Heptapods
The Heptapods are the first alien species humanity has established contact with and has remained in close contact, which is relatively easy, as they are living on four, technically five, of the icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn.
However, rather then a single species, the term 'Heptapod' is used to describe a number of subspecies that have evolved from a common ancestor over the past 1.75 million years in the unique environments of the sub surface oceans of Europa, Callisto, Ganymede, Titan and Enceladus.
Appearance & Biology¶
Heptapods are an aquatic species, with a seven fold rotational symmetry. They have the general appearance of Earth squid, but with seven arms and seven eyes at the base of each arm. Each arm ends in four smaller tendrils, allowing them fine manipulation abilities, comparable to humans and other species. They have a similar skin structure to squids, with large chromatophores that allow them to blend in with their environment, and are their primary means of communication.
Internally, their brains are, like in squids, a torus shaped structure surrounding their seven beaked mouth parts, which means that they will get a 'headache' when eating to large objects.
This general appearance is shared across the heptapod sub-species, with variations between the sub-species.
Their size and life-expectancy also differs between the sub-species.
Procreation¶
Heptapods are bi-gendered species, where the females lay a bundle of ten to twenty eggs, with the males fertilising them with their sperm, externally of the females body. Other then Earth squid, the males and females survive their procreation and are responsible of caring and bringing up their spawn, which hatches after about two hundred days, fully formed, able to feed themselves and about 15 cm in length.
History¶
Historically, the ancestors of today's heptapods arrived at Sol 1.75 million years ago, to hide from a currently unknown mortal enemy that is likely extinct by now. Being an aquatic species, they settled down on the sub-surface oceans of the icy moon mentioned above, setting up 'perfect environments', where they lives, overseen by AIs, today's Heptapod Cities. The perfect environment and the lack of external evolutionary pressure to retain their sentience lead to evolution coming into effect and the Heptapods looking their full sentience, which in turn lead to various reactions from their AI overseers. These reactions varied from icy moon to icy moon.
Enceladus¶
On Enceladus, the reaction of the AIs was extreme, as the AIs blamed the perfect environment, and decided to enact extreme measures to rebuild and retain their charges full sentience. The sub-surface of Enceladus was more limited that that of the other icy moons and so, they began to vie for the limited resources, creating new evolutionary pressures.
War between the Enceladan Cities broke out, killing Heptapods en mass and creating a new environment that lead to the new raise of full sentience. However, the way this evolutionary pressure was enacted created a new Heptapod sub-species for every City, which had a genetic xenophobia and heavy aggression.
The nearly constant war continues to this day and of the initially thousand Cities, only 22 had survived to 2067, when a Titanian subterre breached the ice shield of Enceladus and managed to contact one AI city, only to be destroyed soon after. By 2156, the number had dropped to 21 Cities and it believed that the war will continue until only a single City survives, after which is is expected that the Heptapods of the city will either loose their sentience again, or will turn one each other, destroying the last of the Enceladan Cities.
Europa¶
On Europa, the panic was less extreme, but the AIs of the Cities used a similar tactic. With more space and resources compared to Enceladus, they took complete control over society and began mandatory breeding programs to retain full sentience, giving them some time to plan. This lead them to completely restructure their society and using the memory of the external enemy to create an external evolutionary pressure.
This resulted in a tightly controlled stratified society with an oppressed and exploited underclass, and a privileged class of priests and nobles that worshipped the AIs as gods. There was a military build up, with short artificial 'conflicts' against 'the enemy', which was little more then the Europan military fighting amongst themselves, while other times they brutally oppressed the underclass.
Upon contact with humanity and the Titanian Heptapods, the Europan Cities, pushed their propaganda against the new visitors, destroying any vehicle or probe pushing into the Europan ocean, while never straying above the Europan surface.
