Napean
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The Napeans are a humanoid species hailing from the planet Napea. They strike outsiders as dour and reticent. As a race, they are still grappling with their empathic powers, which they gained only recently in their evolution. Without intending to, they read the emotions of others. This makes them cautious about revealing their feelings to non-empaths, as they worry that they may be tainted by things they are not supposed to know. Their language is Napea, a choppy, harsh-sounding language and they favor short names that end in vowel sounds.
Physiology
Napeans are humanoids with putty-colored skin and a large, leaf-shaped bone ridge that runs down from the crown of their high foreheads to the top of the nose. A tiny, egg-shaped organ near the base of the brain, created as a mutation by an experiment in genetic engineering, receives empathic signals and communicates them to the brain proper.
History
Napea was once a hostile place for advanced life forms. Volatile weather and geology made natural catastrophes frequent occurrences. The idea that Nature is an enemy to be fought and tamed has therefore been part of the Napeans' collective consciousness since their prehistory. When their race came of age technologically, mastering their environment became both a possibility and an urgent priority. Within a century, they mastered sophisticated terraforming and weather control techniques that would make their past hardscrabble life a distant memory.
As the prosperity that came with an absolutely stable environment settled in, however, so did widespread boredom. With the struggle for basic survival no longer an outlet for their energies, it seemed that Napeans began to turn on each other out of sheer anomie. In their major cities, rioting and other violent crime became common past times, especially among the young.
At this point, scientist Iwane Opuh began investigating mutated pathogens as a way of modifying their behavior to, in effect, "cure" violence. Opuh developed a virus that caused a mutation in the Napean genetic structure; this mutation produced an organ embedded in the brain that granted them empathic ability. If Napeans were forced to understand how others felt, he reasoned, they would stop killing each other. In 2216, without prior approval from any higher authority, Opuh released his creation into the air, forcing his designed mutation on the planet's entire population.
Not all Napeans approved of Opuh's action and he went into hiding soon thereafter, never to be heard from again. But it worked. All Napean children born since then have empathic ability, and Napean society quickly stabilized to the point where their political and scientific development could resume. In 2290 Napean scientists developed warp drive, and in 2320 they became members of the Federation.
Society
Napeans still grapple with Iwane Opuh's double-edged gift to them. While their empathic powers have forged social stability, they also struggle to suppress negative emotions and embarrassing feelings. This is quite impossible among their own kind, but they try anyway, since absolute emotional transparency has a way of straining familial and social relationships.
Their history has taught Napeans to place great faith in advanced technology as a way to solve serious problems. Having learned to see the natural world as hostile, they don't understand conservationist objections to re-sculpting their environment. However, the idea of genetically altering life forms appalls them; this, too, stems from their collective history. They feel deep ambivalence toward Iwane Opuh's legacy, and their popular culture has turned him into an almost supernatural figure. No firm reports of his death have ever surfaced, and rumors exist that he invented an immortality elixir and yet lives. Dozens of sightings of Opuh are reported every year, although most are pure hoaxes and the rest are otherwise dubious.
Reference(s)
- Bridges, Bill, et al. Star Trek Roleplaying Game Book 5: Aliens, Decipher, 2003. ISBN: 1582369070.