The Hunter Lords: An Alien Race

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The Origin of the Hunter Lords

The Hunter Lords come from the Mars of an alternate universe. In the present day it is very similar to the Mars of the real world, but in the past it was a living world that evolved its own sentient race from whom the present day Hunter Lords are descended.

The Solar System

In the Martians universe slight differences in the chaotic early Solar System meant that its Earth ended up with more large bombardments, stripping it of its atmosphere and its surface water, and changing its geography relative to the Earth of the real world. It also increased its rate of spin, so that its day is 20 hours long, not 24. Over time the atmosphere and some water was replenished from volcanoes, but the seas are small and the atmosphere thin and unbreathable by humans. The world remained lifeless.

The Moon is also different, with a different geography and a more eccentric orbit with a slightly different orbital period. It is still tidally locked to the Earth, however.

On the other hand, their Mars received more volatiles, giving it larger oceans and also providing lubrication for more active plate tectonics. The core of Mars staye molten for longer, giving Mars a longer-lived magnetic field to protect its atmosphere from the solar wind. All of this allowed life and a sophisticated ecosystem to evolve in an atmosphere thicker than that of the Earth of the real world. The atmosphere was also higher in water vapour and carbon dioxide, making Mars as a whole rather hotter than the Earth of the real world. Because of this, and because it took longer for it to dissipate into space, life had a better start than on the Mars of the real world (assuming any life ever evolved there) and had a habitable environment for much longer. Other differences are that their Mars was, and remains, moonless, and the different impacts mean that its geography is slightly different to the Mars of the real world and its day length is a little shorter than in the real world.

The other inner planets were also affected by their different early bombardment to differing degrees, but not in a significant manner. Mercury is still an airless rock, and Venus a hothouse world baking under its thick atmosphere.

Life Forms of Mars

The biochemistry of Martian life forms was originally much like those of Earth of the real world, being based on water and carbon, using DNA to transmit genetic information. Martian plants tended to be taller than their Earth equivalent, with purple foliage. Their seas were somewhat smaller, covering perhaps 40% of the planet, mostly in the northern hemisphere [much as per the Mars ocean hypothesis]. The thick, humid air encouraged rainforests, which spread widely across the planet.

A great diversity of lifeforms evolved in the rainforests, with varying numbers of limbs, from two pairs (as Earth life forms have) to as high as four pairs. Because of the lower gravity of Mars (0.376G, as for real world Mars) arboreal and flying creatures could, and did, grow proportionally larger there than on Earth.

The most successful creatures were those that, like birds and mammals on Earth, regulated their own body temperatures.

The Original Hunter Lord Race

Martians evolved in the rain forests of Mars as a large brachiating stalker carnivore (like an arboreal tiger), some eight feet long with a mass of some 200 kg (about the same as an Earthly tiger). Bilaterally symmetrical, they were fairly slender in overall build and had four pairs of basically identical long, slender limbs, each of which ended in a strong and dextrous four-fingered hand-foot; two fingers faced forward, two to the rear, like a parrot (Zygodactyly). Each limb had four hard but flexible hoof-pads, one at the base of each finger. All of their joints, and their wrists in particular, were very flexible and shock absorbing. Each finger was tipped with a non-retractable claw.

They could walk on any from one to four pairs of limbs and use their free hands with a horizontal, centauroid or upright stance. When used for walking the fingers of a hand-foot swung upwards and lay along the lower leg, to protect them.

Their main lungs branched off the digestive tract, one pair at the head and another at the tail. The skeleton was two interwoven sets of bone triangles, whose form gave strength, flexibility and shock absorbing capability. Each limb was associated with a small sub-brain, a heart and a vestigial lung.

Their skin was covered in small armoured scales with Martian-style camouflage patterns (analogous to a tiger, but adapted for Martian colours).

They had a short raptor-like beak with a very strong bite. The rear of the body was tail-less, with a blunt beak-like structure protecting the anus and genitals. They were warm-blooded obligate carnivores, unable to digest vegetable matter [like big cats on Earth].

Their primary sense was active electrolocation, which gave them awareness all around themselves. Electric fields also provided a subtle and powerful means of electrocommunication. This allowed them to detect electrical technology and so on.

In addition to this they had six pairs of circular eyes, arrayed around their heads, each eye independently steerable and forming a secondary sense. Each eye sat in a bony 'crater' giving an all-round eyebrow to protect the eye from all directions. Their many eyes gave them vision with both binocular depth perception and an all-round view. Each eye had a protective nictitating membrane and like those of Earth cats were adapted to see well in both day and night, although they were quite short sighted (given the jungle environment in which they lived) and saw only in monochrome.

