Human

After the turn of the 21st century, Earth staggered into decline. Humanity had multiplied far faster than it had matured, clinging to systems that placed profit above survival. Capitalism ran unchecked until it collapsed beneath its own weight. Climate change surged, plagues spread, economies toppled, and new arms races in drones and bioengineering carved deeper wounds. Beneath these overlapping crises, humanity eroded into feudal states.

First Contact came, and humanity lost the Advent War on paper, but not in spirit. The conquering Aempian Empire wove humanity into its designs, pouring resources into restoring parts of the world, introducing Jhoutaioan life and meta-tech, rebuilding just enough to create soldiers and allies against their many enemies. And when the Rilaem War broke out, humanity’s survival instinct ignited. Children of the recovery came of age stronger, taller, angrier. When Aempis called, humanity answered, turning the tide of the war and rescuing their would-be masters from annihilation. In return they won footholds across Jhoutai—small and tenuous, but enough to make their voice heard.

For a time, humanity had leverage in the politics of Jhoutai, and some say over the governance of Earth. When the Bannercasting unified the Jhoutaioan nations into the ValuSelu Pact, that advantage dissolved. Aempis withdrew, betraying Earth to chaos.

From the vacuum came a dreamer: the Somnolent, a prophet who spoke directly into humanity’s sleep and revealed a latent element of the Meta unique to humankind—Astral—and through dreams taught them how to wield it. He elevated and coordinated the dreams of humans all across the stars, teaching them their history the cycles in which humanity had lived. Many began to reject greed, to cast down the corporations and governments that had led them into ruin, to embrace a society with as little hierarchy as possible.

As the wealthy abandoned Earth to form The Andromeda Syndicate and the Pact turned away, , only the discarded remained on Earth. They listened. They learned. They trained their projections, not merely as weapons but as tools of restoration. They built ships from scraps and traded with passing Verin, planting roots on cheap, unwanted worlds while binding their scattered people together with the shared dream of the Somnolent. Humanity had been broken, abandoned, and nearly erased—but they refused to vanish.