Polganite

Biology

Like all life on their homeworld, Polganites have no skeleton. Their bodies are smooth and long, split into six segments each with two thin flexible limbs. The front two segments have longer fingers to make them manipulator limbs, and while the back pair's fingers are not as long or precise they too perform the same role. Polganites have four black-colored eyes in a ring around their mouths.

Civilization and Culture

History

Polganite industrial civilization built up to a total population of three billion before a fossil fuel production peak caused a breakdown and collapse culminating in the Terminus Wars which destroyed most of their cities. Prior to this they possessed such technologies as television and digital computers, had launched a few astronauts into orbit, and were on the verge of a consumer internet. Without the high energy density of oil their cultures were forced into much more decentralized and less intensive modes of operation. Billions died in the attendant wars and famines, and in the new order that followed no one was better off. Once-eradicated diseases returned, petty wars ravaged the already ruined land, a legacy of fossil-fuel-derived carbon dioxide rendered the tropics uninhabitable, and Polganite civilization seemed permanently barred from ever returning to its previous heights.
It was in this state that humans discovered them: a space-based observatory identified several compounds in the planet's emission spectra associated with industrialization on Terra and starships were sent with the thinking they would arrive in the middle of what would by now be a fledgling interstellar civilization. Instead they found low-intensity agricultural societies living amid the ruins of their predecessors.

Average Length

~2 meters

Narrative Info

This content has appeared in at least one story:

Relics of War