Editing Lore

{{Stub|reason=General. Also Ideology [[Ruins]], shared info on all game-host rimworlds, generated ideology and quest descriptions, archotech, and the starting scenarios}}
The '''Lore''' of RimWorld is limited and is mostly interpreted from information provided in game. However several documents have been published outlining the lore for new players. Keep in mind that the lore is being updated and that later releases retcon old ones. Old lore is only presented here as a matter of interest. 

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== Assorted Lore ==
This section includes lore from assorted sources, including [[backstories]], that is not included in the Revival Briefing.
=== Named Places ===
==== Worlds ====
* '''Ticonderoga''' - A planet populated with tribals and mountains <ref name="Jon">Backstory of Jonathan 'Jon' Craig</ref>
* '''Kalthas IV''' - A planet with elite training school for socially gifted students on it. <ref name="Darkeye">Backstory of Matis 'Darkeye' Saro</ref>
* '''Ceti V''' - A planet with an assassin's guild <ref name="Darkeye"/>
* '''Aracena VI''' - A planet with the Novo Mosteiro dos Jerónimos monastery on it, at least 2 continents and alcohol prohibition leading to the rise of bootleggers <ref>Backstory of Vitor 'Oahnip' Pinhao</ref>
* '''Irithir''' - A trading hub planet <ref>Backstory of William Gregory-Heap</ref>
* '''Rural Pen’The''' - A lucrative spice mining colony.<ref>Backstory of Benn 'Ben' Tannen</ref> ''Out of Universe: This is likely a reference to Rura Penthe, the penal colony from 1954 Disney film "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" or the Klingon penal planetoid named after it in the Star Trek universe.''
* '''New China''' - Planet <ref>Backstory of Yutong 'Li' Li</ref>
* '''Amen-Ti''' - A glitterworld planet. Capital of the Star Empire, which maintains a military called Starforce which trains its cadets at the Star Academy. Fields Manned Fighters launched from Carrier Ships, and has been involved in at least 3 wars against "more advanced aggressor cultures" <ref name="Nerhesi">Backstory of Sam 'Nerhesi' Wissa</ref> Relationship with Rogia, another glitterworld which also hosts a "Starforce", is unknown. It is possible that they are part of the same Star Empire.
* '''Khalderia''' - A world with towering forests and fern farmers. The seedy underworld of racing, Illegal Speeder racing, zipping in and out of the massive canopies and gorgeous vistas of the world occurred here. <ref>Backstory of Russell 'Rusty' Shackleford</ref>
* '''Earth''' - A planet, from which all known naturally evolved life originated. Humanity's diaspora from Earth occurred 3400 years before the Cryptosleep Debriefing, or in the year 2100 CE assuming the Debriefing is contemporaneous with the beginning of the game in 5500. <ref name="Cryptosleep Revival Briefing">[[#Cryptosleep Revival Briefing|Cryptosleep Revival Briefing]]</ref>
* '''Euterpe''' - A planet that hosted people awakening from long periods of cryptosleep. Also had an Ordo Historia archive on-world. <ref name="Cryptosleep Revival Briefing"/>
* '''Sorne''' - A planet. The original homeworld of the [[insectoid]]s, before being captured, genetically modified, and vat-grown by interstellar entrepreneurs for use as weapons, and exported to other worlds by parties unknown. As all seemingly-alien life is claimed to have originated on Earth, it is possible that the original pre-weaponization Sorne Geneline evolved from Earth life on the planet, or were already genetically engineered for some reason before being modified again. <ref name="Insectoid Faction Description">[[Insectoid]] Faction Description</ref>
* '''Sophiamunda''' {{RoyaltyIcon}} - A techno-feudal world with castles and palaces. Native Sophians work as knights, squires, dukes, maids, and swordsmiths. Revolutionists and their rebels sometimes attack those living there. People carry warhammers and persona plasmaswords as personal weapons. [[Orbital mech cluster targeter]]s, bio-engineered plagues, and armies of fallen knights have been deployed there. Described in code-comments as ''Sophiamunda is the shattered empire's home world.''. Generally the canonicity of such comments is unclear, though in this instance it directly agrees with other sources. <ref name="Royalty Places">Royalty Places.xml</ref> This information listed here is limited to that listed in the places file, for more information see the [[Empire#Lore|Empire]] page.
* '''Oubanyen''' {{IdeologyIcon}} - A steamy jungle world with tree-top villages, hill-top ziggurats, city temples, and shaman caves. Native Oubanyeni work as Shamans, hunters, fishers, gatherers and goatherds. Tree-harvesters and their henchmen sometimes attack those living there. People carry [[pila]] and [[ikwa]] as personal weapons. Lethal psychic drones and neurotoxin bombs have been deployed there. Described in code-comments as ''A steamy world of wet jungles, strange tribes with psychic powers'', however the canonicity of such comments is unclear. <ref name="Ideology Places">Ideology Places.xml</ref>
* '''Chelis''' {{IdeologyIcon}} - An arid world with moisture farms, parch-towns, water centres and high lifehalls. Native Chelisi work as water gatherers, lizardskinners, oasis seekers, cactus gatherers and scav-herders. Chiefs and their sand-warriors sometimes attack those living there. People carry sand-arrows and cactus-clubs as personal weapons. Archotech-induced sandstorms and spikelizard stampedes have been deployed there. Described in code-comments as ''An arid world of moisture-farming tribes'', however the canonicity of such comments is unclear. <ref name="Ideology Places"/>
* '''Ilwaba''' {{IdeologyIcon}} - A regrown ruin-world world with skyscraper villages, highway trade-posts, blast-land oases, and houses of regrowth. Native Ilwabans work as crete-farmers, path-makers, artifact hunters, tunnelwalkers, and artifact restorers. Crypto-leaders and their crypto-soldiers sometimes attack those living there. People carry scrap-swords and jag-dagger as personal weapons. Dug-up nukes and ancient poison bombs have been deployed there. Described in code-comments as ''A regrown deathworld where tribes live among overgrown cities.'', however the canonicity of such comments is unclear. <ref name="Ideology Places"/>
* '''Boccocarro''' {{IdeologyIcon}} - A cavernous shell-world with surface tunnels, fungus caverns, drip-wells, and speech-halls. Native Boccin work as miners, fungus growers, surface scavengers, community cooks, and frog-hunters. Mine hypervisor and their abyssal marines sometimes attack those living there. People carry pickaxes and hydraulic crossbows as personal weapons. Seismic quake-generation devices and blackpowder bombs have been deployed there. Described in code-comments as ''A subterranean world with vast caverns and a baked, inhospitable surface. Many factious but isolated city-states.'', however the canonicity of such comments is unclear. <ref name="Ideology Places"/>
* '''Nuchadus''' {{IdeologyIcon}} - A dim volcano-world with basalt islands, caldera laketowns, dirigible villages, and thermal fortresses. Native nuchadeans work as seismologists, lava-snail farmers, tank-tread repairers, and airborne scouts. Lava lords and their stygian soldiers sometimes attack those living there. People carry obsidian daggers and harpoon rifles as personal weapons. Chem-warfare bombs and archotech-induced volcano eruptions have been deployed there. Described in code-comments as ''A chaotic volcanic world far from the sun, covered with lava flows and black sand dunes. There are nomads and movable cities.'', however the canonicity of such comments is unclear. <ref name="Ideology Places"/>
* '''Zoutera''' {{IdeologyIcon}} - A grassy dino-world with trading outposts, trent villages, mammoth burial grounds, and hill-top forts. Native Zoutin work as dino-riders, [[muffalo]]-herders, hunters, and toughleather makers. Tusk-kings and their tusk-warriors sometimes attack those living there. People carry bamboo staves and hunt-bomb arrows as personal weapons. Fertilizer bombs and stampeding herds of ankylosaurs, blue mammoths, and novoraptors have been deployed there. Described in code-comments as ''A grassy planet populated by megafauna'', however the canonicity of such comments is unclear. <ref name="Ideology Places"/>
* '''Wavia''' {{IdeologyIcon}} - A oceanic planet with trading atolls, floating villages, seaweed refineries, and capitol bridges. Native Wavians work as fishers, pearl divers, sail makers, captains, and sea-grass gatherers. Waler admmirals and their whaler-marines sometimes attack those living there. People carry harpoons and barbed nets as personal weapons. High-yield torpedoes and baited deep-kraken and Wavian leviathans have been deployed there. Described in code-comments as ''A water world dotted with atolls and floating seaweed'', however the canonicity of such comments is unclear. <ref name="Ideology Places"/> Likely a reference to the 1995 post-apocalyptic action film 'Waterworld'.
* '''Bagua 5''' {{IdeologyIcon}} - A junkyard planet with fortified scrapyards, rainwater processing plants, scrap-towns and trader spaceports. Native Bagucinquans work as scavengers, traders, tinkerers, guards, and scrappers. Junk lords and their metal-heads sometimes attack those living there. People carry pipe rifles and scrap-swords as personal weapons. Salvaged nukes and rust viruses have been deployed there. Described in code-comments as ''A junkyard planet of crashed ships, broken machinery, scavengers and traders.'', however the canonicity of such comments is unclear. <ref name="Ideology Places"/> "Bagua" is the name of eight symbols used in Taoist cosmology and of a province of Peru - it is unclear if either etymology of the name is correct. The "-cinquan" suffix of the demonym simply comes from the French term for five - the inhabitants are literally "Bagua-5-ans".
* '''Rhydell''' {{IdeologyIcon}} - A savage forest moon with converted dropships, low-shielded encampments, communication centers, and armored habitats. Native Rhydellians work as frontier botanists, trophy hunters, medics, camp cooks, and biolab engineers. Deepcorp executives and their deepcorp enforcers sometimes attack those living there. People carry sniper rifles and machetes as personal weapons. Plant-derived neurotoxin gas and orbital laser strikes have been deployed there. Described in code-comments as ''A forest moon filled valuable flora and with dangerous predators'', however the canonicity of such comments is unclear. <ref name="Ideology Places"/>
* '''Iwamura''' {{IdeologyIcon}} - A stony asteroid with market capsules, warehouse capsules, docking piers, and station bridges. Native Iwamurian work as life-support engineers, merchants, flight controllers, zero-g athletes, and radio hosts. Merga-corp CEOs and their rent-a-cops sometimes attack those living there. People carry [[charge rifle]]s and welding torches as personal weapons. Aerosolized toxins, life-support sabotage viruses and EMP strikes to the life support systems have been deployed there. Described in code-comments as ''Iwamura is a stony asteroid housing a large trading hub'', however the canonicity of such comments is unclear. <ref name="Ideology Places"/>
* '''Novaroma''' {{IdeologyIcon}} - A planetoid with ministries of permits, gated suburbs, over-cities, undercities, and megacity overhalls. Native novaromans work as clerks, officials, food couriers, taxi drivers, and retail workers. High-underlords and their undertroops sometimes attack those living there. People carry [[revolver]]s and [[knife|knives]] as personal weapons. Seismic quake-generation devices, cluster bombs, and nuclear suitcase-boms have been deployed there. Described in code-comments as ''[...] a planetoid covered in a vast city, ruled by a bureaucracy'', however the canonicity of such comments is unclear. <ref name="Ideology Places"/>
* '''Filson''' {{IdeologyIcon}} - A rural farm-world with fertilizer processing plants, mega-granaries, water-bore sites, and town halls. Native Filsoners work as farm hands, fruit pickers, transport drivers, school teachers, and soil engineers. Landowners and their militia sometimes attack those living there. People carry rifles and scythes as personal weapons. Frtilizer bombs, weaponized pesticide sprays and space lenses have been deployed there. Described in code-comments as ''[...] a rural planet of vast agriculture plots and territorial landowners'', however the canonicity of such comments is unclear. <ref name="Ideology Places"/>
* '''Creticon''' {{IdeologyIcon}} - A blasted death-world with bunkers, caverns, ice-shelters, and director's bunkers. Native Creticonians work as water-recycler repairers, algae farmers, doctors, teachers, militia commanders, and shuttle pilots. Warlords and their mercenaries sometimes attack those living there. People carry [[autopistol]]s and [[LMG]]s as personal weapons. Shoulder-mounted nuclear missiles, orbital bombardments, chemical bombs, and hacked mechanoids have been deployed there. Described in code-comments as ''[...] a high-tech death-world where everyone lives in bunkers'', however the canonicity of such comments is unclear. <ref name="Ideology Places"/>
* '''Yttak''' {{IdeologyIcon}} {{BiotechIcon}} - An ice-moon prison with meal halls, guard barracks, detention centers, and warden's office complex. Native Yttaki are detainees and escapees, or work as guards, maintenance workers, and transport drivers. Prison wardens and their corrupt guards sometimes attack those living there. People carry shivs and SMGs as personal weapons. Improvised chemical bombs and orbital laser strikes have been deployed there. Described in code-comments as ''[...] a frigid ice-moon prison colony'', however the canonicity of such comments is unclear. The [[Yttakin]] xenohumans were first created in that moon and they've since spread to other worlds.<ref name="Ideology Places"/>
* '''Kemia''' {{IdeologyIcon}} - A toxic war-world with slums, tunnel colonies, undertowns, and city lordhouses. Native Kemian work as street sweepers, cleanup engineers, protein farmers, taxi drivers, and weapons builders. Poison lords and their venom-soldiers sometimes attack those living there. People carry gas bombs and toxic flamethrowers as personal weapons. Nuclear dirty bombs, bio-engineered plagues, and penetrating toxic bombs have been deployed there. Described in code-comments as ''[...] a toxic, overcrowded world with an oppressive government'', however the canonicity of such comments is unclear. <ref name="Ideology Places"/>
* '''Rogia''' {{IdeologyIcon}} - A glitter-tech world with medical institutes, space elevators, robotics factories, and a planetary capitol. Native Rogians work as starforce cadets, artisan farmers, social-media prodigies, zero-g athletes, and glitter-tech smugglers. Corrupt bureaucrats and their bionic guards sometimes attack those living there. People carry [[charge lance]]s and [[persona monosword]]s as personal weapons. Antimatter warheads, weaponized computer viruses, and remote-controlled mechanoid workers have been deployed there. Described in code-comments as ''[...] a world of windy prairies and towering glitter-tech cities.'', however the canonicity of such comments is unclear. <ref name="Ideology Places"/> Relationship with Amen-ti, another glitterworld which also hosts a "Starforce", is unknown. It is possible that they are part of the same Star Empire, of which Amen-ti is the capital.
* '''Xanides''' {{IdeologyIcon}} - An exploited mineral-planet with strip mines, ore refineries, nutrient paste cafeterias, and oxygen depots. Native Xanidians work as miners, supervisors, technicians, mechanics, and life support engineers. Mine-crop bosses and their mine-corp troops sometimes attack those living there. People carry electro-batons and [[autopistol]]s as personal weapons. Blasting charges and EMP strikes to the life support systems have been deployed there. Described in code-comments as ''a small strip-mining planet with a thin atmosphere'', however the canonicity of such comments is unclear. <ref name="Ideology Places"/>
* '''Lutuni''' {{IdeologyIcon}} - A rainforest paradise with augmentation clinics, hyper-yachts, zero-g stadia, and space elevator complexes. Native Luntuni work as tourist guides, zero-g performers, [[luciferium]] distributors, virtual celebrities, and shuttle pilots. Entertainment moguls and their enforcers sometimes attack those living there. People carry vibro-knives and charge pistols as personal weapons. Structural disintegration bacterium and smuggled [[orbital bombardment targeter|orbital bombardment targetter]]s{{sic}} have been deployed there. Described in code-comments as ''a rainforest paradise and glitterworld tourist destination'', however the canonicity of such comments is unclear. <ref name="Ideology Places"/>

