Road to Hope

[Jakob]

This thread shall be my dumping ground for all things Kyanah, since I'm too lazy to write a real story with plot and characters and dialog and all that. Maybe some AI generated images will be included. If they're not trash.

FAQ

• What the hell are Kyanah?
  • Intelligent aliens from Tau Ceti e with the minimum tech level to invade Earth. You'll learn more about them after the lore dump, but the most important thing to know is that they're a pack society. Like seriously, their packs are everything to them.

• ACKSHUALLY Tau Ceti e doesn't exist/is like Venus!!11!
  • Hey shut up and let me have fun

• What kind of name is Kyanah anyway?
  • Oh excuse me, I mean the , but humans can't physically enunciate those sounds, nor type them on our keyboards, so that would be a pain

Anyway, let's get into the history of why they're invading Earth.

To fully understand it all the factors one must dive deep into Kyanah history, and it'll take a few posts to get to the modern world and the start of Project Hope. 300 of our years ago, Kyanah society was on the level of late 19th or early 20th century Earth. Railways and telegraphs, highways and radio were linking up city-states once separated by endless kilometers of uncharted desert, accelerating the global trade of goods and ideas. Scientific and technological progress was rapidly accelerating, with scientists examining the structure of atoms and galaxies alike, and the great mysteries of the universe toppling one by one. It was a deeply idealistic time, with many believing--perhaps slightly arrogantly--that the Kyanah civilizations would soon enough know everything there was to know. It was this mindset that led to the first Utopian thinkers. They believed that if the scientific method could create a perfect and correct model of the natural world, then surely it could too create a perfect and correct model of the Kyanah world, uncover the one true formula for good society and government, a solution to the Great Societal Equation if you will, and end all societal instability. Subsequent Utopian philosophers expanded on this idea, positing that such an idea was not merely possible in the abstract, but rulers had a duty to experiment and solve this great societal equation by any means necessary. Any cost, whether it be in money or blood, could be redeemed by the discovery of a solution, the second generation Utopian philosophers wrote. Perhaps you can see how things are going in a dangerous direction...

[Jakob]

The appeal of Utopianism was far reaching, and Utopian politicians rose to power across the world, a mix of true believers and self-serving opportunists and imperialists. Some genuinely useful reforms and innovative policies were discovered during this time period, but most of the radical social experiments did more harm than good. Some modern-day Futurist Utopians believe the problem was merely a lack of high-level AI (even computers were in their infancy back then) and an insufficient understanding of Kyanah psychology at the time, but this is a fringe view, any form of Utopianism is outside their Overton window. At the time, though, the third-generation Utopians arose and proposed that the problem was isolated implementation, that the solution to the great societal equation could only work if implemented everywhere in the world. Naturally this could only lead to one thing: global war.

Think "you guys are screwing up our perfect system by not implementing it, so we'll invade you and make you" times 1000. This was not like the human World Wars with two rigid power blocs fighting a continuous war, but thousands of smaller conflicts rippling across the world, each one ending quickly, but not before triggering several more, like an endless chain of falling dominoes. The Kyanah way of fighting war remained, as before and since, a quick show of fangs to assert dominance, ending in weeks or months once one side gained a decisive advantage, but even a quick war could kill thousands with the new technologies that were available: aircraft that could drop bombs from thousands of feet overhead, machine guns that could wipe out an entire pack in less than a second, even newfangled poison gas and dirty bombs.

[Jakob]

Over the equivalent of 30 Earth years, tens of millions died as the Utopian Wars circled the planet several times. However it would eventually come to a screeching halt as one city-state developed a weapon that could instantly end any war by simply wiping the enemy city-state off the map. The weapon, of course, was the atomic bomb, and the city-state that invented it was Ikun. By erasing two of their enemies in quick succession, Ikun disrupted the endless chain of falling dominoes, and the conflicts petered to a halt. But it was a tenuous peace. As Ikun expanded its nuclear arsenal, advanced city-states around the world rushed to develop their own nukes. For a few years, it seemed like the Utopian Wars would soon carry on, this time with nukes, until nothing was left. But it was not to be. Ikun struck first.

