It occurs to me that only the Vanguard and Dvar are full pure human factions

[Ethorin]

Indeed, they're using PsiTech items for the psionic attacks. They're as human as the Vanguard.

eh, the Runner flavor text mentions "I don't have the gift for Psi-tec" which, I mean, it's vague and highly interpretable but certainly suggests that at least SOME of them think there's a certain minimum level of psionic activity required for Psi-Tec... Of course, it's also very explicit that you don't HAVE to be capable of it to be considered part of the Syndicate sooooooo.

 

[Tropical Sunset]

I don't see why not. Their campaign makes it implicit that the Amazons view radical changes to genetics as an abomination. They also don't look any different from a woman in peak physical condition, and there is no mention anywhere of them being much different from normal humans.

Do you remember those old Hong-Kong Kung-fu movies in which everybody is trained in martial arts?
The same goes for the Amazons. They are a genetically modified race of brawlers which includes even their civilians.
And another difference from unmodified humans would be their mentality as their culture revolves mainly around a warrior's code of honour.

 

[Draxynnic]

eh, the Runner flavor text mentions "I don't have the gift for Psi-tec" which, I mean, it's vague and highly interpretable but certainly suggests that at least SOME of them think there's a certain minimum level of psionic activity required for Psi-Tec... Of course, it's also very explicit that you don't HAVE to be capable of it to be considered part of the Syndicate sooooooo.

Or it could be similar to someone having the gift for programming or some other technical skill: having the "gift" for Psi-Tec could simply be a matter of being good with the technology rather than having native psionic ability themselves.

 

[HousePet]

The existence of the Celestian and Psynumbra Secret Techs strongly imply that Humans are capable of developing Psionic abilities without technology.

 

[Draxynnic]

The existence of the Celestian and Psynumbra Secret Techs strongly imply that Humans are capable of developing Psionic abilities without technology.

Yes, but that's not specific to the Syndicate. It's hard to say whether the Syndicate actually have more psionic ability, or whether it's purely because they have the PsiTec and without it they'd be at a similar level to other human races.

 

[HousePet]

Wasn't implying it was Syndicate specific. Just pointing out that Psionic abilities do imply non-Human.
More Psionic abilities might do, but with a heavy caste system like the Syndicate, it could still be <1% and it appears more prevalent because they give Psionics more status.

 

[Goblin-Cookie]

I doubt that inhibiting anger is enough to not be genetically compatible with regular humans. There are people in real life that have no sexual drive or are incapable of empathy and genuine bigotry, and yet they are able to productively copulate with the rest just fine (theoretically in the first case, at least). And Amazons don't have males because they create their children through artificial means, so it's purely a cultural thing. And as was already mentioned, they sometimes recruit women from at least human settlements descended into ignorance.

Everyone can create their children through artificial means, but that they don't have males implies very much that they *did* have problems in making the template compatible with regular humans, which in turn implies that things are not quite as easy as you imply. All members of the society are not going to all decide to have girls even if reproduction is entirely artificial, so if it is a 'cultural thing', there will end up being a few male Amazons somewhere.

I'm trying to avoid dropping too many spoilers in this thread, but suffice it to say that cryosleep on a planet is a thing, and there are more Vanguard commanders that were alive when the Star Union fell.

I don't think this is actually their thinking, given that some of the fluff indicates they actively recruit more women into their ranks when given the opportunity.

I suspect it's actually more likely that they think their ancestors have already done a good enough job that they don't want someone ruining it, and in particular:

Spoiler

They don't like what Berhane was doing because, first, Berhane was looking to make super-soldiers and the Amazons, for all they've been designed to be physically superior to most human women, generally do not approve of the idea of their race being militarised to that extent, and second, because Berhane was using Xenoplague to do so, and that seems to specifically go against Amazon principles (because, among other things, it does some nasty things to the environment).

Personally, I tend to think of the Amazons as being a somewhat more extreme analogy to the society of David Brin's Glory Season book. They may have been the creation of past genetic engineering, but they're happy with what they've got right now and don't feel the need to change that, thank you very much.

The issue here is that the majority of Vanguard commanders do not have the luxury of sitting around in cyrosleep for several hundred years without being enslaved or killed. Yes on one world they did, but even then one of said commanders got eliminated by the syndicate. Also it was only after they nuked their world that they retreated into cyrosleep, so that was not their initial choice.

