The Notumi are two distinct sub-species with a tangled and complex shared history, that once existed on a single planet. Prior to their discovery and incorporation into the Ascendancy, they had spread out over about 20 star systems, developed a basic form of warp drive, and were viciously at war with each other.

Both Notumi species are notable for their metabolic need for the exotic alloy notum, and how their society has diverged around its availability or lack thereof. Of the two sub-species, the Cerebri diverged with a lack of sufficient notum, and much of their technology and society is focused around alternative methods of making up for that lack. The Corpori, on the other hand, were replete with the rare alloy and its use became the beating heart of their society.

The pre-divergence history of the Notumi has mostly been pieced together by xeno-historians of other species, and much of the detail and verifiable truth has been obscured by rampant propaganda and revisionism by both sides during their warring period.

The ancestral Notumi were a humanoid species that evolved on the once-verdant world of Cerberus V, located in the Orion Nebula Sector. By around 1000PT, the Notumi had developed a mercantile capitalist society, and were towards the end of their first industrial revolution. It was during this period that they first began to mine the rich reserves of a blue alloy that occurred in several of their homeworld’s largest continents. Initially mined as a decorative material, the alloy became very popular in wealthy Notumi society for jewellery and art objects. Within a generation or two, societal elites noticed that those associated with the mining industry began to develop traits that gave them profound advantages - on average, they showed greater aptitude for learning, science and mathematics, as well as faster reflexes and reaction time. Scientists discovered that the alloy was bio-active and could become incorporated into Notumi physiology, particularly in the nervous system. The elites, quick to maintain their status and advantage, acquired the alloy to ingest in the hopes that it would improve them and their offspring. Within a short time, the alloy, which had been named notum after the species, became ubiquitous at all levels of Notumi society, and many involved in its extraction and sale became obscenely wealthy.

The consumption of notum kicked off a second industrial revolution, and their society developed multiple scientific breakthroughs, discovering electronics and making incredible advances in genetics, medicine and physics. The notum was also causing each subsequent generation to mutate to include it more and more in their metabolic processes, and it quickly became an essential nutrient for all Notumi, while progressively altering their genetics. The alloy soon became ubiquitous in the planet’s biosphere, so almost all living creatures made use of it in some way.

By 1500PT, the Notumi had developed spaceflight and were beginning to expand out into their solar system, developing energy harvesting and mining infrastructure on some of Cerberus’ other planets and moons. They had developed rudimentary nanotechnology that incorporated notum to allow it a much greater capacity to perform tasks over longer periods, and were beginning to incorporate this nanotechnology into all aspects of their civilisation.

It was somewhere around this point that a catastrophe now known as “The Ruin” struck Cerberus V. Massive climatic and seismic upheaval struck the planet, and within the space of 100 years the lush planet transformed into a barren, frozen wasteland. Worse still, the Ruin also affected the genes of the planet’s inhabitants, and slowly caused the majority of the notum in the planet’s biosphere to become unstable and revert to its base metallic components.

Technologically advanced enough to understand some of what was happening, but not enough to stop it, the Notumi were devastated. As their civilisation began to break down, the wealthy elites among them retreated from the chaos in their wider society and poured all of their resources into a massive escape plan. They strip-mined vast quantities of the stable notum still in the ground, adapted the rudimentary orbital stations into generational ark ships, and launched themselves out of the Cerberus system to find a new home, leaving billions of less-wealthy Notumi to suffer and die on their degrading homeworld.

This marks the point at which the two sub-species of Notumi diverged. Those who would become the Corpori took to the stars in the hope of finding a new home, while the ancestors of the Cerebri were left to fall into anarchy on the frigid wastelands of their once beautiful home.

The Cerebri are the descendants of the Notumi who remained on their home world of Cerberus V, which had rapidly transformed into a barren, frozen world, haunted by the skeletal remains of the Notumi civilization.

The Notumi who were left behind on Cerberus V during the Ruin found themselves in crisis. Their planet was no longer able to support the ecosystem it once had and most of the remaining notum on the planet was unstable. The advanced Notumi civilisation collapsed, leading to riots, anarchy and starvation. Billions died, and those who remained were left to spend all of their time just trying to gather enough food and notum to stay alive. The Notumi on Cerberus V fell into a dark age, reduced to tribes and isolated enclaves clawing their sustenance from the shattered remains of their world. Some isolated locations kept their archives and technology alive, and these Preserves, as they became known, allowed the Cerebri to rebuild their decimated civilisation.