Callisto¶
On Callisto, the AIs fell into abject despair over the loss of sentience of their charges, something they were unable to get out of. They fell into massive depressions, telling themselves again and again that they could not do anything. Some of the AI cities went insane and destroyed themselves, some deactivated their higher functions, becoming animalistic themselves. Currently, only twenty of the AI cities have something resembling intelligence, but it is hard to make any sense of what they are saying, as they have fallen too far.
Meanwhile the now animalistic Hepapods exploded evolutionary into the new biological niches that existed, creating a diverse ecosystem in the Callistan ocean.
Ganymede¶
On Ganymede, the events of Callisto repeated themselves, but the AIs never fully fell into despair. Instead, they sought out to raise their charges back up to sentience, after the animalistic offspring had exploded into a high bio-diversity.
About 1.1 million years ago, this lead to the evolution of a new Heptapod species heptapoda sapiens ganymedis, which naturally saw the AIs as their gods. The Ganymedan AIs took charge, but rather then the Europan AIs, decided on a more benevolant control over their charges, providing them with different forms of challenges, creating an almost utopian society of artists, philosophers and adventurers, unchanging and stable, as the AIs ensures that knowledge would get lost over time.
The Ganymedan AIs are open for communication, but prefer to remain separate from the rest of the solar system.
Titan¶
Like it happened on Callisto and Ganymede, the Heptapods fell from full sapience and diversified evolutionary, which almost lead to the Titanian AIs to fall into the same depression as the Callistan AIs.
Like on Ganymede, another sentient Heptapod species arose about 1.2 million years ago, but the Titanian AIs repeated their mistake, trying to coddle their new charges, while trying to use breeding to retain this newly risen sentience. They failed.
Almost falling into a harder despair then even the Callistan AIs, they almost missed the second reemergence of sentience with heptapoda sapiens titanis. This allowed the Titanians to develop mostly idependently, which made the Titanian AIs remain in a less controlling role, allowing the Titanians to develop mostly on their own. The AIs only stepped in as partners and mentors to the Titanians, never more.
This makes the Titanians full contemporaries of humanity, as they rose to sentience around the same time. There are some groups of humanity that see the Titanians as some sort of sibling in the outer system.
Contact with humanity and Post Contact¶
First contact with the Heptapods was established in 2004, with the Huygens-Cassini probe to Saturn and the landing of Cassini on Titan, while Huygens did a flyby of the moon.
The Titanai had already used radio astronomy to listen in on Earth media, allowing them the Titanai AIs to translate human language for the Titanai, and knew when the Huygens-Cassini mission would reach Saturn. They prepared their first orbital launch vehicle to launch exactly when Huygens passed by Titan, allowing the launch to be captured by the probe as it made images of the moon.
This was followed by radio contact on the same frequencies that Cassini used to talk to Huygens, transmitting their first contact message. The first Titanai satellite also transmitted to Earth, allowing NASA, ESA and SETI to confirm that the source of the signal came from Titan.
Subsequently, humanity established a permanent contact with the Titanai, including a cultural exchange. A side effect of this cultural exchange was the transmission of novels of all kinds, with the Titanai AIs taking a liking to the Culture novels by Iain M. Banks, deciding that for ease of communication, they would call themselves 'Minds', and used names similar to the novels 'Minds' to refer to themselves when contacting humans.
During the early 2020s, the Titanai launched a number of probes to the Saturnian moons, discovering the Enceladans. These missions were followed in the late 2020s by missions to the Gallilean moons and the discovery of the other Heptapod populations there.
During the 2030s, the Titanai Minds supported the development of Earth's space elevators, while the Titanians themselves used the human concept of the 'tethered ring' to establish their own cheap orbital lift.
Population numbers¶
| Icy Moon | Subspecies | Population |
|---|---|---|
| Enceladus | varies | <10 million |
| Europa | heptapoda sapiens europa | 550-600 million |
| Callisto | N.A. | N.A. |
| Ganymede | heptapoda sapiens ganymedis | 125-150 million |
| Titan | heptapoda sapiens titanis | 1.3 billion |