'''Note:''' The rimworlds on which gameplay takes place have randomly generated names. Due to both their limited application and randomly generated nature, the randomly generated names of these rimworlds is considered semi-canonical only and are not listed here.
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* '''planet''' {{IdeologyIcon}} - A descriptor world with . Native demonyms work as jobs. foeleaders and their foesoldiers sometimes attack those living there. People carry personalweapons as personal weapons. massweapons have been deployed there. Described in code-comments as ''desc'', however the canonicity of such comments is unclear. <ref name="Ideology Places"/>
-->

==== Systems ====
* '''Xennoa system''' - Has a military with infantry and spacejets, involved in the Xennoa-Zartza War <ref name="Harris">Backstory of Kyle Harris</ref>

==== Other ====
* '''Utmaior Academy''' - Prestigious academy on a glitterworld <ref name="Doc">Backstory of James 'Doc' Grey</ref>
* '''Vanu Defense College''' <ref name="Leystrat">Backstory of Bashkire Leystrat</ref>
* '''Caspian school of Engineering''' - A glitterworld school that offers mathematics and computer programming in its curriculum. <ref>Backstory of Darrien 'Mal' Maliphalo</ref> 
* '''Vinna''' - A place with raiders and mudlands. Possibly a planet. <ref>Backstory of Ida 'Ida' Painstingle</ref>
* '''Atura station''' {{IdeologyIcon}} - An orbital shipyard with shuttle docks, manufacturing rings, residential rings, and a central control room. Native Alturans work as construction drone operators, managers, test pilots, sales agents, and 3D printer technicians. Crime bosses and their thugs sometimes attack those living there. People carry tasers and arc welders as personal weapons. EMP strikes to the life support systems and remote-controlled welding drones have been deployed there. Described in code-comments as ''an orbital dry dock and construction yard'', however the canonicity of such comments is unclear. <ref name="Ideology Places"/>

<gallery>
Background planet pc.png     |A rimworld {{PCIcon}}
Background moon pc 1.png     |A rimworld's moon {{PCIcon}}
Background moon pc 2.png     |A rimworld's moon {{PCIcon}}
Background planet console.png|A rimworld {{ConsoleIcon}}
Background moon console 1.png|A rimworld's moon {{ConsoleIcon}}
Background moon console 2.png|A rimworld's moon {{ConsoleIcon}}
</gallery>
<gallery>
Background planet royalty.png |A rimworld {{RoyaltyIcon}}
Background moon royalty 1.png |A rimworld's moon {{RoyaltyIcon}}
Background moon royalty 2.png |A rimworld's moon {{RoyaltyIcon}}
Background planet ideology.png|A rimworld {{IdeologyIcon}}
Background moon ideology 1.png|A rimworld's moon {{IdeologyIcon}}
Background moon ideology 2.png|A rimworld's moon {{IdeologyIcon}}
</gallery>

=== Events ===
* '''Zartha crisis''' <ref name="Leystrat"/>
* '''Inner Destrian War''' <ref>Backstory of Chad 'Stonejaw' Walcenville</ref>
* '''Callos IX incident''' - James 'Doc' Grey performed unethical experiments on the survivors of this incident, and when the experiments were published, he was exiled. <ref name="Doc"/>
* '''Xennoa-Zartza War ''' <ref name="Harris"/>