They had no sense of smell, but a very acute sense of taste with which they could track, like a snake.

They were mute and had no sense of hearing, but a good tactile sense, which also allowed them to pick up vibrations through surfaces and so on. Their kinaesthetic senses were very good, making them natural climbers and acrobats. When on the ground they had a fixed up-down orientation of their bodies, but in an arboreal environment they could operate equally well in any orientation.

They originally tracked their prey through the jungle by taste, at close range via electric field sense, and with sight at the very last.

In terms of reproduction, Martians had two sexes, male and female, with the females laying a single large egg following an annual (for Mars) mating season and intensively caring for the resulting helpless young until it grew and reached adulthood. They were not milk producers - no Martian animals were - but instead regurgitated part-digested food for their young to eat.

A major difference between Martian and most (but not all) Earth animals was that they changed sex with age. All Martians were born female and would change sex to male after some twenty (Mars) years of adulthood, a process known as protogyny.

They had quite a long natural lifespan, up to perhaps fifty Martian years (roughly 100 Earth years).

Martian History

Pre-History

The need for increasingly complex and involved seduction of a mate, as a way to prove genetic fitness, led to an initial growth in Martian intelligence. This was partly driven by Martian females being the youngest and fittest, and so hard for a male to subdue by force. Ways of proving fitness were not unlike those used by some Earth animals, including capture of rare or difficult food, dance, acrobatics, home building and so on.

The Age of Competition

Another driver of Hunter Lord intelligence was competition with the other species at the top of the Martian food chain, a type of ravenous arboreal hive-rat-monkey creature, not very intelligent individually but with complex emergent behaviour when in swarms. The Martians called simply The Competitors. Like the Hunter Lords they communicated via electric fields but in them they linked the minds of the swarm creatures together into a coherent whole.

The drying of Mars over millions of years, and the consequent shrinking and eventual loss of the rain forests they evolved in, also made them more adaptable and intelligent, and a little more social, not to the level of permanent lion prides, but grudgingly able to cooperate on large tasks.

Eventually when they were both at a roughly medieval level of technology the Martians became sufficiently intelligent and cooperative to exterminate the Competitors. They remain a near-instinctive 'bogeyman' to them, and makes them quite biased against non-Hunter Lord intelligences. These are no Martian xenophiles.

The Age of Growth

With the extermination of the Competitors, the Hunter Lords spread out over Mars as a whole, population growing both due to the lack of the Competitors and their gradually improving medical knowledge.

The Age of Crowding

If not unlike tigers on Earth then each Martian needs roughly twenty square kilometres in which to live and hunt. Taking Mars' surface area of roughly 145 million square kilometres into account, of which 40% was ocean, limits the population to at most roughly four and a half million individuals.

As a species, their diet and place in the food chain meant there were never more than perhaps five million Hunter Lords at a time. To the Hunter Lords even this counted as making their world very crowded. This time of high population was unhappy for many due to the limitations imposed on weaker or more marginal families by stronger and more successful ones, in particular their being forced into more marginal lands, leading to starvation and death.

Because of their low numbers their technological and social development was much slower than it was for humans, with many more instances of inventions being lost and rediscovered, sometimes repeatedly.

The Age of Wars

Eventually the population of Mars grew to intolerable levels. Starvation spread widely and with it migrations, wars and slaughter. Families attempted to preserve themselves at the cost of others. Some wars left noticeable damage to the planet, and threw their development back, but they survived and grew again.

Cycles of this continued, not helped by the slow degradation of the Martian environment until, eventually, one group, brought together by desperation and necessity into the largest mass movement in Hunter Lord history wiped out or forcibly assimilated the rest and brought a bloody peace. Enforcing very tough contests of fitness to breed, population levels were stabilised, if at great cost.

The Age of Stability

With a stable population and reasonable peace, Martian society matured and advanced. Over time, they developed science and technology higher than that of Earth in the present day, with space travel and fusion power commonplace.

The Age of Dying

But despite the social stability, as time passed it became clear that Mars was dying. Stability would not be enough to survive. More population movements and environmental disasters led to the first wars in a very long time until an exhausted peace took over.

In the aftermath of this, almost all Hunter Lords became unified by the threat to their very existence.

