Minbari Subraces The Minbari are an ancient people and were starfaring long before humanity developed bronze. This long history of travel and exploration brings with it the potential to develop unique sub-species due to exposure to other worlds and civilisations. The strong sense of unity and cultural identity shared by the Minbari people has kept this phenomenon to a minimum, but society differences have occurred between distant colonies of the Minbari. Subraces require considerably more diversification than simple ideological differences and spatial distance, but these activities are the basis for the creation of three subspecies of the Minbari race. Each new race is quite different and bears its Minbari forebears little resemblance in one or more facets of its existence. One subrace comes from the Minbari’s early spacefaring history and represents their first attempts at genetic manipulation to better adapt their kind to outer space. The other two subraces are the legacy of the Minbari’s encounter with two powerful races; each is the result of physical and mental augmentation by the Vorlons and the Shadows respectively. Neither of these two subraces are very common; only a handful of the former exist while the exact number of the latter is unknown because they remain hidden in the darkest corners of the galaxy. The Star Born When the Minbari first took to the stars, their initial vessels were just as primitive as those of most other newly starfaring races. These venerable ships were comprised mostly of superdense crystal and contained all of the amenities of life save one; Minbari ships during their early exploration period did not have gravity. What the Minbari lacked in special technology, they made up for in genetic engineering and medical technologies. These advances allowed them to specifically tailor the first Minbari starfarers to better survive their journey. In this, Minbari introspection served them well. The first astronauts of their race were far more adapted to the rigors of transatmospheric flight than the initial pilots of most other races. These Minbari lived out decades in weightless environments, charting nearby systems and exploring the near reaches of their own. Minbari visited the other planets in their solar system in this manner and stretched forth their explorations to stars in the immediate vicinity. As the race did not have faster than light travel during this first two century period of space flight, such journeys took a great deal of time. To ensure the survival of their astronauts during these voyages between the stars, the Minbari performed even more radical procedures to optimize them for the environment of deep space. While these experiments were mostly successful, they did leave the Minbari starfarers with a limited ability to function inside of a gravity plane or within non-regulated atmospheres. For the most part, this was not a true detriment as the majority of their lives were spent in transit between destinations. Once the Minbari made contact with advanced races and learned how to incorporate advanced technologies into their ships, those of their race modified for long term, weightless travel were no longer vital to space exploration. In the wake of gravity generation and hyperspace access, these once necessary astronauts became little more than curiosities of history. The new advances in technology required entirely new ship designs to accommodate them. In recognition for their long service to the Minbari, the augmented space travellers were allowed to retain their vessels and chart their own course with autonomy. This was not entirely a selfless act on the Minbari’s part; the experimental procedures had utilised genetic alteration to their astronauts, changes that were being passed down to their offspring as well. As they were now ill-suited to exist on Minbar or on a gravity equipped vessel, they no longer functioned as part of the greater civilisation. These ‘star born’ were effectively casualties of advancing technology and setting them free to make their own way was more a matter of logical course than any gesture of recognition. The Star Born have spent nearly two millennia among the stars, breeding and adapting even further to life in the weightless void. They have long since learned the secrets of faster than light travel and their ancient ships are updated with most of the amenities of high technology except gravity generation. Knowing that their adaptations are also a weakness for those rare times when they must interact with gravity-bound cultures, they have reverse engineered gravitic technology and can operate for short periods of time wearing suspension suits of their own design. These suits internally negate gravity for their wearer while being heavy enough to keep a Star Born’s feet on the ground while aboard a capitol ship or when they must go planetside. The Star Born are not common and their tendency towards isolation among their own kind makes the rest of the reclusive Minbari race seem outgoing by comparison. The genetic manipulation done two thousand years in the past is beginning to catch up with them and each successive generation has been smaller than the last. There are less than a thousand Star Born in existence, with the extinction of the race as a whole being a distinct possibility in the next millennia unless a cure is found for their flagging genetic viability. The latest generation of Star Born is understandably curious about the galaxy around them and they are the most likely ones of their kind to seek answers among the stars and away from the aged relics of their proud space faring heritage. Appearance: In most ways, the Star Born look like their forebear race. More angular and thin, the Star Born move with an ethereal grace that can be almost hypnotic to watch. They tend to be paler than most Minbari and their bone crests are more pronounced. The modifications that enable them to withstand