Jack of Harts

The Albion experimentation on Betelgeuse was farther along than most of their other abandoned attempts. The Albion had actually created thousands of Branan in an attempt to find some way past the basic limitations, and they’d been settled in nearby towns or farms built for them. Years went by, possibly decades if the oldest stories are to be believed, with the Branan living beneath the research station that created them and the small spaceport that linked the scientists to the stars. The Albion rarely walked amongst the Branan, and followed strict rules about what they could reveal to the Branan, but they helped the Branan when they could. They taught basic medical care, animal husbandry, and farming techniques that took us thousands of years to implement on Earth. They gave the Branan all the basics of civilization while they lived in their station, and that civilization survived when they left.

The Branan started with a few small spaceships, some people trained to fly them, and very little else. They had to learn to maintain their new ships on their own, with only a few hardcopy manuals to direct them. The computers had been wiped, and so they had no history to learn and no knowledge of the galaxy at large. All they knew was that the Albion had created them to be soldiers and then left them when they didn’t live up to their promise. But the Albion did give them one other leg up on many of their other creations. One of the Albion scientists had left behind a hard copy of the Albion planetary constitution, marked up with commentary about the nature of government systems and societies. The Branan used that as a blueprint for creating a stable society while they tried to reverse engineer the Albion technologies left behind.