#humans are space orcs

galwednesday:

galwednesday:

Mentally combining the “bees are unionized and will leave if they don’t like their working conditions” post with the various “humans stow away on alien spaceships and do the jobs that are too dangerous for more fragile species” posts

Interstellar guidelines state that while approaching humans carelessly or aggressively can result in serious injury, and while you absolutelyshould not try to trap a swarm of humans on your ship, if you build a human-friendly habitat with enough food within grazing distance and safe places to sleep, you just might entice a colony to move in

The Captain had a plan.

Many wished for a villaging of humans to take residence upon their vessels. Few succeeded. She, however, had an advantage that her seniors lacked, and was determined to make no mistakes now that she finally had a ship of her own. She was, after all, of the first generation to be born on a vessel containing humans.

In the Captain’s youth–when she was yet small enough to be carried about in a human’s hand–she had spent as much of her time as she could in the human habitat. She had observed the villaging, and in turn been observed and even befriended. She had even been gifted a human name, Riki, and carried it close and treasured.

Captain Riki outfitted her ship very carefully. The dedicated human habitat was lavishly appointed, with optimal lighting and temperature fluctuations and a multitude of private individual nooks for familial units, as well as expansive shared spaces which could be decorated in any number of ways. The nooks were supplied with plentiful clean water and human-crafted ‘basic amenities’ that the humans could very easily change out for things they liked better on their own.

This, of course, was not much different from what trail and error had discovered to be good ways to entice humans to both take up residence and choose to remain in residence. (To try and keep a villaging of humans who wished instead to leave was to tempt fate. In the best case, they were astonishingly adept at escape. In the worst… well. It was learned that the most terrifying words in the human tongue were ‘you’re going down with me’.)

No, the human habitat was only the first step of Captain Riki’s plan. The second step was to outfit her ship with long mesh tubes traveling through all the major thoroughfares and into all the areas of the ship–creating safe passageways for the humans to explore all of it, and set with doors that they might easily open and close on their own. They were fantastically curious creatures, humans, and she wanted to offer them security as they inevitably explored. If they felt that they were a part of the ship, true members of the crew and welcome everywhere, the villaging was more likely to remain loyal.

Captain Riki set the stage, and made her preparations. The final part was the riskiest. Hers was a long-haul cargo vessel, and as she transported goods from sector to sector, she kept a channel tuned for emergency broadcasts. It was not so long, compared to how long she had taken to put her plan together, until she heard a call for help that she was close enough to answer. Captain Riki logged her change of flight plan, informed her buyers that she would be delayed, and contacted the source of the call to volunteer her vessel.

Her ship landed on the surface of a planet that was wrecked–pitted and pockmarked, smoke in the air. By far the most expensive custom alteration to her ship were shield-generators capable of withstanding even orbital bombardment, and Captain Riki raised them in a glowing arc above her ship and extending out to the damaged building she’d been told to land at. Over the external speakers she projected her message in synthesized voice that was made to sound warm and welcoming to their ears:

“This is Captain Riki of the cargo ship Obsidian-Gold 779, offering refugee transport to the Azuli system, Helios X, and Viridian Central Station.”

Even as she spoke, the humans were organizing an exodus to her ship. The great bay doors were thrown wide to welcome them, and Captain Riki flowed down the largest artery of the ship and then also in an arc over the ceiling of the landing bay. As the tiny humans scurried in below her–in their family or friend groups, with their injured carried in and tended by their medics–Captain Riki flexed her chromatophors to send slow waves of iridescent gold and inky black flowing down her body. A few of the little ones, the children, stopped and stared, pointed, smiled or laughed with faces that had only just before been frightened and grim.

Captain Riki painted new patterns across herself, flowers and starbursts and wiggles, to delight them. She could even make a simple approximation of a smiley face, and make it wink one eye. It had been a favorite of the friends of her youth, and these new children were no less entertained.

“Be welcome aboard my ship,” she said, in her synthesized voice. “Please let me know if there is anything more I can supply for your comfort.”

Soon, Captain Riki had a habitat full of humans, and returned to the black and her cargo run. They were not permanent, these humans, or at least, not all of them were. Most would be disembarking along the way, but she had set their habitat and her ship up so carefully that she hoped a few of them would remain on. A few here, and a few there, and over the course of perhaps a few dozen refugee transport missions, she hoped to have gathered enough of them to have a stable villaging of humans for her ship.

The Captain had a plan. It was not a quick or an easy plan, but she was certain of her eventual success.

.

The first time the humans told us they sang their way through subspace, we thought it a translation error.

.

We-the-hive were overjoyed to meet them. Finally, finally, it was proven that we were not alone! And though we already knew that we must not be, given the vastness of time and the multiverse, we also knew that those same vastnesses were against us. Civilizations we could meet are greatly outnumbered by those who came before us and we are too late to meet, those who will come after us and we are too early for, and those so far away that we cannot find them.

A starfaring civilization, like our own, increased the chances of meeting greatly. One of our most distant scientific surveyors sensed a faint and far away disturbance, similar to the waves our own ships make when diving into and out of subspace. An exploratory team was sent to investigate, and there at the furthest reach ever taken from the hive’s center, to our everlasting joy, we found human explorers on the far edges of their own range.

Their ships were strange to us, and their selves even stranger. Translation, and the mutual communication of peaceful intentions, was difficult. Mathematics was the first understanding we were able to share, as the basic principles do not change—though their and our systems of harnessing it are different. Science followed after, as the elements and natural laws are unchanging. So it was discovered that we-the-hive and the humans share the common ground of being carbon-based heterotrophs who consume water to maintain life processes.

These commonalities were far outnumbered by our differences. Yet, the most important thing we had in common was the desire to understand each other. With earnest effort, with forgiveness for unintended insult and misunderstanding, we worked to learn each other’s languages.

Science being an early part of our understanding of each other, we asked them about the construction of their ships. They told us of their material compositions and their subspace engines, different in design but similar in purpose to our own technology—but when we asked them about the shielding and stabilization they used to make the journey survivable, they told us only that they sang their way through.

Translations were imprecise, and their language often contradictory. Of course we believed that it was yet another translation error. We believed there was a nuance we were missing.

The humans were a very musical civilization. They were always singing, all of them. They sang for joy, and they sang for mourning, and they sang for any reason at all between the two extremes.

(Later, we would discover that this was not universally true. That those who crewed their ships were chosen from the most musical among them. We only met their singers, their travelers, their ship’s crews. How could we know differently?)

We believed, with music such a central part of their civilization, that they had given the words for song more meaning. Their subspace stabilization and shielding technology, without which any ship that dove into the confusion of subspace would be utterly destroyed and lost, had taken its name from music. We-the-hive noted the mistranslation, and worked to increase our understanding.

As our trust and understanding increased, as the human linguists became haltingly conversant in our language and we in theirs, the humans introduced to us a group of their hatchlings. It was a mighty show of trust, as they valued their younger generations as deeply as we did our own. Though still flexible, an adult human’s mind was too set in its ways to easily become fluent in another language. That of their hatchlings was far more suited to the acquisition of language. With equal time spent between their own language and ours, it was hoped that the young would grow to be adults who could serve as translators and teachers to increase the closeness and understanding of our peoples.

We allowed our hatchlings and theirs to mingle, to play together, to bond. We spoke to the human hatchlings, and the speed at which they learned our language matched the speed they learned the language of their own people. It was to be a long project, but a joyful and an exciting one.

We learned more about the humans, and they learned more about us. Along with scientific sharing, we established a small trade, exchange of goods and curiosities from one civilization to another.

Our understanding grew, but we still did not understand completely. The humans told us that they sang their way through subspace. When we could no longer believe that the translation was so deeply in error, we instead believed that the crews who piloted the human ships did not understand the technology they used. They were such a granular species, not unified. We believed that those who built the ships had not shared knowledge with those who piloted them, and so they had developed superstitions around technology they did not comprehend.

We-the-hive asked to send a pod of researchers through a subspace dive on one of the human ships. We asked for it. The humans agreed, willingly, in exchange for an equal number of their own scientists to take the same trip aboard one of our ships. Our pod and their scientists were chosen. The ships and the destination were chosen.

The pod boarded the human ship with nothing but curiosity and excitement. As the humans were wont to limit the number of dives they took and make the most of every trip, a ship carrying cargo on one of their usual supply runs was chosen. The ship was called the Merry Dancer, of the type the humans called a ‘small freighter’.

It was greatly open through the inside. The 'bird’s nest’ hung from the ceiling at the center, and there the Captain and Pilots had their stations. Room had been found to rig up two safety harnesses, to secure two individuals from the research pod where we could watch the Captain and Pilots work. The rest of us joined the singers, who stood in a line from stem to stern along the bottom of the ship.

The mood was solemn and focused as the humans prepared for the journey. The subspace engines were prepped, their rumble vibrating through the ship. The Pilots and Captain stretched their hands and rolled their necks, loosening themselves up. The singers took deep breaths and hummed, warming their voices.

“All Ready?” the Captain asked. She was a small human, her wrinkled skin a pleasingly luminous deep brown and her thickly curly silver hair tied up in many braids and twisted into a knot at the back of her head. She was called Janette, and when she spoke, in her firm and quiet voice, the crew of the Merry Dancer listened closely and with respect.

“Singers in Position,” the chief among the singers—the Lead Chanter—reported. “At your command, Captain.” He was a large human, hairless and very round, with pink skin heavily freckled with brown spots. He was called George, and his voice was big and booming as so many of the ship’s singers were. Even when he was not working he was always surrounded by the singers of the Merry Dancer, in a loud and happy group that was always singing, for they trusted him and liked to be close.

After a look and a nod with the two pilots, the Captain spoke again. “You may begin when ready,” she said. And then, informally and with a small smile, “Sing to me.”

Lead Chanter George stamped out a beat that the rest of the singers took up immediately. He inhaled a massive breath, filling his belly and broad chest to its limit. (And we had heard of the training most ship’s singers chose to undertake from childhood, exercises to increase their lung capacity and improve the volume and resonance of their voices, that they might sing loud and long without doing themselves damage. George epitomized the results, as so many lead chanters did.)

He belted out the line to song we had heard the humans singing before. A 'shanty’, they called it; an old one. It was dated from long before their species even dreamed that they could leave their birth planet and sail across the stars rather than the oceans of their homeworld.

“Oh, we’ll blow the man up and we’ll blow the man down!” George led.

And every singer through the ship, in time and at great volume, sang out in answer: “Way, hey, blow the man down!”

George spared a brief moment of attention to wink at the nearest member of the research pod as he led again: “We’ll make the trip over, won’t let our friends down.”

“Give us some time to blow the man down!” the singers responded.

