Also known as The High Race, the Daamin are small in number and stature, peaceful and philosophic. Physically, they most resemble meter-high rabbits. The Daamin were one of the original Seven Races of the Pylistroph.
When the Gergathan proclaimed Mertorthar c. 1.2 billion BCE, many of the Daamin refused to yield allegiance to the repressive new government. Led by the Elder Ashli Sicne, and accompanied by many of their friends, several million Daamin fled to the Scattered Worlds, where they established a new home on the planet Nephestal. This event became known as The Flight of the Daamin. One of the Singing Stones was destroyed in the Flight.
The Flight of the Daamin was a central event in Daamin history. Even though a billion years of slow evolution permanently sundered the exiles from those who remained behind, the Daamin of Nephestal never forgot their lost home, and never stopped longing for the star-crowded skies of the Core.
To the Terran Empire, the Daamin are known as the Kien Khwei. In the Scattered Worlds, the Daamin are often referred to as The Elders.
The titular head of the Daamin race is referred to as The Senior. The ruling council of the Daamin is referred to as The Wise.
The Daamin spend a large part of their lives in an alternate mental state called Forever Dreams, a state of nonlinear causality. Natural intitutive mathematicians, they constantly extrapolate and visualize possible futures, readjusting their visualization with each change in the environment. The Daamin see every person/place/thing in the world overlaid with possible future versions, a constantly-shifting kaleidoscope of predictive visions.
To the Daamin, some things are relatively stable and in focus: physical landscape features, buildings, anything motionless; also periodic or easily-predictable events. More fuzzy are living beings and things in chaotic motion; these tend to blur or smear.
Usually, it takes great concentration for a Daamin to leave the Forever Dreams anbd become exclusively aware of the world of the present. Those who can focus on the present to such a degree that they can deal with other races, are usually considered unstable or even mad by other Daamin.
The touch of other sapient beings is a source of discomfort and even pain for the Daamin, and they will take even extreme measures to avoid being touched. Throughout the Scattered Worlds, there is a strong taboo against touching one of the Daamin. Which is a pity, as their fur is so fine and beautiful that the impulse to stroke it is almost irresistable.
Daamin reproduction resembles a Greek tragedy crossed with the mating of fish and played out backwards over several years. Basically, one Daam drops an unfertilized egg. Years earlier another Daam, figuring out exactly where the egg will be dropped, arranges to have it fertilized at some time after it is dropped. Both the egg and the fertilizing material are carried by any of several intermediate lower animals.
The whole thing rather seems like a large-scale chess game, and is further complicated by the fact that the Daamin are female most of the time, and only develop the ability to fertilize or drop eggs under certain conditions -- conditions which vary with the individual and the tribe.
Nowadays it's all done with machines anyway, but primitive Daamin versions of Romeo and Juliet probably sounded more like Tristram Shandy.
copyright (c) 2008, Don Sakers
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