Erma Felna | The Felna Family | Extraplanetary Defense Force and the ConFed | Independent Lepine Republic | Enchawah Corp. | Creators/Khai | Other Characters | Steve's Reality Check
Also known as Khai in the Albedo universe, and the most important figure(s) in the setting, along with The Net. The Creators are the precursor race treated as quasi-divine beings responsable to bring life of all the species and being responsable of the Awakening in the Planet Arras Chanka many centuries ago. No one knows who they are or why they decided to put many different races in a single place, and many scientists are trying to find any clue about who they really are.
At the half of the first Story Arc, Erma and her crew finds a mysterious ship who doesn't belong to any side of the war. With some help of some members of the Enchawah Corp. leaded by Dr. Elaki Kalahahaii, they found many odd objects inside it, including a book, later being revealed as a copy of Frankenstein and also the corpses of many human beings inside the ship, causing a shock in both the EDF and Enchawah Corp. as they possibly found out one of the biggest mysteries of all the story, leading a series of shocking events along the way.
This list only features canon characters, as Gallacci finally stated in 2018 that any other story written by other people involving them is not considered canon.
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Canon Tropes
- Abusive Precursors: Implied, albeit not outright confirmed: Assuming the Creators were either this or having good intentions, even if their methods could being seen as immoral, they don't had any problems on outright messing, and sometimes, destroying the lives of many people for the sake of science, and that included being indirect accomplices to the death of millions of living beings war victims produced by all sides involved, just in order to see their behavior and reactions.
- Alien Non-Interference Clause: The Creators seems to use some kind of version of this trope, since they use The Net to observe the anthropomorphic civilization from far away and without meddling in their affairs, until the whole deal with the derelict spaceship ruined their plans.
- All-Powerful Bystander: Heavily implied, as they're using The Net for supervising the whole civilization from a safe distance.
- Ancient Astronauts
- Ancient Conspiracy: It is more than obvious that such an amoral, dangerous and elaborate project can only work by keeping a very low profile for both the anthropomorphic cast and the rest of the human race, making this one of the most important plot points in the story.
- Artistic License – Biology: While is never fully explained in-story and also in Refractions, by
Word of God the anthropomorphics are technically genetic constructs, meaning they were created from scratch using human bases and adding animal features along the way by using genetic design. The storytelling handwaves this as the Creators seems to possess very advanced technology regarding this.- On the other hand Gallacci got it right by only using warm-blooded beings and excluding cold-blooded beings like lizards and insects, and also cetaceans and whales, because those beings requires special enviroments just to be able to survive.
- Creating Life: The entire point of the Creators is designing sapient life and stranding that life somewhere in the universe.
- Creating Life Is Bad: Basically, with the sole exceptions of the higher-ups behind the project, at least in the Refractions anthology, almost every human scientist involved in the project are disgusted by the unethical nature of the experiment.
- Creating Life Is Unforeseen: Sort of. While the Creators already designed the entire civilization from the start, on the other hand the way how the Species evolved without human help was completely unexpected, to the grade to even reverse-engineering Antimatter energy for using it as a Wave-Motion Gun.
- Easily Forgiven: Played a bit: The few people who knows about the true origins of the Creators Dr. Elaki Kalahahaii, Erma Felna and the top-brass of the three sides of the conflict don't see to hold a grudge against them in any way, and they seem to be more worried that their technology could fall on the wrong hands rather to trying to blame them from anything wrong that happened so far in the plot. This is especially egregious in Erma's case because much of her life was manipulated via The Net by possibly them.
- Expy: Taking into account the many references from both the films and the novels, it's very likely the Creators are based in the Precursors from The Space Odyssey Series including manipulating an entire civilization from far away and giving non-sentient beings intelligence by uncoventional means.
- Possibly not intentional, but the Creators also shares many points with the Protoculture from the Macross franchise, except if the whole plot was told from the POV of the Zentradi race, while the humans themselves are the Protoculture.
- Devil, but No God: Inverted in a weird way: According with the RPG games, the Creators (Khai) are considered as a positive force, since they were the ones who created the entire civilization in first place. While, at least in the second edition, there's a mention of a negative counterpart named "Kio", it was never dwelved in either the comic nor in the games, so the whole concept would had more in common with the Ying-Yang from Taoism, rather than the Abrahamic concept of God and Devil.
- A God Is You: In the meta sense, the entire human race, or at least the people behind the creation of the anthropomorphics.
