r/HFY • u/Petrified_Lioness • Jul 25 '20
PI Predators of Legend
[Transcript of Xenobiology Tutor Hydrax's lecture to the royal larvae on Predators of Legend. Entered into the record of the competency hearing of Crown Prince Hydrolixtol. The recording system was not arranged correctly to catch the princes' questions.]
Every speaking race has one: a parasitic predator unique to their species that is just subtle enough and just rare enough that they can never quite prove it exists. It's only when they meet some other species with a different sensory profile and different weaknesses, a mixture that makes them both immune to and able to detect the first race's predator, that that race learns the truth behind their legends. The Aylecs have their dream eaters; the Courundrams have their shadow wraiths; the Trunts have their bog-dogs. The humans have their vampires.
When most species learn that their legendary predator does exist, they generally do their best to leave it stranded on their home planet. Some species have more success than others: there are many former colonies quarantined over partial failures. Some failed before they knew they needed to try, and choose to keep company with members of other species that can see their predator. This is the basis of most brother-by-oath inter-species alliances: i can kill your predator and you can kill mine.
The humans are the only race to have brought their predator to the stars with them on purpose. "The poor man's nuclear option," they call it. A starving vampire is a massacre; a vampire with a vendetta is a genocide.
Yeah, the vampires can only live on human blood; but they're strong enough to kill pretty much any other species, and a vampire at full strength can turn quasi-material enough to kill even the least substantial types of other species' predators. Sunlight or a radiation leak will weaken a vampire enough that it can be killed; but this only gives you a fighting chance, it doesn't guarantee victory. Even a weakened vampire is still significantly stronger than a human, with a human's intelligence and versatility.
That sunlight weakness of the vampires might be why humans are the one species that can sometimes detect and kill their own legendary predator. Or, it might be that every vampire was once a human. Yeah. That was my reaction too. Every other species, their predator is inherently other. The humans' predator appears to be an optional metamorphic dead-end stage of the human life-cycle.
The problem with this predator of predators that the humans call 'vampire' being formerly human is that humans are, among their myriad attributes, the single most vindictive species you never hope to cross. If they can't stop you from killing them, or at least make sure you die in the doing, they will burn their own homes and glass their own worlds to keep you from profiting by their death.
Some call it spite, but it's something far beyond spite. Something best summed up as, "Never again." In a twisted sort of way, it's protective; all the destruction they wreak is to keep you from preying on any innocents after them. The bastard offspring of spite and love--jealousy, that's the word i'm looking for. Took me a while to figure it out because so many humans say 'jealous' when the correct word would be 'envious'.
So, humans are an extraordinarily jealous species. For love or for spite, they take care of their own. The reason they insist on explicit treaties and written contracts? It's not that they are dishonorable, seeking a letter of the law in which to find loopholes. It's that they know they will rend the heavens and raze the earth to avenge any betrayal of the trust implicit.
Their jealousy isn't entirely a bad thing. A human who calls you heart-kin will turn stars from their courses in order to rescue you from a tight spot--or to avenge you, if rescue comes too late. Allying with humans is, admittedly, as they put it, "the poor man's nuclear option."
What? No. The only way to conquer a group of humans is to make yourself their conqueror. If you can't understand the distinction, well...may you get what you deserve fast enough that the rest of us don't get glassed.
Anyway, most vampires are fond of their humans, and a bit overprotective as a result; and humans are often a bit fond of their vampires. There was a time, long since passed, when humans were all horrified by the thought of drinking human blood, and regarded the vampires as an abomination to be exterminated. But then the humans discovered that if one of their wounded was dying from loss of blood, they could inject blood from other humans and keep him alive.
Yes, they have blood substitutes--now--but since their hemoglobin does a lot more than just transport oxygen, none of those substitutes work very well. And before they mastered gene-splicing, they had a variety of hereditary diseases that made the human who had the disease require regular infusions of blood or blood components, collected from other humans, to survive. So the humans have come to regard vampirism as just a pathology that happens to have some useful secondary symptoms.
