Elnori

No civilisation made such an indelible mark not only upon humanity but the solar system itself as the Elnori. Over the two millennia in which they dominated the Sol System the Elnori wrought a myriad of changes upon its worlds and moons, creating new places in which humanity in all its forms could thrive and prosper.

And yet, they are gone now, reduced to myth and legend over the ensuing millennia and the chaos that followed their sudden and mysterious fall. To the people who followed, the Elnori may as well been Gods or beings not descended from Earth so vast is the gulf between they and them. Even the so called Nobles, that breed of transhuman who see themselves as utterly beyond regular baseline humans acknowledge the Elnori as being leagues above them.

ORIGINS

In spite of what most would believe, the Elnorians were indeed of human descent. They one of the numerous clades that began to arise as humanity slowly but surely spread from Earth and outward across the solar system and beyond in the numerous Ark Ships seeking new worlds outside of Sol. This was a time of incredible leaps and bounds for scientific and technology progress and it seems likely the Elnori achieved an apotheosis of some kind with hyper-intelligent machines or through selective gene-editing attained hitherto before or since levels of mental acumen. Regardless, the Elnori would quickly rise to dominance across Sol, the disparate clades of humans falling under their control in what most scholars believe to be between the mid twenty-eighth century and the thirtieth century.

The Great Architects

The Elnori differed from most at that time in that they did not look outward to lay beyond the Sol system. They did not turn their minds to building ships to sail through intersolar space or how to traverse those immense distances in far shorter times. No, they turned their great minds inward. They saw the Sol system as one of incredible potential, one they could reshape in ways none before had even dreamt of doing.

What followed was centuries of incredible works of planetary and stellar engineering. Mercury as the planet closest to the sun was transformed into the Star Forge, an immense engine that directed the power of Sol, to become an industrial powerhouse. Then, using Mercury, the Elnori shifted the position of Venus and Mars into the same orbit around Sol as Earth, the Goldilocks Zone that was so integral for life to flourish. Venus and Mars were subsequently terraformed, becoming known along with Earth as the Three Sisters.

The Elnori also began the monumental task of building a Dyson Swarm around the sun to capture and harness even more of its energy with the construction of the Engine, an immense station that would have eventually formed the heart of a Dyson Swarm around Sol. Alas, this project would never be completed.

Throughout the rest of the solar system the Elnorians worked, creating the Ring Colonies s of Saturn, and the Jovian Cloud Cities. They reaped the bounty of the Asteroid Belt and the Kuiper Belt, Uranus and Neptune and Pluto beyond. And they built other things to, like the immense artificial planetoid of Bel'Zanar whose heart was a tamed black hole.

A Golden Age and the Fall

For centuries, the Elnorians ruled supreme, presiding over the disparate clades of humanity as benevolent Gods in a Golden Age of plenty for all. They created numerous new forms of life from human and animal stock, birthing the myriad strains of Chimera (animal-human hybrids) as well as a host of humanoids tailored to specific tasks or to work in specific environments such as the diminutive but hardy Dwarger who specialised in work in areas inimically hostile to most other beings.

But in time, they began to grow bored. Ennui led to the desperate search for new experiences, new avenues of thinking. A common past-time that grew popular were war games in which the Elnorians pitted their forces against one another, uncaring of the damage wrought or lives lost. Body modification and mutilation became fashionable whilst the pursuit of esoteric arts and hedonistic cults grew widespread. Not all the Elnori indulged in this way, some sought to cling to their fallen nobility seeing the dark path their people were headed down. Still, such individuals were the rare exception.

The Cataclysm

The Cataclysm was an event as mysterious as it was devastating. Its cause and nature are a mystery to this day, yet the entire system suffered its wrath and none more so than the Elnori. The common theory is that the Elnori as a whole dabbled with forces that were utterly beyond even they, and sought to gain entry to a new universe which triggered an apocalyptic wave of destruction that brought their Empire crashing down, their own near extinction and the death of countless billions.

Much that had been built was destroyed and for those who had so long been ruled by the Elnorians in a post-scarcity paradise the reality of life without them would prove nightmarish. Those who survived the initial chaos turned on one another to stake their claim over territory and resources. Wars over ruins erupted throughout the system and much precious irreplaceable technology and the means to replace it were lost. A Dark Age would descend, one that would last centuries. New powers would arise and seek to control that which remained. Baseline humans became an endangered species, reduced to living in servitude to cruel masters or forced to reside in the fringes, away from the more dominant parahuman and transhuman cultures.

As for the Elnori who survived the Cataclysm, nothing is known for certain. They are either gone entirely now, perhaps they have moved on beyond the solar system and are out there in the cosmos. Or maybe they are still around, slumbering in forgotten places or even hidden in plain sight.

Appearance

The average Elnorian was around six to eight feet tall. They were generally described as being incredibly beautiful, graceful creatures, the embodiment of what was seen once as true human potential. Yet body swapping, modification and mutilation would see a tremendous and bewildering variety of shapes and sizes amongst the Elnori. It was common for an Elnori to have custom made bodies that they would remotely control and some of these were quite fantastical and often terrifying creations indeed.