Laymaran

Typical Representative

One of the smallest civilizations in the Alliance, the Laymarans are strongly social warm-blooded beings accustomed to a thin atmosphere. Their society, once advanced in technology, collapsed due to the shortsightedness of the Laymarans (what they dubbed the Great Mistake), after which they slipped into a primitive existence, and it was only by happy accident that the Alliance realized they needed help.
Average height - 170-210 cm.
Estimated life expectancy - 70 ± 30 years.
Average weight - 80-90 kg

Brief History

The Laymarans originate in the secluded solar system of Lyme Ita, located away from the major star clusters. The system consists of a red dwarf and four planets orbiting around it, two of which are gas giants. The remaining two planets were in the habitable zone of their star, but life was only able to originate on the second of them.

The Laymarans, as a species and as a civilization, originated as omnivorous herding creatures, about four billion years after the origin of life on the planet. The Laymaran homeland had a rather rarefied atmosphere and was not very rich in rare earth elements. The situation left its mark on the Laymarans, forcing them to be calculating and logical. Herd instincts contributed to this, with the evolution of rationality transforming into a leaderless society that strongly resembled a direct democracy. Eventually, the Laymarans reached a level of development that allowed them to launch artificial objects into planetary orbit. Their homeworld had no moon of its own, and the nearest planet was a gas giant. Having launched several scientific stations into space, the Laymarans deemed further space exploration unprofitable, illogical, and therefore pointless, and almost completely abandoned this branch of development, only occasionally launching fresh satellites into orbit.

This could not have been anything but a mistake.

After a relatively short period of time, having achieved quite impressive achievements in applied sciences, the civilization discovered that the deposits of fossil elements were almost depleted, the population was growing almost exponentially, and the collapse of the industry was predicted to be inevitable. The Laymarans, as quickly as their inert social structure allowed, threw all their efforts into finding a way out of their desperate situation. They once again turned their attention to the prospect of space exploration and, in particular, sending a research ship to discover minerals on the first planet in their system.

However, it was too late. The Laymarans had only managed to launch an automated probe into space for initial scanning (although in terms of size, this probe could well be called a full-fledged ship). It was at this point that the threshold was reached. The extraction of fuel and useful elements from depleted deposits had crossed the line, at which point it became unprofitable, requiring more resources than were being extracted. Soon enough, society began to rapidly descend into chaos. Alternative sources of energy were not able to meet the needs of civilization, industry choked and began to collapse, and after that the economy and civilization itself crumbled. All necessary conditions for civilization to function were broken, and a famine akin to which the planet had never seen - at that moment there were over nine billion Laymarans living on Laymar, and the hydroponic farms that relied on industry and chemical supplies were unable to feed even a third of that population. Despair, panic and chaos created a real apocalypse on the planet, civilization rolled back to the Middle Ages, many ordinary and almost all high-tech technologies and areas of science were irretrievably lost. The technogenic disasters that inevitably followed the collapse of industry did not make the already grim situation any better. And the Laymaran no longer had the resources to regain their former power. The planet plunged into the Dark Ages, in which even ordinary iron was a precious substance, that threatened to last forever.

In this mournful state, the Laymaran civilization was stumbled upon by a research expedition expanding the boundaries of the Alliance, one and a half thousand years (Laymar orbits its star in a rather small orbit, so only 250 years have passed according to the Alliance's standard time) after the Consequences of the Great Mistake, as chronicles of the event put it. They were initially thought to be a primitive civilization, not yet advanced enough to reach space (and thus not advanced enough to contact the Alliance either), but upon closer examination of the system, the explorers were surprised to find an automated probe of unknown origin flying around the first planet.

The reconnaissance probe, built by the Laymarans a quarter of a millennium ago, had a considerable margin of reliability and autonomy, as the entire civilization had pinned its hopes on it. It was planned that in case of failure with the first planet, the probe would try to reach one of the satellites of the gas giant, but this command never came, so the machine under the automatic program continued circling around the first planet. By the time it was detected by the Alliance, it had used up almost all the fuel for monthly orbit corrections.

After studying the probe, the researchers concluded that it had been built by a civilization that had experienced a collapse and was apparently now living on the second planet of the system. Closer examination revealed that the writing on the probe was virtually identical to that used on Laymar. The council of the Alliance decided that this civilization needed to be saved, so contact was made. A painful fifty years followed, during which the nature and ecology of the long-suffering planet was being restored, as well as the technological and scientific level of the Laymarans. They accepted the aliens from the sky as saviors, at first mistaking them for gods. Enlightenment, however, did its work, and soon the Laymarans were able to restore some of their former greatness, and travel to the stars. Logical, consistent and calculating, the Laymarans established themselves in the Alliance as managers, logisticians, economists and salespeople who did well in their jobs, although it was unusual even for the Alliance to have more than one person working at the same work station. Today, the Laymaran civilization is still in a rebuilding phase - their home planet is no longer capable of supporting a highly advanced civilization, and while the Laymarans have established colonies in other systems, they are still not sufficiently advanced to be self-sufficient, so the Laymarans are now completely dependent on Alliance supplies. Studies of the ruins suggest that, prior to the collapse of the civilization, Laymaran science and technology was on par with Alliance technology (which in itself is quite impressive, considering that the Layma Ita system is one of the systems that has no trace of the presence of the Ancients), and that they will be able to regain that level within the next fifty or seventy standard years.

