My name is Tonglok Lurris and I am the owner of this legacy journal. It was a sweet gesture from my parents, but I am most likely going to be the last owner of this journal too. Oh well, just go with it, right?

I guess I should set everything up, before getting into how I ended up immigrating to another planet. I was one in a family of four, or five if you count our family friend. My mother is a minare named Tonglok Hayilaa, and my father is a gene-spliced human named Tonglok Grimm. I was born as a set of hybrid twins, being me and my brother Tonglok Drohh. Finally, there was our close family friend Yusef X. Zavier.

My brother and I were born in a hillside dugout dwelling. I was the first out, almost crushing my pa because I was nearly three times his size. Drohh was last out, and he was around my father’s size, so he had to be caught as he fell out. Obviously, we weren’t like most babies born on Irrdnis. Both of us had our ma’s nose, ears, and teeth, and our pa’s hair and fully opaque, fair skin. We had only two eyes like our pa’s instead of four like our ma’s, and we didn’t have glowing pupils, which is apparently normal for my father’s species. Unlike either humans or minare, we came out nearly at full maturity, save for a few physical features that would develop later in our lives. Drohh stayed around the same height and slim body type, while I had a slight growth spurt and kept a more broad, husky body type.

While we were growing up, so to speak, our mother had to usually handle us. Not that my father didn’t try, but we kind of hurt him a few times throughout the first year, which was chiefly my fault. The terror enacted on Pa ended when we reached complete maturity during year two. My mind caught up with the rest of my body, but Drohh’s mental capacity seemingly didn’t, and he could only make guttural sounds. I acted as his interpreter for my parents at times, but they predominantly got him fine without me. Not much kept his interest, so we had to keep an extra eye on him to make sure he stayed out of trouble. Both of us couldn’t handle certain sounds as they would cause us a severe amount of discomfort.

Before I was born, my parents came from the Higherlands down to the Middlelands, where there were more abundant resources for raising a family. However, more resources meant more people, and we didn’t trust non-spliced humans and other minare. We settled in a proportionately smaller and less productive region to avoid chance encounters with random strangers. When I and my brother came to a point in our lives where we were considered competent enough, we helped our parents protect the family’s territory. Those who entered or strayed too close to our family’s land had to face us and pay in some way for trespassing. These ranged from taking some belongings and giving a warning, to straight up murder, as it all depended on the circumstances at hand. We only spared or helped huwaty passing through, which is the Minare term for assorted human-minare hybrids, and the exception who is Yusef.

We first met Yusef when our family ambushed him at his campfire one night. He wore then what we would always identify him by later; super wide brim sunhat, button-up long-sleeved shirt, and a kilt touching the instep of his boots, all in black. He wasn’t scared, but rather elated that we found him. He was a self-proclaimed naturalist and anthropologist, who wandered across lands to study all the flora, fauna, and cultures of Irrdnis. Many considered what he did as a waste of time, so he worked by himself. One day, he heard about us. Apparently, we have a reputation to the point of being a legend amongst humans, both spliced, and ordinary, which he referred to as ‘ordies’. We weren’t exclusively bandits to them, but one that was a family unit made up of a minare and two to three huwaty. Bandits were commonly a species-segregated lot of unrelated individuals or extended family. One being of a single mixed family, let alone one that didn’t abandon its natural-born, human-minare hybrid offspring, was unusual. Yusef searched us out to study us and our manner of living, with the dream to one day share with everyone in the world his findings, and hopefully show that humans and minare weren’t all too different.

Pa resented such sentiments and threatened to kill him, until Ma suggested to just kick him off our land. During the slight argument between my parents, Drohh took two things from Yusef’s pack being, a pair of sunglass-like goggles with flip-up lenses, and a gizmo used to study nature from afar. My brother noticed it was broken and returned to the pack to search through it. While my parents argued, Yusef saw what Drohh was trying to do and carefully approached him, not realizing that I was close behind watching warily. Yusef helped him find a toolset, which my brother then used to open the gizmo and tinker around inside. While Drohh tinkered, Yusef observed with fascination, and I, Ma, and Pa all kept our eyes on them. Soon, Drohh finished fiddling with it and looked at Yusef, who told him to keep it, which he was surely going to do anyway but the permission was a nice gesture. That was how we found out my brother loved working on machines.

Drohh barked to me, and I knew what he wanted. I picked up Yusef by the back of his clothes and brought him to eyelevel, asking him if he could bring more machines. Playing coy, he pointed out how he wasn’t welcome on our land, which prompted me to get Ma and Pa involved. After working out an uneasy compromise with my parents, he was released, knowing that he couldn’t show his face around again without a couple of devices for my brother. Four days later, Yusef came back with three devices and questions for the family. Our interactions gradually built up from there. First, he would pass into our territory knowing that we’d track down and corner him for the deal. After a time, we started giving him specific locations to meet us. Then one day, we invited Yusef to visit our home, which would only be for a moment. A moment evolved into awhile, then a day, few days, several, and “stay as long as you want.” Transactions became favors, and questions became conversations, sometimes curious of how the rest of the world was doing. Drohh would get machines and tools, I’d get sketches and old pictures, Pa would get random souvenirs, and Ma would get literature. Speaking of which, the family was illiterate, except for Ma who was surmised to be ‘functionally illiterate’ thanks to what she learned at a young age. Yusef managed to help us out as much as he could, including multiple languages with a little help from Ma when it came to the Minare language, despite never teaching before. I had the most difficulty compared to the others, due to what would later be identified as ‘dyslexia,’ which used to affect my writing badly too, but I made vast improvements since.

When Yusef wasn’t relaxing or helping the family at home, he was aiding huwaty who were being persecuted by ordies and minare. He’d try and help whichever way he could. Even sent them through our land for temporary safety when things got too dangerous, since he knew of our family’s history of helping other hybrids. We always were receptive towards others like us, and it gave us a day or two talking to people other than family. It was how we found out that I and my brother weren’t the sole natural born huwaty on the planet. A bonus was that we made sure that any of their pursuers who foolishly get too close or cross into our borders, were never seen alive again. We would collect some interesting things from a bunch of those ambushes.

The worst of these persecutors were the Baggsab Saank. From what Yusef told us, years before their current incarnation, they were a single monotheistic faith that was led by Sank, the pet to Helan Phorro Xamium. It evolved into many different sects following an ever-growing pantheon, as more xamiums and other minare became owners of humans as well. After Helan Xamium died, no one else in the kingdom wanted to care for his pets, so the followers of the sect that founded the main faith were discarded to the wilds. The death of their master and abandonment afterwards, left them all feeling adrift, and Sank himself rapidly spiraled into a deeper sort of madness. He one day declared to have been visited by Helan in his dream, who revealed to him that humans can take a so-called “path to ascension,” to becoming a xamium themselves. After having the few dissenters killed, Sank renamed their sect the Baggsab Saank. Since then, they enslaved and converted ordies, while launching a holy war to wipe out the Huwaty and anyone sympathetic to us. To them, the Huwaty were evil abominations who chose to become hybrids to cheat at “ascension,” thus in need of wholesale extermination. Out of all trespassers we came in conflict with during my later years on familial lands, it tended to be them. We could’ve found a way to end them after the first several times they trespassed. We were more interested in minding our own lives and territory, leaving outsiders to their own devices. We’d come to regret such a decision.