In the Illúme language Illúme means white people. It has to be noted there is no reference to skin colour but to the empty state they found themsleves in when they regained consciousness after the fall. The Illúme litteraly remember being in a whitened room as their first memory, it's a shared event hence the name.

The Illúme are a decendent of humans and are a offshoot of them genetically. They speak Illúme In a sense the Illúme are the last of the higher humans (who are them selves modified humans) but Illúme remain not as progressed (and deliberately so).

However Illúme do live agelessly and inhabit the 7 monastery space stations when not on active duty. After the great collapse a number of higher humans did survive. They were hand picked and mind wiped 70,000 years ago, but they are all probably much older than that. They are currently all male, although higher humans could manipulate their gender as a life style choice, and many did. Illúme experience their conscious existence though beaded connections to the Jéem.

the Illúme are not as progressed as higher humans but still retain some of the phage alterations including beaded consciousness and a seven year repititous ageless life cycle. They are also able to be protected by the Jéem while on active duty, most commonly through they use of displaced gravitonics.

Long ago, higher human genomes were manipulated by the dymorphic phage before the final great war.

The Illúme believe in God

numbers are per monastery, and are general not specific

1. high congress (4 officials on every monastery answerable to the Jéem)
2. brutalus (6,000 strong independant military of the high congress)
3. low minstry (800 hitorians purposed to record events)
4. government (12,000 strong field agency)
5. crisis (1,200 strong covert military arm of the government)
6. chancellory (1,000 maintenance crew)
7. pilotry (5,000 who manage the inter stellar vessels)
8. corps (1,000 strong pilotry surverying and military contingent)
9. custodian (500 strong medical crew)
10. theoretics (800 strong science movement)
11. militare (1,000 personnel to service equipment)
12. cultaire (500 protectors of the arts, responsible for culinary excellence too)

Illúme society is beautiful, tragic, painfully logical and emotional without removal of diligence. They have all lived incredibly long lives, and know each other intimately. They are incredily vulnerable to a melancholy, because of their role in the human race and they hate with absolute passion the fact they they help make decisions that effect the lives of feral humans and may indeed cause them to have to be exterminated.

They live in a saddneded state and, although possible, suicide is exceeingly rare, since most people recognise they have no choice but the server the humans race int he way they do. It is alonley and cold existance that is impossible to understand, they live out selfless lives across huge expanses of time and they are able to get up every day and keep on going because of an incredible sense of comitment to their goals.

There is no end to their work, they can and must do the same work day in and day out and it is soul destroying. They talk with a genuine passionate envy of feral man and live with an ache.

The Illúme live with such a burden that they live a very heavily managed life style riddled with ritual and occasion, every pyhsical act is riddled with elemetns of tradition and honourifics that they appear incredibly awkward and in a world of their own. They live in such a regimented lifestyle that they resemble the monastic lifestyle of monks.

But the term monastery is a slight misnomer - they are not monks but they do live lifestyles steeped in tradition, and and very self repressed.