My take on Kerbal Anatomy/Evolution/History/Society. Now with artwork!

[Whirligig Girl]

TL;DR

Kerbals are weird Amphibian/Plant Sybiotes but still similar to humans.

Here's an album.

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Loosely based on Ialdabaoth's concept.

We will ignore that unpleasant little man in the front row who is saying loudly that Kerbals have no gender.

Anatomy

A Kerbal's general shape is held together more by water pressure and muscle tension than by a rigid internal skeleton. In fact, the Kerbal's actual "skeleton" only consists of three keratin "bones": a skull, a mandible, and a pelvis. The spine and limbs are flexible, muscular tubes held in shape with water pressure, while the squeedlyspooch (a combined heart, lung, and digestive tract) brachiates into several 'nodules' within the body cavity. Toxin filtration is shared between the squeedlyspooch and the cyanosymbiont nodules of the inner dermis.

Kerbal reproduce by kissing. When any two kerbals kiss, the squeedlyspooch glands in the mouth produce a special saliva that contains genetic material.

The female's squeedlyspooch begins generating an egg. The Kerbal will become enlarged for 120 kerbal weeks (30 Earth weeks) before laying the egg. The mother will then guard the egg for the next week until it hatches. During the "pregnancy", the Kerbal must have three times as much snack intake and at least 1.5 times as much sunlight.

A Kerbal child has only one two limbs and their body and head are fused. They slowly separate and grown the arms over the course of the next 3 Kerbal years. A Kerbal is fully mature at 17 years, but many societies insist that a Kerbal is mature at 28 years. Due to the hormones still raging in them from the age of 11 to now still being active at 17, this is probably for the best.

Society

Modern kerbal Society is generally the same throughout Kerbin. Kerbals are generally rude by our standards, but kind-hearted. They are very cluttered and disorganised. Their buildings are just built wherever seems like it would look the worst, and roads rarely intersect, but rather go through tunnels constructed in buildings, and bridges over other roads. Kerbals are generally horrible drivers, but since Kerbals are impact-resistant, they survive the majority of crashes.

(Kissing) is never thought of as disgusting or taboo. It is thought of as romantic, adorable, and sweet, similarly to how kissing is viewed in America, rather than how is viewed. Two cute little green things kissing is probably the cutest thing I can imagine.

Ever since the Age of Invention, Kerbals have yearned for more knowledge of science, especially Astronomy. Male Kerbals generally want the flying jobs more than females, and females tend to like the smarter mechanical, engineering, and political jobs. This is just what is expected and generally true of Kerbals. Women are perfectly allowed and capable of Flight jobs and Men are just as fine working as mechanics and scientists and politicians.

Evolution

Kerbals evolved from a species of amphibianoid creature called the Jofre. This creature was a dark brown, feathered, tree-dwelling amphibianoid in the rainforest of Nitserg. When the mass extinction event of the Suoecabrek peroid occured, all larger predatory animals died off.

The Jofre (Kerbalod jofrus) eventually split into two surviving species, the Keafren (Kerbasa keafrena) and the Jassek (Kerseb jassen).

The Jassek managed to survive by surviving in a mutualistic relationship with a species of shrimp-like creatures called Jasip (Antosi Jasipan), who would eat the moss that grew on the permanately hibernating Jassek's back, and the Jassek benefited by eating the Jasip when they died. The modern-day successor of the Jassek would be the Keer Boose (Kersuiva boosen), which has less of a brain and more of a pile of nerves that allow it to have simple reflexes.

The Keafren survived by committing to a skin-tight symbiotic relationship with cyanotubic plant life. The Cyanotubes (Specifically Cyanabacterious tuberos and Cyanabacterious Ringana) provided ongoing nutrients in the sunlight, as the Keafren (in the dying days of the post-Suoecabrek extinction event) would have rarely had food. In the event that the Keafren was without food for 240 days (40 Earth days), the Cyanosymbiotes would keep the Keafren alive, until the Keafren would then begin hibernation and die within 8 days later. A Keafren will become desperate and aggressive if it is without food for more than 48 hours (12 Kerbin days). The Keafren is an omnivorous creature, able to eat from fruits and catch and kill small Mammaloids, Avianoids, and indeed simpler Amphibianoids. The Keafren was also the first creature to reproduce osculatiosexually (by kissing)

Over time species such as the Wok (Wok Primigenius), the Neleh (Kerlobus venusu), and the Pimick (Kerban Kerbodyte)

Perhaps the pinnacle of the evolution to come out of the Keafren's common ancestry was the Kerbal (Kerban sapiens sapiens).

The Kerbal shares a very close common ancestor with the Pimick and even closer the Lebrak (Kerban sapiens lebrekens.

