I have always theorized that the “moon” we see on each planet (but can’t travel to) is the Sanctum. Like its a space ship of a type that is kinda “transcendental” or something. We afterall can’t visit “moons” and there is always 1 moon, and it always looks the same…
I do typically hold to Citizens, I do think its a generic term for us though, as if the other “races” that we have concept art for were added the old news posts would have aged just fine with how they addressed us… I don’t like calling us Oortians, because the in game items refer to them as the long lost people we are discovering technology from, and seems to imply we are not the same group of people… I do get why its a name people use though. The game files calls us “base_race” and the EA character models as “cat_race”, although “base” isn’t much of a better name than Citizen so idk.
As for our origins, all we know for sure is the Elder was the first to awaken, I do like to think we just wake up and don’t know much about our people or past, like we were in some kind of hypersleep and do not have memories of where we came from or how the Sanctum got us here, which is why we can’t replicate that technology yet, but we are cleaver which is why we can make Atlas’s and Portals, and all the other advanced things we build with.
In Lacuna I wrote the following around the edge of a garden:
The stories the Elders tell
Speak of the Great Sky Journey
& how we became New Oortians.
But the stories don’t explain
Our celebrations of places &
times beyond our memories;
why we build stone circles,
where Oortmas trees came from,
or why Halloween is important?
Why are spiders and pumpkins scary?
Why do we craft flowers for Valentines?
The stories of our Elders
only give us more questions.
Did we even exist then
before the Great Sky Journey
in the garden of lost memories
I guess there’s still room for an actual name for our race while “citizen” can be more of a common term. Maybe @PixelatedTwix’s coined term “Ootinis” she borrowed from the Jawas.
@Eneitgranny I love that and we are clearly on the same wavelength.
@Fiffer13 I’d be willing to go along with the idea that the Grey World, as I call it, is the sanctum or could be a giant Death Star kind of colony ship with our thousands of sanctums (sancta?) in it. I’ve also played with the idea that it’s some kind of extremely dense ball of matter with a stronger gravitational pull than the star(s) that ultimately revolve(s) around us, but that would cause more questions than it would answer. I say we put it up to unofficial vote over it being the one and only transport ship that brought us all here… Citizens left whenever they wanted to; some stayed aboard for decades or haven’t left yet. Greyness of it can be an illusion/tint of the windows running over every sanctum.
what about a generational spaceship? That could be something Monumental could work into the new player experience, turn Sanctum into a spaceship, new players go through an awakening (choose their look) go through different parts of the sanctum/ship to learn basic skills, and when they are ready to go choose a world, they go to a final room (kitted out with a library, that they can use as we do the current sanctum - but also go back to read up on skills they might have rushed through on initially)
Experienced players can be logged back into the library when they log into the game, and from there straight to their home base or planet they left the game at previously as we do now with the sanctum
all explained now