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Vulcan was a large, dense, cold world, with an average surface temperature well below the freezing point of water (-103C).  Ironically, however, the world was geologically active, with numerous volcanic vents scattered over the planet. It was around these vents that life first arose on Vulcan. Approximately 300 million years ago an intelligent humanoid evolved on Vulcan in the pleasant, Earth-like equatorial volcanic zone. Eventually, population pressures and the necessity to colonize other warm volcanic regions drove the evolution of intelligence and ultimately technology.

The Vulcanians eventually explored their own world, then the Solar System. They established colonies on all the inner worlds and the moons of the outer worlds, and expeditions were launched to the nearest stars.

Vulcanian Science

One of the earliest sciences mastered by the Vulcanians was biology.  Life had arisen independently around a number of the volcanic vents on Vulcan, and it was efforts to understand this biodiversity that drove Vulcanian biological sciences. As they became more proficient at it, they began manipulating life to suit their ends, raising some species to intelligence or creating tailor-made organisms from scratch.

The Vulcanians were also masters of gravity manipulation. They used their own moon as a test-bed for their experiments, increasing it’s internal gravity from about 0.16G to almost half a G. Additional  experimentation on the next world inward were able to increase the surface gravity of that planet from about 0.4G to 0.9G.

Experiments with gravity led to the development of wormhole technology.  At the height of their civilization the Vulcanian solar and extra-solar colonies were tied to the homeworld by wormholes. Spacecraft were still used to explore new systems or for some specialized tasks, but nearly all commerce was conducted by wormhole, and the nexus of all traffic was Vulcan. In this manner the central government could control travel and tax all trade.  An outgrowth of gravity technology allowed the Vulcanians to pinch off bits of space time creating "pocket universes" and "stasis fields." The latter were useful in that objects within did not experience any flow of time. 

Vulcanian Government

The government of Vulcan had evolved over the millennia into an impersonal bureaucracy; to maintain its power over its far-flung colonies it not only controlled all commerce through its wormhole network, but also kept its colonies technologically dependent upon the homeworld by prohibiting certain industries to them.

Vulcanian Empathic Development

Early on the Vulcanians discovered that a small segment of their population evinced Empathic abilities. Over the centuries these were studied and methods of training were devised. Various schools of Empathic study were founded and technologies created to harness these powers.

The Destruction of Vulcan

All the factors mentioned above eventually led to the destruction of Vulcanian civilization. At the height of Vulcanian civilization, something went horribly wrong. Empathic studies awoke something ancient and evil and its influence spread rapidly throughout the Empathic population.  Civil war erupted as those unaffected fought to stem the advances of those who were. One of the weapons unleashed during this final war was a biological horror engineered from a six-legged insectoid species found on the Vulcanian homeworld. This biological weapon was capable of prodigious breeding and the uncanny ability to generate new castes to counter enemy moves. This scourge ravaged the homeworld and, in a final desperate effort to combat this monstrosity the Vulcanians turned their gravitic-manipulation technology against their own world, destroying it utterly.

As the civil war heated up on their homeworld, many Vulcanians began placing important facilities, equipment and personnel into stasis fields to ride out the coming storm. The research facilities on the Moon and Mercury were both placed within such fields.  Stasis fields on Vulcan itself survived the destruction of that world. Some were flung into the void between the stars, others were captured by the gravitational fields of planets, slipping into orbit or falling onto the world itself. Some were captured by the Sun with similar results. Over time, many failed, dooming their contents to horrific deaths. Some few continued operating, however, with their passengers blissfully unaware of the fate of their world.

The destruction of Vulcan severed the wormhole network between the various worlds. The colonies, unable to maintain themselves technologically, collapsed to stone-age barbarity. The few spacecraft flying at the time of the destruction eventually stranded their crews as they were forced to land on any habitable world.

Vulcan's moon was flung toward the inner Solar System when that world was destroyed. For millions of years it played cosmic billiards among the inner worlds. Eventually, it was snagged by Earth and settled into orbit around that world. As the æons wore on the stasis devices protecting the research outpost within the Moon failed and the scientists revived to find themselves in a bizarre new world.

