Characters / Overheaven Species

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Species and subspecies present in the world of OVRHVN.

Humans

Us. Humanity colonized the solar system and gave rise to a huge variety of new species and subspecies.

• Ambiguously Human: It's not at all unheard of for a human to be modified in such a way that it's not quite clear how human they still are.
• Bizarre Human Biology: Most humans in 2585 have some sort of minor gene-modding going on. The majority are also Cyborgs of various degrees, especially on Mars.
• Humans Advance Swiftly: The Alternate Techline of OVRHVN has us going from never having left Earth's atmosphere, to colonizing Mars, in the space of a few decades, and that's just the beginning.
• Humans Are Divided: At no point has Earth ever had a One World Order.
• Humans Are Special: For all that baseline humanity is lacking in many respects, we've also demonstrated the ingenuity necessary to give rise to all the other forms of humanity in the solar system. Said forms tend to agree with this trope.
• Humans Are Psychic in the Future: Downplayed Trope. Psychic Powers are proven to exist in the setting by 2054. However, they are extremely rare and are rather weak - mind-readers can't really "hear" coherent thoughts so much as "feel" vague ideas, and telekinesis generally can't lift anything you can't already lift with your hands. Furthermore, one can only send or receive thoughts, not both. As such, the presence of "espers" hasn't really had a sizable effect on society.
• Humans Are Survivors: If there's one thing that can truly be said for baseline humans, it's this. Even the Colony Drop of epic proportions that was the Beijing Impact didn't fully wipe out mankind on Earth - and by then there were hundreds of millions of us off Earth.
• Humans by Any Other Name: The proper demonym for someone from Earth is "Terran" or "Earthen." "Earthling" is stated to be mildly offensive, but it's seemingly used anyway by most Martians and Jovians.
• Long-Lived: Pre-Hell Day, it was common for humans to reach 150 years or more thanks to advanced medical technology. The very oldest lived to be over 200. Even afterwards, the average human lifespan by 2585 still reaches at least into the 130s.
• Transhuman: Humanity has modified itself into all kinds of interesting new states of being...
• Transhumans in Space: ...many of which have come into their own far beyond Earth.
• World of Technicolor Hair / Amazing Technicolor Population: Gene-modded hair and skin colors become widespread on Earth by 2150, though they remain less common than the baseline ones.

Human Subspecies

Aquamorphs

In the early 21st century, a Taiwanese lab invented a new gene-therapy called Rusudan, claiming it would allow humans to "return to the sea." What did Rusudan do? Well, it wouldn't give you gills... it'd give your kids gills. Thus were born the aquamorphs, a new strain of humanity capable of breathing underwater.

• Graceful in Their Element: While fully capable of operating above ground, the aquamorphs find themselves as outcasts both on Earth and in the space colonies. But once Ganymede is terraformed into an ocean world, the aquamorphs there come into their own.
• Human Subspecies: The very first.
• Super Not-Drowning Skills: Aquamorphs have this by definition, since they can breathe underwater.

Phytomorphs

Humans capable of photosynthesis.

• Amazing Technicolor Population: They're green.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Being able to photosynthesize is pretty cool, but it's not very practical for an organism that needs to move around, so phytomorphs are rare...
  • ...at least, they were rare before Hell Day. On Metazoic Earth, they're far from unheard of.
• Human Subspecies: Enough of one that they're sometimes considered closer to the florasophs (the intelligent plants) than to baseline humans.
• Plant Person: See above.

Cryomorphs and Xeramorphs

Humans gene-edited to live more comfortably at the poles and in deserts, respectively.

• Amazing Technicolor Population: The cryomorphs on Europa are bright red, while those descended from anti-terraforming Ganymedeans are light blue.
• Human Subspecies: Cryomorphs have been gene-modded to be better suited to places like the Canadian Arctic or Antarctica. Xeramorphs or "Xerda," meanwhile, possess long ears for radiating heat and fatty tails that store fluids, among other adaptations for life in the desert.
• Take a Third Option: How the Xerda happened. The Emirate of Nejd eventually realized their rejection of modernity wasn't sustainable, so rather than staying the course or abandoning it, they decided the best way to properly live "in harmony with God's creation" was to biomod themselves to better suit their Arabian Desert home.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: When in non-subzero environments, cryomorphs tend to not wear very much. They have to, otherwise they'd overheat.