Given that Amazons were created to be perfect pacifist people without aggression, I doubt they are inherently physically superior to most human woman on a biological level. The Amazons we encounter in the game are not happy with their creators work. They have basically rebelled against their creators purpose, they have embraced warfare when the whole point of their existence was to bring peace and harmony to all. In effect Berhane's logic makes sense, their creators are wrong and in order to be more effective warrior-women they need to modify themselves to make up for their inherent disadvantages.

I do not know what you are talking about about recruiting human women. I am pretty much sure that Amazons are bred artificially, or maybe parthogenisis reproduction was actually implemented by their creators to solve the no-men problem. It is implied by how refugee camps do not have any defined race that our colonies are not exclusively of our own species, since regardless of our race we get an extra citizen; so Amazons having human or kirko members really does not mean anything.

 

[Vladisi]

Everyone can create their children through artificial means, but that they don't have males implies very much that they *did* have problems in making the template compatible with regular humans, which in turn implies that things are not quite as easy as you imply. All members of the society are not going to all decide to have girls even if reproduction is entirely artificial, so if it is a 'cultural thing', there will end up being a few male Amazons somewhere.

Given that Amazons were created to be perfect pacifist people without aggression, I doubt they are inherently physically superior to most human woman on a biological level. The Amazons we encounter in the game are not happy with their creators work. They have basically rebelled against their creators purpose, they have embraced warfare when the whole point of their existence was to bring peace and harmony to all. In effect Berhane's logic makes sense, their creators are wrong and in order to be more effective warrior-women they need to modify themselves to make up for their inherent disadvantages.

I do not know what you are talking about about recruiting human women. I am pretty much sure that Amazons are bred artificially, or maybe parthogenisis reproduction was actually implemented by their creators to solve the no-men problem. It is implied by how refugee camps do not have any defined race that our colonies are not exclusively of our own species, since regardless of our race we get an extra citizen; so Amazons having human or kirko members really does not mean anything.

I don't undestand where you're getting all this. Amazons didn't have some "creators". They are descendants of an expedition of bio-engineers that for some reason lost all their males and had to resort to genetic engineering in order to survive as a population. It's much more likely that the lack of males is due to them lacking a suitable source of male DNA than due to them unable to create a male template.

And they're not some kind of pacifist people - they lack anger, not agression. It's pretty clear from the fact that they are a faction in a 4X that they are perfectly capable of agression.

And the stuff about them recruiting other women is from Bombardon lore text.

 

[The Founder]

I don't undestand where you're getting all this. Amazons didn't have some "creators". They are descendants of an expedition of bio-engineers that for some reason lost all their males and had to resort to genetic engineering in order to survive as a population. It's much more likely that the lack of males is due to them lacking a suitable source of male DNA than due to them unable to create a male template.

Specifically Terratechs terrforming divsion.

Given that Amazons were created to be perfect pacifist people without aggression

Literally teh 2nd sentence of Race description is:
"Thier fearsome troops have spartan discipline and a experts in guerillia tactics"

Also I really wonder what "creators" you talk about. The Terratech BioTech and Terraforming Company hired qualified people regardless of Gender. The males died for some reason, that is not discussed. But the women were all experienced bio- and ecosphere engineers.
They just went and adapted, same way the Dvar did to their circumstances.

 

[Draxynnic]

The issue here is that the majority of Vanguard commanders do not have the luxury of sitting around in cyrosleep for several hundred years without being enslaved or killed. Yes on one world they did, but even then one of said commanders got eliminated by the syndicate. Also it was only after they nuked their world that they retreated into cyrosleep, so that was not their initial choice.

Sure, a lot of Vanguard factions are placeholders for "ordinary humans", but there are other Vanguard commanders that were around since before the Star Union fell. There's one in the Assembly campaign for instance (and I'll leave it at that).

Given that Amazons were created to be perfect pacifist people without aggression, I doubt they are inherently physically superior to most human woman on a biological level. The Amazons we encounter in the game are not happy with their creators work. They have basically rebelled against their creators purpose, they have embraced warfare when the whole point of their existence was to bring peace and harmony to all. In effect Berhane's logic makes sense, their creators are wrong and in order to be more effective warrior-women they need to modify themselves to make up for their inherent disadvantages.

Their ancestors modified themselves to better survive the conditions they found themselves in. Said ancestors did seem to want to breed out unnecessary aggression, but they're still intended to survive in potentially harsh conditions that require physical strength and endurance.

