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Humans Are Space Orcs

A 312-post collection

Challenge #01982-E158: Sufficient Motivation

“You can still save the world.”

“I could,” grinned the human, “if I wanted to.” Behind them, the Capital burned.

“But you won’t.” My voice was more hoarse than I’d ever heard it, and I could taste the bitterness of my own blood running down my cheek.

The human’s “shrug” was silhouetted by the flames.

“Convince me.” -- Anon Guest

What motivated a human? Greed? No. This human was already profiting from the current course of events. Events that were literally destroying everything I had known for my entire life. This world could still make it... if the human wanted to make that happen.

Sex? Gross. No. Never. Besides, the plumbing wouldn't allow their bodies to mesh. Excitement? What could possibly excite a human more than the rampant destruction currently underway?

What mattered to a human more than any of that? I wracked my brains. Going through everything I could remember about their species. And then... a moment of pure genius and inspired desperation.

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Challenge #01981-E157: One Educational Day on a Strange New World

Due to the dangerous and rather... peculiar circumstances of the mission, all crew members were assigned a personal “guardian human”.

Your human seems to hate you. At least if their glare and “sarcasm” is anything to go off of. You’ve already tried all the suggested bonding methods but you’re certain that she wouldn’t hesitate to leave you (to die! On that gods-forsaken planet!) if given the chance.

But then the storm came. -- Anon Guest

Edge Territory Planetary Survey,

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Challenge #01980-E156: Friends From the Fringe

Having grown up together in the intergalactic community equivalent of an extremely isolated orphanage, you are very confused as to why everyone seems to be terrified of your best-friend-turned-basically-sibling-because-years-of-social-isolation-will-do-that-to-you. I mean, sure. She certainly has some weird habits and ways of showing affection, and can be rather unaware of her strength at times, but she’s also the nicest, quietest, most loving and peaceful sentient you’ve ever met. So why do all the scary, known-to-be-killers species hiding from her in fear?

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Challenge #01957-E133: If it Works...

person one: human do you have a plan?

person 2 : yes

p1: a good one?

p2: a TERRIBLE PLAN! -- Anon Guest

G'roz stared at the human. "How can you have a plan that is terrible? Do you not say that a plan that works cannot be terrible."

Human Steve sighed and said, "It's terrible in that you'll find it upsetting, stressful, and with a high danger potential."

And it was telling how long G'roz had been around humans, because ze said,

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Challenge #01956-E132: Impressive, But...

"Hmm... I'm impressed."

"I/We thought you'd like it."

"I said I was impressed, not that I like it." -- TheDragonsFlame

There are certain things that were just... impressive. A cellar full of drunk middle-schoolers chanting Fuck da police whilst a policeman is present. Singing, This is me giving a shit, in front of a man who has the power of life and death over you after he has just attempted to insult you. Staging a resistance against a superior force, alone,

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Challenge #01929-E105: Wrong Hostages!

You’d be surprised at how much stuff you can screw up with 24 hours, the proper motivation, and a screwdriver. -- TheDragonsFlame

Rael glared at the human in his company. "Do you mean literally, as in fasten, or figuratively, as in ruin?"

A devilish grin. "Ruin," said Shayde, already digging into her extradimensional pockets. Not even dragging their contents out into what passed for the light. Finding what she wanted by feel. One tool emerged. A relatively small swiss army knife.

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Challenge #01928-E104: Tag, You're Undead!

The homo genus utilized the persistence hunt as one of its primitive hunting strategies. The homo genus, including homo sapiens, is remarkably well suited for this. We are relatively hairless for mammals (it's actually just much thinner than most mammals' hair), bipedal, sweat over-actively, and our legs (from the soles of the feet to the connection at the hip joint) are very well suited to distance running.

With that said ... I just learned that a few Kenyan villagers ran down a cheetah

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Challenge #01924-E100: A Tisket, A Tasket...

Coracle. Ancient form of water transport made out of sticks, cow hide* and waterproofing. *any firm waterproof material will do. -- Anon Guest

The human was messing around with the local vegetation again. They had already taken some fallen wood and whittled two paddles, and now they were making a positively enormous basket out of the long, bendy reeds that had once been growing by this lake.

"Is this a temporary shelter?" asked Thok.

"Nope," said Human Grif. Still lashing things together

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Challenge #01923-E099: They Call Her Queen Badass

"How in the world could a single bottle of alcohol render nearly a dozen of Her Ancient Majesty's finest - oh, and the Millennial Queen Herself! - to nothing but a scattered roomful of unconscious drunks?!"

The taller woman examined the elaborately-decorated crystalline decanter, and then the glasses around each snoring soldier. "Hmm... yeah... I'd say fourteen-thousand-year-old firewine would probably do the trick better than anything..." She paused, re-counting one pile of glasses and then looked back at her partner with a

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Challenge #01913-E089: They Do What Now?

The rise of the mammals, primates such as humans included, was something of an evolutionary fluke. The world was dominated by proto-avian, likely feathered behemoths before the rise of the mammals. What if humans were the only mammalian species to evolve "cogniscience", and mammalian species are otherwise quite rare? Reptilian, avian, cephalopodic, or insectoid life might be far more common. Aliens must find humans quite odd. -- Nani

It's almost natural for newly spacefaring species to be egocentric. They are, after all,

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Challenge #01889-E065: No Cause For Alarm, My Dear

Pax Humanis has an interesting work force, a lot of killers and a few who hold their leashes. -- Anon Guest

There is a world where only specialists go. There are lots of forests. Lots of lakes. Plenty of reefs. It is a paradise. It is also where they keep the psychopathic, sociopathic killers. There is one city, where the analysts and the scientists live. The scattered and vast estates are for the killing killers and the people who they, for want

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Challenge #01882-E058: Flakk it

After having done something stupid and dangerous to escape a hazardous situation At the time it seemed like a good idea. Afterwards, it's a miracle that it worked without killing us all. -- Anon Guest

It takes a special kind of human to be the Ship's Human in a war zone. Crew need quick thinkers, Luckers of a certain calibre, and those with rapid improvisational skills. Or, as it was known amongst the Humans, "MacGyvering the shit out of things."

Human meme

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Challenge #01860-E036: Tenacity Personified

From PictureWritingPrompts - [Picture shows a cliffside town at the base of a very steep, zig-zagging road. Buildings of a small village cling to the side of slopes that are only mildly kinder than the almost sheer cliffs on either side of this town. There are a few jetties stretching into the dark water.]

A lesson must be taken from The Thaknakys Expedition. They had thought that they had found a graveworld on the other side of the newly-reopened wormhole. There was

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Challenge #01851-E027: As Long as it Works...

Aliens trying to convince a human crew to change it's ship

[Alien] "You use century old technologies ! The new system is way more efficient and everything is automatic. No need to repair it!"

[Human 1] "And when it broke ?"

[Alien] "It can't broke !"

[Human 2] "So when it broke we just have to pray to whatever god that either another ship will pick up our distress signal or the engine restart by itself before the oxygen reserve are depleted." -- Anon Guest

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Challenge #01848-E024: Walk it Off...

Human broke his arm and is upset when he saw that he lose his watch.

Human stub his toe and is crying on the floor. -- Anon Guest

In the early days of their acceptance into the Greater Galactic Alliance, there was a code. HID. Human In Distress. The greater population had yet to understand humans and, to state a point of fact, still don't. Therefore, a human in any kind of physical or mental pain was a cause for viral concern

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