Before the destruction of Vulcan someone had introduced bugs to the Moon. Over the hundreds of millions of years the Moon had traced its lonely journey through the Solar System, these bugs had evolved into literally hundreds of new species, filling each of ecological niches of their new world. Unbeknownst to the Vulcanian survivors some of the bugs had achieved a rudimentary intelligence and inhabited the upper caverns of the Moon.

Discovering themselves around a new world — one inhabited by its own species of intelligence — the Vulcanians readied their one remaining spacecraft and began shuttling down personnel and equipment to a large island off Africa's west coast. On one of the trips the craft disappeared over North Africa stranding both groups of Vulcanians — those on Earth and those still on the Moon.

Over the centuries the Moon-Men degenerated to an iron-age existence. Those stranded on Earth parlayed their few high-tech items into dominion over the primitive hunter-gatherers thereon.

However, the evil that plagued the ancient Vulcanians followed their descendents to this new world. The Vulcanians became increasingly abusive of their native servants, prompting the latter to rise in rebellion against their masters. Using pieces of Vulcanian equipment they barely understood, the slaves took the fight to the Vulcanians home island which they destroyed completely.

The ice sheets grew and receded, the planet revolved about the Sun, and the last great Vulcanian civilization faded into myth and legend.

Until, one day, a mysterious traveller presented an odd device to the great inventor, Thomas Edison. He had found the device, the traveller said, in a curio shop in Cairo. It had intrigued him and he'd purchased it. Now he desired to know what exactly the device was...

Background Notes

The Vulcanians were an enigmatic race who inhabited the fifth planet from the Sun nearly a half billion years ago. About 300 million years ago, the world was destroyed and the debris formed what is now the asteroid belt. Compared with the Martians or even the Lizard Men of Venus, very little appears in canon regarding the Vulcanians. 

The Vulcan Homeworld

What was once a large planet, named Vulcan by astronomer-historians, orbited the Sun at a distance of 257 million miles. More than 300 million years ago, the world exploded as a natural consequence of its age, to create a band of rocky asteroids that today circle the Sun in an otherwise vacant orbit.  [Space 1889, page 129]

The basic rule book describes Vulcan as "a large planet" that "orbited the Sun at a distance of 257 million miles." From the physiology of the Vulcanians' descendents, the Moon Men, Vulcan must have been an Earth-like world with a standard atmosphere and comparable gravity. However, at a distance of 2.5 AU, it would have been an extremely cold world; fittingly, volcanism may have been an important source of heat for the biosphere. Additionally, it would have sported seas, at least early on, as these seem to be prerequisites for the development of life.

As to the fate of the planet, the rule book says it "exploded as a natural consequence of its age." The rule book also states that each of the planets has followed similar evolutionary tracks, spaced about 150 million years apart. If this is the case, Mars should have been reduced to rubble 150 million years ago "as a natural consequence of its age" and Earth would be living on borrowed time. As this is not the case, something else must have come into play.

One of the suggestions that has been bandied about on the Space 1889 list is that Vulcan was destroyed during a war. The relic equipment available to the Moon Men (lightning cannons, electric rifles) indicates warfare was known to the Vulcanians. However, it would have had to have been a titanic struggle that resulted in the destruction of an entire planet.

Another clue to the war-like nature of the Vulcanians is found elsewhere in canon:

These people are in fact the last remnants of the race which inhabited the planet Vulcan before its destruction. Their city was originally a secret base with the personnel in suspended animation. With their homeworld destroyed the signal to wake never came, and instead they began waking up as their long-sleep devices failed several thousand years ago.  [Tales from the Ether, "River of Life", page 35 sidebar "The Science Priests of Luna"]

One might ask, why would the Vulcanians build a secret base and place its personnel in suspended animation? One possibility is that the base was a staging area for a conflict and the personnel were placed in suspended animation to cut maintenance costs until they were needed. Albeit this is a lot to read into a few lines, but it fits in well with the idea the Vulcanians were far from peaceful.

