Proeathans

Proeathans were the first intelligent race to evolve in the Helios system. They evolved on Earth and have an common ancestor with humans make them of the same family as humans and other primates. They are characterized by their bipedal nature, large skulls to house large brains, and yellow eyes. The most noticeable characteristic of proeathans is their psychic abilities.

Evolution and Biology
Proeathans are herbivores and exhibit only minor instances of omnivoric behavior. They are a ‘prey’ creature, and while they can detect movement well they have blind spots in their natural vision both because of their slightly warped sight and that they can’t see behind them. The sixth sense evolved to counter such limitations so that proeathans could see what was behind them and allow them to be aware of what’s going on around them at all times. This is why proeathans can only detect the future or empathetic feelings towards themselves and only themselves. This is thought to have evolved in replacement of moving the eyes to the side of the skull like other prey animals. Its also been theorized that other herbivores and prey creatures might also have very very limited psychic capacity that allows them to know when something is hunting them, or great storms are coming/earthquakes as well as allow them to move in swarms/herds/flocks/schools without colliding.

While proeathans do share a common ancestor with humans they evolved in different parts of the world to different environments. Where humans evolved in much warmer climates like Central and North Africa proeathans evolved in much cooler environments of Central and North Eastern Eurasia. This has led to proeathans having a much more delicate heating/cooling system than humans. They run much warmer and can overheat quickly. They have pores like humans but aren’t nearly as efficient at rapid cooling as humans, meaning proeathans don’t sweat a lot. Proeathans instead will pant or submerge themselves in water to cool down. Because the air is usually cooler where they evolved the panting actually allows them to cool their bodies more efficiently than sweating as their lungs are able to ‘store’ that cool air and act similarly to coolant circulation. This has also led to a lot of proeathan fashion being very ‘revealing’ to allow more skin in contact with the open air so they can keep cool easier without having the need for panting. Its also why they have trouble in modern times with such a warm planet and they induced another great ice age.

Because of their biology and need to stay cold proeathans metabolize at a much slower rate than humans. Thus they eat less, and less often and unlike humans are able to fully digest anything that goes into their bodies. As such they do not need to defecate as often as humans since their bodies are better equipped to suck every ounce of nutrient out of what goes into their bodies in an incredibly efficient manner. This leads to them being larger to accommodate a larger stomach and digestive tract which is 12 meters to the human 9. But this can lead to digestive problems if the proeathan isn’t careful. Eating too much meat can be harmful to proeathan and its recommended they eat meat only once a week if at all.

Since proeathans metabolize at a slower rate than humans it also leads them to living longer. Naturally a proeathan can live to be about 200 fairly easily. With the onset of advanced technology and medicine proeathans have extended their life spans to about 700 and around 1000 at the maximum.

Puberty
All proeathans, like humans, go through puberty, albeit much later than humans. Proeathan puberty can start as early as 17 and as late as 23 and lasts until they’re about 25-30 depending on when they start developing. Like everything they take longer to develop than humans (who have a shorter puberty period of about 5 years or so). During this time the sixth sense will start to develop in proeathans. This is the most dangerous time of a proeathan’s life as they can easily hurt themselves with their raw psionic abilities. Early in proeathan history it wasn’t uncommon for proeathans to just die from brain overload. Remedies were found, rather quickly, that could regulate psionic abilities so that they didn’t risk as much death. Children who started puberty early, or developed abilities before puberty, were especially at risk of death.

Death
It should be noted that very few proeathans die of old age. While this may have been common in early proeathans modern proeathans have a different sort of aging gene and while its been lost to modern proeathans at some point in their existence proeathans became genetically modified (even genetically engineered) to not just live longer but seemingly not age. This is, of course, a fallacy and proeathans do age, but do so very, verrrry slowly. However the proeathan brain cannot keep up with the proeathan body and will start to wear down at about 500 years. 500 years is considered late middle age for proeathans and their memory and abilities will start to deteriorate until they hit about 700 when their brains will finally give under the pressure of everything it had to know and keep stored. Some proeathans have made it to 1000 but those instances are very VERY rare. The ‘goddess’ Tiamat is a noticeable exception and she is older than 1000 years old and her brain is still in peak condition. This is thought because she was a Driver and thus her brain works/acts differently.

The Sixth Sense
Proeathans are actually very delicate creatures and are not meant to hunt or fight. Their bones are less dense to allow their large skeletons to be lighter so that they can run faster and proeathans have difficulty building up muscle like humans can. The heaviest organ in the proeathan body is the brain which, unlike the human brain, is hardly wrinkly and doesn’t possess the two distinct hemispheres familiar to human anatomy. The greater surface area for neurons means that proeathans are incredibly intelligent and learn quickly. While humans were still beating rocks together and looked little like their modern counterparts, proeathans were domesticating animals and starting to develop culture and beginning to form settlements and towns. Their brains allowed them to quickly overcome their physical short comings and conquer their world, building cities and settling the land.

