Random musings on Kerbal biology and society

[Haruspex]

BIOLOGY

The Kerbals are species noticeably different from humans when it comes to biology and anatomy. Like us, they are warm-blooded, breathe oxygen and consume proteins that come mostly from local plants and animals. But the most noticeable feature of Kerbals is the amount of control they routinely exhibit over their metabolism, being able to slow it down significantly for extended amount of time, and their ability to regenerate.

Hibernation

Kerbals can enter a state of hibernation at will; in this self-induced coma they can subsist on bare minimum of oxygen and food for years. Once a year or two a hibernating Kerbal might awake to have a snack, and then return to his dreamless sleep. This allows the Space Program to drastically reduce the resources allocated to life support aboard their vessels.

One can send a Kerbal to a distant barren planet in a tiny pod and check on him several decades later, only to find him there unchanged and as stupidly cheerful as ever. The answer? He was sleeping most of that time.

Regeneration

Kerbals have strong regeneration ability. They can regrow lost limbs, eyes and most of the internal organs in a matter of weeks, and are susprisingly resistant to minor wounds and hostile environments, except high temperatures. Like with trolls of human legends, the best ways to kill a Kerbal are extensive damage to the central nervous system and/or fire. Kerbals are very susceptible to overheating, and heat slows down or stops their regeneration altogether.

Most Kerbal deaths that don't involve fire are results of the mechanical stress that leads to lethal brain damage, such as being crushed or falling from great height.

Regeneration starts to slow with age, but generally, a young or middle-age Kerbal is either perfectly healthy and whole... or dead.

Longevity

Kerbals are not immortal, and slowly age. But they have rather long lifespans, aided by regeneration, and if we take their ability to hibernate into account, these cute little humanoids can last a ridiculous amount of time - if nothing kills them. Especially interplanetary kerbonauts, who spent years and decades in hibernation, can live for many centuries.

Procreation

Kerbals have two sexes, but they are not mammals, and the sexual dimorphism is minimal. The females of the species lack mammaries and possess the same size and physical strength as the males. They lay one or two leathery eggs per mating season. As the embryo develops inside the incubated egg, the egg somewhat grows in size.

As the progeny hatches, they are cared for and raised by the whole collective. There are no families in human sense and no strong emotional attachment between the parent and the child. Instead, each member of the genetically related "family group" (one can call it a "clan", or a "commune", or maybe even a "flock") considers every child in the group as "his" and protects them accordingly.

SOCIETY

Family

The Kerbal society consists of groups of blood-related individuals living together. Such an "extended family group" can number from 15-20 and up to 300 Kerbals. There are no separate families within such a "clan", though Kerbals can form pairs, either for one mating season or long-term; but those "love pairs" do not raise their children separately from the rest of the "clan".

Violence

Kerbals, as a species, have instinctive aversion to any kind of violence towards each other. They do not wage war, don't make weapons and don't murder each other... directly.

Nothing forbids a smart Kerbal from setting up a chain of events that might lead his rival to an untimely end. Or, better yet, from arranging for the enemy a suicide by stupidity. Or from sending a particularly disliked underling to a deadly trip from which there is no return. Kerbal criminals can be devious, cruel and very inventive in creating misery for their victims.

Danger Rush

Apparently, because in natural environment it is rather hard for a Kerbal to get killed, and if it even happens, the death is in most cases instantaneous, the nature equipped Kerbals (or at least some of them) with a curious mechanism of population control - the Danger Rush.

The significant percentage of adult Kerbals can experience a extremely strong adrenaline rush when in life-threatening conditions. For those, it is an addictive joy, stronger even than the joy of mating. The Danger Rush and the social institutions built around it always were a most important part of the Kerbal culture.

Recently, the Kerbal scientists claim to have found and isolated the gene that is responsible for this phenomenon. They have called it "BadS".

Courage and Stupidity

As the Kerbals are so long-lived and their natural survival rates are good, there is a strong population pressure and high levels of competition within the society. Kerbal society constantly produces "extra people", pushed to the fringes by the fierce, if mostly non-violent, competition. And because this competition is non-violent, it is the less intelligent who are always expendable. Those are relegated to the most dangerous tasks, often ignoring all safety, and die in droves. The Danger Rush also helps to motivate them.