The Pimick is a simpler Primphibian similar to the Neleh in many ways but still quite distinct. The Pimick is certainly sentient, and borderline sapient, and it is likely they posses consciousness.

The Lebrak is a simpler, stupider, and less advanced version of the modern Kerbal. The Lebrak is stronger and can survive longer in hibernation without food, and their social structure is complex enough that if a Lebrak was starving, they could deliver food to them and the Lebrak would instinctively chew the food. They, however, went into hibernation much quicker than the Kerbal, only lasting about 230 days as opposed to the modern Kerbal's 340 days.

Lebraks and Kerbals were known to interbreed, but in many cases the Kerbals saw the Lebraks as too ugly and the Lebraks saw the Kerbals as too weak. Lebraks and Kerbals both go into angry, confused, cranky temper-tantrums if they went without snacks for more than two days.

History of Knowledge, Technology, Science, and Wars

The early "genetically modern" Kerbal, the only difference from modern Kerbals being social structure, was a very intelligent species. They held an advantage over the Lebraks in that they had far more advanced tools and they could more intelligently search for food and hunt. Groups of male Kerbals would go out and hunt larger creatures, while the females and children gathered fruits, Jasrimp (Modern-day Jasip), and the stronger children and women, as well as the weaker men would gather the Keer Boose. The Lebraks meanwhile, were still killing with their bare hands to eat.

Eventually, some of the weaker men, staying at the villages and settlements, learned how to make more complicated tools and weapons for the hunters. Intelligence of the ingenious type had become an attractive trait in men and women. Around this time, the Lebraks went extinct due to competion with the Kerbals over food.

Little by little, Kerbal settlements would migrate, expand, and explore. For a little over 100,000 years, Kerbal lifestyle was as such. Then Kerbal villages who had been separated by hundreds of years came together. Their different knowldeges came together as each village met. There were a few skirmishes among villages who disagreed that would, on good days result in name-calling, and on worse one result in all-out brawls. Eventually a reclusive culture was discovered that, instead of gathering and hunting their food, captured and cultivated it. They had even managed to accidentally evolve grass into Korn and wheat over time. The knowledge of agriculture spread across the world in merely a century, and that's when things really booted up.

It was only around 300-400 years later that the first true civilization was born, called Kerbopotamia. The government consisted of a council of five kerbals: two men, two women, and one child. Large structures were beginning to be built. A large pyramid structure was built. It honored the child member of the council: Dudrin Kearmus, who was the first Kerbal to establish a law: "Stop stealing my snacks!". The citizens of Kerbopotomia took that to mean "no stealing things at all", and honored Dudrim for this. The pyramid structure also honors the two women and two men on the council, and the biggest structure was "the power of the people" statue, right in the center. A statue of Dudrin was erected at this site a few hundred year later, when a presidential system made Kerbals confused about the age of Dudrin.

Civilization spread like wildfire, and it wasn't long until the first mines were contructed. Civilization flourished when a vast amount of explosive material was found to exist under-ground. They used simple skyrockets to deliver messages across towns.

A few hundred years after that, blacksmiths became prevalent in the continent of Kairifa, and civilization got even better. Each century brought new metals and uses for them, until the age of Invention.

The Age of Invention was a period of time after most of Kerbin had been explored. People all over the world were trying to think of what they could do. The Kerbals often would tinker and try to build things, many of them involving the vast stores of rocket fuel available to the Kerbals. At the same time, the Kerbals looked up at the sky. Kerbals had been doing this for centuries in order to navigate. One kerbal invented a device that was meant to make far away things look big, and it wasn't long before another inventor, one who had often found himself looking at the sky, pointed one upwards. This Kerbal's name was Galileo Kermi.

He looked closely at the stars, and he found that they all looked just as small in the telescope as they did to the naked eye. He then found that he pointed his telescope at one of the Odd Stars, called "Tenalps". The word roughly translates to "Wanderer" as these stars did not go in a regular spinning motion throughout the year, but rather seemed to librate. At any rate, Kermani found himself looking at the purplest of the Odd Stars, and found that it did indeed look much bigger in his telescope. He found that the Odd Stars, henceforth referred to as Planets, were in fact much closer to Kerbin than the Stars were.

Throughout the century and the century following it, bigger telescopes would allow more refined views of the planets, and it was found that many of the planets had moons. Duna had Ike, Eve had a tiny speck of dust called Gilly, and Jool seemed to have at least three moons that Kermani himself discovered near the end of his life, and indeed Kerbin seemed to have a moon called Minmus. A Kerbal named Isak Kilonewton came up with two laws of motion and a law of gravity to describe the motion of the planets and moons. Another kerbal named Johannes Kerpler further explained orbital mechanics and worked out the restricted two-body equation that governs the Kerbal Universe.

