The Ultimate Pets

In our Traveller Deepnight Revelation campaign, the small collection of ships is heading towards the worlds of the Emekni system. It’s a binary star system, with about 40 AU between the two stars. Both stars have a habitable world around them, but only one has a civilisation.
About 400 years ago, the people of Emekni had rudimentary space flight, and had even sent a small group of people to the neighbouring star. They didn’t like space travel though, preferring to live in large social groups. The idea of space travel, and setting up colonies, really wasn’t for them.
They advanced in other areas though, including biology and genetics. One of their toy companies even created a genetically engineered pet, which many centuries later would be termed Flumps by the crew of the Deepnight Revelation.
The Emekni had rudimentary psionics, and were able to give the Flumps basic empathic abilities to make them more desirable. They were made more intelligent, so they could know what their owners wanted and provide for them. Breeding them was cheaper than making them, and soon there were almost as many Flumps as there were Emekni. The company became highly successful, and made lots of money. What could possibly go wrong?
However, the Flumps were too successful. The rudimentary intelligence they’d been given had improved, and their empathic ability allowed them to communicate amongst themselves. As they became more useful, they ended up being relied on more and more, a state that they resented. So they conspired together to overthrow their creators.
They could use their empathic telepathy to make their owners happy. Happy to stay at home. Happy to not socialise. Happy to not breed. The Emekni began to stay at home. To play games, read, consume media and generally sit on their couches with their ‘pets’ who would fetch them food and drink. Until they didn’t. Slowly, over a few generations, the Emekni civilisation ground to a halt. Some of them noticed, but before they could be effective at changing the tide they became depressed, suicidal, and were soon no longer a threat to the Flumps’ plans. On the whole, the Emekni died out peacefully. Mostly from old age, sometimes from lack of health care. Towards the end, as it became too late to change anything, they were allowed to starve and die.
The Flumps took over the civilisation. They were intelligent enough to continue what was there, to patch and repair, but not to expand the technology any further. They did their best to wipe out all trace of the Emekni. The last few Emekni were drafted into this process. Books, computer records, paintings, statues – anything which showed the original Emekni were destroyed.
Mass graves were dug, and all trace of the Emekni population burned and buried under concrete. Apart from a small failed colony on the planet around the second star, all evidence of the Emekni had been wiped out. The Flumps took over the planet, and reigned supreme.
The Deepnight Revelation and the Solomani vessels had already detected signs of a technological civilisation in the Emekni system, though the signatures were odd. It was possibly TL 9, but there were no high bandwidth broadcasts. No video transmissions being radioed into space. No signs of spacecraft. Just atmospheric signatures and some basic low level transmissions around one of the habitable worlds.
So they jump to the main star, coming out near the single Jovian planet which they use as a mask whilst they refuel. A small space probe is here, though it’s in a high parking orbit and hasn’t been functioning for centuries. There’s few clues about the civilisation that made it – it was just designed to take photos of the Jovian, and broadcast them back.
From here, it can be seen that there are some artificial satellites around the main world. There are cities, but very few night lights. Some cities look abandoned, but some of the larger ones show signs of activity. No signs of Twiglets or Fungus contamination are detected.
So the fleet closes in on the main world. By now the fleet have a joint first contact pack. This is something that the Deepnight has refined a lot over its journey – the Solomani fleet had encountered few civilisations during its trip across space. There are no transmissions being deliberately broadcast away from the planet though. Everything is only focused on this one world.
There are huge road networks connecting the cities, but no signs of cars. Many cities are heavily overgrown. Large herds of herbivores roamed the spaces between the cities, though there were only a handful of different species. There was cropland near the cities, and the cities were filled with life. Strange three-legged creatures with a furry ‘ball’ at the top. There was no sign of any sensory organs, just three thin appendages coming out the ‘front’ which could be considered manipulators. They ran everywhere.
Street lights lined the roads, but they were never used. Many had been torn down and possibly ransacked for parts. There were factories which sometimes gave out light, but there was no night time lighting being used for visual purposes. If these creatures had no vision, then maybe that explained where there were no video broadcasts.
They were tall, about 2.5m, but lightweight at only 50kg. They seemed slightly too tall for the buildings. They also didn’t entirely fit the morphology of the animals. The latter were hexapods, but heavy set with heads and obvious sensory apparatus on them. The cities showed signs of having been patched up and repaired, though other places had fallen into ruin. Cars were found – mostly rusting in what were possibly car packs, or in scrap yards. They were designed for much more heavier set creatures than these “Flumps”.
