Jack of Harts

One of the important things to consider about the cats of San Lucas, is that they originally came from Earth. The genetics is quite clear on that. The Albion took them off Earth many thousands of years ago and began a long experiment to turn them into loyal soldiers. They used heavy genetic modifications to give them hand-feet, and human-level intelligence. The Albion abandoned the experiments and the world when they proved unsuitable for Albion needs. I’ve often wondered why they ever thought they could take cats and turn them into loyal soldiers for the defense of Albion interests. My best supposition is that the Albion were capable of just as much hubris as Earthborn humans, and thought that their science was up to the task of making the “perfect” cat that would obey their every whim. News flash. They failed.

The second major indigenous population center on San Lucas was further away from us than the first. It was also more united. Where the first had been a fractured amalgamation of different cultures and beliefs, the second had been a unified nation. They had slowly expanded and absorbed every other population center on the continent over the last few thousand years. Every other culture had been erased from history and a culture of stratified castes guaranteed the stability of what they thought of as the greatest and most powerful empire in the world. They might have even been right. But the conquered populations had not given up their beliefs as easily as the central government thought, and we sparked the flames of revolution. They saw our first scout ships burning through the skies, and thought they were divine messages that the time had come to strike at their oppressors. By the time we colonized their world, it had devolved into a religious and revolutionary war that was waged to the knife. They wiped out half the population of the entire continent before we realized they were there and made Contact.