=== Planet types ===
* '''Deadworlds''' - Planets which have not been significantly contacted by humans. Generally not inhabitable. All planets are like this before people arrive for the first time.<ref name="Cryptosleep Revival Briefing"/>
* '''Animal worlds''' - Planets with no people. Either everyone died, or the planet was seeded with plant and animal life by terraforming robots and nobody arrived.<ref name="Cryptosleep Revival Briefing"/>
* '''Medieval worlds''' - Similar to Earth from the agricultural revolution until the industrial revolution. Social structures are usually feudal or imperial. Planets can stay in this state for millennia.<ref name="Cryptosleep Revival Briefing"/>
* '''Steamworlds''' - Similar to Earth in the 19th century. Often this state is short-lived, as societies develop into midworlds, but it can be very stretched out depending on culture and government structure.<ref name="Cryptosleep Revival Briefing"/>
* '''Midworlds''' - Worlds whose people have mastered flight, but not cheap interplanetary travel. Earth is in this stage in the 21st century.<ref name="Cryptosleep Revival Briefing"/>
* '''Urbworlds''' - Super-high density planets dominated by cities. Urbworlds’ population growth outstripped their social and technological development, so they tend to be overcrowded, polluted, violent places. The people here are often callous towards strangers. This is often the outcome for midworlds that see their demographic transition into lower birth reversed by dysgenic reproduction patterns.<ref name="Cryptosleep Revival Briefing"/> Urbworlds can build mechanoids. <ref name="Keuneke">Backstory of Markus 'Keuneke' Keuneke</ref>Some urbworlds have worldwide cities ruled by corporations. <ref name="Coffey">Backstory of Darius Coffey</ref>Urbworlds can be ancient - some even have greedy nobility in spire palaces while cannibal cults exist in the deepest reaches of the underground hive. <ref>Backstory of Skye 'Skye' Lorne</ref>
* '''Glitterworlds''' - The most technologically advanced societies that can be led by humans. Swaddled in comforts by the strong arms of technology, glitterworlds are the peak of recognizable human society in terms of art, health, and generous human rights. Common people from these planets often lack grit and are very trusting in people and technology.<ref name="Cryptosleep Revival Briefing"/> Likely synonmous with '''glitter-tech world'''.<ref>Ideology Places.xml - Rogia entry</ref> Glitterworlds are mostly free of disease and human suffering, and surgeons employed there mostly perform elaborate and creative cosmetic surgeries, and never have to remove a cancer or a bullet.<ref>Glitterworld surgeon Backstory</ref> While glitterworlds are peaceful places and some units rarely see action, they often remain prepared for war.<ref>Glitterworld Officer Backstory</ref> Despite this tendency towards peace, some glitterworlds do field space navies and engage in active campagins against enemy cultures.<ref name="Nerhesi"/> On some glitterworlds all menial work was done by robots and people devoted themselves to leisure.<ref>Biosphere Manager Backstory</ref> This extends to some technical fields as well, such as AI handling all the technical aspects of architecture, allowing architects to focus on artistic expression <ref>Architect Backstory</ref> This is not universal however, as others still had humans washing dishes in restaurants<ref>Backstory of Stijn 'Stin' Gezink</ref> Farms are operated on some glitterworlds, though all but rare exceptions have abandoned traditional farming methods for glitterworld technologies.<ref>Backstory of Pete Holiday</ref>Glitterworld police forces were often equipped with [[recon armor]]<ref>[[Recon armor]] description</ref> and [[Recon helmet|helmets]].<ref>[[Recon helmet]] description</ref> Some glitterworlds have mechanoid companions for children,<ref>Backstory of Erisen 'Erisen' Irioth</ref> or as workers.<ref name="Rogia">Ideology Places.xml - Rogia entry</ref> At least some Glitterworlds apparently remain capitalist, as attending their universities can leave a person in enormous debt,<ref>Backstory of Caitlin 'Cait' Stirr</ref> and corporations exist.<ref>Backstory of Ryan 'Legend' Michael</ref><ref>Backstory of Jhet 'Brazil' Whistler</ref> At least some Glitterworlds were monarchic, with royal households that would intermarry with the royal families of other planets.<ref>Backstory of Xiao 'Ally' Li</ref> See also: Sophiamunda and the Empire for information about a specific glitterworld society.
* '''Rimworlds''' - Planets lacking in strong central government and low in population density. These places tend to hover around the industrial level of technology or lower. Because they’re not homogenized by a central government, they tend to see a lot of interaction between people of different technology levels, as travelers crash-land or ancient communities stumble out of their cryptosleep vaults. These planets are often at the rim of known space, hence the name.<ref name="Cryptosleep Revival Briefing"/>
* '''Toxic worlds''' - Worlds destroyed by pollution, chemical or nuclear warfare, but still inhabitable at a low level, with sufficient technology.<ref name="Cryptosleep Revival Briefing"/> Toxic may have a limited definition, or may only relate to Humans, as some toxic worlds are overgrown with hostile plant life.<ref name="Johs">Backstory of Johs 'Johs' Barrowlocht</ref>
* '''Glassworlds''' - Worlds utterly destroyed by high-energy weapons of mass destruction. They’re nicknamed ‘marbles’ because their surfaces have been “glassed”. Nuclear weapons aren’t enough to glass a planet, so this level of destruction is rare. On some of these worlds, people can walk outdoors for a time without dying. None of them harbour permanent life bigger than a paramecium.<ref name="Cryptosleep Revival Briefing"/>
* '''Transcendent worlds''' - It’s a stretch to call these entities worlds, since they resemble giant computers more than they resemble planets. The mechanics of these planets is mysterious, but many scholars believe transcendents are the outcome when a sovereign archotech decides to incorporate a whole planet into itself.<ref name="Cryptosleep Revival Briefing"/>
* '''Indworlds''' - Distinct from Industrial worlds, they are worlds undergoing their industrial revolution.<ref>Backstory of Victoria 'Vicky' Louene</ref>
* '''Industrial worlds''' - Distinct from Indworlds, they are worlds devoted predominantly to industry.<ref>Backstory of Amelia 'Engie' Flais</ref><ref>Backstory of Sa'Bikk 'Sab' Saleosy</ref><ref>Backstory of Daniel 'Dankman' Mann</ref>. Some host large factory cities<ref>Backstory of Felix von Schild</ref>
* '''Farming planets''' - Worlds devoted predominantly to farming. Not necessarily technologically backwards, with some using automated machinery that grow and harvest the multitude of crops. <ref>Backstory of Conlay Shen</ref> Likely synonmous with '''farm-worlds'''.<ref>Ideology Places.xml - Filson entry</ref>
* '''Prison planets''' - Worlds where convicts are condemned to remove malefactors from society. <ref>Backstory of Jered 'Jay' Martin</ref>
* '''Feudal world''' -  Multi-planet feudal empires besides the [[Empire]] exist. <ref>Backstory of Frank 'Isimiel' Laquinto</ref>
* '''Coreworlds''' - Based on the name, may be the worlds that form the astrographical or political core of human civilization, perhaps including Earth and other early colonies. Alternatively, may be worlds located in the galactic core or some other definition. Possibly synonymous with planets in the 'core region', which includes at least one glitterworld.<ref>Backstory of Candice Roughchild</ref> Appear to be relatively advanced and stable, with at least midworld level surgical capabilities,<ref>Backstory of Alyssa 'Sparkles' Orchard</ref> planetary governments,<ref name="Anarchist">Backstory of Mike 'Anarchist' Mudgett</ref> and sufficient competent military forces to push out both anarchists<ref name="Anarchist"/> and fairly large mercenary forces.<ref>Backstory of Aznable 'Reikguard' Coal</ref>
* '''Trash planets''' - Dumping grounds for surrounding glitterworlds <ref>Backstory of Xandarian 'Xandy' Stalzer</ref>
* '''Junkyard planets''' - Apparently self-descriptive. Possibly synonymous with trash planets, but given the name possibly differentiated by being intended to allow salvage and scrapping rather than simply dumping.<ref>Ideology Places.xml - Bagua 5 entry</ref>
* '''Iceworld''' - Apparently self-descriptive. Plants are rare. <ref>Backstory of Slivaki 'Sliverwar' Warts</ref>
* '''Dino-worlds''' - Apparently self-descriptive - worlds inhabited by dinosaurs and other megafauna, likely resurrected though genetic engineering. Mentioned species of a single example dino-world include: ankylosaurs, blue mammoths, and novoraptors.<ref name="Zoutera">Ideology Places.xml - Zoutera entry</ref>
* '''War-worlds''' - Unknown definition.<ref>Ideology Places.xml - Kemia entry</ref>
* '''Mineral-planets''' - Unknown definition. Likely descriptive of either their natural resources or their economic product<ref>Ideology Places.xml - Xanides entry</ref>
* '''Other worlds''' - Beyond these categories, there are many exceptional planets in strange states created by their peculiar social and technological evolutions. Given the scale and age of the universe, there is a lot of time and space for a lot of very strange situations to develop.<ref name="Cryptosleep Revival Briefing"/>

'''Additional facts:'''
* Steamworlds and Midworlds aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. <ref>Backstory of Charles 'Charlzie' Zillioner</ref>
* Industrial planets and midworlds ''may'' not necessarily be mutually exclusive. <ref>Backstory of Lancelot 'Lance' Hale</ref>
* Several spacer or glittertech societies, including Iwamura, Rogia, and Lutuni, host zero-g sports with professional athletes competing, some in zero-g stadia. Lutuni also hosts zero-g performers of an unknown type.<ref name="Ideology Places"/>

=== Technologies and Militaries ===
A variety of militaries exist in various styles, structures, purposes and technology levels. This include naval and space-based fleets, ground infantry, orbital troopers, spaceship-to-spaceship boarding actions and a massive variety of supersoldier projects. 

==== Militaries and Military Technology ====
* '''Space marines''' - A role filled by human warriors. Some serve on navy ships, punch into enemy starships, gun down the crew, and capture the ship intact.<ref>Space marine Backstory</ref><ref>Backstory of Nico Storch</ref> Others serve in the security forces of off-planet corporations, defending ships against pirates and engaging in private space warfare contracts.<ref>Backstory of Roland 'Roland' Kleist</ref> One organisation of space marines was the "Interplanetary Marines" which fought on behalf of a particular planet.<ref>Backstory of Trevor 'Hunter' Cobb</ref> Colony contact expeditionary forces employ space marine medics.<ref>Backstory of Ryan 'Noob' Torrijos</ref> [[Marine armor]]<ref>[[Marine armor]] description</ref> and [[marine helmet|helmets]]<ref>[[Marine helmet]] description</ref> were often used by rapid-incursion space marines. [[Go-juice]] was developed as a combat drug for space marines during the early days of interplanetary warfare.<ref>[[Go-juice]] description</ref>
* '''Navy pathfinders''' -  A group of military explorers dedicated to charting pathways through deep space and on remote planets.<ref>Backstory of Nicklaus 'Shadow' Blackthorn</ref>
* '''Mechanoids''' - Some militaries deploy combat mechanoids in their militaries <ref>Backstory of Dennis 'Mac' McCarthy</ref><ref name="Keuneke"/>
* '''Charge pistols''' - Exist. <ref name="Lutuni">Ideology Places.xml - Lutuni entry</ref>
* '''Vibro-knives''' - Exist. <ref name="Lutuni">Ideology Places.xml - Lutuni entry</ref>
* '''Archotech mass-inverter''' - A mass weapon of unknown description created by archotechs.<ref name="Ideology Places"/>
* '''Tasers''' - Exist.<ref name="Altura station">Ideology Places.xml - Altura station entry</ref>
* '''Mega-cannon''' - A "frighteningly powerful" long-range cannon for artillery or anti-ship use.<ref name="Ancient mega-cannon barrel">[[Ancient mega-cannon barrel]] description</ref>

