Far, far away in the Andromeda galaxy lay an extraordinary planet. Its name was Ahhwoo, given to it by planet’s dominant species. Translated to Basic, it roughly means Paradise. But in the eyes of its people, Ahhwoo was synonymous with just Home.

Ahhwoo is a planet of plateaus and mesas, broken by the occasional mountain range, river, or desert. Rain falling upon the mountain ranges and helped fed by snow melt accumulate into rivers that fed into a large inland freshwater sea located on the equator.

The planet’s rocky surface was primarily an interesting bright and white-color rock, dotted with black spots. Closer to the inland sea was where the majority of the desert terrain was located with tan-colored rocks and sand. The sea was a crystal-clear blue color.

The temperature of the planet was mild; it was warm in places where the sun hit and cool in the crevices between the plateaus and mesas. Intense light shone on the planet from the star system’s binary stars but it scattered across the surface and did not penetrate too deeply into the labyrinth between the plateaus and mesas.

On top of these plateaus and mesas was where a peculiar little creature lived. It was a mammalian animal, quadrupedal, with a head on the front and a tail in the back, covered in a waterproof fur, and paws. The head had two ears, two eyes, an iconic snout where its mouth and jaw extended from the skull, and a dry leathery nose on the end of that snout.

The creature did not have a long set of teeth for tearing flesh but instead a variety of small teeth for eating fruits, insects, and smaller vertebrates of the planet.

It breathed through hybrid respiratory and circulatory system. Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide is exchanged through blood vessels running through its fur, of which the individual fur bits are thicker and less inclined to fall off the creature’s body over time. A series of decentralized hearts pumped oxygenized blood throughout the body. It did however maintain a centralized system that pulls in air from the nose into a set of small lungs where the oxygen entered the bloodstream. The heart however is a secondary system, used when the creature is excited or stressed.

Sensory input was primarily dealt with by the eyes, ears, and touch. The creature had no sense of smell and almost no sense of taste. Luckily for them, while venom and toxins were rare on Ahhwoo, they were incredibly resistant to even the toughest of neurotoxins. Human explorers that came later remarked that they completely ignored anything at the level of a Box Jellyfish and down.

This creature’s species was successful enough where it lived all across the planet in every climate and terrain. Barring the mountaintops. They did not like the cold. The poles were not covered in ice although it got chilly up and down there.

They were eusocial creatures, living in large communal societies of a few hundred individuals with an advanced organized system of food gathering and farming, shelter construction, and defense. There is no record of them having a biological stage before this eusocial state.

Peculiarly, the species actually maintained a hivemind of sort. Scientists call it a pseudo-hivemind, as all members maintain an individuality but they instinctually and automatically look to help each other and finish tasks for the common good of the group. When this false hivemind is engaged, the difference is profound as an individual walks off to complete a task. There is a natural and hard instinct to help those in trouble and the creature can share physical and emotional load from its comrades to lessen the overall pain. Any member of the group that is in trouble immediately has the entire group drop everything to come to their aid. Most of the successful species on the planet, whether carnivorous, omnivorous, herbivorous, or otherwise maintain a similar false hive setup.

Normally, this would simply be written off as generic civilization, but there was an extra aspect of the hivemind that made it different from actual civilizations. The link was telepathic. Individuals from one group knew the well-being of other members without needing to be within sensory range. They knew how to reach and help their comrades. So, they did.

This hivemind creature would be considered middle of the road in its food web. More powerful hive species would hunt and consume the creature’s hive, but they would do the same to smaller creatures and these smaller creatures’ hives. The whole planet was mostly made up of hivemind species. This adaptation was seen as wolf packs and herds taken to a whole new level. Groups are generally more effective than individuals.

The obvious downside to being in any form of hivemind is that it stagnates the species. The hive has little reason to innovate or experiment because the hive took care of itself. For predation, as long as the hivemind itself wasn’t threatened, there was no need to adapt, and thus biology-wise, the lack of individual DNA variation meant that each new generation of creatures would effectively be the same as the previous generation. Thousands of generations would go by without any appreciable change in the genetic blueprint of individuals, whether or not they retained an individuality within their collective.

A hivemind further up the food chain would hunt individuals of a hivemind further down the food chain. The preyed upon hivemind would not see any new biological variation to maybe adapt better because it was only individuals being hunted. None of the hiveminds across the planet had the abstract thinking part down to hunt the hivemind itself, so the hivemind did not push biological advantage and genetic variation come forth.

This meant that a planet of hivemind species would fail to evolve at a pace comparable to planets with individual creatures. But give a species a reason to Improvise, Adapt, and Overcome, the hivemind will take out all the brakes on its ability to advance.

