{message::

Hello Gustav, my old friend!

You must be wondering what caused me to contact you again after 12 years, but it will become clear if you read on. As you can see from the addressing I'm sending this message from the relay station at the border of Thevian space. I'm returning to the Institute from an extended journey through Thevian space, and their very culture. I remembered you shared my fascination for the Thevians, so I decided to announce my return to you first. I just couldn't wait, so I already wrote a short summary. Unfortunately the high-capacity link is down, so I can't send full sensory recordings. You'll have to do with my (hopefully not too bad) writing.

Let me start at the beginning. It was some 4 years ago that I had finally obtained the funds and permissions to enter the Thevian core systems. I must have driven every Thevian I met crazy with questions, but after some time, I had a sizeable list of locations I should visit. First thing I noticed was that the nearer I got to the center of Thevian space, the wilder the Thevians' appearances got. While the majority was still humanoid enough for me to be able to cope, I did encounter a number that I would never have recognized as a person, if I hadn't been told about it. Indeed, I never knew about some, until my partner pointed it out to me. But, I'm getting ahead of myself now. I collected several holo-disks worth of data, but with every new disk, I collected more mysteries. That's where my 'partner' comes in. She, (or rather 'it', as you'll see later) found me on my third stop. Mersa, as she called herself, was the Thevian equivalent of a cultural historian. She had heard about my research and sought me out. Straight to the point, she told me she wanted to co-operate to gain insight in eachother's culture.
As you can imagine, I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn't dreaming. I wasn't.

As any good researcher would, I started at the most basic determinant of a species: it's evolutionary path. Immediately turned out that Thevians have a completely idea of culture and history. They focus almost completely on actions. A thought isn't considered important unless it results in an action, and neither are environmental other than actions.
The result is that I only was able to find out that Thevians "gained acting thoughts before walking or swimming or flying". In scientific terms: Early in the evolution on their homeworld, before physical differentiation into fish, mammals etc had happened, the Thevians became sentient, and had some limited psychokinetic power to act on their environment. Mersa's spare comments on the physique and nature of Thevians have led me to believe they evolved no further physically than amorphous lumps of mainly nervous tissue roughly 0.4 meters in diameter. They are asexual and reproduce by budding. Taken together with a later comment that "All Thevians are born equal; In action they are unique", I am led to the conclusion that "equal" actually means "identical" here. If every Thevian is identical, action and reputation become a natural means of distinction and individual assertion, as well as the artful robot bodies they create. I haven't noticed two the same bodies yet, which seems to support my hypothesis.

After learning to communicate and use their psychokinesis (pk) the Thevians displayed a singleminded devotion to developing tools to improve their survival rates. Two milestones were the use of a bowl-like leaf as a kind of boat to navigate the primal ooze, and the use of branches as clubs to fend off the first mobile predators. This took tens if not hundreds of thousands of years, and only after a like period did they make the tool which would prove the turning point in their history: An articulated arm, attached to a "body" shell. The arms, and later hands, allowed the Thevians to perform ever more complex tasks, for which their psychics were not strong enough. The biggest problem however, was their lack of strength. While other creatures went from hobbling to walking and running, the Thevians were still limited to dragging their shells along with their arms. Every attempt at making legs failed miserably, for lack of strength. Where levers and such had allowed for more force to be applied than pure psychics, no construction they could find was strong enough. They needed another force, something completely independent of their innate psychics.

At this point, Mersa made a vivid display of the ancient Thevians' failure to find anything useful. Great advantages in thinking and many improvements on their arms could not compensate their utter failure to come with a new force. It was to be an outside interference that allowed progress. An early spaceship crashed on the Thevian homeworld. (Note: I estimate this event to have happened 15-20 thousand years ago. Imagine, an interstellar craft...twenty thousand years ago!)
While there was not much left of the ship, and the whole concept of space travel hadn't occurred to a single Thevian yet, they studied it as much as they could, wondering about it's supreme material and construction. However it wasn't an advanced system that finally gave the Thevians their force, it was a simple powered wrench. When one of them accidentally turned it on, a revelation hit the assembled Thevians. They had found their independent force!
From there on it took their combined intellect only 30 years to reproduce the hydrogen power cells and the electric engine.
The first Thevian-made engine, a huge wood and scrapmetal affair, which ran for only a day before breaking down, nevertheless heralded the "Era of True and Purposeful Action" as Mersa called it. I would rather call it an industrial revolution of immense proportions, with as spicy detail the fact that the Thevians took along the entire iron-working process in the same time-span as our industrial revolution took.
250 years later, the Thevians had taken on the robotic appearance we know of them, although not even close to humanoid in form. They developed the technology to sustain themselves inside the now metal shells permanently. (Note: No probing of mine was able to reveal what a Thevian needs to sustain itself. Mersa simply stated it required no action and therefore was unimportant. She did hint once at electricity as a source of nourishment, but how this would suffice I don't know)