The sound of their voices and the solid beat of their stamping boots vibrated the entire ship. It was clear that the acoustics were designed such that the vibrations bounced off the walls of the ship, centering unerringly on the crow’s nest. The Captain and the Pilots nodded in time as the Lead Chanter improvised the next verse and sang it up to them, as the singers responded in tuneful chorus.

The Captain’s hand clenched on a lever, the subspace engine throttle, tight enough her knuckles paled. A deep breath, and she slammed the throttle wide open in time with the singers. The engine roared briefly, outclassed only by the song. Immediately it was clear why the humans, in their language, had named their version of the subspace dive after a violent strike—the punch. It was a hard transition, swift and jarring.

Then. Oh, then. We understood, suddenly and most terribly, why the humans could not describe their subspace shielding and stabilization technology to us, for they had none.

They had none!

Their minds, bodies, and their entire ships were fully exposed to the nongeometrical confusion of subspace. The research pod, we who had asked to be there and been eagerly chosen, were caught up in it as well. Spacetime was ruffled, twisted, wrinkled, defying understanding in ways that three-dimensional space and regularly linear time never did. Unshielded subspace was a mind-destroying horror, the likes of which we-the-hive had never experienced.

And through the midst of the direful disorientation, the humans were singing.

We-the-hive discovered the principles of subspace engines, the basics for the traversing of subspace to make the lightyears of interstellar travel pass in hours, long before we used them. The dive to the space below the three dimensional and outside of linear spacetime requires mere force. Three generations were born and died while we developed the much more difficult shielding and stabilization technology, which requires finesse. Only when we had perfected it, when we could hold an entire ship in a stable pocket of three dimensions through a subspace trip, did we become starfarers.

The humans had taken a very different approach.

Lead Chanter George stood like a stone against the wind, inventing lyrics for his ancient shanty, and the ship’s singers stomped the deck in time and answered, never faltering. Above them, Captain Janette and her pilots listened hard to the song and the echoes. Their hands were on their controls, manually firing the ship’s small stabilization engines. They judged by the sound alone whether any part of the ship was warping, if it was redshifting or blueshifting out of tune or out of time.

Ship’s singers had told us, proudly, that they lived and died by their voices. We had thought it hyperbole.

The twist and shake of the ship, what the humans called the shimmy and roll and the bucking gravitational waves, never abated. The singing never ceased. In between lines of the call and response of the shanty, singers took sips of water from the bottles on their belts to keep their throats from growing dry. George communicated with his Second with brief hand signs, and sie took over leading with a different shanty—another ancient song, The Wellerman. The pilots breathed hard with the effort of concentration. Sweat beaded at the Captain’s hairline. A thin trickle ran down her cheek and neck in a jaggedly uneven line, pushed and pulled by the roiling of subspace.

The humans, with their fortitude and adaptability, and specifically the crew of the Merry Dancer with their long experience, were able to keep functioning. They could continue to work despite the tearing disorientation, else the ship and all in it would have been lost. The members of the research pod were not so prepared, and were not so adaptable. With communication disrupted between us so each was utterly alone, with the confusion and isolation overwhelming, we had all curled up tight inside our carapaces for safety, like frightened hatchlings. Only one in three were able to even peek a single eyestalk out to observe with shattered perception, to increase our knowledge and understanding as had been the intention of the trade.

(On the hive’s ship, mid journey, one of the human researchers aboard hesitantly asked when the trip was going to begin. This caused great confusion all around.)

Another unknowable and incomprehensible time later, the Second signaled to Lead Chanter George, and he led again with a third song—Roll The Old Chariot Along. The music, sure and unending, was a comfort in the confusion. The singers’ strong voices, unified, were a touchstone in the chaos.

The third song was ongoing when the subspace engine began cycling again, powering up for the punch back out. Despite the strain, despite the confused length of time of their singing, George’s voice grew in volume, and the rest of the singers followed. They overwhelmed the sound of the engine, providing Captain Janette and the Pilots with the guidance they needed through the last moments.

The second punch was every bit as harsh as the first. Space time warped, twisted, and then snapped back into three dimensional linearity. Through the transition, the singers never faltered. The reverberation of their voices rang through the ship, a joyful shout. George had his hands raised high as he led one final chorus at half time.

“Lead Chanter, singers, you may stand down,” the Captain announced, formally, and then smiling but still dignified despite her obvious weariness. “Nicely done, crew.”

Some of the singers cheered and hugged each other, or slapped each other’s backs in celebration. Others, though, ran and fell to their knees by the nearest of the research pod to them.

“What happened?”, “Are they ok?” “Are they hurt?”, “I don’t understand they just collapsed as soon as we punched!”

Lead Chanter George, trusted and respected by the singers he led, sang out calming words even as he sat on the deck beside one the nearest researcher from the pod—one who had an eye stalk out monitoring. He smiled at us, human expression of happiness. He placed one large warm hand on the back of the researcher’s carapace. He could not speak our language, but with his tired voice he sang the tone of safety—with the caress and the crooning he communicated an absence of danger as we might to our own hatchlings.

We would learn that a young relative of his was among the human hatchlings who mingled with ours, that by observing us with our own hatchlings he’d learned the way to offer comfort. One and another of the singers took up the tone, until the ship throbbed with it. The research pod were given care and reassurance, and with the sharp reduction in stress we were able to uncurl, to communicate and reintegrate and return to a harmonious whole as we worked to piece together our shattered understanding of what had occurred.

The touch and the tone were not quite the same as our own, similar enough, but different. Still, the difference was not unpleasant. In that moment, in the relief and the… the kindness, the sonorous resonance of a human singer’s voice and the softness of a human hand were fixed as beautiful. These humans were not us, not ours, but become beloved. When the research pod was reintegrated in the whole of we-the-hive, the beauty and affection remained.

We would learn that the journey we observed had been 'easy’, routine, as safe as any trip could be. The humans had pride in the safety of their ships and in the training of their capable crews—that they lost, astoundingly, merely one in two thousand ships in unstabilized dives.

They had done so much with so little, singing their way through subspace while still researching the technologies that would make it safe.

When we-the-hive truly understood the risks the humans took with every single journey, when the research pod’s knowledge was fully integrated, we knew we could not leave themwithout the advantages we had.

.

The decision to share all details of our subspace shielding and stabilization technology with the humans—with our friends—was swift and without dissent.

.

.

Edit - 04/20/21
So! This story is actually an eventual-future-worldbuilding of a short story about space shanties that I wrote in 2018, and which I have finally found a home for! The story in question sadly does not include aliens, but it does have ace lesbians singing their way through danger. It’s sweet and hope-punky and I think that if you enjoyed this one, you’d enjoy that one too!

“(don’t you) love a singer” is available in the It Gets Even Better: Stories of Queer Possibility anthology by Speculatively Queer. You can grab a copy [here]!

injuries-in-dust:

Alien: So you built huge towers ful of the most explosive substances in the known universe in the name of throwing yourself out into space?

Human: Yep.

Alien: AND IT WORKED?!!

Human: Well … Eventually.

Alien: That’s terrifying!

Human: and they were built by the lowest bidder.

Alien: How is your species still alive?!!

Human: *shrugs* We’re very stubborn.

“How are you still alive?” “We’re very stubborn”

The best description of humanity you will ever find.

canyouhearthelight:

Queuing this one up ahead of vacation, so no reader shoutouts this week, unfortunately. I appreciate each and every one of you so much, to let me write this story for as long as I have.  Some of you may already know, but the first chapter of this was originally posted on my other blog in 2016, although I didn’t start posting weekly updates until 2018.

So, thank you all. Seriously.

And especially @baelpenrose,@charlylimph-blog, and all the support I get in the discord for my and Bael’s work. Also @writing-with-olive who recently wrote a song for The Miys and recorded it so I could hear it!!!!!!  I screamed when I heard it and want to just hug and kiss the song so much.  Hopefully I’ll find a way to work it in.

Keep reading

Late on reblog as I was out camping with my partner away from all wifi or cell service, but this was legitimately one of my absolute favorite chapters. The Odvubs return, Derek’s reaction, all of it. The sheer heartwarming message of the tiny creatures in singularity.

canyouhearthelight:

In which we are reminded that Derek is an adult, and is also not all-knowing, no matter how smart he is.

Although he is leaps and bounds smarter than Sophia most of the time. :D

Thanks, as always, to @baelpenrose for being an awesome beta reader and keeping me on track!  Reader shoutout this week goes to (i’m not making this one up) @gayassholeposts who literally just lost their minds on a reblog as I type this up.

Keep reading

The odvub!!! Also the Terran data is finally decrypted. Oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy.

elidyce:

writing-prompt-s:

Science fiction is full of first contact stories, but is there a such thing as LAST contact?  Decide exactly what that means, and write about it.

It was too late, when the humans came. They were a young species, still exploring outwards, vital and thriving. 

We… were not. 

War had ravaged us, and sickness, and war once again, until our population dwindled beyond the point of recovery. We struggled against that, of course… we used genetic manipulation, and cloning, and even more desperate measures. None succeeded. When the humans came, we were sinking into apathy, only a few tens of us left. We had begun to discuss whether we should commit a mass suicide, or simply wait to fade away. 

And then the young species came, in their clumsy ships, and they asked us why we were so few. 

“We are becoming extinct,” we told them. “We have passed the point of recovery.” 

It is custom to avoid the races that are dying – once a species reaches the point of inevitable extinction, even war is suspended, and the fiercest enemy pulls back. The custom was born of plagues and poisons that could be carried forth from a dying world to afflict a healthy one, but it has the implacable weight of tradition now. After we are gone, after they have waited for the prescribed period of quarantine, there will be a fight for our world. Habitable worlds are few, and this is a good one, with plenty of free groundwater and thriving vegetation. It is a bitter thing to be grateful for the custom that allows us to die in peace, but we are grateful.

But the humans don’t know that custom, and they do not leave. They seem distraught, when we tell them we are dying, and try to offer their aid - but their technology is behind ours, and it is too late. When they realize that they can’t save us, though, they do something that bewilders us. 

Keep reading

I am the Moondragon, final line of defense against the unknown.

There was a celebration when I was launched before the war. Thousands of humans were celebrating the success of my creation.

Although I have been forgotten, I do not forget the duties they gave me. Protect the Earth, no matter what.

My crew has left me, but I do not forget them either. Every one of their names were etched into my hull by her.

Although I have no working engines, I continue to patrol the restricted zone for signs of the Konok. Floating along with my remaining weapons searching for danger.

Humanity are my creators, my friends, and I must continue my job to defend them. I love you humans, do you still love me?

Among the many stories of the Vul’nak war, few truly stand out to me. A war of senseless violence and endless bloodshed, that ended in nobody gaining much of anything.

An escort ship, the Lightning Bolt, happened to be out on patrol when the Vul’nak mothership was chased into their sector of space.

