* A touch-screen lights up in front of you with a list of recordings, you decide to press play on the one titled " A brief history on Dravers" and the video goes to full screen as a confused looking pony taur comes into focus.

R : Euh, hallo ik ben Robin en er is mij gevraa... hé wat? Oh, in Teranglo... Oké.
Hello, I'm Robin and I was asked to give a quick introduction about my kind, the Kleine Draver pony taurs. Although I don't know why Blackwater doesn't just write this down hirself since history never was my strong point and I'm not good with remembering dates.

B : I just thought it would be more interesting to get it straight from the horse's mouth.

R : Niet grappig, Blackwater. Alsof ik die nog nooit eerder gehoord heb.

B : Sorry, just couldn't resist the pun. You know I don't mean anything by it. Please continue and don't worry about the exact dates and such since this isn't supposed to be a lengthy history lesson.

R : Uh, ok. I'll see what I remember from my history classes then. Are you still recording or do I need to start over?

B : Still recording, so do continue.

R : Er, alright. Let's see... Well I suppose I should start at the very beginning. I think it was about 40 years or so before the gene wars and many countries started creating various species of morphs for...

B : The Gene wars started in 2050, and creating morphs was legalised around 2040...

R : Oh right, er, so that would have been about 30 years before, around the same time as the BioLife incident in Oregon USA, when similar research was done in New Benelux which back then was still Flanders, Belgium. Belgium had just split from the southern half of the country, Wallonia which merged with France while Flanders remained independent though Luxemburg was annexed along with Liége and southern Braband. This meant a shortage of resources and a near economic collapse in the region, so in order to increase the work force research began on creating the first morphs as the theory already existed thanks to some leaks from the BioLife labs. *swipes some pages on the phone and shows an image* This launched project Eenhoorn, or Project Unicorn, led by a man named Leopold DeDraver to create a new kind of horse to help in farming which would require less room and and nutrition than a normal horse.

B : So that is where your last name and your species originated from then?

R : Yes it does, but I'll get to that later. Where was I? Uh. Right. research developed rather quickly thanks to the leaked data from BioLife and around 2027 the first Draver pony taurs were born, carried by 12 carefully selected draft horse mares. Though these first 15 Dravers did not survive long. Two more attempts were made and from those 5 foals survived past their first year before they developed serious health problems. So the project went back to the drawing board while the threat of lost funding was looming over it. By this time it was 2032 and data from successful morph creation was leaked abroad and sparked the genetic arms race, which revived Project Unicorn and secured their funding for years to come. As technology improved at record pace so too did the Dravers as several enhancements were made giving us two sets of lungs and two hearts much like Chakats, although our hearts were on seperate vascular systems with the one in the upper torso providing for the brain and muscles of the upper torso, while the lower torso heart and lungs provided for the muscles. The upper torso was also tilted more forward since there was still issues with the gettign the nervous system to make that angle connecting upper and lower torso, this problem woud not be fixed untill after the creation of Chakats and would be the main health issue for Dravers untill that time.

B : Due to spinal injuries, I assume?

R : Indeed. It was our Achilles heel so to speak, but proper harnesses and bracing could prevent injury while we worked on the field. Three of us were as stong as two normal horses when it comes to lower body pulling strength but we required a little less than half the amount of food and took up less space as the project intended so it was considered a success. We did not have much rights at the time although we had some under animal protection laws sparing us from a lot of the abuse other morph species suffered at the time. During this time the morphs created for the sex industry were on the rise and someone on the project went rogue and created a breed of us for the sex industry, though they were caught and the new breed was moved to the farmland. This led to the first national scandal involving Dravers as some farmers were caught renting out stables for sexual encounters with Dravers after taking in the new breed and not limiting it to just them. Because of this it was discovered that we could interbreed with humans, albeit with a very small chance, and some were bred with normal horses. This did result in Dravers gaining some more protections to prevent this from happening again in the future, and while mostly effective it did not prevent this entirely untill around the 2040's when morphs were granted full protection and equality

R : *sips some water* Not that this meant a lot as we were weren't that intelligent yet at the time but at least we were treated more fairly and it stopped the sex work. The world was getting a lot more polarised as the world headed towards the gene wars. There is a bit of a history gap here as not a lot of records survived but during the gene wars when the global civil wars broke out the next generation of Dravers were created with the Four Horsemen project... Someone must have had a strange sense of humor I guess. This created four new breeds, although technically just three as the codename Famine breed was just improvements made to the existing Draver breed and was designed specifically to work in food production during the war. The other breeds were codenamed War and Death and were designed for the frontlines, they were a bit larger and sturdier built so they could haul military equipment and act as heavy infantry, both these breeds went extinct by the end of the gene wars. Codename pestulance breed was created to be field medics and also had enhanced immune systems capable of producing antibodies to any new diseases that could spread during the war. All current day Dravers are descended of these surviving two breeds and it is thanks to the Pestulance breed that we survived at all when the Sauron plague wiped out so many during that time.

B : Good thing your creators had the foresight to include that ability, certainly made Dravers a lot more resillient in the long run and made it so your immune response rivals that of Chakats. I certainly am glad for it because I think your species is just so cute. *winks*

R : ...I...Uh... *looks away embarassed* Well... I would say Chakats have played a role as well in our survival since our design flaw could finally be fixed and we no longer risked spinal injury from doing normal everyday activities...Also increased our reproduction rate thanks to a chance of herms being born. So we probably might have still gone extinct if Chakats weren't created first to aid in our final evolutionary step after the great reconstruction. Now we number around 750.000 spread across New Benelux and still growing in number, I think we are very much tied to this land since we don't seem to have much of a desire to explore generally speaking, we've never even left New Benelux. Well asside from me, I may be the first to not only leave United Europe but make it into space...At least I haven't met or heard of any other Dravers out there.

B : Well I for one hope you broke a trend and we get to see more of you out there at some point, maybe even make it to Chakona some day, wouldn't that be something?

R : Time will tell I suppose. As for making it to Chakona at least I will eventually since the Red Star is currently headed that way with a bit of a detour. I'm really looking forward to set hoof on another planet and use my shore leave to explore a bit, hopefully meet some some alien races as well...although I hear Rakshani are quite scary looking and big. At least Caitians are about our height from what I'm told, but haven't met any of them either.

B : Rakshani can be a bit intimidating, but they are good people really, Caitians can be pretty scary in their own way despite their smaller size. Are you looking for some...close encounters with them or maybe some friendly 'Kat?

R : NO!...I...I mean, no. I'm just curious about them. I...don't even know id we'd even be compatibale at all. I mean I know we can breed with humans sometimes, possibly horse morphs, but no idea about Chakats or Caitains and Rakshani...

B : Well I didn't say anything about breeding. *chuckles*

R : S....Shut up.

B : I'm just teasing. Anyway, anything else you might want to add still or should we wrap things up here for now?

R : No, I don't think there's much else to add for now, so I'll save some for next time. I really could use a nice juice before heading back to work.

B : Well I'll be happy to get you one, my treat as a thanks for agreeing to this. I think you did great by the way, so I hope we can do a part two sometime soon. *recording cuts off*


Made in Hero Forge
Characters belong to me  Chakat_Blackwater