El-Aurian
|
| ||||||||||||||
The El-Aurians are a widely traveled people who have spread themselves across many parts of the galaxy. The Borg destroyed the El-Aurian homeworld in the late 23rd century as part of an attempt to destroy the race. The Federation has never determined why the Borg sought to destroy this race instead of assimilating it, theorizing that the El-Aurians pose some sort of real threat to the cybernetic collective. While some think this might have to do with the El-Aurian time sense, others note that Borg hostilities lessened after destroying the El-Aurian homeworld. This would imply that the Borg feared the El-Aurians as a group, not as a scattered race, or that some property of the El-Aurian homeworld itself was a danger to the collective.
Personality
The El-Aurians have a reputation as a race of listeners. Listening, to the El-Aurians, is an active process. Good listeners learn to draw out their conversation partners, getting past expressed concerns to unearth fundamental difficulties. Good listeners rarely solve other people's problems, instead helping them to find their own solutions. These traits combine with the El-Aurians' natural sense of the ebb and flow of spacetime to make a placid, observant race that harmoniously watches the goings-on of the universe without feeling a driving need to control or shape the galaxy around them. El-Aurians follow in the wake of destiny, and while they may not create great things, they are almost always present at important beginnings.
The El-Aurian talent for listening may well stem from their exceptionally long lives. A very healthy and robust race, El-Aurians live well in excess of 700 human years. While one might think that in that time they had heard it all, El-Aurians find other people's problems and situations endlessly fascinating. They usually have a wealth of experience from which to draw, and they look forward to the chance to add more.
Some also say that the El-Aurian's fabled loneliness contributes to their ability and desire to listen. The Borg destroyed the El-Aurian homeworld in the late 23rd century, scattering the race throughout the galaxy. El-Aurians rarely gather in large numbers any more, and some believe they do this out of fear that another catastrophe could leave their race on the edge of extinction. Lacking companionship of their own kind, they seek out whatever camaraderie they can find. Becoming known as a good listener is an excellent way to gain new associates.
Just because El-Aurians willingly listen to those who come to them does not mean they take these people as friends, however. El-Aurians are friendly with many but friends with few. They have earned a reputation as great listeners, but they rarely reveal as much as they learn. Some people joke that the El-Aurians had to become great listeners since they almost never say anything. Even those people an El-Aurian claims as friends rarely learn much about her.
El-Aurians usually reserve their respect for those people who exhibit as much common sense as they do - a rare breed, considering most people do not have as long as El-Aurians do to learn from their mistakes. While El-Aurians can listen to anyone about anything, they demonstrate little tolerance for stupidity. Acting foolishly in their presence is a sure way to find oneself quietly shunned.
This intolerance for mistakes may also stem from their world's destruction. Though this happened in the 23rd century, even a hundred years later many El-Aurians remember it personally. Almost all the survivors lost friends and family in the destruction. This mass catastrophe left the race shaken and anxious, afraid of losing what they have left. It also contributed to their reticence at letting people close to them, since they have already lost so many people important to them. Any long-lived race faces this dilemma, since so many of their friends die before them, but the destruction of the El-Aurian homeworld made their losses that much more severe.
Many El-Aurians also manifest personality quirks that other races might term dementia. These include obsessing on individuals, seeking to recreate their pasts at any costs, and imaginary friends with whom they speak throughout their lives. Some people even refer to the El-Aurians' reticence at divulging information about themselves an obsession. No one knows whether these stem from the El-Aurians' part trauma, their long lives, or some other source.
Physiology
El-Aurians have so many similarities to humans that they successfully and covertly lived on Earth long before humanity realized it. Their height, weight, skin, musculature, skeletal structure, and even internal organs require that observers know about their differences before noticing them. El-Aurian evolution and genetic manipulation made all these more efficient, however, and contribute to their longevity.
El-Aurians rarely fall ill, and their bodies can survive years of abuse and hard living. Their immune systems seem almost intelligent, targeting only those foreign bodies that can actually hurt the El-Aurian and ignoring the benign ones. This also makes them more resistant to poisons, though by no means immune.
One significant El-Aurian difference comes in their time sense, which many consider a real "sixth sense." Not only can El-Aurians easily track the passage of time, but they can detect aspects of it invisible to other observers. They quickly become aware of disruptions in the flow of time, and, while they may not understand the nature of the problem, they can easily determine if they are getting closer to or farther from the disruption, both physically and temporally. Federation scientists do not understand the source of this sixth sense, nor have the El-Aurians allowed them to study it in depth, but it has revealed itself most prominently in individuals exposed to the nexus energy ribbon phenomenon.
History and Culture
The loss of the El-Aurian homeworld also destroyed most of their culture. They became a refugee race, traveling the galaxy in search of safety. Most of their art, industry, and history disappeared in the attack, causing a loss that xenopologits still bemoan. The El-Aurians scattered throughout the galaxy and now reside within the Federation, the Klingon Empire, and wherever they can find homes.
The destruction also manifested itself in other problems for the race. Many El-Aurians sought to escape back to their past, either recreating their old lives through holoprograms, using artificial means to forget, or even trying to change the course of time itself. Eventually, most realized the futility of such efforts, but some became obsessed. Other El-Aurians look on these demented few with pity made all the more personal by the realization that these fixations could have happened to any of them. Strangely, El-Aurians tend to treat their personality quirks as strengths, not character flaws. Such fixations and pastimes help to deal with an otherwise long and traumatic existence.
El-Aurians have little problem inserting themselves into new cultures, finding acceptance almost everywhere they go. Their wisdom and ability to lend an ear seem welcome among all cultures. El-Aurians adapt easily to their new homes, learning new ways and manners with ease. Their long lives also mean that they see cultural forces come and go, change and evolve, and either disappear as fads or stay as cultural norms. Changes barely phase them. Young El-Aurians inherit this detachment, emulating their elders' own indifference to fluctuations in society.
El-Aurians can even adapt to other cultures' family structures, though they tend to follow many of their own practices here. Since they live so long, few expect to have the same partners throughout their entire lives. El-Aurian women tend to have many children over the course of their lives, and they stay fertile for centuries. The destruction of El-Auria caused many women to try to have more children as a way to repopulate their culture, though the sorrow struck others so deeply that intimacy became a problem. They also lost the desire to bring more children into a universe that could manifest such horror.
Families do not hold the same importance to El-Aurians that they do for other races. Even the most dutiful child or loving sibling drifts away through the course of centuries, and few El-Aurians look to their families as their primary support structure. Nevertheless, El-Aurians take their family responsibilities very seriously, and most feel that they must pass their wisdom on to their children. At the very least, they have to teach them to listen well.
Most El-Aurians can still speak their common language, though they rarely get the chance any more. Most become so comfortable with whatever language dominates their new homes that they even stop thinking in El-Aurian, leading some to fear that El-Aurian may become a dead language in a couple centuries.
Reference(s)
- Bridges, Bill, et al. Star Trek Roleplaying Game Book 5: Aliens, Decipher, 2003. ISBN: 1582369070.