The Circle is a small, but very densely populated galaxy (which we encountered as the home to the Dellwellians). With many, many planets making up a galaxy-wide society, there are vast shipping lanes that bring supplies between worlds. This is prime territory for criminal activity, and one crew of such criminals go by the name “The Feral Pirates”.

Murb Deel

Murb Deel is a Drutag, and Drutags are not a species native to the Circle. Back home, Murb was a test pilot who was flying a new type of spacecraft when something went wrong. Murb has no idea of the physics of what happened, but the next thing he new he was in a new galaxy and surrounded by Space Pirates. Luckily, the Drutag are a species who advance in rank by being superior in combat, and that worked with these pirates too. Murb is now in charge of a pirate ship with a crew from a bunch of species from this strange new galaxy. Though Murb is not bloodthirsty, crimes being committed to make a living are fair game. And, of course, proving the superiority of the ship in battle is a must.

In any other story of this sort, this is the role that would be occupied by a human. If it isn’t clear by now that PDR don’t necessarily play that way, I don’t know what to tell you.

Haqwad

Second in command to Murb Deel, Haqwad is the femme fatale of the crew. Skilled with martial arts and espionage tactics, Haqwad’s real skill is the art of seduction. Haqwad occasionally hints at a mysterious past in which she was an assassin, but that is just to draw suspicion away from her real mysterious past as a member of a law enforcement agency.

Henjuen B

Henjuen B is from a species that could best be described as “brain cells inside large floating devices”. Henjuen B is the pirate ship’s chief mechanic, keeping the thing running even when it is being blasted apart by enemy fire and replacement parts are just too expensive to get right now. Perhaps rightfully so, Henjuen B is a cantankerous sort and plays it up, often playfully bantering with the rest of the crew, especially Pilot.

Pilot

Pilot is not a robot, but a member of a species who used their advanced technology to upload themselves into computers. The rest of the species has suffered bad times, with a sort of computer virus corrupting their memory banks and forcing them to go into sleep mode. Pilot now works with the pirates in the hopes of finding the means to save the rest of the species, but is also not averse to having a fun time along the way.

Swobbin

Swobbin is something of a loose cannon. Nobody else on the crew is quite certain if Swobbin is typical of her species, or if even among them she would be considered crazy, but she is almost suicidally reckless and unpredictable. She’s the sort who might betray the crew for the right price, but she’ll probably then kill the payers when she loses interest. She’s the type who might try to trick the crew into going to a planet where there is supposed to be treasure, but there is actually a bunch of people she wants to beat up. They can only justify keeping her around because she is really good in a fight.

Dworreh

Dworreh is the team’s muscle. From a species who are so feared that they aren’t even allowed to leave their home sector without permission from law-enforcement agencies, Dworreh is the secret weapon that the pirates don’t advertise unless they are planning on taking no survivors. Dworreh is less concerned about keeping the secret and is more eager to get into action than the others would consider wise.

Owds People

The People of the planet Owds are ruled over by a royal family who justify their rule purely by might. Perhaps at one time they gave some justification about being divinely chosen or whatever, but if so, that is lost to history. Now, the fact they are the most powerful is reason enough. If you don’t agree, why don’t you do something about it?

The Empress of Owds was featured on a Supervillain Sunday post, which suggests she might not be such a great person. The trippy cosmic hero Astrona has taken an interest in saving this world.

The Owds People conform to most of the standard humanoid features. One difference, though, is their two mouths. While the Owds People do stand upright on their hind legs when still, they move around on all fours. Commonly, if they are moving and want to hold on to something, they will place it in their lower mouth to hold it.

Vethew Tekh is a high-ranking member of the Owds’ secret police service. Tekh’s identity is so secret that no record of his existence can be found outside of his own files and the memories of those who are allowed to know. If a citizen learns that Tekh and the secret police are there, it is already too late for that citizen. Tekh has beaten seventy-three people to death in service of the Empress, and has enjoyed it every time.

