Velans

Overview

The second xenosophonts to be classified by humanity, the Velans are named after the constellation in which the first world where their unambiguous artefacts were identified. Ironically, it was only this discovery that led to the realization Velan 'artefacts' had been known and misidentified for almost half a century; the feral 'xenodrones' (seperate and distinct from those from recognizably Human origin) which had been generally believed to be distantly derived from Precursor machinery were in fact of much more recent provenance.

Archeological research and dating has determined that the Velans were actively spacefaring and colonizing circa 2.2 MYA, soon after the start of the Pleistocene epoch on Earth. Presumably originating from around an M-type main sequence star (eg, red dwarf), the Velans colonized and bioformed a significant number of star systems, though exploration limits and stellar drift have made it impossible to make a firm assessment of just how many the Velan 'empire' counted at its height. Some reliable estimates calculate that the Velans laid claim to more worlds than Humanity circa 2195 AD.

The Velan homeworld itself has not yet been discovered and is estimated to lie up to several hundred light years outside of the nebulous outer boundary of Human-explored space, however, various educated assumptions have been made about it.

1) Its parent star is a non-flaring M-type red dwarf, similar to Gliese 581

2) The homeworld is a rocky world with a surface gravity between 0.7 and 1.5 Gs.

3) The homeworld is inside the water zone; as a consequence it can be expected to be less than 0.25 AUs from the primary and will almost certainly be tidally locked to the primary.

4) The homeworld is expected to have an oxy-nitro atmosphere broadly similar to that of Earth; Velan biochemistry and floral/faunal stock is fundamental similar to that of Terrestrial origin and requires comparable temperature and gaseous chemistry.

Velan Biology

Like Terrestrial life, Velan-derived life uses DNA and RNA as its fundamental genetic material, albeit with a number of different amino acids and codons. As a result, Velan biochemistry is only moderately compatible with Terrestrial life and Humans would find many things devoid of nutritional value or be outright poisonous. The differences in environmental constraints have resulted in various other differences, most notably in sensory and photosynthesis.

Velan Technology

Velan technology is generally seen to have been (very) roughly comparable to modern (2195 AD) Humanity's, though with some radical differences. Firstly, the Velans do not appear to have ever developed a population of postphysical uploads or otherwise strongly superior individuals; while complex and powerful, the electroneural computational systems in Velan drones do not appear to perform any better than smart animals coupled to expert systems. Secondly they do not appear to have embraced the use of metric-modifying technology as both the Precursors and modern Humanity has done, even though at least one Velan-colonized world had enough relic Precursor dust for commercially viable extraction. As a consequence the Velan colonization and bioforming efforts must have taken millenia, pointing towards a fairly static technology base.

By contrast, the Velans had very efficient, mature nanotechnology including programable Drexler nanobots, far superior to anything non-Posthumanity has yet introduced. In fact, once the general coding and programming language used by Velan nanobots was decoded in the 2140s, it became popular to hunt down Velan drones or drone spawning sites and in a bizzare and high-tech parody of whaling, drain them of nanobots for industrial use.

Overall Velan technology is considered to be much more 'organically inspired' than that of Humanity, though some theorize that this is simply the end result of centuries of mature nanotechnology-based industry as opposed to a specific cultural bias. In any case, Velan machinery has 'organs' as opposed to 'components', with the entire object giving the impression of having grown as opposed to built.