the calcium loss inherent in a Zero Gravity environment also cause rapid growth of the crest, causing it to spire and widen more prodigiously. In a few extreme cases, the crest actually covers the entire back and top of the skull, with a few peaks touching the ridge of bone just over the Star Born’s eyes. Crests this advanced are considered signs of favour by ‘the stars’ and afford those who have it great respect among their peers. The Kira Zhe When the Vorlons first made contact with the Minbari, the latter race was a primitive culture still learning to develop the first tools of civilization on a harsh world fraught with dangers. The Vorlons guided the Minbari through millennia of evolution in a few decades, advancing far beyond what they could have accomplished on their own. One of the reasons the enigmatic race did this was to develop the Minbari to the point where they would be able to biologically and culturally support a very special project of the Vorlons. This experiment would forever change the course of Minbari history and bring about one of the greatest disasters of their race. The Vorlon project was an attempt to create soldiers for the next great conflict they would have to fight against their sibling race, the Shadows. In their last struggle, the Vorlons had noticed a weakness in the mindset of their rivals; the Shadows were vulnerable to direct mental projection and their technologies were fundamentally unable to process such information. While the Vorlons could generate these projections themselves through their own technology, an ancient agreement kept them from doing this directly. Instead, they chose to try breeding the ability to create mental wavelengths of energy into indigenous populations under their sphere of influence. The Minbari were the Vorlon’s first choice for an attempt at breeding telepaths. The process was a remarkable success, with the first Minbari mentalists created living openly among their race and eventually given positions of authority as befitted their great gifts. For several thousand years, the effectively immortal Kira Zhe formed the ruling class for a large group of religious Minbari, benefiting from Vorlon wisdom and their own incredibly powerful abilities as they dominated every aspect of their combined northern kingdom. This was a violent, turbulent period for the Minbari and their culture both flourished and then sharply declined under the ever more potent attentions of the Kira Zhe. When the Kira Zhe telepaths began to tighten their reins of control in an attempt to restore order, the Minbari rose against them and ended their tyranny in a bloody war that touched every corner of their world. Horrified at both this conflict and their own part in perpetuating it, the Vorlon pulled back and sharply reduced their contact with the Minbari. The Kira Zhe were dead, but their legacy lived on in the few offspring that managed to elude the fanatical purges that followed. It is from these offspring that all Minbari telepaths can trace their heritage and the inheritance of their powers. Knowledge of the Kira Zhe is all but lost to the Minbari people, with only a few pieces of lost lore surviving the scourging fires of that brutal time. The Grey Council knows of the Kira Zhe, where they came from, and how their reign finally ended, but it is considered nothing more than a black chapter in their race’s history. No one among the Minbari knows that while all telepaths of their race have the Kira Zhe as ancestors, a few are more direct inheritors than others. In order to ensure that the telepathic gifts they bestowed upon the Minbari would still be potent enough to use as a weapon when the next great conflict arose, the Vorlons made their genetics extremely dominant. In time, it was assumed that a large enough percentage of the Minbari would be telepathic enough to serve as a major bulwark against the forces of the Shadows. While the destruction of the Kira Zhe ensured that this did not occur, every few generations experiences a resurgence of the original genotype. For this to occur, two Minbari telepaths must mate and even then, the result is not always telepathic. When the child does inherit the ability, there is a roughly 50% chance that the potency of the ancient Kira Zhe flows through its mind. Minbari with the gift of the Kira Zhe do not necessarily know they have been touched by their blood. In fact, very few Minbari even know the Kira Zhe ever existed, and telepaths of this potency are usually just considered to be highly talented. Those few who do know tend to keep their heritage a secret. While the hatred and rage that brought down the hallowed halls of the Kira Zhe may be long gone, the Minbari have a history of reliving the emotions of the past. The Grey Council does not have a specific policy for dealing with the Kira Zhe’s descendants, but when they are identified, those with the genetic legacy of the first Minbari telepaths are watched carefully. Any sign of their ancestor’s megalomania is dealt with quickly and quietly, but as long as they do not act out of the ordinary, they are left alone to nurture their unique gift. Appearance: On the surface, the Kira Zhe do not look in any way different from other Minbari. They tend to have smaller than average bone crests, but otherwise they are identical to the rest of the Minbari race. An internal examination reveals nothing out of the ordinary except for a decreased immune system and a reduced ability to cope with fatigue and illness. The primary difference between Kira Zhe and other Minbari is in their cerebral cortex, where chemicals directly related to telepathic ability can be found in abundance. Brain structures in the Kira Zhe are enlarged as well, resulting in their extraordinary abilities The Shadowsouled When the last Great War gripped the galaxy one thousand years before the time of the Earth Alliance, the tide was only turned by a union between the Minbari, a