Bizm

**Bizms** were a race of people native to the numerous moons that orbited the now volatile gas giant, Glimr – the sole planet in a star system of the same name. As inhabitants of the dense stellar region of the Galactic Core during the Old Era, Bizms were strongly associated with the Gimoan Alliance, who utilised the Bizms’ well-established but little-understood custom of collating and chronicling information in their enormous telepathic libraries. Bizms themselves, meanwhile, remain a relative mystery, in part due to the Bizmic vow of secrecy, a belief shared by all Bizms that upon revealing anything of themselves, culturally or personally, one would be exposing one's soul and thus die (although the word “soul” here is reductive). As with many of the races of the Alliance, the Bizms eventually became extinct as a consequence of the Chaotic Wars. They were among the last to do so, however, with a few populations lasting up until the Imperial Epoch of the Middle Era. It is believed that the last Bizm died while making the final entry to the vast telepathic library – an entry that was never to be transcribed.

## Biology and appearance

Bizms were small, long-eared, large-eyed, and very long-living mammo-amphibians, meaning they were cold-blooded, but like mammalians they were also able to grow hair, usually in thin, wiry wisps at the ends of their long, drooping ears. The ears of a Bizm were peculiar among mammo-amphibians, since most species of this class possess only internal ears, while Bizms possessed large, distinctive, external ones. It is believed that these strangely large ears played a role in telepathic communication between individuals, functioning as a kind of satellite, rather than for actual hearing. Like mammalians, Bizms gave birth to live young.

Another peculiarity of Bizms was their ability to subsist entirely on the energy they absorbed from their homeworld, the gas giant, Glimr. As inhabitants of the terrestrial moons in Glimr's orbit, Bizms did not typically visit the gas giant, but were able to consume its energy through making contact with the planet telepathically, a process that remains largely a mystery today. Bizms possessed a vestigial but almost completely regressed digestive system, which suggests they were at one stage in their evolution able to digest matter, but over time lost the ability in favour of absorbing energy telepathically. This form of consumption is often referred to as "Essence subsistence", and is widely considered to be one of the earliest forms of Essence worship in the Galaxy.

As a consequence of the comparatively low gravity of Glimr's many moons, the skeletal structure of a Bizm was flimsy. This made it almost impossible for Bizms to inhabit higher gravity systems without the aid of specific anti-gravitational technology.

## History

### Ancient origins

The origin of the Bizms is a subject that has eluded historians for millennia. This is partly due to the system by which the Bizms recorded their own history, the inaccessible and deeply secretive Bizmic Libraries; and also a consequence of lacking archaeological evidence due to the volatility of the Bizmic homeworld, Glimr. Preceding the events of the Great Silence, all expeditions to the Glimr system were banned under Jurrikian law. Now, the system is still prohibited, but a recent survey revealed that the planetary system of Glimr no longer has any moons in its orbit. It is believed that the moons were consumed by the gas giant during the Great Silence, making any expedition attempt futile. Therefore, almost all of what is known about Bizmic history and society comes either from Gimoan historians (predominantly the historian Heshkitiu) or what the Bizms themselves revealed.

It is theorised that there were originally two planets in orbit around the star Glimr; one terrestrial and one comprising mostly gas. The terrestrial planet, Shimr, was eventually subsumed by the larger gaseous planet, Glimr. This destruction of its sister planet is believed to be what created Glimr's numerous moons, formed from the remnants of the dead planet. The Bizms themselves made references to this celestial occurrence in the precious few transcriptions they have provided of the Bizmic Libraries, an ambiguous store of collective cultural memories accessible only to the Bizms. The transcripts refer to the first entry in the Bizmic Libraries, which itself details how the Bizms came to inhabit the many moons of Glimr, and mentions the lost home of all Bizms, referred to as "Shimr" (from which the theorised second planet gets its name). Gimoan and modern historians alike have argued that this suggests the Bizms originated on the theorised, now-extinct planet Shimr, and could explain the origin of the Bizmic cultural phenomenon of telepathic connection to the destroyer planet, Glimr. Whether or not it was possible for a race of alien to evolve on a planet, survive its subsumption into another planet, and continue to proliferate on scattered celestial debris until the debris formed gravitationally into moons, is hotly contested.