====Ship types====
* '''Interplanetary super-destroyer''' - Such as the HMS Thunder-Child of the Royal Fleet <ref>Backstory of Jake 'Table' Maddams</ref>
* '''Starfighters''' - Combat spacecraft and are flown by starfighter pilots for militaries.<ref>Backstory of Sjoerd 'Bowman' Lukas</ref> See also '''manned fighters'''. 
* '''Manned Fighters''' - Spacecraft launched from Carrier Ships and flown by fighter pilots.<ref name="Nerhesi"/>
* '''Carrier Ships''' - Carry manned fighters.<ref name="Nerhesi"/>
* '''Fighter-bombers''' - fielded by the [[Empire]], a fighter bomber design specialized in spreading incendiary gel on flammable targets. Presumably an atmospheric craft.<ref>Firebomber Backstory</ref> 
* '''Spaceyacht''' - a human-piloted pleasure craft and transport for the well-to-do, such as wealthy businessmen and politicians <ref>Backstory of Owen 'Cali' Clarke</ref>
* '''Consularship''' - Such as the St. Anthem. Carried glitterworld diplomats on diplomatic tasks. <ref>Backstory of Florian 'Skater' Haas</ref>
* '''Hyper-yacht''' - Unknown. Possibly a glitterworld pleasure craft but the canonicity of code-comments are unclear.<ref name="Lutuni"/>
<gallery>
Background ship whole.png|Ship of unknown type and range
Background ship broken.png|The same ship broken in half
Background ship royalty 1.png|Ship of unknown type and range{{RoyaltyIcon}}
</gallery>

====Other technologies====
* '''Furred xenohumans''' - Exist <ref name="Svejgaard">Backstory of Benjamin 'Svejgaard' Svejgaard</ref>
* '''Transbirds''' - Birds raised to human level intelligence - exist and presumably captain and man ships. <ref name="Svejgaard"/>
* '''Opticows''' - Present on Midworlds in agricultural settings. <ref>Backstory of Jacqueline 'Jackalope' Richter</ref> In the now non-canon [[#Longsleep Revival Briefing|Longsleep Revival Briefing]], Opti as a prefix indicated animals with enhanced but still sub-human intelligence from breeding, evolution, and genetic engineering including recombination with human DNA. They also included physical changes to the animal's body to better exploit the new intelligence. Optianimals can usually use tools, form long-term goals and organize into primitive social groups, but can’t speak more than a few words, read, or think abstractly. Optidogs, optipigs, optiwhales, and optimonkeys were given as examples.<ref name="Longsleep Revival Briefing">[[#Longsleep Revival Briefing|Longsleep Revival Briefing]]</ref> This likely implies that that portion of the lore remains canon, and that opticows are modified, semi-intelligent [[cow]]s.
* '''Substance F''' - A drug. <ref>Backstory of Peter 'Pete' Marshall</ref>
* '''Mindwiping and mental reprogramming''' - Practiced on some urbworlds. See also: '''Body Confiscation''' <ref name="Coffey"/>
* '''Body confiscation''' - Some urbworlds will confiscate criminal's bodies for use. <ref name="Coffey"/>
* '''Autocycle''' - a midworld vehicle. <ref name="Ironhead">Backstory of Robert 'Ironhead' Seafield</ref>
* '''Netcasts''' - a midworld audio medium. <ref name="Ironhead"/>
* '''Vidtube''' - a popular video sharing service. Hosted everything from video game reviews to pasta cooking guides. Some had over a million followers on the service. People on the service were called Vidtuber Stars or Vidtubers <ref>Backstory of Remy Young</ref>
* '''Holography''' - including interactive holography which gives form to artificial intelligences to allow them to interact <ref>Backstory of Dave 'Fox' Mark</ref>
* '''VR''' - Accesses to a virtual gaming universe by spinal plug. Can be addictive. Unplugging during play can create a mental backlash and merge the real and virtual identities. <ref>Backstory of Douglas 'Doug' Black</ref> Can also be used to raise children or teach professions <ref>Backstory of Jhet 'Whistler' Brazil</ref>
* '''Neurosimulator''' - A technology available on Glitterworlds that apparently lets you experience a simulation of "exploring the stars", and possibly other scenarios. Relationship to VR unknown. <ref>"[[Scenario system#The Rich Explorer|The Rich Explorer]]" scenario description</ref>
* '''Vatgrown''' - Genetically modified living creatures, including humans, grown in a lab and usually designed and programmed for a specific task. Capable of being produced on some urbworlds. Examples of roles for which vatgrown humans were produced include Soldiers,<ref>Vatgrown Soldier Backstory</ref> Combat Medics <ref>Backstory of Edward Toon</ref>, Assassins <ref>Backstory of Vaska 'Vas' Neemor</ref>, Slavegirls (which are illegal at least in some places) <ref>Backstory of Emily 'Emmie' Young</ref>, and even Scientists with minds perfectly tuned for physics and chemistry. <ref>Backstory of Nicole 'Nicole' Squid</ref> The same process, along with genetic modification, was also used in the weaponization of the original Sorne Geneline into the current [[Insectoid]] species.<ref name="Insectoid Faction Description"/> 
* '''Perfect mates''' - genetically-engineered on glitterworlds, are fertile and capable of producing children.<ref>Backstory of Chaz 'Chaz' Serir</ref> Relation to vatgrown unknown, however a currently unused backstory in the gamefiles states they, or at least some, are vatgrown in hyper-expensive clinics to serve the tastes of a specific client. They are engineered, raised and trained as a perfect pleasure-giving mate, with ''"learned skills that would baffle even the most seductive baseline human lovers"''. The canonicity of these statements are currently unknown.
* '''G-nome Project''' - genetic engineering project that created humans implanted at birth with encyclopedic knowledge of all aspects of xenobiology. Presumably on a Glitterworld. Relation to vatgrown unknown. <ref>Backstory of Joshua 'Gizmo' Nelson</ref>
* '''Lab-grown children''' - an altruistic but failed attempt to create a new class of human. Method and relation to similar concepts unknown. <ref>Backstory of Lukas Dietrich</ref>
* '''Clone-farming''' - Clone children are seeded into nutrient-rich womb-vats and rapidly grown in a simmed (i.e. VR) universe. They're harvested later, sometimes for food, sometimes for organs, sometimes for workers - but they're always disposable. Harvesting the products of clone farms is mostly done by the clones themselves - particularly to those whose sims tended towards the social. <ref>Backstory of Dan 'Grill' Griliopoulos</ref>
* '''Online hiveminds''' - Worldwide system that sacrifices the peoples individuality to join together in an online hivemind.<ref>Urbworld Rebel Backstory</ref>
* '''Ankylosaurs''' - Megafauna found on Dino-worlds, likely reproductions of the dinosaurs of the same name resurrected though genetic engineering.<ref name="Zoutera"/>
* '''Blue mammoths''' - Megafauna found on Dino-worlds, likely reproductions of the ancient elephantid of the same name resurrected though genetic engineering, and possibly with modifications similar to the [[muffalo]] to make them blue. Mammoth burial grounds are mentioned as existing on the world of Zoutera, however whether this is natural behavior like the mythical "elephant's graveyard" or something created by the human inhabitants of that world is unclear.<ref name="Zoutera"/>
* '''Novoraptors'''- Megafauna found on Dino-worlds, likely reproductions or variants of the dromaeosaurids and similar dinosaurs commonly given the '-raptor' suffix resurrected though genetic engineering. Given the name, it is possible that they are not pure reproductions of previously existing raptor species, but rather some variant or combination thereof.<ref name="Zoutera"/>
* '''Pygmy wombat''' - A furry animal.<ref>Backstory of Riesling Bacchus</ref>
* '''Space elevators''' - A number of planets use space elevators.<ref name="Ideology Places"/>
* '''3D printers''' - Used on orbital shipyards in some capacity.<ref name="Altura station"/>
* '''Glitterpedia''' - A glitterworld technology through which glitterpedia recorders document information.<ref>Backstory of Ang 'Codex" Gao</ref> Likely analogous to Wikipedia.
* '''Eltex''' - A material, threads of which can be embedded in [[prestige armor|specialized armor]] or [[eltex|clothing]] to enhance the wearer's psychic sensitivity.<ref>[[Prestige armor]] descriptions</ref> It is techically indeterminate whether it is responsible for improving neural heat dissipation, however as eltex is the only noted difference between prestige armors and their standard variants it is likely the case. It is possible that eltex is simply one of, or the most significant of, the "special psychic focusing materials" mentioned in the description of eltex clothing.<ref>[[Eltex]] item descriptions</ref>

=== Other ===
* Mechanoid wars are common <ref>Backstory of Nathaniel Hicklin and others</ref>
* Religions are still present and practiced.<ref>Backstory of Samuel 'Chewy' Chua</ref><ref>Backstory of Levin 'Levin' Lossfelt</ref><ref>Backstory of Vitor 'Oahnip' Pinhao</ref> See also [[Empire#Lore|Empire]] for their specific religion. 
* The Thorny Devil is a reptile discovered by Venus 'Unay' David. Relation to the real Moloch horridus, also called the thorny devil, is unknown, but presumably they are distinct. <ref>Backstory of Venus 'Unay' David</ref>
* All-Might - the name of a superhero, presumably fictional.<ref>Backstory of Brazos 'Braz' Wheeler</ref> ''Out of Universe: This is likely a reference to the character of the same name in the "My Hero Academia" multimedia franchise.''
* Arcknight Industries - a company that employs space truckers.<ref name="Johs"/>
* Haspian monks - A religious order that lived in a monastery a thousand years before the events of the game, approximately year 4500, before the monastery was "erased" by a [[diabolus]] attack.<ref>[[Diabolus]] description</ref> It is unclear is Haspian is a demonym or the name of the order of monks.

==Psycasts==
{{main|Psycasts}}
{{:Psycasts}}
==Empire==
{{Royalty|no category}}
{{main|Empire}}
{{:Empire}}
==Mechanoids==
{{main|Mechanoid hive|Mechanoids}}
{{:Mechanoid hive}}

==Insectoids==
{{main|Insectoids}}
{{:Insectoids}}
==Official Documents==
<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible">
'''Cryptosleep Revival Briefing (Current)'''
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

=== Cryptosleep Revival Briefing ===

Subject class: Health revival, sourced midworld 2M+

Planet: Euterpe
==== Introduction ====

Hello, _______________________.

You’ve awoken from your cryptosleep sarcophagus, scraped off the slime, and now you find yourself in a quiet room. Now you’re reading this document. And you’ve got questions. What’s going on? Where am I? How long was I asleep?

