Terranovan Centaurs

A crude but efficient bioengineered race of the UNTN, designed to survive the hazards of nuclear apocalypse.

Basic Information

Anatomy

On the surface, centaurs are as their name suggests - a human body from the stomach up, married to a horse's body from the neck down. Of note are the slightly narrow cloven hooves, which are in fact blunt and durable claws. Internally, the internal makeup of the centaur is significantly altered and shows signs of both rationalisation and redundancy. An extended and unified digestive tract runs the length of both bodies, developed to wring nutrition out of almost anything. High-volume primary and responsive secondary lungs are partially specialised but can provide survival if one set fails, much like the secondary and tertiary hearts. Internal processes isolate and cage heavy metals imbibed by the centaur and shunt them to out-of-skin storage, namely the hair and tail. This can provide dramatic shifts in hair colour, especially iridescent colours, as the unusually thick hair fibres contain entrapped metallic residues.

Genetics and Reproduction

Genetic alteration of Terranovan centaurs is a poorly understood process, oweing to the loss of all documentation when the bombs fell. In fact, it isn't known who actually developed the virus that created the centaurs, and centaurs are found roughly evenly (if not frequently) throughout the UNTN. Alterations occurred first by releasing a retroviral agent that implanted a supply of junk DNA into random segments of the population. With war imminent, an energency release of a viral activation agent provided a trigger and reset the junk DNA to active. Mana use among centaurs is unusually common, implying they have been altered by unknown means to ensure better or more ready control of Terranovan magic. Offspring of a human and centaur are viable, but the child is always a centaur (births can be extremely difficult).

Growth Rate & Stages

Conventionally, and on a suitable diet, a Terranovan centaur has no more body mass than a comparable human and sometimes appears spare and childlike in proportions. However with a large enough food supply, they can grow to human proportions and (in rare cases) slightly beyond.

Genetic Ancestor(s)