Here it is, part 1 of the lore about my original species and one of the major peoples of the Arcane Realm stories.
Overview
Homins or Kaf Humans are an extraterrestrial species of humanoids that live on the planet, Kaf. Homins have long, prehensile tails and hand-like feet capable of well-articulated movements. In fact, H. prehensus walk upright on two legs while on the ground, and crouch on two or climb on all fours along the branches of trees. Even with humble beginnings in the high leafy canopies of tropical forests, their drive, curiosity, and determination allowed them to settle in various forests the world over and plant various species of trees to extend their ranges. They also still have most of the traits shared by all species of humans, making them as at home on the ground as they are in the trees.
Quick Species Profile (Homo prehensus) Life Expectancy Average: 65 years Max: Possibly 180 years Average Height: 3’8-4’2”/110-127cm Average Weight: 50-90 lbs/30-41 kg Hair: Black, Brown, Blond, Auburn, Midnight Blue Eyes: Brown, Hazel, Amber, Green, Blue, Gray Creature Type: Natural Humanoid
Biology
Homins are a sentient species that belong to the simians, a subgroup of the primate order of mammals. As such, they were similar to a number of other species variously designated as apes, including the non-sentient chimpanzees, gorillas and number of mammalian humanoids with a similar physiology.
Homins are endotherms, or “warm-blooded” animals, meaning they maintain a constant body temperature independent of the environment using the energy from their food. Homins are in fact omnivores, subsisting on both animal tissue and plant-based foods, as their gastrointestinal system was much longer than that of carnivores. Many Homins are partial to food products that have a high fat, sugar, or salt content. As is common to many humanoid species, Homins has two sexes: male and female, with the latter being distinguished by their pronounced breasts, overall smaller stature and lesser quantity of body hair.
Appearance
Homins are bipedal beings with a bilateral symmetry, having a front and a back end, as well as an upside and downside. Their body comprises of one head perched atop a torso by a neck, and four limbs. The upper limbs, called arms, ends in hands which have five fingers each; the lower ones, called legs, end in feet with also five digits called toes. Homin arms are unique in that they are long enough to reach their knees without bending. The homin fingers and toes have multiple points of articulation, and one of them is an opposable thumb that allows for fine manipulation. Finally, unlike most humanoids they are all born with a fully prehensile tail that extends from the lower base of spine and sports a fine layer of hair, the same color as that on their head. Unlike other natural mammalian species such as, they have only a light covering of body hair. Most of it is concentrated on the head, underarms and groin after puberty and, in the case of adult males, face.
As for hair and eye color, some also have a natural shade of dark blue hair. Their hair can be grown, cut, and styled for aesthetic or ritualistic reasons—The facial hair grown by adult males could be grown, styled, or shaved completely. Their hair color ranges from blond to black, sometimes with hues of red or brown, changing to gray or white as years passed and could be straight, wavy, or curly or frizzy. In addition to those varied hair colors, their eyes come in shades of blue, green, gray, or brown. Gradiation of skin tone was also seen among baseline Homins, usually limited to various shades of brown, ranging from pale yellowish brown to light brown, and dark brown. Despite the variations in skin color, homins tend to have more intermediate shades with pale or very dark skin being rare although lighter shades of skin are more common in children and females.
Physiological Traits
Prehensile Tail– Prehensus humans have long, flexible tail from the bottom of their spine covered in terminal hair that they can use to hold on to branches and alternatively, carry objects.
Prehensile Feet– Homin feet have a grasping opposable big toe, similar to great apes. They are capable of a precision grip as well as a power grip, having the the same range of articulation as the hands. Unlike the great apes, a particular bone embedded within the foot tendon helps keep the foot rigid, especially when jumping from one surface to another like humans.
Thin body hair– Although covered in hair from head to toe except their palms and soles, it’s so thin and fine they look hairless. Their thinner body hair and more productive sweat glands help them avoid heat exhaustion while running or climbing for long distances. Thick hair only grows on top of their heads, under their arms, their groin, their tails and the faces of some males.
Innate Abilities
Arboreal locomotion and expert climbing– Homins have roughly three forms of moving through the trees:
On all fours, grasping the branches below them.
Because they share the modified pelvis and spinal column of humans, they can also crouch bipedally on top of branches and walk straight up on the ground.
Lastly, Homins are brachiators, and can move around in trees by swinging under branches with a hand over hand motion from limb to limb.They can also quickly adapt to climbing on rocks in cliff faces.
High Agility- They can leap well above their heights due to high power to weight ratios launching them. The arms of Homins are very long (they can put their hands on their knees standing up; take a moment and try to do the same). When climbing a cliff face, they can typically travel up seven feet per second on average.
