On occasion, we would send Gatherers to hunt and protect our lands. Several centuries ago, we began seeing strange artifacts washing up on our shores. Our Instructors and Researchers would look at these items, test them and analyze them. During this process we became not only capable of speaking, but also began to comprehend the written word.
Books would wash up as well, filling us with knowledge of the World Beyond. Technical manuals from cargo lost in shipwrecks taught us electrical workings and mechanical engineering. Science texts would encourage the learning of physics. We would see ships pass, and we would wonder how to build them. So deep in underwater caverns we taught ourselves ship-craft. Our divers would continue to plumb the depths, exploring the watery world that surrounded us, and bringing home loot from ship-wrecks. With this loot and the knowledge we were acquiring, we began building a society with towns, villages and cities.
Then we saw a great battle being fought by two ships made of metal in the water. We had already begun making metal ships by this time, so it was no great surprise to us. But it was the fact that the soft-skins who we had been studying and learning from (with their writings) were also capable of fantastic violence to the degree we thought only we were capable of. This caused a small panic amongst our people who insisted we begin making ourselves more powerful than we already were. With this rush into military technology, we also made headway into the realms of science, architecture, and engineering.
Now we feel we are at an equal level of strength with the humans. We may be physically more powerful by far, but our numbers were very few and we would be severely outnumbered if the soft ones decided to destroy us. This has since changed, and so it is with this in mind we decided to show ourselves. We sincerely hope it was not a mistake.
