kaleshu*-class frigates, some of their most durable and reliable starships.

Initial trials of alien shocktroops proved promising, though they tended to be rebellious, and starship production was going well until the neyanta pushed forward with their plans sooner than expected. The fleets and stations defending Pratishaya were utterly annihilated, prompting the rest of the starships in authiik space to retreat until they exited the other side of bomure space, which at the time meant they would have to leave the galaxy.

As the yumaneh were rebelling in full as the neyanta began invading, the authiik abandoned their world but still wished to give the yumaneh a chance to survive the coming conflict. Their genome was taken to a world with a similar climate to Yeritii and, with a few modifications to more closely match the native wildlife, was allowed to spread across its surface and thrive.

All remaining fleets, totaling five, each with roughly 80 ships and 40,000 people for an approximate total of 400 starships and 200,000 authiik individuals, scattered in all directions towards various dwarf galaxies in an attempt to find someplace they could call home. All aside from approximately a dozen who fled to a nearby uninhabited planet that was recently discovered. They survived for only a few months before falling ill and dying due to a lack of infrastructure or support on the world that would become the Apsic Empire's home colony of Rece. Civilian starships and vessels not currently in fleets containing a total population of roughly 125000 people fled to the better known planet of Mabatshar, which was a lowly ranked potential colony world orbiting Vapara, a red dwarf star orbiting the galaxy far below the galactic plane

    The world was dry. So dry that the majority of its surface was desert and bare rock, with water existing only in small crater seas with sparse foliage grouped tightly against them. Its advantages were that the atmosphere was breathable and the planet looked unattractive, which hopefully would cause the neyanta to look elsewhere. This seems to have worked, as the neyanta never found them there. With no infrastructure remaining or a will to leave their new home the second collapse of the authiik civilization was complete in 25560 BCE, 34,546 years ago in the authiik measurements of time.

### The Journey

The extragalactic expeditions, as they chose to name themselves after departing for the edge of known space but before losing contact with one another, made it to the fringes of the galaxy and beyond. They discovered little in the way of habitable worlds in the nearer dwarf galaxies, with a number of individuals becoming deeply depressed and highly irritable after spending their entire lives in space searching for something that didn't seem to exist.

The modus operandi for the fleets was to travel for several hundred years while the crew and passengers were kept in a state of suspended animation. Suspended animation keeps an authiik in a medically induced coma while their lifespan is artificially extended by way of machines and medicines, slowing their bodily functions and aging processes to roughly 1/10,000th their normal speed. A sharship's warp ring uses only a percentage of it's total coil count in order to artificially extend the distance that it can travel during normal use, keeping other coils in reserve to use when the active coils inevitably fail after decades of abuse.

At the end of these centuries of travel, starships will enter into a system surveyed remotely from FTL that is known to contain metal-rich planets, ice or water, and hydrogen gas giants. They will often have a staggered entrance due to individual vessels having different rates of warp coil failure. This causes slight drops in speed while coils are swapped by the navigation systems, and thus spend a number of additional days in transit and arrive later than those starships that experienced the least breakdowns.

These visits are used to not only refuel the fleet, but also to replenish the supply of water and syntheses materials and collect the materials needed to repair or replace dead warp coils. The crew are also let out of stasis to get exercise and lay eyes on alien worlds. Occasionally they will come across a planet that, while not possible to colonize with no infrastructure backing them up due to a climate they consider extreme or hostile microorganisms, does have fauna that they can eat. This is one of the few circumstances where individuals outside of designated extravehicular operators will volunteer for EVA, intending to hunt the creatures to gain recognition on their home-vessel.

The crew will stay animate for several months before the resupply stop ends, at which time they are eased back into stasis while the navigation systems plot the next vector.

It was not until the second fleet reached Kiyadehgana Bateh Kada, known to humans as the Large Magellanic Cloud, that they discovered intelligent alien life. The two spacefaring species native to the dwarf galaxy were in a large-scale interstellar conflict. Traveling for almost 11,000 years, of which nearly twelve were spent awake, only to end up in the same situation was disappointing to say the least.

One of the two species never made contact with the authiik, but the second was one of humanoid insects. These are remembered in the Second Extragalactic's archives as the shatikteh. They seemed relatively interested in doing business with the fleet, but they kept their hand close to their chest and let little information about themselves known.