More insidiously, the processes of the Ruin further mutated their genome, made more susceptible by the changes wrought by notum on their ancestors. Over time, successive generations of Notumi would become enfeebled by their middle years - a genetic curse they called “The Bane”. Children affected by the Bane would be born strong, but as they grew they would become weaker and weaker, often being unable to walk by the time they finished adolescence. Most of the afflicted died before reaching middle age. Those afflicted by the Bane were initially rejected from society, seen as corrupted and possibly contagious. As it began to take hold more and more over successive generations, however, it became clear that eventually the Bane would affect their entire species.

The equalising force of shared suffering unified the remaining Notumi in a way nothing had previously, and they rebuilt from the ashes with a single goal in mind - finding a way to cope with the Bane. The Preserves acted as hubs around which their society re-emerged, this time as the Cerebri, centering their new incarnation as a civilisation of the mind. Once they had managed to rebuild their infrastructure enough to allow for basic survival, they poured all excess resources and workforce into research. Progress was painstakingly slow, as those who had accumulated the knowledge to lead research had to direct teams of younger, fitter Cerebri in practically every project. Cerebri research explored numerous dead-ends, from exo-suits to virtual reality solutions. Eventually, they found a solution of sorts in what was thought to be a long-lost discipline - nanotechnology.

Deprived of the Notum that made the Notumi’s nanotech experiments come easily, the Cerebri developed more conventional nanomachines out of common metals, and encountered the same issues with power distribution and computing power that hinders that discipline even in the Modern Age. Eventually, by combining nanotechnology with cybernetic implants and their Notum-altered genetics, they devised the solution called “The Elevation”. This process allowed the Cerebri to overcome the blight of their damaged genome, offering a practical solution that allowed them to rebuild their civilisation and look beyond day-to-day survival. The inhabitants of Cerberus V, in a break from the habits of their forebears, united in a highly egalitarian technocracy. The new civilisation, rooted in the highly personal process of the Elevation, led to a society that valued the personal expression of each individual, prizing the role of each member of their society within the larger structure of Cerebri life. Buoyed by a working treatment for the Bane, it was not long before they struck out to the stars again, and had rebuilt a network of mining facilities and research stations across their home system by around 2500PT. With much of their system’s resources depleted by the elite Notumi’s evacuation a millennium before, they began to develop warp drive technology in an attempt to locate more resources in other nearby systems.

It was when their first warp-capable ship arrived in a neighbouring system that they discovered that someone had been there before. Corpori derelicts, floating in space surrounded by frozen bodies rimed with a thin layer of nanites, all suffused with precious notum. When news of the survival of their former rulers reached Cerberus V, the entire civilisation was incandescent with anger. The descendants of those who had left them to die, and taken the only reserves of the life-giving metal, were at large in the galaxy, and must be made to pay for the actions of their ancestors. The Cerebri threw resources at their space programmes, and militarised their economy for a conflict that they would begin, and hopefully finish.

Abandoning the majority of the Notumi in the Cerberus system, the wealthy and elite of Notumi society left in their cryoships in search of habitable worlds. After a few hundred years of passage through the interstellar void, they located a system 10ly away from Cerberus with several planets that were just within the verge of habitability. They called the system Roturi, after its small, reddish star, and set about establishing colonies across the various planets and moons of the system. With the distances involved and the stresses of establishing themselves, each large cryo-ship established itself as an independent polity, with its own reserves of notum and other resources brought from Cerberus. Research into new nanotechnology prospered, as the settled Notumi developed innovative ways to make their new homes habitable enough to survive on. Within a few short decades, they had rebuilt their industrial base, and most city-states were approaching self-sufficiency. Meanwhile their planets were becoming more habitable every day, as specialised deployments of nanomachines mined minerals for oxygen and other chemicals to release into the atmosphere. The combined effects of the notum in their systems and the prolonged cryo-stasis led to more genetic drifting among the Notumi, adapting each generation more and more to their new environment, and to the notum-imbued nanomachines that were becoming more and more common.

Within a hundred Terran years, they had discovered a form of warp drive, but lacked the shielding to make it safe and reliable. Again, nanotechnology filled the void, allowing Notumi FTL vessels to rapidly repair damage from dust and micrometeoroids entering the warp bubble. Soon, Notumi ships capable of 5c were exploring nearby stars and establishing outposts and small colonies. As these colonies in other systems began to prosper, Notumi society began to splinter, as cooperation between city-states dwindled due to increased competition to find new resources. A new cadre of elites arose, who controlled the remaining supplies of notum, ever dwindling in response to demand from the growing population and nanotech industry.