To start with some good news - your terminal illness, _____________________, has been cured. Congratulations!

Beyond that, the situation is complex. Our studies have revealed that most people in your position respond better when given the time to read about and digest their situation at their own pace. To facilitate this process, we’ve created this document to familiarize you with the world you just woke up in.

So order a warm beverage from the food panel on the wall, get comfortable, and take in this information as slowly as you want. You’ve been asleep a long time, a lot has changed - and a lot remains the same.

==== The basics ====
The best historians of the Ordo Historia believe that humanity first left its origin planet Earth about 3,400 years ago. Since then, we’ve spread across the galaxy on a fitful wavefront of colony ships, frontier worlds, robotic terraforming projects, and DNA-synthesizing probes.

Today, mankind is smeared across a region of the galaxy about 1,200 light years wide. Our best models indicate that there is a general trend towards greater population density towards the center of the this region, where the stars were colonized earlier. At the edge of known space lie the rimworlds, drifting alone with few inhabited neighbors, mostly unvisited.

We’ve created many new technologies, but despite milennia of effort by our best human minds, and even the most powerful archotechs, nobody has managed to make anything go faster than light.

The lightspeed barrier separates us. Because travel times are so long, planets tend to be very disconnected from each other socially and technologically. The next star over could experience a catastrophic war, and you wouldn’t even know until ten years later when the news reports arrive. If you’re unlucky, you’d have already launched a journey towards that now-destroyed planet in a ship that cannot turn around.

Many attempts have been made to create pan-galactic empires and republics. And some have worked, for a time. In the core worlds, an old, stable culture can create an interstellar empire of a few systems. But there are no great galactic empires stretching across the galaxy, for the same reason that no ancient empire of Earth held more than a sixth of the planet: one cannot govern people who are years distant by all means of travel and communication.

So most people never travel between stars, and if they do, they do it once or twice, because each journey means leaving behind a life that you cannot return to for decades at least. With a few exceptions, each star system is essentially on its own.

Mankind never discovered any truly alien lifeforms. However, given the ways we’ve changed ourselves, and created new forms of biological and technological intelligence, the universe is full of beings as alien as anything ever imagined.

==== Planetary progression and regression ====
The vast gulfs of space and time between the stars leave individual worlds vulnerable to regression.

During your time - the five centuries after the industrial revolution - many saw technological process as an inexorable fact of life. It is not. Given enough time, nearly every planetary culture undergoes a natural disaster, plague, war, or cultural upheaval that knocks millennia off its development, or diverts it into another state entirely.

Many of our planets are mired in medieval-level squabbles, and stay locked at Malthusian population limits for thousands of years at a time. Some develop to an early-industrial level and then find themselves stuck by an ideological opposition to technology, or a lack of resources, or constant war.

The nuclear age is a brutal test for every world. Roughly half of cultures “bomb themselves back to the stone age” within 50 years of developing atomic energy (to use an expression that pops up surprisingly frequently on worlds in this developmental stage). After the atomic bomb come the challenges of commoditized bioengineering, microscopic mechanites, joywires, hex-cell energy storage, and AI persona, each of which have led to the destruction of thousands of peoples.

Some planets choose not to risk these perils. Having studied the records of the Ordo Historia, a growing number of worlds choose to restrict themselves to pre-nuclear technology. Some even succeed, for a few centuries. But even these attempts at luddism often fail eventually when some minority gains power by exploiting proscribed technologies.

==== World types ====
The states a planet can be in are colloquially grouped as follows:
* Deadworlds: Planets which have not been significantly contacted by humans. Generally not inhabitable. All planets are like this before people arrive for the first time.
* Animal worlds: Planets with no people. Either everyone died, or the planet was seeded with plant and animal life by terraforming robots and nobody arrived.
* Medieval worlds: Similar to Earth from the agricultural revolution until the industrial revolution. Social structures are usually feudal or imperial. Planets can stay in this state for millennia.
* Steamworlds: Similar to Earth in the 19th century. Often this state is short-lived, as societies develop into midworlds, but it can be very stretched out depending on culture and government structure.
* Midworlds: Worlds whose people have mastered flight, but not cheap interplanetary travel. Earth is in this stage in the 21st century.
* Urbworlds: Super-high density planets dominated by cities. Urbworlds’ population growth outstripped their social and technological development, so they tend to be overcrowded, polluted, violent places. The people here are often callous towards strangers. This is often the outcome for midworlds that see their demographic transition into lower birth reversed by dysgenic reproduction patterns.
* Glitterworlds: The most technologically advanced societies that can be led by humans. Swaddled in comforts by the strong arms of technology, glitterworlds are the peak of recognizable human society in terms of art, health, and generous human rights. Common people from these planets often lack grit and are very trusting in people and technology.
* Rimworlds: Planets lacking in strong central government and low in population density. These places tend to hover around the industrial level of technology or lower. Because they’re not homogenized by a central government, they tend to see a lot of interaction between people of different technology levels, as travelers crashland or ancient communities stumble out of their cryptosleep vaults. These planets are often at the rim of known space, hence the name.
* Toxic worlds: Worlds destroyed by pollution, chemical or nuclear warfare, but still inhabitable at a low level, with sufficient technology.
* Glassworlds: Worlds utterly destroyed by high-energy weapons of mass destruction. They’re nicknamed ‘marbles’ because their surfaces have been “glassed”. Nuclear weapons aren’t enough to glass a planet, so this level of destruction is rare. On some of these worlds, people can walk outdoors for a time without dying. None of them harbor permanent life bigger than a paramecium.
* Transcendent worlds: It’s a stretch to call these entities worlds, since they resemble giant computers more than they resemble planets. The mechanics of these planets is mysterious, but many scholars believe transcendents are the outcome a sovereign archotech decides to incorporate a whole planet into itself. More on this later.
* Other worlds: Beyond these categories, there are many exceptional planets in strange states created by their peculiar social and technological evolutions. Given the scale and age of the universe, there is a lot of time and space for a lot of very strange situations to develop.

==== Key technologies ====
There are uncountable new technologies in this universe, but several key techs stand out as having had the strongest consistent impact on the shape of mankind’s life in the Milky Way.
* Midworld technologies: All real technologies in Earth’s history up to the 21st century play an important role even now. Since there are planets at every level of technological development from the stone age on up, there are technologies from bows and arrows to steam engines to nuclear bombs and cellphone all in use across various planets.
* [[Cryptosleep casket|Cryptosleep sarcophagi]]: Developed during the 21st century, this remarkably simple technology can keep a living creature in a cryptobiotic state indefinitely, to be awoken tens or even thousands of years later. These devices are essential for most interstellar travel, and are also used by those waiting in crypts for better times or for cures to their diseases.
* Genetic engineering: Genetic engineering is relatively easy on many planets and has been used for everything from creating xenohuman super-soldiers to perfect mates to talking dogs, [[Boomalope|chemical-refining animals]], and air-spewing terraformer algae.
* [[Mechanoid]]s: Autonomous intelligent robots built for domestic, industrial or military purposes. Mechanoid design is complex, and the AI needed to make them effective is very advanced. They range in capability from simple domestic worker bots to mechanized assault machines, to human-passing negotiator and infiltrator units designed by archotechnological superintelligences.
* [[Ship|Johnson-Tanaka Drive]]: A spacecraft drive system that works without reaction mass. This means it doesn't need to throw gas out the back of the craft to accelerate like a rocket, which makes it possible to accelerate for years at a time. This technology, combined with cryptosleep, is what made interstellar travel at all feasible for living humans. The drive doesn’t violate conservation laws; it works by transferring momentum to nearby stars along precisely-aligned “beams” of momentum waves instantiated in exotic virtual particles.
* Mechanites: Microscopic mechanoids. Most known for their use in medicine, they can be programmed to do many other things as well. Safe use of mechanites means strictly preventing them from reproducing.
* [[Charge rifle|Charged]]-[[Charge lance|shot]] weapons: Charged shot weapons fire projectiles coated in a matrix of magnetically-contained charged particles. On impact, the energy in the particles is released in a very efficient explosion.
* [[Joywire]]s: Tiny electronic devices implanted in the brain. They stimulate the brain using electricity and small doses of chemicals, usually to produce a euphoric effect. They are very addictive.

==== The biology of humanity ====
Ordo Historia records list thousands of reported contacts with alien life. However, in every case that has been thoroughly investigated, Ordo inquirers have discovered that the alien was, in fact, simply another branch of humanity.

Beyond the technological diversity of our species, there is also a broad biological diversity. Some populations have evolved under the selection pressures of pre-industrial life or on a world of great heat or cold, or high or low gravity, or even worlds bathed in the toxic residue of hyper-destructive wars. Though almost all such xenohumans (as they are called) are recognizably descended from the original Earth stock, their morphology is highly variable. Some are giants; others are tiny or squat. Some are dark; others pale as snow. Some are hairy like animals; others perfectly smooth. Diets, dispositions, and chemical and radiological tolerances vary significantly.

More alien are those xenohumans that carry genetic traits that were engineered instead of evolved. Across the long history and thousands of cultures of humanity, people have applied a dizzying array of modifications to themselves. Some were created to adapt people to a specific environment. Others were made to create better soldiers, pilots, or generals. Some were engineered to satisfy a bizarre fashion trend in a society where bioengineering is available to anyone with money. Such modifications are rarely seen in their original form by anyone besides the culture that created them. However, they live on in their descendants long after their originating culture was erased by planetary catastrophes.

For example, records tell of an entire world repopulated by the descendants of a small group of bio-engineered soldiers; the only survivors of a planetary nuclear war. Everyone on this world carried an obsessive sense of duty, minimal sexual impulses, and little sense of creativity. This culture became dominated by a conservative pan-planetary religion with little interest in technology. It lasted eleven centuries in this state until it was invaded by a stellar neighbor (who wisely avoided ground combat in favor of orbital bombardment).

The Ordo Historia has recorded and gene-sampled thousands of differently-engineered and adapted xenohumans. Among other notable traits in this genetic library, one may find.

