Hub Shit

Okay so the first thing I wrote got way too detailed so FUCK IT I'm writing this shit stream of consciousness style

[YONDER HUB]

Okay so the Hub is this big pocket universe created by Artemis Capellenus coming into contact with what is now considered one of the largest shards of Surtr ever fond. It caused him to temporarily become the Multiverse and he procedded to explode his mind out into the void, forming raw Omnus into a pocket universe formed of his ideas, memories and dreams. Once complete, Artemis was turned into a  giant crystal and slept for four billion years, during which the Hub went through untold amounts of change and was inhabited by thousands of civilizations, of which are (to everyone's knowledge, at least) dead. Eventually this lead to the Saleut, who fell through a rift in space-time ten thousand years ago and proceeded to break off into different tribes and nations who colonized the Hub. Other species showed up, made their own settlements, had their own wars, and bob was your uncle until Avalon showed up.

[Avalon]

So during the British Raj, this young college student hopped on a boat and sailed for India to study Hinduism. But instead of our version, John Woodroffe, who spread Hindu philosophy and Tantric Yoga to the West, this chill chingu wound up caught in a storm that tore reality in half and dropped him face first into the sea of Ryuujin. After dragging himself ashore and adopting his pen name of Arthur Avalon, everyone's favorite English scholar set out on a journey that changed the Multiverse forever. During his time sperging the fuck out about documenting EVERY SINGLE PLANT AND ANIMAL AND ROCK AND GOOD SIR DO YOU NOT SEE HOW FANTASTIC THAT BUG YOU ARE CURRENTLY FEASTING ON IS he learns about the Thuban Empire and how they've been systematically skullfucking the entire Hub for a good century, he decides to help take back what the people rightfully own (he wasn't a fan of the British Empire, you see). With a gaggle of chill chingus in tow (the awakened Artemis, Ehrani, Fatima Tanner, father daughter duo Václav and Naděžda Tarsanki, and plenty of others), the Avalon Pact fights a guerrilla war against Thuban that slowly but surely wins them their homes back.

[And then the Sentinels showed up]

And they took one look at the giant lizards oppressing the poor, tiny, heathen peoples that are the Saleut, and decided to holy steamrolly the entire Draconian population. The Holy Order of Sentinels joined with the Avalon Pact, and the two royally fucked Big Lizzie back to the Universe whence it came. Cut off from their home Universe, the Sentinels decided to join with the Pact and form a new nation, one that wasn't going to stamp on everyone's faces like the veritable reptilian gestapo that Thuban is.

[0/0/0 AUC]

And so, with a flag made of an ourobouros wrapped around a thousand-spoked wheel, Arkadia was formed. The next ten years (now called the Koutetsu Junen, or Thunder Decade) were a period of development and constant battle, during which Artemis was once again crystallized for reasons I never actually came up with other than, "I wanted him to create Arkadia but still be a semi-greenhorn wimp by the time of Jaxx." Kotetsu ends in AUC 13 (it started in AUC 2, a bit before Art went peruzzi), Y'os show up in AUC 14, and in AUC 16 the République Dexys decides to poke thier head in and expose Arkadia to the Lustrum galaxy, chock full of hundreds upon of hundreds of alien species Star Wars style. From there's it's history, until Auc 91 when Artemis wakes up, and then AUC 95 when Jaxx's car falls through Stonehenge's collpasing reality and he ends up in Gandhara Golden Spire surrounded by confused Buddhists and armed Sentinels. That pretty much covers history, but I can elaborate if need be on any topics.

~Species~

[Everyone's favorite ape — Humans]

Not Expand Dong, but the humble, murderous species that is Homo Sapiens. They make up 56% of the Hub, and have shown that majority by taking all their culture and religion, mixing it up in a pot, dumping a grenade in it and calling the resulting mess Arkadia. Humans comes in many shapes ans sizes these days, and with advances in technology, there are many human-alien hybrids (known as hafu) in the connected Multiverse.

