At the height of its power, the Verunasi empire was the greatest in the history of the Novus Æterno universe, spanning multiple galaxies and cradling thousands of habitable worlds. However, much like the once mighty human empires of ages long past, the Verunasi empire eventually imploded, due largely to the burden of prolonged interspecies war. This left millions of Verunasi stranded on remote, isolated worlds scattered throughout the cosmos, forced to fend for themselves, and without the means to maintain their incredibly sophisticated technology.
Over time, these Verunasi began to regress to a more primitive, often tribal social structure, similar to that of their ancestors’ millennia earlier on their homeworld, Cassus Prime. These atavistic Verunasi are known as Savages.
It is important to remember that Savage Verunasi are not stupid, they simply lack the capacity to fabricate complex machinery of any kind. Instead, they must develop tools from the natural resources they have at hand. Depending on a number of factors, most notably the size of the tribe, a group of Savage Verunasi may range in technological development from a nomadic band of cave-dwellers armed with weapons made from rock and bone, to an extremely organized civilization capable of constructing sprawling cities peppered with gigantic stone structures similar to those built by the ancient Mayans of Earth. Some have even incorporated salvaged non-Verunas technology into their cultures, and occasionally this might include an ancient element of “lost” science that, strictly speaking, is actually more advanced than some of the high technology employed by space-faring Verunasi existing in a more imperial state.
Because of certain physiological similarities between Verunasi and many of the animals native to Earth, a planet that is suitable for Verunasi habitation is often suited for colonization by humans as well. Thus, many worlds settled long ago by Verunasi populations that would now be classified as Savage have become havens for human Survivors, and these two groups invariably find themselves in competition for territory and food.
Human Hunters will often go to great lengths in their attempts to control populations of Savage Verunasi on the lower end of the cultural development scale, but to their dismay they sometimes find that even a single Savage Verunas possessing Stone Age technology is more than a match for a group of contemporary humans.