In the beginning not all proeathans had the sixth sense, and it took hundreds of generations for the entire population to acquire the sixth sense. In proeathan history these proeathans were seen as gods. The most powerful of these early psychics had religions founded on them and were eventually merged into the omnireligion contemporary proeathans practice as ‘saints’ or aspects of the Sixteen.

Proeathans psionically resonate at the same frequency as the hotai, as they are the first children of Earth and the first to encounter the the hotai. The hotai is also control over other proeathans and the use of the power of the hotai in hodori is one of the only instances of proeathans being able to control other proeathans. Particularly strong telepaths can also use their the hotai frequencies to directly control other proeathans/hybrids but cannot be used against humans in its pure form. The Eden can cancel out the hotai. Atlantis was built to resonate at the frequency opposite of the hotai in an attempt to resist the compulsions felt by hodori, which is how they found the Eden and humans in the first place.

Reproduction
Humans played an interesting role in proeathan history. They came to Atlantis, drawn by the Eden. Humans in this time did not really resemble the humans we think of now but the proeathans saw creatures that looked sort of like them and were gentle and submissive and took advantage of that. They enslaved humans and began to breed humans to be more aesthetically pleasing to proeathans while at the same time going out and hunting these helpful hunter/gatherers. Proeathans weren’t super technologically advanced at that time so breeding humans to be aesthetically pleasing basically involved forcing their women to have half proeathan half human children while men worked in the fields as slaves. This is one of the reasons humans and proeathans look so similar though over the subsequent generations the look of modern humans emerged as a mix between what they used to look like and what proeathans looked like. Basically proeathans bred humans like dogs to get the type of animal they wanted out of them and because of humans breeding so rapidly and easily there could be 35-40 human generations in one proeathan lifetime.

Proeathans used humans for all sorts of things including to further understand themselves. As proeathans advanced into a technological time period they used humans to try and fix what they felt was wrong, or not good enough with them.

Proeathans are notoriously difficult to conceive and to carry a child to full term. The psionic energies from the parents and society as a whole could overwhelm the fetus and cause a miscarriage. Miscarriages were not uncommon in proeathan society and in the early days proeathan mothers would seclude themselves for months while pregnant to protect their unborn children from being afflicted by their society. And this was after the couple went through great lengths to become pregnant in the first place. Unlike humans proeathans have a much longer periods between menstruation cycles and only become fertile about four times a year. Their periods do last considerably longer though at about 2 1/2 weeks. As proeathans began to live longer children began to become problems for proeathans as women were having even more trouble getting pregnant and when they were fertile the men often didn’t have the sperm count to actually be effective.

This all led to the study of humans in a way to help fix proeathan reproduction. While some fixes were found they were all thoughts to be abhorrent to proeathans. These included introducing a gene from humans into proeathans to help shorten times between menstruation periods and make them fertile more often. Sperm was also thought to be the problem because the testicles were closer to the body than on humans so they were dying from the heat but few proeathan men wanted to have surgery to lengthen their scrotums. And of course the worst, artificial insemination which was mainly used on humans to ensure that specific human traits were passed on. There was also a theory that part of the reason proeathan women miscarried so often was was because their bodies were rejecting the fetus and a way to fix the issue was to implant the conceived fetus from the womb of the proeathan woman into the womb of a human woman and she would act as a surrogate. As you can imagine the last idea didn’t catch on and is rarely mentioned.

Because proeathans do have such difficulty getting pregnant children are very special in their society. There’s no children worship but there is no hardship for children and that extends beyond when they are fetuses or infants. Abortion, in most nation-states, was illegal except in cases of health or the child was a product of rape/incest. However the government provided health care for pregnant women and giving your child to adoption didn’t have the negative connotations it does in modern human society. In fact for young proeathan women it could even be a way to get money as many older proeathan couples who had trouble becoming pregnant would offer proeathans of a certain age monetary compensation for their unwanted, accidental, unborn children.

This wasn’t a money making scheme though and only happened in tightly regulated situations where a proeathan woman didn’t want her child but knew she couldn’t get rid of it. Proeathan couples would place their bid on the unborn child which would include money and benefits for the mother through the government. The women would be given this information anonymously and they could chose to take the bid, or take another. These bids were only offered to women who did not want their children and they were only allowed through government agencies. But it was a good way for women to be compensated for time spent out of work or away from home from being in the hospital for the last few months of pregnancy which was mandatory for all proeathan women. This was so they could stay in psionically shielded rooms to protect the unborn child which was at its most vulnerable 3-4 months before delivery.

In only a few instances did these bidding agencies lead to any abuse. And it was simply that the proeathan woman in question was just very fertile as well as very promiscuous who didn’t practice safe sex. Some proeathan officials did worry about black market ‘breeding programs’ of proeathans but those were mostly horror urban legends and there were no actual, reported cases of such programs.