Tellurian

Tellurians are sentient, bipedal mammals native to Planet Tellus with evolutionary and cultural influences from the Ara species. Due to their many shared commonalities with other sentients, they are considered one of the the few "standard" species yet discovered. Additionally, their native planet's relatively accessible position in relation to other spacefaring species has led to significant study by and significant influence from other galactic cultures. Prior to the planet's adoption of Intergalactic Common, they were once known as Humans or Earthlings.

Biology and appearance
The Tellurians are bipedal mammals with a bilateral symmetry. Their body is comprised of a head, neck, torso, and four limbs. The upper limbs, called arms, end in hands which have five fingers each, except in the case of abnormalities at birth or mutation. The lower limbs, called legs, end in feet with also five digits. Tellurian fingers have multiple points of articulation, including an opposable thumb. Finally, they have one head perched atop a torso, with vital organs housed inside these two features. Unlike other mammalian species, they had only a light covering of body hair. Most of it was concentrated on the head and, in the case of adult males, face. Other sentient species that have a body type similar to Tellurians are often referred to as humanoids.

Tellurians are thermoregulatory endotherms, or "warm-blooded" animals, meaning they maintain a constant body temperature independent of their environment using energy obtained from food. Tellurians are omnivores, subsisting on both animal tissue and plant-based foods. For that reason, their gastrointestinal system is much longer than that of true carnivores, and food takes longer to fully digest.

As is common with many species, Tellurians have just two sexes: male and female. Females are distinguished by their pronounced breasts, generally smaller stature, and lesser quantity of body hair. Members of the Tellurian species can interbreed naturally with many other species, primarily humanoids.

Despite overall physiological uniformity, baseline Tellurians vary greatly in appearance, and no two look exactly alike. Diversity factors include height, weight, hair, eyes, and skin. Beyond that, mutations and abnormalities have led to even more differing traits. Such changes to the foundation of Tellurian appearance have grown to include changes in size, eyes, skin, and more, including behavioral differences.

Tellurians have long been viewed to be biological oddities. With weak backs, skin susceptible to severe sun damage, difficulties during childbirth, a dislike for naturally occurring foods, and high rates of chronic disease, something about the species didn't make sense to Tellurian scientists. The dominant race of the world was less successful in its own environment. The reason was eventually uncovered to be a result of the effect of the Ara species of Mars on Tellurian evolution. While much of the history and science is unclear, Tellurians are generally regarded to be a product of Aras, though they have evolved independently enough to be considered their own species.

Life cycle
Tellurians are sexually-reproduced animals, requiring either heterogenous mating, or the in-vitro combination of male and female reproductive tissues to produce offspring. While developing in their mother's womb, the growing fetus creates a distinctive stomach bump accompanied by a significant weight gain. After a gestation period of approximately nine solar months, Tellurian females give birth to live young and can produce one or, less commonly, multiple offspring at a time. Childbirth itself is a painful process and sometimes traumatizing process for both mother and child that can take many hours. In some circumstances, women can die during childbirth, especially if high grade medical facilities and supplies are not available.

The transition from childhood to adulthood depended on culture. While some societies treated their members as adults as early as the age, others considered that full adulthood was attained later on in life.Tellurians displaying several signs of aging, such as white hair, wrinkles, and sagging skin. Typically, they have an average lifespan of 100 years or longer. Old Humans may experience a decline in many cognitive processes, such as frequently losing track of time, misidentifying people or places, and momentarily forgetting about their own identity or state. Individuals past the age of 80 were considered old, and most Tellurians died in their early hundreds unless they were wealthy enough to afford rejuvenation procedures.

Society and culture
Tellurians are social beings and tend to live in complex social groups. Their groups range from family units of varying sizes to civilization encompassing communities. Social interactions between Tellurians have established an extremely wide variety of values, social norms, and rituals, which together form the basis of their society.

Language
While many species communicate, Tellurians have had a unique history with language. Largely ignorant of other sentience in the universe throughout most of Tellurian history, even when faced with evidence of extraterrestrial activity on Tellus, they Tellurians did not develop mass language skills through external communication as other species had. When the Theos began more openly involving themselves in Tellus matters, they tried to gift early humanity with language. At first, these attempts were considered failures, as primitive Tellurians did not grasp the concepts behind the words and had little understanding of the universe. An emotionally based species, Tellurians assigned emotional and philosophical symbolism to Intergalactic Common words, and it formed various languages that spread across the planet. For example, the species name "Theos" came to mean "gods" due to misinterpretation and its usage in the Greek language, and the universal name for Earth, "Tellus," became just a personification of the planet itself in the form of a deity.

With time, humanity developed a better understanding of language and helped advance Intergalactic Common. As Humans began to drift toward one dominant and uniform language, other species who observed Humans began to absorb and incorporate the Human system of emotional symbolism and interpretation into their own uses of Common. While some species saw this as a corruption of a logical language, many others enjoyed the expressive facets humanity brought to the language.

Family
All Tellurian societies organize and recognize types of social relationships based on relations between parents and children and relations through marriage. These kinds of relations are the essence of kinships. Among the many functions of families is the ability to form groups of people sharing a common line of descent, which can function as political units such as clans. Another function is the way in which kinship unites families through marriage, forming alliances between groups. Kinship relations often includes regulations for whom an individual should or shouldn't marry. All Tellurian societies have rules of incest taboo, according to which marriage between certain biological relatives is prohibited. In many societies kinship can also be formed through forms of co-habitation, adoption, fostering, or companionship.

Species, race, and ethnicity
Before the Tellus Sector War, Tellurians, then called Humans, commonly formed racial and ethnic groups in the form of tribes, gangs, clans, and even nations. They were larger than family units and were organized around shared ancestry and history, cultural norms and language, or biological phenotype. Depending on the state of Human mentality and intellectual ascension at the time, racism, or prejudice based on racial and ethnic group membership, was an issue throughout the history of their entire world. Although ethnic groups appear and disappear through history, there are still those Tellurians who have a preference for or unique bond with others of similar ethnic backgrounds or racial features within their own species. Largely thanks to the war, many Tellurians are xenophobic, and have placed themselves in a new species-based social group with very apparent prejudices against non-Tellurians. Rebel gangs are species-based groups that unite via shared species and a cultural distaste for outsiders and their sympathizers.