
Story
**SPOILER WARNING: This story and these characters are not my original creation. I do no take credit for anything but the art in this thread. If you are reading or want to read Titan, Wizard, or Demon by John Varley and don't want the secrets spoiled, don't read the following!
In recent history a crew was sent out on an expedition to explore a distant moon, but along the way they discovered a large mass orbiting around Saturn that had not yet been discovered or charted, dubbed first as Themis, the twelfth moon of Saturn.
However getting closer to the new moon provided more accurate information that proved that the moon was made by an intelligent race. With this new information, it's shape and identity became more clear. Toroidal in shape and most likely hollow on the inside, the likelihood of it origins was much more agreeable.
It was agreed upon that their previous mission ought to be discarded, and the crew moved closer still to the mysterious disk. Once they had gotten quite close, Themis reached out for the ship with a large tentacle and pulled them in. Fearing they were under attack they sent out a distress signal. Alas, they were not saved.
Once inside, their bodies were manipulated and then pushed to the surface of the earth, but still beneath it. They had been separated from each other. They had to dig themselves up, and like a newborn their eyes were sensitive to the light. They were hairless and in the nude.
After finding each other, they traveled until they found the first intelligent lifeforms the human race had ever come across, Titanides. They closely resembled a centaur with the lower half of what appeared to be a horse, and a humanoid upper half. They all appeared to be female, with their slender upper halves, long beautiful hair, and outlandish colors.
Each Titanide has a male and female reproductive organ where a horse would have them, but what made one female and the other male was the organ located where a human ought to have genitals. This makes their breeding very different from our own, and allows for one Titanide to have several parents.
Shortly after finding the Titanides the Angels made an appearance. They were small in comparison. They had small bodies, extra large wings, and the feet of a birds. The Titanides and Angels seem to have an untamable hatred for the other for reasons that can only be explained by their biology.
Not believing that these amazing creatures could control their own rage, the crew climbed the endless cables through the spokes to the central hub of Themus to try to find what the locals called the goddess Gaea.
After going through many troubles and dangers along the way up the spoke, they finally met the ruler of the land. However, their expectations of meeting the race who created Themus had been foiled. The woman they saw was merely a representation of Gaea. Gaea is Themus. Themus is a living creature, one of a race called Titans.
She explained that she is one of several that live as monumentally large beings in space. They are first thrust onto a planet and take hold for thousands of years where they absorb the mass and minerals needed to create itself. Once they have everything they need, they launch themselves and begin to orbit around their planet. From there their mass inside their ring moves around as they get ready for the creatures they will soon begin to design and create.
And so that is how we came to know of this great place. Today the people of the third planet from the sun frequent Gaea as a vacation spot, or means to escape their reality, or just to find a place to call home.