u/Quiet-Money7892

What's your price?

This is the question that laid the foundation for our entire civilization. What is your worth? What do you have to take? What are you willing to give? What do you want? Are you wanted? It has multiple interpretations, and each one became an origin point for our civilization's philosophy.

Nowadays we can blame our world of origin for that. Seismically active, dry, full of ash and brimstone—and by chance, located right inside a rift in reality itself, the chaotic weaving of which became our sun and stars. It's almost impossible to place one stone upon another in these surroundings and hope to see it still there tomorrow. The price of something stable is the sacrifice of someone else. That is what separated us from the beasts of our world. We knew how to sacrifice.

We originated from scavengers. Our predatory nature is but a mocking gift from reality, and the fact that we gained sapience to understand this is proof that reality has a sense of humor. Our mythology speaks of the First Lord, who brought a dead beast back home and fed his clan. He killed it with the densest thing he knew—denser than ashstones and the petrified remains that covered the ground. It was the rib of his own brother.

Our kingdoms were built of bones and blood, both literally and philosophically. We learned that behind everyone's successes and riches stands someone who gave up everything. Someone who toiled the lava lakes with plows made of their ancestors to pull out slightly denser metals. We made sacrifices for one reason: so someone else would make them for us after.

Our civilization is built on slavery. Thanks to the location of our world of origin, we quickly discovered how little we actually were worth. We bent chaotic fires to cast ourselves gates to the plentitude. We traveled realities like one travels oceans to find those who were willing to sacrifice. And in exchange for their work, we gave what they lacked.

Among others, we became known as interdimensional merchants and slave traders. In a way, our slaves speak of us more than we ever could. We cultivated them so they were willing to sacrifice, and we gave them every chance to do so.

Our food slaves are willing and enthusiastic to become as tasty as possible. We enslaved creatures made of rocks and crystals, and their successors now yearn to be harvested for minerals. We enslaved those who spoke in lightning, so their deathsongs would power our engines. Our scientists enjoy the thrill of discovery and the sparks of their talents, but leave the suffering of failures and the complexity of tasks to those who were made to enjoy them. Even reproduction is left to slaves who enjoy the tortures of birth, growth, and parenting, while we, from childhood, enjoy love, pleasure, and the happiness of family.

So when we stumbled upon humans, our question was the same. It angered them, and their response was as spiteful as they were: "And what's yours?!" Yet it came not from them sharing our worldview—it was different. Why do you think you're worth more? Who are you to name prices? How do you know you are better? Those conflicts grew into a nightmare of a war. But it made us rethink many things. We had become accustomed to thinking of everyone as slaves—if not current ones, then potential.

We saw that humans were willing to sacrifice, but they did not enjoy it. Among them were heroes and cowards, and it was hard to determine one from another. They were eager to make us suffer the things we had avoided suffering. And they gave us the answer to our eternal question. It never mattered how much you were willing to sacrifice. We saw it in our slaves; we had forgotten it in ourselves. The only thing that mattered was what you are willing to sacrifice for.

In the end, we found a compromise. Humans were left as free as ever. But we gained the most valuable slaves of all time—those we could never cultivate. The slaves of willpower. Those who could tell us what is worthy of making sacrifices for, leaving us the simple pleasure of feeling a goal worthy of suffering.

As all psykers - human ones are feared. It's scary to hear of spells like "Wraith of Black Sun" or "Eternal suffering". But when you really should run if spell sounds suspiciously nice. For example:

"Sunshine and butterflies" - will summon a sun-eating horror right where you stand.

"Wonders of life" - will turn you into immortal limbless slime with it's insides out, that can only slither, suffering every moment it contacts with reality.

"Octopus party" - will rip existance apart, opening portals to the most terrible worlds, and leaving a beacon in your brain to make it smell like a tasty treat to them.

"Smiles and cheers" - will split apart your consciousness and make the parts fight, turning your willpower against itself, making you desperately destroy everything you are, until nothing is left but a useless and blank mind, filled with one happy wish of being useless and blank, that prevents you from recovering ever.

Also if human will ever start rhyming their spell - running away might be too late for you.

