Anomalies

Anomalies are humans (or individuals of other sapient races) that have naturally occurring mutations. Not to be confused with Post-humans whose genetic alterations are intentional.

History
As humanity spread across the deep black it began to change in many ways for many different reasons. Most humans are genetically the same as they were ten or more centuries ago, but anomalous genetic traits weren’t unheard of in the days when humanity was still restricted to earth. As human populations have expanded far beyond what was possible for one world to sustain, and these populations are exposed to a much larger array of factors that can contribute to the birth of new genetic anomalies, some of these anomalies even giving people seemingly super-human abilities.

People with Super-Human abilities that are achieved through natural mutation are called “anomalies”, they do not exist in any numbers large enough for any prejudices to have formed against them or for there to be much scientific notice of them, in fact most scientists outright deny the existence of super-powered anomalies (while accepting more benign anomalies). The first recorded and most well known anomaly was blue hair, one child on the ship that colonized the planet “Wolf Red” and its moon “Wolf Blue” was born with this mutation, and now the blue haired humans of the Wolf 359 system are considered a distinct ethnic group.

Science
Benign anomalous attributes are typically superficial, pigmentation, digit number, and eye number are thought to be the most common. Anomalous abilities will often go unnoticed unless they cause a negative effect, known anomalous abilities include minor radiokenesis, effective empathy, superior endurance, and extremely durable bones. These are only examples, there are far too many reported anomalies to list them all. Because of the nature of these anomalies there are often downsides in their biology, strong-boned anomalies often have extreme skeletal deformities or bone spurs for example, and radiokenetic anomalies have difficulty handling electronic devices.

Evolution is a difficult, slow, and messy process. The genes that cause these anomalies are more often than not diluted in subsequent generations passing on only a fraction of the original mutations ability, ultimately this helps the evolutionary process slowly degrade the negative aspects of these mutations. Scientists do not believe that even a small fraction of human mutations will contribute to humanities overall genetic progress, but there has been some talk in the scientific community of gathering anomalies to help them build communities as to better further their evolutionary process, these talks have never amounted to anything more than being hypothetical.

Known Anomalies

 * Nuke