Their planet was supposed to be paradise. It was. A stagnant paradise, but a paradise nonetheless. Until an invasion came from the stars.

The first and very unfortunate civilization to come across the creatures on their paradise planet was known as the Kenthians. Officially, the Kenthian State. Or more accurately, the Kenthian Horde, especially to outsiders.

The Kenthians were a bipedal people of a little over two meters in height with a strong muscular build, four eyes, four ears, and a single mouth. They held the typical humanoid shape although they had two sets of arms and hands. Their skin was a pale-green color with a light shimmer that signified ancestry with a reptilian ancestor.

The Kenthians were the local dominant empire in Andromeda at the time. There were a few other large star empires but the Kenthians maintained the largest. The Kenthians had an empire that took to the stars in order to drown the infidels and heretics in blood and fire, which were basically every other civilization out there. Planets would be attacked, conquered, subjugated, and exploited to fuel the powerful Kenthian State.

They were in perpetual cold wars with four large Andromeda star empires and for the last century things had cooled down dramatically between Kenth Prime and the other major empires. Internally, the Kenthians were still finding new species and civilizations within their official borders. Same with the other empires in their space.

This is where the Kenthians came across a rocky white planet with black spots and a large inland equatorial sea.

An ancient satellite in solar orbit reactivated and sent them a series of messages in as many languages as possible, including an earlier form of the Kenthian Language. It told that the system was home to a powerful hydra, and to not disturb its rest. Waking the hydra up would spell catastrophe to all involved.

The Kenthians paid no heed to the advice. And they understood the language.

The Kenthians came with a series of exploration ships and mining barges. They were looking for raw materials to fuel the Kenthian urban worlds.

A Kenthian exploration cruiser touched down on Ahhwoo near a large colony of the creature. At this point in time, they had not come up with a name for themselves as a whole. This colony was called Rawruu-Rah-Ah-Uh, which roughly translated into Colony Near Triangle Rocks. It was made up of about a thousand individuals.

The Kenthians came down and left their ship to take samples. They breathed oxygen too and had advanced enough medical technology to not need their space suits. After taking some samples, they left. The creatures did not notice for the samples were small.

A few days later, a mining barge came. By now, the Kenthians had known the extent of most of the planet’s species and where all the useful resources were. One last exploration crew touched down to make sure where the deposits were, the Kenthians were greeted with a small but determined colony of these creatures.

“Grrrrrr. Ruff-Raw-Rah.”

Of course, the Kenthians did not understand a word. If those were even words. They carried on with their work.

The creatures followed the Kenthians around and stood in their way.

“Grrrr. Ruff-Raw-Rah.”

Several more times of this, it was clear that the creatures knew what the Kenthians were going to do. They kept pointing at the Kenthian spaceship and then pointing at the sun. The creatures growled and barked at the Kenthians. The creatures wanted the Kenthians gone.

The lead Kenthian counseled his comrades. They shrugged. The leader pulled out a small arm and pointed at the creatures. He took a step forward and made a kicking motion.

The creatures accepted the motions as a threat and launched themselves at the lead Kenthian, biting, scratching, and clawing at the man’s clothes and body. He went down in a storm of angry tribespeople. The other Kenthians pulled their weapons and started to blast at the small creatures. They killed some but only further angered the mass of furry creatures, which went after them too. They were pulled down as well.

The whole mess lasted only five minutes. The results were gruesome. The five Kenthians of the exploration team were dead, pieces chewed off and consumed, and their clothes in tatters. Twenty of the little creatures were dead, most of them expiring in the struggle and not from the blaster shots. The remaining creatures immediately set to work chopping up the remains of the Kenthians and carrying the flesh away to store in cool pits, the colony’s equivalent to a refrigerator.

The Kenthian ship did not escape the wrath of the creatures. The creatures found the ship and with stone tools and claws, tore it apart the best they could. They did not manage much. In the end, the creatures pushed the ship into a deep ravine crevice. The ship was destroyed on the way down and crushed on impact with the floor of the ravine.

Their job done, the creatures went back to their colony home to mourn the loss of the dead and celebrate their victory over the star people.

The Kenthians elsewhere in the solar system, once they discovered that their exploratory team was lost, set an investigation to find out why. They quickly found the team’s remains. Scanners also found the pieces of their former teammates in artificial pits that were likely made to keep food around longer. They also found the mangled remains of the exploration cruiser, bent and twisted at the bottom of a deep hole. It was clear the little creatures did this. The Kenthians would be back.

