Gravitals (All Tomorrows)

The Gravital were a robotic posthuman species that evolved from the Ruin Haunters.

Biology

Originally, the Gravital were cyborgs, holding the brains of the Ruin Haunters within their chassis. However, advanced quantum computers allowed the Ruin Haunters to completely digitize their minds and scrap any organic remnants, thus making the Gravital a completely robotic species. Gravital have been seen in a number of different forms. What appears to be their most common form is that of a smooth mechanical sphere, with a single red optic at its center, bearing three smaller, seemingly hollow holes beneath it, which may be speakers or other sensors. Other Gravital forms include a flat, wall-like form and a form that bears some resemblance to a spacecraft, with the wall-like form bearing a similar eye and sensor configuration as the spherical form. While described as being able to reproduce, such an action is obviously merely constructing a new Gravital, although it could entail using the mind-programs of "parent" Gravital for constructing the mind of their "offspring." The Gravital are capable of manipulating gravitational fields to manipulate objects, and appear to fly through their very manipulation of gravity, but some have been seen with physical limbs, whether they be robotic tentacles or mechanical hands on spindly arms. Due to their robotic bodies, they are capable of surviving in virtually any environment.

Culture and society

The Gravital, like their organic predecessors, retain their delusion of being the sole heirs of Humanity's legacy. Their transition into mechanical beings created a species-wide belief that life was a privilege, not a right, and made them unable to understand that organic life was still life. Despite this, they retained a cohesive society like the Ruin Haunters before them, forming families, friendships, political alliances, and even religions. They saw other species as not life, but mere garbage to be disposed of or remade in their image, the way a modern Human would see an old electronic or other spent item. Planets were seen in a similar matter, with the destruction wrought on them by having their suns blocked out or their surface bombarded being seen like tearing down an old building to construct a new one. However, they also seemed intrigued by certain organics for unknown reasons, keeping the Bug Facers around as genetically modified Subjects for their own amusement, albeit seeing and treating them like toys or other objects. Initially keeping the isolationism of the Ruin Haunters, they turned to invasions after developing practical means of interstellar travel. Despite their initial apathy, some Gravital began understanding that life can be organic as well as mechanical, treating their organic Subjects better and managing to gain enough traction to operate publicly as the Tolerant, but such beliefs created a sharp divide in Gravital society, with the first practitioners of Tolerance being punished. Their starships and architecture have been known to be blocky, imposing, and monolithic, with some buildings bearing features such as towers topped with glowing lights.

Technology

The Gravital were one of the most technologically advanced species in the Milky Way, coming to match the Astermorphs. Their very bodies were a grand demonstration of their advancements, bearing a quantum computer holding their sapient consciousness, and despite usually having no visible engines or technology other than their optics, they are able to manipulate gravitational fields through a technology held within their bodies. They appear to have modified their very bodies to be able to travel throughout vast interstellar distances, and created blocky battleships that could do the same. They were capable of utilizing sail-like devices of gargantuan sizes to block out stars, and could manipulate asteroids into hitting planets, possibly through scaled-up versions of their own gravity manipulating technology.

History

Due to their knowledge about the Star People and the Qu, the Ruin Haunters were able to develop a civilization while other posthumans were still non-sapient animals. This gave them an edge that matched that of the Asteromorphs, but also led to them seeing themselves as the sole heirs of the Star People.

When the sun of their planet started to rapidly expand, there was nothing they could do to stop this. To save themselves, they built spherical, robotic bodies that floated and manipulated their environment through gravital manipulations. At first, those spheres still contained the brains of the Ruin Haunters, but later they were fully mechanical, becoming the Gravital.

But still, they retained their human dreams, human ambitions and human delusions of grandeur. Their artificial bodies made space travel easy for them, and they started colonizing other planets.

Galactic Conquest

A Gravital attacking a planet

When the other posthumans, started by the Killer Folk and the Satyriacs, joined together into the Second Galactic Empire, the Gravital refused to communicate with them and stayed for themselves.

After long preparations, including developing better bodies capable of interstellar travel, the Gravital began to wipe out their posthuman cousins and all other organic life within about 10,000 years. They managed this through blocking their suns with million mile wide sails and, if that wasn't enough, finishing the worlds off via orbital bombardment.

They did all of this without fully realising the life of the other posthumans, having spent so much time without biological bodies that they were no longer capable of recognising biological life as what it is. So what was genocide to the other races was more akin to tearing down an abandoned building to the Gravitals.

