Sickleborns

You! Whose homeworld assumes the shape of a sickle. Your leaders have been vanquished and annihilated, and so will you if refuse to comply. In his boundless benevolence, our beloved emperor grants you your lives. Surrender all weapons, bow down to humanity's divine, the herald of order, and acknowledge him as your only sovereign. Only then your lesser species will be spared.

The Sickleborns are one of the two alien species assimilated in the human hegemony during the grand conquest, and the first to be subsided. Where his predecessors blindly annihilated to the last individual every enemy they crossed paths with, the divine supreme emperor Julian III viewed them as assets to his name. History remembered it as the magnanimous emperor who showed mercy to the people he subjugated.

Unrelenting labor

With strong muscles and tough skin, Sickleborns are ideal for works requiring strong labor. The war, and more so their defeat, broke their will and rendered them obedient to their human overlords. There is nothing left in the eyes of the dreaded warriors that ruled over a hundred systems and pushed back the conquering humanity for over a century.

Though they are technically citizens in the three human Domains, they are far from having similar rights. Parked in insalubrious buildings at the edge of the cities, they live in terrible conditions and are barely allowed to mingle in the main area. Thanks to their strength and resilience, they are primarily used at construction sites, to do ungrateful work or as technicians on dangerous space operations.

Rumengol via MidJourney by Sickleborn resting during a touch day of work

Culture erased

With the destruction of their homeworld, the Sickleborns lost most of their leaders and culture. Despite their large stellar territory, almost all their civilization concentrated in a single system was vaporized in an instant. What was left, their language, habits and oral culture, was thoroughly suppressed until no trace of it remains. Nowadays, the only records of Sickleborn's previous society are told from a human perspective, either an officer's diary or an exo-ethnologist paper.

The hardest was to get rid of their language. With underdeveloped vocal cords and a tongue way less flexible than a human's, they had a tough time learning the language of the empire and still taught theirs to their offspring. It was the last thing to go, millennia ago. They are now obedient, soulless workers who will never discuss an order or try to rebel against their masters.

The secret rebellion

Rumours have it that in secret, some SIckleborns are unionizing and making plans to overthrow the Domains and take back the place that was stolen from them so long ago. A faint hope of a brighter future, regularly repressed in fire and blood. No Domain is complacent with disobedience and any Sickleborn found guilty of plotting against a human, no matter how light the evidence, is sentenced to death.

What's in a name?

In the last months of the war against the Sicklerborns, the prototype of a new weapon was put to use on their homeworld during a heroic breakthrough. The Star Blaster, which would then be refined into the infamous Star Eater, was a gigantic vessel able to harness the power of a star and concentrate it into a laser of several kilometers in diameter. Even though the power output of this first test was deemed insufficient, it still disintegrated most of the Sickleborn's planet, ending life at its surface and the war in the span of a few seconds. What was left of this wounded planet had the vague shape of a sickle, with a melted core dripping into outer space.

As her spoils of war, the admiral of the fleet decided to change the name of both the planet and its former inhabitants. Out of spite or a personal vengeance, she humiliated the defeated by stripping them of their identity. The real name of the crescent-shaped Sickle and the Sickleborn that once inhabited it was lost to history, they are now tied to the perpetual remembrance that their home is no more.