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Description
After the invention of the Zero Point drive, the human race rapidly spread out across the stars, from the solar hub to the fringworlds. However, space is a hostile place, and habitable worlds are quite rare. As a result, many new variants of humanity have emerged, modifying themselves in order to survive the strange, alien environments they find themselves in… or sometimes just for fun. Pictured here are but a small sample of variant human subspecies…

Titanian: Corpulent, furry human variant adapted to extremely cold environments; initially developed to better withstand the harsh conditions of Titan, Saturn’s icy moon, but have since spread to other frozen worlds; typically inhabit pressurized underground tunnel cities carved into the ice.

Spaceborne: Tall, lanky variant with prehensile feet and tails, optimized for life in microgravity; one of the oldest variant groups, created during the earliest days of the first interstellar age; designed to live aboard long-distance exploration/colonization vessels.
(Artist’s note: these folks are heavily influenced by jayeatonart ‘s tailed spacers - go check out their stuff, it’s awesome!)

Rock Rats: Another early variant designed to live and work in the asteroid belt; short, stocky bodies built for navigating the narrow ducts, crawlspaces, and passageways common aboard mining vessels, as well as the labyrinthine tunnels of their hollowed-out asteroid homes; “rock rat” is a colloquial term, originally derogatory but has since been reclaimed.

Voidwalkers: Highly-modified variant designed to survive in the vacuum of space for extended periods of time; originally created by a dubiously-ethical megacorp to serve as an orbital labor force; have since gone on to form their own society of nomadic spacefaring clans, offering their unique services to ships and stations in need.

Vamps: A collective of eccentric horror fiction enthusiasts who deliberately bio-modded themselves to resemble their favorite imaginary bloodsuckers; long-lived, sensitive to sunlight, crave the taste of blood; actually pretty harmless, as they tend to subsist on synthetic blood substitutes.
(Artist’s note: apparently its a weirdly common thing for vampires to inexplicably show up in otherwise grounded hard-sf settings, so I decided to jump on the bandwagon!)

SmartPets: Bipedal canine uplifts with trace amounts of human DNA, available in a wide variety of species; created and sold by a division of the same megacorp as the voidwalkers; designed to be the ultimate domestic companion; infamously advertised with the tagline “man’s best friend just got better.”

Description
After the invention of the Zero Point drive, the human race rapidly spread out across the stars, from the solar hub to the fringworlds. However, space is a hostile place, and habitable worlds are quite rare. As a result, many new variants of humanity have emerged, modifying themselves in order to survive the strange, alien environments they find themselves in… or sometimes just for fun. Pictured here are but a small sample of variant human subspecies…

Titanian: Corpulent, furry human variant adapted to extremely cold environments; initially developed to better withstand the harsh conditions of Titan, Saturn’s icy moon, but have since spread to other frozen worlds; typically inhabit pressurized underground tunnel cities carved into the ice.

Spaceborne: Tall, lanky variant with prehensile feet and tails, optimized for life in microgravity; one of the oldest variant groups, created during the earliest days of the first interstellar age; designed to live aboard long-distance exploration/colonization vessels.
(Artist’s note: these folks are heavily influenced by jayeatonart ‘s tailed spacers - go check out their stuff, it’s awesome!)

Rock Rats: Another early variant designed to live and work in the asteroid belt; short, stocky bodies built for navigating the narrow ducts, crawlspaces, and passageways common aboard mining vessels, as well as the labyrinthine tunnels of their hollowed-out asteroid homes; “rock rat” is a colloquial term, originally derogatory but has since been reclaimed.

Voidwalkers: Highly-modified variant designed to survive in the vacuum of space for extended periods of time; originally created by a dubiously-ethical megacorp to serve as an orbital labor force; have since gone on to form their own society of nomadic spacefaring clans, offering their unique services to ships and stations in need.

Vamps: A collective of eccentric horror fiction enthusiasts who deliberately bio-modded themselves to resemble their favorite imaginary bloodsuckers; long-lived, sensitive to sunlight, crave the taste of blood; actually pretty harmless, as they tend to subsist on synthetic blood substitutes.
(Artist’s note: apparently its a weirdly common thing for vampires to inexplicably show up in otherwise grounded hard-sf settings, so I decided to jump on the bandwagon!)

SmartPets: Bipedal canine uplifts with trace amounts of human DNA, available in a wide variety of species; created and sold by a division of the same megacorp as the voidwalkers; designed to be the ultimate domestic companion; infamously advertised with the tagline “man’s best friend just got better.”