Bushraki

Bushraki
Leader	Unknown
System	Unknown
Homeworld	Unknown
Capital	Unknown
Allies	Unknown
Enemies	Unknown

Morphology and Physiology

The Bushraki are a very humanoid race that is augmented from birth with cybernetics due to their unique ability to accept extensive implants without biological rejection kicking in, resulting from the Sa'hak-ren race implanting Cleax genes in them.

History and Culture

The Bushraki are one of the most-despised races in Starmourn, finding general acceptance only in Scatterhome. They're a race defined to others, in the modern age, by three main characteristics: their universal, often-extreme cybernetic enhancements, their pervasive love of drugs of all kinds, from recreational to performance-enhancing, and their unstable, hair-trigger personalities. Previously unknown to most of Starmourn, they gained their infamy during the Bushraki war, when they were used by the Ishvana to invade Starmourn sector.

Around 1400 B.E. the Sa'hak-ren Hierarchy developed a new kind of advanced medical tech based on the unique genetic material harvested from the Cleax, who heal more quickly than any other known race. Someone near-death from grievous injury could be healed in a matter of hours, using injections that caused the body to rapidly and aggressively repair itself, regardless of race. Using this rapid-healing medtech, the Sa'hak-ren, who are masters of genetic manipulation, albeit in a manner completely different from that of the Fatar, began to experiment on the nascent Bushraki people, who hadn't yet left their home planet of Dikamazi.

For a thousand years, the Sa'hak-ren treated the Bushraki as their personal laboratory, vivisecting them and then healing them, poisoning them and healing them, hitting them with lethal doses of radiation and then healing them, and so on, always without any pain relief.

Eventually, the Sa'hak-ren decided to begin breeding Bushraki to be shock troops for the Hierarchy, enhancing them at birth with cybernetics that would greatly increase their potency. What they found, however, were the same problems that have plagued development of serious cybernetic enhancements across Starmourn: the biggest enemy is the body itself, rejecting the enhancements.

Of course, for as long as any race could remember devices had been implanted in bodies, from the simple pacemakers of old Earth to lab-grown organ replacements and cryptographic key systems, but the kind of cybernetics envisioned by the Sa'hak-ren went far beyond this. They envisioned Bushraki with enhancements that were deeply entwined with all the body's systems, from musculoskeletal to endocrinal to cardiovascular to nervous and more.

The trouble was that the procedures they had to perform on the Bushraki were so invasive that vivisection was merely the beginning, and even with the healing tech engineered from Cleax genes, the Bushraki couldn't survive this kind of all-out assault on their bodies.

Through a series of breeding experiments, the Sa’hak-ren were successfully able to implant some of the Cleax genetic material into fetal Bushraki, and on maturity these unfortunates were brutally torn apart and put back together again. This time, they survived. Within a generation, all Bushraki in the womb were routinely subjected to this manipulation of their very essence, and the old Bushraki died off with age, or disease.

The Bushraki were no longer what they were. They had been a contemplative race preferring to dwell in or near forests, and to pass their days creating or appreciating art, literature, music, and vigorous sport in the company of other Bushraki. Even throughout the generations of slavery to the Sa'hak-ren, and despite their burning hatred of their masters, they maintained some semblance of that former spirit.

The introduction of the Cleax genes changed everything for them. Physically, of course, they no longer resembled natural beings, full of enhancements both organic and technological, but far more important was the change in their emotional and cultural makeup. They became an enraged, broken race. Violent crime rates on Dikamazi soared, and many of the new Bushraki simply hunted the old Bushraki down, who regarded their descendants with a combination of pity and horror.

Excerpt from “An Inquiry into the Origins of the Bushraki” by Repsara Holiwee (Elgan)]]

“The strong physical resemblance between the old, unaltered Bushraki and Humans have prompted much speculation in the geneticist community in Starmourn sector, and markers on their genetic material produces results that are either patently false, or which must cause us to reconsider our conceptions of the origins of life in our galaxy.

The most fascinating part of this mystery is not whether the science is wrong – and it may be – but whether these analyses of the Bushraki truly indicates that their race’s age is as incalculably old as it appears to be. The limited analyses they’ve allowed to be performed have concluded that they are either older than the oldest-known Elder Races, including those of the Wild Kith empires that preceded the Worldbreaking, or are almost genetically unique.

In the latter case, it is assumed that for some reason the markers used to roughly estimate the time period in which the race evolved (‘precise’ only to the extent of half a million years’ precision, so not useful for anything but the Elder Races and the oldest of the Younger), are simply different enough in the case of these two races that they lose meaning in our scientific context.

That latter theory is more widely accepted when it comes to the Humans, who are from across the galaxy, far from Starmourn sector. It’s more difficult to accept that theory as regards the Bushraki­ though, whose homeworld is within Starmourn sector, if on the outskirts. Genetic dating relies on looking at tiny ‘imperfections’ in a race’s genes, and comparing them to other races. Commonalities are identified and once you can establish one race’s age definitively, you have a basis for taking an educated guess about the others.

We have only theories as to why this appears to work – why these tiny ‘nicks’ in the genetic material can be used to age a race compared to another race whose age is known, though only very roughly, as mentioned above. What causes these little irregularities on a race-wide basis is theorized to be high-energy events permeating the galaxy during the formative years of a race, though what the extent and variety of these cosmic events are is unknown.

For instance, it’s very easy to tell whether a race originated before or after the Worldbreaking, but there are no other events known that would have resulted in that much energy bathing the galaxy at once.

Neither the Bushraki nor the Humans claim to have any cultural memory that would indicate their races are so ancient, and this also prompts multiple theories on the part of those who accept the idea that their genes do establish their approximate age.

Of course, none of this explains why these two races, only relatively recently evolved to the point of spaceflight, appear to originate so incredibly long ago, and are so physically similar, in the case of unaltered Bushraki.

It’s likely we’ll never establish the truth, for entropy, riding on the back of the arrow of time, inevitably decays and obscures evidence of the distant past. But, and this is an important but, the very fact that these two races are such apparent outliers tells us there is much we do not know about our galaxy’s past.”

Culture

Nothing is currently known about the culture of the Bushraki.