A planet orbiting a white/blue binary star system was found in the fringes of the cloud. Its simple biosphere was well suited to the stunted authiik immune system, leading to its colonization under the name Roxash. It was successful for roughly three Earth years before the war in the dwarf galaxy spread to its vicinity. it was blockaded by the shatikteh, who instructed them to hand over the colony and its assets. The authiik retreated from the colony, taking with them the necessities of their starships and the fuel needed to run them, food, water, and their personal belongings. They left the small galaxy, fearing that the space was not large enough for a third species at the time. They instead turned back and headed back to The Milky Way. The requirements for their survival was so rare, and only a handful of worlds was known to have them. Home.

When they returned, spending millennia longer in transit and another decade animate for a total of nearly twenty-five Earth years, none of the spacefaring alien species that were known to exist, friendly or not, showed any signs of remaining extant after all of these years. Authiik space was empty, with the worlds of Udyana, Udshaxiva, Ramani, Uviirina, and Pratishaya all leveled, irradiated, and mostly barren. No authiik remained living on their surfaces. Visiting the edges of both bomure and neyanta space, not one signal that was detected could be described as originating from their technology. One signal stood out. An authiik distress call activated due to the lack of activity in the galaxy allowing them to broadcast their position without drawing attention from hostile aliens. Answering the call led them to Mabatshar, which had developed into its own civilization.

Standardized curriculum taught via the computers of their starships kept their language the same or roughly the same with remarkable intelligibility between the two groups, though their own vernacular speech and pronunciation had diverged leading to new words and colloquialisms not being shared, but the core of the language remained the same. Despite the common language, the culture there had evolved into one of scavengers.

They lived in homes fashioned from the superstructure and hulls of hundreds of sharships both civilian and military, stripped of their useful materials long ago for use in other projects. The population initially remained small due to fears of discovery should the light be visible from space, and many of the more advanced technologies that they once enjoyed were no longer available, aside from the self-sustaining main computers of the aforementioned starships, mostly of carrier and escort types. They were practically revered as deities called Atiipanaraksha, or the "keepers of the lore", literally translating to "past holder". It was one of these self-sustaining class-2 AI that began broadcasting the distress signal once it detected authiik warp disturbances nearby.

Instead of immediately combining the two populations, the fleet instead consolidated parts and crews into a smaller number of ships with all-working parts and donated the remaining scrap and derelict husks to the surface populations as tokens of goodwill. The newly refurbished starships were grouped into a smaller fleet used to both protect the system and to find material from which new settlements and starships may be made. This marked the beginning of both the initiative to monitor and recolonize their old territory and the Ehkaki Kiyadehgana, or EhK epoch, known to humans as the empty galaxy period.

As individuals aged, they left military service and traded out for younger members of the Mabatsharic population, slowly merging the new culture of scavengers and that of the ancient and hardened military servicemen together for a new culture with a very resourceful and determined outlook.

In time, three others of the five fleets would return. Once near the year 3000 BCE, where they rediscovered Yeritii and the world the modified yumaneh had decided to call Yaart, introducing the natives of both to their language and writing system. The third fleet would never return, instead forming the interstellar state of Alyavaloka. The fourth would return in the 1990s CE, and the fifth in 3005 CE, who would be intercepted by humans on their way to Pratishaya, now the human colony of Temno.

### First Contact: Apsic Empire

In 2484, an authiik scouting party followed their decennial check on each of their old colony worlds to see if they had returned to a state where they would support authiik life. This practice ended due to their experience with the Apsic Empire. Their colony of Mara was the same planet as the old authiik colony of Uviirina, and they moved into orbit to bombard the colony, at that time only seven Earth years old, colonized mere months after their last visit. The authiik intended to retake the planet, but word got out far too quickly. The Apsic fleet arrived only months into the authiik invasion, which was already being repelled.

The small wing of scout ships the authiik brought, mostly composed of *Talyati*-class scouting corvettes, was quickly dealt with by the Apsic *Avenger*-Class heavy destroyers. The authiik survivors were integrated into the lowest social classes in Apsic society, workers who labored for housing and food rather than money. Only 405 authiik of the original 2650 managed to escape death at the hands of the Apsic resistance and all would later die due to Mara's hyperactive microbial and floral life forms.

Due to the total loss of contact with the wing of scouts led to the cessation of the periodic checks on Mara. The authiik leadership could not risk potentially hostile aliens being be led back to Mabatshar.

### First Contact: Orion Confederation

Centuries later, in the year 3005, first contact between the Orion Confederation and the Fifth Extragalactic occurred, and it was a particularly unpleasant one, a first contact scenario that the yemun would compare to their own. The authiik fleet, which had been reduced to thirty-seven starships from the original eighty-two, neared the space they used to call their own, they detected radio signals and FTL activity near a system that matched projections to be the current location of the Dvarika system. The home of their first colony world, Pratishaya.

