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The Neuman are a paradox made flesh. To stand among them is to see two faces at once: one turned inward, where love, loyalty, and nurture define every action; and another turned outward, where all life beyond their own is treated with a clinical disdain so complete it does not even rise to hatred. To their own, they are family. To others, they are livestock. Their politics grow from this foundation, creating a society of warmth built atop a worldview of exclusion.
Among themselves, the Neuman are one of the most caring peoples to ever exist. Every child is considered precious, not to its parents alone but to the entire clan. Youth are raised communally, moving from home to home with ease, every elder seen as a mentor and every adult as a guardian. A Neuman child never lacks for food, attention, or teaching. The entire Sky Garden is their nursery, and the whole of their people their family.
Injury and illness are met not with pragmatism but with profound communal effort. The wounded are carried by their kin until they walk again. The sick are sung to through the night until they heal or pass. Even the old are treated with reverence; when the eldest die, their bodies are carried high into the canopy and left among the Prism Trees, where their bones will scatter light for generations.
Their care extends beyond survival. They invest deeply in one another’s joy. Feasts, dances, and flights are communal celebrations. A Neuman does not eat alone if it can be avoided, nor fly in solitude unless in mourning. Their politics are bound in the same principle: no voice is unheard, no member cast aside. Within their borders, the Neuman are tender and unyielding in their devotion to one another.
That love ends at the edge of their own skin. Beyond their race, the Neuman’s worldview is one of supremacy so absolute it does not even perceive cruelty. They do not hate baseline humans; they consider them lesser in the same way one might consider cattle lesser. There is no anger, no rage, no passion, only certainty. Humans are kept in pens, bred like stock, harvested with care as one would manage livestock herds.
When delegations have approached them, they have been slaughtered without hesitation. Not in fury or battle, but in cold efficiency. Their dissections of outsiders are clinical, their studies dispassionate. They are not sadists, not monsters reveling in torment. They are supremacists who see no contradiction in loving their own while reducing others to resources.
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To a Neuman, it is simple: only the Neuman are people.
Their society mirrors this duality.
Glideclans: The Neuman organize themselves into massive extended families called glideclans, each tied to a section of the Sky Garden. A glideclan is both home and parliament — disputes are settled communally, and children are raised by the clan entire.
The Canopy Assembly: Representatives of each glideclan gather beneath the Prism Trees for grand debates. Assemblies are ritualized, often lasting weeks, with decisions reached only after long deliberation. The process is slow, but it ensures consensus.
Elder Singers: The oldest Neuman preside over these assemblies. Their cracked but powerful voices lead ceremonies, open debates, and declare conclusions. They rule not by enforcement but by reverence — their age seen as proof of wisdom.
Consensus Rule: Neuman politics rarely fracture. To harm one’s own is the gravest sin, and the drive to preserve unity overrides all divisions. Their political life is deliberate, careful, and deeply communal.
Within this system, no voice is dismissed. Every Neuman is heard, from youth to elder. Consensus is sacred, because they believe their strength lies in their unity.
This is the great paradox of the Neuman: the same people who cradle their wounded, who raise their children in joy, who sing through the nights for their sick, are the same people who cage outsiders like livestock. Their tenderness stops at the boundaries of their race. Within, warmth. Without, dismissal.
And yet to the Neuman, this is not contradiction. They see it as order. Love is for their own because their own are worthy. Others are not. Their racism is not loud or hateful, it is calm, assured, woven into their politics as truth.
For outsiders, the effect is chilling. When soldiers of the Legion are shown images of Neuman pens, they see human beings treated as stock, fed through troughs, catalogued by weight and volume, dissected and harvested. And then they learn that these same people sing to their young, carry their wounded, and weep for their dead. The dissonance strikes deeper than hatred. The Neuman are not savages. They are not villains frothing at the mouth. They are, terrifyingly, a civilization of deep love that has chosen to define humanity as something less than human.