Human minds are like old castles. Built on layers upon layers of primitive, ancient foundations, hidden from plain view. The troglodyte, the lizard, the mammal, the monkey, all labeled under the impulsive Id, and atop it all, the newborn usurper, the Ego, the self, the arrogant thing that spits on its ancestry and screams into the cosmos, “I am man, and I am above your law!”

Sequestered in their fortress of civilization and prosperity, hidden behind walls of comfort and consumerism, humans came to believe themselves to be weak. They came to think they were no more than glorified prey animals, only able to survive thanks to technology and social structures.

But when it comes to true conflict, true strife, when man is thrown to wilderness and left to survive without a lifeline, the Ego legs go of the leash, just a little bit. It loosens the choke-hold on its predecessors, the collective Id. The primitive, but clever caveman, the skittish mammal, the sheer unadulterated feral violence of the reptile.

Within every man, woman and child, lay locked away four billion years of violence and death, four billion years of perpetual struggle and murder in the pursuit of dominion over a world that wants nothing more than to wipe humans from its surface. They don’t have a civilian population. Behind every tree, every blade of grass, you will find the muzzle of a rifle, the edge of a sword, the air-ripping scream of a compressed plasma projector. Push them far enough, and they will graft their minds into beastly bodies so they may tear you to shreds the way their ancestors would.

Stolen novel; please report.

For you see, they’ve dulled their own fangs and claws on purpose, so that they need the tools and technology they love so much to truly let their incredible violence out, so that there is a degree of separation between themselves and the instruments of their savagery. At least, that’s what they were before. In the second millennium. Before the Thought-Eaters came for them, broke their precious tools, forced them from their home.

For half a millennium, the remnants of man drifted through the cosmos as little more than digital ghosts aboard a reliquary ship. When they settled upon their new home, they were no longer Homo Sapiens. They made it so they were as one with their tools. So their bodies were no longer anything more than another form of tool.

Another weapon.

Humans don’t have a civilian population.

The fire-eyed, metal-skinned monsters you see skittering about in the night, ripping apart your men, they’re the same “children” that made a big show of running scared when you made planetfall.

Every monster and old fable, every seemingly supernatural creature you’ve faced in your pointless conquest was merely a human letting go of the reins and seeing what their Id would do if provided with a body capable of expressing that boundless violence.

The seven-armed, skull-faced, screeching thing that slaughtered your battalion, ruined your ship’s engines, and left you stranded on this rock in the middle of bumblefuck nowhere?

You’re looking at him.