“They smile like us, sing like us, and even bleed like us. But under the lights, their skin glows, and their hair tastes sweet. Don’t mistake that glow for warmth. The Vanthine don’t see life the way we do—they see usefulness. And one day, they’ll decide you’ve run out of yours.”

— Anonymous trader on Vanth

Origins and Alien Legacy

The Vanthine are the descendants of human colonists on Vanth who, during the Great Timocracy and Solar Commonwealth Eras, became entwined with a resurrected alien genome decoded from the Spinward Signal. Though direct hybrids with the winged “Remnants” were purged during the Siege of Angels, their genetic influence lingers in the Vanthine population. Today’s Vanthine are biologically human, but marked by traits unmistakably alien, and culturally shaped by centuries of pragmatic survival under occupation and war.

Appearance

Vanthines are typically tall, androgynous in build, and unusually symmetrical—an eerie perfection that unsettles outsiders as often as it attracts them. Their skin has a polished sheen, as though made of smooth stone, and may glow faintly with bioluminescence, controlled at will through chromatophores. Their hair and nails are translucent filaments, iridescent and faintly sweet to the taste, containing a mild stimulant. Shedding is regular, leaving trails of filaments that can be collected and sold, though addiction is rare compared to the catastrophic dependence once caused by the Remnants’ scales. Their eyes are violet, drooping at the edges, with a reflective glimmer in low light. Lips tend to be narrow, their features balanced and sharp.

Names

Vanthines retain names of Terran origin, though they are often chosen with deliberate symmetry or euphony, reflecting their aesthetic values. Family names are still maintained but carry less weight than in many cultures—what matters is not who one descends from, but what one contributes. “Merine” is a common given name, after the matronly founder Merine Fenne, used across genders as a mark of endurance.

Culture and Society

The Vanthine ethos is one of utilitarian pragmatism: every life is judged by contribution. Children are precious for their potential; the elderly are honored by being spent in battle or labor when their productivity wanes. There is no shame in being “used up”—indeed, to end one’s life still useful to the community is considered an enviable fate. Leisure exists, but it is always secondary to the colony’s survival and its great project: maintaining and decoding the Lens.

Despite this cold calculus, Vanthines are not joyless. They sing, they dance, they love—but even these acts are framed as service. A song is meant to bind the group, a romance to produce capable offspring, art to reinforce cultural memory. Outsiders often find this alien, even horrifying, but among Vanthines it is natural.

Dress and Aesthetics

Vanthine clothing is pragmatic: tunics of simple cuts dominate, with important figures adding larger garments resembling kilts, togas, or draped sashes. Their palettes tend toward drab grays and muted browns punctuated by hazard stripes, a fashion carried over from their orbital labor culture. Hair is often cut short, or bound with bandanas to control filament-shedding. Jewelry and decoration frequently use their own filaments, woven into braids or cords.

Architecture across Vanth’s domes and habitats prominently features three motifs:

• Merine Fenne, depicted as a kindly, middle-aged woman in simple clothes.
• Shining angels with iridescent wings, reminders of their alien-tainted past.
• Dragons slaying angels, a perpetual warning carved into their facades by Haus des Drachen.

Food and Daily Life

Vanthines live primarily on food supplied by orbital farms and nutrient vats, supplemented with cloned livestock. Their filaments are occasionally ground into sweets or stimulants, though cultural taboos limit this practice. Meals are communal, reinforcing the utilitarian ethos: what is eaten is what serves the group. Alcohol and stimulants are present, but excess indulgence is seen as wasteful rather than sinful.

Faith and Ideals

Religion is muted but not absent. The Perfected Path has a strong presence, reframing self-improvement as a duty to increase one’s usefulness to society. Local cults and splinter sects erupt regularly, often inspired by the alien whispers of the Lens or by lingering Remnant myths. Though most are quickly suppressed by Castaigne and Pheme’s oversight, their persistence underscores the uneasy balance between alien heritage and human pragmatism.

Reputation and Attitudes

Vanthines are seen by outsiders as paranoid, cold, and unsettling, but also as loyal, pragmatic, and stubborn survivors. They are famously unwelcoming to immigrants, viewing them as potential spies or liabilities. Travelers are tolerated only while useful; once they’ve delivered their goods or spent their credits, hospitality evaporates. Pirates who raid Vanth find themselves swarmed not by professional armies, but by waves of the elderly called up as militia, honored to spend their last years in service. The strategy is brutal, but effective: invaders underestimate the zeal of those with nothing left to lose.

To the Vanthine themselves, however, they are a people of quiet pride. They see themselves as the heirs of Merine Fenne’s defiance, chosen to endure the whispers of Spinward where others faltered, and to bear the weight of alien inheritance that still shapes their faces and their ethics.

Whispers from Whitespace

Vanthines possess an uncanny mental quirk that outsiders find as unsettling as it is impressive. In moments of focus, a Vanthine may seem to remember things they could never have known—an engineering principle, a navigation trick, a piece of lost lore, or even the right seasoning for a meal. They describe it as reaching into a vast chorus beyond time, catching fragments of thought that belong to no one and everyone. In play, this manifests as sudden flashes of insight: Modular Abilities they can reconfigure on the fly. To the Vanthine, these whispers are both a blessing and a curse. They are never entirely their own ideas, and the detachment that comes with hearing the voices of a dead civilization leaves most Vanthines cold, pragmatic, and difficult to read.