- Gone Horribly Right: It's very possibly whatever plans the Creators had in mind, those plans didn't include the anthropomorphics becoming too much warlike and by the second Story Arc judging by the reaction The Net had after the EDF tested their Wave-Motion Gun by reverse-engineering the technology from the human spaceship, it seems the Creators very possibly panicked by the possibility the anthropomorphics developed a technology that can be used against them. This is even discussed by Word of God, as he agreeds that human arrogance is what caused this in first place.
- Humanity Is Advanced: It's heavily implied the technology of the human race is much advanced than anything the anthropomorphics have right now. Justified in many ways because they were the ones who created them in first place.
- Humans Are Cthulhu: The rest of the cast treats the Creators like this.
- Memory-Wiping Crew: In both official and not-so-official canons, the Creators wiped out the memories of all the anthropomorphics before leaving them in Arras Chanka.
- Powers That Be: Most of the cast treats them like this, since they don't have any clues about their identity.
- Precursors: They were the ones who put all the anthropomorphic beings in a single planet and their origin.
- Spanner in the Works: Ironically enough, their true identity is revealed because of one of their spaceships being destroyed due to an unforeseen accident with a comet, causing the ship to end in their space and being located by Erma's fleet.
- Thank the Maker: In some degree, except replace "maker" with "khai" instead. How they handle this varies between the ConFed and the ILR: The ConFed (and by default, the EDF and Enchawah Corp.) they treat the Creators mostly as revered beings, but doesn't go beyond that, while the ILR has their own flavor of them, named as the "Karantok's Tigers", who according with Word of God, they are not gods per se, but nothing more than glorified boogymen for the ILR Lepines.
- They Who Must Not Be Seen: They're exactly this until their identity is revealed at the half of the first arc.
- Uncertain Doom: They had even worse than the Felnas outside Erma regarding this, despite there's nothing in-universe that points out towards any definitive conclusion, and this is because Gallacci has changed his mind many times about what could had being about them. According with his most recent statement, there's the possibility mankind is now extinct, but there's any clue yet that point out to that direction. And considering what happened so far in Albedo: Birthright, maybe it was never solved in Erma's lifetime.
- Unknown Character: Even if we know the Creators are the human race, we know almost nothing about them and their real intentions other than they probably started to panic after witness the power of the EDF's Wave-Motion Gun.
- Walking Spoiler: Well, not exactly walking as they're already dead inside the ship, but they fit that role anyways. This is played straight in the Refractions anthology, since their exploits are explained with more detail.
- Xanatos Speed Chess: Thanks to The Net they can adjust their plans as quickly as possible if something goes wrong along the way, something that become useful when the EDF build the Matter Conversion Cannon and they basically had to change their plans if they want to live.
Canon Characters (SPOILERS!)
The Human Female Corpse
A human corpse found inside a destroyed spaceship wandering over the Ish-tako solar system by Dr. Elaki Kalahahaii and now in custody of the EDF. Despite being dead by probably years (or even centuries) ago, her sole presence sends shockwaves that shakes the foundations of the very anthropomorphic civilization in space, as Dr. Kalahahaii, the EDF and Enchawah finds out that human woman and her people were the ones who created them.- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Despite being dead for likely a long time, her body is still in a very good shape, and her face only suffered some slight scrapes, but nothing serious. This is because most of her injuries were internal, and she died of lack of oxygen rather than being being killed by the explosion that destroyed the ship.
- Dead Guy on Display: Her body is currently in an secret undisclosed location within the EDF on display for the researchers, giving them goosebumps along the way while trying to find her secrets inside her.
- Expy: Very likely of Lt. Ellen Ripley, and by default, of Sigourney Weaver.
- Fiery Redhead: In the first issue of the second story arc, her hair color is depicted as red, and it's very likely she was this for having the guts to sacrifice her life for her crew.
- Heroic Sacrifice: According with Dr. Kalahahaii, she likely sacrificed her life in an attempt to save her ship or the remaining crew who was inside the ship so they could escape safely.
- No Name Given: Her real name hasn't been revealed yet, very probably because Dr. Kalahahaii and the EDF hasn't found any record of her name anywere.
Derelict Ship's Crew Members
- Artificial Human: Unlike the human girl, they were genetically created for the sole purpose for living permanently, or for very long periods, in space using a mix of genetics and Nano Machines. By Word of God, they were created with the same method with which the anthropomorphics were created, though in a much more advanced way.
