While tradition maintains the first human colonists were lead from their homeworld of Kroatoan by Captain Vance Goodthrust in the spirit of exploration, this account is likely somewhat embroidered, as research has determined that the earliest humans were scavengers, that Kroatoan didn’t exist, and that Goodthrust was invented by Alberich Dries in 5250 as part of an elaborate practical joke.

Humanity’s actual origins remain obscure. The earliest evidence of human activity can be dated to −550 s.y.v.p. on the old Intoan hiveworld of Viridia Prime, where humans were first discovered by a group of Bazrahin nomads. The Bazrahin describe welcoming the confused strangers with open arms and closed mandibles only to be suddenly attacked. While the humans were easily beaten, disarmed and sent on their way,¹ they would go on to fully colonize the planet within a few centuries.

The historical record presents several challenges. Humans are universally depicted as newcomers to Viridia, yet newcomers who appear, at least at first, ignorant of space travel. How, then, did they arrive in the first place? One theory holds that humans were originally spacefaring but crashed their vessels on arrival and subsequently lost the knowledge of spaceflight; no archaeological evidence exists to support this. Another claims humans were incapable of spaceflight but were transported by another species; again, no evidence supports this. A third maintains humans were actually native to Viridia, evolving separately from other species and remaining unnoticed for millennia; this is not only unsupported by the fossil record but astronomically unlikely.

Amateur cryptohistorians often point to a structure in the Bkmma labeled “KROATOAN” as a possible origin of the Explorer myth, but this tells us little, as “kroatoan” was a standard Intoan warning, and the machine itself is little more than a rudimentary genegineering device laced with primate DNA.

—Recorder 3000-21