The concept of the “True Vandyrian” is a philosophical toxin that has annihilated worlds.
In the ruins of Thanator and across dead systems far from Ran, we find evidence of wars fought not for resources or borders but for authenticity. Battles between factions claiming purer blood, closer inheritance, truer doctrine. Whole ecologies sterilized for daring to proclaim themselves rightful heirs. This obsession with legitimacy carved scars through the galaxy long before Doom shattered Kydahn.
Yet the obsession itself rests upon a false premise. The Vandyrians may not have been one people at all. Their empire appears to have functioned less as a species’ dominion and more as a design consortium, a civilization whose unity arose from purpose rather than biology.
The shared anatomical and neurological traits in Ran-system species—parallel skeletons, compatible aggression-pathways, hierarchical instinct—do not necessarily stem from common ancestry. They may represent a standardized template, a suite of desired characteristics imposed upon uplifted species across countless worlds. A doctrine of utility, not kinship.
Thus arises the coldest definition: a Vandyrian is whatever the Empire deemed useful. A slave-race refined into soldiers. A predator modified into an overseer. A scavenger uplifted into a technician caste. A biologically malleable species reshaped into an administrator or diplomat. No wonder the peoples of Vandyrus share brutal elegance and instinctive stratification—they are not siblings by blood, but siblings by design.