The only biological species that survived the invasion were the Bug Facers, for reasons still not completely understood. They were one of the first to be attacked by the Gravitals, but they were left alive and redeveloped through genetic engineering into the Subjects.

Civil War

A Gravital and its subject hugging each other

There were some fractions in the Gravital empire which developed, through science, philosophy and religion, an understanding of universality of life and the common origin of organic and mechanical humanities. Initially, they lived in seclusion and created subjects that were allowed to do as the please, and eventually the movement gained enough momentum that it could be practiced openly without being punished. Some Gravitals even fell in love with their subjects.

The seething intolerance between the two factions finally broke when some Tolerant Machines wanted to set several worlds aside for the unrestricted development of biological life. All hell broke loose and the Machine Empire; the apparently seamless monolith of the galaxy, experienced its first short, bitter civil war.

Downfall

The Astermorophs triumph over the Gravital

Over a long time, the Gravital and the Asteromorphs nervously eyed each other. Both factions mostly kept for themselves, as the Asteromorphs inhabited the void while the Gravitals occupied the planets, but in almost every inhabitable system, the two Empires lived side by side and there was a strange tension between them, due to both sides knowing that they could destroy each other and whole planets and solar systems.

But in order to resolve the internal tensions created by the civil war, the Gravital Empire needed a common enemy to unite against, and the Asteromorphs were chosen as this enemy. The war spanned many million years and life (both biological and mechanical) was lost in numbers that let the Gravital's genocide look trivial. But in the end, despite huge losses, the Asteromorphs succeeded in nearly completely annihilating the Gravital.

After that, the Asteromorphs used the surviving Subjects to repopulate the planets and become true creator-gods for the worlds populated by their descendants. But they didn't completely destroy the Gravital, they disabled their gravity powers and some of them being remade into the New Machines and living as second class citizens in the new empire.

Source: WikiFandom

Ruin Haunters (All Tomorrows)

The Ruin Haunters were a posthuman species created by the Qu from a colony of the Star People, and were among those to regain sapience.

Biology

The Ruin Haunters were one of the most Human-like of any Qu-created posthuman species. They bore humanoid bodies that appeared nearly identical to Humans, but differed in the structure of their heads and necks. Ruin Haunters bore thick necks and somewhat elongated faces, with large, drooping, rounded noses, with no hair atop their heads and small triangular ears. Though they were reduced to the intelligence of chimpanzees or gorillas, the Qu didn't do much to avoid sapience to re-evolve.

History

Since the Ruin Haunters lived on a world where the Qu didn't destroy the ruins of the Star People's civilization, they learned from the ancient wisdom of their ancestors and used it to build an advanced civilization that quickly rivaled that of the Star People.

Oftentimes, they only replicated Star People technology without fully understanding it. The political stress put on them by the quick development of their technology led to five world wars, two of them being thermonuclear exchanges.

The wars united the survivors and they were able to surpass the technological advances of the Star People. Soon they came to the conclusion that they were the sole heirs of the Star People, which later led to problems with other posthumans.

When their sun began to rapidly expand, a threat their technology was unable to overcome, they remade themselves into the Gravitals to escape their extinction.

Source: WikiFandom

Asteromorphs (All Tomorrows)

The Asteromorphs were a posthuman species that evolved from the Spacers.

After the spacers joined all of their arks into one giant world built from zero-gravity bubbles, their bodies became even more spindly and single digits evolved into whole appendages, but none of those were used for locomotion because their specialised sphincters propelled them through their worlds.

Most of all, their brains evolved. Free from the burden of weight and gravity, their brains expanded beyond the limits of terrestrial organisms and they started to think in concepts totally alien to their posthuman relatives and human ancestors, which led to them developing philosophy and science far superior to that of their ancestors.

The Asteromorphs expanded by building smaller sub-arks and colonised stellar systems to build a new empire of man, but this time they didn't colonise any planets and only lingered in the outer realms of star systems, silently watching their primitive relatives.

When the Second Empire of Man, founded by the Satyriacs and the Killer Folk and by now completely aware of their history with the Qu, encountered the Asteromorphs, they feared the worst. But after the Asteromorphs turned out to not be interested in the Second Empire, they were accepted as incomprehensible, omnipotent forces of nature and left alone. They continued to develop themselves, their giant brains unfolding into wing-like structures and their finger-derived limbs forming an intricate set of sails and legs.