It is around this time that personal, reprogrammable nanites were invented, along with a device called the Nanodeck - a compact personal computer and recharging station for these new nanites. The Nanodecks interfaced with neural implants and the notum in the user’s nervous system to control a swarm of generalist nanites that invisibly surrounded them. Where previously, Notumi nanomachines were programmed at their creation to perform a few simple tasks, which they would be limited to, the Nanodeck’s neural interface allowed for rapid reprogramming of personal nanites to perform a variety of tasks. The nanites were either general-use enough to perform an array of functions, or were able to quickly reconfigure themselves to each new task. Nanodecks used notum to inductively power their tiny charges, allowing them to persist almost continuously as long as they remained close to the Nanodeck user. This innovation caused the daily use of nanotechnology to explode among the Notumi, and massively increased the demand for notum to create nanites and nanodecks. Obsolete nanomachines were collected and recycled for their tiny quantity of notum, and personal nanites soon became a part of everyday life, for those who could afford them.

By 2100PT, the new Notumi civilization was highly stratified, controlled by a few wealthy leaders who controlled access to the dwindling supplies of notum brought from the Cerberus system, which was already in high demand. Wealth brought access to notum, which in turn bought more potent nanotech, which could be used for almost any task. The poorest in society, meanwhile, barely had enough notum to fulfil their nutritional needs. Meanwhile, their society pushed outwards, exploring and colonising new systems in search of other sources of the all-important alloy. Up until this point, small asteroids containing tiny quantities of notum had been found in a few systems, but nothing of the scale of the reserves they had taken with them from the Cerberus system. The great breakthrough came when a Notumi ship travelling at warp speed catastrophically collided with a rogue planet when travelling between two systems. Although the ship was obliterated on impact, its transponder was not, and was found several years later by a rescue party, which detected significant notum reserves on the rogue planet’s dark surface. Although the finder’s city-state attempted to keep the planet a secret, it was soon leaked to the others. The search for more rogue planets with notum deposits began, with each state hoarding their secret locations as best they could. A fresh supply of notum brought incredible wealth for each ruler, and improved lives for all of their citizens - such high stakes that minor skirmishes, piracy and espionage increased across the entire society as each state tried to monopolise every new notum resource discovered.

Within 100 Terran years of the discovery of the first new notum source, Nanodecks were being widely weaponized across society, and research into new nanotechnology and nanodeck programming was primarily devoted to military uses. Within another hundred years, the Notumi were, as a society, almost entirely devoted to waging brutal wars against each other. Each state was effectively on its own, engaged in a vicious conflict against all the others. The very idea of a united species broke down, and propaganda to “other” all Notumi from outside each city state was rife. Historical records were redacted, as each state sought to distance themselves from the others, and the origins of the species and their home system were lost altogether.

The trauma of the conflict went deep, and citizens were encouraged to use nanodeck programming on their own brains, to alter their own perceptions and memory, “editing out” events, people or objects that conflicted with the sensibilities of their state or caused them pain. The pressures of the war evened out some of the stratification of their society, as most were expected to serve the war effort, and the greater availability of notum improved the lot of the lowest classes. The elites remained in control, and became known as the Vertici, while lower classes were referred to as the Corpori, making up the “body” of society. While the Vertici lived in luxury, free from danger, the Corpori waged war in space and on planets, mined notum, produced food and everything else that was required to fulfil the Vertici’s desires. This situation would probably have continued for the rest of time, were it not for the arrival of a new threat in the form of the Cerebri, boiling out from the Cerberus system in a tide of vengeful wrath.

It is believed that the first assault by the Cerebri against the other former Notumi came around 2650PT. They came in comparatively primitive ships, but with a drive and fervour that took their opponents completely by surprise. Reverse engineering Corpori technology had come to naught, as so much of it relied on their integrated nanite swarms. Falling back on their own technology, cooperative society and powerful industrial base, the Cerebri had produced vast numbers of small single-seater ships that deployed from large warp-capable vessels. When assaulting Corpori assets, these agile ships with a hardened front would literally ram Corpori vessels, venting their atmospheres and much of their nanite swarms, while disgorging Cerebri soldiers in armoured spacesuits, integrated with their Elevation systems, to sweep the ships clean. The Vertici states were so splintered and mistrusting that several fell entirely before they even realised they were being attacked by an outside force.

Eventually, the Vertici leaders mustered some resistance to the Cerebri forces, and brought their militarised economies to bear on the threat. The Vertici and Corpori holdings were too extensive to overwhelm, and the war bogged down into a stalemate. The steep cost of the Elevation meant that the Cerebri were severely impacted with each loss, and the Corpori relied heavily on scarce notum to fuel their own war efforts. The conflict remained hot and brutal, if smaller in scale - sorties into opposition territory made small gains, but the grinding cost of the war on both sides crippled their economies. The Cerebri fury remained, but the Bane remained an ever-present drain on resources and personnel, and on the other side the fractiousness of the Vertici prevented them from pooling their resources enough to mount a major offensive. It barely made a difference when Corpori researchers developed a complex series of nanodeck programs and specialised nanites that could synthesise small amounts of new notum from base metals - reserves of the alloy had been so depleted by this point that it only allowed the Corpori to stay in the fight and prevent their entire civilisation collapsing. The war would continue in this way for centuries.

