Jack of Harts

People ask how we could have lived on a world with a major indigenous civilization in the middle of multiple major wars and never realized it. The answer is simple. We settled the coastal regions and did not enter the jungles in large numbers. Their largest and most powerful civilizations were in the deepest parts of the rainforests or jungles and they didn’t go to the coasts. There was water there, and everybody knows that no self-respecting cat wants to be anywhere near water if they can help it. Also, they weren’t exactly an industrial society. There were no train tracks or factory plumes for us to detect while flying overhead. They weren’t noble savages or anything like that, though. They had complex societies complete with large cities, small villages, several major religions, numerous international borders, and large standing armies. They’re actually more like us than the Peloran or Arnam. There’s a reason for that.

The cats of San Lucas are at least as warlike as mankind can be. They were in the middle of several rather impressive wars when we colonized their world, in fact. Three, maybe four depending on the exact definition, were religious wars of some kind. One of them was extremely serious, with losses on both sides equaling Earth’s Socialist Revolutions, and destabilizing the political structure of an entire continent. Most of the others were more colonial rebellions, on the outskirts of a previously united empire that had recently fallen into a serious civil war. These wars didn’t end when humanity arrived. There were only a few thousand of us, living on the seashores that any self-respecting cat stayed far away from. We, the aliens who crossed the stars to colonize their world, didn’t matter when it came to the political calculations of power on their world. Let that sink in for a moment.