The creatures did not exactly go back to peaceful tribespeople. Oh, they did, but the colony was changing. The creatures were now using stone tools to dig into the earth and stone. They were extracting metals and minerals. Back at the colony, the creatures started to cook food in firepits. They also used the fires to melt the metals down into refined goods, most of sheets and tool heads. These sheets were being used to build structures. Metal buildings.

The buildings were not proper structures. They were little more than four walls and a roof. But on closer inspection the rapid pace of technological advancement was evident. For now, though, the buildings gave the colony the ability to build upwards.

Unbeknownst to the Kenthians, this was not an isolated incident of technological advancement from the one colony. Colonies across the planet mysteriously started doing the same, the telepathic connection of their hivemind reaching out and bringing news and better ways of doing things to all of the other colonies. This was the planet’s unique fauna biology in action.

The Kenthians returned with one of their mining barges. They stripped the weapons from the other ships and piled into it. The barge was a rudimentary battleship, armed with small ship-to-ship weapons and crewed by a horde of armed troopers. They were going to eradicate the colony and finish their scans. Then they would bring in the other cruisers and barges and start strip mining the planet.

The Kenthians touched down a few leagues away from the colony. They got their forces out. Each Kenthian had a blaster and explosives being used as makeshift grenades. They had fifty men here, more than enough to destroy the colony. The Kenthians split into two forces. One force would poke the nest. The other would give them covering fire if need be but were charged with preparing explosives.

There was no resistance on the paths to the colony. The Kenthians found a nice position to strike from, a ridge overlooking the colony. The creatures were paying the Kenthians no mind. Until, of course, the Kenthians opened fire.

The creatures panicked and started to scatter. A few of their numbers dropped dead from blaster plasma. Attempts to drag their wounded and dead away only took more of them to the afterlife. The creatures retreated into the labyrinth surrounding their nest. When all of the remaining creatures escaped, the Kenthian second team moved in and started to place explosives on the walls of the colony nest. Those buildings from last time were held together by a primitive cement and had proper insulation now. They would be gone once the second team was finished.

Out of seemingly nowhere from the labyrinth around the Kenthians exploded masses of creatures. The first team was caught unawares from three different directions. Three separate colonies had snuck up on them and thousands of creatures leaped into the fray, biting, kicking, scratching, gnawing, clawing, and ripping the Kenthians down. The second team, busy with the explosives, started to get pelted by rocks. On closer inspections, the original colony had set up crude torsion catapults in the surrounding region. These were not there when the original exploration cruiser was destroyed.

The explosives team started to take casualties. One man went down clutching his leg. A rock bashed another’s head. The rocks started to become more accurate. The team abandoned their explosives to take cover behind rocks and boulders. The catapults then started to rain ordnance down from parabolic trajectories. By now, a quarter of the second team was down or out and the rock intensity was increasing.

Over at the catapult area, the creatures were field constructing more catapults and improving their designs. It started with gravity-based counterbalance catapults. Then torsion-based ones once their attack began. Now they were using cranks to pull back the torsion spring more efficiently and building platforms and universal joints for the ballistae to sit on. The rate of experimentation and innovation was scary. What should have taken hundreds of years of warfare and engineering was passing by in mere minutes.

The reality was the hivemind in action. The colony at the catapult area was sending thoughts and practice back to dozens of colonies many leagues away and these colonies were doing the actual experimentation and innovation. One colony experimented with ball joints to turn the contraption around and get better firing arcs. Another was testing new materials for pieces of the ballistae. A third was messing with shaping the rocks. A fourth building tools to shape said rocks. Trajectory mathematics, ballistae designs, tactics on operation, and on and on and on. All this was being fed back to the original colony. Support colonies not directly involved with innovation were carving out rocks and building ballista parts from the stone, metal, and the planet’s equivalent to flora’s ‘wood’. Others cut down flora and mined material for raw resources. Creatures shipped the materials to the frontlines and assembled new weapons in the middle of battle. The original colony operated the weapons.

The Kenthians of course couldn’t see the insane rate of innovation going on. They were being pelted by increasingly accurate and deadly weapons. They were down to half their numbers. They had blasters and were using them. They would get some kills here and there but the creatures would erect defensive fortifications.

All this, an outside observer would have the second team book it from the nest area. But there was a colony of a hundred odd individuals waiting for them. And these guys were covered in some form of armor with sharp metal jaw and paw armor to enhance their biting and clawing. It was crude but it was effective enough for their needs at the time. And the Kenthians could see this force sitting just outside the nest entrance.