Radiomorphs

Humans gene-edited for high-radiation environments.

• Alien Blood: Their blood is black.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: Radiomorphs, at least the ones from Io, have black skin - not African black, jet black. Apparently it helps with radiation shielding. The sclerae of their eyes are also black.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Despite this, they're fundamentally just ordinary people trying to get by.

Volari

Humans adapted for zero gravity. Also known as astromorphs.

• Graceful in Their Element: They tend to suffer from health problems in gravity that resembles ours, but they're right at home in zero gravity.
• Space People: They're more frail than humans, but much better equipped to live and work in low-gravity environments.
• Space Station: Their preferred habitat.
• Start My Own: Dissatisfied with the human-run nations of Exonesia and out of place in Centrifugal Gravity, many if not most volari retreated to the L3 Lagrange point and built the Republic of the Zero Nation there.

Paleohumans

Human progenitor species from the distant past, brought back to life in the modern day. These are the Dwerga (Neanderthals), the Precursors (Homo erectus), the Hobbits (Homo floresiensis), the Titans (Meganthropus) and the Dinkineshi (Australopithecus).

• Ambiguously Human: While the other paleohumans are actually quite a lot like us, the Dinkineshi are more of an edge case. The Ethiopian government has granted them ownership of a piece of land in the Afar region (where their fossils were found), but it's not entirely clear whether the Dinkineshi are actually sapient enough to understand the property rights they've been given.
• Crazy-Prepared: Paleohumans in general, and especially the Dwerga, are greatly concerned with making sure they don't go extinct again. To that end, they have bunkers in the Icelandic lava tubes, backup communities in the Alps and even their own space endeavors. Some have thrown their lot in with ArkGenesis, while another group has joined a Colony Ship mission bound for Alpha Centauri.
• Fossil Revival: The first 23 Dwerga were cloned from the remains of a Neanderthal tribe discovered frozen in a Swiss glacier. Since then, four other proto-human subspecies have been revived as well.
• Human Subspecies: The real-life ones from thousands or millions of years ago.
• Like a Duck Takes to Water: Turns out, many of our prehistoric relatives were a lot more like us than pop culture might have you believe. The Dwerga in particular proved to be very fast learners - the Swiss 23 figured out how to operate a computer after seeing it used once.
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: The Dwerga have come to believe that human myths of dwarves were inspired by cultural memory of Neanderthals, so they lean into it, embracing a fantasy dwarven culture.

The Kara

A subculture of "spider-goths" who got their start in Melbourne, Australia and later moved to Noctis Labyrinthus on Mars. They've gene-modded themselves to have multiple limbs, among other alterations.

• Awesome Aussie: They proved very effective guerillas during the Red-Blue War.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: Fond of breeding Giant Spiders and such things. This is one of the reasons they stopped being welcome in Australia.
• Bio-Augmentation: Their stock in trade. They're experts in applying it to both themselves and their arachnid and insect friends, prompting MarsCom to hire them on as noaforming contractors, designing giant bugs for the new ecosystem.
• Creepy Good: They're perfectly willing to play up their more disturbing aspects to scare off their enemies, but at the end of the day, the Kara mostly just want to hone their biomodding skills in peace.
• Friend to Bugs: It's why they get along with the Martians.
• Goth: Among other things, they almost exclusively wear black, and their extensive gene-modding got started out of a desire to "escape the human condition."
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: They have four arms and four legs.
• Never Accepted in His Hometown: They rapidly wore out their welcome in their native Australia, what with the Giant Spider-breeding and generally being a little too biolibertarian for the early 21st century. On the other hand, they fit right in on Mars.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Australian anarcho-libertarian matriarchal bio-hacker spider-goths IN SPACE!

Cyborgs

Anyone with both biological and mechanical body parts - which, as it turns out, is a very broad and complex category.