Strong Grip-Their grip strength can allow them to easily carry their own body weight on only their fingertips which tend to be longer than other humanoids due to bulkier knuckles.
High power to weight ratio– Homins bodies are relatively robust, and can withstand and exert a high amount of power. An untrained homin can lift around 4 to 6 times their own weight, while professional lifters can reach up to 12 times.
Raw Sorcery– Being natural humanoids, when homins channel mana from the environment into magic, the energy generates a substance known as mana plasma. Their magic involves manipulation of mana plasma to do various things such as act as a projectile, barrier, mimic other substances, or alter preexisting magical effects.
Comparison with Kaf Homins and Earth Humans
Compared to sapiens, Homins lag behind in long distance running, but they are the fastest and longest distance climbers in the animal kingdom of Kaf and are much better suited to it than other human species. Due to their large power to weight ratios, the average Homin can lift and move up to four to six times their own body weight, with their athletes and warriors obviously outclassing them.
General Diet
Homins are opportunistic omnivores, capable of consuming a wide variety of plant and animal material. Staples of their diet is fruit, region specific tree nuts, edible flowers, leaves, eggs, and various invertebrates likes insects or mollusks. They will also hunt for edible fungi and small vertebrates such as lizards, rodents and small birds. Communities with agricultural practices will make the efforts to grow crops like shrub berries, starchy tubers, beans, and gourd vegetables within constructed gardens in their treetop dwellings.
Reproduction
Homin females are fertile year round, and in which no special signals of fertility are produced by the body. Opposed to many animals, female homins have a menstrual cycle roughly every month. Homin women will also go through menopause, typically after 50 years of age, in which they will no longer bare children. Homin males remain fertile much longer, many well into their 70’s.
As with other mammals, homin reproduction takes place as internal fertilization by sexual intercourse between an opposite sex couple to produce offspring. While developing in their mother’s womb, the child gives her a distinctive “baby bump” accompanied by a significant weight gain. Being mammals, the homin females give birth to live young, either one or several at a time. Two children born at the same birth are referred to as twins, and three as triplets. The delivery itself normally takes place after nine months of pregnancy. It is a painful process that can take as much as ten hours. In some circumstances, women could die during childbirth, although it became less common in places with access to top-notch medical technologies. During their first months of existence, Homin babies are usually fed with milk from their mother’s breasts.
Lifespan and Growth
The period during which a young Homin develops from a child into an adult is known as adolescence. According to top therapists, that stage of development is emotionally hard to endure without support. Regardless of physiological and psychological changes, the legal transition from childhood to adulthood depends on culture. While some societies treated their members as adults as early as the age of 13, others considered that full adulthood was only attained at 21.
Adult Average Height:
Male: 3’8”-4’2”
Female: 3’6”-4’1”
Largest Recorded: 5’8” male
Etymology
hom·i·n \ˈhä-mən
Homin is based on a shortening of hominid, the proto-human ancestors of the genus Homo, including modern humans.
History
Human ancestors (likely Homo erectus) found their way to the forest region of Kaf by random temporal portals linking to prehistoric earth. Basically this gave their ancestors millions of years to adapt to the tree filled areas as they were pushed back by foreign and hostile creatures like mega fauna. Eventually their Kaf native descendants developed arboreal traits intrinsic to other primates such as the reintroduction of grasping big toes and longer arms. Random chance and sexual selection favored the development of long prehensile tails to better aid climbing through trees. Still they retained their bipedal walk and posture even in the trees, and developed traits similar to that of modern humans, such as increased brain size, similar facial features, prominent breasts in females, use of advanced tools, fire and a complex social culture.
Homins first appeared in tropical forest areas and after the Ghul wars, were able to spread to island and temperate regions. A few went as far as mountainous and boreal forests. Another group learned to construct simple boats allowing them to populate various islands as well. During the standardization era, they were able to grow forests in order to increase their range, along with other forest beings.
The trees where they first settled were massive enough for the branches to interconnect them and allow for climbing between them. The trees were also able to support small huts they eventually built among their branches. Because they have mega fauna and magical beast enemies on the forest floor, homins survived by only going down when they are gone, and eventually building weapons to fend them off when they needed to.
Before the United Sentient Species, Homin settlements were either nearby or cohabited relatively peaceful with brackish merfolk, lamia, wood fairy, and various spirits of the forest. With various empires cropping up from the jinn, and faye, homins in occupied territories grew a sense of nationalism and wanted their own nation. However the various major ethnic groups of homins couldn’t agree on a single territory which resulted in three homin created states. These nations and a few surrounding territories where controlled by monarchs until the events leading up the creation of the United Sentient Species led to them taking on ceremonial positions.
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