Inevitably, some humans developed psychic abilities after closer contact with Other Side. As usual, it turned them into outcasts, but unlike others - they were not exiled. They stepped away because being near so much of their thinking and imagining kind was too distructive.

And yes, like all normal psykers - they had to greatly change their everyday life and habits. They settled their own small planet, that was now human version of a riftworld, they greatly overlooked their vision of mind, death and divinity and they couldn't find understand in their former species even if they wanted. Because they are different... But it doesn't stop them.

Unlike others - they don't want to admit their differences. They actively judge those, who develop god complex and recognize it as a mental disease (despite being closer to gods than anyone of their species). They refused to break bonds with their former friends and families, despite the fact that normal connection with them now only possible through hyper relay from afar, so they'd not actually hear their real thoughts. And they still participate in human market, unlike other species' psykers, who mostly turn ascetic or build their own twisted economy, after discovering the real value of things.

They don't do blood sacrifices, death cults, they don't eat children and don't torture themselves with psychic flames and judge those, who do. It seems, that unlike most - something stops them from admitting that they are not human anymore. Even more, they actively assist in the development of psychic supressors, instead of psychic catalists, like normal psychics. Others see it as naivety and lack of experience. Yet human psykers keep chaining themselves to their species of origin... We can't really tell, why.

Why would you want to talk about them? They are a tiny, insignificant, underdeveloped species that only still exists—and remains unenslaved—because our Empire has much more important matters to attend to at the moment.

They are primitive. We tried to subjugate them through normal means. We offered them food, technology, fuel, and protection. They see no value in any of it. In their naivety, they send our free traders away, not understanding that every time they dismiss those who came to subjugate them and returned bearing trinkets as welcome gifts, they gain a very insulted and powerful enemy.

They are tiny and ambitionless. Despite possessing FTL-drive technology, they only build small ships and refuse to expand. This is explained by their insignificant population on their homeworld. If they were to stretch their numbers across their local sector, they might as well settle a single human on every celestial body. It's ironic how they managed to develop any form of spaceflight at all.

They are weak and generally stupid. Their homeworld is barely livable. Our scientists universally agree that humans evolved from cave-dwelling species—there's no other way life could have evolved on that rock without hiding underground, where stellar radiation becomes somewhat tolerable. There are also theories that their planet had such a fragile ecosystem that they barely managed to pass through a golden era. Now they spend stupidly large amounts of energy trying to terraform their homeworld back into a habitable state. Still, they mostly rely on biological manipulation and implants just to survive on the surface.

They are poor and terribly unlucky. Their homeworld barely has enough resources to build anything. If it weren't in the habitability zone, it wouldn't even be valuable as a mining colony. They are located as far from the galactic core as possible, with half their sky never showing stars. Their own star is dim and small, barely warm enough. As a result, they must recycle everything. They produce overly reinforced technology and tools to make them last long enough to pass through generations. It explains their gifts—for them, those trinkets may genuinely represent generations of value. Seriously, they are so poor that they had to consume their own history. There are no traces of ancient cities left on their planet. They recycled it all.

They are naive and uncreative. We don't know much about their culture, but what we do know suggests it's remarkably simple—probably due to the lack of stars in their skies and resources in their possession. They likely didn't have enough materials to record their history until they reached the space exploration stage and began mining the tiny asteroids in their system. They have a universal religion and worship some deity called "Prometheus," which represents fire and knowledge—things they desperately lack. Though they don't spare resources for temples, their main governing body is called the "Prometheus Exploration Corps." Their name for the galaxy is equally uncreative: they call it "Kepler-Beta 13-24." Wherever that came from, it's shameful to name your home like that.

Imperial bureaucracy has yet to decide what to do with them. Enslaving them would be like stealing from ants. Subjugating them might cost more in administrative salaries than they could possibly generate in their lifetime. Perhaps some nobles will take them as exotic pets.

He was sitting in a torn tent, playing games on his phone. He listened to me, reached for what looked like the only box of supplies that survived and said: "Here. Have some vitamin pills."

I was almost crying: "Fucking vitamin pills?"

He shrugged: "Good ones. Strawberry-flavored."