Introduction
The Revarans were the first alien race humanity encountered once the Commonwealth began its interstellar exploration. The initial meeting took place in 2237.
The Revarans are blue-skinned pendactyl humanoids. In common with the
Arlosians they are also devoid of scalp hair but their heads are nevertheless endowed with shallow cranial ridges. Revarans possess three pairs of ridges, the inner, intermediate and outer. The ridges originate from the eyebrows and run backwards over the crown of the head to converge at the nape of the neck. The single ridge is visible to the level of the lumbar spine.
Polarised Emotions
Revaran emotional behaviour is unique among the carbon-based spacefaring races in that it exhibits the phenomenon of polarisation.
The emotions of an adult Revaran operate in an all-or-none fashion. An emotional response is either manifested or is absent. If present, the reaction tends to be of a strong degree. The spectra of emotional reactions which characterise the other species are not known. Thus, where a human could be pleased, happy, glad, pleasantly satisfied, joyful, elated or ecstatic a Revaran could only be ecstatic.
The impact of such profound emotional response is mitigated by the threshold phenomenon which applies to Revaran emotions. Stimuli which would elicit a mild emotional reaction in a human would not provoke an emotion in an adult Revaran. For example, something which might cause a human to become a bit irritated would have no effect in a Revaran. A situation which could induce anger in a human may also have trigger no emotional reponse in a Revaran. However, circumstances that would incite a human to rage would also precipitate rage in a Revaran.
Young Revaran children do not demonstrate the threshold phenomenon and will exhibit emotional reactions to mild stimuli. As these reactions are nevertheless of the polarised magnitude the task of raising Revaran children can be challenging and require skills in dealing with frequent tantrums.
Around the age of ten years Revaran children begin to develop their threshold response. The threshold adopts comfortable adults levels by the end of the second decade but will continue to rise until approximately fifty years of age.
Although adult Revarans can appear somewhat serious and humourless to humans, most people adjust fairly quickly to the limited emotional content to interactions with Revarans. The friendly and helpful nature of Revarans facilitates professional relationships and scientic collobrations between humans and Revarans have been particularly fruitful.
Pitamism
Pitamism is frequently referred to as the Revaran religion but there are strong arguments that it should be considered a philosophy and a way of life rather than a religion.
Pitamism espouses the importance of the search for truth and the understanding of the universe. The designation as a religion is derived from the hypothesis in Pitamism that a creator god who exists outside the universe can only be comprehended once the entire universe is understood. The term
cuvax demir is applied to the attaintment of complete understanding.
Five categories of truth are recognised in Pitamism.
- Grallin
- Avorm
- Namate
- Beim
- Capul
Grallin truths are physically demonstrable, provable and their basis explained.
The avorm category is related to grallin and encompasses facts which can be demonstrated but their why is not known. The values of many universal constants are often cited as examples of avorm truths.
Namate truths are the realm of mathematics. They are provable but are abstract and do not directly exist in the physical sense.
Beim refers to historical fact. A beim truth had physical reality but is no longer directly accessible.
Capul truths are a rich source of debate among Revarans because they are the class of moral truths and have fluidity. Revaran priests, known as renims, are concerned primarily with exploring the capul.
Symbols connected with Pitamism often have a pentagonal theme. The principle emblem of Pitamism is shown above and is a pentagon filled with gradients of colour to symbolise the changing nature of understanding.
Set theory and Godel's incompleteness theorem feature prominently in certain aspects of Pitamism but familiarity with these mathematical concepts is not necessary for the practice of Pitamism. Instead, curiosity and an eagerness to learn, which are two instrinsic characteristic of Revarans, are all that are required.
Tetapleir
Tetapleir was the planetary-wide abandonment of a financial economy which took place on Revar in the earth year 2210. Since tetapleir the Revarans have abandoned internal currency and ensure fair and necessary distribution of all essential resources among their populace. This generosity extends to visitors to the Revaran Republic. The polarisation of Revaran emotions and the absence of low levels of avarice, together with Pitamism and the naturally caring nature of Revarans all combined to make tetapleir feasible. Of the other races only the
Zhekhlans are deemed to have even a modest potential to undertake a similar revolution.
Interstellar trade remains for the Revarans but it is in the form of exchange of goods and knowledge. This somewhat curtails the involvement of Arlosians in the Revaran economy and has the benefit of removing some of the input of the more unscrupulous businesses of the Commonwealth.