The first team wasn’t doing so hot either. They were pounced on by three colony hordes coming from different direction. These colonists were unarmored, but hundreds of sets of teeth and claws were still intimidating.

The first Kenthian team was caught off guard, but blasters put down enough of the creatures’ numbers to allow the Kenthians some escape. They were unlikely to be able to rescue their comrades in the nest area, though. The Kenthians were radioing for help from the battle barge, and the pilots aboard it was attempting to bring the ship closer to exfil whatever Kenthians they could.

Kenthian pilots however were having their own problems. Four hordes had gotten on top of the ship and were slowly prying bits off to tunnel their way in. Ropes were being tossed off the ship to give access to more creatures and be wrapped around the ship. Attached to the other end were massive boulders. They were going to prevent take off.

Numerous, larger ballistae were being assembled to attack the ship. The pilots directed their small naval guns against the catapults, destroying some, but were aghast to see the creatures start to saw off the gun emplacements with metal tools. The pilots tried their best to direct the guns against the horde on top of the ship but the creatures were all over the turrets. Kills here and there were not making a dent in the creatures’ progress.

By now, the creatures were starting to eat into the hull. They were past the outer hull and starting to encounter electronics. Some of their numbers died from electrical burns and were carted off. The deaths only burned the fervor hotter. Mining tools were brought in to cut past the electronics. The creatures were selling their bodies and souls in record numbers to destroy the invaders.

On the catapult ridges overlooking the ship, these ballistae were different. Torsion-based ones were being used to finish off the explosive team but these ones had string-prods. The prod is the bow section of a modern crossbow and the string is the thing to be pulled back and hold the tension. And these ballistae were big enough to threaten a Kenthian military tank. With enough numbers and more advanced projectiles, they were going take down the ship. The ship’s hull was so far holding back the projectiles. Newer ballistae materials and armaments however were being brought into action, including one with an explosive shot.

The Kenthian ship was now completely unable to escape. They were also unable to defend themselves; all the ship’s guns were silenced. The creatures were also about to get into the main cabins. The Kenthian pilots got out as many blasters as they could and were going to make a stand. Instead of reaching the cabin, the Kenthians noticed that the reactor was starting to overheat. Seeing imminent threat of annihilation, the Kenthians dropped their weapons and started to try to bring the reactor offline. They couldn’t. And the creatures burrowing through the ship reached the cabin. As the Kenthians were being pulled down by the horde of angry creatures, the reactor melted and the whole area became a flash of white light, brighter than the brightest white rocks of the planet.

The Kenthians of the first team saw a bright explosion in the distance followed by a mushroom cloud. They stopped just long enough for the horde to catch up and pull the remaining Kenthians down. Their fate was the same as the original exploration team. The explosives team was also surrounded and charged. They were pulled down as well.

By the time the suns had ‘set’ (the planet really didn’t have a nighttime with the set of two stars), all the Kenthians were dead, their ship destroyed, and the creatures victorious. Thousands of the creatures were also dead but at least their planet was free. They were also running around with metal armor, military artillery that fired explosive shots, and creation of tools via rudimentary machines and assembly lines.

The destruction of the Kenthian ship did not go unnoticed. The destruction of any Kenthian ship, especially the wholesale meltdown of one got the attention of the Kenthian Military. A scout ship was dispatched to the system. It was a ‘scout’ ship. Kenthian military standards decreed that even scouts were armed and armored. In most interplanetary governments, the Kenthian scout ship was roughly on par with a frigate, which meant that it was capable of defending itself and operating on the frontlines as a light warship. Kenthian technology at this point meant the ship was armed with a plasma cannon running the length of the ship, plasma gun turrets, and plasma torpedo launchers. It also carried a squadron of fighter craft for escort and strike duties. The ship was protected by an energy shield.

The Kenthian scout ship entered the Ahhwoo system and quickly located the remains of the mining barge, the original exploration ship, and a vast network of bustling colonies belonging to the planet’s dominant species. It left with those scan results and evidence in hand.

The Kenthians returned with an invasion force: A military cruiser with four destroyers, and ten scout frigates. They also had a small baggage train of logistics and resupply barges. They were treating the creatures as a minor planetary empire that was resisting the Kenthian State.

The satellite once again tried to reach out to the Kenthians with an additional warning that the hydra lived in this system and was far more powerful than anything the galaxy had combined. The Kenthians responded by blasting the satellite to pieces.

They started by bombarding the largest cluster of colonies. Panic and havoc were unleashed on the creatures. They scattered into the depths of the labyrinth as the hivemind was engaged once more and organized the little creatures into action.