The Age of Attempts

Attempts were made to 'marsoform' the planet back to its original hospitable state, using water and gases mined in space to regenerate the environment. As part of this a Mars-wide canal network was constructed to distribute water, but in the end it came to naught. Although some of these attempts were successful in the short term, it became clearer and clearer that without some other approach Mars would, eventually, die. Its physical properties - its low gravity and weak magnetic field in particular - would allow nothing else. The canals dried up and filled with sand.

Many long and arduous research programmes were undertaken. Huge domes containing ecosystems were built, but the psychological effects on the Martians within became too great - their minds could not stand long confinement, and they were not willing to change their own psychologies sufficiently to survive in domes, as it was considered that this would turn their descendants into non-Martians. This same limitation prevented their colonising the other un-marsoformed worlds of the Solar System.

The same distrust of the other also stymied any research into Artificial Intelligence they might have performed.

The Age of Reworking

Instead, research moved towards genetic engineering, changing their bodies without changing their minds to allow them to survive even on a dead Mars.

The New Age

Eventually, and after a great many false starts and suffering, the last remnants of the old Martian species succeeded. They genetically engineered a completely new stable ecosystem for Mars, with their genetically remade children at its top.

Their New Martians were able to at last spread out from Mars, able to survive without mental change on many of the worlds of the Solar System.

The Age of Stagnation

In time all worlds came to be populated as densely as they could be without excessive conflict, and the Martians reached the limit of their expansion. Even so wars and conflict occurred.

Wars were fought to exterminate a few radical groups who wished to re-engineer the Martian mind to live more densely, and ones who wished to make particularly radical physical transformations, for example to live in the oceans of Europa, or among the clouds of Jupiter.

Some slower than light starships were launched out into the stars, but they have never been heard from again.

By their present day, the Martians are slowly dying out; trapped on their worlds with no escape short of changing themselves into something non-Martian. Their racial intolerance of non-Martians is very much against this. As they see it they have nowhere to go without abandoning their fundamental nature. They basically do not breed.

The New Mars

At its base, the new Martian ecosystem is powered by biological cold fusion reactors, fuelled by hydrogen atoms digested from any source they can find (including living matter, but water is sufficient). Made of tough biological polymers, all life forms are macroscopic, hard to damage and essentially immune to poisons, diseases, extremes of temperature, pressure and radiation. They are also un-ageing, and regenerate any non-fatal damage, including loss of limbs and so on. Because they do not breathe and are so tough they can survive in space unaided. They are highly resistant to damage. They can gradually starve themselves, but this is hard and slow process.

The basis of the new ecosystem is trees, also cold fusion powered, that break down rock and produce edible fruits and leaves. Among animals the basis of the ecosystem is the many species of herbivores, plus species of rock-eating animals (almost mobile plants). Above them are non-sentient carnivores, and the Hunter Lords at the top.

Without much remaining air there are no flying creatures in the new Martian ecosystem. Some creatures can jump very long distances, however.

Some unmodified life, mostly bacterial, still exists in rocks deep underground and a few similar isolated and undisturbed environments.

Modern Hunter Lords

The new Hunter Lords are externally indistinguishable from particularly handsome (to another Hunter Lord!) members of the old race; their creators did not want to create a race of freaks or monsters as their descendants. Internally, although there are structural similarities, they are very different.

The modern Martians are not superhuman as such, but of comparable power. They are essentially immortal, very intelligent, genetically engineered to be very strong (even on a higher gravity world such as the Earth), fast, and tough, with a multitude of savant abilities (though none of the associated disadvantages).

They retain their camouflage-patterned skin, but for modern Martians it is engineered to be not only concealing but also slowly reconfigurable to allow them to slowly alter its patterning and appearance in line with their personal wishes, and what passes for fashion among them.

They have genetically engineered bio-radar from phased array patches all along their bodies giving a 360-degree sense. This is in addition to their electric field sense (though processed by their brains in a very similar way). Their other senses were also improved, often based on those of other Martian life forms. In particular, they have very sharp eyes, with perfect vision at all ranges, (including slight telescopic effects) and see in colour and into the ultraviolet and infrared. Like their unmodified ancestors they see equally well in day or night.

Although like their ancestors always born female, once they achieve adulthood modern Martians can now change gender at will over a period of months. Likewise they now no longer have a fixed mating season but, like humans, have the capability for sexual activity at any time.

With the creation of the New Race, the Hunter Lords were able to expand out into their Solar System, with the population expanding into the hundreds of millions. The stay-behinds on Mars were the particularly conservative Martians.

