Vespians

The Vespians (Vespian: Jâ-Veskoyâkī) are an ethnic group native to Vespia. They are the most populous ethnic group in Zhakar and one of the most numerous ethnic groups in the world, with more than TBD billion Vespians on the continent alone and another TBD million living abroad. Belonging to an entirely distinct racial group of humans known as Vespoids, the Vespians are unique in their isolationist and xenophobic behavior which has been fueled by their physiological and genealogical distinctness in the global human population. Feared for their savage culture and religion, the Vespians have a long, blood-soaked history which has revolved around their lust for violence and conquest, and have seen the Vespians as a people widely rebuked and ostracized for their culture and beliefs.

Origins

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The Vespians are unique in the isolated nature of their genetic legacy, which is virtually devoid of any patrilineal links with the surrounding ethnic groups. Their origins remain unknown largely due to the lack of genetic ties with any other known ethnic groups in either Zhakar or TBD as a whole. To date, geneticists have been unable to trace the for the Vespians to a specific location, leaving the origins of the Vespians a mystery for the time being. What is known of the Vespians is that they migrated from an unknown location to the Zhona River around, where their people settled down and established the groundwork for the Vespian civilization as it exists today.

Sports and fitness
The sports have historically been an integral part of Vespian culture, religion, and society, helping to shape the ideals of their society as a whole. Athletics are held as the holiest of skills by Vespians, an expression of all the human body can do thanks to the gifts of their god, Zhautan. Given the latent cruelty of the Vespian people, the sports enjoyed by the population have a violent and bloody streak which have given the Vespian civilization a negative image around the world. Man-hunting, animal fighting, gladiatorial sports, rape games, and torture have all been integral parts of the Vespian identity. One of the most notable cases have been blood sports, which dominant athletics and entertainment in Vespia. Vakori the most prominent blood sport in Vespia, having grown to become the Vakori Grand Tournaments, which drawn tens of millions of views and countless billions of dollars in profit each year. Naturally, many of traditional Vespian sports are banned overseas, and many within the Vespian diaspora have tried to fight to have the sports legalized in their new adopted homelands.

Vespians have traditionally held the belief that humans were made from the divine blood, bone, and flesh of their god Zhautan, and that they are duty-bound to treat their bodies with the utmost care. Zheani religious authorities thus preach that all devout followers of Zhautan must remain in peak physical condition as a form of devotion to their deity. All public institutions within Vespia promote a healthy lifestyle that requires public servants to exercise regularly while in the workplace, while schools set aside an hour-long period in which children are made to perform exhaustive exercises before their recess period. In the home, Vespians The concept of obesity within the Vespian community is viewed as obscene and blasphemous, and insult to Zhautan and the true physical build he designed for humans. Vespians aggressively target overweight individuals, and are known to pay special attention to killing the obese during their conflicts.

Fitness culture has a deeply ingrained role in Vespian culture, and as a rule, the Vespian people maintain an level of physical fitness among their population. Families regularly exercise together, and entire communities are known ostracize those who do not take part in routine physical fitness tests. The results speak for themselves, with the average Vespian often performing well in the varies metrics used to determine physical fitness. Further evidence of this Vespians devotion to fitness and athletics can been see by the country having per capita the highest number of bodybuilders in the world. Various events such as the Dak'Diyon and Shidodina competitions for men and women respectively throughout Vespia, are examples of the Vespians obsession with fitness and pushing the human body to its limits. As such, Vespians are more than willing to show off their bodies as proof of their endurance, and one would be hard pressed to find a Vespian who is not physically fit or lacks some level of muscle definition.

Dress and grooming
Traditionally, the Vespians have been well-known for their obsession with cleanliness, ensuring that their bodies, clothing, housing, and surroundings were of immaculate nature. As with much of their culture, the roots of this obsession can be traced to the religious teachings of Zheaniism, which dictate that the Vespians and their dwellings are to remain physically clean so far as it depends on them. As such, bathing and grooming have been important aspects of Vespian life, with public baths located in every city, town, and village in Vespia, as well as in every Vespian diaspora community around the world. Vespian men and women maintain high levels of personal grooming and physical cleanliness, with Vespians bathing at least three times a day where possible as well as washing their hair regularly, and body odor is looked down upon as unacceptable and unholy. Interestingly, the Vespians avoid cutting their hair unless it is necessary. Axillary hair is typically removed as it has traditionally been associated with foul body odors, though pubic hair is retained as a sign of physically maturity and religious edicts require it not be removed.

Physiology
The Vespians as a people express a number of unique genetic traits not found in any other ethnic groups in the world. Many of these effect the psychological profile of the populace, while others have had a marked effect on the visible physical traits of the Vespian people. One of the most notable cases is the color of Vespian hair, which remains silky black throughout a Vespian's life. This trait is caused by the intense amounts of black eumelanin in the hair, which is responsible for the pigmentation in dark hair. Soft and malleable silk-like texture of the hair on the otherhand is believed to be linked to a combined factor of genetics and the traditional diet of the Vespians. Another visible trait of the Vespians is the dominance of true white eyes present in the entire population. The lack of melanin and heavy build up of collagen in the stroma, have resulted in the Vespian population boasting irises which are practically white in color. Perhaps the prominent trait unique to the Vespian population is the inability to interbreed with the rest of the global population. Only 5% of Vespians are known to be able to produce offspring with members outside of their ethnic group, however, this number is expected to decrease with time. This handicap is believed by anthropologists to have been the main contributing factor in the Vespians' insular and xenophobic nature, as well as the reason incest was allowed to propagate within Vespian society and culture.

