General A new Ship's Pet?
- Thread starter Spinward Scout
- Start date
BlackBat242
SOC-14 1K
Perhaps a long-lost exploratory ship from a predecessor (post-ancient, pre-Vilani ascendency) civilization carrying a cargo of small (<25kg) Terran animals and plants crashed on their planet. Most animals survived - with all but the koalas dying off over time. The coffee and eucalyptus plants were among the few that grew well, and the koalas found themselves attracted to the coffee beans (like Sphynxian Treecats to celery), as those who ate it became faster, longer-working food-gatherers, increasing species survival.
Over the 50,000+ intervening years the koalas became more intelligent and... vigorous, dominating the ecosystem. They developed a complex language, and began making primitive tools and shelters, and to begin changing their local ecosystems to suit their needs.
Then the Solomani* exploratory scout arrived, and the Australian crew were shocked at the "super-Koalas" they found - and named them Drop Bears (rather tongue-in-cheekly). The sole American-descended crew member dredged up a half-remembered saying about "keep and arm bears", and found in the library files a mention of early-space-flight-are works of fiction - but no details were present,just a couple of interesting images.
One concerned small bear-like creatures and the other large ones. They all thought "why not", and proceeded to try to teach the DBs about written language, and improvements in their technology. After they left, in the next ~3,000+ years, the Koalas worked out their own writing system, and began consciously working to understand and make their own versions of what was in the various text-books the hairless gods had left them.
By the time a long-range scout ship from the 3rd Imperium finally re-discovered them, they had a roughly 10th-century Norse level of civilization, and they had built large-scale terrain drawings (think Nazca images) depicting the arrival of the hairless gods, their giving the gift on knowledge, and their departure. This led the scouts to list the planet as "a thoroughly contaminated culture, one which needs guidance rather than isolation".
Of course, various stellar, transstellar, and multi-sector corporations proceeded to find ways to exploit... er... enlighten this species.
* early 2nd Imperium
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion
It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed
The hands acquire shakes
The shakes become a warning
It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 1K
I should also note that Drop Bears would deploy in Drop Capsules.