In 3424PT, Ascendancy explorers located a safe warp route into what was later called the Notumi Cluster, a relatively clear expanse within the dense Orion Nebula. They first encountered numerous shipwrecks, planets bearing the scars of orbital impacts, and skeletal cities abandoned and suspiciously empty. Proceeding cautiously, they learned much about the warring species by sifting over the wreckage of their conflict. Long-distance observers would enter inhabited systems, document movements in the system and flee if detected. The Ascendancy spent a year taking the mettle of the two sides, and considered them ripe for conquest. The Ascendancy naval forces, their forces swollen from the First Tulaki Invasion, but with little to do during the First Armistice, were looking for a relatively easy victory and an opportunity to justify their post-war operations. Three battle groups were sent into the Notumi Cluster with orders to conquer and subdue the warring sides.

In a nine-year campaign, the Ascendancy fleets slowly ground down the resistance of the Notumi forces. The admiral in charge of the fleets, Ananya Malhotra, prioritised precision strikes against logistical and political targets, as well as the survival and morale of her own forces. Although only somewhat more technologically advanced than their opponents, the Ascendancy had several key advantages that gave them a critical edge, and deployed them well across the entire campaign.

• Firstly, Notumi starships were woefully slow in comparison with the Ascendancy vessels. Never having to travel beyond their 10ly cluster of space, Notumi warp drives were very slow, and lacked gravitic shielding. Although they possessed capital ships bristling with plasma projectors, torpedoes loaded with nanite disassemblers and other vicious armaments, these ships were easily outmanoeuvred. Ascendancy vessels could travel between star systems 100 times faster than the most advanced Notumi ships, and could engage their warp drives as soon as they left a planet’s gravity well - the tactical advantage was immense. Terran destroyer groups, when faced with superior firepower, simply warped away and assaulted another, undefended location.
• Secondly, both Corpori and Cerebri soldiers were critically vulnerable to disruptor weaponry, which would either disable their nanite swarms or cause their nervous systems to overload temporarily. Without shielding, the Notumi had no real defence against these weapons, which were deployed extensively.
• Finally, the Ascendancy fleets comprised veterans of the First Tulaki Invasion. In addition to being battle-hardened and well-trained, they had experienced the tactics of the Dominion first-hand, and were able to create innovative combinations in the field to great advantage. In particular, several assault teams composed of Urg troopers with Sollen support personnel obtained heroic status breaching the luxurious quarters of a dozen Vertici rulers and capturing them without alerting their Corpori guards.

Ground down by the constant needling strikes of their foes, both Notumi sides eventually capitulated. The Cerebri agreed to surrender to the Ascendancy first, gaining a number of concessions in the process. The Vertici, on the other hand, refused to submit and led several revolts as their city states were brought to heel. Almost the entire Vertici population were eliminated or snuck away on cryo-ships during the latter part of the conflict. Some Vertici seemed to mysteriously disappear without trace, either hiding within the Corpori populace, being assassinated or spirited away by skilled operatives on one side of the war or another. The Vertici were no more, and only the Corpori and Cerebri remained.

With both sides conquered, the Ascendancy was quick to bring the two warring sub-species into line. Hostilities between the two groups were ended, their territories were formalised and exclusion zones were enforced between them to present any flare-ups. Before any significant resentment could fester, the Second Ascendancy-Dominion War erupted a year later in 3442PT, and significant numbers of both Cerebri and Corpori were conscripted and sent to the Coreward front. Pains were taken to ensure that neither the Cerebri or Corpori encountered each other in that conflict, and by the time it had ended both sub-species were much more thoroughly integrated into the Faction.

Both sub-species of Notumi can now be found in numerous roles across the Ascendancy - Cerebri tend to stick to small enclaves of their own species, while Corpori are more likely to be found alone or in pair groups. Despite being integrated into the Faction for several hundred years, old attitudes remain, particularly around Notum. Both sub-species are wary of each other, and trust between them in any amount is rare. The Corpori remain fiercely protective of their access to Notum, as its use and creation is a core part of their identity. The Cerebri are still deeply resentful of their hoarding its secrets, and in part for the ravages of the Bane. Although the Ascendancy did perform some research into the use of Notum as a cure for the Cerebri’s inherited condition, the Bane has taken root so deeply in their genetics that infusions of the alloy cause little improvement. The Cerebri under Ascendancy rule have been granted enough Notum to satisfy the nutritional needs of their population, but for now the Elevation is still an essential rite of passage for all Cerebri who expect to live out a full life.