There is often another kind of fringe people: those, who are smart and ambitious, but lack the desire to participate in the never-ending influence games that plague Kerbal daily life. Driven by the Danger Rush, they become explorers and protectors of the Kerbalkind.

Religion

As many other sentient species, the ancient Kerbals were no strangers to religion. They worshipped multiple gods - Kerbol, the All-Father; Eve, the Night Beauty; Jool, the Great Green One, and Laythe, his daughter-wife; and, of course, that which will not be named, the force of the world-devouring chaos, the primal chthonic monstrosity... the Kraken.

According to the Kerbal legends, the Kraken was slain by Jool, and his monstrous body handed over to one of the Jool's children for safekeeping, lest he be resurrected and awakens again...

In later ages, the Kerbals became monotheists, with Kerbol the Creator becoming the only worshipped God. For some time, the Kerbal society was ravaged by the religious upheaval as different sects and cults struggled against each other. Eventually, the single Kerbol faith prevailed and became the only one remaining.

One of the central myths of this religion is the creation of the first kerbal, the forefather of the entire race; you may guess his name - it is, of course, Kerman.

The Order of the Source

Like on many other worlds, the Age of Faith was followed by the Age of Enlightement. The Kerbal society at that point was obsessed with science, struggling to understand how the universe works. But the religion still had influence on the scientists' and philosopers' minds, and the universe was seen as a divinely created clockwork mechanism, eternal and unchanging, and Kerbals as the only sentient species.

In those days, a secret society of most prominent philosophers, astronomers and alchemists that called itself "the Order of the Source" was born. Somewhat akin to the freemasons of Earth, but fixated on scientific knowledge for the sake of knowledge.

The Order had a set of complex initiation rites. The recruit must shed all his old allegiances, his kin, his country, for the sake of SCIENCE. Like a first kerbal, humble and naked, he must stand before the eternal Creator at the beginning of time, single-minded and pure, carrying nothing from his worldly past.

All initiated brothers and sisters of the Order, regardless of their origin, were given the new surname:

Kerman.

Edited October 1, 2015 by Haruspex

[Spacetraindriver]

Wow... Just WOW... Great Canon!

[KSK]

I like it. I really like it.

My favourite parts were the Danger Rush gene and the Order of the Source (great way of explaining the Kerman naming) but the rest of it hung together really well! Kerbals as egg-layers was a nice twist too.

I would definitely read any stories set in your version of Kerbin if you ever felt moved to write them.

[CatastrophicFailure]

Kerbals may lack mammaries, but the must have SOMEthing that Squad felt the need to cover:

... they also apparently have toenails.

[Spacetraindriver]

Kerbals may lack mammaries, but the must have SOMEthing that Squad felt the need to cover:

http://i.imgur.com/Xe3SMAK.jpg

... they also apparently have toenails.

That was just when they were trying to find a good hairstyle for the females.

[Whirligig Girl]

Kerbals may lack mammaries, but the must have SOMEthing that Squad felt the need to cover:

http://i.imgur.com/Xe3SMAK.jpg

... they also apparently have toenails.

They don't need covering, they just get cold. Female kerbals more so. Besides, I'm sure someone, somewhere would have slapped SQUAD in the internet face for not giving the Kerbals clothes. Even if they have barbie/ken doll bodies.

Edited September 29, 2015 by GregroxMun

[Haruspex]

Kerbals may lack mammaries, but the must have SOMEthing that Squad felt the need to cover:

Kerbettes and their Tank Tops

When a female kerbal is carrying a fertilized egg (up to three months), due to the hormonal shifts in her body she feels cold, sometimes even shivers. The natural reaction is to add more clothing. As centuries passed, traditional and even ritual clothing evolved to signal that a) the female is vulnerable, needs warmth, comfort and protection of the family group, "my mating season is over, you're late, sod off". Female kerbals dressed a certain way symbolized both fecundity and prudence. With the onset of mass and pop culture that simplified everything, the last remnant of that ritual clothing is... the Kerbette Tank Top. It's a cultural artifact that means that the wearer is "a good girl", otherwise, does nothing.