Archaeological studies undertaken by Gimoan scientists during the Emergent Epoch, OE, suggest Bizmic society dates back longer than any other race in the Galaxy, possibly making them one of the earliest known intelligent lifeforms. Historian and analyst of alien societies, Heshkitiu, noted during her time living alongside Bizms on the Glimric moon of Otn during the 2nd Age of the Emergent Epoch that life for Bizms remained largely unchanged since pre-recorded time. In her seminal work, *On Bizmic Histories and Customs*, she wrote:

> "From what I have come to learn, and greatly admire, about these quiet Bizmic folk, is that with all their hidden technologies and secret wisdoms remains a simplicity and deeply rooted attachment to the quietude of familial co-existence with oneself, one's family and one's neighbour, that pre-dates all our many greatest achievements and is, perhaps for all of us, as ancient as the Bizms themselves."
>
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Across the Glimric moons the Bizms inhabited, societies and cultures seemed to vary minimally. While there were numerous ethnic subgroups in the Bizmic conglomerate, distinctions remained largely superficial, with each community sharing almost identical ideals, laws, customs and traditions. Attempts have been made since, to replicate this kind of cohesion through similar kinds of uniformity by various races throughout history, but this has typically resulted in violent upheavals. For the Bizms, however, this unusual level of cultural unanimity meant that conflicts between Bizms rarely, if ever, occurred.

They typically lived in small, simple dwellings, constructed of whatever material was most prevalent - usually mud or stone - fashioned into a box shape. A single home would house up to three or four families, living communally. The average family would consist of up to ten children, or Bizlings.

### Scribes of the Alliance

It is believed that a second planet once orbited the star Glimr, but it was eventually consumed and destroyed by the planet Glimr, which created its numerous moons to which the Bizmic people are native. Many historians have noted the peculiarly enigmatic nature of the Bizms, who were recorded to have had a kind of telepathic connection to their planet, which allowed them to subsist on nothing other than the energy they absorbed from it. This meant that the Bizms rarely strayed very far from their star system, adding to their sense of mystique among other nations of the Old Era. In the days of the Old Alliance, the Bizms were some of the most trusted allies to the rising power that was the Gimoans, who utilised the Bizms’ well-established custom of collating and chronicling information in their enormous telepathic libraries – effectively storing cultural memory into one giant, invisible network that any Bizm could tap into. This technology was inaccessible to the other nations of the ever-growing Alliance, however, so the Gimoans had these Bizmic libraries transcribed into what became known as the Bizmic Chronicles – an extensive account of the events of the Old Era, without which very little of its history would be so concisely knowable today. The Bizms themselves, though, remain a relative mystery, in part due to the Bizmic vow of secrecy. They believed that if they revealed anything of themselves, culturally or personally, they would be exposing their souls and thus die (although the word “soul” here can be misleading – perhaps “collective mind” might be a better, yet still reductive, term). Unfortunately, as with many of the Alliance nations, the Bizms eventually did die out as a consequence of the Chaotic Wars. They were among the last to go, however, clinging on to their secretive, forbidden star at the heart of the galaxy. It is said that the last Bizm died while making the final entry to the vast telepathic library – an entry we will never be able to retrieve.

## Society and culture

### **Religion**

#### **The Bizmic Libraries**

The Bizmic Chronicles are the collective texts written by the Bizms from the start of the Old Era to the culmination of the Chaotic Wars. The origin of the texts dates back to the early allyship of the Gimoan and Bizmic people who, alongside the Valen, instigated what became known as the Gimoan Alliance. The Gimoans, upon learning of the vast Bizmic libraries and their highly religious custom of recording information, tasked the Bizms with chronicling the events of the Alliance. The Bizmic libraries, though, were accessible only to Bizmic chroniclers and librarians, existing solely as a kind of telepathic network of shared memories into which only highly trained Bizms could tap. This unfathomably complicated system of stored knowledge is believed to exist within the homeworld of the Bizms itself – Glimr – which was a gas giant of great spiritual significance to the Bizmic people. It is believed that the Bizms, who inhabited Glimr’s surrounding moons, were able to telepathically tap into the planet’s energy, allowing them to subsist on this energy without need for food or water and allowing them to communicate with one another without language (some consider this to be the first example of Essence worship, or “Essence subsistence,” and that the gas giant was actually a celestial mass of Essence). Only the most devout and well-studied Bizmic chroniclers and librarians had access to the telepathic library, however, making them revered among Bizms effectively as high priests, making the libraries a kind of temple. The notion that Bizms worshipped history, or shared memory, as a kind of god is a heavily debated one among scholars, some preferring to consider the Bizms as an areligious people. The spiritual and cultural significance, and secrecy, of these Bizmic libraries made it impossible for the early Gimoans to access the information the Bizms collated in the early days of the Alliance, so it was proposed that the Bizms begin transcribing their accounts into a more accessible, textual format. It was then that the Bizms began writing what became known as the Bizmic Chronicles, of which there were countless volumes. These texts contained all the events of the Gimoan Alliance in extreme detail, allowing for much of its history to be researched today. New volumes are forever sought after, and it is estimated that only a third of the Chronicles have yet been discovered – making them prized artifacts for treasure hunters. Many of the volumes are remarkably tedious, going into excessive detail about endlessly mundane activities, but without these famously tedious Bizmic Chronicles, very little of the Old Era would be known, albeit from the perspective of Alliance-loyal nations.