I also don't see any indication that they're rebelling against any purpose en masse. Many Amazon characters are still essentially scientists. From the Tyrannodon description, they seem to agree with their foremother's decision to remove unwarranted aggression, but they also know that sometimes they need to defend themselves. Obviously, Amazons are no more monolithic than any of the other races, so responses will vary, but I'm pretty sure the objection the Matriarchs had to Berhane as a) there's a distinction between being able to defend yourselves and being made specifically for war, and b):

Spoiler

because she was doing so by adding the Xenoplague to the Amazon genome.

Honestly, this feels like another case where you've jumped to a conclusion and are trying to argue it as proven fact. You're going to need citations if you want to claim that the Amazons hate themselves. Speaking of citations...

I do not know what you are talking about about recruiting human women. I am pretty much sure that Amazons are bred artificially, or maybe parthogenisis reproduction was actually implemented by their creators to solve the no-men problem. It is implied by how refugee camps do not have any defined race that our colonies are not exclusively of our own species, since regardless of our race we get an extra citizen; so Amazons having human or kirko members really does not mean anything.

Look up the Bombardon description. It basically boils down to "The Amazons tried to steal our women, we drove them into the swamp, and they came back with the creatures of the swamp".

 

[Goblin-Cookie]

I don't undestand where you're getting all this. Amazons didn't have some "creators". They are descendants of an expedition of bio-engineers that for some reason lost all their males and had to resort to genetic engineering in order to survive as a population. It's much more likely that the lack of males is due to them lacking a suitable source of male DNA than due to them unable to create a male template.

And they're not some kind of pacifist people - they lack anger, not agression. It's pretty clear from the fact that they are a faction in a 4X that they are perfectly capable of agression.

And the stuff about them recruiting other women is from Bombardon lore text.

No the bombardon lore does not say that, it refers to the Amazons as witches and accuses them of teaching that women didn't need men; no women ever joined the Amazons at all in the account. Basically they are your typical patriarchal society that sees Amazons as a symbol that threatens them whether or not they actually did anything intentional to do so, attacks the amazons and then gets wiped out. For all we know the Amazons killed everyone, men and women alike in response to the attacks, there is no reference there to them recruiting any human women at all into their ranks, only allegedly undermining their patriarchal society; it is also a very unreliable narrator we are talking about.

The idea that the terratech engineers did not have any male human DNA in their database is ludicrous. You are not both going to be capable of genetically engineering a whole new subspecies and somehow not have any male DNA. The likely reason there are no male Amazons is that they could not make any at all, which means that all the male members of the expedition remained human and simply rejoined human society unaltered, along with any unaltered women that they might have had. Quite likely another side-effect of making Amazons was to make them unable to reproduce with regular human males, so we end up with a separate subspecies of human that spreads through the Star Union.

Sure, a lot of Vanguard factions are placeholders for "ordinary humans", but there are other Vanguard commanders that were around since before the Star Union fell. There's one in the Assembly campaign for instance (and I'll leave it at that).

Their ancestors modified themselves to better survive the conditions they found themselves in. Said ancestors did seem to want to breed out unnecessary aggression, but they're still intended to survive in potentially harsh conditions that require physical strength and endurance.

I also don't see any indication that they're rebelling against any purpose en masse. Many Amazon characters are still essentially scientists. From the Tyrannodon description, they seem to agree with their foremother's decision to remove unwarranted aggression, but they also know that sometimes they need to defend themselves. Obviously, Amazons are no more monolithic than any of the other races, so responses will vary, but I'm pretty sure the objection the Matriarchs had to Berhane as a) there's a distinction between being able to defend yourselves and being made specifically for war, and b):

Spoiler

because she was doing so by adding the Xenoplague to the Amazon genome.

Honestly, this feels like another case where you've jumped to a conclusion and are trying to argue it as proven fact. You're going to need citations if you want to claim that the Amazons hate themselves. Speaking of citations...

Look up the Bombardon description. It basically boils down to "The Amazons tried to steal our women, we drove them into the swamp, and they came back with the creatures of the swamp".

Just because what I am saying makes sense and what others are saying does not make any sense at all, does not mean I am claiming anything is a proven fact. We do not have many proven facts, even the bombardon description you refer to does not refer directly to Amazons stealing human women.

No I was not arguing that the Amazons hate themselves, I was arguing that the Amazons do not really agree with their own creators purpose; they simply cannot hate themselves for the same reason they cannot hate anything at all, that is not in their makeup. This is why the Amazons have not reversed the process and turned themselves back into regular human women, even though that would be more functional given their present course.