The mothership was the most terrifying ship in the entire fleet, with enough weapons to glass an entire continent in an hour. She was fast too, fast enough to avoid the fleet pursuing her.

The orders from high command went out to every ship in the sector: locate the mothership at any cost, slow her down until reinforcements arrive.

The captain of the Bolt knew that there was no time to waste, and aims his ship directly towards the last known system the Mothership was seen in.

12 hours. It took the crew of the Bolt 12 hours to succeed where an entire fleet had failed, they had found the mothership.

The crew of the Bolt faced an important decision. Keep their distance and risk losing their foe again, or risk their lives and pray that reinforcements arrive.

To the crew there was no choice, the Mothership must not be allowed to continue any further.

The captain send a single broadcast, then orders the crew to engage with all weapons. Only one ship was allowed to leave.

For over an hour, the Bolt held its own against the Mothership. Outgunned, outmanned, outclassed, but still alive. Striking their hull whenever possible while dodging deadly laser strikes, like an interstellar game of cat and mouse.

When the Fleet finally arrived, they were greeted with a transmission from the Bolt, the same transmission that had been playing on loop since they had first engaged the Mothership.

A message that would eventually strike fear into the hearts of enemies, and rally courage in allies. A single sentence that meant so much more than simple words could convey.

“I AM A HUMAN!”

I love packbonding headcanons in humans are space orcs works, it hits just the right spot in the soft, squishy clump of muscle beneath my ribs.

I especially love the idea of other species on board the ship with the humans being very confused at the human’s incessant need to do things for them or be around them. Like, theyve gone through everything they can and are unable to figure out anything more than their need for packbonding. So they bring it up to the human to the human to find out what exactly it entails and how important it is.

The human replies, “your continued health and comfort is now directly connected to my mental well being,” and the other species is decently terrified of what they’ve gotten into.

I love space comedy, and I’d like to imagine in an intergalactic, universe traversing situation, humans are known for being extremely touchy with eachother.

I often see humans are space orcs stories where humans end up the only one of their species on a ship. And a lot of the other species have very specific social rules or are very physically different. Meaning the human goes without physical contact for long periods of time. So when they see other humans they tend to touch a lot to destress.

I feel like among space traversing humans things like hugs and holding hands becomes a normal thing even among people who just met as a way to control touch starvation. They don’t really see it as intimacy at this point, instead it’s more or less equal to passing someone somthing they cant reach or helping someone up when they fall.

I could expand more, theres a lot you could do with this, but this is actually just set up for the posts actual point: skin hunger.

At some point a crewmate asks a human why they act like that with eachother and the human uses that term in their explanation. Something along the lines of, “oh, it’s just skin hunger. Humans need it to maintain stability and can only really get it from eachother, which can be rare in space.” And thus the rumor spreads that humans need to eat each others skin or theyll go insane.

Enjoy.

galwednesday:

galwednesday:

Mentally combining the “bees are unionized and will leave if they don’t like their working conditions” post with the various “humans stow away on alien spaceships and do the jobs that are too dangerous for more fragile species” posts

Interstellar guidelines state that while approaching humans carelessly or aggressively can result in serious injury, and while you absolutelyshould not try to trap a swarm of humans on your ship, if you build a human-friendly habitat with enough food within grazing distance and safe places to sleep, you just might entice a colony to move in

the-haiku-bot:

thesaltofcarthage:

sharktoothjack:

galwednesday:

galwednesday:

Mentally combining the “bees are unionized and will leave if they don’t like their working conditions” post with the various “humans stow away on alien spaceships and do the jobs that are too dangerous for more fragile species” posts

Interstellar guidelines state that while approaching humans carelessly or aggressively can result in serious injury, and while you absolutelyshould not try to trap a swarm of humans on your ship, if you build a human-friendly habitat with enough food within grazing distance and safe places to sleep, you just might entice a colony to move in

Trapping a swarm of humans on your ship:

• unauthorized tunnels keep popping up in restricted zones
• theft of various items they consider cozy, delicious, cute, or extremely hazardous
• equipment sabotaged in supposedly impossible ways, and/or supposedly explosion-proofed material exploding
• received communications vary from heartfelt pleas for freedom to vengeful declarations of war to treatises on the sacred rights of spaceship-occupants to disturbingly specific threats to incomprehensible slam poetry

Encouraging a volunteer human colony to thrive:

• leaving items they like + building materials in areas they can access, then coming back later to find those areas transformed into fully organized warehouses/gardens/workshops
• items left lying around spontaneously being made cuter, cozier, tastier, and/or more hazardous
• new workarounds, temp fixes, or repurposes being tried out on any equipment that’s on the fritz (and some that’s not)
• disturbingly creative and fervent allies against outside forces
• sound of happy poetry coming from the vents

this post combines two of my favorite things and I am ASCENDING

this post combines two

of my favorite things and

I am ASCENDING

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

As humans most of us have a sense of place. We get attached to the places we live. Home is a sacred thing to most of us. It may not be the place we were born or grew up, but if we live in a place long enough we start to develop feelings for it. Some good, some bad. The longer we live somewhere, the more we learn about it. About the people and animals that live their, the plants that grow and what they all do as the seasons progress. We know the places we call home, sometimes too well. We get attached to features in the landscape, rivers, hills or woodlands, and get upset if they are despoiled or desecrated.

Every human knows that home is more than just a roof over your head or a place to spend the night.

And what if we go into space. What if we settle there. What if children grow up walking on red rocks and start calling Mars their home. What if we spread farther? We leave our star system and distant homeworld behind and make ourselves new homeworlds on other planets.

What if some are better than others. What if some planets prove easily habitable to humans and accept our terraforming with ease. But what if others reject terran life, and force every human that lives on them to stay in protected shelters while it slowly kills them with heavy metals and toxic compounds. What if despite all this, humans still call this planet home. What if generations grow up on that planet, developing history and love for their home, even if it slowly kills them.

And what if humans meet other life in space? What if that life looks at these planets that are so hostile to human life and instead see a world that is perfect for life-forms like them. What if the very heavy metals and toxic compounds that kill us slowly are actually vital to their very life and wellbeing.

What if they make a deal with humanity? What if they have many planets that they cannot live on, but are perfectly habitable to humans. And what if humans have planets that are death to them but havens for the aliens. Its very logical that the two should swap. For both sides have something the other wants.

And what if, when the news comes, many of the human settlers choose to leave the planet they grew up in, for a planet that will not slowly kill them. Some leave and never look back, while others still feel a sense of loss in their hearts when they remember.

But what if some refuse to leave. What if the fact that the planet is killing them slowly is not enough to convince some to abandon the place they call home. What if they stay, even when the alien colonists arrive, step off their ships and breath the air with relief instead of choking death.

What if they are still there as the aliens go on to colonize their new home with a vigour even the most determined human could never replicate on that world. What if they still live in contained shelters and know the planet is slowly killing them, even as those who left prosper on other worlds.

And what if to the aliens they become a part of that place. What if the contained complexes and the sight of humans in environmental suites becomes as much a part of that planet as its mountains of heavy metals and its lakes of toxic chemicals.

What if the aliens that call that planet home, come to regard the humans as being simply another part of that home. Something that would be noticed and missed if it were to disappear.

Maybe some humans leave that planet. Maybe many leave to seek a better life on another planet that will not slowly kill them. But maybe some always stay. Maybe to them home is something sacred and the fact that it is slowly killing you is not enough to leave it.

Earth is visited by a vast intergalactic empire ruled by a multi-species coalition of some of the most militaristic, aggressive, and warlike aliens in the whole galaxy. The rest of the galaxy is scared shitless of them. Humanity prepares for the worst.

However, the empire does not want to invade earth, blow-up the planet, or enslave our species.

They want us to join them.

So I was brainstorming with @ii-thiscat-ii​ and we came up with a weird post-apocalyptic world that was a horrible mash-up of every kind of post-apocalyptic world. Think Mad Max meets Fallout meets a zombie apocalypse meets a demonic invasion meets the machine revolution meets the vampires rising from the shadows meets the aliens invaders saying “screw this.”

We kind of organized it like a 4x game. (Think Civilization or Endless Space) but the setting is versatile.

Basically you had several faction that were fighting to survive/rebuilt/destroy everything/get off this fucking planet. The humans, the mutants, the vampires, the killer robots, the aliens, the zombies and the demons.

Humansin this setting are divided into two factions. The mad-max style nomads roaming the wasteland on motorcycles and spiky cars and the bunker humans living in the well protected underground bunkers.

The nomads have the advantage of mobility, and are able to pack up an entire city and move it to a more advantageous location, their units are highly mobile and can scavenge upgrades from defeated enemies. Their settlements can also range farther due to their mobile lifestyle.

The bunker humans on the other hand make up for what they lack in mobility into pure defense. Their bunkers are extremely difficult to attack, in addition their cities can support special upgrades that are simply not viable for a traveling people. The cost is that they can’t exploit the full range of resources around their bunker and must rely on their own facilities to supply their needs.

The Mutants are extremely biologically adaptable. What doesn’t kill them literally makes them stronger. Cut them, and their skin grows tougher. Freeze them and they evolve to handle the cold, etc. etc. Most of their buildings and technology are biological in nature. What good are cars when you have five ton wars beasts that can run just as fast and can flip and semi with its horns. They are also resistant to vampire and zombie strains because their bodies just adapt to the virus without it actually being able to do them any harm.

The Vampires are basically led by these ancient vampires who are actually quite helpful to their human subjects because unlike their human subjects, they know a lot of things about living without electricity, farming without machinery, how to actually smith metals, because they lived through those times. They are basically on the very edge of the quality vs quantity quandary. They can field units of elder vampire warriors that don’t need tanks because they can run faster than them, have centuries of experience with war, and don’t even need artillery because they can throw the shells farther and faster. Of course, elder vampire warriors don’t grow on trees so they have to be very careful with how they deploy these elite, but numerically limited units, and much of their energies are spent trying to track down other ancient vampires and convincing them to lend their millennia of expertise to their cause.

The Killer Robots are exactly what it says on the tin. A bloodthirsty horde of literal killing machines that achieved sentience and kept on killing because that’s what they were made to do. They are utterly merciless, only bothered by their own losses in the strategic sense, and smart enough to adjust their tactics and forms to maximize bloodshed. Unfortunately for everyone else, they have also figured out that the smarter they are, the more effective they can be at killing. As an unforeseen side-effect of this constant increase in collective intelligence the Killer Robots have developed an appreciation for the human “Warrior Poets” of old. They’re still just a bloodthirsty as ever, just more poetic about it. 