The next century discovered the chemical elements that make up Kerbin are similar to those that make up the planets, aside from Jool. When someone thought it was a good idea to point the spectrometer at the Sun, something which everyone thought was a rather dumb thing to do, they found that the Sun and Jool had similar elements in them. Furthermore, they found that the element could be found in stars as well, and it seems on Kerbin as well in rare amounts.

The greatest achievement of that century occurred when some student decided to write down the exact speed of the big white circle compared to the rotation of the planet. He did the calculations using Kilonewton's and Kerpler's laws and found that the big white circle people had been trying not to look at was indeed a moon of Kerbin. Because he was not very good at writing or naming, this Kerbal, known as Bobilldiah "Munspeller" Kerman, aptly named the new moon "Mun".

Near the end of that century, the process of diggin oil out of the ground was found, and the short Age of Pollution began.

The Age of Pollution's first major invention was the Rover. Although the wheel was invented a few years before the discovery of oil, the Automotive Mobile Vehicle truly took advantage of the new technology by exploding oil in an engine to turn the wheels. The automobile was soon put on rails and rebranded "Railtrain". The first major developer of automobiles was Henry Kerford. Soon, a competitor arose using the mass-production assembly lines invented by Kerford, the company Automax. It was only about 50 year later that Kerbals realized that all the smoke from the oil was probalby a bad thing at they switched to electrics, utilizing the newly discovered Kerbovoltaic Effect. Kerman Oberth calculated the Oberth effect, and Robbaz Goddard invented the first liquid fueled rocket, fueled by Liquidied Oxygen and refined oil. Kerman Oberth also mentored a young Wernher von Kerman, but more on him later.

The worst thing to come from the Kerbal's history was the Kerbin War. It started when a Kerbal who perpetually felt really hungry was accidentally given power in Namregy, giving rise to the evil Izan party.

The Kerbin war was fought by two sides, each spanning a quarter of Kerbin's land, while the other half stayed out of the war. Billions of Kerbals died in the war. It was the only major war in Kerbin's history so far, and very devastating.

Namregy bombed one of Kearima's allies, Nodlon, using a newly developed missile, which was a type of rocket used to harm people, which is not at all what most kerbals used skyrockets for at the time. These rockets were very large, and fueled with that bad-smelling poison that comes from spoiled fruit in addition to that bad-smelling gas that makes you feel happy. They were developed by Wernher von Kerman, who despite being a member of the evil Izan party, was clearly only in the missile program for the money. He was a sell-out, but for a noble cause. To him, the use of the missile was only one of it's applications. He had ideas far beyond bombs.

Near the end of the war, von Kerman and his team of rocket scientists defect to Kearima, and are put on trial for war-crimes. Kerbals were enslaved by the evil Izans, and often worked to death. Von Kerman and his team had been aware of these slave camps that had been used to manufacture his rockets. He insisted that someone else would have done the work, perhaps someone with less than scientific intent. He one the trial, and he and his men and women working with him were put to work designing missiles for Kearimacan Army. Von Kerman was not pleased.

Around the same time, Bill Kerman, Jebediah Kerman, and Bob Kerman were born. The Brothers all became test pilots for the Kearmican Air Force. Jebediah also owned a Junkyard where he built his own rocket pieces. He figured that if a bomb could ride a missile, so should a Kerbal. The closest Jebediah came to making liquid-fueled rocket was a static firing which ended up blowing up a whole section of the junkyard.

Kearima ended up inventing the Atomic Smashy Explody Thingy, and they used it to bomb one of Namregy's allies, Apjan, totally obliterating it and creating a massive crater. Both sides of the war immediately called it off, as they knew going any further would result in the destruction of the species.

Von Kerman had been fired after the war ended, as missile were never to be needed again. He and his team attempted to get back to their work on their own, but couldn't get any funding for their project. Little did he know that the car company Automax was looking for rocket scientists to help with their budding rocketry systems. Aerodyne as well was working on a rocketry project on the other coast.

At long last, the Kerbal Space Program was started. The KSP were looking for scientists, before finding Wernher von Kerman, and immediately hiring him and his team, with him being the Cheif Designer. Jebediah was found as well, and with the Research and Development facilities that the Kerbal Space Center had, he found it impossible to turn down the request. His only condition was that he'd be the first Kerbal to ride a rocket.

The first rocket launched from KSC was a heavily refined Trash-bin of Boom that Jebediah's company had manufactured, known as the RT-10 Solid Fuel Booster, and it was attached to no other than a command pod designed by Von Kerman, built by Kerlington, and flown by Jebediah. Flight controllers Gene and Bobak Kerman worriedly counted down the launch of the rocket. The rocket flew up almost 15 km into the sky, before it was parachuted down. Meanwhile, STEADLER Corps discovered the third law of motion and were making plans to fully exploit this discovery.