When they arrived, they were greeted by the sight of a thriving ecosystem on the world unlike what had been seen by the third fleet, who checked on the world in the 1990s, and unseen by scouting parties sent by Mabatshar since. Plant life grew near the geothermal hotspots once more, and the signs of radiation had diminished. The only thing that stood out was the number of alien freighters, defense platforms, and patrolling military corvettes that were guarding the planet.

The flagship of the fleet, *Xalayatra*, a *Kaleshu*-Class destroyer, gave orders to scan the different varieties of ships in the vicinity. The vessels were spotted by traffic controllers on the defense platforms who, upon the beginning of the scan, alerted the central authorities of the Orion Confederation to the presence of a fleet of potentially hostile alien starships over Temno. A total of ten *Amazon*-Class destroyers were sent to answer the call, arriving immediately via their subspace drives, including the OCS *Atalanta* and HMS *Gwenevere*, two especially famous examples of the class.

Immediately, the alert status on the authiik vessels rose, as ten heavily armed vessels have entered the vicinity. The human fleet brought their primary guns to bear, and the authiik returned the gesture. This was the state of affairs for several hours until one of the other destroyers in the fleet fired a warning shot through the human fleet via their particle beam batteries. These were detected by the human vessels, and their reaction was less than pleasant, responding by firing their own shots towards the authiik fleet. The authiik returned their volley and began a short battle between the two small fleets.

Human casualties included non-critical damage to the HMS *Hippolyta*, OCS *Columbia*, and HMS *Gwenevere*, critical damage to CD *Zenobia*, and the destruction ofTz801 *Freyja* by way of direct hit to the core of the vessel, which destroyed both the AI and CIC, killing the command staff. *Freyja's* reactor was damaged, resulting in the immediate jettisoning and detonation of the reactor core and activation of backup systems to provide life support for intact areas of the vessel.

Authiik casualties were far less severe, with destroyers *Xalayatra* and *Shukiinii* suffering damage and cruiser *Iidakika* being disabled before all ships halted all motions and offensive actions. *Xalayatra's* commanding officer ordered this ceasefire to prevent their potential extinction. This resulted in contact being made between the *Atalanta* and the *Xalayatra.*

The remaining vessels were docked to one of the defense platforms and the authiik commanding officers were taken prisoner, with the rest of the authiik populations being quarantined to their ships. Their ships were searched for infantry weapons, which were removed and stored on the defense platform. All traffic in the system was directed outwards unless clearance was given to enter, and experts were brought in to establish real communication.

When the captain of the *Xalayatra* saw her first human without their combat suit on, she expressed elation and, after a brief pause, began speaking far more deliberately. Some interpretation led the humans to the conclusion that the language was distantly related to Earth languages, particularly the Indo-Iranian branch of the Proto-Indo-European family. She pointed at the humans and said "Yumaneh ka", towards the sole yemun in the room: "Yumaneh teya", then towards herself and the others: "Authiik".

A human expert, one Ami Kurosaki of Banzen who was present for the first contact scenario between humans and yemun and member of the OCS *Atalanta's* crew, repeated the process in Anglic. "Human, yemun, authiik."

From there, more words are introduced into the lexicon of the computers, translations and explanations becoming more and more complex. They explained their history to the humans, from their fall, to their colonization, their devastation at the hands of "the haired ones", and their journey to map the Small Magellanic Cloud or, as they called it, "Kiyadehgana Igaxu Kada (trans: The Galaxy's Small Moon)". Only now were they returning to find their old homes occupied by aliens, or so they had thought. They did not view humans or yemun as "alien" as they did the bomure and neyanta. They shared DNA as a result of their modifications, causing them to see humans and yemun as comrades.

It was now commonly understood that the conflict that marked the beginning of their existence together was due to a misunderstanding. After everything that could be learned from had been learned, the authiik expressed sadness about being forced to leave without a home. Temno's leadership, who had been involved with the study, extended a hand to them, promising land on the planet for their population and suggesting they seek out other survivors of their species. It was this suggestion that led to more authiik vessels showing up at the planet later, responding to distress signals used to contact them.

## Home Planet

The authiik home world exists somewhere in the region of space currently inhabited by the human and yemun species.

Not much is known about its appearance, but what is known are some physical characteristics relayed to other races by the authiik.