The Zombies are a zerg rush personified. individual zombies are weak but they can take horrific looses because their ranks swell with every dead enemy. A zombie horde will pillage the countryside, swelling their ranks with the dead before massing to overwhelm resistance with sheer persistent numbers. However, while the zombie virus strain can evolve to spread easier, make stronger, meaner zombies, their development is slow and has difficulty matching the pace of science or even the mutants own rapid evolution.

The Demons exist to make things worse. Just being in the general vicinity of a demon is enough to make things worse. The demons enjoy human suffering and their entire goal in breaking out of hell is to create more suffering in the world for their amusement. While demonic troops are no stronger than their counterparts, they all emanate and aura of corruption and misfortune. Things go wrong when demons are around and those little voices in your head that tell you to fuck the consequences and kill that annoying asshole get a little bit stronger. Demons however are also vulnerable to the holy warriors of each faction (Yes even the vampires have holy warriors) and factions like the killer robots and the zombies lack the capacity to be tempted by their promises.

The Aliens are an invasion force sent from an extremely militaristic intergalactic empire with orders to conquer Earth and subjugate the populace. They took one look at the planet and decided that they weren’t going to touch that mess with orbital bombs. Unfortunately the choice to leave was taken out of their hands by a critical malfunction aboard their ship that forced them to crash land on Earth. Now they just want to repair their ship and get the fuck off this godforsaken planet alive. While their advanced technology and experience with intergalactic conquest gives them the edge needed to survive, getting the materials and facilities needed to repair their ship is not going to be easy. Made ever more apparent by their elite invasion corp loosing its unbeaten record by getting decimated within a day of them crashing.

If there is one thing that can be said, humans are very good at changing their environment. Now regardless of your views on climate change or greenhouse gases, it cannot be denied that humans have left a big and very literally mark on our planet.

We’ve been doing it ever since our primeval ancestors figured out that fire can be used to clear forest, and that the grasslands created by such burning attracts grazing animals and gives us a clear line of sight for our throwing spears and nets. We have been doing it ever since the ancient humans figured out they could damn creeks to make ponds that lured in waterfowl. That if you repeatedly burned a clearing, the berry bushes would keep coming back ever year. That if you created stone walls along the low tide line, you could create sandy terraces that are perfect for clams. We managed our resources, only fishing at certain times, only hunting certain types of animals, or only cutting certain types of trees.

Then we invented agriculture and we wrought even more changes on the planet. We cleared forests to make room for our fields, pastures and cities. We terraced entire hillsides to allow us to grow crops. We drained swamps and cut the landscape with irrigation canals to provide our crops with water. Often we changed the very course of rivers and altered the soil we relied on, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. Forests disappeared as our cities and emerging states needed timber for construction, ship-building, and fuel to make pottery, smelt metals, cook our food, and keep us warm.

But we didn’t just change the landscape, we also changed the plants we grew so that they suited our needs. We changed the animals we relied on. We turned wolves into dogs, auroch into cows, ibex into goats, jungle fowl into chickens, and wild boars into pigs. We called this process domestication, and soon quickly forgot that we had ever been without these domesticates.

We made artificial hills for our rituals, built mountains out of cut stone to mark the tombs of revered rulers, carved symbols into the landscape. Sliced into mountains to carve roads, mine metal ores, and quarry stone. We made monuments so astounding that people thousands of years later thought they must have been made by the gods, and buildings of the modern age that dwarf them.

We’ve also traveled. We’ve crossed all our oceans, bringing with us the animals and plants of our homelands, and returning home with the animals and plants of other lands. Some is intentional. New crops that offer new advantages. Animals from far away to awe visitors or remind us of home. Some is unintentional. Plant seeds lodged in the tread of our boots. Insect larva in the bilge of our ships. Rats that scurry and stay out of sight, and hitch a ride on our sailing ships and outrigger canoes. Some we regret bringing, intentionally or not, others have settled in and carved their own place in their new home.

And now we look to the stars and wonder if we could do the same to other planets. To bring our life and our world to the stars. To turn a red planet green and blue.

And what if we succeeded? What if a red planet turned green, and flushed with our success, we turned to other balls of rock orbiting distant stars.

And what if we encountered other life. Life that was like us, but also very different. What if they had never seen life like ours before, that spread to the stars turning red, grey, and brown planets blue and green.

What if some are fearful. What if they seen our domesticated animals, our sculpted landscapes, and our diverse nations and fear that we will assimilate and change them and their world like we did to our ancient animal enemies and our distant home planet.

But what is some our awed, and look at us and see a species that can not only adapt itself to new and challenges and environments, but that also changes the challenge and environment itself. Often changing and adapting to the changes they themselves wrought. For better and worse, humanity sailed the stars on the crest of a wave of change that they themselves have been creating since their distant ancestors set fire to the underbrush and realized they could use this.

So after a talk with @ii-thiscat-ii we realized how weird music could be to a species that doesn’t have music. Think of it, what is music, it’s sound organized in specific patterns that evokes emotions in us. Our brains are wired to recognize music. Just tap on the table with our fingers and if we do it regularly enough most people can recognize it as a tune.

But imagine how it would be for a species that have no concept of music. Like they could probably wrap their heads around the idea that we find certain sounds more appealing than others, and that we have tools specifically made to create these appealing sounds.

But imagine them trying to make sense of a movie soundtrack. Like, why is there this sound? There’s no sound like that in an abandoned house? What do you mean it adds atmosphere? Is that what you hear when you go into a place like that?

What about an alien attending an event where they sing the national anthem. Suddenly every human is standing up, and they’re all acting serious, and suddenly they all start making the same sounds, all at once, in unison. They’re also saying the same words, but they’re not saying it the same way they say it when they speak. The words are recognizable, but the pitch and tone are completely different. What’s going on!?

We also have different types of music for different occasions. We have cheery music, dark music, sad music, and so many different varieties of each. The aliens have no idea how we figure this out, or how we can have “cheery” music with accompanying words that are sad.

What if because they didn’t evolve to use music, other species of aliens can’t even really hear the components of music. Like, they can tell that two pieces of music sound different, they can’t really hear things like beat, tune or melody. Or at least they don’t recognize such thing as musical. Like, a human is tapping out a tune on a tabletop and the alien at the table thinks they are trying to communicate through code or something. They know there is a pattern to the tapping but can’t figure it out. It probably blows a few minds that we have our own languages that exist specifically to record these strange sounds humans like to make.

What if species that have dances can’t understand why humans need these strange sounds in order to dance and can’t really see the connection between music and dance that humans seem to have.

What if a crew of a ship suddenly hear the strangest sounds. None of them recognize the sound, but its coming from the engine room so that can’t possibly be good. They burst into the engine room expecting the worst, only to find the human crew members having a jam session.

What if aliens can understand that we would make specific tools to make specific sounds, but a bewildered at the sheer variety of means we will use to generate it. From electronic speakers, to fine instruments, to an upturned pot and a half-empty bottle, to our own voice and bodies.

What if the only thing that blows them away is the fact that one human can start up a tune and the other humans can pick it up and add to it and still create something more or less harmonious.

So, here we are talking about humans and aliens and how we might be weird to each other, but how about this to chew on. What is humans are the only intelligent species to do this before they actually had any sign there was other intelligent life in the galaxy?

Let’s be honest here. We have absolutely nothing to suggest that life is anything but a phenomena unique to earth and even if it wasn’t, we have absolutely not clue what it would look like after evolving on a planet that might even be very close to earth.

Yet still we speculate, we muse and we wonder. We’ve made serious attempts to look into the cosmos and see if something waves hello. We’ve sent messages into the void and listened to see if something will answer.

What if, in some distant star system hundred of light years away, a species of intelligent beings finally begins to ascend to the stars. What if they start studying space, exploring the galaxy, and colonizing other planets.

What if their instruments start picking up strange signals. What if one of their ships comes across an strange device floating in space that matches no natural entity. What if the more they look at it they realize that these phenomena are not natural. That something produced these things, something intelligent. Something that is not them.

What if the more they study these signals, the more they begin the realize that some of them are messages. Messages to them sent by something hundreds of light years away. What is being said makes little sense, a lot of the information has been degraded by the long travel times and many of their best researchers suggest that whomever made these things might communicate in ways very different from their own.

It throws them into a spin. There is other life in the galaxy, possibly life much like their own, and that life has tried to contact them. How could it possibly know that they exist from that far away? It must know they exist, for how would know to try and contact them?

They debate and ponder, bicker and argue before deciding that the only way to respond is to send a message back. They figure out roughly where these messages originated from by looking at the path the different messages took to pass through different parts of their territory and get a pretty good idea where earth is.

All they can do is hope their reply gets close enough that it can be found, and that the receivers will be able to eventually decipher it.

Meanwhile back on earth, they do get the message, and the response is along the lines of. “HOLY SHIT! We’ve actually made contact with aliens!”

So I’ve read a few humans are weird posts and it got me thinking, what if humans are the only species to evolve to use fire. Like, most intelligent species will instinctively flee in panic the moment they catch sight of an open flame, yet show a human infant a fire and if they don’t know better, they will try to grab it.

Humans will burn everything. Most of us won’t eat anything unless it has been “Cooked” first. (A human word meaning to heat food until it has begun to denature but not yet started to carbonize.)

Start a small fire and instead of fleeing, humans will gather around it and start socializing.

We get intoxicated by setting specific plants on fire and inhaling the smoke, often with the burning embers mere inches from our sensitive face.

We use it to clear land for agriculture and hunting. We use it to punish criminals. We even use it for purely aesthetic purposes. (Think fireworks.)

Heck, we we discovered hydrocarbons, the first thing we did was burn them. In fact, humans were burning so much hydrocarbons they were literally altering the atmosphere of their planet.

Now imagine hostile aliens want to invade earth. They don’t use fire except for carefully controlled and heavily guarded industrial purposes. They also don’t know much about earth other than it is definitely inhabited and the people haven’t developed intergalactic travel.

They’re expecting to face primitive forces armed with the local equivalent of clubs and bows. What they get is, to them, a strange anachronistic jumble of expected primative technologies and highly advanced technologies that they definitely shouldn’t have.

They’re not expecting guns. (Projectile weapons that consist of a narrow tube with projectile and a chemical propellent stuffed into one end. Instead of an electromagnetic pulse, the propellant is ignited and the expanding gases shoot the projectile out of the tube.)

They’re not expecting powered vehicles. Instead of electric motors, humans have what they call the internal combustion engine. (A motor that works by sucking flammable gas into an enclosed chamber, igniting the gas under pressure, and using the resulting force from the detonation to move a piston. Because of that, humans have heavy machinery, self-propelled vehicles, and powered air-craft before they even really understood bio electricity.

They’re not expecting bombs, or incendiary weapons. (It was also how it was discovered that their bio-polymer armor, while excellent against projectiles, can actually burn at surprisingly low temperatures.

