Lemurians

The Lemurians were an interplanetary intelligent race in the Milky Way galaxy. It is unknown exactly how widespread their presence across the galaxy was, or even if there are still any active colonies of their fractured empire across the galaxy. Their lasting impact on the Inhabited Universe is their manufactured biodiversity of Gaia and Persephone.

Culture

What is known of Lemurian culture points to a society that desires diversity but simultaneously has little understanding of in-group vs out-group dynamics. The Lemurians and many of their creations, through evolution or self manipulation, are polysexual, meaning that many individuals contribute to the genome of a specific offspring. Through their writings it seems that they do not have an analogous concept to the human family, and that individuals are offspring of the entire community. While they seem to have had a tribal nature long ago, their writings demonstrate they had a contemporary understanding of their species as a single group. Writings often speak of a duty and desire to explore the world of possibility by bringing new elements into their culture and being. This may be the catalyst for their evident expansion across the galaxy, and their strong cultural embrace of genetic engineering. It is understood that at some point the species had a way to share memories, but why this was lost is not well understood. As a result the Lemurians fortunately became prolific writers, allowing the glimpses into their way of life that we now possess.

Technology

Creations of the Lemurians are mostly organisms sculpted through a process called Fabrication. A great breadth of tasks from construction to health care were quickly and effectively handled by artificial organisms designed by the Lemurians. Although some abiotic technology has been excavated from Persephone, the most observable legacy of the Lemurians is the flora and fauna of Gaia. These creatures brought enormous wealth to the investors of the 40 Eridani Daedalus 8 voyage, soon forming the economic backbone of the Eridani Trust. Persephone too contains unique organic technology, such as its red autotrophs adapted to the red light of its sun, but its very brief incorporation with the rest of the inhabited universe has not allowed these creatures to diffuse across other worlds.

Genomorph

The Genomorph was designed to make obsolete the entire process of fabrication. It was to be a kind of superorganism with an unprecedentedly vast genome capable of differentiating into any specialization, and to intelligently self-modify its genome to develop new specializations. The superorganism's development is understood to have a polarizing effect on the Lemurians, with some believing its phenotypic possibilities to be the epitome of diversity, and others regarding the absorbtion of so many functions by a single genotype to be abomidable. The Lemurian artifacts excavated on Persephone indicate that many if not all Lemurians in the settlement were of the latter persuasion, contributing to the biodiversity of the settlement.

The Genomorph is understood to be the catalyst for the end of the Lemurian civilisation in the inhabited universe and possibly beyond. From what has been deciphered of Lemurian writing, the Genomorph biotechnology must have achieved a high degree of adoption across the Lemurian civilisation before becoming ubiquitously dangerous, possibly from an infectious pathogen. Dormant colonies of the Genomorph exist on both Gaia and Persephone.