Salutations, my curious congregation! Last time I rambled a little bit about the broad strokes of Astrallis as a setting, so now I'm going to get into the various playable species (and maybe the unplayable ones when I'm done with that, we'll see how I'm feeling about it when we reach that point).
CWs: I'm using 'species' instead of 'races' and I say fuck a lot. Also, we're going to be talking about the sheer concept of evolution. If any of that bothers you, there's the door.
Alright so, in most tabletop settings humans are a playable option and Astrallis is no different. But it isn't just 'here are your humans they are the default', it's 'here are three different flavors of human you can play with'.
So, in Astrallis, humans as we know them, the ones that live on earth, were a branch species that came from a proto-human spacefaring civilization that liked to leave its mark wherever it could reach. And it had a pretty dang far reach, spanning multiple galaxies. For reference, the span of this game mostly takes place in one, though it does dip a tiny bit into the Milky Way because of the Wyrmhole--we'll get to that in a minute.
Anyway, one of those seed species the proto-humans left behind was on Terra. Those are your typical humans, the ones you think of when you think of the humans in any given game that are playable. Most of this game takes place in the Astrallis galaxy but you can play a human from earth if you want to.
The proto-humans got here by taking what is colloquially known as the Mars-Terra Wyrmhole and planted themselves on the most habitable world, then just left their progeny to thrive or die on our own merit.
The second humans that are playable are Martians. Because colonizing Mars is a thing that happens and magic makes terraforming actually possible in this setting. They do make use of domes in a lot of places, Olympus Mons is the biggest city and capital, but before Mars became very populated no one wanted to go there because it was very dangerous and who wants to live on a big red planet where there isn't anything fun to do?
And so Mars started off as a penal colony. My players have affectionally nicknamed it "Space Australia".
Martian Humans tend to be very cyberpunk. They're modification heavy, excpress themselves with tattoos, piercings and cyberware. At one point Mars and Terra had a war because Mars wanted to declare independence and Terra was like 'fuck you no', but all that got stopped because the Wyrmhole opened back up and both subspecies of human were welcomed back into the Astrallis Galaxy.
Which might leave you wondering who the third humans might be. Well, Terra wasn't the only planet the proto-humans splooged on. Another was Serraka, and thus, the Serraket humans. Serraket look very much like humans but with sharper and more pointed canine teeth and kind of talons on their fingers. Their nails are very pale and clear. They also tend to be a bit larger than humans are and heal a bit faster, but those are both traits they inherited from interbreeding with Draxians for generations.
As a quick side bar, draxians are this setting's trolls.
The Serraket are extremely militant and have that human impulse to go conquer everything, except it's dialed up to 11. And you thought the humans on earth were bad.
Alright. Next time I'm going to hit you with the Oshka, which are basically this setting's halflings.
Fortune Favors,
Robin the Red
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