[Hon hon baguette Xanadu Tower — Dexys]

While Humans mainly evolved into apes for hunting game on the savannah, the Dexan evolved from a  Darwinnius-like creature and lived along lush rivers and mangrove forests, which basically means they're a big gaggle of lemurs that eat fish, bugs and fruit. Hailing from the jungle planet of Dexys, the same named species grew quickly into a series city-states and countries, and for a while everything was relatively normal for a newly civilized species exploring their world. And then an unaging Dexan named Guillaume showed up speaking some strange language he called French and proceeded to systematically conquer the entire planet. Under the world spanning empire he built, civilization rushed forward at blinding speed, and by roughly the same point that Earth was experiencing the Crisis of the Third Century, the empire colonized its moon and had ships spreading out across the solar system.

In the gulf between spaceflight and now, the Dexys created a galaxy spanning government with hundreds of world and species under its rule, growing to be one of the mightiest species to ever walk the Multiverse in memory. In AUC 16 the Dexys discovered a rift leading to the Hub, and using technology managed to keep it open and create the Hub's first true Multiversal connection.

No, nobody has any idea where the fuck Guillaume came from. In fact, his existence is one of the most hotly contested concepts in the whole Multiverse.

Dexys notes:

Because they went from "alphabets are a brand new concept" to "let's learn advanced particle physics" in under two hundred years, the Dexys are kind of a 'full of themselves' species. Guillaume's reign caused such a massive jump in civilization the Dexys also skipped some of the vital periods of adaptation and reform that kept Humans from being 100% terrible, leaving the lemur-like species with stunted morality, a hidebound social mentality, widespread xenophobia, and little care for environmental conservation.

[Slimy blue piss breathers — Saphrehomme]

The Saphrehomme are basically great dane-sized, semi-bipedal toads with apposable thumbs. Hailing from Saint-Acelin, a storm-ridden planet with a nitrogen-methane-ammonia atmosphere much like Titan, the Saphrehomme were just developing the concept of tribal villages when Dexan ships burned through their atmosphere and claimed ownership of the planet and all its inhabitants. Enslaved by their Strepsirrhinian overlords and forced to mine and collect liquid methane for Dexys rocket fuel, the weak, fearful Saphrehomme were unable to fight back. Millennia later, the Saphrehomme have found some independence in the Hub, though their servantile history has left the vast majority of them living either in the Collectivité territoriale de Saint Guillaume, or in massive Underworks apartment blocks.

Saphrehomme notes:

Over a thousand years under Dexys rule caused the Saphrehomme to evolve biologically into natural servants to the lemurs, and government experiments furthered the mutation of the enslaved species. Saphrehomme are commonly found as domestic workers, public works employees, factory and refinery employees, and other low pay or laborious jobs. A surprisingly large amount of Saphrehomme are also found as mercenaries, pirates and police, brought up by dissatisfaction with the status quo of Dexys-Saphrehomme relations.

Saint Acelin is no longer habitable to the Saphrehomme. The genetic experiments have caused them to de-adapt from their natural habitat, and now they can only survive unshielded planetside for extended periods of time, instead of indefinitely. Without their breathing apparatus, however, they are also unable to survive in nitrogen-oxygen atmospheres such as the Hub. To only add to the disassociation, the refineries and other various industrial facilities planet side have left little if any areas not built over or mined out.

[I have no mouth but everything's chill — Y'os]

It's hard to explain the Y'os without a picture, but I'll try. The Y'os orginate solely on the planet Lem in the Lin Bai-lo Universe, where extremely different laws of physics favored the element Lemnon (a boron-like metalloid) over carbon for biological life. From Lem's silvery surface rose the Y'os, a strange and extremely curious species with few (if any) natural predators. The Y'os kind of look like if you took a big water wigglie and a translucent, ashy gray shower curtain and formed it into a ball gown with arms and a head. Inside this ballgown is a large, swirling cloud of sparkling smoke that flashes with light like ship lights across a foggy night bay. The Y'os have two spindly arm that end in three-fingered hands with simple bulb-tipped fingers, and at the end of a thin neck is a bulb-shaped head, with only feature being two oval pools of subdermal light that serve as their version of eyes.

