Honiani

The Honiani are a species with long-remembered traditions and an innate predilection towards the grandiose. They swear by a form of spirituality they refer to as Lakhept; a struggle against being unclean. In the modern age, this is taken to be a drive for self-improvement and the betterment of society. In days gone by, however, that has often involved more muscular approaches and a focus on external uncleanliness. Some echoes of these times still remain in the collective consciousness of the Honiani, and it has always been a fear of the FDS that something like this may return. It was, in fact, not long ago that the USS Avandar was involved in averting an attempted coup by these old hardliners.

Appearance
The Honiani are often described within the Federation as appearing like a combination between Amarki and Humans. They clearly show Preserver influence like most species in this quadrant. Their common hair colours are red, black, blue, and brown, in order of commonness. Eye colours are often brown, blue, or red. Skin tones tend to run a similar gamut to those on earth, likewise tied originally to geographic ancestral origins, though that correspondence is now far less common.

There is a somewhat higher level of sexual dimorphism among the Honiani for a humanoid species. The male of the species tends towards slim builds and delicate features. Females, on the other hand, develop rather curvaceous figuresby comparison. Both genders trend towards similar heights, however.

On the crowns of their heads, on either side, are small vestigial nubs that were once horns during an earlier stage of evolution. Nowadays they are used cosmetically, as it is as common to polish and paint these nodules of bone to a fine glimmer as it is for some humans to paint fingernail cartlidge.

Social
The Honiani tend to favour larger family groups, though not formal clans. Multiple families and even single persons will share extended abodes. Religion plays a major part in the lives of the ordinary Honiani citizen, something that happens to a very unexpected degree.

Honiani males relatively swiftly developed into a source of fascination among many human female subcultures.

Lakhept
A syncretistic religion that unites honiani society, and that they are in the process of spreading to the Yan-Ros, Obar, and beyond. The word "Lakhept," while it had a more arcane meaning in ancient times, is now defined by practitioners as "a state of spiritual purity that enables a oneness with cosmic beauty." The core belief of modern Lakhept is that the universe hides within its material an earthly paradise ready to be made reality, and that perfection of the self and the surroundings are necessary to bring this reality about.

Attached to this core belief are a number of others inherited from various older forms of Lakhept, and other honiani religions that it absorbed in premodern times. The first codification of Lakhept beliefs came from a text written by an ancient priest-king known only as the God Emperor, a man who many believe to have been all the best traits of the ancient honiani incarnated in one person, a preview of what all beings can be like in a world brought to Lakhept, and a messianic figure expected to resurface or reincarnate in one form or another to herald the universe's final perfection. Another belief, almost certainly inherited from an animistic faith that Lakhept absorbed in premodern times, concerns a concept of inherited spirituality; that old things, be they objects or people, acquire an intangible lakheptness of any who interacted with them throughout their histories. The same origins are likely true of the honiani belief that any destruction or ugliness inflicted upon the natural world must be compensated with an act of creation or beautification; hence, the ornate and meticulously decorated Honiani buildings and spacecraft that compensate for the ugliness caused in mining or quarrying the materials to build them.

The most modern form of Lakhept took shape a mere two centuries ago, in the wake of the Revelation of Infinite Opportunities. Honiani physicists accidentally created a temporary portal to a parallel universe; a world in which the universe was tangibly the same, except for a few key differences that caused history to progress in a different direction, for better and for worse. This incident confirmed the previously theoretical notion of a multiverse, in which everything that can happen DOES happen within one parallel timeline or another. This was taken as confirmation that Lakhept, the earthly paradise, does indeed exist; it is inevitable, after all, that one of those infinite timelines would have to be one in which all outcomes were optimal and all beings are at their best. And, if Lakhept already exists somewhere in the multiverse, attempts to make our own timeline more like it are hardly futile. This final revelation was responsible for making the Lakhept belief system universal among the honiani, rather than simply dominant.

There are two major philosophies in modern Lakhept, whose adherents compete with each other for control of the Star-Kin government in an ever shifting balance of power. Fhor-Lakhept, or "the seeking of Lakhept," is a more inward focused philosophy, dedicated to self-improvement first and foremost with evangelism following just behind it. Ni-Lakhept, or "the destruction of that which is un-Lakhept," is more about finding things that cause our world to be imperfect and rectifying them through one means or another. The latter includes a militant fringe sect, Alano-Ni-Lakhept, that has committed terrorist acts against the Federation in order to prevent the Star-Kin from joining it, for fear that Federation plurality and tolerance will make their people too tolerant of evil.