Amazons are not Dvar, there is no reason to think that the environment on which they were stranded was the kind of nightmare that would kill an unaltered human being; just a fairly dangerous place a regular human could survive with a little difficulty. Then the Amazons altered the environment around it so that it was quite benign to human beings, meaning that the only remaining threat was therefore each-other.

I do not think they altered themselves to survive, they altered the environment to make that environment benign; so benign that their creators decided the only threat left was their own aggressive tendencies; which they tried to eliminate.

 

[The Founder]

For all we know the Amazons killed everyone, men and women alike in response to the attacks, there is no reference there to them recruiting any human women at all into their ranks, only allegedly undermining their patriarchal society; it is also a very unreliable narrator we are talking about.

They at least left the Narator alive. And I doubt one of those can escape Amazon hunretesses. So they did not kill all, only did a Punitive action against their people literally being burned at the stake.

The idea that the terratech engineers did not have any male human DNA in their database is ludicrous. You are not both going to be capable of genetically engineering a whole new subspecies and somehow not have any male DNA. The likely reason there are no male Amazons is that they could not make any at all, which means that all the male members of the expedition remained human and simply rejoined human society unaltered, along with any unaltered women that they might have had

Please go into the game.
Open the Imperial Archives ingame wiki.
Type in "Amazon".
Find the entry about Race / game concepts.
And stop making your own lore up.

 

[The Founder]

Then the Amazons altered the environment around it so that it was quite benign to human beings, meaning that the only remaining threat was therefore each-other.

They did not. Nature and "the law of the jungle" does not coddle the weak.
And as they were terraformers and biosphere engineers, they knew damn well to include it in their operations.

 

[Garresh]

Homo Amazon

That sounds like the name of a p-...er, "documentary".

 

[Draxynnic]

Just because what I am saying makes sense and what others are saying does not make any sense at all, does not mean I am claiming anything is a proven fact. We do not have many proven facts, even the bombardon description you refer to does not refer directly to Amazons stealing human women.

No I was not arguing that the Amazons hate themselves, I was arguing that the Amazons do not really agree with their own creators purpose; they simply cannot hate themselves for the same reason they cannot hate anything at all, that is not in their makeup. This is why the Amazons have not reversed the process and turned themselves back into regular human women, even though that would be more functional given their present course.

Amazons are not Dvar, there is no reason to think that the environment on which they were stranded was the kind of nightmare that would kill an unaltered human being; just a fairly dangerous place a regular human could survive with a little difficulty. Then the Amazons altered the environment around it so that it was quite benign to human beings, meaning that the only remaining threat was therefore each-other.

I do not think they altered themselves to survive, they altered the environment to make that environment benign; so benign that their creators decided the only threat left was their own aggressive tendencies; which they tried to eliminate.

Given the sheer arrogance of that statement when this isn't the first time when you've been in one of these discussions where nobody agrees with you, I think from now on I'm just going to assume you're a sophisticated troll and proceed accordingly (including advising others to do the same).

For the sake of others who might be fooled, though, a final gathering of the evidence against your claims.

I used a humourous paraphrasing of the Bombardon flavour text, but the precise words are that the Amazon missionaries "preached that men were wicked and women didn't need us". The natural assumption when a monogender society starts telling people from a bigender society that the opposite gender is wicked and not needed is that said monogender society is looking to recruit. Either way, it's certainly an indication that the Amazons don't regret what their ancestors did - if they did, they'd probably want to reverse the changes to their society by bringing men back into it and breeding out the modifications over time, rather than encouraging others to see them as role models.

This is reinforced when you look through the various other lore snippets we see - the overall picture is one of the Amazons being smugly assured of their own superiority, if anything. (This is not a criticism of the Amazons, incidentally, since most of the other races have the same attitudes).

Regarding being designed as soldiers: You don't need to be thinking in military terms to realise that being physically stronger is a survival advantage. It's another theme in the Amazon lore snippets that pretty much everything they have is designed to be able to continue operating even in the event of a total technological collapse - for instance, the Amazons use laser weapons because their lasers are designed to be able to be powered through biochemical means, meaning that their laser weapons are not reliant on a supply chain for ammunition. If you're faced with the potential of losing all your technology and you've engineered out your men, you're going to want your women to be at least as capable as unmodified men. You can see this in the leader design screens: it's subtle, but Amazons are more muscular than female Vanguard commanders.

