Planet Explorers - 8/20 hours

The story is really starting to heat up. In the past couple of hours, I learned new background details that totally change the context of who I am and what I've been doing.

Apparently, in the far-off future of the Planet Explorers universe, humanity has split into two factions - Earthlings and Martians. Both factions are regular human beings and I've not yet figured out how (or even if it's  possible) to tell them apart visually. These two factions recently had an acrimonious and bloody war and the colonization of the planet is a joint operation meant to bring them together for a common cause.

Unfortunately, it appears the planet Maria is already inhabited. Just a couple of missions ago, I was forced to fight the natives, a group of gigantic (think 9 feet tall) humanoids with a fierce demeanor and rudimentary technology. (It's possible that I may be underestimating them, though. Some have shot at me with guns, but I haven't seen any evidence of factories or cities, just these simple-looking huts).

The existence of native sapient life dramatically changes the equation. Part of the fantasy of settling space is that you can have true terra nullius and thereby all the adventure and excitement of colonization, without all the nastily exploitative stuff that makes real-world imperialism such a drag. To then be confronted with NPCs who have a much superior claim on the land that I'd been planning on exploiting is a troubling development.

I suppose its my own fault. On some level, I'd bought into the romance of the settler mythology. As much as I knew that it's never been done humanely in recent history, I indulged the idea that a whole new planet might be different. That if we could but find a place without people, it would be possible to transform the world without an accompanying injustice.

But that's all over now. I'm going to have to side with the aliens. In my heart, at least, if not in fact. It remains to be seen whether Planet Explorers will allow me to treat with the natives in a peaceful and responsible way, or whether the aliens are simply meant as another sort of environmental hazard.

Expect a 20 hour post with a lot of complaining if that turns out to be the case.