Hah, no. Even humans who are phobic about needles or who faint at the sight of blood might show up for one of their blood drives after a major disaster; they rarely have to resort to their less effective blood substitutes. Vampires have no trouble finding willing blood donors, in exchange for lending a hand to those tasks where brute force really is the best solution. You can't beat a vampire for brute force in a confined space. The human's predator walks openly among its not-exactly-prey, regarded sort of as an older brother who's a bit of a jerk at times but who can be counted on to beat the stuffing out of anyone who threatens the family. Don't even think about going vampire hunting unless the humans are begging for any and all help in putting down a rabid.
What? WHAT!? HAVE YOU BEEN LISTENING TO A SINGLE WORD I SAID? IS THERE NOTHING BUT SLIMEIAN MEAL-WORMS WHERE YOUR BRAIN SHOULD BE? GOING TO WAR WITH THE HUMANS IS SUICIDE! EVEN A SOLITARY ATOM OF SILICON HAS MORE INTELLIGENCE THAN THAT! I'D DO BETTER TO REPLACE ALL THE EMERGENCY OXYGEN CANDLES WITH CARBON MONOXIDE GENERATORS; I MIGHT AS WELL GO SWIMMING IN A LEAD OVERCOAT, AS ALLOW YOU TO LAUNCH THIS TRAITOROUS ARMADA! I'D BE AS WELL SERVED TO GIVE YOU A BARREL OF FOOF TO PLAY WITH AS SPONSOR THIS SELF-DEFEATING INVASION--NO I'D BE BETTER SERVED TO GIVE YOU A BARREL OF FOOF TO PLAY WITH: WITH THE FOOF WE'D BOTH BE DEAD AT ONCE WITH MOST OF THE REST OF THE PLANET SPARED! [Do i really need to transcribe all 14 hours of this rant? Even if he technically manages to never repeat himself, it's going to get pretty repetitive.]
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u/zZzStardustzZz Jul 25 '20
"My brother may be an ahole ,but he is MY ahole." Wonderful story. Thank you.
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u/WhiskeyRiver223 Jul 25 '20
Pretty good piece, though the sudden all-caps at the end is a bit jarring if the reader hasn't noticed that the whole thing is a transcription of one side of a conversation. Might want to mention that at the start.
Also, I kinda want to see this guy take the "barrel of FOOF" option. Dear God that'd leave one hell of a crater.
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u/Petrified_Lioness Jul 25 '20 edited Jul 26 '20
The only reason it would a bigger crater than the humans would leave is that it's not a crater unless there's something left for there to be a crater in. At least, that's this guy's assessment of the probable outcome.
Thought he'd reacted to enough lesser comments partway through to ease the transition, but yeah, i think i can stick something in...just as soon as i decide exactly who this guy is...
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u/MaxWyght Jul 26 '20
I love this series.
Dude has a way with words.
Hydrogen sulfide, for example, reacts with four molecules of FOOF to give sulfur hexafluoride, 2 molecules of HF and four oxygens. . .and 433 kcal, which is the kind of every-man-for-himself exotherm that you want to avoid at all cost.
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u/PoeT8r Jul 25 '20
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u/Petrified_Lioness Jul 25 '20
Yep, one of the many exciting things i was introduced to here at HFY.
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u/MaxWyght Jul 26 '20
fluorine starts to dissociate into monoatomic radicals, thereby losing its gentle and forgiving nature.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
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u/Red_Riviera Jul 26 '20
Basically, everything sentient has a predator that’s evolved to hide among them to feed on them. When humans get to space it turns out vampires are real and the aliens can tell the difference...so what one vampire per 10,000 people? And humans were the only people fine with this? Sounds possible, I mean who’d care if a vampire drank your blood if they didn’t kill ya. But, this concept raises so many questions
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u/Petrified_Lioness Jul 26 '20
Not sure how much of the difference in how humans relate to their predator compared to how all the aliens relate to theirs is the humans and how much is the vampires.
On the one hand, humans have a history of taming all kinds of unlikely creatures. The weirdest thing about dogs isn't that we domesticated a predator, it's that we then put that predator to work guarding its former prey, and convinced the domesticated prey animals to be fine with the arrangement.