Most of Mars itself is now a vast hunting park, 're-wilded' with their new ecosystem. The last few Martian cities (vastly spread out in human terms, but the limit of crowding in Martian terms) - mostly located within Noctis Labyrinthus - are collections of family compounds.

Most Martians live wild, though still educated and as part of society as any Martian can be. They are un-aging, after all, and have savant abilities. Because they do not need to eat very much except as children or when breeding they often now 'touch hunt' rather than killing their prey.

Culture and Society

Because Martians are nowhere near as social as humans, and they are all dangerous psychologically self-contained predators, essentially they all think of themselves as the lords of creation, a sort of wild nobility. This is why the closest English translation of their name for themselves as a race is the Hunter Lords.

Hunter Lords trace descent through their mothers, with families organised along maternal lines. Families tend to be closer to each other, and cooperate more, than they would be non-family, but this is still quite a low level of cooperation and so on compared to humans.

In addition to this, Martian society works on Reputation. The original Martian race knew their loose social circle and others outside of that by their reputations. The new race, with perfect memory, all know vast numbers of others, and use this knowledge with their savant-level mental abilities to judge the worth of each other. Martian computerised social networks and video/event logging networks help in this.

Changes in the reputations of Martians in a group can abruptly change their power structures.

Because of this their society has never had any level of organisation above that of loose hierarchies, with leadership based on reputation and persuasive skills rather than force. They simply will not submit to one another beyond a certain degree of cooperation; they are psychologically hard-wired to fight or flee if pushed too far, and will fight to the death rather than submit. Thus they cooperate and accept leadership only by consent.

They do not accept representative forms of government; instead they insist of direct involvement in decisions. This greatly hindered cooperation between large groups of Martians before technologies such as radio were developed.

Related to this, when not fighting each other Martians are always very polite to one another as if provoked they can do a great deal of damage to one another.

They can spend long periods dreaming and planning future actions, or studying things that interest them, especially as they are without the need to eat or sleep.

They need a lot of personal space, at least three body lengths in all directions, and roughly twenty square kilometres of land per individual Martian.

They do not like being confined within buildings, but can put up with them if they must. Even so their structures tend to be large, with high ceilings and large spaces, plus large doorways (wide enough for two Martians to maintain their preferred separation while passing) and even larger windows. Their 'cities' have a very low population density compared to those of humans, and are much more three-dimensional in terms of spaces and pathways than human cities, giving a sort of 'jungle gym' effect. They make use of climbing walls, cables and narrow walkways to move between buildings, often with the aid of a sort of Martian parkour.

Martians can lie and deceive one another, though it is not as natural to them as it is to humans. They tend to react more strongly than humans if they discover they have been deceived.

Modern Martian society is one of rich immortals seeking to stave of boredom. As such they are constantly looking for new things to learn, do, see, explore, create or gamble about or with. Because of this their numbers are gradually dropping as eternity drags on, so that now there are perhaps a million of them.

There are still some researchers, looking for new knowledge and technology, and a way out of the dead-end in which the Martian race finds itself. Others are genetically engineering more challenging prey for the hunters.

Young Hunter Lords are rare as the urge and need to breed is very low among them (as distinct from the urge for sex), so children are only hatched occasionally. They have a hard time building a reputation against their more established elders. Many of them die in the process, either in challenges, or they commit suicide in despair. However, some families use abdication as a way to allow the young to learn and gain experience and reputation.

Religion

As for humans, in their primitive days Martian invented deities in an attempt to understand the workings of the world around them, and many of these still linger in their culture, although belief in religion as humans would understand it is weak to say the least.

Although not very religious, Martians are often superstitious, and many strongly believe in luck and fate, and more than one deity of Fortune.

Pets

Some Hunter Lords keep pets. Some are creatures they find attractive or interesting. Others are ones descended from domesticated working animals, generally the equivalent of dogs. Some are much friendlier with and attached to their pets than they are to any other Martian. For some their pets are substitutes for children.

Crime and Law

There is no formal law among Hunter Lords; they will not stand for it. However, there are codes of expected behaviour, essentially codes of honour that have evolved over time, some into very complex and baroque forms. Adherence to these codes boosts reputation. Violation of the codes leads to loss of reputation. Sufficiently major violations can also lead to the formation of a 'lynch mob' to punish the offender, with beatings, maiming (though modern Hunter Lords will regenerate even from this) or, sometimes, death.

Dress and Decoration

Martians are immune to all hostile environments found on rocky planets. As such they have no need for clothing for protection. However, they do use clothing for decoration, as an indicator of status, and as a way of carrying things. Styles vary wildly depending on the Martian in question.

