"Thanks!"

Some talk with mom, and: "There's the Elder Things, or there used to be. They had an interplanetary empire and made a bunch of other species including the shoggoths to be their slaves, and they were jerks and got into fights with everyone they met, and then the shoggoths and a bunch of others rebelled and their civilization collapsed. We don't know if there's any more."

"The Yith also were fighting the Elder Things over Earth - a lot of people fought over Earth for a while - but they left when the planet got less habitable for a while."

"The Cthulhi also fought the Elder Things, but we dunno what happened to them."

"The Mi-Go are in the same solar system as Earth, and fought the Elder Things, but they don't like Earth 'cause the gravity's wrong or something. They have a really weird moral system and are sometimes jerks."

"The Flying Polyps also aren't from Earth, but we only heard of them from the Yith who were their enemies."

"The Lloiger are from another galaxy and we haven't heard from them in forever but they might be related to the Flying Polyps?"

"I think we met the Yaddithians like once? Dunno much about them."

"On Earth, there's humans, Deep Ones, White Apes, and shoggoths that me and mom know of, though there might be other small groups hiding. Shoggoths are actually on a lot of planets, but we lost contact with the other groups when the Elder Things closed the portals."

"Deep Ones are an amphibious people, and they're allies with the sea-shoggoths and some coastal humans."

"White Apes might technically be a human sub-species? They only live in a very few places though and we don't have much contact with them."

"That's so many kinds of people!" says Hadri. "Why did the Elder Things get into so many fights?"

"They didn't see other species as having like any rights at all or being worth negotiating with. The Mi-Go were mad at them I think over someone seeing the Mi-Go's sacred patterns and then spreading them? The Yith had something where their home planet stopped being habitable and the Elder Things were jerks over it."

"What led so many peoples to be fighting over Earth, is it especially nice?"

"This was also over a really long period - the Yith weren't the same time as the Cthulhi and both weren't the same time as a lot of the Elder Things' other enemies, since the Elder Things had control of Earth for hundreds of millions of years. I think the Yith were just close by, and the Cthulhi might've been made by someone separately angry at the Elder Things? The last war had a lot of peoples involved and was happening all over a bunch of planets, but pretty much all of them left Earth when the Elder Things did, though also the Earth was getting less habitable, and it stayed really hard to live in for a whole ninety thousand years."

Talking with mom: "Mom says that what great-grandma told her is Earth was mostly strategic? It's nice for the native peoples but everyone else needed adaptive technology, though the Elder Things were using it as a nursery for some stuff. So it was really easy for the rebellious shoggoths to get people who didn't want to actually hold territory to help the fight, and as the Elder Things got weak a lot of peoples also pounced on them."

"What made the Earth less habitable?"

"It got really really cold, and no one liked that, though mom's not certain if that was 'cause of the war or 'cause of just nature."

"And it's strategically important? Why's that? We don't have any experience with interplanetary war."

"Mom's a science and culture and languages person so she doesn't know. We know lots about the story but great-grandma's story doesn't mention why people were fighting for which place, just that they were."

"Are there lots of other shoggoths where you lived before you came here?"

"Not in our town. We were living with humans, which meant we only sometimes saw other shoggoths."

"Why were you living with humans, if they're hostile to shoggoths?"

"Mom's job is studying them and their languages and stuff, and she met a human man and fell in love with him, and our specific town was more friendly since they traded with the Deep Ones a lot. The bad humans weren't locals."

Talking in the shoggoth tongue, and: "Mom says also that she'd hoped I'd grow up really familiar with humans since I'm extremely good at shapeshifting and talking to people, and there's been arguments among the shoggoths about actually opening real diplomatic ties with some places. And she was hoping I wouldn't have to wait until I was super old to get a job like that."

"So you wanted to be a diplomat when you grew up! You've been going around with purple hair, though."

"I don't really know how the castes work? I think our great-great grandparents would've all been purple because we were made for labor, and we're all their descendants? But we do a different thing than Amentans with who takes what jobs. There's the energy jobs for young shoggoths, which's like building stuff and taking care of people and doing lots of repetitive things, and there's the knowledge jobs for older shoggoths, and then there's the wisdom jobs for really old shoggoths like grandmother was. I think blue is wisdom jobs? Shoggoths don't get in wars anymore but if we did that'd be the job of the super old shoggoths who fought in the rebellion. And you can skip around if you have a really good talent for one area. Dunno where we'd put diplomats, though; they might go in energy or wisdom or their own thing. Mom thinks probably energy because you have to be really hopeful and not have a lot of grudges."

"Oh, how interesting, castes by age! Do you know how old you two are in Amentan years?"

"I don't know how long an Amentan year is. An Earth year's three hundred and sixty five and a quarter days, and a day's twenty four hours, and an hour's sixty minutes, and a minute's sixty seconds, and a second's how long it takes to say 'one Mississippi.'"

"I'm seven Earth years, and mom is around two hundred Earth years which she says is actually super young to be a knowledge person and have a kid."

One of the greens does some math on his pocket everything and says, "It sounds like an Earth year is about a season long."

"So I'm almost two and mom's about fifty!"

"Amentans don't even live to be fifty, that's really cool!"

"Humans I think live to be fifteen to twenty usually... Being fast's sad. I'm not even gonna be done growing until I'm twenty five."

"I think a lot of Amentan kids your age wish they grew faster."

"I'm gonna be able to talk in adult circles once I memorize my line's history but I like being a kid. It's fun."

"Is there a whole lot to memorize?"

"Lots and lots and lots, and my memory for that stuff isn't good."