With new fusion bombs in the range of megatons, not kilotons, they obliterated all 13 other city-states with credible nuclear weapons programs in the span of one day. These city-states all instantly ceased to exist as political entities and were abandoned, with the surviving civilians emigrating to nearby city-states and starting anew. Ikun had sent a clear and resounding message to the rest of the world: all were free to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, but no one else would be allowed to have nuclear weapons. Instead of mutually assured destruction, the Kyanah homeworld would have the Hegemony Era. Ikun already was a strong regional power before the wars, and rebuilt their city quickly in the following years. Large chunks of the city had been bombed in air raids, and enemy armies had come near to invading the city itself several times, but overall, they got off lighter than many of their large rivals. This, combined with their nuclear monopoly, allowed Ikun to emerge as the first undisputed military hyperpower in Kyanah history.

[Jakob]

Soon after the Hegemony Era began, a group of packs--most of them young adults who had grown up during the late stages of the Utopian Wars--from a broad array of city-states and cultures met up in a remote resort town to discuss strategies for avoiding future nuclear wars. Eventually, after much chaos and bickering, they had the idea to establish a neutral forum for city-states with differing sizes and strengths to negotiate, which they termed the Coalition of Cities Against Blowing Everything Up. This idea proved to be quite popular, hundreds more packs from across the world became involved, though in the early years, it wasn't widely agreed upon what exactly the organization should do, if anything. However, within a couple of years, major governments, Ikun included, recognized the utility of such a forum to further their own geopolitical aims, and began sending official ambassadors to join. As professional diplomats and bureaucrats outnumbered and pushed out the students, dreamers, and activists, the organization's name was shortened to Coalition of Cities and its procedures became more regularized and formalized, and took on a distinct pro-North slant, with Ikun in particular using it as a platform to coordinate its allies and suppress and sanction its enemies. Though many Far South city-states and other enemies of Ikun remained involved, perhaps believing that a suppressed voice was better than none at all.

Eventually over 3000 city-states would join, but many thousands more would not, either out of a desire for independence or because they were too small or remote to be interested and relevant in global affairs. Meanwhile, Ikun's military had been busy. Utopianism was still alive and well, though as far as anyone was concerned, it seemed that Ikun had won and solved the Great Societal Equation as a result. Across the world, the Ikun Army and Air Force toppled city regimes left and right, rebuilding them in their own image with impunity. Though they exhibited restraint against city-states without a nuclear weapons program (which none dared openly work on) the mere existence of their nuclear monopoly as enough to force key diplomatic and economic concessions around the world. Ikun would, however, frequently use nuclear bombs for peaceful mining and civil engineering projects, and also their nascent space program.

In the meantime, Ikun was taking its first shaky steps into space. With 40% higher gravity than Earth, the planet was close to the limit for chemical rockets--just 10% more gravity, and it would be impossible for such rockets to carry any payload to orbit. The Kyanah thus did what any serious spacefaring civilization does, and went nuclear. With Raiun-cannons, they were able to use the force from a nuclear detonation to launch payloads into space, where a small and simple rocket could push it into a stable orbit or beyond. Of course, no living creature could handle the tremendous acceleration of a Raiun-cannon launch, so for crewed missions, a Kyanah pack would squeeze into a regular old chemical rocket carrying nothing but them and their life support, squeak into orbit, and dock with a pre-launched capsule.

[Jakob]

Yet domestically, cracks were beginning to show in the Utopian ideology. Many packs had questions. If Ikun had truly found the solution to the Great Societal Equation and was now sharing it with the rest of the world at gunpoint, then why was Ikun not a utopia? Why did poverty, crime, and corruption still exist, when Utopian theory claimed that such things would become a relic of the past? Why were thousands of conscripts still dying in faraway lands, fighting enemies that posed little threat to Ikun's existence? By this point, Kyanah technology is approaching that of present day Earth, and with the rise of the internet and independent online media, it's becoming easier and easier for packs to see for themselves that things aren't as utopian as the government claims.

Utopian lawspeakers are being increasingly challenged by isolationist and anti-Utopian upstarts, with a certain Nyektak-pak gunning for the City Alpha position. Nyektak-pack is shockingly young for such a position, but became involved in the Coalition of Cities as university students, when their pack was still nascent, and rose to fame rapidly as one of the few amateurish activist types still in the Coalition. They spoke the message that many were beginning to think: Ikun has not found the solution to the Great Societal Equation because it simply doesn't exist, and all the blood shed in its name was in vain. Nyektak-pack gained enough signatures to challenge the incumbent City Alpha in record time and won on their first attempt, becoming the youngest City Alpha of Ikun in over two Earth centuries. Their reign would also go on to be the longest in Ikun's history, reigning all the way into the era of Project Hope. Kyanah have different lifespans than humans and their planet has a different year so direct numbers aren't illuminating, but if you imagine a human becoming a major world leader at like 27 and still holding office at 90, that's pretty much what happened with Nyektak-pack.