1. The star it orbits is roughly half the mass of Sol.
2. It's orbital period lasts approximately 302 Earth days, each roughly 0.8274 Earth years long or 1.2094 Udyana years to an Earth year.
3. It's days are approximately 18.9 Earth hours long.
4. It is colder than Earth, averaging around 43 degrees fahrenheit, or 6 degrees Celsius.
5. It's surface is rocky, with little plant life aside from near the oceans and seas that are scattered across the planet.
6. It has a single moon, roughly 16% the size of the planet itself.

The other races living in that area have been asked by the authiik not to actively look for it, but should they happen across it, they would like to be informed of its location for re-colonization and terraforming if necessary.

## The Authiik Extragalactic Fleets

These fleets were collections of vessels that were sent outside of The Milky Way roughly 51k years ago in order to scout the various dwarf galaxies that surrounded the main disk. Their creation was a response to the Neyanta showing growing aggression and technological advancement, their goal was to find a place the Neyanta could not find them. By this point their first Ring-World design project had been started, though it would not be completed for thousands of years, and the authiik themselves had only been in space for a little more than a thousand years.

Considering how slowly most other galactic events took place, they had hoped they would have the time to receive word from at least the first of the fleets before the neyanta attacked their space, but this would not be the case. The first of the fleets to arrive was the First Excursion, and had returned from the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy after several millennia to find only devastated and destroyed remains of ships and stations.

This fleet eventually discovered the Xvanxa system, and added their ships to the bulwark of vessels defending the system's perimeter. The same could be said for the next several fleets, but some still have not returned. The Fifth Excursion was returning from the Small Magellanic Cloud at a time when humanity was near the Xvanxa system, and the human vessels began reporting thousands of powerful warp signatures.

This led to first contact with their races. The Authiik were wary of leaving their space at first but once they laid eyes on the vastly different forms of the Neyanta when compared to the ones they were familiar with, they started expressing a desire to return to some of their old colonies and rediscover their home world.

## Technology

### Arms

In their time, their weapons technology was not considered advanced. Their starships are armed with two to four spinal mounted railguns with a projectile diameter of over three meters. Embedded point-defense particle beam arrays were intended to destroy incoming missiles and small craft, most often boarding craft and small gunships.

Infantry equipment was a mixture of cartridge firing weapons utilizing impact-sensitive primers, infantry-scale coilguns, and long range precision and anti-material railguns.

All designations below are those applied to them by humans, with the construction of...

1. A, for Authiik.
2. C or M, for Chemical or Magnetism, designating the method used to launch the projectile.
3. M or A, for Manual or Automatic, noting whether the rifle has to be manually operated, or whether it is capable of automatically reloading.
4. P, C, or R, meaning Pistol, Carbine, or Rifle, designating overall size or barrel length.
5. A number, designating the number of weapons that have received the same letter designations. This usually increases based on barrel length and cartridge volume (ACAR-1 has a shorter barrel than ACAR-2, ACAR-2 fires a smaller cartridge than ACAR-3, ect.)

This designation is followed by their names in Utikii. Standard infantry equipment for authiik military personnel consists of...

* Light body armor capable of defending against their own handguns and submachine guns that doubles as a temperature control suit for use in environments hotter or colder than is safe for them.
* An ACAP-1 or ACAP-2 Handgun, featuring simple mechanical operation in the form of straight blowback or gas delayed blowback respectively, and firing 4.88x20 or 8.78x22mm chemically propelled cartridges. These pistols are intended to be used in situations where the standard submachine gun or carbine has become disabled through electromagnetic pulse or lack of charged batteries.
* An AMAC-1 Coilgun, which fires ST1 5.8x21mm steel-cored tungsten slugs at mach 2.64. Production of magnetically operated weapons had effectively ceased by the time the fleets returned in favor of simpler, cheaper cartridge firing weapons.
* An ACAC-1 Submachine Gun firing 4.88x20mm cartridges. These carbines are intended to be used in situations where the standard coilgun carbine is at risk of becoming disabled through electromagnetic pulse.

Alternative small arms, used in times of material shortage, for special purposes, and in rear line duty includes...