Food and Drink

Martians do not need to eat or drink as evolved biological entities do. However, they can - and often do - do so for pleasure. Cuisines vary from raw food to elaborately prepared feasts at least equivalent to anything the finest human chef might prepare, depending on the meal.

Arts and Entertainment

Many Martians gamble; it is a thing to do, true excitement and true risk for them. They gamble possessions, tasks, physical challenges, or even permission to torture or commit violence on each other. Gambling can include challenges that help determine Reputation.

They also have a strong culture of duelling, and a widespread code duello. Duels can be physical combat (with agreed conditions, or none), or ones of pranking, insults, poetry, stories or any competition that both sides can agree on. For Martians this is another way to make life interesting. Sometimes multiple Hunter Lords are involved and these duels can escalate into what are essentially small wars.

All Martians enjoy hunting live prey; this is a part of their core psychology that they have never wished or attempted to change. Even if they do not need to eat, they still enjoy the hunt and, often, the kill.

Perhaps related to this they have a rich storytelling culture, much of which revolves around the hunt in a similar way to how much of human storytelling revolves around love. Related to this, many Martians document their lives and help cement their reputations by uploading full-sensory recordings of their exploits to the Martian equivalent of YouTube.

Since the appearance of the Modern Martian with their perfect memories many Martians create ephemeral art, such as sand pictures, that only last for a short time before vanishing. To many Martians this makes the art much more affecting.

Language

Hunter Lords do not have a vocal (sound-based) language at all. Instead they speak via biological electric field and/or radio signals. These can be either open and understandable to all Martians within range, or encrypted.

It is entirely possible that suitably motivated people could create sound-to-radio and vice versa translators that would at least allow species such as humans to communicate with Martians.

Of course, each side would then have to learn the language of the other. Like humans, Martians have many different languages (some of them constructed rather than naturally evolved) most of which use their electromagnetic means of communication as most human languages use sound. Again like humans, Martian sign languages exist, though of course are very different to the human versions.

As for those of humans, Martian scripts come in a number of different kinds. The most widely used one uses dots (often connected by lines) in a four by four grid, giving 65536 (216) possible characters [not unlike Marain, the language of the Culture]. This makes it not unlike written Chinese, using logograms to represent individual words or common phrases rather than constructing them from letters.

Names

Martians are named in the form:

The personal name is chosen by their mother, and the daughter or son suffix changes as they change sex through life. Nicknames are acquired through their life based on their accomplishments, and may be good or bad. As such they are linked to the history and reputation of an individual. Some long-lived Hunter Lords may have long list of nicknames, not all of them good!

Numbers and Time

Martians count in base 16.

Their units of time are based on the rotation of Mars, and so are slightly different to the human day. However, because their ancient timekeeping was based on the same constellations as those of humans in the real world, so their year is divided into twelve 'months'.

The Martian day is divided into 16 'hours' (each one roughly 90 Earth minutes long), which are in turn divided into 256 (16 squared) 'minutes', each some 21 Earth seconds long. However, because Martians are active all the time, with periodic cat-naps and light sleep, they do not have specific working days and similar time divisions.

Science and Technology

Biology

The Martian biological sciences are highly advanced, with a mastery of genetic engineering that extends to not just individual species, but to entire ecosystems. They can genetically engineer life forms that are immune to most hostile environments, are powered by cell-sized biological cold fusion reactors, and can digest literally any matter and extract useful materials from it.

Their mastery of biology means that much of their technology (for example sensors and computers) are self-repairing biological systems rather than un-living ones. However their distrust of non-Martians means that none are sentient.

Computing

Hunter Lord computing technology is advanced, but not as much relative to that of humanity as their other technology. They have no artificial intelligences, although in theory they could construct them, again because of their distrust of non-Martian intelligences.

It would be possible for them to either implant cybernetic interfaces to their technology into their bodies, or even genetically engineer such interfaces into themselves. However, their distrust of other intelligences, and desire to avoid mental changes that they would consider to make them less Martian mean they have chosen not to do this. Instead, external displays (visual and electroreception) and virtual reality equipment are used instead.

Energy Technology

Most Martian technology is powered by cold fusion, using similar technology to that they have incorporated into themselves and the Martian ecosystem. They do have the technology to create and use antimatter, but they choose not to for safety and also because it is much easier to refuel a fusion drive while in the wilds of the Solar System than an antimatter drive.