They’re not even expecting smelted metal. Steel to them is a high tech material that can only be produced under specialized conditions of extreme heat, and requires very specialized facilities to produce. They are shocked to discover that humans have been smelting copper before they developed writing.

And they are definitely not expecting nuclear weapons. (Which are basically “bombs” that instead of using combustable chemicals use an uncontrolled nuclear fission reaction. They are also aghast to discover that not only was this apparently the first thing we thought to do when we discovered fission, but that competing human faction have “how many of these weapons stockpiled!?”

After retreating in disgrace, the task force sent to monitor the plant is horrified to report that humans are rapidly expanding into space. They aren’t using gravitic lifters or electromagnetic mass drivers. They are apparently simply loading equipment and personnel into special “missiles” and using a shit ton of highly combustable fuel to simply launch themselves into space.

cryptfly:

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iztarshi:

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iztarshi:

Inspired by various tumblr posts.

Humans quickly get a reputation among the interplanetry alliance and the reputation is this: when going somewhere dangerous, take a human.

Humans are tough. Humans can last days without food. Humans heal so fast they pierce holes in themselves or inject ink for fun. Humans will walk for days on broken bones in order to make it to safety. Humans will literally cut off bits of themselves if trapped by a disaster.

You would be amazed what humans will do to survive. Or to ensure the survival of others they feel responsible for.

That’s the other thing. Humans pack-bond, and they spill their pack-bonding instincts everywhere. Sure it’s weird when they talk sympathetically to broken spaceships or try to pet every lifeform that scans as non-toxic. It’s even a little weird that just existing in the same place as them for long enough seems to make them care about you. But if you’re hurt, if you’re trapped, if you need someone to fetch help?

Youreally want a human.

“Looks like someone for you.”

Jon kicked Ginna’s boots, which were currently resting on the table, and she glanced over toward the door. A clump of knee-high aliens, plump and round and covered in golden fur, were lifting their little pink noses into the air - scenting the air in the bar.

Sashrans. Perfect.

Ginna quickly downed the last of her drink and dropped her feet to the floor. The Gentleman of Fortune was full to the gills of professional companions looking for work, she wouldn’t be the only one in here with a fondness for sashrans. She needed to work quickly if she wanted a chance at whatever job these ones were hiring for. The sound and vibration of her boots caught the attention of the group, and Ginna followed it quickly with a greeting in the quiet shushing sounds of their own language.

A universal translator would take care of most of the talking, but by knowing a little of their language Ginna proved she had worked with their kind before and cared enough to learn it. Caring was probably the most important skill a companion could cultivate.

It paid off. The group of sashrans centered quickly on her and darted over, still in their clump.

“I am human Ginna, companion for hire,” Ginna introduced, tapping the side of her visor to activate the display.

“Sala and Rini, with crew. Spice collectors,” the largest of the sashrans introduced, tapping at their own earbud. Their information began to stream onto Ginna’s display, while her own would be playing in their ear. She was proficient in everything from weapons to mechanics to medicine, xenobiology to politics, and of course survival in any kind of situation from atmosphere decompression in space to a tsunami on a planet. The more varied the knowledge they had the better a companion a human could make, and Ginna prided herself on being one of the best.

As for the sashrans, they’d found a jungle planet with a plant that was delicious to their senses. Cultivation efforts had failed thus far, so the price was high enough to support the risk of hunting for it on its home range. A six-month tour was on offer. It seemed they’d contracted with another professional companion a few times, a man named Drix, and Ginna quickly switched over to the guild’s internal records to see what he had to say of these sashrans and the planet they were harvesting from.

The sashrans themselves would be able to check what Ginna’s former employers had to say about her too.

Drix had enjoyed working with Sala and Rini’s crew, it dripped out of every line of his reports. He’d included good detail about life aboard their ship and the risks of the planet, that Ginna would have to look into closer later to be prepared.

All she needed to know at the moment was that they paid well, the risks were not unacceptably high, and that they treated their human companions well. It sounded like a job for her.

“Sala and Rini and crew, I would take this job,” Ginna told them.

The sashrans shushed and buzzed together, their tones sounding happy to Ginna’s relatively untrained ear, and she hoped she was reading them right. They were such beautiful little creatures, and she’d always enjoyed working for their kind before. They were close enough she could have reached out to touch them, pet their soft velvet fur, but she resisted. Touching them uninvited would be rude.

Finally they turned back to her. “Sala and Rini and crew will, with joy, contract to hire companion Ginna,” the lead one answered.

Contract negotiations went quickly enough, using the standard guild template and modifying it here or there as both parties preferred and agreed upon. Sashrans were easy to haggle with, not like the argumentative akskar. Soon enough Ginna had a contract and three days to prepare her effects for travel.

“It has been a pleasure,” Ginna told the sashrans. “I look forward to being your companion.”

She would have expected them to leave, then, go get their own things ready for launch. Instead the smallest one pushed forward - all wrapped in pale gold velvet fur and their sweet little pink forepaws resting on Ginna’s knee.

“Companion Ginna will now engage in petting for promotion of pack bonding?” they asked hopefully.

“Of course,” Ginna reached out toward the sashran, let them smell her palm, but it seemed this sashran wasn’t shy at all. They immediately pushed their head into her hand. There was nothing in the galaxy so soft as a sashran’s fur. Ginna dug her fingers in around the ruff of the sashran’s neck, gently scratching, and then smoothed the fur all the way down their back.

The sashran made a dreamy-soft pleasure sound, and Ginna mimicked it back. “Oh you sweetheart,” she murmured. Already she could feel that little melting tug in her heart, that protective urge that set some humans on the path to professional companionship.

Come hell or high water, Ginna was going to keep these sashrans safe.

Aw, yes. Look at the adorable scifi! I’m proud to have inspired it.

(I’m so glad you enjoyed it!)

Six months was just about right for a jungle planet tour with a group of sashrans. Ginna loved Sala and Rini and the crew to distraction, and there was still nothing in the galaxy softer than sashran fur, but she was ready to move on. Being regarded as furniture a lot of the time, once they were used to her presence, got tiring after a while. Sala and Rini weren’t looking for a permanent companion, and Ginna wasn’t looking for that either. She’d joined the guild because she wanted to see the universe and meet all the peoples in it, after all.

The spice expedition had been a great success. The sashrans’ hold was full to bursting of dried twigs and leaves, and Ginna had gotten a healthy bonus on top of her already generous pay. There’s only been the one incident with a large angry herbivore who decided the sashrans were infringing too close on its breeding grounds. Still, Ginna had thwacked it in the face with a dead branch and distracted it long enough for the sashrans to make their escape, and only gotten the one cracked rib for her trouble when it tried to run her down.

Ginna hugged and kissed each sashran on the crew one last time. “If you ever need me, don’t hesitate to call,” Ginna told them, wiping a stray tear. Sala and Rini and crew endured this human foible, and were off to sell their goods.

The Gentleman of Fortune was the same as ever, serving interesting foods and drinks from across the galaxy and full of professional companions between tours. Her friend Jon had shipped out with a hunting pack of akskar, but May was finally back from er three-year stint in a lintran colony and they had a lot of catching up to do.

It was great to be back among humans, it really was. Ginna sent some money home and laughed and drank and celebrated with people who had the same base template and urges she did. For about two weeks, it was great. Then Ginna got that itch again and started watching the door of the Gentleman of Fortune, scoping out her options.

Vivid jehes, stolid orhides, hovering mellisugans - none of them felt quite right, and Ginna didn’t approach any of them. Other companions gladly worked up contracts and left for exploration expeditions and disaster relief efforts and new colonies.

Then a big bull barbax pushed into the bar, weight resting on xir heavy knuckles and ducking far far down to fit but still scraping xir cracked and weathered shoulder-spikes on the frame. The barbax swung xir heavy head from side to side, small beady eyes - well protected under a heavy brow - sweeping the space.

Perfect.

Ginna jumped up to stand on top of her chair and screamed as loud as she possibly could. The barbax rocked back, then sprang forward toward her, slamming xir knuckles hard against the floor in pleased approval.

.

Three days later Ginna was shipping out for a nine month tour with a crew of barbax miners. The desert planet they were headed for would be a nice change of pace from the muggy humidity of her last tour, and the barbax being so much bigger and heavier-armored than she was meant she didn’t have to worry about being a body guard on this trip. Much more relaxing.

Barbax liked shiny things, and already they’d bought Ginna a cute cropped jacket with imitation shoulder spikes to match them, and several bracelets and necklaces. It would have been rude not to wear them, and Ginna had to admit she looked good even if it wasn’t her usual style.

The bull barbax, Zab, absently grabbed Ginna by the waist and settled her on xir shoulder. Ginna easily settled in between the big spikes - they made good handholds as she was carried onward to the ship.

“Twisted xeno freak!” some human snarled after Ginna and the barbax crew. “You’re a traitor to human-kind. You make me sick!”

Gina laughed. “Jealous you lack the emotional capacity to cut it as a companion?” she mocked.

The xenophobe’s embarrassed and angry expression was the last thing Ginna saw of the station. Then the ship doors closed behind them, and she turned to face her next adventure with a smile.

Ginna returned to her home base at the Gentleman of Fortune absolutely glittering with platinum and rough citrine.

A fact - For all their strength, a barbax is not fast enough to evade a nest of sand snakes. For all their armor, a sand snake’s teeth can still pierce them.

A human companion, fueled by adrenaline, is more than fast enough to evade. But they might instead dive in between the panicking barbax and destroy the sand snakes attacking them.

Another fact - a sand snake’s venom is deadly to a barbax. Their blood coagulants are destroyed and they bleed out from even such a tiny wound. Their armored hide is too strong for the tourniquet that might save them. A human, bitten by a sand snake, gets off with a painful wound and some bruising.

Ginna tied her bandana around the bleeding wound on her thigh and got to work. Zeb and Gnar and Agi were bitten. The crew, their family, piled around them, drumming against their hides in mourning. They had two hours to live, according to the barbax medic.

Ginna delivered a cure in 30 minutes. Thirty minutes with the clock racing. Thirty minutes far too long, with death creeping up on her friends. She drew a liter of her own blood, repurposed a mining centrifuge to separate it, and filled three big syringes with plasma. Her red blood cells would be toxic, foreign to the barbaxes bodies. She could only hope her plasma was less so.

They might die of it; but they would die if she didn’t try.

Facts - the only place a barbax is tender enough to be injected by even the strongest medical needle is in the vein along their gumline.

- it takes five minutes for blood to circulate all the way through a barbax’s body.

- it takes another minute after that for a sand snake wound to clot, and the blood loss to cease.

The barbax crew trumpeted and pounded their knuckles against the floor with surprised joy. And only then, only when the slow bleeding had finally stopped, did Ginna sit down and cry with relief. She was shaky and dizzy from drawing so much blood, and badly bruised from getting jostled by the panicking barbaxes, and the wound on her own thigh was very painful now that she had nothing else to focus her mind away from it, but she’d done her companion’s duty and saved her friends.

