Tale: Deep Space Diary Entry

Dear Diary,

The Temthans have allowed me to have a diary, after I tried some… unsavoury things yesterday. Being so far away from home and being so abused made me pretty damn depressed. But after a lot of antidepressants, I’m feeling better now.

The idea behind the diary, I assume, is that they want to learn more about me, as well as trying to stop me from topping myself in the negative way. I’m not going to sit here though and write about home. I don’t need that, I have my own private little memories for that. I just… I just need to comprehend all of this.

So let’s start with what the fuck Temthans are. When I first saw them, I called them Thanatians by accident, but it turns out that’s exactly what they are. A wildly varied race of reptilian beings, but rather than them being mostly confined to the jungle-based Thanatia planets, the Temthans run an empire. They spread themselves out by dumping dumb, feral Thanatians on planets they want to take over, and these feral creatures slowly, surely evolve and take over. A gigantic waiting game. Effective too, apparently. No one has mentioned how many planets and solar systems the Temthans rule, but I think it’s a lot.

They’re all super peaceful though. Really relaxed and chilled out. They are in no hurry to do anything, something that’s irritating me because I just want to go home. The Temthans here, the females are all pretty young (still older than me), but the oldest male is 346 years old. Explains their way of empire-building.

The oddest thing though is their religion. The Temthans have a religion, and that bothers me. Maybe it’s because us Rethans hate what our own religion did to us. Their religion is one of peace. And food. And sex. Lots and lots of the latter two. The average Temthan here seems to eat four or five large meals a day (compared to our three small meals) and they all have sex once a day with no distinction between their genders. Worse, they expect me to join them. Which I’m only doing because I don’t want to be either thrown off the ship or worse, killed and eaten.

They call it their way of worshipping “Her”, the “Lady of the Cycle”. Tenuk knows what I mean. The personification of Death and the creature that protected me long enough for me to end up on this stupid ship. Trust me, she’s real. And she looks somewhat Thanatian-y so that’s probably why they worship her. Or perhaps I was dying and hallucinating or something and imagined that she was there. Still, I have an unshakable feeling that Death stopped me from dying, and the Temthans believe it too. The only real reason they kept me alive was because they believe I have “Her Blessing” and they wanted me to share it with them.

You really don’t want to know what that means.

Dammit, they’re calling me. The Raptesses. I’ll tell you about them next time.

– Arkay