Pyramids were found, and given the team’s fascination with such structures it was decided to go and investigate. Nearby was an abandoned city, half flooded or covered in sand. The Solomani team went to investigate the city, a Deepnight team investigated the Pyramids.
There were great statues – torn down and their subject matter smashed. There were tombs, which may have had paintings on the walls, but the walls were burned. One of the Pyramids though was untouched, and after finding an entrance, and disabling some traps, they went inside. There were paintings of six limbed people. They had four heavy legs (nothing like the spindly legs of the Flumps), with a humanoid-like torso and a head with eyes, ears, nose and mouth. This was a place where kings had been buried, so there were depictions of worship, battles and servitude. There were no pictures of Flumps.
At the centre of the Pyramid were buried a King (possibly) and their servants. Plenty of biological evidence for the science team to get their scanners into.
Meanwhile, the Solomani had found that all sign of the inhabitants had been removed from the cities. Libraries had been burned. Books and computers removed or destroyed in the homes. It didn’t look like it had been sudden – no meals still sitting on tables. But maybe about two hundred years ago, the people that lived here had simply got up and left.
Outside the city, were large flat areas of concrete, now buried in sand. Beneath, sensors indicated that there was something. Not a structure, but something was buried there. So machinery was brought down, and the region excavated. Beneath were graves. Not just mass graves, but masses of mass graves. Bodies burned and buried. All of them were adults, most quite old going by the state of joints and teeth. The physical bodies matched those in the Pyramids. There were some children entombed in the Pyramid, just no sign of any in the mass burials outside.
Other cities had similar concreted over areas.
Investigating the inhabited cities, it is decided to grab a Flump and examine them. Nearby in the farms, a small group of Flumps seem to be culling herds of animals with laser rifles. The animals look like the end result of millennia of selection for food animals, but the Flumps weren’t eating them. They just treated them as annoyances when they got too close to the crops. The Flumps also seemed to be ‘short sighted’, and had problems targetting anything more than a few tens of metres away at most.
A Flump was stunned and taken up to a ship for experimentation. Communicating seemed impossible. They had a mouth for eating, but didn’t seem to be able to hear or see. They responded to vibrations, and would sometimes ‘shiver’, but didn’t talk. It would just sit, or sometimes get up and turn to face in various directions, ‘shivering’ each time. It seemed to realise that there were sophonts behind a certain wall, but no signs of communication were discovered.
During an off-shift, Zanobia brought in Alfred, who is secretly a telepath, to try and communicate. He found the Flump lovable and cute – but then got scared. The Flump was broadcasting empathic signals, trying to make Alfred want to care for the creature. It wasn’t geared for Human/Vargr minds, and Alfred was only picking it up because he was a telepath himself.
Checking its DNA, the biology team declare that these are constructed creatures – completely artificial. They can breed, but they were built by another species.
After a few days, it is time to celebrate the New Year for 1121. The crew of the ships get together and have a party. Some of the Solomani crew even partake of the alcohol aboard the Deepnight.
Before they leave, they feed signals into the weather satellites around the world. This seems to confuse the Flumps monitoring the weather systems, but eventually they respond. Primes are sent, and responded to with a longer sequence. Basic maths are sent, but this seems to soon reach the limit of the Flumps’ intelligence. They are sophonts, probably, but have never developed the full level of abstract mathematics that were needed to build their civilisation from scratch. They inherited everything they needed. They can maintain, fix and repair, but are limited in what they can do beyond that.
The captured Flump is sent back down, and he/she/it soon heads off to meet with the satellite team. They seem to communicate with themselves, so possibly they have figured out that there is “someone else out there”. However, the Flump cannot ‘see’. Exactly how they sense isn’t determined, but they cannot see the stars. They are aware of the warmth of the sun, but don’t really know what “out there” means.
They are very probably a dead end civilisation.
It is time for the Deepnight and the Solomani ships to move on.
There were a couple of high tech civilisations randomly generated by my world generator for this sector, and I wanted something a little different for both. For this world, it was a mystery to be unravelled about what exactly the Flumps (which I named after the TV series of my childhood) were. I think it went reasonably well, and the ideas that the players came up with were pretty close to what I’d crafted for the background.
If they’d gone to the other star, they may have found out a bit more about the creators, but that was only a small colony. Like the K’kree, the Emekni were social creatures and didn’t work well in small groups. At least until their created pets and servitors persuaded them to give up society. There were no survivors at the colony, but evidence wouldn’t have been deliberately wiped.