The Crucians

The Crucians (also called the "Eyes") are so-named from a constellation in an ancient galactography that contained their home world. Their own name for themselves is uncertain, but is believed to be a term they also applied to a group of warriors.

By whatever name, the Crucians were by far the most aggressive and unstable sentient species that Humanity has encountered. During the Great War, they overran and destroyed countless Human and Ferret systems and their populations, including the Ferret home world of Tzchirreel. Today, they are largely the stuff of legend, with countless popular entertainments centering upon undiscovered enclaves of the species bent on regaining galactic domination.

From museum preservations and video records of the Great War, we know that Crucians stood about 2.5 metres high and possessed a leathery skin that appeared amber or brown to human eyes. Their bodies were divided into three segments, each with three arms and three photosensitive organs that could be called eyes, although the term may be somewhat misleading, since Crucians' vision was probably very different from humans'. Biologists are relatively certain that Crucian vision was limited largely to the infra-red, and may have involved the detection of heat signatures more than sight as humans use the term.

Each arm ended in a six digit appendage that could be used as either a foot or hand. The digits on these appendages were extremely long and thin by human standards, making the Crucians skilled at minute manipulations of objects. They used this flexibility to evolve a language system that was entirely visual, consisting of signals and shapes adopted with their limbs and digits.

In motion, Crucians used two, four, or six limbs. No matter how many limbs they used, they were faster than all but a handful of humans. This speed was attested to many times during the Great War, when human invariably lost in hand to hand combat against Crucian forces of equal size, armament, and preparedness.

These facts aside, much of what we think we know about Crucians consists of conjectures. So far as we know, no human ever learned a Crucian language beyond a pidgin vocabulary suitable for diplomatic exchange and a random collection of vocabulary related to warfare and space travel. Moreover, the archaeologists who worked in the aftermath of the Great War usually found that the soldiers who had preceded them had made a through job of destroying most indications of Crucian culture. What follows, then, is tentative at best.

Biology and ecology

When inhabited, the Crucian home world was called The Nest. Since its destruction, it has been called The Pyre, after the combined Human and Ferret fleets reduced it in a firestorm that lasted 97 days.

Although no human is known to have set foot on it until after it was reduced to slag, when habitable it would have been roughly terrestial. The main differences are slightly higher gravity, and a richer proportion of oxygen in the atmosphere. Although its sun emits more infrared than is ideal for humans, The Nest was also warmer than human prefer, due to its proximity to the sun and a lack of axial tilt. However, humans could have survived on The Nest in reasonable comfort, as some did on captured Crucian ships.

So far as we know, life forms on The Nest were all trilaterally symmetrical. Even more importantly, they were entirely carnivorous, with hundreds of orders of microbes and bacteria fulfilling functions normally performed by plants, such as photosynthesis. If our computer simulations are accurate, it was a world where children's over-simplifications of evolutionary theory were literally true -- on The Nest, survival of the fittest probably did mean the survival of the toughest and most aggressive.

On the basis of five partially preserved skeletons believed to be from a museum, the Crucians are usually supposed to be the descendants of a pack hunting creature of two sexes that evolved in the central mountains of The Nest's largest continent. These proto-Crucians were cave-dwellers, and most likely hunted at night. Probably, too, its packs were strongly hierarchical, with members competing constantly for status.

Hundreds of millennia ago, proto-Crucians introduced a new viral-carrying microbe into their diet that was carried by their favourite prey, an animal that resembles an egg-laying badger. Whether this microbe had always been present or had recently undergone mutation -- for that matter, whether the proto-Crucians were aware of its introduction into their diet -- remains uncertain. But the fact remains that the microbe had two effects: while it was being digested, it raised the proto-Crucians into sentience by temporarily overriding its equivalent of DNA, and it heightened their already extreme aggression.

This microbe has been found on Crucian ships from the Great War, little different from the partially fossilized remains found on The Nest. Today, it is usually referred to as "brainweed" -- a term that is inaccurate, since it is not a form of plant life, but which seems appropriate because of its frond-like structure.

Based on observations of Crucian behaviour in battle and that of prisoners, at full potency brainweed seems to have steadily increased a Crucian's intelligence for 8-12 hours until it was at high genius level, then decreased it over the course of about 6-8 hours. Most likely, lesser doses could be given to induce a range of different level of intelligence, and the duration and extent of any effect would vary with the individual.

This cycle explains one of the early mysteries of the Great War: Why the few Crucian prisoners seemed to lapse into sudden idiocy after a few hours. At the time, Humans believed that the change was the result of some equivalent of a suicide pill. It was also a major factor in keeping Humans from learning Crucian languages.

Crucians apparently needed to take their first brainweed before sexual maturity for it to have effect. Some scholars among the Humans and Ferrets speculate that Crucian users of brainweed must have required increasingly larger doses to retain sentience, so that the end of Crucian life -- when it did not come in battle -- came in sudden and irreversible senility at a comparatively early age.