The Asteromorphs destroy the Gravital

After the total annihilation of the Second Empire of Man through the Gravital, the Gravital and Asteromorph empires coexisted for along time, the Gravital inhabiting the planets and the Asteromorph inhabiting the void. But after a civil war in the Gravital Empire, they needed a new enemy to unite against and attacked the Asteromorphs. After a long war, the number of casualties dwarfing that of the Gravital genocide, the Asteromorphs emerged as winners.

After that, the Asteromorphs took the Gravital's Subjects, who miraculously survived the war, and became true creator gods through terraforming and repopulating the Milky Ways planets with the descendants of the subjects.

To prevent another genocide like that of the Gravitals, the Asteromorphs decided to watch over the newly created worlds. They created a new sub-race of Asteromorphs which were able to survive on planets, with long, spindly limbs for walking and smaller brains which nonetheless were still bigger than those of the Subjects descendants. Those creatures were called Terrestrials and still acted under the supervision of the Asteromorphs.

As the new empire was spanning the whole of the milky way, the humans tried to make contact with the indigenous folk of the surrounding nebulae, while still being cautious because of their history with alien invasions, remembering the Qu as well as the invaders that attacked the Bug Facers.

After a time, they found another civilization in the form of a diverse empire ruled by the Amphicephali. Like the posthumans, the Amphicephali had a rich and diverse history and were cautious, but both species finally proved to be mature enough to make contact peacefully. They were the first species to peacefully make contact with humanity, but not the last.

Together, the united galaxies eventually destroyed the Qu, cradled their suns with artificial shells, crisscrossed interstellar space with wormholes and made travel a thing of the past. One day, a researcher rediscovered the Earth, humanity's ancestral home, which had been abandoned 560 Million years ago because it was too far away from the main centres of population.

By the time of the All Tomorrows afterword, all of humanity has disappeared for unknown reasons, Perhaps it went extinct through a war or the empire slowly fell apart, leaving single colonies to meet their own fate. Perhaps, it was a mass migration to another plane of existence. The Author of the book doesn't know.

Source: WikiFandom

Bug Facer (All Tomorrows)

The Bug Facers were a posthuman species that evolved from the Insectophagi. Over the course of their evolution, the Insectophagi's leathery face plates ossified and became a part of their jaws. This, in combination with the reduced digits on their hands, that became pincer-like, lead to them superficially resembling their insectile prey.

Due to a atavistic throwback, some of the Star People's genes resurfaced and resulted in the evolution of an Insectophagus-species with a slightly bigger brain, which allowed them to develop crude stone tools to better open insect colonies.

One thing led to another and they evolved into the civilization known as Bug Facers, which, like most sapient species, passed through consecutive cycles as agrarian (in their case hive-farming) empires, colonial endeavors, industrialization, massive world wars and finally, globalized world-states.

But in their history, they, like the Star People before them, faced an alien invasion. Not much is known about the invaders, and after many orbital and terrestrial wars the Bug Facers managed to fend them off, but they introduced many lifeforms native to their homeworld to the Bug Facers' world and induced them with a strong inter-species xenophobia.

This xenophobia led to them listening to the communications of their fellow posthumans for forty million years before finally joining the Second Galactic Empire.

Over a timespan of about 80 million years, the Second Empire developed, through the combined effort of all members, into a galaxy-spanning empire, even though the members never met each other personally, and all of the species colonized other planets.

A stereotypical bugfacer and two Subjects

Though they were prepared to face an alien invasion, the Empire didn't think about an invasion from other posthumans, and so the Bug Facers were the first species to be attacked by the Gravital, but also the only one that survived the onslaught. Through genetic engineering, they were made into the Subjects.

Source: WikiFandom

Satyriacs (All Tomorrows)

The Satyriacs were a posthuman species that evolved from the Hedonists.

After millions of years in which the Hedonists lived in constant pleasure, cataclysms shaked their planet and their continent, no bigger than Iceland, was expanded into bigger landmasses roughly the size of Australia. The same cataclysms produced vast amounts of ash which blocked out the sun and led to the decline of most plant life and therefore also most of the Hedonists.

Only a few fast-breeding mutants survived and managed to repopulate the world with many species. One of them were the Satyriacs, sapient creatures which had a "tail" made out of pelvic muscles which gave them an almost dinosaurian stance.