One of the list members, Terry Sofian, postulated the Vulcanians destroyed their homeworld in a last, desperate attempt to eradicate a horror they'd unleashed upon themselves. In his writings he had some of these "bugs" surviving to the present day in the deep caverns of the Moon. Specimens were captured and transported to Earth, where they escaped and wreaked havoc on late 19th century southern England before they were subdued.

Vulcan Physiology and Biology

Moon Men are actually descendents of the long-destroyed planet Vulcan, but they have forgotten their origins. The most striking difference from humans is their pale, almost translucent skin, which shows an elaborate network of veins and arteries, and a hint of the muscles working below the surface. Their skin has a faintly bluish cast, and is rough and scaly in texture. They are about man-size, perhaps a bit taller, but appear shorter as they are somewhat stooped.  [Conklin's Atlas of the Worlds, page 78]

As has been pointed out, the Vulcanians are humanoid and generally tolerate the same range of temperatures and atmosphere as do humans. They are, however, not human. One of the biggest differences is in the number of digits per limb: Vulcanians sport three digits, Martians four and humans five. 

Vulcanians also differ markedly from the other denizens of Luna. The latter all share a vaguely arthropod appearance with multiple limbs and vertical mandibles rather than the Vulcanians horizontal jaws. The Selenites, on the other hand, do appear to be related to the other animals in the Moon. 

As mentioned earlier, one theory as to the demise of the Vulcanians was that they unleashed a biological horror — the bugs — upon themselves. Some of these bugs survived in Luna, and over the intervening 300 million years evolved into the various insect-like creatures, including the intelligent Selenites, found throughout that body. However, some "wild Selenites" were throwbacks to the original organism, and these were the creatures recovered and transported to Earth. The bugs may have been a naturally-occurring species utilized by one of the warring factions on Vulcan, or they may have been created artificially as a terror weapon.

Vulcan Technology

At first glance, Vulcan technology is not that much more advanced than the technology of 21st century Earth. The most advanced items used by the Moon Men are electric rifles, which are essentially portable rail guns, and lightning cannons, which are nothing more than charged particle accelerators. However, one canon source says the ancestors of the Moon Men remained in suspended animation from 300 million years ago until only a few thousand years ago. Building a suspended animation facility that lasts 300 million years without breaking down is an engineering feat beyond anything modern man can accomplish.

One possibility is that the "suspended animation" mentioned in Tales from the Ether is actually akin to Larry Niven's "Slaver Stasis Boxes" — a pinched off bubble of space-time wherein time does not pass. The external passage of time might have eventually rendered the space-time bubble unstable, it collapsed and freed its occupants. This would also explain the relatively decent condition of the Moon Men's equipment — it is not really 300 million years old, but rather only a few thousand.

One of the semi-canon sources, Challenge 47's "Fist of Allah," details a Vulcanian spacecraft built before Vulcan was destroyed. However, the condition of the bodies aboard, and of the spacecraft in general, make it obvious the vessel is nowhere near 300 million years old. It is possible the ship was stationed at the secret base on the Moon, and was launched toward Earth shortly after the base's crew revived, possibly intending to ferry the survivors to a more hospitable locale. Something went wrong and the crew was killed when the vessel crashed into the African desert.

Stasis boxes might also explain the relatively pristine appearance of the Vulcanian base on Mercury mentioned in another semi-canon source, Challenge 52's "Dwellers in the Dark." One of the vehicles recovered there not only functioned, but the batteries retained a nearly full charge. It is therefore quite possible the stasis box surrounding the base failed relatively recently, and the lack of base personnel could be explained by it being unmanned at the time it was placed in stasis.

Another powerful technology is hinted at in the semi-canon resources. "Fist of Allah" details an ether drive that functions deep within an atmosphere and is controlled by magnets. This is beyond the ability of 19th century technology, but might portend future trends in propulsion science.

Character Races:  Vulcanians

Canon Sources

• Conklin's Atlas of the Worlds
• Soldier's Companion
• Space 1889
• Tales from the Ether

Semi-canon Sources

• Challenge 47, "Fist of Allah"
• Challenge 52, "Dwellers in the Dark"