fire watch - episode 005 - the yellow of stone

part 01 The planet of Zarlum

In the previous episode of Zarlum stories.
We went over the many island cities and their purpose for the mainland. Zarlum had a lot of cities, and it had many cities because it had so many people. Zarlum had a huge population of 36 billion people which was 4 and a half times as many people as Earth, and it was only getting bigger and bigger by the day. It was lucky that Zarlum was a planet big enough to support all of them in fact it was so huge the world had room to spare for the people. Now the closest thing to the human race on Zarlum weren't actually called Humans they were known an entirely different species because they were, they were similar to the human race but with very important differences. They were called the Zurm race and the human and Zurm race didn't even know of each others existence because their planets were so far away from each other, neither telescopes could see each other. However, if they were to meet each other they would both probably wonder why they looked so similar but the Zurm race was better, but it actually made a lot of sense and was a similar reason as to why characters such as superman look like humans when they're not. The environments of Earth and Zarlum was similar, so humans and Zurm went down a very similar evolutionary path, so they looked very similar, but because there were more dangerous creatures on Zarlum, the Zurm race had to evolve to be stronger and slightly better than humans just to be able to survive on their planet, they also had other aspects of the planet which helped them a lot.
Telling the two species apart was pretty hard.
However, it was doable, if you were to simply look at a Zurm and a human next to each other it would be difficult to tell them apart. The way only to tell them apart from the outside was Zurm were slightly taller than the humans with a males average height being 6 foot 1 and a females average height being 5 foot 9, another few important differences were their fingers and eyes and some other smaller aspects of their appearance. The eyes were slightly bigger and slightly rounder, the pupils in their eyes were bigger, and they could focus their eyes easier and faster than humans, they could also see further and even slightly zoom in their vision however some were unable to, it was almost like the skill of moving ones ears or eyebrows, some could do it and others couldn't. The fingers were almost a centimetre longer than humans which paired with their eyes allowed them to have exceptional hand eye coordination.
Another way to tell the differences were.
Their hair and finger nails were able to grow slightly faster than humans, some found this great others found it annoying. They had better hearing, taste and smell. If humans and Zurms went to war against each other, humans wouldn't even stand a chance, the Zurm would destroy them easily not just because of their vastly bigger numbers but because of their power, strength levels and intelligence. They of course had the same kind of body type of humans because that's the body type that has worked for a lot of beings for billions of years, the difference that would help them fight humans was they had more naturally occurring muscle without even having to try. Another difference was human and Zurm blood, the blood of the Zurm race was thicker and a lot darker red, which doesn't sound like a big difference but because their blood was so thick their hearts had to beat a little faster to get their blood around them. The final and most important difference that would help them in battle the most and in almost everything was humans used 10 percent of their brain capacity, however Zurms used 15 percent of their brains, that meant they were smarter, they were experts at looking at weakness and then tearing it apart in seconds, while working together perfectly, being able to work out how to attack a group of people, how to basically do everything before the humans would even know they were there. The issue with the human race is when they get into the military or any kind of army they have to be trained to work together and to fight and it takes a very long time, however the Zurm race seemed to just immediately know how to work together and how to fight like it comes naturally to them, because it does, it's insanely easy to teach a Zurm how to fight perfectly making them very hard to defeat because they can train soldiers ready for the battle field in just a few weeks. Their technology was also a lot higher and a lot better than the humans. However, luckily for every other species in the universe the Zurm weren't violent creatures at heart, they actually tried to go about everything as peacefully as possible when discovering a new species especially one that could help them, if they were to discover humans they would most likely attempt to help them, with violence and war being the last thing they would attempt even if the humans were trying to fight them, because they knew they would defeat them, it was their form of mercy however there was some evil in the Zurm which rarely ever helped in war.
One of the weird facts about the Zurms were.
They had a kind of built-in natural disaster mode however it wasn't recommended to activate it, if they were almost on the point of death, the Zurms were able to 'regenerate' themselves, not like in doctor who it was a lot more painful and a lot more risky, and they could only do it once in their lifetime. What they would do is shut down their heart almost completely turning it off, that forced their body to kind of factory reset, antibodies would shoot from their heart through their entire body, and they could fix a lot of issues, like diseases with no cures, broken bones, anything however the process was very dangerous and could only be done in hospitals because otherwise it would most likely end with the person's death because to do it, the antibodies typically took about an hour to fix everything and bring a person back to health, but while it's doing that the person doesn't have their hearts beating, so they have to be connected machines to push their blood around for them, and even if they have the machine there was a chance that the antibodies wouldn't be able to fix the person quickly enough, and they would die anyway because the antibodies die after the hour. It was incredibly dangerous to do this, and most didn't survive, but if they did the person would be immune to basically all forms of damage for almost a month, the reason this isn't recommended was because it's insanely painful like breaking every bone in your body and after your heart isn't entirely the same, the person will have to take pills for the rest of their lives just to stay alive. There were rules to this though, the person was only able to do this once, and they are unable to do it if they were being attacked because it would just kill them faster, the attack either had to be over and them be taken to the hospital because otherwise they would just die. The person also could not do this unless they were on the brink of death, if they had a life changing injury like an arm or body part removed it was unable to fix that, but most diseases, broken bones, brain damage and other things like that were fixable.