In general

• Augmented Reality: Most places have an AR overlay that people can access. If you've got cybernetic eyes or something of the sort, the AR display will be built into them.
• Brain/Computer Interface: DNI (Direct Neural Interface) ports, typically installed at the back of the neck, are the most common type of cybernetic augmentation. By 2585, most people have them.
• Brain Uploading: Possible, but very difficult and with its own complications.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Cybernetics are often depicted as being gold-colored. The "Idiot's Guide to Cyborgs" graphic uses a blue, gold and white color scheme.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Heavily downplayed - it's really only the case if the cyborgization involves doing something to one's brain, as that's an easy way to cause dysphoria.
• Cyborg: Well, yes.
• The Engineer: There's a whole new subset of this trope in OVRHVN's world, the "grinder." Grinders specialize in making, installing, maintaining and removing cybernetics. Part engineer, part surgeon and part artist, they often operate on a master-apprentice model like old-school blacksmiths.

Somaborgs

Cyborgs whose entire bodies are cybernetic thanks to the Yashima Procedure.

• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Prosthetic bodies typically have to be as humanoid as possible, since the less like one's previous body the new body is, the greater the risk of dysphoria and insanity.
• Eating Machine: Full-body cyborgs can often consume machine oil and certain metals, which their prosthetic bodies can make use of.
• Emergency Transformation: Invented for, and usually done by, cancer patients, paralysis victims and other people whose bodies aren't going to hold out much longer. There are people who choose it, though, often for ideological or spiritual reasons, and it's outright encouraged on transhumanist Titan.
• Full-Conversion Cyborg: Biological brain, prosthetic body. Sometimes the brain is even gradually replaced with cybernetics as well, albeit gradually and very carefully, so as to preserve continuity of consciousness. This results in what's called a "noganic" cyborg.
• Was Once a Man: Noganic cyborgs aren't quite human anymore. They're more likely to associate with each other than with humans, albeit less out of Transhuman Treachery and more just because most places either don't have legal precedent for them or consider them legally dead.

Digital Cyborgs

People who have left their physical bodies behind entirely.

• Brain Uploading: There's two ways to go about it:
  • The pneumaborg: You slowly replace your brain with cybernetics, one piece at a time, then convert it from analog to digital. The result is a digital being that retains continuity of consciousness and is thus still "you."
  • The ghost: You freeze your brain and have it scanned. The result is a digital being with all your memories. Is it still you? It thinks so.
• Virtual Ghost: Subverted. Destructive uploads are even called "ghosts," but the reason for this is because the method they use doesn't preserve continuity of consciousness - the original person really is dead, and the uploading process is what kills them. A ghost is technically not an uploaded brain, but a copied one. However, since the ghosts themselves believe they are still the people they're based on, people still occasionally do it.

Bioborgs

People who have organic prosthetics ("bionetics") grown from their own stem cells.

• Against My Religion: Some religions, such as certain sects of Buddhism, frown on cybernetics, so people of those religions use bionetics instead.
• The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: Mentioned as why transplanting your brain into a younger body doesn't work and why bionetics in general can be risky. New organs have a way of changing one's hormonal responses and metabolism.

"Reverse" Cyborgs

Machines with organic components added on.

• Become a Real Boy: This is the goal of a "newganic," the opposite of a noganic. After installing their mechanical brain into an artificially grown organic body, they gradually incorporate organic parts into their brain until they're an entirely biological being. However, they often still consider themselves to be AI (which is admittedly probably better for their mental health), and they're even rarer than noganics.
• Ridiculously Human Robot: It's not unheard of for an android to have a synthetic skin over their metal chassis. Some of them have working organic parts as well, even reproductive organs - which occasionally result in unexpected pregnancies.

Non-Human Cyborgs

It's not at all unheard of for zoans to become cyborgs. Sometimes this is for the same reasons humans do it, sometimes it's to overcome biological shortcomings like not having opposable thumbs.

• The Immune: Astroceti, a family of whale and dolphin uplifts native to Jupiter, are apparently immune to prosthetic dysphoria. This allows them to transfer their minds into all sorts of bodies, be they cetacean, humanoid or even spaceship forms.
• Mechanical Insects: Mars, a culture where cyborgs are ubiquitous and insects are well-regarded, naturally has a thriving population of sub-sophont cyborg bugs. Many are pets, but some are allowed to roam wild, creating a thriving Bug Catching culture.
• Mindlink Mates: Not only do raven uplifts mate for life like their baseline ancestors do, they use DNIs to enjoy a kind of symbiosis.