Others, point to the apparent existence of elderly oracular figures in Crucian society and suggest that, at least in some cases, brainweed could permanently rewrite a Crucian's genetic code, resulting in uninterrupted consciousness and perhaps a mitigation of the accompanying aggressiveness.

From a Human perspective, one of the mysteries of the Crucians is why no synthetic form of the microbe was ever developed that ensured continued sentience without any aggression. Perhaps it was, unsuccessfully. Or perhaps even the idea of such a substitute was unacceptable to the majority of Crucian leaders. Aggression was such a dominant part of Crucian life that the majority of the species may never have questioned it. All things considered, perhaps it is just as well for Humans and their allies that the Crucians either never developed or never widely used such a synthetic.

History and culture

Whether brainweed was discovered once or many times in Crucian pre-history is not known, but scholars believe that it became the basis of all Crucian culture, with the question of who controlled access to it forming the basis of all political struggle.

For dominant Crucians, brainweed must have strengthened their control, and ensuring their personal supply and controlling access to it must have quickly become the main priority of their sentient moments. For others in Crucian society, obtaining brainweed seems to have become a prime motivation. While sentient, the amount of brainweed available to a Crucian was probably a main indicator of status. While they were non-sentient, the desire for brainweed appears to have been a deeply-rooted piece of conditioning. Possibly, brainweed was addictive as well.

The result was a society where status must have been everything, and the punishment for disobedience was the loss of consciousness itself. Conceivably, disobedience could even have an effect on one's family, since any Crucian who did not receive his or her first brainweed before reaching sexual maturity risked achieving muted sentience, or even none at all, and becoming a permanent dependent.

By Human standards, the resulting social structure was probably unusually stable. Crucian culture must have never have suffered from the need to placate its lower members, many of whom would be incapable of plotting, and the rest of whom would be reluctant to lapse into pre-sentience. Possibly, too, soldiers serving away from The Nest were kept in control by the threat of having their family's access to brainweed cut off.

At the same time, among the elite with constant access to brainweed, its second effect must have come into play. Already combative by nature, Crucians under the effect of brainweed became impatient, edgy, and easily insulted. Personal honour and warfare, tempered by little else, is thought to have been a preoccupation of the Crucian ruling classes, leading to early -- but bloody -- political unification of The Nest, and an expansion into space that was marred by the constant in-fighting among various factions. Possibly, this second effect negated the first, making it harder for Crucian society to take advantage of the temporary geniuses it produced because much of their energy was devoted to plotting and combat.

Within this highly structured, competitive culture, family seems to have played a surprisingly large role. Some scholars suggest that the family was a refuge from the pressures of the larger society. However, others suggest that the importance of family reflected a preoccupation with breeding for lines that either required less brainweed (and therefore delayed the onset of senility) or could remain permanently sentient.

Most Crucian worlds were destroyed or made over so thoroughly that we know very little beyond these broad outlines. Some scholars suggest that the number of limbs used in locomotion was a sign of status that was rigidly enforced, with the use of two limb indicating the highest rank, but the evidence is inconsistent. We know the names of only a few prominent Crucians, and little about their culture or entertainment -- assuming, of course, that such things existed. Even their political factions and the details of their government are uncertain, although apparently those in charge were able to divert Crucian aggression away from each other and towards Humanity, the Ferrets, and their allies.

Some scholars claim that signs exist that the Crucian colony of Bashakenor once housed a sentient species that the Crucians extirminated. However, the evidence is inconclusive. Apart from Humans, the first species that we know the Crucians encountered were the Ferrets, who were fighting a rearguard action against them when humanity encountered them.

Humanity's own first encounter with the Crucians occurred on Illiad, when a Crucian light cruiser carrying a research team alighted on the new colony. Humans were able to negotiate successfully for a Crucian withdrawal and, not long after, withdrew from Blast Mountain when confronted with evidence that the Crucians had established a scientific outpost there before the first human landing. These encounters raised hopes that the two species could cooperate successfully.

Then something happened on Five Canal, when the two species discovered that they had both colonized the planet. Initial exchanges seemed promising but, within a few months, the Crucians ceased negotiation and abruptly exterminated all of the Human colonists. The problem may have been that this was the first time that Humans and lower caste Crucians had encountered each other. Evidence from Crucian shipping just prior to the event also suggests that the massacre coincided with a massive shipment of brainweed. Perhaps, too, the Crucians had simply been waiting to act until they had taken the measure of Humanity, and determined that they could easily destroy them. Whatever the case, the final result was The Great War, which began with the Crucians pouring through the single c-tunnel connecting their domain to Humanity's and laying dozens of worlds to waste.

This is not the place to detail the history of the Great War: The disaster at Sentinel, the taking and retaking of Tunnel, and the final, unexpected victory by the Humans and their allies. Still, it must be noted that, besides the tactical situation, one of the reasons for the long duration of hostilities was that the two sides were equally matched. While the Crucians could boast superiority in numbers, aggression, and physical prowess, the relative emotional and intellectual stability of Humans gave them advantages in both tactics and strategy, as well as in research and development.

