Jack of Harts

The indigenous civilization on San Lucas was several thousand years old when we colonized their world. One of the major population centers was on the cusp of an industrial revolution that probably would have made them the dominant planetary culture in a few decades. We could have detected that from planetary orbit. They were centuries into a cultural revolution similar to our own Enlightenment period that had sparked numerous small revolutions and civil wars as the unity of the old empire failed. Numerous younger colonial realms were already on the rise after winning their own freedom, and the empire itself was devolving into a serious civil war between those supporting the old regime and something our historians compared to Earth’s Young Turk movements. It was one of those Young Turks who was saved by that human veterinarian and later initiated the first major Contact between our races.