Oni (Burning)

## **Species Description**

**Name:**  Oni (Singular, Plural, and Adjective form)

**Naming Conventions:** Oni, male and female, can be named almost anything. In sequence, an Oni's name is read "personal", then "family", and then "clan". All Oni identify themselves as the son or daughter of one of the many clans and this is often a form of pride for them.

**Appearance:**

☀https://onigiri.fandom.com/wiki/Clothing

Externally, Oni are visually human. Their most distinctive and noticeable physical difference is the natural horns that grow out of their heads - on average, both genders have a pair with males usually having larger, more ornate horns than females (though number and style can vary between clans) - and a wider range of hair, skin (though this is more particular to certain clans) and eye colorations.

## **Biology**

Having evolved on a world located closer to the galactic core than most other sapient species, the physiology of the Oni, and other life on Musashi, has adapted to survive in the higher radiation.  While these don't restrict them from living outside their nominal zone, but it does keep most other species from getting to far into their space;  in exchange these combine to allow Oni to average a higher tolerance to enduring both higher rads and duration of radiation exposure.

The Oni skeletal structure is crystalline instead of the calcium base known by humans as standard on Earth.  This allows for their bodies to tolerate higher radiation as it redirects the particles and energy from their tissues and emit it out through the cranial horns.  If the expelled radiation is high enough, the horns can glow in the visual range of the electromagnetic spectrum, but usually its a softer emission outside of the visual reach of most species.

As a side effect of their horns acting as radiators to manage the radiation within their bodies, Oni horns tend to be unique in the patterns the radiation is emitted in.  Evolution led to the species developing the ability to see near ultraviolet on top of the normal visual spectrum, and - though technology eventually was developed to use these unique patterns as personal identification - Oni were able to learn to distinguish each other by these patterns.

Due to the natural celestial environment around their homeworld, Oni bodily tissues tend to be higher in radiation than those of most other species.  While this may make them unappetizing to most carnivorous species in the greater galaxy, this radiation can and will fade away the longer an Oni spends in normal space.

Oni evolved both a more aggressive immune system and faster regeneration rate in order to survive the effects of radiation.  Five times more efficient than that of a human, Oni regeneration allows them to heal faster to recover from the natural cellular degradation the radiation causes.  Their more aggressive immune system allows for them to better fight radiation induced cancers;  it also makes any Oni that reach the outside galaxy more resistant to infection by all but the hardiest bugs.

Due to a bizarre interaction, some of the hormones the body produces during the onset of puberty mixes with the Oni regeneration and immune systems to combine into a slow down of physical aging.

Due to a traditionally physical lifestyle and a somewhat denser musculature, compared to the average human, the average Oni is two to three times stronger.  In layman's terms, this puts the average Oni as equivalent to an athletic human.  There are outliers, chiefly among specific clans, in both directions;  and the more trained an Oni is, the more super human they can seem from a human perspective.

## **Background**

**Homeworld:** Musashi

**Location Of Note:** Laihiala

## **Beliefs And Culture**

Isolationists by nature, the Oni prefer to stay out of the greater world outside their sphere.  Outside of a few, select individuals, only those going on Walkabout as their right of passage to decide if they'll continue living within Oni society or abandon it for the outside leave their hidden places of safety.

Young Oni are only considered legitimate to start their Walkabout after reaching the Earth equivalent of 100 years of age.  On top of this, their shifu must give their blessing for it to be approved.

Depending on clan, Oni opinions on monogamy, polyamory, and polygamy can differ greatly.  However, no matter the views on size of a family, all currently existing clans mandate consent - part of the Maneater Wars was the extermination of clans that did not, albeit at the cost of countless lives, technologies, and knowledge forever lost to the void.

Seeing all beings as having a place in the universe, the Oni clans are willing to adopt into them members of other species who are judged as being able to fit into both the clan in particular and the greater Oni society as a whole.  These former refugees of the stars enjoy freedoms they might not have gotten under the thumb of other nations, but the Oni maintain a number of rules to ensure the safety, security, and secrecy of everyone.

They believe in the concept of soul being separate from the body and everything has one, from the smallest rock to the biggest star.  On death, the soul is judged for the good and bad karma it has earned and sent onto the wheel of reincarnation.  After enough trips through this process, the soul is either pure good or bad karma - first gets to ascend to a higher plane, having earned the right;  second is either cast down into darkness or kept going through the cycle until it’s purified....not really settled on this yet.

They see the universe itself as a living thing and everything in it as it learning about life, those who manage to ascend and leave the cycle of reincarnation join the consciousness of the universe and those who went before in Nirvana.

## **History**

In the distant past, the precursors of what became the species now known as the Oni crawled out of the primeval muk on their homeworld of Musashi.  Over time, they evolved into the dominant species of the planet in spite of its location in such a hostile part of the galaxy and began the typical long march that every species follows.

At an unknown point, the Oni came to the attention of an off-world species.  Their true name lost to time - different Oni religious cults centered around them have long debated what the 'name of the gods' was - they eventually decided to uplift a select group of Oni and transplant them to a Dyson shell, which the Oni named Laihiala, they had constructed near by.  For a number of centuries, these off-worlders would regularly return and abduct Oni from both Musashi and Laihiala - at first, the developing Oni saw these as divine occurances, but eventually developed enough to recognize them as what Earth has dubbed close encounters with technological beings from another world.

Over time, the two isolated populations of Oni developed along seperate paths as the off-worlders' experiments continued.  Though unknowning of it at the time, the outside galaxy had fallen into a massive war between numerous factions and the mysterious visitors finally dissappeared for good in this period - what became of them has long been a source of debate for Oni scholars.

The Oni of Laihiala were the first to achieve spaceflight - the discovery that their home was inside out compared to a normal world came as quite their surprise.  Following information left behind by their mysterious benefactors, these Oni made their way back to Musashi.  There, leaders from both sides recognized the other as kin and agreed to live together on both worlds.

Combining their civilizations, Musashi and Laihiala developed rapidly only to be met by a serious blow that set them back severly - the Maneater clans.  As the dominant modern religion hadn't spread fully at that point, those clans which chose to live counter to its teachings about life and the soul broke from the others and tried to assert their dominance.  Seeing others, even other Oni, as little more than snacks and playthings and even spread to other worlds where they also tried to put themselves as masters of the more primitive locals.  On some worlds, the Maneaters were repulsed by the natives;  others saw them pulled off by their rival clans.  In the end, tensions rose to the max and the Oni civil war, now remembered as the Maneater Wars, kicked into full gear as the offending clans were hunted down and wiped from memories, even their names were excised from history.

In keeping with their beliefs, the captives rescued from the Maneater clans were offered the choice of either returning home or being adopted into one of the surviving clans.  Of those who chose the latter, their descendants continue to give modern Oni a slightly outside perspective on things that come up.   From that point on, the Oni turned inward - no longer the power they were, their sphere currently is pretty much just Musashi and Laihiala - and they allowed the belief system that had won the wars to spread and integrate.  Eventually, Oni actions in the galaxy faded from memory and, if remembered at all, they became the stuff of myths and legends.