During this period, the Thevians also developed a society like we know it. When large-scale operations arose, the informal gatherings no longer worked, and Thevians started to specialize. This resulted in a system of hundreds of castes, determined by many factors, such as place in the community, tasks, skills, and (above all) the look and functionality of the robot body.
This is one of the reasons I encountered so many strange forms near the Thevian core systems; they belonged to castes that rarely ventured into space. In fact, there are only a handful of castes that are represented among the spacefaring Thevians, but I digress. More about them later.

Further development on Thevian, while stretched over several thousand years, was not unlike our own, except for the lack of ground vehicles. They took somewhat longer to develop airplanes and near-space travel, but found hydrogen fusion a lot earlier, as well as anti-gravity systems. The next big change was once again brought on by outside interference. A spacefaring species, who had observed the first Thevian spacecraft, made contact. (Note: from database cross-checks I assume this species to be the extinct Mailk, a friendly and peaceful race that made contact with both the Ik-Thorne and the Thevians. They were driven to extinction by the Salvene, who viewed them as easy prey.)

The contact was peaceful and friendly, especially when the Thevians recognized the sleek lines of Mailk spacecraft as similar to the "Gift from the Sky". However, in the years after the Mailk left to report their discovery at home,  a major crisis hit Thevian. For the first time inescapably confronted with another species, they started questioning their own identity. Faced by the facts that all Thevians were physical equal [identical if my theory holds] and any Thevian could copy another's shell if it wanted to, they had no natural sense of individuality, like we humans have. A great need for assertion of the individual arose, and this led to several reactions.

First and most visible is that many, or even most Thevians modelled their own shells to be unique. And what better model than humanoids who all seemed unique? Thus it is that every young Thevian performs the act of creating his own robotic body as a ritual of passage into 'adulthood'. Until the body is finished the young Thevian is not seen as a full individual. Along with the body, Thevians have also adopted as many distinguishing features as possible from other races, including the notion of genders (Mersa insists she is female, and her body looks the part.), decorations of the body, facial expressions, scents, signature movements and gestures, etc.

The second is their focus on actions. The Thevians figured that if every Thevian starts out the same, it's actions are the thing that identifies them as individuals, and their reputation is the total knowledge of their actions. Thevians are very aware of the actions of others, and make sure others know of their actions. The retelling of other Thevians' actions one has experienced is an important social event among Thevians. (Note: That is how Mersa was able to find me in the first place) Thevians have the most extensive "grapevine" I have ever seen, but unlike rumor-mills, they portray others' actions as accurately as possible.
Among Thevians, spreading lies about another's actions almost inevitably leads to a confrontation, often fatal.

Third is the interaction between spacefaring Thevians and other races. There are only a few castes regularly found in space, these include the traders, explorers, ambassadors, warriors and rogues.
Traders can be anything from honest merchants to pirates, 'explorer' covers everything from colonist to scientist, as long as they are on a mission to discover something new. ambassadors are more specialized traders, excelling in dealings with other races. Among ambassadors there is a drive to emulate one of the other races as completely as possible, and some of their 'bodies' are indistinguisable from the real species, except by members of the copied species. Warriors are just that. They don't interact much with other species, which would often be hard even if they tried, given their menacing bodies. While their bodies vary from small tiger-like bodies to towering battlemechs, they are all designed to be as deadly as possible.  In fact, it is not uncommon for warriors of the Thevian Navy to adopt a body in the form of a warship, living their entire life inside it.
Rogues finally are the outcasts, the wild bunch, being as wild as possible.
One thing they have in common: Since they know the other species don't pay as much attention to actions, the Thevians ensure their actions are memorable. Thus, most Thevians don't take long to build a reputation, be it good or bad. There a few things as satisfying to a Thevian as having a bounty posted in him/her, for then they know their actions are remembered.

Well, that is my story for now. I will be able to tell much more when I have my notes and my holo-projector, but both are packed now. If nothing goes wrong, I hope to arrive on Jefferson's Claim in three weeks. There was rumor of a raid by that so-called Human Fleet, so we may be taking a detour. I'll keep you advised as much as I can.

Yours truly,

Liam Kynes.

PS: Aaarrgh! I must be getting senile! I almost forgot to tell you Mersa is coming with me, to see the Institute. Better clean up a bit if you want to make a good impression, you old grub!

Histories compiled by Cyrus