Kherubim

## History

### Overview

Kherubim are a race of aliens. They are a coalition of several races with common ancestry. Kherubim come in all shapes and sizes, but generally look pretty much human.

On Earth, the Kherubim and Daemonites have been waging war for a thousand years, using their half-breed spawn and agents to engage in cold wars, proxy wars, and shadow conflicts. The Kherubim, and their followers, answer to Lord Emp on Earth.

They have a specialized taskforce - WildCATs which combat Daemonites.

### Origins

The Kheran are a humanoid space-faring race that systematically traveled from world to world after they destroyed their own native planet twelve million years ago, causing the survivors to migrate to a fleet of warships. Still, the Kheran were a powerful and technologically advanced species compared to less developed species on neighboring planets, so the Kheran began conquering races to feed their gene pool, thus strip-mining organisms much like how they had strip-mining their own planet. What races they could not utilize as genetic material were often subjugated as slaves.

Using vast Planet-Shaper Engines, they remade entire worlds into compatible habitats for their own leisure or projects. It is believed during this time, that the planets of Earth and Krypton were "seeded" with ancient Kheran genetic stock as both Kryptonians and Humans are all part of the same xenobiological clade.

Eight million years ago, the Kherans came to the native planet of a race known as the Titanthropes and conquered them, transforming the Titanthrope homeworld into the crown jewel of their empire. Naming the paradise Khera and settling it, the Kherans subjugated the native populace of Titanothropes. Though these Titans would slowly become more or less accepted within the Kheran society, they remained a lower level of citizens to compared to the Kheran themselves.

It was on Khera that a Kherans continued to tinker with their genes and create a variety of different designer castes that would fundamentally reshape their society.

Several millennia ago, the Kherans attempted to subjugate the people of the much smaller Daemonite Empire. But the Daemonites proved more powerful and more hostile than the Kherans anticipated and though the Kherans were initially victorious, the Daemonites rapidly reproduced as they were spread over the Kheran Empire and would continually revolt. Their own pride would lead the Kherans to continually attempt better ways of controlling the Daemonites. All methods failed and only provoked the Daemonites further. Soon after the Kherans infected the Daemonites with a bio-weapon which severely crippled the Daemonites' reproductive abilities, a war erupted between both species, engulfing Khera in an intense civil war. This war would last several centuries and spread across the ancient Kheran Empire.

Seven thousand years ago, a small but elite group of Kherans known as a "Covert Action Team" captured a powerful cell of Daemonites and took them aboard a ship to transport them to Krypton for imprisonment in the Phantom Zone. En route to the prison, the Daemonite prisoners escaped while the ship was traveling through the Sol system and in the ensuing skirmish, several key systems were damaged and which would cause the vessel to crash land on Earth.

The Daemonites scattered from the wreckage while the Kheran survivors gathered what supplies they could and then went their separate ways to gather reconnaissance on the new planet and search for the missing Daemonites. Through Daemonite interference, some Kheran operatives would be killed while trying to rendezvous later, causing the remaining Kheran to go deep undercover. Others chose more overt methods and some of these ancient escapades humanity would confuse for encounters with gods, angels, demons, and monsters (in addition to actual gods, angels, demons, and monsters).

Recently, the Kherubim Lord Emp has banded together what remaining Kherans he could find, as well as specialist humans and Kheran cross-breeds to take a more active role in eliminating Earth's remaining Daemonites. This recreation of the original Covert Action Team in the "wilds" of Earth would later become known as the WildCATs.

### Biology

It is important to note that the "Khera" are multiple different species that are part of the same cooperative evolutionary clade. The word Kheran is also used to refer to both the entirety of the empire but also is the name of the most prominent species in the clade.

Nearly all Khera resemble humans in appearance but are physically stronger and more durable. Khera also have more developed vocal cords which allow them to communicate at pitches imperceptible to many other races, likewise, they possess heightened hearing well-suited to this form of communication.