In AUC 14, the by then highly advanced Y'os tunneled through reality and discovered the Hub, at that point just coming down from a decade of war that left them in disheveled shape. Feeling great compassion for the poor carbon-based life, the Y'os started a transversal relief effort and worked side-by-side with the Arkadian peoples to build their nation and expand each others technological horizons. Decades later, the Y'os are undoubtedly humanity's closest ally, and the two species have managed to almost entirely dissolve prejudice between each other. So remember: While there may be plenty of horrible monster that want to melt your flesh, and strange anomalies wanting to turn you inside out around every corner, the ballgowns always have your back.

Y'os notes:

Fed up after the many years of scribbling on notes and sub par text to speech programs, the common modern Y'os carries with it a semi-spherical device that they manipulate to convert typing into perfectly natural sounding speech, with everything from enunciation and emotion to accents and code switching. The Y'os are a sexless and genderless species by default, but due to their close bond with humanity, they have developed a "coming-of-age" ceremony in which an Y'os will take the name of a human who they deem important, whether it be an Earth scientist of their same field, a religious figure from their chosen belief system, or even just someone they trusted greatly in life. The Y'os are commonly employed in science, philosophy, art, information and medical fields. Their unique mentality and large sensory range has lent them advanced analytical skills suited for these jobs.

[You're standing on my land, puṛṅka — Saleut]

Roughly ten thousand years ago, the species known as Saleut were transversally displaced into the Hub after a massive reality flux in their home Universe. Numbering in the tens of thousands and collectively shitting their pants at the whole thing, the Saleut subdivided into tribes that spread out across the Hub's lands and formed a range of unique cultures and civilizations, many of which still exist today. Perhaps the most notable of these is the Thaurusaunee, a tribal culture who inhabit the western coast of Urashima Bay in what is now the Saleutan Nations. It was the Thaurusaunee whom Arthur Avalon first encountered when washed ashore in the Hub, and the great Saleutan hero (and adoptive mother of David) Fatima Tanner was half Thaurusaunee.The average male saleut stands 165 cm in height and weighs in at 53 kilograms, while women stand 152 cm and share roughly the same weight. The Saleut are upright and evolved from a fish-rat species, making them appear lithe and sleek like an otter. Otherwise they're close to humans in silhouette, but with very aquatically built bodies. This ancestry also lends to them various adaptations for their natural environment, such as:

Patches of scales, usually brassy in color, located on the elbows, knees, limbs and atop the shoulders.

Their nails, sharper than humans, are made from the same material, which is similar to pangolin keratin.

Lustrous hair, usually black or dark brown, with waterproof oil excreted at the roots and combed through.

Increased dexterity and more bones, allowing agility and acrobatics difficult for humans.

Slightly webbed digits, allowing better movement through the water.

Improved night vision, and the ability to constrict the eye muscles to clear up underwater vision.

And plenty of other fun facts about your friendly neighborhood Saleut.

[Darwinian Skullfucking — Species of the Thuban Empire]

The thing with the "alpha draconians" is that they're not one species, they're over fifty. From bipedal lizard people, to talking gators, brilliantly feathered dinosaurs, servile birds, poison-sweating frogs, ship-pulling whales, farmed cattle, and dozens of other species that make up a complex caste-based empire ruled by a master species, the Thubans, or in their native tongue, the Saruk.

The Saruk are basically 16-20 foot long crocodiles with apposable hands that can stand up on their back legs, but usually move around on all fours. Through a few thousand years of conflict they proceeded to enslave every other species on the planet and eventually spread out to the rest of the solar system, a slash and burn mindset allowing them to conquer it in its entirety. A chance encounter with ancient ruins lent them access to transversal technology, and over a period of four hundred years they took control of a vast swathe of the Hub, keeping it under their control until the resistance spearheaded by the Avalon Pact. Today, the Thuban Empire is a vast government spanning multiple galaxies and pocket Universes, absorbing dozens of species and hundreds of smaller states in its endless hunger.

[The rest of the gaggle]

There's plenty of other species in the Hub, though they have either not been explored enough or don't make up a enough of a percent to warrant an entry. These are species like the Graangeer, Eforwit, Lemnoish, etc.