The popular mythology is that Humans ultimately won The Great War because they were more adaptive. And certainly it is true that the invention of the spacefold drive allowed Humans in effect to outflank the Crucians in a devastating drive towards The Nest. However, what is not often remembered is how many times Humanity and its allies came close to disaster, especially in the early days of the fighting, when the superior reflexes of the Crucians often proved decisive.

Humanity soon learned to vary its fighting style, alternating between guerrilla style raids and mass fleet actions as different situations called for. By itself, this flexibility was unlikely to have done more than continue the stalemate. The invention of the spacefold drive was frankly a piece of luck, although Humans can be credited for their quickness to take advantage of it — and, perhaps, for having developed the sort of societies in which such unforeseen windfalls could emerge. But the conflict was a near thing, and many times could have easily tipped in the Crucians' favour.

Since the ending of the Great War, more than one scientist has lamented the thoroughness with which Crucian civilization was destroyed, both in the final days of fighting and the centuries-long aftermath in which Crucian colonies were relentlessly hunted down.

However, the reaction of the victorious Humans must be judged in light of the Crucians' own atrocities and the cultural weariness caused by long years of fighting. Perhaps, too, Jan Freyr and the other leaders of the final push were uneasily aware of how easily the outcome could have been different -- and how little mercy they could have expected themselves had the Crucians been victorious.

The Crucians today

Today, Pyre is a a barren world, with radiation levels that are still too high for prolonged exposure. During the final attack, much of the surface of the world faced such intense heat that large stretches of rocky soil are glass, and no life forms have survived. Entrepreneurs quickly established a heavily-shielded hotel for tourists, as well as memorials to Human and Ferret forces and museums depicting snippets of Crucian culture and memorabilia from The Great War. Despite its relative remoteness, Pyre has remained a popular tourist attraction ever since.

As for the Crucians themselves, the last documented sighting of them occurred in IY 5341, when the Spartan world of Peloponnessus destroyed a group of less than a thousand that had been living in the highlands of Dieudonné for some unspecified time.

The consensus is now that the Crucian are extinct. Although a few crackpots insist that the disappearance of a few ships in the remoter area of human space may indicate Crucian activity, such claims lack all credibility. Shortly before The Disappearance, in investigating the fate of the Doragon Shugyoku, which was found drifting in the Ghost Rim with all hands dead, the Imperial government concluded that there was no reason to believe that any Crucians remain, and nothing has happened since then to make any except the badly neurotic believe otherwise.

Equally unlikely are the claims that the Imperial government and its successors engaged in a conspiracy to conceal the continued existence of Crucians so as to avoid a public panic -- let alone the claims that surface periodically that various governments are drilling secret legions of Crucians to further their imperialistic ambitions.

Those who take such ideas seriously should consider that accidents and disappearances have been part of space travel since the beginning, and have become even more common since the Disappearance. Besides, such incidents might be more reasonably attributed to piracy than the survival of a species that was never known for subtlety.

More convincing speculation about Crucian survival comes from the statisticians who have looked at the size of the known Crucian sphere of influence, and declared that the odds are that some remnant of the species must have survived. After all, Human space remains a tiny fragment of the galaxy, and there are still many parts of it that are inadequately explored, particularly those not yet connected by spacefold drive.

What type of culture any Crucian survivors might have developed is a favourite subject of speculation among many biologists and sociologists. Do they center on worlds similar to The Nest, where brainweed could survive? Or do these societies survive by domesticating brainweed in sealed environments? Or have they managed to synthesize a form of brainweed that allows sentience without aggression? Do they survive by concealment, or remoteness? Undoubtedly, there are as many answers as there are remnant cultures.

Amidst this speculation, two questions seem especially important. First, would any surviving Crucian cultures be patterned on the old expansionist one? It seems likely that some new Crucian cultures would have had so few members, at least at first, that a more general sharing of brainweed might have been necessary for survival. If so, then these cultures might be even more formidable than the one Crucians possessed during the Great War. Alternatively, they might be stunted even more thoroughly by in-fighting. Either way, humans expecting a replay of the situation in The Great War might be in for a rude surprise upon encountering these new Crucian cultures.

Second, any new Crucian culture would have had eight millennia to develop. Is it possible that one or more of them has established a new domain in some unknown corner of space? The possible ominousness of the answer explains why, for the most part, Humans prefer to believe that the Crucians are extinct, or, at best, reduced to small remnants clinging to the edge of survival.

Such questions remain more a game played by academics than a practical line of research. However, in the unlikely event that Humans or their allies encounter life forms that they have reason to believe might be Crucian survivors, they are cautioned against making contact themselves. Instead, they should contact the nearest military authority, who are better equipped to handle such situations as may arise.

Until such an event occurs, leading scholars agree that the public should not waste time or resources over the possibility of Crucian survivals. Those who claim to know of such survivals are almost certainly fraudulent or the victims of self-deception.