few other races caught in the conflict, and the Old Ones, including the Vorlons. The battle was hard fought and victory was never certain from the opening volley to the last assault that drove the Shadows from their places of power and into the darkness between stars. Those who fought until the end were united in their faith and their determination that the light of the Vorlons and the Way of Valen was the right path to follow. Though most Minbari felt this way and turned their strength to the task of defeating the Shadows, there were a few who felt that Valen, who was Minbari not born of Minbari, had no right to lead them in what seemed like a suicidal war against a clearly superior force. These Minbari saw the Shadows not as the enemy but as the greatest example of what they believed in themselves; might makes right was the whole of their law. Mostly members of the Warrior Caste, these Minbari numbered among them an entire clan, the Dark Knives, when they gathered together and fled their homeworld to go in search of the Shadows in the hopes of pledging themselves to the race’s terrible cause. Dedicated to conflict and the ideal of survival of the fittest, these Minbari were found by the Shadows and forced to undergo trials of the most strenuous sort. Intended to push these would be servitors to the limit and then beyond, the trials cost half the Minbari their lives. Those that emerged from the hideous ordeal were only pale shadows of their former selves, harrowed by the truth of the Shadows and their true purpose in the universe. These Minbari foreswore their previous names and racial heritage, embracing instead eternal service to their new masters. Before these new servants could prove themselves to the Shadows, their side was defeated and had to retreat before the Vorlon/Minbari alliance. The Shadow-changed Minbari went with them, vowing revenge on their former race and everything that had mattered to them in their previous lives. If the Shadows could not rule the galaxy, then it would all burn. While the Shadows fell back to recover and await the next Great War, they released the altered Minbari to seek whatever vengeance they wished. A thousand years have passed since that day of defeat, but for the Shadowsouled, it has shaped every minute of their lives thereafter. The current generations of Shadowsouled are the descendants of those who directly served the Shadows, but their loyalty is no less complete for the distance of time. They have accumulated a massive fleet of ships drawn from the many races they raid for their survival. In every battle, they have used the stealth techniques given to them by the Shadows to fade in, strike hard, and then disappear back into the darkness of space. As a result, virtually nothing is known of the Shadowsouled outside the lore circles of the Minbari. Even those learned scholars believe the Shadowsouled to have become extinct during the Great War. The Shadowsouled are few, but they certainly still exist. Members of this subrace have been altered at the deepest levels; their very bodies are canvases upon which the Shadows painted their ideal of what the Minbari would have become if they have found them in their infancy instead of the Vorlons. Greatest among their abilities may be their power of deception. The Shadowsouled can go among other races for long periods of time undetected as one of their own number. This power has kept them alive for centuries, granting them the time to build their forces and await the day of their revenge. At least, that was the truth for over nine hundred years. When the humans encountered the Minbari and the Earth/ Minbari War began, the Shadowsouled watched from their hidden places with great interest. As the War pressed on, the Shadowsouled debated the merits of striking Minbar while their attention was elsewhere, but before they could agree to do so, the Battle of the Line ended the conflict. They were weakened, but the Shadowsouled knew their old relatives were still seething and that any action they took would be met with a fury that matched their own. Losing this opportunity has also introduced an element of doubt in some of the Shadowsouled. If they were not ready to attack when their traditional enemy was at its weakest, perhaps it was time to turn from the road of vengeance altogether and make their own way in the galaxy. Fully half of the Shadowsouled are still bent on revenge, but the rest have begun to seek other motivations. All of the Shadowsouled still believe in ‘might makes right’, but not all are convinced that wholesale slaughter is the way to achieve it As such, many Shadowsouled, especially the youngest among them, are leaving the Dark Fleet and searching for something else to do with their lives. The Shadowsouled have the same tradition of not killing their own that the Minbari do, so these members of the race are allowed to leave without harm. In order to protect the Dark Fleet, each must submit to a process that erases the details of the Fleet’s location and numbers. This effectively exiles those Shadowsouled who choose to leave, but it is the price these ‘Enlightened’ members of the race must pay for their freedom. Appearance: Tainted by the Shadows during the crucible of their trials, the Shadowsouled show their allegiance on their skin and in their minds. The Shadowsouled have the same impossibly black colouration of their Shadow masters, with ashen grey bone crests and teeth. Intended to become predators by nature, the Shadowsouled have slightly pointed teeth and nails that naturally form claws if they are not kept meticulously trimmed. Shadowsouled rarely appear like this, however, as they have innate stealth abilities and possess incomparable hologram technology. Most creatures encountering a Shadowsouled never know they have done so.
Posted on: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 18:59:58 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015