Zoans

A catch-all term for humans with animal traits gene-modded in as well as uplifted animals.

• Artificial Animal People: Created through genetic engineering, sometimes for noble purposes, sometimes not.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Things to do with them, like the "Idiot's Guide to Zoans" graphic or ArkGenesis' flag, tend to use a green and white color scheme.
• Fantastic Racism: Zoans suffered a great deal of mistreatment and discrimination during the 21st century, some of which persisted into the 22nd. Some of them came to harbor a distate for humanity themselves.
• Fossil Revival: Yes, there are dinosaur zoans - both uplifts of the revived ones as well as chimeras. The latter rank among the most fervently anti-human of the zoans and admire the former for being of "purer blood," but tend not to take their hints to be less racist.
• Furry Fandom: The "huzos" - humans who identify strongly with, or as, zoans - are what eventually became of these types. Their relationship with zoan-kind is kind of awkward: their interest in zoans isn't always welcome, but a lot of them are also descended from people who moved to ArkGenesis with their zoan family members, friends or partners, or who provided crucial technical assistance there.
• Gentle Gorilla: Ape zoans are actually among the most pro-human zoans, since they see humans as fellow apes.
• Little Bit Beastly: The term for these is "chimeras." Unfortunately, many of them were originally created for... untoward purposes and were horribly discriminated against on Earth for quite some time.
• Start My Own: The zoans founded their own nation in orbit, ArkGenesis. After Hell Day, the Arkgenians evacuated back down to Earth and did a great deal to recolonize it.
• Uplifted Animal: A wide variety of species have been uplifted over the centuries. All of them count as zoans.

Chimeras

Artificial beings with some degree of animal DNA. They come in three varieties: "anthro" (more human than animal), "therian" (more animal than human) and "demitherian" (somewhere in between).

• Ambiguous Situation: The line between "therian" and "uplift" can get blurry. So can the line between "anthro" and "human."
• Beast Man: Some anthro chimeras are like this, as are many demitherian chimeras.
• Call of the Wild Blue Yonder: Avian chimeras can't fly - humanoid bodies are too heavy for that - but that doesn't stop many of them from trying. E!2150 also mentions that some of them have been slowly modifying their genetics over the generations, in the hope that their descendants will one day be able to fly, but it hasn't yet been said whether or not they succeeded.
• Fantastic Racism: A lot of the first chimeras were originally created For Science! - or to be used as pets, or as slaves. Many have a rather low opinion of humanity as a result.
• Little Bit Beastly: Anthro chimeras are usually this.

Uplifts

Animal subspecies genetically modified for sophonce.

• Animal Stereotypes: Some uplifts work to dispel them, while others, not having a native culture, embrace them. Hyena uplifts have sought to "reclaim" the negative perception of hyenas as monsters in Western media and witches in African mythology. Raven uplifts are very into Norse mythology and gothic fiction. Dog uplifts still think of themselves as "man's best friend" and often have a knight-like Legacy of Service with human families. And a disconcerting number of pig uplifts are named "Napoleon."
• Irony: As the first uplifts of any species naturally had to be raised by humans, uplifts actually tend to draw a lot more on human impressions of the animals they're based on than chimeras do, despite being genetically much less human.
• Talking Animal: Most can communicate effectively with humans. The rest find workarounds.
• Uplifted Animal: Well, yes.

Cetaceans

Whale and dolphin uplifts are a remarkably diverse bunch.

• Cloudcuckoolander: The tripeds, dolphin uplifts who can walk on land on three limbs (forelimbs and tail), are broadly regarded as a species of stubborn eccentrics and "connoisseurs of strange ideas."
• Foil: The delphi (bottlenose dolphins) and the paikea (humpback whales) are this to each other. The delphi are loud, colorful, liberally-minded party animals, while the paikea are tactful, minimalistic, conservative and austere. Both, however, are native to Ganymede, fond of "crossbodying" (see below) and very artistic.
• The Immune: Somehow, cetaceans are all but unaffected by prosthetic dysphoria. Many enjoy transferring their brains into alternative bodies, ranging from cetacean to humanoid to even spaceships.
• Lovable Sex Maniac: Delphi tend to be this.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: The illustration of a male delphi in a humanoid cyborg body in Age of Aquarius is this - and also has lime skin, Anime Hair and a Heroic Build. Delphi love all things garish and are quite fond of the human form. They think it's a shame humans insist on wearing so much clothing.

