Intro

## History

There is an Empire that spans stars, galaxies, and even realities. Like so many empires, it was built on exploitation, slavery, and oppression. While even its slaves have better living conditions under its rule than in much of the rest of the multiverse, many find their state intolerable. They join with political dissidents, unpopular minorities, and disgruntled homesteaders to find a place beyond the Empire's reach.

There are several criteria for finding such a place. It cannot be in Imperial territory, for the purpose of the journey is to leave the Empire. It must have life of its own, for the process of making a world habitable and seeding it with life using Imperial Tech leaves marks that would suggest it as an obvious refuge to the trained sensory organ. It must have sentient life, for the sudden insertion of sapient beings into the evolutionary tree would draw similar attention. It cannot have technology advanced to near the Imperial level, for this would make it a prime candidate for Imperial conquest.

One such planet, orbiting a yellow main-sequence star of no particular consequence, would later be called "Earth" by a small subset of the primates native to it. It is this planet that most concerns us, for it is on Earth that our tale is set.

Using various means, the refugees took on the shape of the beings referred to as *homo sapiens sapiens*. They found that they would need to hide, not just from the Empire, but from their new fellows as well; for like so many primitive races, H. sap. sap. is distrustful of what it does not understand.

## Tech

While they were generally the underclasses of the Empire, the refugees brought with them certain Imperial comforts. Some of these were necessary, such as the vehicles used to flee from the Empire. Others were brought in the hope that the refugees could use them to rule as lords, but this hope turned out to be misplaced as sheer numbers and opposition from other xenos humbled the self-named god-kings.

These devices, collectively referred to as Tech, are items that anyone in possession of the correct materials, knowledge, and spiritual alterations can construct. However, simply having a Tech and the necessary type of soul does not grant understanding of how to operate it, let alone the principles of how it works. This knowledge is stored in small devices called Memories: tiny crystals or machines that can impart the understanding needed to build, repair, and operate Tech. Accurate Memories, though, are hard to come by on Earth; many of the refugees only had access to the Memories containing the most basic understanding possible for their work, and then with numerous unnecessary steps. Thus, the Tech knowledge of the average xeno is not that of the scientist or the engineer, but somewhere between a technician and a cargo-cultist: able to perform rituals to create and work a thing, and to fix it when it breaks, but with no grasp on how or why it works.

## The Xeno Condition

Disguised as humans, and hiding within the human population, xenos are set apart from humanity by their Instincts: patterns of behavior that define what it means to be that specific type of xeno rather than another species. While these Instincts can be resisted, doing so is both unpleasant and dangerous; ignoring what makes one oneself sets up patterns in the soul that interfere with the ability to work Tech, sometimes including one's own body.