#but it probably wasn't the smartest decision to build it smack in the middle of a flooding zone
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drowningin666fandoms · 4 years ago
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Humans are Space Orcs- Great Old Ones
It had taken countless generations to achieve proper space travel, for us. The ships took several lifetimes to build, each and every one of them an effort beyond anything we had built for the surface of our planet. And when we finally joined the galactic community, it was as equals amongst equals. Different origins, appearances, languages, but all of us with similar ways of thought, histories, lifespans. Sure, some had a little more or less, but it was negligible. And then we learned of the nightmares.
The Aaarkaaar had records of them, made by the creatures themselves. Almost three times the size of the tallest of species on average, we thought that was all the horror there was to them, but nay. They were violent beyond compare, each and every of their conflicts lasting at least three of the longest living species' generations, and that was to say nothing about their civil projects, which easily could take over a hundred.
Were it just their dedication and height, we could have dealt, but then one of the keepers of records pointed us at another part of the medical section we skipped out of habit and we grew terrified. No wonder it all took so long, when during the time one of the luckiest of us was born, grew old and died of oldest age, they were less than halfway through childhood. Until one of them would die of age, we would have replaced our entire population more than ten times over, assuming all of us lived till their bodies gave out around them. Or, more correctly perhaps, of their shorter-lived sex.
Ancient - we had seen three generations come and go in their entirety since ascending, where to them it'd be not even half their life -, larger than even the biggest animal and violent but terrifyingly intelligent as a consequence of it - the only reason we knew the alloy they used to inform the Aaarkaaar of their existence was that hundreds of generations dedicated their lives to studying and replicating it, and it would be only a small sample of what their long lives allowed them to discover we could never - we found we understood why there was a no-contact decision and a buffer zone around them. Many of the most adventurous of us had decided to dedicate their entire lives to studying them, so that future generations could try to understand them without fear of dying, and we already had a wealth of information on that, but it only made us more wary. Their results bordered on the impossible, but were proven true by others with no way of knowing the reports, after all. No wonder so many of our peers feared the Great Old Ones.
And then, generations later but probably only a blink of an eye to them, the Senate got a message from them that caused a galactic panic and fear.
"Hello. We are humanity, and we come in peace."
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Something a bit different this time! This idea just wouldn't let go of my brain. Why should the aliens be the ones with super long lives all the time? I think I've never seen a single piece of writing where our livespan was anything more than average, usually less even. And since longer lives tend to equal unique scientific advances based on that lifespan - usually medically speaking, but not exclusively - I figured we'd have things they would have no way of considering possible. Anything longer than, say, half their life to include some time to study would have to be a group effort at least.
I've set the average alien lifespan for this at around nine, longest getting to ten, shortest at eight and a half (giving them only five years of work to give some time for studying). So, given some civic engineering projects take ages even for us, I figured the very prospect would be intimidating for them. For example, the cathedral of Colonge took so long to build, by the time they 'finished' they got to start restoring the statues and artwork at the other end, and it is now a common joke in Germany that once all works on it are finished, the apocalypse will start. Far as I know, there have only been short breaks due to finance or weather related phenomena.
The longest active war in history was the hundred year war between England and France I think, which actually did take about a hundred years. Calculate two years off the ten years for childhood and old age and it's at least eleven generations. Which would be obscenely long for us. We tend towards on and off feuds when it takes longer than two or three.
So, let me know what you think!
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