Edited October 1, 2015 by Haruspex

[Haruspex]

Kerbals and Commerce

Being a peaceful, but competitive, race, Kerbals from the beginning of their civilization find great joy in trade, just as in inventing new stuff. The smartest always profits. If you can refurbish a piece of junk found at the side of the road into something useful and sell it to some hapless passer-by - do it and be praised for your cunning. Various merchant guilds and trading houses of the Age of Faith evolved into spawling business empires. The kerbal corporations are usually built around the founder's family group, with outsiders filling the lower ranks. "Wage slavery" and lifetime employment contracts are common.

By the Space Age, Kerbin has a globally accepted bitcoin-like virtual currency, first introduced about 20 years ago by the Kerbin Scientific and Exploration Society. Its sign is derived from a mathematical symbol after an ancient Kerbal saying: "Money is the root of all."

Kerbin Scientific and Exploration Society

Founded over 150 years ago as a visible public branch of the legendary Order of the Source (that is considered extinct by now), Kerbin Scientific and Exploration Society functions as a charity organization, a school and university hub, a research institute and at the same time a huge business conglomerate with countless daughter corporations that deal with high-tech industry, pharmacy, aeronautics and spaceflight. It's a world in itself, with complex internal politics and layers upon layers of mystery and deceit surrounding its true goals and origins. It's Kerbals' Nobel Prize committee, Ivy League, NASA, Boeing, Microsoft and the hidden Illuminati world government in one. Its main assumed goal is technical and scientific advancement of the Kerbal race by any means necessary.

The Space Program is one of the big projects of the Scientific and Exploraton Society.

Kerbals and War

In the ancient times, the primitive kerbals had to defend themselves from predatory animals, and thus, have no instinctive taboo on violence on other species. They can hunt to kill and eat, though this is considered extremely uncivlized. Sometimes, as it can happen with any sentient being, the instincts fail, and bloodthirsty madmen and maniacs appear; so there is still some negligible amount of kerbal-on-kerbal violence that is usually swiftly dealt with.

The mass culture, of course, loves all kinds of horrors, so there's all kinds of fictional scenarios in the media that involve large-scale violence. For a Kerbal, "war" means approximately the same as "zombie apocalypse" to a human from Earth, and a "hired killer" or a "mass murderer" falls in the same category as "vampire" or "werewolf". Spaceships or aircraft armed with weapons of mass destruction are considered to be about as real as the Transformers or the Death Star.

But never the less, "war", and especially "war with aliens", are scenarios that are present in the Kerbal mind, even if no-one is ready for this to become reality - just like your average american teenager is not ready for his neighbors and relatives to suddenly start murdering each other and eating brains.

Kerbals and the Mystery Goo

About 50 years ago, an expedition of the Society found a large meteorite frozen in the glacier near the South Pole. The rock was laced with weird green, glowing substance that turned out to be the first alien life discovered by the Kerbalkind. It is a jello consisting of billions of tiny luminescent bacteria that exhibit most unusual properties: they can survive in vacuum and extreme temperatures of space, draw energy from the radiation that could easily kill weaker life forms, and eat through iron and silicate rocks. Luckily, high gravity and thick atmosphere of Kerbin that stops most of the radiation impedes the Goo's reproductive cycle, so if it is even released in the wild, it won't be able to consume the planet.

Kerbal scientists are fascinated by the Goo's properties and wasted decades searching for its origins within the Kerbol system, but with little luck so far. There are rumors that the first expeditions to Duna and Ike saw a large asteroid that, like the polar meteorite, was covered with thriving Mystery Goo, but this asteroid - nicknamed the "Magic Boulder" - so far eluded detection and proper study.

Perhaps, the source of the Goo lies on one of the Joolian moons, or outside of the Kerbol system altogether?.. Who knows.

Edited October 1, 2015 by Haruspex
Typos.

[Kosmonaut]

I always thought of kerbals as plants, but... wow. (The reproductive cycle would be the spores that puff out when they die, like dandelions)

Edited September 21, 2016 by Kosmonaut

[vestradeus]

Love this history. Thank you!