* AMAR - 1 Coilguns, a longer Type 22 capable of firing slugs 20% faster than the standard Type 22. Often equipped with optics and used for midrange support of standard infantry, or in light sniping roles.
* AMMR - 1 Precision Railgun firing ST2 8.78x80mm Sears-Haack profile depleted uranium slugs measuring from aluminum sabots at mach 4.06. Their shape is the most efficient aerodynamic shape between mach 2 and mach 12, giving it an incredibly flat trajectory and maintaining its speed for massive distances. The railgun was used for ordnance disposal and armor penetration, and for elimination of extreme long range targets. For soft targets, a hollow projectile was used, causing it to shatter upon impact. For solid targets, monolithic projectiles were used for maximize force applied to the target.
* ACAR-1 Assault Rifles chambered in the CT4 4.88x42mm cartridge, used where an ACAC-1 SMG would not have enough firepower.
* ACAR-2 Designated Marksman Rifles, ACAR-1 rifles with longer barrels used in concert with ACAC-1 SMGs and ACAR-1 ARs for mid-range support of close-range infantry.
* ACAR-3 Battle Rifles chambered in the CT5 7.33x50mm cartridge, used at ranges where CT4 cartridges would have lost too much energy to be effective.
* ACAR-4 Gas-Operated Anti-Material Rifles chambered for the CT6 8.78x78mm cartridge, used in situations where the AMMR-1 is at risk of sabotage or electronic gamage, such as high-radiation environments, or opponents capable of tracking a sniper and hacking their rifle, preventing it from firing.
* A number of personally owned gas operated or bolt-action carbines and rifles chambered in the intermediate 4.88x48mm rifle cartridge, a full-power 7.33x50mm rifle cartridge, or an 8.78x78mm magnum rifle cartridge. These are owned by civilian militias, and are often used for recreational competition and target shooting.

For additional information about authiik small arms, see here.

### Space Travel

While they were the first known race to travel to another galaxy, this does not mean that they were advanced in that field by any stretch of the imagination. Humanity is literally light years ahead of them in terms of their FTL speeds. It would, or did, take them over fifty thousand years to reach the Small Magellanic Cloud and return, while the fastest ships with the most common drive methods in the HSG, those being Quantum Slip and Warp drives, could reach Andromeda in only 16.7 years at their fastest (Travelling at 152190.14998 times the speed of light). The rarer types of FTL drives, such as Subspace drives, could reach Andromeda in only 22 hours (1012092168.30846 times lightspeed relative to our own universe).

These estimates assume that the drives have unlimited fuel and would never overheat. In the case of Subspace drives, they assume that there are no mass shadows in the path, and that the ship is moving in a straight line the entire time. Based on this, one could say that the authiik are experts in building efficient and reliable drive technology. In addition to this fact, their vessels did not travel in straight lines to their destinations, rather they visited several star clusters and other minor bodies in order to gather various forms of hydrogen and used to keep the massive tokamak reactors burning.

Their vessels have been described by humans as "Like barges with warp rings", and this description is at least somewhat accurate. Using the common cruiser as an example, although by human standards they would be considered size S Class, making them more useful as Dreadnoughts or Carriers, they would consist of a forward section with a large antennae, the deflector arrays, and the ramjet hydrogen collector. In the rear was the engine pod.

The center of the ship was further subdivided into three parts. Behind the forward command section were three decks of hallways and utility rooms surrounded by large storage rooms and tanks used to store items such as weapons, small repair vehicles, water, fuel, and air. By the time the excursion vessels had returned from the magellanic clouds, the coverings for these had mostly been damaged, left behind, or used to create more essential components for the continued operation of the starship. As such, they looked like freight barges to human observers, with massive uncovered tanks and containers beneath the stripped armor plating.

Behind this is the central portion, which consisted mostly of recreational facilities, laboratories, and crew quarters. This also contained the portions of the ship dedicated to hydroponics, used to provide necessary plant-based sugars and oxygen to the ship's crew as well as the facilities used to clone large quantities of meat.

Between that section and the engines/backup command is the reactor and drive section, which consisted of a large ring that was rotated to have its widest points facing away from the sides of the ship. The ring contained both the tokamak reactor and the warp systems.

All of their vessels feature at least one large ring structure that houses both the tokamak reactor and the warp systems, and tend to have long, square or hexagonal hulls.

### Biotechnology

The authiik were, by far, the most advanced in the fields of biology, specifically the manipulation of DNA. Their lifespan was many times longer than it is today due to extensive genetic modification, they could seamlessly integrate their own DNA into the Human and yemun species in order to increase their intelligence, and they were able to engineer crops that would grow in barren, dry soil.

Some members of their species became biologically immortal following the discovery of a gene that could prevent the depletion of telomeres, and thus extend the lifespan to an unconfirmed number of years, barring disease or other causes of death outside standard organ failure due to age. Some of these members of their race are still living and work as chroniclers, keeping records of the histories of their race.