For a while, there were three empires, then two, before all of them split up into myriads of countries, which later reunified into one world order. Like their non-sapient ancestors, the Satyriacs once again loved life and enjoyed it to the fullest in their newly built paradise, with festivals, concerts and orgies every week.

But they also probed into the sky and eventually established contact to other posthuman species, at first the Killer Folk, later the Tool Breeders. Together, they founded the Second Galactic Empire.

During the following ten million years, other posthumans joined in on the communications, including the Modular People, Pterosapiens and Asymmetrics. After another 20 million years, the empire also included the Saurosapients, Snake People, Symbiotes and the Sail People. Only after forty million years, the Bug Facers joined in.

Over a timespan of about 80 million years, the Second Empire developed, through the combined effort of all members, into a galaxy-spanning empire, even though the members never met each other personally, and all of the species colonized other planets.

Though they were prepared to face an alien invasion, the Empire didn't think about an invasion from other posthumans, and so the Satyriacs, along with all of their cousins, were quickly wiped out by the Gravital as part of their interstellar conquest.

Source: WikiFandom

Sail people (All Tomorrows)

The Sail People were a posthuman species that evolved from the Finger Fishers. They developed long skin similar to a flying membrane-spanning from their arms and elongated fingers, but unlike some other descendants of the Finger Fishers, they didn't use it for flying, but for sailing on the oceans of their homeworld.

With their arms used as sails, they developed dual tongues to catch their prey, and later evolved them into manipulative organs to use tools. Because they needed to navigate the endless oceans of their homeworld, they developed a good memory and eventually sapience.

Due to their planet being mostly covered in water and land only existing in form of islands, the populations of the Sail People were scattered and developed many different tribes who mostly went to war with each other. There were nomadic tribes who lived as pirates and warrior societies that fought endless wars, making this species very violent.

Only when one of those tribes developed industrialisation to develop better weapons, they needed a state society to support it. With this came a more enlightened way of thinking and the idea of peace between tribes spread across the planet and eventually unified the Sail People.

Because of their violent nature, hunting still is a popular sport among Sail People.

They belonged to the third wave of posthumans joining the Second Galactic Empire founded by the Killer Folk and the Satyriacs.

Over a timespan of about 80 million years, the Second Empire developed, through the combined effort of all members, into a galaxy-spanning empire, even though the members never met each other personally, and all of the species colonized other planets.

Though they were prepared to face an alien invasion, the Empire didn't think about an invasion from other posthumans, and so the Sail People, along with all of their cousins, were quickly wiped out by the Gravital as part of their interstellar conquest.

Source: WikiFandom

Symbiotes (All Tomorrows)

The Symbiotes were a posthuman species that evolved from the Parasites. Many of the parasite species and their hosts evolved from a parasitic to a symbiotic relationship, with the symbiotes offering their hosts heightened senses in exchange for their blood.

This led to a kind of arms race where many species of symbiotes and hosts developed, each having different biological weapons and advantages, making them attractive for each other. There were symbiotes with extremely efficient eyes and noses or venomous saliva, and hosts with long running legs, strong bodies or specialized heads with more blood vessels and insulating fur for symbiote nesting. Many species of symbiotes were only compatible to certain species of hosts.

In one forest area, there evolved a species of symbiote that didn't have any biological weapons, but extremely efficient brains. They developed sapience and controlled their hosts like riders, and over time they began to totally dominate their hosts through tactile and olfactory signals.

This symbiote-host-civilization developed countries, fought wars and eventually led to a globalized culture. They also developed technology which could do some of the things that hosts previously did, but they still used hosts out of tradition and efficiency. A single symbiote often had different hosts for different tasks.

Some of their technologies was olfactory television and radio listening to signals from space. They also excavated ruins of the Qu and Star People and found out about their heritage, which led to them joining the Second Galactic Empire founded by the Killer Folk and the Satyriacs as part of the third wave of newcomers.

Over a timespan of about 80 million years, the Second Empire developed, through the combined effort of all members, into a galaxy-spanning empire, even though the members never met each other personally, and all of the species colonized other planets.

Though they were prepared to face an alien invasion, the Empire didn't think about an invasion from other posthumans, and so the Symbiotes and their hosts, along with all of their cousins, were quickly wiped out by the Gravital as part of their interstellar conquest.

Source: WikiFandom