Weapons

Martians do have the ability to make weapons, from knives and guns up to energy weapons and nuclear or even antimatter bombs. However, in the modern age they do not use them much as their society has become reasonably stable, and for hunting it is matter of pride to use only their own claws and beaks. They do have stockpiles of weapons if required.

Space Technology

The Martians make use of many different types of spacecraft, almost all of them fusion powered. They do not have generated gravity or reactionless drive technology. Many vehicles are biological with implanted technological components.

A Typical Ship

The most common Martian ships are interplanetary transports. These tend to be huge, as each individual Martian needs roughly twenty square kilometres of space to themselves. They are a hollow cylinder six kilometres long and six kilometres in diameter, with a three kilometre diameter hollow through the centre. It spins with a period of some 160 seconds to provide simulated gravity, varying from 125% of Martian gravity at the outer edge to 50% of it at the inner edge.

The cylinder is divided into sixteen levels spaced one hundred metres apart. This gives a surface area of some one thousand three hundred and sixty square kilometres, all of it landscaped into a three dimensional labyrinth of pseudo-wild Martian landscape, including a fully functioning ecosystem. This is enough for a crew of roughly fifty Martians, each of whom has roughly twenty seven square kilometres of territory; this is very low compared to how many humans might fit into such a large ship. Braced in the centre of the hollow cylinder is another thinner cylinder that holds a low-thrust fusion drive and its fuel tanks. It also contains engineering spaces and so on.

Fusion powered shuttlecraft of various kinds (mainly landers and single stage to orbit craft) are docked on the inner surface of the cylindrical hollow and the outer surface of the drive cylinder. These can be mounted to be used as extra ship thrusters if necessary.

Both the main fusion drive and those of the shuttlecraft can be used as weapons.

The ship as a whole uses many self-repairing biotechnological components, particularly for sensing and computation.

Position within the hierarchy of the ship, and where the territory of each Hunter Lord crew member is located, are determined by complex competitions, gambles and so on.

Other Races

Compared to naturally evolved races such as humans, modern Hunter Lords are very powerful. One of them would be a match for a number of powerful, experienced, armed humans, or even superhumans.

Other races will initially be seen as interesting prey and little more. The Hunter Lords have never hunted sentient alien prey before and this will interest them, and although careful they are unlikely to initially consider other races to be much of a threat. Experience may teach them otherwise, of course.

They would not be particularly concerned about damage to natural ecosystems as they and the Martian ecosystem are immune to such things.

Against Humans

Should they find their way to our Earth, they are tough enough to do a 'War of the Worlds' style invasion. Even with very small numbers they would be a challenge to humanity. They could declare the Earth their hunting ground.

With the transition to our universe they would see the Earth as somewhere they can live, breed, multiply, and make a new home for their race. Perhaps from it they will eventually expand out into the universe. Perhaps they start in deserts and high mountain environments, which are very, very habitable for them, and most like Mars.

Youngsters may be among the first to volunteer to go to Earth - this is a chance to gain Reputation out from under their elders.

Martians on Earth might go a bit mad with the hunting. They are fully aware of the need for conservation in the long term, but know there are enough humans that it will take a while for there to be a problem.

They do not just want to kill - that is too easy. They want to hunt, and challenging prey at that. They could start by hunting human captives, then begin to hunt humans in the 'wild'. Physically powerful individuals, and also those who are well-guarded, such as politicians and so on, would make attractive prey. This might include the President of the USA. Perhaps they 'dare' each other to hunt a given prey, as a kind of gambling.

Perhaps, if they are driven off enough times, they can be persuaded to 'touch hunt', perhaps with cameras (that they use anyway) uploading to the 'Martian Youtube' to prove it. Or to hunt non-living trophies (for example, the Prime Ministers tie).

They will like big cats as they are somewhat like them. Perhaps they Uplift them to sentience, as allies, or prey. Likewise they could conceivably (in time) genetically engineer humans to be more like them. To be more of a challenge.

Hunter Lords and humans could in theory use each other's technology, but with difficulty due to the different layout of their bodies and differences in their hands and sense (Martians lack hearing; humans lack electroreception).

NOTES

The font used in the banner of this page is called Antique Paleoindonesia. It comes from the Dafont.Com site.

The panorama of Mars and view of Mars as a whole used here are taken from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Cosmobranche sites respectively. They are used here without permission, but for personal use only and not for profit or other financial gain.

Send any comments to me at tony {dot} website {at} clockworksky {dot} net.

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