LF Friends, Will Travel

Diplomatic incident

Date: 52 PST (Post Stasis Time)

The sound echoed along the hallway, a terrible sound that kept anyone sane from coming too close. A sound of grinding and sloshing, a cacophony of squealing and crunching. It sounded like a bag of puppies being fed through a woodchipper in dear need of maintenance, like nails being scratched down a chalkboard, like the feeling of grinding teeth over tinfoil. It sounded like terror, like madness, like everything wrong with the universe placed into one instant.

Nearly every other species in the diplomatic quarters had either made themselves scarce or were hunkering down in fear as the sound blared out from the furthest door on the right. A location where nobody went, a door marked "Dunwil". Inside was source of the sound, A Dunwilian.

Evolution tends to follow certain paths. Birds, mammals, insects; All are common on practically most life sustaining planets. Deathworld, not deathworld, gas based, earth based, alloy based: The problems that evolution has to solve are generally the same, so the outcome tends to be the same. 99% of life in the universe is recognizable to each other; sure the colours might change or an extra super special limb is added, but at the end of the day there's only so many ways you can build the same thing.

But occasionally the cruel gods of evolution decide to throw shit at the wall and see what sticks, then you get something completely new, completely alien. Most of the time these species are like the Scythen: Just weird. A sentient ball of florescent tentacles isn't common, but doesn't get much more then a second glance.

But in the 1% of the 1%, you get something... terrifying, something completely wrong. There's no official name for this categorization: Terror species, Horror species. Meaner people might even call them the Ugly species. Whatever you called them the Dunwil were definitely part of this categorization.

The Dunwillian stood at staggering 8ft tall, a mass of writhing wiggling strings tied and bound together into an egg like shape, punctuated by eyes of varying sizes, each one burning a deep blood red. Twenty trunk like appendages spouted from the sides of this mass, the ugly blue's and purples mixing together into a slimy viscous skin. Each trunk ended into a gaping maw of teeth and slime, seeming to gnash and bite as it moved around.

The Dunwilian's were not a well liked species in the galaxy, their appearance triggering fear and revulsion in practically all sentient species. As such they were very rarely seen or written about, preferring to avoid a galaxy that seemed to hate them, instead tending to stick to their home world and single solitary colony.

This one however was called {{̷̢̨̡̦̹̻̠̳̪͋͒̋̾̊̃̐̈_̶̮̽̐͠_̶͔̍_̷̹̳̮̤͆̑_̴̨̢͒̓͆̚}} and had the unfortunate job of being the ambassador for the Dunwilian people. For all of their horrible appearances the Dunwil were a social species, so attempting diplomacy in a universe disgusted by them was an exercise in torture. They had no alliances, no embassies, only the barest of agreements with their neighbours. Most Dunwilian ambassadors lasted a month in the role, {{̷̢̨̡̦̹̻̠̳̪͋͒̋̾̊̃̐̈_̶̮̽̐͠_̶͔̍_̷̹̳̮̤͆̑_̴̨̢͒̓͆̚}} had been there for two: Now they finally had enough.

The horrifying sound echoing about the halls was the noise of sobbing as the Dunwilian was curled up into a gigantic crying blob. Today was supposed to have been better, been something new, but instead had highlighted everything wrong with the Dunwil's place in the galaxy. The Federation's General Assembly was a monthly event hosted at various locations across the galaxy. A chance for general diplomacy, for new and old species alike to come together at neutral ground. But this one was different, this one had a new attendee, one who hadn't visited this part of the galaxy yet: A Terran.

They had become legendary among the diplomatic circles, a new species who had only recently found themselves in the Galactic community 50 years ago, but during that short time their entire mentality had seemingly been "Make as many friends as possible". 412 different species were united under the Terran Alliance, from pacifists to warrior empires, insects to avians, the uniting force of the Terran's immense pack bonding instinct had caused one of the biggest galactic forces to emerge in such a short time.