Khera are extremely long-lived, nearly immortal. A healthy Kheran can live to be a hundred thousand years old. A Kherubim could theoretically live to be a million years old.

Despite their own thoughts on the matter, the Khera are not perfect. They possess an evolutionary drawback to their near-immortality as a side-effect of all their gene-tampering and self-perfection. Kherans are almost always infertile with their own species, only very rarely will a Kheran produce offspring with another Kheran. Only one in 10,000 Kherans are naturally fertile and both parents must be fertile in order to naturally reproduce. The rare offspring of these unions is usually a Kherubim, the most evolved and "perfect" form of Kheran. This infertility does not seem to apply when the Kheran is mating with another compatible species such as humans (at least to such a drastic degree). While crossbreeding can happen, even among "infertile" Kheran, only a fraction of such pregnancies are carried to full-term as there are a number of complications and risk factors to contend with.

To summarize:

* Kheran-Kheran natural mating is effective if only both parents are fertile. The child will likely be Kherubim.
* Kherans mating with humans produces the Kheran Crossbreed.
* Fertile Kherubim are even rarer than fertile Kheran and will always birth or sire Kheran with the potential of Ascension to Kherubim, such children are called Noble Kheran.

### The Castes

The pure-blooded Kherubim themselves are often known as Kheran High Lords or High Ladies and serve as the oldest and most powerful of the Kherubim in the Kheran Empire. These act as the highest ruling body in Kherubim society as members of the "Pantheon". Each Kherubim possesses the ability to manipulate energy and often have extremely potent psionic abilities. They also possess incredible willpower, often able to will themselves back to life from near-death.

The Warlords are the pinnacle of the Kherubim genetic experimentation, serving as the most highly evolved and altered of the Kheran nobility. They are described as the most indomitable and invincible of the Kheran forces. It is said any single Warlord is capable of leveling cities in a matter of minutes. They are themselves Kherubim who have undergone alteration, sacrificing their psychic potential for supreme physical and tactical might.

The Shapers are a subspecies of Kheran. They are shapeshifters born with a special genome who are able to change their bodies into a mercury-like substance.

Few Titanthropes remain with pure Titan DNA, though they did originate as an entirely different species, as they have bred with the Kherans and Kherubim to produce a new breed of Titans. They are now considered to be mostly a subspecies of Kheran, usually considered just above slave. The purest Titanthropes are large, purple-skinned humanoids who are able to increase or decrease their mass. They have large yellow horns growing from their backs. When increasing size, a Titan will lose intelligence, but gain strength. They were often used in Kheran armies as shock troopers and berserkers, but are also key to labor and sentry duties. Titans with Kheran blood are able to assume Kheran skin tone and shape but are often not able to fine-tune their transformations.

The Kheran Bladesmen are lab-grown Kherans which were intended to be the foot-soldiers of the Kheran Empire. They are more or less identical to natural Kheran except they can be mass-produced in a lab and tend to have rather dull personalities.

The Coda Sisterhood is the counter to the Bladesmen, producing female warrior Kheran through arcane means in secretive temples. Many Coda are effectively clones of their mothers with only a few dozen variations of clones among their order. As a result of this exceptions to this, such as the rare natural birth are celebrated for bringing in a new possible line of successors. When a Coda sister gives birth, she becomes a Coda priestess or Coda mother and is expected to raise her child and then take part in the birthing pools where her DNA is used to create new Coda sisters in her own image, and then raise these daughters. The few Coda Kherubim are known as High Mothers and bear titles instead of names.

The Usual Social Order of the Castes

* Kherubim High Lords
* Kherubim Warlords
* Noble Kherans
* Shapers
* Kherans
* The Coda
* Bladesmen
* Titans
* Slaves
* Daemonites

## Trivia and Notes

### Trivia

* Planet Ysmault is located in the Kherubim Empire space.

## Links and References

* List of Kheran Characters

1. ↑ Kherubim v. Daemonites
2. ↑ Power of Imaginations