A note on the Schism.
It may seem a little confusing, the way I'm writing this out. There are A'Tarans who are spacers, and then there are some who are of a sword-and-bow culture. I've tried to explain this in-character in the History thread, but here's the basic notion so it doesn't confuse.
There is only one race of A'Tarans. They originated millenia ago, far across the multiverse, and their culture advanced far above where we are now in the 21st century. They had a devastating war with the ancestors of the human empires, and as a result were nearly driven to extinction and saw their homeworld burn.
The ancestors of the A'Tarans fled in great ships, across the universe, searching for a new home. Along the way, one of those ships was lost to the twists of fate that faster-than-light travel offers. That ship ultimately found a backwater world, far from anything, and its crew and passengers managed to survive by going back to basics.
Over the generations, the memories of their origins faded, as they did their best to survive first and foremost. They forgot who and what they had been, and those origins among the stars became myth and legend.
In starting over, these "Imperial" A'Tarans formed an empire, and a new culture almost from scratch, supplemented by scraps of traditions and language saved from their history. They rediscovered secrets of ironworking, of farming, of building and so on. And so the Empire thrived, while out among the stars their brethren continued to build on their spacefaring culture. And neither side knew the other existed. They still don't.
Though, that's gradually changing. Spacers, daring to interact with other cultures, have made it as far as Star's End Bar. And on the other hand, as you will see in the history of the Great War, the Empire also managed to breach the Nexus and find their way to Rhydin as well.
The "Galactic" A'Tarans are the (for lack of a better term) 'main' race, in terms of my thinking. They are much more like their ancestors, much less tolerant of other races. The ones who come to Rhydin, ironically, are the 'crazy' ones who DO usually get along with other races. It's very unlikely you will see one of the traditionalists in live play. They do not go where other races walk.
The more primitive "Imperial" A'Tarans are the offshoot, the lost colony if you will. They had their first contact with another race when they found a stable portal to Rhydin (for that first contact and what came of it, see the "The Imperial A'Tarans: Their History and The War" thread), and in the few decades since then, have been slowly starting to accept other races. In this sense, the Imperial A'Tarans by and large are already more open and broad-minded in their thinking than their ancestors or their descendants out in the galaxy.
It's inevitable that the two sides will eventually meet. That day will be interesting.