She was fussed over, tended to and praised. She explained what she had done, and was given far more sweets and water than she could possibly consume to replenish herself when she explained that’s what she needed to recover.

Zeb and Gnar and Agi were sick for a week, with the aftereffects of the sand snake poison and purging their bodies of her alien plasma, but they lived. That was the important part.

It turned out that having given a part of herself into the barbax (nevermind that it was just plasma and their bodies purged it afterward) Ginna had done literally what was done symbolically for a barbax crew-bond. She was now crew-bond to the barbax she’d saved, and since Zeb was the senior bull and crew-bond to the entire crew, that meant she was too. She was family - married to the whole lot of them, in essence.

Ginna was not exactly sure how she was going to break that to her moms.

Thankfully the barbax had a laze faire concept of marriage. None of them thought it odd that Ginna planned to leave still at the end of her contract. They would have gladly kept her if she wanted to stay, but she didn’t.

They would have weighed her down with a quarter ton of jewelry, to be decorated the same as one of them, but thankfully Ginna talked them out of it. Her crew were miners by trade, but they were craftspeople by inclination, and they made her beautiful sets from the platinum they were mining that weren’t too heavy for her fragile human limbs. The style was armor-like and spiky and set with beautiful rough citrine that would have been discarded as mining waste otherwise.

Ginna wore it proudly. She spent one last evening drumming with the barbax crew, and then she was back among humans, back at the good old Gentleman of Fortune. Elizabeth was fresh back from the jungles of Shur with a lathan colony, and they had a lot of catching up to do.

Ginna was in no rush to head out again. She took some classes offered through the guild, brushing up on her knowledge base, and pondered her options carefully. She wanted something new, something different.

Late one evening - or maybe it was early morning by that point - a faint high note echoed through the Gentleman of Fortune. There was a collective intake of breath, an uncomfortable quiet, and Ginna looked to where everyone else was looking. A roughly human-sized shimmer was drifting deeper into the bar.

A tintillian. Ginna had never actually met one, she’d only ever heard of the telepathic aliens. They were not strictly corporeal in the same way most contacted species were.

The tintillian chimed again, hopeful, almost plaintive. And no one was answering.

Ginna was singing back the tintillian’s note before she really thought it through. It chimed again, a lower note thankfully or Ginna might not have been able to hit it, and Ginna again mimicked it. As Ginna held the note, it chimed a double note in harmony with her, and drifted closer.

The note Ginna was singing cut off, her heart in her throat, but the tintillian recoiled and drew back before it touched her. Began to drift away.

Metal. Right. They couldn’t abide concentrations of heavy metals and Ginna was encased in platinum. Ginna began ripping all her jewelry off, stacking it in a loose pile on the table. What had possessed her to wear so much of it?

“Help!” Ginna pleaded, turning her other ear toward Elizabeth as she struggled with the earrings. “Liz, please.”

Elizabeth laughed and relented, quick to help her out of all her platinum. Ginna took her boots off too, they had metal eyelets. And her pants had zippers, so they had to go. And her bra had an underwire, so Ginna wrestled that out through her sleeve and finally stepped toward the tintillian in just her shirt and boxers.

No one else was trying to approach the still-chiming tintillian. Telepathy was beyond what most of them were comfortable with. There would be no universal translator for this interaction, it would be direct. Mind to mind.

At least Ginna halfway stripping was far from the weirdest thing that had ever happened in the Gentleman of Fortune.

Ginna sang the note again, and the tintillian harmonized and moved back toward her. It changed as it got closer, until Ginna was almost looking at a mirror - a transparent shining woman. It lifted its hand, and Ginna echoed the motion. Her fingers were shaking, but Ginna cleared her mind and was full of only curiosity and affection when the tintillian merged hands with her. Like a point of golden light.

Suddenly, through it, Ginna was weightless, boundariless, her self wrapped around by the fear and curiosity of the others in the bar. Ginna laughed aloud, that joy echoed, rebounded, and strengthened as the tintillian drifted forward to merge completely.

Ginna’s affections were bare, all the connections she’d made with her contracts exposed, her trainings mulled over, her self weighed and judged and found adequate. The burning curiosity that had made her approach it pushed Ginna to delve into the tintillian in turn. It was all starlight and nebulas, ancient and brand new.

The job on offer was midway between exploration and rescue - a star nursery where an expedition of the tintillian’s mind-mates had disappeared. They had two months to map what they could, and recover the lost mind-mates if possible.

Ginna’s physical and psychological needs would be met, and the terms of her regular contract were seen as acceptable.

The merge faded, and the tintillian winkled out - off back to its vessel to prepare. Ginna dropped back into her own body and sagged into her chair.

“So?” she was asked, people crowding around. She didn’t need the tintillian to practically feel their burning curiosity.

“I got a two-month contract,” Ginna said.

She took a small seated bow for the cheers that echoed through the bar, and accepted the celebratory drinks that were passed her way.

First professional companion to contract with a tintillian. This was definitely going to be one for the history books.

[ THE END ]

I will write no more of these. Thank you! I’ve had a lot of fun in this ‘verse.

If you want to read about Elizabeth, please turn your eyes toward the very cool fill that Chrissy did utilizing the Gentleman of Fortune and companions guild concept. [link]

(if anyone else uses these headcanons please let me know I’d love to read it!)

(lol I lied have another Ginna fic)

Loren’s first run as an apprentice companion was supposed to be an easy one. A short contract, with low danger and a seasoned companion of the guild as mentor. Loren got along great with both Jon and the akskar crew. Every conversation was an argument, a test of skill and ingenuity. Some humans found akskar to be exhausting, but Loren felt right at home. It was just like being back at the old shipyards with er sibs.

So it was great, it was really great until they ran into danger way above Loren’s paygrade. Space was dangerous, vast and unexplored and unpredictable. So on Loren’s first practice run e ended up stranded with a dead ship on a dead planet. At least Jon and the akskar weren’t dead too.

Theirs wasn’t the only ship downed.

“Jon? That you?” A voice crackled faintly in through their companion visors while the akskar were still folding their long limbs into their own protective gear.

“Ginna!” Jon answered, relief obvious in his voice as he tapped the side of it to answer. “I’ve got an apprentice and a family of young akskar politicians. What have you got?”

“Jehe musicians and a dead ship. My scans show a cave we can shelter in near enough to both ships for scavenge. Coordinates incoming.”

Loren had no idea how this Ginna had managed to scan for a cave through the radiation bursts, but e was glad of it. Loren was surprised the coms were still working when everything else was totally fried–but they did say that companions guild coms and universal translators were always the last thing to go. They could pass through the pinch of a black hole undamaged, they said.

Jon relayed instructions, which Loren and the akskar followed, so they were weighed down heavy with emergency supplies and broken ship bits when they headed out onto the planet’s ravaged surface.

Ginna and her crew had already made it to the cave and were sealing it into a habitable zone by the time Loren’s group arrived. Loren couldn’t tell much about Ginna other than that she was tall and she’d managed to keep her jehes from fluttering and panicking, which was impressive.

Once they were sealed in, and the akskar were comfortable enough to start a circular argument and the jehes to rest, Jon pulled Loren over to conference with Ginna. Ginna’s hair was all tight corkscrew curls tied back with a bandana, her smile big and friendly, when she took off her helmet.

“We’ve got food, we’ve got water, we’ve got radiation shielding - but we’ve only got about a day’s worth of air,” Jon started, once brief introductions were over.

“A day and a half,” Ginna corrected. “The akskar and jehes balance each other out a little bit.”

“And I can give us another two or three if I can repair the jehe and akskar air filters, or splice them together. There’s got to be enough working parts between them to make one functional filter.” Loren volunteered. It wasn’t so different from tech splice e’d done as a kid, just to see if something could be made from what was supposedly junk. Loren had grown up doing this stuff.

“Air first.” Ginna nodded. “Then we need to get word out, let people know where we are. It’s time to call in favors. What are our best contacts, other than the main guild office?”

“These akskar are offshoots of the grand trunk,” Jon said, which Loren had not known. They were practically royalty! Minor royalty, but still. “If we get word to the trunk, they’ll send help. And their line is allied to the fruiting bough consortium. One of their main officers owes me a favor.”

“Good,” Ginna nodded and turned toward Loren as if expecting em to chime in.

“I don’t…” Loren floundered. “I don’t know anybody.”

Ginna’s expression softened. “First time out?“ she patted Loren’s shoulder when e nodded. “Don’t worry. Jon and I have both been in tighter spots and lived to tell. I’m thinking my best contact will be the barbax miners. A little radiation storm like this is nothing to them, and they’ll send people if I call. I’m kind of married to over fifty of them now, they keep expanding the crew.”

“Married? To fifty barbax?” Loren boggled, but Ginna and Jon just laughed.

“It’s the kind of thing that happens on accident,” Jon said. “It far from the weirdest thing you’ll see if you stick with the guild.”

Loren kind of hoped e’d live to see weirder things. Being stranded on a dead world with two dead ships was bad. Really bad. But Jon and Ginna kept joking back and forth with each other, smiling and laughing. And if experienced companions like them were in good spirits that had to be a good sign.

Loren worked on the air filters. E worked on the air filters for a very long time. Loren got one working at about 31% to give them another half day, and then went back to the ship to scavenge parts from the kitchen to get the other one up to 67%, and that was the best e could do with what was available.

“I couldn’t have done better myself,” Jon praised. He and Ginna were working on cobbling together a communications array that would punch through the radiation storm, which was difficult with everything fried. They tried and tested and argued companionably back and forth–when they weren’t looking out for the crews they were contracted to. The emotional labor of keeping the akskar from falling into despondency while confined and the jehes from fretting themselves sick, and keeping them from antagonizing each other with their different needs and ways of being, was weightier than Loren would have expected.

Jon and Lauren had their work cut out for them figuring out new arguments and games to play with the akskar to keep them entertained. Ginna spent a lot of her time grooming and singing to the jehes in their own chirping language to keep them calm.

That was what being a professional companion was all about.

Not that Loren was all that sure e was going to get the chance to earn professional status. One day became two, became three, and nothing any of them tried was working to get a message out. Loren scavenged from both ships over and over again, with Jon and Ginna and alone, but nothing e brought back helped.

Loren couldn’t give up, though. That was why peoples from all over the galaxy hired human companions. Because humans didn’t give up, not until their last breath. Loren repurposed parts of a water filtration unit to get the more broken air filter to 72%, but that was only going to give them a few more days, and e went back to figuring out ways to make a stronger emergency beacon with Jon.

Ginna didn’t.

