Laymaran

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Typical Representative

One of the smallest civilizations in the Alliance, the laymaran are vividly social warm-blooded creatures that are accustomed to a relatively low atmospheric pressure. Their society, which was once a high-tech one, collapsed due to the short-sightedness of the laymaran (which they dubbed the Great Mistake), after which they slipped into a primitive existence, and only by a happy coincidence did the Alliance understand that they needed help.
'Average height' - 170-210 cm.
'Estimated life expectancy' - 70 ± 30 years.
'Average weight' - 80-90 kg

Brief History

The laymaran originates in the Lime Ita's secluded solar system, away from the main star clusters. The system consists of a red dwarf and four planets revolving around it, two of which are gas giants. The remaining two planets were in the zone of the life of their star, but the life of the smog originated only on the second of them. As a species and as a civilization, laymarans originates from omnivorous herd creatures that appeared about four billion years after the birth of life on the planet. The birthplace of laymaran had a rather thin atmosphere and was not too rich in rare-earth elements. The situation left its imprint on the laymaran, forcing them to be prudent and logical. Herd instincts contributed to this, with the evolution of rationality transformed into a non-leader society, strongly reminiscent of a democratic one. In the end, the laymaran reached a level of development that allowed them to bring artificial objects into orbit of the planet. Lymamar didn’t have its own moon, and the nearest planet was a gas giant. Launching several scientific stations into space, the laymaran recognized the further exploration of space as unprofitable, illogical, and therefore meaningless, almost completely abandoning this branch of development, only occasionally launching fresh satellites into orbit.

This could not be a bigger mistake.

After a relatively short period of time, having reached quite impressive achievements in applied sciences, it was discovered that the reserves of fossil elements were almost depleted, the number of people is growing at an alarming rate and, according to forecasts, a collapse of the industry was inevitable. The laymaran, as quickly as their inert social system allowed, threw all their strength into finding a way out of a desperate situation. They again turned their attention to the prospects for space exploration and, in particular, the sending of a research ship to detect minerals on the first planet of their system. However, it was too late. The laymaran had only an automated probe for primary scanning released into space (although in size, this probe could well have been called a full-fledged ship). Just at that moment, the hour "X" came. Extraction of fuel and useful elements from depleted fields crossed the line, and at that moment became unprofitable, demanding more resource costs than was extracted during production. Society quickly began to rapidly fall into chaos. As alternative sources of energy were not able to meet the needs of civilization, the industry choked and fell apart, and the economy and civilization collapsed soon afterwards. All the conditions for a civilization to function were violated and a famine arose, which the planet had never seen equal - more than nine billion laymarans lived on Limara at that moment, and the hydroponic farms relying on industry and chemical reagents were unable to feed even a third of this population. Despair, panic and chaos staged a real apocalypse on the planet, civilization rolled back in its development back to the Middle Ages, and many ordinary technologies and almost all high-tech technologies and fields of science were lost forever. The man-made disasters that inevitably followed the collapse of the industry only added to an already gloomy situation. And the laymaran was no longer able to get the resources to restore its former greatness. The planet plunged into dark ages, in which even ordinary iron was the most valuable substance, that threatened to last forever.

In such a mournful state, a research expedition from the Alliance stumbled across the laymaran civilization after fifteen hundred years (Laimar orbits its star in a rather small orbit, so the standard time of the Alliance was only 250 years) after the Great Mistake. Initially, they were taken for a primitive civilization, which had not yet achieved sufficient advancement for going into space (and therefore also for contacting the Alliance), but by studying the dwarf system more carefully, the researchers were surprised to find that an automatic probe of the unknown way flying around the first planet of the system. The reconnaissance vehicle, built by the laymarans a quarter of a millennium ago, was built with a fair amount of reliability and autonomy since all civilization had pinned its hopes on it. It was planned that the probe would try to reach one of the satellites of the gas giant in case the planet failed to recover, but this command did not come, so the machine continued to cut circles around the first planet as part of the automatic program by the time the Alliance discovered its fuel supply for monthly orbit corrections. After studying the probe, the researchers came to the conclusion that it was built by a civilization that had survived the collapse, and which apparently was now living on the second planet of the system. More careful research has shown that the writing on the probe was practically the same as the writing used on laymare. The Council of the Alliance decided that this civilization needed to be saved, so the contact was still made. A painful fifty years followed, during which the nature and ecology of the long-suffering planet were restored, as well as the technological and scientific level of the laymaran. Those took the aliens from the sky as saviors, initially mistaking them for gods. Efforts of enlightening of the laymarans soon bore results though, and soon the laymaran could, to some extent, restore their former greatness and go to the stars. Logical, consistent and prudent laymaran have proven themselves in the Alliance as managers, logisticians, economists, and salespeople who do their job well, although it was very unusual even for the Alliance that several people worked in the same workplace. Nowadays, the Lyranian civilization are still in the recovery stage — their home planet is no longer able to support a highly developed civilization and, although the laymaran has colonies in other systems, they are still not sufficiently developed for autonomy, so the laymaran are completely dependent on the Alliance's supplies at the moment. Studies of the ruins suggest that, before the collapse of civilization, the science and technology of the laymaran was at the level of technology of the Alliance (which in itself is quite impressive if we take into account that the Lyme Ita system is one of those that have no traces of the presence of Ancients), and that they will be able to reach this level in the next fifty or seventy standard years.

