This Is Mostly Just Soft World-building And A Writing Exercise (not That I’m Much Of A Writer? But

This is mostly just soft world-building and a writing exercise (not that I’m much of a writer? But alas, what else to call this). But very HASO, so figured I’d share [:

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There were plenty of reasons it was assumed, by the general community if not officially, that a sentient predator species would never reach space. Several scientific minds argued that sentience was not possible in predators at all, though this is generally an idea rooted in ⧭ปΦ∸яism and has some troubling connotations, especially for species with scavenger roots like the Tumªolut and the Kkaრ೮ಊs. But in general, it was considered at best an improbability. Any erudite or academically minded individual could give you a reason. Predator species had not been found in the over 1,300 sentient species recorded in galactic history, suggesting it was statistically unlikely. Predator species only occurred on death worlds, and few species developed past infancy in such conditions. Individuals that had grown up from predator-laden planets would submit that predators were too instinctual to gain rational thought. They argued that a sentient predator would starve as it lost the cruelty necessary to hunt, or that no god would allow the gift of a mind to fall into the hands of a predator. Ecologists submitted that a sentient predator would not be able to survive: they would simply eat themselves to starvation. They would not have time to advance enough to set up truly sustainable food sources before they decimated their homes, and would subsequently never survive, or at least be stuck in a perpetually diminished state. The ∴።፨፨•, with their unique cultural appreciation of their homeworld and its other facets, occasionally disputed this idea. They themselves might be able to support a predator species on their otherwise peaceful planet, as they worked diligently to prevent the extinction of any species, even those bothersome to themselves. However, this was generally concluded to either be a cultural stance too rare to be statistically significant, too kind-hearted for a predator to develop, or too cultural for a predator-species to develop before it was too late.

The Media and Entertainment industries had their own perspective on the hypothetical. Naturally, the idea of a flesh-eating, shadow-stalking killer was too good to pass up, once introduced by the likes of popular Kkaრ೮ಊs myth and fable. And as scary as they were as threats of nature, they were tantalizingly terrifying when they became sentient villains. They also had the additional benefit of being unlike any known species on the market: there was little risk in ostracising an audience or, as was assumed, any future audience. Media outlets on the less scrupulous end cherished flashy articles that warned of hazy figures on newly explored planets. Even official GC sources occasionally indulged in calculating the chance that a predator species would be discovered on planets set to be explored next, with comically infinitesimal numbers listed beneath the statistics displaying the chance of another sentient species, life at all, or the presence of water or mercury. Doomsday cultists of various sects listed the discovery of a sentient predator (an event commonly titled as ‘The Birth of the Weapon’) in their timeline to the end of known existence, claiming that such a species would herald, or bring about, the end times.

All of these sources provided the space for people to set aside suspicion and fear and truly hypothesize what such a group would look like, however. The visages they drew were wicked. The hulking, camouflaged behemoths of “Coldest Ice”, the slithering, silent shades in Buer-Mak’s various sculptural works, the clawed, voracious maws illustrated in Kk⇟ꜿ Illustrated’s conspiracy surrounding a supposed super-predator underneath the ℋi⤕lei colony. It would be, with strange accuracy, the literary works of Juarl Mೊ who came closest. Mೊ’s works took a clever spin on the Predator Villain in his series “The Remarkable and Solitary Survival of L.C. Tanne”. Mೊ portrays a sentient predator not as a physically imposing figure, but one of remarkable skill and endurance. An enemy that was nearly impossible to kill, and infinitely motivated. The unnamed villain of Mೊ’s story captured the fears of a small cult following, but did not become an archetype for new sensationalized stories. So, when that fateful discovery was made in the 1st quarter of 3409 GCY, it was to the delight of those few who had unexpectedly out-predicted the intellectuals of our time, and the horror and trepidation of all.

[Excerpt from “Sentient Predators: The Entrance of Humanity to the Galactic Stage” by Gaamorrnnck’ luuoi, transcribed from audio recording by Tamurӕck Passei, Translated into Terran common English by Automatic Translator ver. 1309]