Spoiler

Amazon characters, based on their behaviour in campaign, seem to have a variety of backgrounds. Berhane, Mahina, and Sappho are hunters and military commanders. In Zarai's case, I don't think she even is Amazon, but the personality of one of Carminia's agents downloaded into an Amazon body. Kelshana was also influenced by Carminia. Raxonee and Selia were both presented in the campaign as being scientists.

The simplest answer to why Berhane was so hated by the regular Amazons - especially since Mahina was sent after her before finding out that she was meddling with the Amazon genome - is that she was working with the Xenoplague, and that's what the Amazons banned. It makes sense - their Terratech foremothers probably knew about the Xenplague and how dangerous it was, and specified that whatever genetic engineering the Amazons did in the future that they at least kept away from that. For all that players have made the association that Xenoplague works well with the Amazons, it's worth noting that what we see in-game is that Berhane is the only Amazon commander that uses Xenoplague by default, and she's a hunted outcast; Mahina can pick it up in the campaign, but if you take this option, Sappho trusts you less than if you'd stayed Celestian, and Mahina probably only gets away with that through the "fighting fire with fire" argument and the assumption that she'll get rid of it when she's done. The revelation that Berhane was grafting Xenoplague into Amazon embryos was simply the icing on the cake.

Occam's Razor says that it's not genetic engineering in general that the Amazons forbid, it's Xenoplague use specifically.

Heck, if you look at the Amazon leaders, the only Amazon leaders using Psynumbra, Xenoplague, or Synthesis are those who are influenced, directly or indirectly, by Carminia (most of whose agents use those technologies). Mainstream Amazons seem to prefer Celestian, VoidTech, or Promethean. Of course, this might be an observation that gets overwritten by future campaigns, but it is notable that all Amazon leaders going outside this group thus far share a single source.

 

[MaitreBouh]

You are overthinking it with the Amazons I thing. The philosophic materials already exists on our earth : eugenism to make perfect humans, removing men to remove the unnecessary aggressivity from the society (which goes with the first), some ecology principles, and there are your Amazons. I'm simplifying a bit, but all start with this I think for them.

 

[Goblin-Cookie]

They at least left the Narator alive. And I doubt one of those can escape Amazon hunretesses. So they did not kill all, only did a Punitive action against their people literally being burned at the stake.

As I said, we do not actually know what happened but nowhere does it say the Amazons recruited any human women into their ranks. That man might be the last survivor among thousands, there just were not enough huntresses

Please go into the game.
Open the Imperial Archives ingame wiki.
Type in "Amazon".
Find the entry about Race / game concepts.
And stop making your own lore up.

Everything I am saying is based upon that lore. According to that lore what happened to the men on that expedition is a closely guarded secret, so something happened the Amazons do not want to talk about. They probably did not outright kill them because no aggression, which supports my theory that they did not survive the attempt to make male Amazons; the genotype turned out to be incompatible with male physiology. So basically the males could have either died or became sterile and died of old age before the expedition returned to the Star Union.

They did not. Nature and "the law of the jungle" does not coddle the weak.
And as they were terraformers and biosphere engineers, they knew damn well to include it in their operations.

It does if you completely re-engineer the biosphere to make it is a harmonious place to live in. Doing so makes sense from the survival POV, you make all the nasty creatures harmless by releasing a virus to genetically re-engineer them to not attack human beings. Once you have done that to all the other creatures, the logical next step is to do it too yourself; the ecosystem is harmless so no reason to not make yourself harmless as well as the only threat to yourself is now yourself.

Some modern Amazons have pretty much embraced the kind of thinking you mention above; this is why I say the Amazons are consciously rebelling against the purpose of their own biological modifications in embracing warfare.

Given the sheer arrogance of that statement when this isn't the first time when you've been in one of these discussions where nobody agrees with you, I think from now on I'm just going to assume you're a sophisticated troll and proceed accordingly (including advising others to do the same).

For the sake of others who might be fooled, though, a final gathering of the evidence against your claims.

The utter hypocrisy of the above statement beggars belief. You are always the first to make all manner of suppositions from limited information but if I try to do the same as you then you get all angry and call me an internet troll.

I used a humourous paraphrasing of the Bombardon flavour text, but the precise words are that the Amazon missionaries "preached that men were wicked and women didn't need us". The natural assumption when a monogender society starts telling people from a bigender society that the opposite gender is wicked and not needed is that said monogender society is looking to recruit. Either way, it's certainly an indication that the Amazons don't regret what their ancestors did - if they did, they'd probably want to reverse the changes to their society by bringing men back into it and breeding out the modifications over time, rather than encouraging others to see them as role models.