Biology

Laymarans are warm-blooded, are about 190 cm tall, and have a dry, veiny and thin build. The rarefied atmosphere of the home planet required a large volume of lungs, with the chest was disproportionately wide compared to the rest of the body because of this. The skin color is pale yellow, with variation to pale red and light olive. Two opposed fingers on the four-fingered hand have sufficient flexibility and development of fine motor skills to produce the majority of precise manipulations. On their world, a laymaran sees with a quadricular vision that has an impressive ability to distinguish very small objects at fairly large distances and determine the distance to them. On the top and back of the skull, extending to the middle of the back, they have thick hair that is usually black or dark green, although there are occasionally individuals with a fairly light green hair shade. The laymaran's physical abilities are not impressive - more often they seem skinny, if not rickety. Although their hind and middle legs have adequate strength, their arms are rather weak. Laymarans are technically herbivorous and 80% of their diet is plant food, however they have no difficulty or express disgust when absorbing and eating food of animal origin. The biosphere of their home planet is not particularly rich in animal life, about 90% of all species living on the planet are plants and insects, so the proportion of meat in their diet is minimal.

Military doctrine

At the moment, the laymaran do not have an army. Before the collapse of civilization, the army was developed relatively weakly, since the laymaran was rarely resorted to war, believing that it was not the most rational way of solving problems that threatened an unjustifiably large expenditure of resources.

State system

The laymaran are traditionally governed by a similar to the democratic structure of society, where important issues are resolved by voting, discussing and choosing the most logical option with as many participants as possible. Over time, population growth and the merging and complication of communities made the “popular vote” difficult, so the system was divided into a sequence of cell steps from a limited number of citizens discussing the need. After a decision was made, a random laymaran from several cells is collected in the cell of the following sequence, in which the cell variants are compared, the adoption of the most logical solutions from the proposed solutions was taken and then the whole cycle was repeated anew, until sufficient to form only one cell of the discussion. The exact amount of a laymaran in a cell varies from community to community, but is kept within the limit of 5-20 individuals. The system is slow, inert and unhurried, but due to the absence of leaders and leadership positions (any laymaran may be in the highest discussion cell, the choice of a “candidate” for promotion to the next level is carried out either randomly or again by general vote), as well as their gregarious nature ancestors, in which there was no hierarchical struggle for the position of the leader, proved to be the most logical and efficient in the eyes of the laymaran. Moreover, the development of remote communication technologies has allowed them to collect cell advice much more quickly than before.

Society (general mentality, special features)

Due to their past, the laymarans have a rather weakly expressed independence and self-sufficiency; a person who is new to this civilization may even be under impression that they are completely lacking in initiative and will simply do whatever they are told. For most laymarans, they need a preliminary discussion of options with at least one other laymaran for making a decision. Laymarans do not understand the concept and meaning of the existence of a hierarchical society and consider such management ineffective and even hindering 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 hierarchically organized society allows you to make important decisions much faster than their own.
The laymaran also very poorly tolerate loneliness, often falling into depression and apathy. The presence of an interlocutor from another species often allows the laymaran to endure loneliness better, but the depression and lethargy do not completely disappear in most cases. Most often, laymarans can be seen in small groups of three to five people. The rationality of thinking led to the almost complete absence of artistic creativity, which led to a very strong cultural shock when the laymaran began to get acquainted with the culture of the rest of the Alliance members. The belief that logic and rationality should remain the main thing was greatly undermined by the consequences of the Great Mistake, so it is not too surprising that the ideas of artistic creativity began to take root and flourish in the culture of laymaran very quickly, especially among young people. Music had the strongest impact - unlike other areas of creativity, their civilization did not know about musical instruments before joining the Alliance, and the idea of ​​creating melodic sound combinations that were pleasant to hear captured the minds of almost all laymarans. On that note, conflicting opinions emerged in the Alliance itself. Many argue that the Alliance has made a big mistake and the alien culture is now gradually changing and destroying the culture of the laymaran, which very clearly shows the validity of the ban on contacting immature species that have not mastered at least interplanetary travel. Others believe that this is not a catastrophe and that in any case, if they didn't interfere, the laymaran civilization would have expected nothing but a very long and very painful sunset ahead of them.