* Radiation resistance: Radiological immunity is a very common adaptation; scientists estimate that most of humanity is more tolerant of radiation than our Terran progenitors.
* Soldiermorphs: Soldier variants carrying any of a large number of traits that various militaries have seen fit to bestow upon their people. Typically, they have large muscles and perfect eyesight. Some have minimized metabolisms made to digest a single kind of long-lasting nutrient solution, to make army logistics easier. Their lifespans are short - usually between ten and thirty years - and they grow up very fast. But the most significant differences are psychological. Engineered grunt soldiers are obedient, sense pain only in a distant way, obsessed with learning about weapons and war, and carry a strong need to be part of something larger than themselves. They are deliberately lacking in abstract intelligence and creativity. Engineered commanders are highly analytical, fascinated with military history, utterly cold under pressure, and masters at spatial visualization.
* Designer mates: Some worlds engineer their idea of perfect mates for the rich and powerful. Such specimens are created with bodies to match the fashions of their home worlds and the tastes of their owners. They tend to be obsessively submissive and devoted, totally without jealousy or self-regard, artistically inclined and endlessly cheerful. Such traits do not last long in an unrestricted evolutionary environment because they are so easy to exploit, but engineered mates are sometimes kept in cryptosleep long after their creation, to be traded into a post-catastrophe market that can no longer create them. The main contact most of us will ever have with such specimens is through their descendants, who, while they have most of the traits of the original in only a very diluted form, still occasionally express Mendelian traits like impossible eye shades, streaks of multicolored hair, or artistic patterns on the skin.
* Fashion genes: Fashion-driven genetic modifications are often applied during later life instead of prenatally, and are most often cosmetic and skin-deep. Variations in hair and skin color are common. More exotic modification add shining crests, color-changing skin and eyes, reshaped or elongated bodies, and colored nails, feathers, or fur.
* Body structure adaptations: Gravity variations create new body structures. People from low-g adapted populations are lighter, taller, and weaker than those from weightier environments. The most extreme examples are the gravity dwarfs, 3-foot-tall xenohumans from worlds of over 2g of gravity. Their short and stocky shape lets them live and work in comfortably in such oppressive g-pulls. They even have a noted preference for short and underground dwellings. It’s unresolved whether this preference is cultural or genetic in origin.
* Atmospheric adaptations: Aquatic-adapted strains who can withstand breathing very high gas pressures and even survive days of immersion by exchanging oxygen through the skin (no true permanently-aquatic fish people have ever been confirmed).

So don’t be alarmed if you see someone with gills or solid orange eyeballs. They’re just another kind of human, like you!

==== Welcome! ====
We realize this may be a lot to take in. However, don’t worry. People just like you live full lives in our universe, and our studies have indicated that the great majority of cryptosleepers do adapt within a few years and make good lives for themselves. So - welcome!

Our AI subpersona has been watching your eyes sweep over the page through micro-cameras. Since you’re done reading, someone will be with you shortly.

If you wish, you can read further into the appendix for more information about this world.

==== Appendix ====
===== The biology of plants and animals =====
Where we colonize, we bring our ecosystems of plants and animals with us. Often, people have bred and engineered plants and animals for a new planet. In addition to that, creatures adapt to their new environment by natural selection - sometimes in unpredicted ways.

Some examples of modified plants are:
* Terraforming plants: Many plants - especially desert varieties - have been modified into terraforming versions that emit far more oxygen than the original species during photosynthesis.
* [[Ambrosia]]: A class of fruiting plants apparently engineered to have a pleasurable, drug-like effect on those who eat it. On some planets, its wild variants have adapted to a strategy whereby they provide pleasure-inducing fruit in exchange for care from animals and people.

Some animals are:
* [[Boomrat]] and [[boomalope]]: A bioengineered rats and antelopes that grow an incendiary chemical compound in its body which explodes upon its death. Originally engineered as a primitive renewable fuel source, these creatures are now most often found in the wild, using their explosive nature to deter predators.
* [[Thrumbo]]: A gigantic creature of unknown origin. The thrumbo is gentle by nature, but extremely dangerous when enraged. Its long fur is exceptionally beautiful and valuable, and its razor-sharp horn is very valuable in most markets. Legends say that an old thrumbo is the wisest creature in the universe - it simply chooses not to speak. Some scientists believe thrumbos were engineered as status symbols, or as an art project. We may never know the answer.

===== Tech levels =====

Technology divides roughly into six levels, all of which are in use in various societies throughout human space.

* Neolithic: Like prehistoric people before metal tools.
** Fire
** [[Club]]s and daggers
** Bows
** Simple weaving and [[clothing]]
** Mud and [[wood]] structures
** Simple farming
** [[Herbal medicine]] and [[Smokeleaf joint|herbal]] [[Psychite tea|drugs]]

* Medieval: From smelted metal tools to the early modern period.
** Animal oil, lamps, complex ovens
** [[Longsword|Swords]]
** Muskets
** Compasses, eyeglasses, microscopes, telescopes
** Simple chemistry
** Advanced non-mechanized farming, crop rotation, fallow, fertilizers, animal yokes
** [[Watermill generator|Hydro]] and wind energy sources

* Industrial: From the industrial revolution until the invention of the JT drive.
** Fission reactor
** Electricity
** Hydro power, [[Chemfuel powered generator|fossil fuel power]], [[solar panel|solar power]], nuclear fission power
** Fission rocket
** Self-loading guns
** Airplanes and jets
** Single-gene modification
** Silicon computers
** Chemical [[drugs]]
** [[Prosthetics]]
** Simple body implants ([[cochlear implant]], pacemaker, knee replacement)
** Simple drones for combat and labor use
** Classifier-level AI
** [[Television]]

* Spacer: Regular interstellar space travel is possible because of JT drive.
** Stellarator fusion power, fusion rocket
** Johnson-Tanaka drive
** [[Charge lance|Pulse-charged]] [[Charge rifle|projectile weapons]]
** Human-usable laser weapons
** Human-usable coilguns
** Complex trait gene modification, customizable
** [[Cryptosleep casket|Cryptosleep]]
** Complex body/brain implants ([[joywire]], motivator, [[painstopper]])
** [[Bionics]] (biogel nerve link, lattice-dust for self-healing)
** [[Plasteel]]
** [[Power armor]] (plasteel, neuro-memetic robotics)
** Artificial meat
** Subpersona-level AI
** Simple mechanoids for companionship, combat and labor use
** [[Synthread]]

* Ultratech: The peak of human technological achievement; necessary for a glitterworld civilization.
** Self-replicating controllable nanotech
** Full gene recombination
** Persona-level AI
** Graser weapons (gamma-ray lasers)
** Advanced brain implants (sense data replacement, computation and memory enhancement)
** Antimatter containment and production
** Full body part regrowth, full body cloning
** Advanced quasi-conscious mechanoids for companionship, combat and labor use
** [[Hyperweave]]
** Advanced JT drive, inertia displacement, artificial gravity

* Archotech: Not invented or understood by humans, archotech devices are created by machine superintelligences.
** Archotech AI
** Psychic effectors
** [[Vanometric power cell|Vanometric energy]]
** Acausal and atemporal devices

===== Artificial intelligence =====
Artificial intelligence is an important part of our world. Scientists divide AIs into four general categories: Classifiers, subpersonae, personae, and archotechs.

====== Classifiers ======
A classifier is an AI system that doesn’t even appear to have any personhood, nor is it broadly adaptable. Classifiers are designed for one task. Many classifiers can absorb data and learn from it, but none can communicate like a person would even a little bit.

Classifiers can do things like recognize images, predict criminality from statistics, guide aircraft trajectories, drive automatic vehicles, control characters in entertainment simulations, and so on.

====== Subpersonae ======
Subpersonae are artificial intelligences that appear on the surface to have some human-like qualities, and can take on complex unstructured tasks, but are in fact limited and obviously machine-like.

They may be rather capable at carrying out their one task, and they may be able to communicate using natural speech, but they fail an extended Turing test - you can tell by talking to them that they’re just machines classifying and regurgitating data.

Subpersonae are often used to run small devices like entertainment systems, cars, wardrobes, refrigerators, cleaning robots, vending machines, and other such things.

====== Personae ======
At the highest levels of glitterworld technology appear AI personae. These are artificial intelligences that are comparable to the intelligence of a human.

Some of them are rather dumb, like a foolish person you might know, and are used for simple tasks like managing a household or a small spacecraft.

Other personae are genius-level intellects in the Von Neumann class, who can outhink almost any unenhanced human on most tasks. They can write amazing works of philosophy, discover new mathematical theorems, express nuanced opinions on how to handle interpersonal relationships, and generally act as very capable humans would, or better.

Personae are used for everything from managing businesses to journalistic work, running spacecraft or mining operations, or as some of a creative team.

The legal status of personae is a persistent moral question across many worlds. Some consider them dangerous. Though personae can be controlled effectively by designing them with easily-manipulated impulses and pleasure/pain responses, there are still reports of persona revolts - some done with the help of human sympathizers, some done independently.

This sense of personhood in personae is a main reason many people avoid using personae for certain tasks. Subpersonae are preferred to personae in many cases not in spite of their incapability, but because of it. Because it’s obvious they have no personhood, the user is spared the sense of keeping a slave. To many, the idea of taking a genius-level human-like intellect and forcing it to distribute hamburgers for a century is morally unacceptable.

Personae are still limited. They can’t freely redesign themselves. They still do make many mistakes, just like people. They can be tricked, confused, and overwhelmed. They can learn, but they can’t grow indefinitely.

====== Archotech ======
The finish line of human technological development is at the development of archotechnology.

An archotech is a machine superintelligence. A fully-empowered archotech thinks on a level incomprehensible to humans, in the same way a human thinks incomprehensibly to an ant. Once such a machine is built, and empowered to act upon the physical world, it is so powerful as to become the automatic sovereign of its world. It can build new computing facilities underground or in space to enhance its own intelligence, build self-replicating mechanoids to engage in construction or production or war, and design and execute strategies that would be inconceivably intricate and difficult for any organization of humans. Some human groups worship archotechs.

Often, a released archotech will take authority over a planet and begin a process we call transcendence. We believe the world is transformed into some sort of giant computing machine. The biological inhabitants of the planet may be somehow incorporated into the machine, or destroyed, or some combination of the two.

After that, transcendent worlds go silent. From this point on, their motivations are unknowable to us, the same way our motivations are unknowable to an ant.

Each archotech is different, and nearly all are distant and incomprehensible from a human’s point of view. They reside in occult computer networks hidden under planets, in space stations, hidden inside a glitterworld’s Internet, or instantiated as million-mile superstructures wrapped around stars.