This is reinforced when you look through the various other lore snippets we see - the overall picture is one of the Amazons being smugly assured of their own superiority, if anything. (This is not a criticism of the Amazons, incidentally, since most of the other races have the same attitudes).

There are no missionaries in the precise wording of the text; that is your supposition. There are also no Amazons in the account, only witches using magic; we only know that he is talking about Amazons from context. You are basically talking about a very misinformed, ignorant and bigoted person, then proposing that we take everything he says as gospel truth even when he appears not to even know what his enemies are even CALLED.

An accusation from a known enemy of a faction has a high probability of being simply untrue, especially when the individual in question is ignorant as hell.

Regarding being designed as soldiers: You don't need to be thinking in military terms to realise that being physically stronger is a survival advantage. It's another theme in the Amazon lore snippets that pretty much everything they have is designed to be able to continue operating even in the event of a total technological collapse - for instance, the Amazons use laser weapons because their lasers are designed to be able to be powered through biochemical means, meaning that their laser weapons are not reliant on a supply chain for ammunition. If you're faced with the potential of losing all your technology and you've engineered out your men, you're going to want your women to be at least as capable as unmodified men. You can see this in the leader design screens: it's subtle, but Amazons are more muscular than female Vanguard commanders.

When your strategy is to bio-engineer everything so it loves you and obeys you, it is unclear what survival advantage being strong imparts. Unless you fighting things up-close, strength is of pretty limited value survival wise, particularly because it means you eat more for your size.

I am not sure how you can infer anything from the build of the average build of an Amazon against a Vanguard commander. There is only one build per gender, per race; does everyone therefore have the exact same bodytype in the Planeterfall universe?

 

[The Founder]

It does if you completely re-engineer the biosphere to make it is a harmonious place to live in. Doing so makes sense from the survival POV, you make all the nasty creatures harmless by releasing a virus to genetically re-engineer them to not attack human beings.

Then Prey species overrun the Ecosystem.
This is dumb,
This is so dumb, we know in our world right now it is dumb.
Dozens of Ecosystems are suffering for this very problem right now, that is how dumb it is.

Why do you feel the need to make amazons sound incompotent, while ignoring every piece of lore?
Is your mysognism that extreme?

 

[Hunnuli]

I am not sure how you can infer anything from the build of the average build of an Amazon against a Vanguard commander. There is only one build per gender, per race; does everyone therefore have the exact same bodytype in the Planeterfall universe?

It is pretty safe to assume we are looking at an 'average' member of the faction, or at least the average of the military arm of that faction. So the Amazon commander bulkier than the female Vanguard commander is a rather strong hint that the Amazons are ON AVERAGE larger than Vanguard women. Really. . . I am surprised this needs to be explained. With limited resources you aren't going to be able to offer every possible bodytype so you offer up one that is, on average, representative of those the character is supposed to represent. Duh.

When your strategy is to bio-engineer everything so it loves you and obeys you, it is unclear what survival advantage being strong imparts. Unless you fighting things up-close, strength is of pretty limited value survival wise, particularly because it means you eat more for your size.

Have you played the Campaign? You may have noticed that the mission to acquire a mount for your Amazon sister requires you first to beat it into submission. And the mission to acquire the Voradon requires you to beat it into submission. And then Mahina gets up close to it in order to collar it. So I would say the Amazons end up close and personal with dangerous critters quite often. If an Amazon appeared in our world I wouldn't be at all surprised if the first thing she did was wrestle a bear or something. Listen to the dialogue of how much they enjoy the hunt, etc. They sound an awful lot like Thrill Seekers to me. Being larger, stronger, and fitter on average could be useful for such people.

 

[Flight_of_Icarus]

All of them are human or are some variant of it, excepting the Kir'ko. That was a huge point of the world building. They're all from the same origin, the Star Union. Otherwise it all depends on your definition of Human.

Also, about the Dvar, I think it's pretty clear that they're shorter, because you can see the size difference on the tactical battle map. Not to mention how cramped the other heroes look when they're trying to pilot Dvar vehicles, and the fact Triumph basically came out and said they were space dwarves in their dev diary. It's likely they just got trapped on more massive planets with higher gravity, because they had more resources to mine, and they got shorter and more stout with each passing generation.