The Rish

General Information

Species Name: The adar’Rishsal (The Rish)
Base: Carbon based humanoids
Mode Of Governance: Fleet Counsel, with each homesteader ship lead by a Chief Captain
Tech Level: (Alpha: Pre Warp. Beta: Warp Capable. Delta: Able to harness ALL available resources. Gamma: Q level.) Beta

Physical Descriptors

Stemming from human ancestry of the 21st Century, the adar’Rishal can most often be safely classified as human. They tend towards taller stature and lighter bones, as an effect of living in a reduced gravity environment. Some of the less welcoming sects of Rish have even begun to show signs of speciation, where certain traits adapted to their lifestyle have begun to manifest. Better low light vision and diminished immune responses are the most common, along with a high tolerance for low oxygen enviroments.

As for modes of dress they can differ as much from one Rish to the other. For the most part, they enjoy colourful garments and often take pride in creating their own garments out of patches of cloth from a myriad of sources. This goes for their space suits, which are often patchworked affairs cobbled together form a dozen different suit designs. This is not done out any particular mechanical need, but a sense of aesthetics and want to spread out the newer parts of one suit to all members of a work team.

Key Points

The Rish are, for the most parts, one of the forgotten and often overlooked branches of the human diaspora of the early 22nd century. Originally a colony ship chartered by the cooperative of minor corporations and national interests, the low warp vessel was destined to make its thirteen year trip to Tau Numiri in one direction. The long-range data feeds suggested an M-class world was there, ready to be colonised and exploited to benefit the human drive for exploration.

Seven years into the voyage, all contact with the colony ship Belle Terre was lost, and it and the crew faded into history alongside the Roanoke Colony and Terra Nova.

In truth, the ship had suffered a major communications causality due to a collision with a piece of interstellar debris, but apart from its long-range transmitter being a pitted black crater, the ship was in good spirits. But as they grew closer to the star Tau Numiri, things began to look odd.
What from Earth had appeared to be a bright yellow main sequence star with a habitable world orbiting it in the Goldilocks zone, soon turned out to be a trinary system of three aged brown dwarfs. Their orbits were so close together, they acted as a lens, magnifying the spectrometric profile to appear younger and more vital. And the worlds that orbited the three dying sun were rocky, barren wastelands.

But the crew and passengers of the Belle Terre did not decide to die there and then. They looked at the barren worlds and saw readily accessible resources, things their machines and ingenuity could mine and manufacture into fuel and spare parts to repair their ageing ship and continue on to a new world. But without their own telescopes, nor any way to contact Earth, they had no clue where to go.

And so began the wanderings of the Rish. At one point the crew of the Belle Terre began to fracture, forming into clannish groups would agree in friendship to part ways. The first two Rish homesteaders were born. In the many years and decades, it took the Rish to find a habitable world, they had become accustomed to their ways of wandering where they wanted. They did not yearn for clouds and green leafy things, instead, they sang of their stars and the winds that whistle between them.

In the 24th century, the Rish are a common spaceport presence, either with their ship’s of mottley and questionable merit or in their ragged space dwelling enclaves. Some bands of Rish travel from world to world, like the travelling carnivals and troupes of performers of old. Whereas others prefer dark places that do not welcome those who do not wish to be there. They have many traditions, and rules of hospitality and conduct between guest and host.

A Rish who is given a gift will seek to return the favour, and it is an old Rish proverb that a gift denied thrice from the captain of a homesteader is as good as writing you into the family. They are fiercely loyal to kin, and ferocious in kind those who would slight them. This has lead to them gaining a reputation as gipsies and vagabonds, the constant blame for every poor crop and the spiriting away of young folk seeking adventure.

Worlds Of Note

Anwnn: A large Rish enclave built into the fragmented mantle of a D class volcanic moon.
Tornado Station: Asteroid habitat, four Ceres sized planetoid’s connected together and spun up to a fractional Gee.
Nimue Shipyards: Shipyards scattered throughout the halo debris belt of the star system Tau Numiri.
Cargo Reef: Canopus Station