Star Log Sec8 Sub3-1

Lizard people.

We had begun to think that they were a scifi trope without any merit when we found this planet.

Actual lizard people.

Not bipeds, but they have a culture & technology, tools & electronics and, possibly most importantly, radio. And television! Or visual-spectrum broadcast, at least.

We sent them a greeting message.

They are the most brilliantly-colored lizards I have ever seen!

Star Log Sec8 Sub3-2

Not that far from the lizard-people planet, we found a gas giant, mostly Hydrogen atmosphere, swirling with massive storms.

One of the two moons, a very wet planetoid with dense bioluminescent forests, held sentient but not high-tech inhabitants – octopods – who had giant telescopes pointing at the planet.

Avoiding detection by those scopes became a dance of navigation. Kept our pilots on their toes!

Star Log Sec8 Sub3-3

I would call this planet small were it not for the ridiculous tiny planet that we found earlier.

It orbits in the path of at least three asteroid belts, but around its beautiful meadows and forests – the view even from space is gorgeous – are rolling, dome-like buildings filled with – well, with Yeti.

These tall humanoids have developed cybernetics but not radio or other broadcast media that we can detect, nor space travel.

We sent a greeting probe.  I wish we could explore their buildings.

Star Log Sec8 Sub2-1

This planet is incredibly pastoral-seeming for one which appears to be on the cusp of space flight.

We could not locate its factories at first, because they were all under a thick mound of dirt and foliage.  We could not find its population centers for a similar reason – trees, which a further probe discovered were actually artificial constructs  – reach up taller than their highest skyscrapers.

There are pockets of more standard-looking industrialization across the planet, but those seem stuck in the steam era.

We picked the prettiest city and sent down a greeting probe.

Star Log Sec8 Sub2-2

This planet, at first, looked like a giant monoculture, almost one plant over the whole thing.

“This,” Erki said, “is what happens when you let morning glories go unchecked.”

I never did find out what Erki has against morning glories: Lerin found life.

Life in small nests, each under a slightly to much taller plant with a broad flower. Each nest had twenty to five hundred beings, and they seemed to communicate along root-ways.

We found radio signals and underground structures, but each being seems connected to the flower, and all the flowers seem attached.

Morning glories, indeed.

Star Log, Sec. 7, Sub 26

From space, this place looks like a glitter-filled lava lamp, the sort of thing you see only in college dorms.

It’s crazy.  The clouds are filled with some sort of metallic shine that reflects sunlight; looking past the cloud cover, the land and water, the plants and even the mountains are, too.

Readings suggest no sentient habitation and a breathable atmosphere, and so we found a place where the plant life looked the least shiny and sent down a team.

I hope it’s not gold.  It’s too pretty to be mined and picked over. On the other hand…

Star Log Sec7 Sub26

The impression given by this planet is that it never achieved space flight, despite being more heavily industrialized than any planet I have ever seen.  Perhaps they do not care.

The media we see of the denizens indicates that they are descended from burrowers, not tree-climbers, and, indeed, although they have built up, they have also dug down quite far.

It’s an ugly planet, but the media of the subsurface looks beautiful.  I almost wish I could go down, instead of just sending a probe.

Star Log Sec7 Sub26

I had to physically stop Steb from going down to the surface, nineteen protocols or no.

“They don’t REALLY look like animal-people,” I tried, but Steb was unconvinced.

“Ears!  Tails! Bipeds! FUR!”

I had visions of Steb trying to pet someone and starting an interstellar incident.

Steb aside, the planet is post-Industrial but pre-space, filled with lovely people, with wide semi-inhabited places and very few city-like structures.