Cats

The cats of Vesivis are the only animals from Earth that surveyed the voyage aboard the arkship Originality. Through some malfunction, the section of the ship carrying the wildlife awakened its occupants too early from their cryogenic slumber. The animals awoke from their deep slumber as the arkship sailed through a mysterious field of energy. While fully inside the energy field, a few flashes of that energy flooded the ship with psychic energy. The brains of the slumbering humans were shielded, but the animals took the brunt of the force, with all of them falling braindead aboard the ship. All of them except, of course, for the cats.

All manner of cats from house cats to lions found themselves quickly developing an intelligence that outpaced even the masters who had packed them onto the ark. Within two generations, the cats were staffing the Originality completely. For nearly two hundred years, generations of cats expanded their numbers and filled up every corner of the ship. It seemed that the cats could do anything they set their min to. They could not, however, manage to save the ship when it began drifting off course. All of the controls were unresponsive, and the life support systems began to fail. After a quick scan, the cats manually guided the arkship toward the nearest habitable planet: the dark planet of Vesivis.

Upon landing, the humans finally awoke from their slumber. To their great surprise, they were greeted by hyperintelligent felines running the ship. After quite a while of trying to deal with their new reality, they went about trying to repair the ship, but they soon found that the navigational computers were too damaged to repair, and the backups had been damaged by whatever had harmed the operational computers. With that, the millions of humans began to build settlements to set about producing the materials they would need to fully repair the Originality.

Just as mining operations were underway, large groups of humans at various settlements began disappearing. At first, the cats assumed it was simply the wildlife of the planet, but then the attacks began happening more frequently. After two weeks, the D'un K'un began openly attacking and abducting humans. The conflicts continued, which was a losing battle for humans. Within five years, almost all humans had been abducted by the vampiric natives. A large number of cats also lost their lives in this struggle. After running from the D'un K'un for so long, the cats and humans had finally gathered what was needed to repair the arkship. After one last battle to clear the ship, the cats and humans blasted off into orbit around Vesivis.

Sadly, not enough humans remained to keep a sustainable population, so within two generations they died off aboard the arkship. The cats were more fortunate. They also discovered that the sun of this system was covered in a Dyson sphere, and they uncovered a way to tap into to power it generated. After fully repairing the ship, the cats went about crafting cybernetic enhancements to increase their physical and mental abilities. They then began to abduct the D'un K'un trying to find their weakness. The greatest weakness was found to be solar radiation, so the cats crafted weapons that harnessed this energy, and they took the fight to the D'un K'un.

It was a long process to arm the human insurgents and rescue them from bondage, but they finally managed to get most of them free, while using the Originality as a staging point. All was going well until some ancient weapon on the surface was activated by the D'un K'un and sent a piercing ray of concentrated energy slicing through the hull of the Originality. In a desperate play, the cats jettisoned all important equipment and everyone who could be saved (comfortably in escape pods). They then set the arkship to fly straight toward the Dyson sphere covering the sun.

With a great explosion, a large hole was blow in the side of the sphere, and sunlight reached the surface of Vesivis for the first time in thousands of years. Many of the D'un K'un were killed nearly instantly. The remaining humans were saved from bondage, and it had been one hundred and twenty years since the humans first set foot on Vesivis.

Now, the cats act as advisors and bureaucrats for the humans. They are seen as the most intelligent and wise creatures of the planet, and the humans typically defer to them in all matters. The humans use their abilities to protect the cats from all harm and expand across the planet, which is something the cats themselves cannot quite accomplish.