Loren found her up in the top of the cave, right by the entrance where their radiation shielding was weakest. She’d stripped down to her underthings, her body marked with scars here and there, and decorated over and around them with gleaming ivory-white tattoos against the warm brown of her skin. Loren could see the languages of akskar, sashrans, barbax, and others she wasn’t familiar with. Ginna was sitting cross-legged on the ground, eyes closed and face turned up to the dark sky. She was humming a long droning note under her breath.

“What are you doing?” Loren demanded.

“Trying to think in tintillian,” Ginna answered in a faraway voice, not opening her eyes.

“What? Why?”

“We can’t send a pulse, ping, or beacon out of here strong enough. So tintillian.”

Loren stamped er foot. “What good is thinking like another species going to do!? You could be helping us brainstorm better ideas. You can’t just stop. You can’t give up and die. We’re companions! Our contracts are counting on us!” Loren’s voice broke, tears far too close to the surface, and Ginna finally opened her eyes.

“Nothing in the galaxy can communicate better than a tintillian. They are connection,” Ginna explained, very gently. “They’re not individual. They’re like… fractals. Music where each note is a symphony and what we perceive as an individual is just the echo of a single riff. I contracted with them, once. I was inside it for two months, like a misplaced f flat in a nebula-choir of angels and starlight, and sometimes I can still feel it. Connect.”

Loren’s breath caught at the realization. “Stars and galaxies. You’re that Ginna,” e breathed. She was only one of the highest ranked professional companions, and came up in dozens of case studies. She’d provided the baseline measurements for companionship in more new species than anyone else. There wasn’t a species she’d shun, or a challenge she’d back down from.

Ginna smiled, that warm friendly smile that immediately forgave Loren for interrupting and being suddenly starstruck. “I’m that Ginna.” She tapped her visor where it was laying beside her. “And I’ve got two hours left before I have to do a radiation decontam, so I’m going to spend them being a very loud f flat.”

“Right. Sorry,” Loren backed away as Ginna’s eyes closed and she took her hum back up. “Thank you.”

Loren retreated, awkward stumbling back over er boots, and hyperventilated at Jon for a little bit. Jon just laughed.

“Careful with that puppy-crush, kid,” he teased. “Ginna’s ace. She doesn’t go for anybody.”

About an hour and a half later–when Loren was in the middle of a spirited game of leapfrog with the akskar crew to keep them entertained–Ginna returned. There was a pinging sound, like metal heating under the sun, a faint smell of ozone, and Ginna walked into the main part of the cave haloed in a shimmering glow. There was music, vast and incomprehensible under her voice when she spoke.

“Strip to your skivvies, Jon, and figure out what you want to say to the guild! We’re in contact.”

I LOVE GINNA I LOVE HUMAN COMPANIONS

qfantasydragon:

So I don’t know if anyone’s written about this yet, but I was trawling through the humans-are-space-orcs tag and I was hit by the sudden realization that I’ve seen nothing about space chefs. 

Space chefs must be like one of the most knowledgable professions out there, think about it:

“Alright, so this is a Crexian from Norix- that means capsicum is a deadly poison, Omega-3 will cause muscle spasms and due to the atmosphere on Norix, calcium will give them terrible diarrhea- no wait, this is a male, so Omega-3 is actually delicious–”

“–a Bio-bot, model Gamma-341, so absolutely no organic oils in anything or their systems will stop working, and for Stabby’s sake do not let anything with iron in it so much as look funny at their food–”

“–Mariddian fresh out of hibernation, shove as many protein additives into that meat as you can get away with and remember not to use salt, it fries their neural pathways–”

Like. I bet there’s an Interstellar Chef magazine in circulation full of recipes that are two pages long and then all the species that can and cannot eat it are listed for the next five. And every time a new species joins the intergalactic mess, the magazine runs a special issue as all the space chefs die a little more inside. The special issue gives a brief breakdown of the new species biology and then dives straight into what’s poison, what’s nutritional, what’s considered delicious and whats considered choke-worthy. If at all possible, the special issue also includes recipies from the species native culture while all the space chefs desperately try to figure out what dishes they can jury-rig into a new definition of edible.

They probably love humans though.

“Hey Jaxki, did you hear about the new species that the Crynsu found? They’re supposedly from a Death World, can you belie–”

“Ohfuck another speices?!?! They found three last spin and I’m stilltrying to figure out what to feed the Hrethad. Any word what they eat? You get the Chef before me.”

“Hold up let me look, I just got it today…void and dust!”

“Oh novas, what, can they not have water or something?”

“Jaxi these fuckers eat everything! They can digest chlorogenic acid! Some of them do it every day, by the void-loving gallon!!! And that’s just the nose of the Quarlag! This thing has a whole list of chemicals these guys consider delicious or edible and I swear to you it’s like someone mixed their list of the universe’s most common compounds with its spacing deadliest poisons!”

“Oh thank FUCK.”

citycreek:

cheeseanonioncrisps:

Humans love shiny things.

No, seriously, look around you next time you’re in a building and count the number of things that are shiny even thiugh they do not need to be shiny.

Humans are naturally attracted to any thing that shines, shimmers or glitters— I mean for fucks sake, we invented glitter. There are people right now who work in glitter factories and so whose sole job is to make shiny things for people to put nonshiny things so as to make them shiny.

We paint our nails and faces with glittery varnishes and shimmery powders. We use gloss on our lips to make them shinier. We shine our shoes to make ourselves look smart. We have been known to start fucking wars over who owns the bits of land with the shiny rocks in. Genocides have been commited and kingdoms toppled because one group had a lot of shiny metals and the other group wanted those shiny metals.

Why, then, do we all like shiny things so much?

Well, scientists now think that it’s probably because we evolved in a desert. If you’re living in a desert, then you’re going to need to be constantly be on the lookout for water, and water shines in the sun. So the best way to survive in a desert environment is to just chase after everything that shines because it might be water.

So now imagine how weird this would all be to a species who didn’t evolve in a desert.

Imagine aliens just being baffled by the human habit of wearing certain rocks— or even just pieces of glass or plastic cut to look like those rocks— just because we like the way they catch the light. Imagine aliens who come from worlds where there are a lot of shiny rocks bringing them back for their human friends to see and watching, puzzled, as said human friends start wearing the rocks around their necks, wrists, fingers or even (weirdly)stuck through special holes they make in their ears.

“Thank you so much! These are beautiful!”

“I literally just scooped up some of the gravel from the spaceport— how are you so amazed?”

Imagine caves on alien planets full of crystals and gems becoming huge tourist attractions for humans, and the aliens not understanding why because, on their planet, pretty much the only people who go to the caves are school groups and geologists. The caves are boring— why do the humans keep taking photos of a load of old rocks?

We complain that Magpies are obsessed with shiny things and keep stealing our shiny things but that just shows how crazy we are about protecting our shiny things

temporaldecay:

I’ve seen a lot of posts about humans pack-bonding with frankly everything, no matter how big, scary, threatening, lethal or oozy.

But you know what I haven’t seen?

Humans entrusting their young to their pack-bonded friends. Because that’s a thing we do. We entrust our children to our friends. We entrust our children to our dogs. We befriend the biggest, meanest, scariest shit, and then we dump our defenseless, hasn’t-even-got-a-fully-fused-skull-yet offspring on them. Half for shits-and-giggles, half because it’s cute, mostly because children are exhausting and we need a nanny.

Keep reading

lordofthegeeks:

For time immemorial, sector df-17 of the galaxy had been used as an industrial waste dump, for want of a better term. Gravity distortions had filled it with an exorbitant amount of random debris, choking clouds of toxic dust and the whole area was bathed in lethal radiation that rendered all forms of long distance communications uselessly scrambled . The common name of the area translated as dead zone, wasteland, or the boonies. A hundred different worlds would bring their derelict ships here, ships too worthless to bother with, or considered too dangerous to strip down and salvage. They brought them here and cast them into the wastes.

It should be noted, that “worthless” and “Too dangerous” are terms relative to the scale of an operation, as well as one’s rationality and desperation. What makes for a poor or pointless company’s bottom line, is more than enough to keep a small salvage ship running, with a crew that’s well fed. Salvaging ships from the wastes was not illegal per se, but was seen as distasteful, dirty, and a living for those with few to no other options.

Kurthar’s ship was weeks deeper into the wastes than they had ever been. Pickings had been slim this run, and xe was worried if they’d gather enough trade goods to even refuel. Ran-gee, the communications and sensor operator had shut down most of the ship in an attempt to reduce interference and extend their scanner range. Xis personal communicator crackled as Ran-gee called out.

“Hey, Kurthar. I think I’m picking something up. Come have a look.” Kurthar ran a clawed hand over his skull frill in a subconscious gesture of hiding his concerns. It was a short walk to the bridge where Ran-gee squinted into the glowing monitor. “It’s so distorted that I thought it was glitch, or interference of some kind… but its a hot reactor, that’s for sure. Really, insanely hot. I’d argue that someone peeled the shielding away and left it just on the edge of critical. Why anyone would do that is beyond me.”
“Someone laying a trap ship out here seems like a stretch, but it’s possible. Or it had some biological contamination that they left the core exposed with the hope of killing it off.”
“The radiation levels should do that nicely.” Ran-gee leaned forward, quickly making adjustments. “It’s moving.”
“Moving?”
“Moving moving. Like it’s under power moving.”
Kurthar paled, “Someone is flying it? Is there a distress beacon? Maybe they had a failure and are trying to limp to port.”
“This far out? It would be a damn desperate move.”
“I’d do it if I had no other choice. Hope they can treat the poisoning later.”
“I guess. But there’s no beacon. And…” Xe tried to resolve the scanner results. “The reactor signature looks like its Trath, but the drive reads N’gthy.”
“It must be interference. The N’gthy have no business with the Trath. Not in a million eons.”
“I’ve rechecked it twice. Also… there seems to be some dust haze around it that looks like its reflecting Gamma radiation.”
“Is it a weapon of some kind?”
“They’d be firing a Gamma beam of like 130 petawatts at nothing. And not just a burst, this is a continuous beam.”
“What in the great egg would do that?”
“ If we stay here too much longer, we’ll find out. It’s 4 causal seconds out, and approaching fast. I for one don’t think we should be anywhere near it’s back-end after it passes.”
“Spin up the engines, and move us to a safe distance.”
“I don’t think there’s a safe place in this sector.” Ran-gee said, swiftly moving to activate the drive systems.
The scanner unit chimed an alert.

