Mowlings

The **Mowlings** are a race of small furry creatures who worship an alien probe by the name of Jeff. Jeff in turn looks after the Mowlings and tries to curb their clumsiness, but to little success.

**Biology**

Mowlings are a race of small furry creatures with eyes positioned on the tops of their heads and an extremely fast birth rate. Mowlings are not very prone to disease, so the presence of a cough is highly unusual.

Mowlings are extremely clumsy and often cause horrific accidents that get copious amounts of themselves killed. This explains their rapid birth rate, as a way to counteract their relative clumsiness.

In spite of their relative clumsiness, which often results in the death of many Mowlings, they are an extremely intelligent race, having reached their current level of technology within only four hundred years. This clumsiness is actually a genetic factor in their rapid development, in addition to their high birthrate. As Mowlings tend to die in droves, they are forced to develop quicker to compensate for these incidents, allowing for their rapid evolution and development of technology. Jeff postulates that within another couple of centuries, the Mowlings might even ascend to a god-like status.

**Culture**

Mowling culture is almost entirely centred around their worship of Jeff, an alien probe from a long gone civilisation. Jeff attends to the Mowling’s needs, trying to keep them from killing themselves too much, but to little success.

Due to this aid, the Mowlings are an extremely diligent race, following Jeff’s commands with little hesitation, believing he only has the best of intentions for them. Jeff on his part does care for the Mowlings to a degree. Having been horrified by their recurrent deaths however, Jeff has grown tired of caring for the Mowlings and wishes to pawn them off onto the Captain of the Vindicator.

Upon Jeff leaving, the Mowlings take to their new “God”, the Captain, with great fervour, immediately joining the Federation of Allied Species and helping the Captain in whatever he requires, whilst also continuing to praise Jeff, as they haven’t quite let go of their old God quite yet.

**History**

Mowling history is somewhat recent, having been at a stone age level of technology only four hundred years ago. In a manner of centuries, the Mowlings managed to develop their technology enough to acquire space travel. This, as per the norm for races in Scryve space, was met with a delegation of the Scryve, who proceeded to enslave the Mowlings.

The Mowlings for their part were very proud of this achievement and a number of them went to the Scryve homeworld, whereupon they were received warmly by the Scryve populace. Unfortunately, as per usual, none of the delegation of Mowlings survived their trip to the Scryve homeworld, dying in a number of horrific accidents. The Scryve proceeded to ignore the Mowlings after this, regulating them to their list of conquered species.

This allowed the Mowlings to continue to develop rapidly, until tragedy struck. A comet was on route to their homeworld, which would destroy all life on the surface. The Mowlings began to develop a number of ways to stop this tragedy, but all were met with hilarious failure. Their first attempt was to fire a rocket with their top scientists at the comet to stop it, but this merely led to the death of the Mowlings aboard.

It was during their second attempt that Jeff found them. The Mowlings had been attempting to build a giant paddle to knock the comet away from their homeworld, but were having little trouble. Perplexed, Jeff stopped the comet for them and helped the Mowlings to stop their acts of clumsiness. This was met with little success and much frustration on Jeff’s part, but the Mowlings began to worship their new benefactor, seeing him as a god.

During this time, the Mowlings began to expand from their homeworld, encountering a number of different species, including the Pinthi. This didn’t go down well, as in their eagerness for hugs, the Mowlings cuddled the various mounds of slime that contained the Pinthi pathogen and began to spread the infection to their own race. The Pinthi for their part hadn’t wished for this to happen, but attempts to rectify the matter were put on hold due to the presence of Jeff in Mowling space and the fear of retribution on his part.

Eventually, the Mowlings would encounter the Captain of the Vindicator and he would help cure them of the Pinthi infection, as well as helping them to develop hospitals, something the Mowlings didn’t often require, as the clumsiness just resulted in death most of the time. However, as thanks, Jeff left behind a copy of his weapons platform for the Mowlings and left the Captain as the Mowling’s new god. They proceeded to join the Federation of Allied Species and helped to attack the Xraki Origin, pinning down the forces in the system long enough for the Captain to close the Origin and cut off the Xraki reinforcements.