Ezbrick Doi is a scientist working for the royal government on a secret reality-warping project. The project, the translated name of which would be something close to “The Godseyes”, is a set of goggles that allow the wearer to modify anything they can see in any way they can imagine. Obviously, this is a lot of power, so only test subjects who are extremely loyal to the royal dynasty can be used to test it, lest they use the power in some way against them. It has not been easy to find subjects loyal enough to trust, and the first nine tried all died in horrific ways. Ezbrick is certain, though, that the Godseyes will be ready for the Empress before too long.

And Iswin Heheka is the average suffering citizen of Owds. Living in a port city, Iswin is employed as a ship-builder. Iswin keeps a low profile, as all Owds people do, because they are always reminded to report any suspicious behavior to the guards. In her own time, though, Iswin composes beautiful music that she does not get to share.

A Fact About Owds People: The biological waste that Owds people produce is vomitted out through their lower mouths. For the species to have existed like that for so long, it is no surprise that they take sanitation very seriously. Owds people (and all the animals on the planet closely related enough to have the same system) expel their waste daily, after which they take baths in the highly acidic ponds that are naturally abundant on their world and are useful sanitizers. It has not been unheard of for Owds people to expel waste on enemies in battle, but… it’s rude, obviously.

Universe: Green

Picking up where my last report on my health left off, let’s see how my month has been going.

Friday April 28

This was, overall, a typical day until my daily antibiotics treatment, during which the nurse was unable to get anything to move through the PICC line, so I had to go to the ER to get my treatment. There was a wait of a few hours at the waiting room, but once I got in it took almost no time for them to get me going. I was out once I had my stuff pumped into me.

It was, however, this day that I had to admit to myself that I was coughing a lot. More than I ought to be considering I was supposed to be getting better.

Saturday April 29

I woke up this Saturday with a distinct taste of blood in my mouth and the coughing continued. Considering my medical history of the last few months, I thought maybe I ought to get that looked at. I went back to ER. It seems that the triage people didn’t think it was all that important, because even though I had the symptoms that had left me hospitalized weeks earlier, with the addition of the tastebloods, I was the last person to get in. Every person who had been in the waiting room before me, as well as every person who came in while I was waiting, got in until I was the last person in the waiting room. When I did finally get in, they did an x-ray that showed my lung had fluid in it again! That was annoying. They arranged for my next clinic appointment to be pushed up to…

Thursday May 4

I went to an appointment at a busy clinic where my doctor told me they would push up my next scheduled CT scan to check on the fluid. It seemed like a good plan, so I went home with that knowledge. Meanwhile, the cough continued to worsen.

Saturday May 6

I don’t know if voiding the contents of my stomach because I am coughing too much is actually the same as regular vomitting. I mean, I admit that it probably still counts as vomitting, but it felt different to me when it happened this night. Still, I guess I need to count this as the new marker when measuring my next vomitless streak. I feel like I’m not going to get another decade-long one of those any time soon. Anyway, the cough continued to worsen.

Tuesday May 9 to Saturday May 13

The cough reached a point where it was as bad as, or possible worse than it was when I first got hospitalized. Being me, I was just waiting for the call about that CT scan, but enough people finally convinced me I needed to get looked at more urgently that I was soon back to the ER. This time, though, triage determined that I had a fever I was not even aware of, so I got in pretty quick. As they gave me my daily antibiotics (I had left home before getting them) and treated my fever, it was soon determined I would be staying in hospital again. Indeed, I was soon transferred* back to the very room I had stayed in before (though not the same bed). The news I got was that the fluid in my lungs had actually receded since the last x-rays that told me they were refilling. That was good. The bad news was that my immune system was in terrible shape, with white blood cells about as low as possible. They ran a whole battery of tests on my blood and found not much. As they treated me, the white blood cells started coming back and eventually I was allowed back out, though now I have to get weekly blood tests and the length of time for which I will be getting daily antibiotics has been lengthened by a couple weeks after which they will decide if it will go further or not.

*This transfer was my first ambulance ride in my life. Any enjoyment I got from that was mitigated by the fact I had an extreme coughing fit that last pretty much the entire five-minute trip. I have no idea if this fit was triggered by the ride, or if it was a coincidence, but it sure happened.

Tuesday May 16

After a few days back on the regular antibiotics routine, I noticed that I am actually breathing better. I had barely noticed when I was breathing worse, but today I could tell that I was breathing better. And the cough was lessened as well. Let’s hope this trend continues.