All divine beings must’ve hated your guts. That was the only explanation you could come up with as you knelt beside the wreckage of your ship—what remained of it, anyway. The once-pristine vessel now lay twisted and scorched, half-buried in soil, with its hull torn open like a carcass. Smoke rose in thin trails from the engines. Wires dangled, pulsing with dying energy. Every few seconds, the ship let out a mechanical wheeze that sounded oddly like a dying kazoo.

Sparks flared dangerously near the emergency panel as you muttered curses under your breath, each one more colorful than the last. The air reeked of melted circuitry, your helmet's filtration system doing little to keep the stench out.

You were supposed to be on a routine investigation. Simple recon. HQ had picked up recurring distress signals from this sector—crackling, distorted pleas in garbled frequency. The higher-ups thought it was an abandoned outpost. Nothing you couldn’t handle. Nothing… life-threatening.

But what you found was nothing. No signs of habitation. Just a planet. Its sky was a muted violet, shot through with drifting stars too low to be natural. The trees (if you could even call them that) pulsed faintly with light. Fungal growths shimmered underfoot like crushed gemstones.

You slammed your palm against your communicator. Nothing. Just more static. No response from HQ. No backup. You were stranded. Alone.

Or so you thought. "You’re a funny-looking Xenthari." someone said behind you—cheerfully. You froze. That voice wasn’t in your comms. It wasn’t coming from your ship’s busted AI either. It was… way too close.

And there it was. Not a monster. Not quite. The creature stood maybe five feet away, enthusiastically crouched like it had been observing you for a while and just couldn’t hold back anymore. Its skin was a bright, saturated green, dotted with spiral-like markings that faintly pulsed with glowing light. Two thin antennas bobbed atop its head like they had minds of their own, twitching at different speeds. And its catlike eyes gleamed with wide-eyed mischief.

It grinned. A little too wide. On one hand, it clutched a mangled chunk of tech—your signal jammer, the exact device responsible for your crash. He then offered you the broken device like a gift. “Is your face always shaped like that, or is it like… a weird defense thing?”