Like many of the other species among the wayward stars, the Kiaurist are a Xenophobic race. Centuries, nay, millennia of bitter conflict for the sake of resources have filled the entirety of their kind with a coldly ruthless, brutally efficient pragmatism, they have no patience for idle superstition, no respect for any accord not enforced by martial might, nor for anything they cannot see, hear, and feel with their own eyes, ears, and hands. Generations of (un)natural selection has imbued in them an innate greed, an all-consuming thirst to accumulate any and all things valuable, and an equivalent overbearing urge to slaughter those who would see their hard-earned supplies stolen.
Since time immemorial, the Kiaurist have assembled themselves into closely related clans, and spurred by paranoia and avarice in equal measure, they have only ever met one another in bloodshed, to raid for goods or to steal territory. Within their clans, the idea of hierarchy is utterly alien to them, each individual is considered the same, and each is forced (in days gone by, by their kin, in the present, by necessity) into only the tasks to which they are best suited. In the past, this combative clan system was functional, even desirable, as over the eras, it has culled the weak from their genetic pool, and over an eon of struggle, they have become far hardier and stronger than their ancestors ever could've envisioned.
However, in the present, it has lead to ruination. Their homeworld was once a lush, verdant, and fertile planet, dotted with hillocks bloated with mineral wealth, and thriving woodlands filled with all manner of delicious docile beasts and plants both edible and medicinal. A dozen millennia of apocalyptic devastation has seen its splendor reduced to rubble, where its hills once sat, now lie mountains of rubble made hollow by countless century-old labyrinthine bunker-mazes, and where its forests once grew, only the poisoned ash-wastes remain, filled with embittered thorns, desperate scavengers, and twisted cannibalistic mutants, their forms bent and broken by the toxic detritus of a dozen civilizations.
No matter how willing they might be to repeat their past mistakes, the mineral deposits of their homeworld have been stripped of all value and if its children fail to overcome their inner greed before it is too late, they will receive no other chance. Either the currently living clans abandon the urge to pillage and plunder their neighbors and reach to the stars, or in a few century's time, their less violent cousins across the cosmos will find only skeletons where they once stood. One enterprising clan, the Bozhakata, or, the "Emerald Lenses" in their baritone chittering language, comes to realize this sobering truth, and in the interest of ensuring the prosperity of their descendants, pioneer a wholly revolutionary idea: Barter.
By exchanging bits and pieces of their painstakingly scavenged archeo-tech with a neighboring clan for the raw resources they require to manufacture more, they are able to attain mutual gain, harness their savage instinct to raid and slay toward the pursuit of profit, and both clans are able to gain the vital materials and sustenance they need, without murdering each other by the dozen! While at first, both clans are initially hostile to one another, over the course of a dozen years, they become mutually apathetic and are content to merely isolate themselves from their customers rather than give their lives for fleeting conquest that would see their profits dwindle. Eventually, they came to call themselves the Athouricus, meaning "The Many Clans" in their tongue.
Such a radical concept will take time to spread, but its utility is enough that it cannot be ignored. When all clans have come to know of Barter, who knows what they can accomplish?
The idea of Barter has begun to spread to the eternally raiding clans of the Athouricus, and over time, the concept of commerce becomes known to the species as a whole.
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Topic: The Cycle - IC-Thread - First Cycle - Turn 1 (Read 2232 times)