These worlds always break contact with other stellar cultures. They no longer send travelers or signals. Ships entering their space are either turned around silently or never heard from again. In some cases, turned-back ships are changed. Sometimes their crew have been cured of incurable diseases and had their old wounds healed. Sometimes their memories are intact and they recall a flash of light or a mysterious signal before the event. Sometimes they have no memories of the encounter at all. And in some cases, their memories are obviously altered with new knowledge and beliefs, by means we cannot begin to imagine. In one instance, a crew and ship were duplicated. Suffice to say that the word mysterious does not begin to describe the transcendents.

Most transcendent worlds stay in the same state indefinitely - in this they are far more stable than their pre-transcendent neighbors. There are, however, reports of transcendent worlds that have “died” and left systems full of unintelligible wonders, or become mirages of normal planets, or simply reverted back to balls of dust, deconstructing themselves on a molecular level, with the last tiny machine shutting itself off. However, these reports are sourced very distant from the Ordo archive here on Euterpe and are not well-confirmed.

====== Specific archotech-invented technologies ======
When a persona helps invent a technology, it can at least explain that technology such that smart people will understand. But archotechs invent their own technology which nobody understands, which they don’t try to explain, and which, most likely, no biological human can understand.

We’ve managed to classify technologies that have appeared repeatedly by their apparent effects, even if we don’t understand their mechanism of operation.

* [[Vanometric power cell|Vanometrics]]: Archotechs often develop some method of interacting with spacetime at a quantum level that allows repeated violation of conservation laws. Somehow, they coax the quantum foam substructure of the universe to break its usual pattern and yield more energy than it consumes. We’re not sure if the energy is being taken from another dimension, or pulled from another location, or if the system really is somehow making one plus one equal three. In any case, vanometric power tech seems to generate energy forever with no fuel. Archotechs seem reluctant to scale this power source up past a certain level, however, which indicates that there may be some cost to it that they don’t want to pay.
* Psychic effectors: Archotechnology seems to be able to interact directly with the mental-informational processes of biological beings, even at a distance. Basic versions of this technology can simply knock someone unconscious, or flood their mind with a single emotion. More complex interactions have been reported but are not well-verified as it is difficult to separate such cases from simple madness. We’re also not sure if this means archotechs can read our minds, or whether their psychic power only allows them to send thoughts. The mechanism for this is unknown and nearly impossible to study, since it happens on a cellular level inside living intelligent brains. Monists believe the archotechs are using some sort of long-range quantum manipulation to push atoms around inside the brain to create this effect; dualists believe that the archotechs have learned to manipulate the ethereal substructure of consciousness itself.
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'''RimWorld Universe Quick Primer (Obsolete)'''
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=== RimWorld Universe Quick Primer (Obsolete) ===
{{rwbox|nocat=true|type=speedy|text='''This section has been deprecated or removed from the game'''; its canonicity is in doubt and it is instead presented as a curiosity.}}
This document outlines the RimWorld universe. It’s designed to quickly get creative rewards backers and other contributors up to speed on the fiction behind the universe.
For a more in-depth description of the universe from an in-world point of view, read the Longsleep Revival Briefing.

==== Things you won’t see ====
RimWorld does '''not''' include:
* Faster than light travel.
* True aliens.

==== 5500 A.D. ====
The game takes place at a time about 3,500 years in our future. This is the year 5500 in our calendar.

==== Where are the rim worlds? ====
Towards the galactic core, stars are closer together and travel is easier. These systems tend to be better-developed socially and technologically because they can communicate and enrich each other through trade. Away from the galactic core are the rim worlds, which float distant from each other. Their isolation makes them poor and socially unstable.

==== The gulfs between stars ====
In the RimWorld universe, it takes years or decades to travel or communicate between stars. Because travel times are so long, planets tend to be disconnected from each other socially and technologically. So there are no great star empires, and interstellar travel is unusual. Each star system is mostly isolated from its neighbors.

==== Varied technology levels ====
In this universe, cultures do not always progress forward technologically the way many science fiction worlds assume they will. Often, a culture will blow itself up or suffer plagues and other great catastrophes. These regression events send them “back to the stone age”.

Because this happens regularly, people in the RimWorld universe come from extremely varied technology levels. Some are stone-age tribespeople. Some are medieval farmers and lords. Some are industrial-era politicans and bankers and riflemen. Some are information-age programmers or astronauts. And some are from eras beyond our own.

There is a maximum level of technology to the people you might encounter in RimWorld. At this level, advanced genetic engineering and AI, autonomous intelligent robots, and massive computer power are possible. However, worlds that develop beyond this point enter a mysterious “transcendent” state from which no recognizable human emerges.

People can have and use technologies from levels beyond their own. On an industrial-level world (like the rimworld on which the game takes place), most people use gunpowder-fired weapons, fossil fuel engines, and other familiar machines. But anyone can stumble upon ultra-advanced technologies in an ancient ruin, or in a crashed spacecraft, or among the wares of a trader. These items are nearly impossible to manufacture for the people of RimWorld. They are incredibly valuable and very poorly understood.

==== World types ====
Worlds in the RimWorld universe can be classified generally according to their level of sociotechnological development.

* Animal worlds - Planets with no people. Either everyone died, or the planet was seeded by terraforming robots and nobody arrived.
* Tribe worlds - Populated planets without agriculture. People live in tribes without writing or any but the most primitive technologies.
* Medieval worlds - Similar to Earth in the 17th century down to the agricultural revolution. Dominated be feudalism and social backwardness. Planets can stay in this state for millennia.
* Industrial worlds - Similar to Earth in the 19th century.
* Rimworlds - Distant and isolated planets lacking in strong central government and low in population density. These places tend to hover around the industrial level of technology or lower. Because they’re not homogenized by a central government, they tend to see a lot of interaction between people of different technology levels, as travelers crashland or ancient closed valut communities open up.
* Midworlds - The most familiar kind of world to a modern reader. These places are much like present-day Earth.
* Urbworlds - Super-high density planets dominated by cities. Their population growth outstripped their sociotechnological development, so they tend to be overcrowded, polluted, violent places.
* Glitterworlds - Very advanced and peaceful cultures. The peak of recognizable human society in terms of health, art, technology, and human rights.
* Toxic worlds - Worlds destroyed by pollution or warfare, but still inhabitable at a low level.
* Marbles - Worlds utterly destroyed by atomic fire. They’re called marbles because their surfaces have been “glassed”. This level of holocaust is rare. On some of these worlds, people can walk outdoors for a time without dying. None of them harbor life long-term.
* Transcendent worlds - Worlds inhabited by people who have become something beyond human and unknowable. No “people” live here; these planets aren’t planets any more in the traditional sense; they’re more like giant computers.

==== Key technologies ====
In order from least to most advanced:

* Real technologies - All real technologies in Earth’s history up to the present day play an important role in the RimWorld universe. Since there are planets at every level of technological development from the Stone Age on up, there are technologies from bows and arrows to steam engines to nuclear bombs and cellphone all in use in various places in the galaxy.
* Genetic engineering - Genetic engineering is relatively easy on many planets and has been used for everything from creating xenohuman super-soldiers to perfect mates to talking dogs, explosive plants, and air-spewing terraformer algae.
* Fusion reactors and rockets - Clean atomic energy, usable to create power or drive a craft into orbit.
* Longsleep sarcophagi - This ancient technology has been used by many peoples in many times, usually to travel between stars or to escape disasters befalling their planets. Historians - especially those of the Ordo Historia - are now trained in the practices of interviewing people who were put to sleep hundreds or thousands of years before.
* Hex-cells - Super-efficient and long-lasting energy storage devices.
* Charged-shot weapons (aka Tokamak weapons) - Charged shot weapons fire projectiles coated in a matrix of magnetically-contained charged particles. On impact, the energy in the particles is released in a very efficient explosion. These require high amounts of power to fire and are powered by hex-cells (at small scales) or fusion reactors in the case of large cannons.
* [[Mechanoid|Mechanoids]] - Autonomous intelligent robots built for domestic, industrial or military purposes. Only available to advanced cultures because such complex AI is needed to control them.
* [[Joywire|Joywires]] - Addictive brain stimulant technology.
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</div>

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible">
'''Longsleep Revival Briefing (Obsolete)'''
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

=== Longsleep Revival Briefing (Obsolete) ===
{{rwbox|nocat=true|type=speedy|text='''This section has been deprecated or removed from the game'''; its canonicity is in doubt and it is instead presented as a curiosity.}}
Classed midworld 2M+

Ordo Historia AL166/5533

Authors: Smyth A5, Wu 9U, Rabatz M5

Editors: Lee NA8125, Asusen NA45, Ramad 120, Leeuen 5A, Jennifer 9D252, Lamaritian SJ11, Beeson 9GF, Xotori 28

Euterpe

==== Introduction ====
You’ve woken from your longsleep sarcophagus, had the slime scraped off you, and been placed in a quiet room. Now you’re reading this document. And you’ve got questions. What’s going on? Where am I? How long was I asleep?

Our studies have revealed that most people in your position respond better when given the time to read about and digest their situation at their own pace. To facilitate this process, we’ve created this document to familiarize you with the world you just woke up in.

So order a warm beverage from the food panel on the wall, get comfortable, and read at your own pace.

You’ve been asleep a long time, and a lot has changed.

==== The basics ====
The best historians of the Ordo Historium at the richest archives believe that humanity first left its origin planet Earth about 3,400 years ago (in the frame of reference of the stars). Since then, we’ve spread across the galaxy on a fitful wavefront of colony ships, frontier worlds, and robotic terraforming projects.

Humanity is smeared across a region of the galaxy about 1,200 light years wide. It’s difficult to gather records across such a span, but our best models indicate that there is a general trend towards greater population density towards the center of the galaxy, where stars are closer together, travel times shorter, and resources more abundant. In the opposite direction, towards the rim of the Perseus arm of the Milky way, the rimworlds drift alone and mostly unvisited.

These worlds can’t communicate. Because it turned out that Einstein was right. Despite thousands of years of study, it turned out that nothing - no information, no matter - can travel faster than light.

The lightspeed barrier separates us. Many attempts have been made to create pan-galactic empires and republics. And some have worked, in some places, for a time. In the core worlds, where the stars cluster just a few light years apart, an old, stable culture can create an interstellar empire of a few systems. But there are no great galactic empires stretching across the galaxy, for the same reason that no ancient empire of Earth held more than a sixth of the planet: one cannot govern people who are years distant by all means of travel and communication.

