In which more lore is dumped on the reader.

It is no secret by now, that the average xeno from the Space Union of Sapient Species (the Dorarizin, the Jornissians and the Karnakians, as they are known grouped together in general) is about 4 times the volume of a human, thereby, requires at least 4 times the space and resources required for a human’s comfortable living. Thus, as a rule today, all human-made mixed infrastructure must have this minimun space in at least 50% of its design, granting access to all important areas so xenos can move wherever they must go without traffic congestion.

This is naturally a boon for all humans, since they are given extra space that may or may not be used at all. But for xenos, this is the equivalent of designing an underground bunker filled with mouse holes you could barely crawl through.

And worse still, this only applies to mixed infrastructure.

So, imagine the frustration of the new mixed crew of the Tigh Tunic as it settled for duty. You arrive to this remote smol-only station eager to work with your fourth spacefaring neighbour, but instead of being met by an average sized place for you, you are hazardously crammed into a fragile model-scale station that creaks and screeches at your every touch. You soon realize this place wasn’t designed with your comfort in mind (and you have the suspicion it wasn’t designed with anyone’s comfort in mind), and that the only reason you and your crew are able to move about, is because a ¼ of the station is a network of utility hallways and warehouses that miraculously double as your minimun hallway.

Every time you have to go from place to place, you have to watch your body clearance lest you knock off a random pipe or step on your smol crewmate at suspiciously bottlenecked corridors and blind turns. And god help you if you are carrying something and you happen to encounter a fellow xeno going in the opposite direction.

Oh, and let’s not forget that using the allotted space for storing supplies robs you of your own living space, so its either the food and gear for your survival or you staying on the hall.

So, of course, one of the first actions your crew takes is leaving your arrival ship anchored to one of the available ports to act as your living quarters. Problem solved and everyone happy, right?

Nope.

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For reasons that escape you (most likely lack of comfort), the smol crew simply abandons ship one day, leaving you with all the work necessary to keep the station in one piece as it seemingly tries to undo itself.

Now, remember that you cannot access the remaining ¾ of the station, so any time something there needs work, you are forced to use drones to reach the offending site. One of these sites happens to be the control room, which is so-not-for-you that just trying to enter it ripped part of the consoles and now the station lost gravity on half of its corridors, forcing you to install portable gravity fielders at different spots.

So, you think. Why even bother with keeping this thing afloat if its original crew deemed it a better option to leave?

And that’s when you discover The Potato Crew.

Imagine: as you explored this metal trap wrongfully called a station, you stumble upon the miraculous existence of a laboratory that is at least the size and clearance of a community center back home, and at the heart of this place, you find a trio of naked individuals from the Union that have been living like animals in a zoo, only able to move inside a limited set of rooms with glass walls for external observation.

This alone triggers a red flag in you.

But, before indignation consumes you, it turns out the trio of fellow xenos were not being maltreated at all. It’s just that they were part of a smol project and their smol caretakers didn’t exactly know how to give them ammenities you would take for granted, like clothing.

Upon closer inspection, you can’t help but notice that these individuals are in great shape, all things considered. And you could even say they are somewhat attractive. Like, naked-olympic-athletes attractive.

Of course, your first instinct is to get these fellows out of this floating time bomb now that the smols are gone. But, for some reason they are scared of you, refusing to abandon their spartan home and rigid schedule despite promises of a better life.

Not only that, but their language, gestures and habits are pretty much smol-like in everything, so communication is entirely dependant on translators incapable of picking up social subtleties to earn their trust and convince them to leave.

You cannot abandon them now. There’s something just so adorable about witnessing them behave with a natural smol sincerity (as if they had been raised from birth to be smols), that you have to keep them alive until they can be extracted of their own volition or this dead trap is converted to real working conditions.

So you reconsider remaining in the Tigh Tunic for longer, now aware of why it needs to be kept working: the link between smol and xeno lives in this station.

Thus, begin the strangest couple of months in your career.