Geneticists have found that inbreeding within Vespian society has not had the same disastrous effects as found elsewhere in the globe. Whereas repeated instances of inbreeding typically end with genetic defects, mental retardation, and infertility, inbreeding within the Vespian population generally has no long-term adverse effects. However, this unique capability has come at the cost of being able to interbreed with the rest of the global population. It is widely believed within the historian community that the inability of the Vespians to reproduce outside of their general population, was the leading contributing factor of the Vespians xenophobia and disregard for the lives of non-Vespians. The inability to form a direct link to the neighboring ethnicities of Zhakar and the rest of the world as a whole, meant that the Vespians formed a vastly insular culture, where they view themselves has having an entirely different origins from the rest of humanity. This view has given the Vespians a concept of superiority over their neighbors, leading to their violent and psychotic treatment of non-Vespians, which results in foreigners being viewed as either as potential slaves, sacrifices, or concubines by the Vespian population.

In other areas of their genetic background lays the Vespians long history of deep sex ratio imbalances, with women outnumbering men 4-to-1. In 1987, the cause of the imbalance was discovered to have been linked to the  gene in Vespian men, which serves as a signal to the Y-chromosome in fertilized eggs to begin the process of male sex determination in unborn humans. The gene has been found to malfunction in two-thirds of all Vespian men about 80% of the time of impregnation, and in the other third of Vespian men, the corruption of the gene minimized to only about half the time. In the prenatal offspring, the malfunctioning of the SRY gene typically results in one of two outcomes. The first and most common is miscarriage of the child, though in most other individuals outside of Vespia this would not have been life-ending for the embryo. The second is the more rarer replacement of the Y-chromosome with an X-chromosome, which typically results in the female child possessing many psychologically male characteristics such as heightened aggression; a superior metabolization of testosterone into the female body without compromising estrogen use.

Beyond this, the Vespians boast a high level of neoteny, which has lent to the population an air of "exoticism" which has for ages attracted foreigners to the land of "eternal youth and beauty", often to the unfortunate pain and misery of the outsiders. A Vespian's youth is considered their most precious feature, as without it, they cannot fight for or father offspring in the name of their gods, two forms of service deemed important to a Vespian's way of life. The most important trait within the female population is the increased muscle density they possess. Biologists who have studied the Vespians noted that the female Vespian population boasts muscle density 15% greater than in non-Vespian women. They claim that this may have been an evolutionary development specific to the Vespians, as the need to fulfill typically male-dominated roles such as hunting and gathering in prehistoric Vespia, that the largely diminished male population in the country could not accomplish for the early population.

Psychology
Of notable interest are the many genetic disorders which have historically set the Vespians apart from most of the global population. The most notable disorders are those of a mental nature, such as and, which have long been the driving factor in Vespian culture, religion, and politics. have been discovered to be present throughout most of the Vespian population, with, , (thinking in extremes), , and uncontrollable emotional outbursts well-recorded in the population as well, with more than 65% of all Vespians known to be clinically diagnosed with such disorders by foreign experts. Even in the remaining 35% of the population, disturbing levels of mental abnormalities have been discovered. High levels of rage and in the form of religious "purity" rites have taken hold of the majority of Vespians, and have been recorded within Vespian culture since the first written records of Vespian history as early as.

Anthropologists have long studied the Vespians with the aim of discovering why the ethnic group suffers from so many psychological issues, as well as how the Vespians managed to build a thriving civilization in their fifteen thousand years of existence. Numerous theories as to the cause of the Vespians many maladies have been proposed, ranging from diet and environment, possible inbreeding, cultural acceptance of such disorders and therefore misdiagnosis of trained behavior, and even supernatural curses within the circles of more fringe groups. However, little information about the root of the Vespians mental state exists, and only guessing has been of any value to the scientific community. Within the Vespian nation, little about their racial traits have been acknowledged, and many naturally believe that such claims are but rumors and falsehood being spread from abroad. All that can be said of the Vespians emotional volatility is that it has had an indelible mark on their culture and society as a whole, and helps to explain, at least in part, their hostile stance toward the world.

Another trait of Vespian psychology has been the religiosity of the population. For thousands of years, the Vespians have maintained one of the most religious civilizations in human history, with a consistent rate of 99% believers across the entire population. Psychologists have traditionally been intrigued by this devout adherence to religion, mainly given Zheaniism's role in sanctioning the violent behavior and inhumane sacrifice of human beings within Vespian society. Brain scans on Vespian volunteers have shown that the region of the brain responsible for emotional connections and comfort in humans, was highly active whenever the topic of religion was brought up with the subject. Contrasting this was the part of the brain linked to anger and hatred, which flared up during the scans whenever topics of atheism and skepticism were mentioned, and at times, the subject had to be restrained whenever a copy of the Zhantana were burned in front of them by a self-declared atheist, demonstrating the accuracy of the data. Notably, the same brain activity was also found in children, given credence to the belief that within the Vespian population, religiosity was an inherited trait, not an acquired one.