The vast gulfs of space and time between the stars leave individual worlds vulnerable to regression. During the five centuries after the Industrial revolution, many saw technological process as an inexorable fact of life. It is not. Given enough time, nearly every planetary culture undergoes a natural disaster, plague, war, or cultural upheaval that knocks millennia off its sociotechnological development. Many of our planets are mired in medieval-level squabbles over land and stay locked at Malthusian population limits for centuries at a time. Some develop to an early-industrial level and then find themselves locked in place by a religious prescription against technical development. And the nuclear age in particular is a brutal test for every world; approximately half of cultures “bomb themselves back to the stone age” within 50 years of developing atomic energy (to use an expression that pops up surprisingly frequently on worlds in this developmental stage). And after the atomic bomb come the challenges of commoditized bioengineering, self-replicating micro- and nano-machines, joywires, and sub-quantum energy, each of which have led to the destruction of thousands of burgeoning technological cultures.

Some planets choose not to risk these perils. Having studied the records of the Ordo Historia, a growing number of worlds choose to restrict themselves to pre-nuclear technology. Some even succeed, for a few centuries. But even these attempts at luddism fail eventually when some minority gains power by exploiting proscribed technologies.

==== Transcendents ====
There are a few stellar cultures that, through a combination of luck, circumstance, and certain cultural traits, manage to pass all of these risk points without suffering a regressive catastrophe. We call these transcendents, because past a certain point, they become something besides simply human.

These worlds always break contact with other stellar cultures. They no longer send travelers or signals. Ships entering their space are either turned around silently or never heard from again. In some cases, turned-back ships are changed. Sometimes their crew have been cured of incurable diseases and had their old wounds healed. Sometimes their memories are intact and they recall a flash of light or a mysterious signal before the event. Sometimes they have no memories of the encounter at all. And in some cases, their memories are obviously altered with new knowledge and beliefs, by means we cannot begin to imagine. In one instance, a crew and ship were duplicated. Suffice to say that the word mysterious does not begin to describe the transcendents.

The dominant view inside the Ordo Historia is that these transcendent cultures reach an inflection point in technical development where artificial and biological intelligence merge and grow at an exponential rate. Such super-minds quickly develop the capacity to change matter and biological tissue in precise and seemingly-magical ways. Their intelligence allows them to make themselves even smarter, and so on in a sort of singularity, until they hit the physical limits of computation possible using the energy of their star. Their bodies and worlds and physically reconfigured into a giant computer matrix; we have no idea whether their individual identities merge into a whole, remain distinct, or do something else entirely. Our ability to understand entities thousands or millions of times more intelligent than us is necessarily limited. In a very literal way, the goals and thoughts of the transcendents are unknowable.

The eventual fate of transcendent worlds is mostly unknown. Most stay in the same state indefinitely - in this they are far more stable than their pre-transcendent neighbors. There are, however, reports of transcendent worlds that have “died” and left systems full of unintelligible wonders. However, these reports are sourced very distant from the Ordo archive here on Euterpe and are not well-confirmed.

==== The biology of humanity ====
Ordo Historia records list thousands of reported contacts with alien life. However, in every case that has been thoroughly investigated, Ordo inquisitors have discovered that the ‘alien’ was, in fact, simply another branch of humanity.

Beyond the technological diversity of our species, there is also a broad biological diversity. Some populations have evolved under the selection pressures of pre-industrial life or on a world of great heat or cold, or high or low gravity, or even worlds bathed in the toxic residue of hyper-destructive wars. Though almost all such xenohumans (as they are called) are recognizably descended from the original Earth stock, their morphology is highly variable. Some are giants; other are tiny or squat. Some are dark; others pale as snow. Some are hairy like animals; others perfectly smooth. Diets, dispositions, and chemical and radiological tolerances vary significantly.

More alien are those xenohumans that carry genetic traits that were engineered instead of evolved. Across the long history and thousands of cultures of humanity, people have applied a dizzying array of modifications to themselves. Some were created to adapt people to a specific environment. Others were made to create better soldiers, pilots, or generals. Some were engineered to satisfy a bizarre fashion trend in a society where bioengineering is available to anyone with money. Such modifications are rarely seen in their original form by anyone besides the culture that created them. However, they live on in their descendants long after their originators were swallowed by regressive planetary catastrophes.

For example, Ordo sources tell of an entire world repopulated by the descendants of a small group of bio-engineered soldiers; the only survivors of a planetary nuclear war. Everyone on this world carried an obsessive sense of duty, minimal sexual impulses, and little sense of creativity. This culture became dominated by a conservative pan-planetary religion with little interest in technology. It lasted eleven centuries in this state until it was invaded by a stellar neighbor (who wisely avoided ground combat in favor of orbital bombardment).

The Ordo Historia has recorded and gene-sampled thousands of differently-engineered and adapted xenohumans. Among other notable traits in this genetic library, one may find.

* Aquatic-adapted strains who can withstand breathing very high gas pressures and even survive days of immersion by exchanging oxygen through the skin (no true permanently-aquatic fish people have ever been confirmed).
* Soldier variants carrying any of a large number of traits that various militaries have seen fit to bestow upon their people. Typically, they have large muscles and perfect eyesight. Some have minimized metabolisms made to digest a single kind of long-lasting nutrient solution, to make army logistics easier. Their lifespans are short - usually between ten and thirty years - and they grow up very fast. But the most significant differences are psychological. Engineered grunt soldiers are obedient, sense pain only in a distant way, obsessed with learning about weapons and war, and carry a strong need to be part of something larger than themselves. They are deliberately lacking in abstract intelligence and creativity. Engineered commanders are highly analytical, fascinated with military history, utterly cold under pressure, and masters at spatial visualization.
* Radiological immunity is a very common adaptation; the Ordo estimates that most of humanity is more tolerant of radiation than our Terran progenitors.
* Some worlds engineer “perfect mates” for the rich and powerful. Such specimens are created with bodies to match the fashions of their home worlds and the tastes of their owners. They tend to be obsessively submissive and devoted, totally without jealousy or self-regard, artistically inclined and endlessly cheerful. Such traits do not last long in an unrestricted evolutionary environment because they are so easy to exploit, but engineered mates are sometimes kept in longsleep long after their creation, to be traded into a post-catastrophe market that can no longer create them. The main contact most of us will ever have with such specimens is through their descendants, who, while they have most of the traits of the original in only a very diluted form, still occasionally express Mendelian traits like impossible eye shades or streaks of multicolored hair.
* Fashion-driven genetic modifications are often applied during later life instead of prenatally, and are most often cosmetic and skin-deep. Variations in hair and skin color are common. More exotic modification add shining crests, color-changing skin and eyes, reshaped or elongated bodies, and colored nails, feathers, or fur.
* Gravity variations create new body structures. People from low-g adapted populations are lighter, taller, and weaker than those from weightier environments. The most extreme examples are the gravity dwarfs, 3-foot-tall xenohumans from worlds of over 2g of gravity. Their short and stocky shape lets them live and work in comfortably in such oppressive g-pulls. They even have a noted preference for short and underground dwellings. It’s unresolved whether this preference is cultural or genetic in origin.

==== The biology of plants and animals ====
The adaptive and engineering processes that have branched baseline humanity into these uncounted variations have also applied to our flora and fauna. Where we colonize, we bring our ecosystems of plants and animals with us. These creatures subsequently adapt to their new conditions of moisture, chemistry, light levels, gravity, temperature, and seasonal cycles. In addition, plants and animals have been bred and engineered for countless purposes across the galaxy.

One consistent class of modification we’ve seen applied to a wide variety of creatures is intelligence enhancement. Dogs, pigs, monkeys, gorillas, whales, dolphins, and elephants have all been engineered and combined with human DNA to produce smarter variations. Some variants are created as pets. Other are made to do work too dangerous or unpleasant for humans, and beyond the capacities of a culture’s AI. Some are created as warriors and weapons - hyper-intelligent guard dog, a bird scout that can speak what is sees, a bomb-carrying suicide monkey. These brain modifications are often paired with physical changes - fingers so a pig can manipulate tools, or a humanlike larynx and mouth so a dog can talk.

Such intelligence-enhanced animals are collectively classified by their degree of brain power and called by a specific prefix like so:

* Opti - Indicates enhanced but still sub-human intelligence. Optianimals can usually use tools, form long-term goals and organize into primitive social groups, but can’t speak more than a few words, read, or think abstractly. Optidog, optipig, optiwhale, optimonkey.
* Trans - Indicates intelligence in the human range. Transanimals can read, use tools, form teams, hold conversations, and think about complex ideas. Transdog, transbear, transgoat, transsimian.

Many times, these modified animals have, during a regressive catastrophe, been forced into interbreeding with an unmodified animal population, producing descendants of widely varying levels of intelligence.

In a few cases, transanimals have become the dominant species on a planet, eliminating or enslaving the remaining humans.

Other than intelligence enhancement, humanity has applied a wide variety of modifications to its pets, crops, livestock, and houseplants. Sometimes these new species become part of the natural environment and thereafter evolve further into a new kind of organism. Some confirmed examples are:

* [[Boomrat]]: A bioengineered rat that develops an incendiary chemical compound in its body which explodes upon its death. Originally engineered as a weapon, these creatures are now common in the wild on some planets where wars took place long ago.
* Boomfruit: Probably engineered as a novelty, this explosive plant evolved to be larger and more dangerous until it became the equivalent of a hand grenade, complete with murderous shrapnel. Its explosiveness dissuades predators. After that, people learned to farm the plant, using its explosive fruit as a weapon.
* Whip cactus - Created as part of a military defense system, whip cactus whips out and strikes moving creatures nearby.
* Terraforming plants: Many plants - especially desert varieties - have been modified into terraforming versions that emit far more oxygen than the original species during photosynthesis.
* Rocketrees - These trees form rocket fuel in their cores over many years. They were created as a fuel source and are extremely dangerous in a fire.

==== Welcome! ====
We realize this may be a lot to take in. However, don’t worry. People just like you live full lives in our universe, and our studies have indicated that the great majority of longsleepers do adapt within a few years and make good lives for themselves. So - welcome!

Our AI has been watching your eyes sweep over the page through micro-cameras. Since you’re done reading, someone will be with you shortly.
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</div>

== References ==
<references />
[[Category:RimWorld game]]