Gene, Bobak, Jebediah, Bill, Bob, and Wernher von Kerman all knew that this century is going to be a good one. I hope you make sure of it.

Some of this info has officially been proven wrong by unofficial official lore.

Edited November 8, 2014 by GregroxMun

[trekkie_]

No you've got it all wrong. They have a crystalline skeletal structure

[Whirligig Girl]

Really? I spent three hours writing this, and thinking up how a Kerbal's anatomy best fits with what is seen in the game, and you, without any evidence just say that a rigid, hard structure could survive a fall from space without shattering? You clearly don't understand how weak crystalline structures are.

[SlimeCrusher]

Really? I spent three hours writing this, and thinking up how a Kerbal's anatomy best fits with what is seen in the game, and you, without any evidence just say that a rigid, hard structure could survive a fall from space without shattering? You clearly don't understand how weak crystalline structures are.

Don't listen to him, you've done an AWESOME job on doing this, i really enjoyed it!

[pxi]

You had me at squeedlyspooch.

Good job!

[randomness5555]

Huh. This idea seems to have some parralels to another world I know of.... but I can't think which one. Hmm.

Awsome work BTW-Maybe if squad ever hold a competiton for writing the backstory, you should enter this. I could see it doing well.

[CavemanNinja]

Was that whole "a kerbal who felt perpetually hungry" business a reference to Germany's hunger plan? if so, a historical internet cookie for you!

[Whirligig Girl]

Uhh, yeah, totally. It was in no way simply a reference to the fact that hungry Kerbals are irrationaly and very angry.

[pxi]

So basically...

Wir müssen Raum für Lebensraum erobern!

[Whirligig Girl]

I recognize "Living Space" from that sentence.

[Whirligig Girl]

"We have to conquer space for Habitat!"

YES!

EDIT: I just realized that room and space are the same in german. That explains the phrase "Raumfarzeug" or "Spacecraft" Raum being Space.

[Aurora]

Seems like you spent a lot of time into this, it all seems very logical. Great job!

[Whirligig Girl]

There, I forgot about STEADLER Corps discovering the third law of motion.

[KSK]

Really? I spent three hours writing this, and thinking up how a Kerbal's anatomy best fits with what is seen in the game, and you, without any evidence just say that a rigid, hard structure could survive a fall from space without shattering? You clearly don't understand how weak crystalline structures are.

Depends - metals are technically crystalline too. Polycrystalline if you want to be picky.

Great job putting all this together though GregroxMun - the anatomy and evolutions sections were especially good!

[Whirligig Girl]

Now with artwork!

[Thomas988]

WOW! Amazing work, Greg!

[Morthgal_dwarf]

Looking at the album and watching an Adult Jokes + Inappropriate Scenes when a scene showing Invader Zim. then he says Squeedlysqooch... DAFUQ?

[Whirligig Girl]

Looking at the album and watching an Adult Jokes + Inappropriate Scenes when a scene showing Invader Zim. then he says Squeedlysqooch... DAFUQ?

I didn't come up the the term Squeedlyspooch. Ialdabaoth did. I adopted much of the basic concept such as the cyanosymbiot model into this.

*snip*

He may have heard the term in Invader Zim. Edited August 26, 2014 by GregroxMun

[jfull]

It seems I'm not the only one who favors the idea of Kerbals having symbiotic algae in their skin!

I find it to be much more plausible than them being actual plants themselves.

You mentioned that a mass extinction killed off most of the large predators on Kerbin (probably leading to Kerbals losing their natural defenses), but I prefer to think that the algae in their skin actually makes Kerbals toxic and foul-tasting to predators, which lead to them losing all other defenses.

[Whirligig Girl]

It seems I'm not the only one who favors the idea of Kerbals having symbiotic algae in their skin!

I find it to be much more plausible than them being actual plants themselves.

You mentioned that a mass extinction killed off most of the large predators on Kerbin (probably leading to Kerbals losing their natural defenses), but I prefer to think that the algae in their skin actually makes Kerbals toxic and foul-tasting to predators, which lead to them losing all other defenses.

But then omnivores would love them, plus there'd be no advantage to evolve intelligence.

[dlrk]

I love this! It makes sense, is entertaining and compromises very well between the real world and Kerbin

[ZoidPool]

I love this! I just started a thread on kerbal biology, before I saw this, and now I realise how dumb that was. This belongs in the "Hitchhiker's guide to the Kerbal species" Thing.

[_Augustus_]

rather than how is viewed.

What happened here????

I'm guessing.. censorship?

Edited December 27, 2014 by _Augustus_

[Whirligig Girl]

What happened here????

I'm guessing.. censorship?

Yep.

[Ten Characters]

[_Augustus_]

Yep.

[Ten Characters]

Didn't know they did that even when what you're saying is in the name of science.

Edited December 28, 2014 by _Augustus_