Development in space continued incrementally. There was no space race like on Earth, since Ikun had already destroyed any would-be competitors. And there was nowhere to go either, since the Kyanah homeworld had to moons. So progress in space was mostly limited to satellites (which many other city-states began launching too) and a small space station which Ikun began working on, along with robotic flybys of the Tau Ceti system's other planets.

[Jakob]

In their first years in office as City Alpha, Nyektak-pack made good on their promises to implement sweeping reforms. All the conscripts were released from duty, and Ikun pivoted to a less ambitious but still interventionist foreign policy. They still retained their nuclear hegemony--indeed it would be tested again, as Ikun destroyed one more city-state accused of developing nuclear weapons, though historians dispute whether they even had a nuclear weapons program, or whether this was merely retaliation for said city state pulling out of a lopsided trade deal and seizing the assets of Ikun-based corporations in its territory. Ikun would also still do the occasional counter-insurgency operation or regime change, but the regime changes were no longer a constant occurrence, and the number of foreign military bases was slashed from over 200 to just 50. Nyektak-pack insisted that Ikun no longer had any interest in turning other city-states into clones of itself, but would still protect its interests everywhere in the world. From a domestic perspective, Nyektak-pack announced that Ikun's government would no longer pursue nebulous ideologies or experiment on its populace, but instead focus on maximizing Ikun's wealth using tried and true methods. The remaining Utopians were gradually purged from the highest levels of government through both citizen challenges and various anti-corruption operations, with Utopianism becoming a fringe ideology and a failed experiment.

[Jakob]

In the early years of Nyektak-pack's reign, the economy boomed, taxes were lowered, and battle deaths dropped to levels not seen since before the Utopian Wars. They were naturally wildly popular and there were few challenges during their early years. Technology continued to advance, with robots and automation becoming more and more widespread, and Ikun continued to use nuclear bombs for peaceful mining and civil engineering projects. Such technologies were used to finally finish the Water Distribution System, an enormous network of pipes, wells, and water silos used to transport excess water to drought stricken regions, an important piece of infrastructure on a desert planet. This was a rather decentralized project with numerous city-states and corporations creating their own disjoint pieces of infrastructure, but Ikun-based technology and corporations were heavily involved in combining everything into a cohesive system and bridging gaps in strategic locations, thus giving them an outsized level of control over the whole system. One might think there were noble humanitarian motives behind this (and no doubt many of the organizations that worked on the system had good intentions), but Ikun saw it as an excellent opportunity to seize control over a crucial strategic resource, using the Water Distribution System to shore up its allies or as a weapon against its enemies, allowing them to keep the Hegemony going with less military brute force.

Meanwhile, the Kyanah would make great strides forward in space. The first crewed missions to Tau Ceti f--known to the Kyanah as Ryitu--took place, though due to technical limitations, these were one way missions of a flags and footprints character. Due to Tau Ceti f's even higher gravity and thicker atmosphere than Tau Ceti e, it simply wasn't possible to come back with the technology at the time. There was at this stage little commercial use of space aside from satellites and occasional tourism, but this would change with the discovery of a room temperature superconductor that could only be made in zero gravity. Such a discovery promised revolutionary new innovations, especially in computing, where the Kyanahs' mechanical computers had previously run up against hard physical limits and stagnated, as well as energy storage. Such superconductors could solve previously insurmountable heat dissipation problems in said computers.

With new incentives to develop in space, many corporations and city states rushed to expand further there. The crude, explosive nuclear cannons are gradually replaced with sleek SSTO nuclear spaceplanes, further accelerating space-based development, and Ikun develops its first real spaceport. The first large stations with spin gravity are built, and additional uses for zero-gravity manufacturing, such as special alloys, are discovered. Some city-states, including Ikun, begin building permanent infrastructure on Ryitu, similar to the human research bases in Antarctica, along with a cycler to reach it. The key technologies and infrastructure for Project Hope are now in place, though it still has yet to be conceived, methods for interstellar travel are at least being discussed seriously, instead of being pure fantasy. This is the heydey of Ikun's Hegemony Era, though it will be past its peak before any of the main characters even hatch.