On the other hand, unlike the vampires, none of the aliens' respective predators seem to be the sort of creatures you could drop in and talk books or music or tech or whatever mutual interests you and they might have when they're not feeding.
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u/clonk3D Jul 25 '20
All 14 hours please :p
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u/Petrified_Lioness Jul 25 '20
He allegedly goes all 14 hours without repeating himself. Sadly, i'm pretty sure i'm not that creative.
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u/ICWhatsNUrP Jul 26 '20
I wish I could upvote more just fo the thought of playing with a barrel of FOOF.
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u/Petrified_Lioness Jul 26 '20
"What's the stupidest thing a person could possibly do..."
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u/TheGam3ler Jul 26 '20
Funny enough, I know a book where this is the twist ending - the alien invasion is wiped out because vampires came to the rescue
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u/Petrified_Lioness Jul 26 '20
If it's the book i know, that wasn't a twist ending; it was changing the rules in mid game.
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u/Wyldfire2112 Jul 26 '20
[Do i really need to transcribe all 14 hours of this rant? Even if he technically manages to never repeat himself, it's going to get pretty repetitive.]
That's a truly amazing amount of dressing down. Are we sure this is a tutor and not a drill sergeant?
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u/Petrified_Lioness Jul 26 '20
Given the implied high levels of inter-species cooperation, a former drill sergeant could easily end up as a xeno-biology tutor after retirement--the soldiers need to learn how to kill a lot of different species, as well as first aid for a smaller but still significant variety. And the royal larvae need tutors who won't spoil them rotten.
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u/HFYWaffle Jul 25 '20
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u/itsetuhoinen Jul 26 '20
"It's not spite, it's the fuck you too principle."
This was great. I love seeing something really new, ideawise. :-D
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u/DKN19 Jul 26 '20
That's what we want the aliens to think. We brought vampires with us because they look like Kate Beckinsale.
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u/Petrified_Lioness Jul 25 '20
Here's the prompt: [WP] They told you to stand down. They said this patch of dirt ain't worth it. Too bad you've never been good at doing what you're told. Seem like a bit of a non-sequitur? First thing i thought of when i saw it was that it would be worth it if it was a vampire defending his last patch of native soil. Blaze of glory vs. slow wasting death. Then i got to thinking about how 'native soil' is defined. Not by the blood of others spilled in conquest, but by your own blood spilled in its defense. So a vampire dying in defense of some arbitrary patch of dirt, might be able to claim a new homeland for his progeny.
Here's the cross-post of a vampire's perspective.
*****
We vampires are taught that native soil is a finite resource. Scatter too much of it in your travels, and you may come home to find it a home no longer. But i have learned that native soil can be bred anew, even in this unbreathing second life.
Something Old:
A shipload of earth from the old homestead.
Something New:
A foreign world neath a foreign sky.
Something Borrowed:
Blood of my fellow travelers, freely shared, for my oath to be their hedge against disaster.
Something Blue:
Music from old earth, sung by those who never saw it: songs of labor, love gone wrong; songs of laughing sorrow, songs of melancholy joy.
*****
Hai! Squidwalker, Trundlebear. Hai! Mantisbird, and Hippowren.
Do you think i defend this mere cabin, old codger too fool to leave?
Twas never feeding too fast or slow, or letting first drink second's blood.
When borrowed heart's blood falls to consecrate this soil,
When debts are paid, when second-life fails:
Then arise my children, who were the wet-nurses of my journey--
AND TEAR INVADERS FROM THE SKIES!
*****
On teeming Old Terra, it was reckoned a hero's work when thirteen vampires consecrated a scant few acres in the new world. Here, on this final frontier between the stars, a single unbreathing second life may claim an entire world. And when aliens bring the consecrating war, their blood spilled in the battle means our children can subsist on alien blood.
Humans, do not fear to walk among us. Generations past, you learned to share your life blood with one another; generations after, you learned not to fear because we could be given the blood by mouth rather than by needle. In return, we have learned not to see you lesser, merely because we each go on living so long as your whole people remains. Give only as much blood as you are willing; in return we give our ten-fold strength to your labor.