A random idea for a ‘Humans are Space Orcs’ post
What would we look like to an alien race down the line. We, as a species, describe ourselves as scientific and logical, yet emotional and brutish. We can copy anything, but we also invent new things. We rush through ideas to make them work, but also stay with them until we’ve mastered them. We are peaceful and loving, but also hateful and war-like. We’ve created a thousand ways to peace, and a thousand ways to war. What would the aliens think?
The humans were the second largest intelligent species we’d ever encountered, and they were sitting inside of what our First Contact Unit referred to as a ‘missile with life support’. They were somehow at the far side of their ‘Asteroid belt’ yet were still burning explosive materials as a means of propulsion.
They were also likely the most dangerous species any race had ever encountered. With no natural defences, they’d somehow become the dominant species of their planet. None could understand it. They even had species on their planet that seemed almost designed to kill them… and they had adopted them as pets! Monsters on their planets called ‘bears’ and ‘tigers’ that the humans enjoyed looking at IN THE WILD with NO PROTECTION ON!
Their biology is possibly more terrifying than their planet, which houses every biome known and hundreds, if not thousands, of species that can kill with a single bite, sting, or even touch. Yet the humans are masters there. They can heal from wounds that would prove fatal to anything else, can set broken bones to heal in a fraction of the time anything else would, assuming it can at all, and can even have organs damaged or removed without it always being a death sentence. They have adapted to survive in almost any situation our scientists have tested them with. Many regard them with fear for this reason alone.
The beings themselves varied wildly as well, both in appearance and preference. Some liked it hot, others cold. Some preferred to be in groups, while some only seemed happy when left alone. To say their species were living paradoxes was to not give them enough credit.
In just fifty of their years however, we truly understood how these species had become so dangerous and dominant on their planet. My race had taken over two hundred of their years just too master intergalactic space-flight. Other races we’d met shared similar stories, explaining how it took them hundreds of Earth years to journey to the stars, but humans? They simply looked at what we had… just looked! We gave them no design specifications, no blue-prints, no clues as to how our engines worked. The only question they asked was what material worked for the engines fuel, which was not classified as every species used the same energy conversion process. Only three years after looking at our engines, the humans had created their own versions that, though rushed, still operated at 82% efficiency compared to our own. Our earliest design had taken a hundred years just to become operational!
When asked, the humans simply smiled and stated they’d tested them in a Mars base to ensure safety for the scientists while they ‘backwards engineered’ our entire engine core FROM MEMORY.
Within five years of copying our engine designs, they’d surpassed even the most brilliant of our galactic neighbours. Any ship that met them peacefully was welcomed by their fleets for trade… while any ship that dared attack was either destroyed, or salvaged and added to their already impressive fleet size. The humans were like walking mirrors, copying everything they saw and touched, creating their own versions in a fraction of the time it took other species and then exceeding our own.
It took years to discover how this was possible. A humans version of imagination allows them to somehow think beyond reality. They don’t spend decades removing every flaw like other species, instead relying on ingenuity to solve problems as they appear. They rush forward into technology they don’t understand, accepting all possible risks as ‘learning’, and then continue to move forward with the technology even after it has been proven operational, making it ‘perfect’ as they say.
In just fifty years, they’d used this ability of theirs to spread across almost a fifth of the galaxy, establishing colonies and growing in population at an impressive rate. On top of that, although they were clearly a dangerous race, they were also amazingly peaceful. They helped us go from many governments working in conjunction to a central group, where all races met with their designated leaders and discussed things under one goal: Unity. They claimed that this was an ancient idea of theirs that stemmed from a place known as ‘The United Nations’.
Not only that, but once you were accepted into the United Galaxy and proved your intentions, they promoted resource and information sharing, something that had never been done before.
On the other hand… none wanted to risk fighting the humans. They promoted peace and equality, but they also carried behind them a military that was so colossal in size that even we, their first allies, didn’t know its full extent… though we do know that, during a war they dubbed ‘Galactic War One’, their home world was attacked. Though the loss of life was minimal, they said it was beyond forgiving, and in their anger they launched a full scale attack. The species that attacked them? Extinct.
Nobody really knows if the humans will always be true to their words of peace, but one thing is certain… nobody wants to find out how angry they can truly get
Just a rough idea. Feel free to take it and run with it!
janainaart
romaincrisis
origamiaround
discoholicmusic
blakekathryn
stormborns
dededos
prguitarman
ellievsbear