[Jakob]

Eventually cracks started to appear in Ikun's hegemony. The industrialization of the Kyanah, while it had led to unprecedented population growth took its toll on the homeworld's biosphere and climate. The hot, arid equatorial regions, such as the Dunelands, were the hardest hit, and many fled northwards to more temperate and less corrupt city-states such as Ikun. Increasing use of robots and AI are leaving many packs struggling to find gainful employment, and the influx of Dunelander migrants willing to work for low pay makes the competition even tighter. Ethnic tensions simmer in Ikun, with gang wars and race riots reaching levels not seen in decades, while hostile foreign governments deliberately fan the flames, eagerly awaiting Ikun's downfall.

There are even more sinister threats in the southern hemisphere. The Far South was at the end of the Utopian Wars an impoverished backwater, but in the decades since, many city-states in the region have rapidly industrialized and become far wealthier, especially Koranah, the largest city-state in the region. They have a population over double that of Ikun, who are younger on average and far more patriotic, and with a far more centralized and authoritarian government, Koranah can ram through programs and infrastructure projects that would be endlessly delayed by negotiations, challenges, and red tape if attempted in Ikun. In addition to their economy--including large amounts of high-tech manufacturing that Ikun depends on, such as high-performance mechanical computer components and other nano-scale precision manufacturing--their military capabilities are advancing rapidly. They have no nukes, but all their conventional weapons are equal to Ikun's or closing in fast. They openly resent Ikun for its interventionism, including a brutal regime change in Koranah itself during the early Hegemony Era, and have begun to adopt a similarly aggressive foreign policy, establishing foreign military bases and overthrowing pro-Ikun regimes in the Far South; Koranah becomes a rallying point for many city-states displeased with Ikun's policies.

Ikun, with its volunteer-only military, is unable to defend all its allies, and a fair few are left out to dry. Even the Hegemony itself is slipping. The spread of anti-missile laser arrays mean that Ikun can no longer annihilate any city-state they want with absolute, 100% certainty. Ikun has developed alternative delivery systems that aren't affected by lasers, like ground based systems and orbital bombardment, as well as electronic warfare targeting sensors. Though many city-states are becoming bolder and less fearful of nuclear annihilation. Meanwhile, as more and more city-states in the South and West grow and industrialize, the environmental damage accelerates. The Water Distribution System becomes increasingly strained, with new innovations in prospecting, Ultra-Deep Water Wells, and dew collection not keeping up with the increased demand and reduced supply.

Geoengineering and weather control technologies are being developed, but Nyektak-pack recognizes that this won't solve all of Ikun's problems, and will create new ones. Koranah is ahead of Ikun in this field, so a hypothetical Climate Control System would likely be heavily developed and controlled by them, allowing them to use it as a diplomatic weapon much like Ikun uses the Water Distribution System, but even more powerful. Further, it would only create small numbers of highly educated jobs and Nyektak-pack would not get all or even most of the credit in such a globalized effort, meaning that the system of governance they spent their lives building might be torn down after their deaths--and Nyektak-pack is getting old and worrying a lot about their legacy. Thus, they move to suppress geoengineering ventures around the world to leave room for their solution: invading and colonizing a certain habitable world 12 light years away--Earth. To them, this is a win-win situation: Ikun's stagnant manufacturing sector will be boosted with huge numbers of accessible jobs, they will demonstrate their ability to project military force in a way that Koranah could never dream of, re-strengthening the Hegemony, and enshrining Nyektak-pack's system and their legacy indefinitely. But are things ever really that simple?

[Jakob]

Spoiler alert, no they are not that simple. The key problem is that Ikun actually has no way to pay for constructing and arming a fleet of starships, aside from crushing taxes and massive loans from hostile foreign governments such as Koranah. Which negates the economic benefits of all the job creation and then some. And none of this actually solves the problem of how their world is supposedly dying (there are problems, yes, but a lot of climate data is being exaggerated to drum up support for extreme initiatives like Project Hope). And it suppresses companies and city-states with actually useful solutions, like geoengineering. In some ways, the ironically named Project Hope is Nyektak-pack's worst blunder, undoing everything they worked for in a long and illustrious political career. In the end, they sacrificed Ikun for the idea of Ikun, much like the Utopians they rose to power by challenging. Kind of ironic in a way, how Nyektak-pack live long enough to become the very thing they swore to destroy. Not that they ever get their just deserts. They die peacefully, without being successfully challenged (though Ryen-pack comes close) leaving everyone else to clean up the mess. And their designated successor (actually also Nyektak-pack, because one of their young is the pack's alpha) finishes what they started and sends Project Hope on its way.

[Jakob]

If you had a picture of the Kyanah in your mind's eye, prepare to wipe it away, because I'm here with the definitive answers (but no AI art )!

