Killer Folk (Descendants of the Human Predators)

A young male Killer tours one of the myriad ruined fortresses in his country, testimony of their species' bloody, protean history. The planet of the Killer Folk is an archaeologists' paradise. It has more buried dark ages, ruined cultures and fallen kingdoms than any other world.

The carnivores also rebounded into civilization. Their journey involved a series of changes during which they lost the adaptations that had allowed them to endure as the top predators of their world. The saber teeth, once used for slashing through sinew and trachea, became fragile and thin, useful only as organs of social display. The hook-like thumb claws were also reduced, but not deleted. In their place, the last two digits rotated perpendicularly to become newfangled graspers. All this gracility, however, did not mean weakness. Although they were no longer specialized for hunting, the Killer Folk could still kill with their bare hands, but only if they really wanted to. What enormous claws and teeth could not do, they could easily achieve with bow, arrow, flintlock repeater or gas rifle.

Their descent from predators gave the Killer Folk a unique social profile. Almost all of their religions had rituals allowing for periods of completely natural, animalistic hunts and duels. This necessity of venting these atavistic urges also led to the formation of religious "hunter nobilities"; privileged warriors who were skilled in the arts of hunting, war and murder. Entire societies were assembled underneath these ruling classes; orderly communities that erupted once every year into an orgy of death, sex, and prayer. For thousands of years nomadic warriors, together with their vast herds of once-human livestock, chased and battled each other across a chessboard of continents.

All of this chaos was to be swept apart with the advent of modernity. In a development comparable to an industrial revolution, one nation-pack of Killers devised methods of settled, intensive factory farming. Organized state structure, secularism and technological leap-frogging were quick to follow.

Needless to say, such developments polarized the world into bands of progressive, developed "factory herders" and increasingly fanatical "hunting states." While one side condemned their old, animal ways, the other side embraced them with blind zealotry. This was their crisis of modernity; the balkanization of the progressive and conservative factions on the road to global unity. Fortunately, the Killers managed to pull themselves through, even after drifting dangerously close to global conflict at certain points.