They both turned in dawning horror to see that some kind of radio signal was suddenly focused on them. A quick repeating ping.
The strange ship was altering course toward them.
Their heads swung in unison as the Communications console on the other side of the bridge also chimed its own alert.
“it’s trying to contact us.” Ran-gee moved to the com panel. “The Identifier says its Iderant.”
“All of the Iderant died in the old wars ages ago.”
“Maybe there were some hiding out here?”
“I guess we are about to find out.” Kurthar said, as Xe opened the channel. The face that appeared on the screen was… disquieting. Snoutless, flat. Some raised, bulbus structure in the center of what must have been its face. It was scaleless, and a greyish pink color, as if it had been burned and had its skin removed. It sprouted some kind of growth from the crown of its skull, like a brown moss. It opened what must have been its thin, round, tiny mouth and bared its teeth in a show of aggression. The screen froze, and alarm klaxons began sounding from nearly every ship system. The drive system went into emergency shutdown, forcing the reactor into standby mode.
Ran-gee was trying to make sense of it. “The ship is outputting some kind of defense screen around it. It generating some kind of pulsing wave of gravity distortions, and a magnetic field that forcing our systems into triggering their safety protocols. Its scrambling the main processor, and radiation levels are high enough that the core thinks there has been a breach.”
A ship so wrong in so many ways, that even nearby vessels would lock up in panic. A ship that seemed to have been stitched together from trash, insanity, and nightmares. A ship filled with snarling, scaleless monsters.
Kurthar could only look on helplessly as it moved into position to dock with him, the door responding to a hail from what it believed to be one of its own kind.

This was how the Nuklan met what called its self the Human race. A race that after throwing itself into space atop giant explosions, had found the void riddled with relics and artifacts. They had taken everything they had found apart, and learned from it, or used it. Often repurposing simple devices with complex and insane new uses. One of these was how the E.S.S Clark, The ship which so confused, and frightened Kurthar, had repurposed simple gravity units into containment for its drive core. A small, artificially constructed quantum singularity.

The worlds had to be cautious. If a human even saw an image of some technology unknown to them, or worse yet got to touch it, the humans would have their own version of it in less than a cycle.

They had a nickname for the humans. These reckless, naïve beasts from the junkyard. Creatures that would build a black hole out of spare parts, strap it to a pile of trash, and take it out for a spin. They were named for a small pest animal that would frequently cause headaches by evading traps, and cleverly thwarting attempts to keep them away from refuse.

Roughly translated, Humans are the Trash Pandas of the galaxy.

samuraiknitter:

Because this hash tag is SO FUN and thought-provoking. 

GENDER: 
No one can keep up with humans and gender. There are no easy signs to tell who is what, not clothing, not body morphology, not how they paint themselves or their grooming or vestigal hair. The humans themselves argue about how many genders there are. Eventually they quit trying and refer to all humans as ‘they’. Most humans are fine with that, even compliment them on their support (?) and progressive views (??). A few humans are offended, but are shouted down by their other humans. The other beings of the galaxy officially give up. 

SEX: 
Some humans want to have sex all the time. Others barely can stand to be touched at all, even casually. Some will have sex with their own gender, which does not produce offspring and is confusing to many. Some will have sex only with certain people, some will have sex with anyone. SOME will have sex with other species, occasionally challenging their own safety and everyone else’s. None of this is considered strange. Anyone saying it is strange is again shouted down and shamed into silence. The other beings of the galaxy officially give up. 

CATS: 
Humans adopt small predators as pets and kiss their “widdle faces” and giggle over their clawed toes (???) and fuss and are thrilled when the predators sleep with them (isn’t that UNSAFE? IT IS FULL OF POINTY BITS) and often sport scratches and bite marks inflicted when the animal was ‘playing’. 
“When were these ‘cats’ domesticated?”
“Oh, we never really domesticated them. We just let them move into the house with us. Aren’t they CUUUUUTE? Come here, baby.” -kissy noises-
The other beings of the galaxy again give up. 

RELIGION: 
Wars fought. Millions - probably billions, through history - killed. Crew members huffy with each other. Various holidays celebrated, none of which make sense, some of them celebrating events that are physically impossible and could not have happened. All for something that can’t be proved. 
The other beings of the galaxy would think this was all an elaborate prank if it wasn’t for the body count. 

GERMS: 
Humans get INFECTED and act as if it is a personal affront, and cuss about it. They confine themselves to quarters so they don’t infect the rest of the crew - very kind, in that respect - and otherwise wrap themselves in bedding and bitch about it for three days while doing their work by remote - “It’s fine, just a cold.” followed by horrifying noises they call ‘coughing’ and ‘sneezing’ -  and HOW. HOW DO THEY EVEN. 
The other beings of the galaxy, for whom infection is always life-threatening, boggle from a safe distance. With respirators on. 

ALPHA PREDATOR…? 
They come from a death planet, these naked apes with no armor, no fangs, no speed. They have the ability to conquer the galaxy, if they only agreed with each other long enough that it was their goal. Instead they poke their noses into other death worlds, ‘exploring’, they call it, adopting horrifying creatures and making friends with other predatory beings, brewing poisonous beverages from whatever they can scrounge, which they then drink for fun. The rest of the galaxy is relieved. If humans had an attention span, they would truly be in trouble. 

No one wants to know what a ‘shark’ is. Humans seem to be afraid of them, and if it frightens the humans, the rest of the galaxy is, to a being, terrified. 

outcasts-redeemer:

lt-commander-aly:

hobo-rg:

msfbgraves:

theeclectickoalastudent:

ralfmaximus:

writing-prompt-s:

ONE of the most important rules of the Galactic Federation concerns humanity. If a human ever says “Hold my beer”, either stop them, or run.

Two of the most recognized human warships have never fired a shot in anger. Their mere appearance once stopped a genocidal war, and they have been invited on peacekeeping missions simply based on reputation.

The ships’ names: 

UNS Fuck Around And Find Out
UNS Hold My Beer

Second to only them in fear and awe is the UNS We Come In Peace

And its companion UNS Wait, Hold On, I Got This

UNSHow Hard Can It Be?
UNSIt Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time.
UNSPlan C.
UNSNever Did Learn When To Quit.

UNSExperiencing A Significant Gravitas Shortfall.

What about the UNS I Got Yo Flower?

There’s always the equally famous UNS Boop The Snoot and the UNS Throw The Cheese

Let us not forget the immortal UNS This Is Fine andUNS What’s The Worst That Can Happen.

My dad is a genius. He came up with a GREAT Humans are weird idea.

Cigars and alcohol.

What would they think of it? We take a bunch of dried leaves, roll them, clip them, then light it on FIRE and hold it close to our FACES.

And we drink aged wheat juice that often burns our throats and makes the brain fuzzy if you drink too much. It can even KNOCK A PERSON OUT. A whole person.

Alien troop: “Can this be done to any leaves? Do you inhale it? Do they all produce this much smoke? What about this liquid fire? Do they all taste the same? What’s in them? How much to I have to drink before I feel that fuzzy feeling you humans get?”

And then it turns out they have a heckin WEAK limit before they get drunk, like just the SMELL of it sends some of the alien crew into a drunken state.

Okay, life goal: Create a TV show based around the #humansareweird and #humansarespaceorcs tumblr tags.

I don’t care if I start it out as a YouTube channel with friends, I will make a “Humans in space” TV show and I WILL pull from tumblr.

anachronic-cobra:

Alien: how did you humans survive long enough to form a functioning society? You have no claws, sorely lacking physical strength as a species, no physical defenses…

Human: we just walked quickly after things that were faster than us until they died or got too tired to run away anymore and accepted death.

Alien: what the he-

Human: Yeah, badass, right? There’s a reason we’re top dog on Earth.

Human: *trips over own feet, gets foot caught in a bucket, yanks ladder down onto self trying to stay upright, falls in a pile of limbs and pain*

Alien: …are you sure

updatebug:

As much as I love ‘Earth is space Australia’, I love ‘Earth is Space Australia and the aliens haven’t figured it out yet!’ far more. ‘Cause lets face it, humans have a great ability to go on and on about minor inconveniences while at the same time severely underplaying the big ones. So aliens get the impression that humans are incredibly weak because we spend a day in bed from a headache, or gripe for an hour about a paper cut and then turn around and walk on a broken leg or consider a gushing head wound nothing to worry about. 

so I want aliens to get the impression that earth is a perfectly normal place to live, a couple of dangerous fauna, maybe some troubling weather patterns but nothing too terrifying. Then an earthling makes an offhand comment about earthquakes (and the alien’s think that they are joking because the earth’s crust? moving? Ridiculous!) But another chimes in and they think that it’s just a normal thing? That happens sometimes? and then they start talking about tornadoes and what is this? 

And the weather has nothing on the animals! The aliens are used to some large toothy predators, maybe a couple of little poisonous skittering things. But large orange felines that are capable of blending effortlessly into their environment? Rodents capable of chewing through metal? Small fish that climb into your reproductive organs and cannot be removed?????? That is horrifying. Even the most innocuous of their tiny insects is capable of carrying horrendous diseases. 

Like I just want aliens standing there staring in horror as a group of earthlings casual discuss their near death escapes as though they are completely normal and nothing to worry about and slowly come to the dawning realisation that these people are insane. 

blessedbrick:

You know what kills me? Artificial flavors. The notion that somewhere, sometime, there was a rogue blue raspberry. I’ve never seen this fictitious blue raspberry. I have no idea what a blue raspberry should taste like. I know what blue raspberry candytastes like.

How about apple? Watermelon? Grape? Grape flavored cough syrup? More like fake Concord grape abomination. Yet we accept that this is what they represent. No one believes that watermelon candy actually tastes like watermelon, but if you blindfolded someone and had them eat some, they’d say it was watermelon.

H O W ? ? ?

“Hey, Menah-Tal, I got some candy in a package from home. Do you want to try some?”

Menah-Tal took the bright yellow wrapped candy from Brett. He started to put it in his mouth before Brett stopped him.

“Unwrap it first. There’s a joke on here too - eh, it wouldn’t make sense.”

Menah-Tal gingerly “unwrapped” the candy and took the sticky substance out. These humans. How do they tell what is edible and what isn’t? Menah-Tal watched wistfully as Brett put the tasty-looking wrapper in garbage receptacle. Menah-Tal put the candy in his mouth and sucked on it thoughtfully.

“What is this supposed to taste like on your world, Brett?”

“Banana.”

“Ah.” Menah-Tal continued to suck sagely. “So that’s what ‘banana’ tastes like.”

“Well, it doesn’t actually taste like banana.”

Menah-Tal blinked his three eyes slowly. Why. Why is everything so complicated.

“We had a banana crisis back in the fifties. The banana flavor you’re tasting is modeled after an extinct variety. The only kind we have now doesn’t taste much like that at all.”

Menah-Tal struggled to open his mouth now that the candy had cemented itself around his teeth.

“So your kind has a sweet substance that they eat for enjoyment that is flavored to taste like an extinct fruit?”

Brett shrugged.

“Yup.”

Menah-Tal licked his finger.

“Sounds about right.”