They have the same general body plan as a human, with two legs, two arms, and a head connected to a torso, and a bipedal posture, but there are many key differences, including a thick and robust tail which is used for balance and plays a role in unarmed combat, often being used to trip up enemies. Average adult height of different ethnic populations ranges from 141-155 cm, while average mass ranges from 54-73 kg, groups from warmer climates tend to have taller and lankier frames, while those from cooler regions are shorter and more compact. There is no appreciable difference in either between males and females, although as with humans, nutrition, diet, and genetics induce considerable variation in height and weight. Kyanah have scaly skin and no hair, with populations in most of the northern hemisphere, including their original habitat, and some temperate regions in the south having a dull blue skin tone, which can be somewhat more vibrant with a slight indigo complexion in the very high northern latitudes, though this is rarely considered a separate racial group in modern Kyanah demography. Populations from the scorching hot and sunny equatorial regions have evolved elevated melanin levels, resulting in a deep brown skin tone, examples of this adaptation date back at least 15-18 thousand years. In the far south, many populations have evolved more opaque skin and a grayish complexion in the past 5-7 thousand years, though this is not universal.

Kyanah have four fingers and toes on each hand and foot, which end in claws; they are believed to have lost the ability to retract their claws around 5-6 million years ago, with the advent of bipedalism. The limbs are slightly shorter than a human of comparable size, but the head is proportionally about the same size, albeit with a broader and flatter skull and a protruding snout, and enlarged, floppy ears that sit higher on their head; these are believed to be used for both heat dissipation and display purposes. Kyanah are obligate carnivores, gaining all their caloric needs from meat, though they are willing to occasionally consume certain plant matter for taste or extra micronutrients--mostly tubers and nuts, they avoid their planets' analogues of leaves and grasses entirely. They can eat almost any non-toxic meat from their planet, but prefer medium to large game. Their dental structure reflects this, with 38 teeth, including 3 pairs of canines, the top-front "main" pair of which can reach 2.5 centimeters. Teeth take up to a year to grow in and can be continuously replaced until old age, though replacement can also take up to a year. Kyanah evolved to use these teeth, which curve inwards, to grip onto prey and tear out chunks of flesh using their powerful neck muscles. Kyanah eyes range from light yellow to dark brown and they have excellent color vision and movement detection, but poorer overall visual acuity than humans. On the contrary, their senses of hearing and smell are considerably stronger, up to 60 times better than humans in the latter case. Despite this, visual communications, including written language, are still broadly used. Being from a planet with 40% higher gravity, they have a considerably higher muscle and bone density than an equivalently sized human, making it impossible for most Kyanah to swim. They are considerably faster on land than a human; even a sedentary desk worker can easily exceed 30 km/h in short bursts, and world class athletes can be in the 60-70 km/h range, though they have far less endurance, partially due to an inability to sweat, forcing them to rely on panting and heat dissipation through their enlarged ears to thermoregulate--Kyanah are warm-blooded with a normal body temperature of 51.8 Celsius.

They are an egg laying species, laying elliptical eggs measuring 13x8 cm on average, in groups of two as a redundancy mechanism. Eggs typically hatch in 65-75 Earth days, resulting in a 400-gram hatchling. Due to their small size and limited brain matter available, their initial weeks and months they rely heavily on mimicry and hard-coded instinct to survive, and they require constant stimulation and socialization from adults for their higher brain functions to come online. As their teeth have not come in at this point, they consume chewed up and regurgitated meat provided by the adults in their pack. However, they grow rapidly, consuming nearly half their weight in food per day in the first few weeks after hatching, and by 1 Earth year, they have reached a more respectable 10 kilograms. Sexual maturity is typically reached around 9-10 Earth years, with typical lifespan being 50-60 without technological intervention.

Internally, the Kyanah body also holds some interesting surprises. They have an internal skeleton like Earth vertebrates, but their bone mineral of choice is silicon dioxide--they literally have quartz bones and teeth. They additionally have indigo-based blood, and use peptide chains to store genetic material--they have 0% DNA in common with humans, because they literally don't have DNA. While they do vocalize and have spoken language, their vocal cords aren't suited to replicate human speech (nor vice versa); their vocalizations have been described as vaguely crocodilian in nature, but with a higher pitch and cadence, and more complex patterns as they are actually speaking a language and not merely vocalizing. Despite this, most of their internal organs seem to have a fairly similar structure and placement to humans, with the exception of the brain, which is kind of out there, so deserves its own post.