Enlights

Enlights are animals who were born baseline, but made sophont. Enlights are a bad idea.

• Civilized Animal: Very darkly averted - they're smart all right, sometimes even talkative, but civilized... not so much. About 50% of all enlights gain the human-level cognition but keep the animal instincts and motivations, which in practice usually leads them to become Serial Killers, and very dangerous ones at that. Another 25% wind up roughly equivalent to intellectually-disabled humans. The last 25% are smart, lucid and more or less "civilized" - but that just means they know exactly what's been done to them, and they're not happy about it.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: The entire movement to boost animal intelligence, and thus create enlights, stemmed largely from attempts to boost human intelligence. Turns out, neither animals nor humans can handle that without their mental stability suffering for it.
• Kill All Humans: Enlights remember being non-sophont, and they never appreciate the change. It's not at all unheard of for them to advocate for this.
• Meaningful Name: "Enlight" is short for "enlightened animal." They started out as ordinary animals, but were "enlightened" to sophonce. They're also looked upon as sages and "enlightened" philosophers by the less human-friendly zoans, since they remember being animals and can thus provide insights into how zoans can be more "authentic" and bridge the gap between their human and animal natures.

Florasophs

Intelligent plants. Not technically zoans, on account of not being animals, but closely associated with them, to the point of having their own ArkGenesis station, ArkEden.

• Cyborg: Most of them need cybernetics to communicate with other beings.
• Planimal: There's quite a few of these on ArkEden as well.
• Plant Person: Albeit less "people who are plants," and more "plants who are people."
• Wise Tree: Neurotrees (so they're called) are some of the only florasophs to survive Hell Day. They often serve as keepers of pre-Impact knowledge and history.

Turingrades

Sophont artificial intelligences of all varieties.

• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Pointedly averted. Turingrades turning on humanity are all but unheard of - see below for why.
• Artificial Intelligence: Fairly common, apparently.
• Benevolent A.I.: AI respect humanity for having created them, and many are in fact Intrigued by Humanity.
• Genius Loci: There are some AIs, some turingrade and some not, installed in buildings. They're even called "loci." Cars and clothing sometimes have them as well - these are called "tonomos" (short for "autonomous") and "fiberminds" respectively.
• Humans Are Special: The turingrades certainly think we are. After all, they exist for a reason - we don't.
• Spaceship Girl: Spaceships almost always have "figureheads," turingrade constructs which handle many of the ship's functions. Perhaps inevitably, they seem to most frequently appear as cute anime girls.
• Turing Test: No longer a recognized method of determining an AI's sentience, but the name stuck.
• Virtual Ghost: Uploads consider themselves cyborgs, but function like AIs in practice.

Aliens

• Absent Aliens: Double Subverted. There's aliens all right, they're just not sentient... except for the ones that built those megastructures around Kapteyn's Star and Delta Pavonis... but whoever did build those, they don't seem to be around any more.

Martian Life

Mars was long dead by the time humanity got there, but there were a few forms of life that had survived: various species of microbe, most notably the so-called "greenmen," and the amphiformes, rock-like organisms similar to stromatolites.

• Bizarre Alien Biology: Amphiformes appear to be rocks at first glance, but start growing when exposed to water and/or oxygen.
• Extremophile Lifeforms: The greenmen cling to life in the Martian rocks, requiring neither water nor air.
• Little Green Men: Not actually what the greenmen are - they're just microbes, similar to bacteria - but they're called that after a joke their discoverer made about "finding the little green men on Mars."

Eurozoa

Europa's underground ocean is home to a whole ecosystem of alien creatures.

• Fantastic Livestock: Perhaps the weirdest thing about the eurozoa is that they can be this. Not only are many eurozoa edible, they're actually nutritious, and frippers and tigerspines soon become staple sources of protein in the Outer Planets.
• Starfish Aliens: Eurozoa are weird. For one thing, they're all eyeless, since there's no light in their native habitat. The one eurozoa we've seen a picture of, the "cubecell," looks like a single-celled organism... but it's about the size of a human and is cube-shaped.

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