Short Trips: With Feeling

With Feeling

They can feel everything, you know. The Drantoo are one of the most empathic beings in the Universe. Whatever others feel the strongest around them, those little guys feel it too. Not only do you affect them, they affect us as well. Just by touch you can feel what they feel and what affected them the most.

You've probably seen a Drantoo. They are small, delicately small, have shimmering blue scales that allow them to almost bend the light around them, cute owl-like eyes, and spindly little feathers that dot their head. It's why you might mistake them for a floater in your eye's peripheral vision. They exist to immerse themselves in emotion. They provide the Universe a collective intelligence of emotional storage.

They are basically living emotional storage containers in a cute and tiny form. But they have a flaw. The Drantoo can only communicate telepathically. But no species in the Universe have the mental capability to understand them.

Advanced species in the Universe still seek them out. Sometimes as medical application to read the emotions of a patient in a coma. Sometimes to use them as spies to watch over alien colonies worth invading. To the wider Universe the Drantoo exist as emotional batteries. Nothing more.

Without communication the Drantoo are left to the devious whims of the races across the Cosmos. Only few know of a race that can understand them: Time Lords.

"Granule Feldspar," bellowed a large bellied Hippopotamus-like being as it fiddled with supplies in a rusty old box, "that man can find you the Drantoo you need."

"Where can I find Mr. Feldspar?" Fredrick asked, pulling out a notebook in preparation.

"Why are you asking again?"

Fredrick swallowed a bit, his nose twitched nervously. "My reasons are my own Branigan. I need a Drantoo. A well-versed one."

"Right then," grumbled Branigan. "First I'll need some oil to get my gears going," he said as he rubbed his meaty fingers together.

"What?"

"Bribery. Incentive. Credits."

"Ah." Fredrick scrambled to pull a Credit Coin out of his satchel. He jumbled around in bag a bit until he found it. "Sorry, ought to organize a bit more." He handed Branigan a silvery coin with a glowing center. "Just get what it'll take for the information."

Branigan sniffled, grabbing the coin and looking it over. "It's going to be steep, kid."

"How steep?"

"At least 500 Credits."

"What?!" Fredrick grasped his shoulder in mental pain. He took a breath. "Fine! But at least warn me before you metaphorically drive a stake through my heart!"

Branigan chuckled as he inserted the Credit Coin into a receptacle. Pulling it out, he dropped in back in Fredrick's hand. "Feldspar is in the Terpaleen System, a few light years away on a planet called Lignum. You'll find him in the city of Vandran. It's the capital of Drantoo trade. What you have left on your Credit Coin should get you there," he said with a scummy grin.

"Thanks, I guess," Fredrick said dishearteningly as he left Branigan's dusty shop.

It's been a long journey, but Fredrick is finally close to getting his hands on an Elder Drantoo. The older lived a Drantoo, the more it can feel. The hard part though is deciphering which Drantoo is the oldest. They are a long-loved species, with some ranging from 50 years to 1000. It's worse knowing that one can't just tell you since Drantoo can't actually speak.

"I just need to find the right one and I'm so close," Fredrick said under his breath. He had a habit of mumbling. It got him in trouble quite a bit. He pulled out his communication disk and opened up a route to the nearest Gal-Ax Shuttle. It was a 500 Credit trip. Branigan was right, it might as well be a one-way trip. "As if things can't get any worse," Fredrick mumbled again.