Biology

The Laymarans are warm-blooded, about 190 centimeters tall, and have a lean, wiry, and thin build. The thin atmosphere of their home planet requires a large lung capacity, making their rib cage disproportionately wide compared to the rest of their body. Skin color is pale yellow, with variations to pale red and light olive. The two opposable fingers on the four-toed hand have enough flexibility and fine motor skills to perform most precise manipulations. The Laymaranin looks at the world with quadricular vision with an impressive ability to distinguish very small objects at fairly large distances, and to determine the distance to them. On the upper and back part of the skull, continuing to the middle of the back, is a thick hair, most often black or dark green, occasionally there are individuals with a fairly light green shade of hair. The entire body is covered with shorter, lighter and softer fur, ranging from a few millimeters to a few centimeters in length. Laymaran physical abilities are unimpressive - more often than not, they appear scrawny, if not downright rickety, though their hind and mid legs have decent strength, their arms are rather weak.

Laymarans are technical herbivores and 80% of their diet is plant food, but they have no difficulty or aversion to ingesting animal food as well. The biosphere of their home planet is not particularly rich in animal life, with approximately 90% of all species living on the planet being plants and insects, so the proportion of meat in their diet is minimal.

Military Doctrine

The Laymarans do not currently possess an army. Before the collapse of civilization, the army was relatively underdeveloped, as the Laymarans rarely resorted to war, believing that it was not the most rational way of solving problems, threatening to waste resources unnecessarily.

State system

The Laymarans have traditionally been governed by a direct democracy-like structure of society, where important issues are decided by voting, discussing and choosing the most logical option by as many participants as possible. Over time, population growth, merging and the increasing complexity of communities, made “ public voting” difficult, so the system divided into a sequence of cell stages of a certain limited number of citizens discussing the need. Once a decision was made, random Laymarans from several cells would assemble into a cell of the next stage, in which cell choices were compared, judged and a vote was taken to accept the most logical of the proposed solutions, after which the whole cycle was repeated again, until the number of involved Laymarans of interest was sufficient to form only one cell of discussion. The exact number of Laymarans in a cell varies from community to community, but stays within a limit of 5-20 individuals. The system is slow, inert and sluggish, but due to the absence of leaders and leadership positions (any Laymaran can be in the highest discussion cell, the choice of a “candidate” for promotion to the next stage is conducted either randomly or again by general voting), due to the herd nature of their ancestors, in which there was no hierarchical struggle for the position of leader, has shown itself in the eyes of the Laymaran the most logical and effective. Especially since the development of remote communication technologies made it possible to gather cell councils much more quickly than it used to be.

Society (general mentality, special distinguishing features)

Due to their herd past, the Laymarans have a rather weakly expressed autonomy and independence, and to a person unfamiliar with this civilization it may seem that they are completely lacking in initiative and will just do what they are told.

Most Laymarans require prior discussion with at least one other Laymaran to make a decision. Laymarans do not understand the concept and meaning of a hierarchical society and consider such governance to be inefficient and even interfere with the normal functioning of society. This often leads to problems of understanding between the Laymarans and other members of the Alliance, but at the same time, the Laymarans agree that a hierarchical society allows for important decisions to be made orders of magnitude faster than their own.

Because of their herd mentality, the Laymaran also have a low tolerance for loneliness, becoming depressed and apathetic. The presence of a companion from another species often allows the Laymaran to tolerate loneliness better, but the depression and lethargy in most cases does not completely disappear. The Laymaran are most often seen in small groups of three to five individuals.

Rational thinking has led to a near total absence of artistic creativity, which led to a very strong culture shock when the Laymarans began to learn about the culture of the rest of the Alliance. The belief that logic and rationality should remain paramount had been severely undermined by the aftermath of the Great Mistake, so it was not too surprising that ideas of artistic irrationality began to take root and flourish in Laymaran culture, especially among the young. The strongest impact was on music - unlike other areas of creativity, their civilization had no musical instruments at all before joining the Alliance, and the idea of creating melodic sound combinations pleasing to the ear literally took over the minds of almost all Laymarans.

There are conflicting opinions on this matter within the Alliance itself. Many argue that the alliance has made a big mistake and an alien culture is now gradually changing and destroying the Laymaran culture, which is a very clear indication of the validity of the ban on establishing contact with immature species that have not mastered at least interplanetary travel, while others believe that this is not a catastrophe, and in any case, with no intervention civilization Laymaran would have a very long and very painful sunset.