Shun

The Shun are a race of people. It's a blanket term to encompass any upright standing individuals with distinct appendages in low number (less than 8). Some feature requirements have to be met to be classified as a Shun but usually the term is used loosely among the population.

The number of Shuns percentage-wise spans up to about 12% of the entire galactic situation. They are considered the dominant race not because of their number but because of the amount of Aetheri present in the population.

The Shun are known to be "survivalists" which lead many philosophers to believe them to be one of the most violent races in the galaxy.

Their Spread
It is yet unknown as to the origin of the race and how it spread among the galaxies. There are four major theories about this, also discussing the high-Aether presence.

The Toria Theory
It was theorized that the Toria brought about the spread of the race. Noting its potential, they seeded genetically-modified versions of an original on different planets to colonize. The Shun were unaware of this.

Common Evolution Theory
It was theorized that the Shun follow a common evolutionary path distinct to certain climates, hardships, and more. The Shun may share a similar look but they have different biologies. The idea was linking the most common Shun shape to a "must-have" such as having having strong appandages capable of doing manual labor but also possessing distal appendages capable of fine work and crafts.

The theory is largely undermined because the similarities of the Shun suggests that they came from one common source. The Shun shape, also, does not seem to offer enough benefits to become an evolutionary must-have.

An example of general shape evolution pattern exists within the anthropods whose version (one way or another) seems to exists on several different worlds.

Archaic Civizilation Theory
Another theory coinciding with the disemmination feel of the Toria Theory is the Archaic Civilization theory that denotes the rise of an ancient civilization several hundreds of thousands years ago that had the ability to change its genetic material according to the environment it encountered. Some calamity, dissention, or any variety of reasons created a situation where the invidiual groups of this civilization became planet, system, or cluster-locked.

There are many "loose" pieces in this theory and due to lack of substantial evidence (or substantial drive for people to find out), the theory ranges from theoretic assumption to pure fiction. The term for the race of protoShuns thought to have existed is Siiks.

Common Features
There features more or less common among the Shun races and there are still some traits that all races share.

Appendages
Shuns commonly have less than 16 main appendages (such as arms, legs, and tails) and less than 8 upper appendages (arms). It's common for the appendages to have sub-limbs including fingers, talons, nails, split arms, and more.

The purpose of the sub-limbs is to gain precision, speed, and power.