Planetary Scout

Overview

When it is deemed necessary to expand the Kepek Commonwealth's territory and found a new planetary colony, drones are sent out to a number of star systems to do initial scans of the planets orbiting them. This data is sent back to the Interstellar Colony Fleets in the region, where a team of scientists will analyse the information found. If the planet is deemed as safe enough or something of interest was located, specialised field scientists, called planetary scouts, will be sent to manually explore the surface (or atmosphere in the case of gas giants).

Multiple teams of scouts, usually consisting of up to 100 individuals each, will be deployed all over the planet to try to establish research bases. These bases act as a central hub of sorts for the scout teams, and while some will stay at the base, others will venture out either on their own or in small groups (usually no more than 5) to cover more ground.

These scouting missions last for 10 Bektep Orbits, and end either when the planet proves too dangerous to settle, another intelligent species is found to already be inhabiting it (though this is rare, as the drones normally pick up on this during the initial sweep of the planet) or when the fleet returns to the region in order to pick the scout crew up and begin the process of establishing a true colony.

While fairly rare, Scouts are occasionally used in search and rescue missions as well, as they are often the ones with the most training on how to handle unknown or unexpected planetary conditions. they will occasionally be sent out to aid anyone (Kepek or otherwise) who has become lost or stranded on an uncolonized planet, or to recover lost equipment and items from a planet's surface.

Criteria for Establishing Permanent Planetary Settlements

The Kepek Commonwealth has a list of requirements a planet must meet for a scout team to deem it as suitable for either habitation or further research.

• The planet must have some kind of recourse that the Commonwealth would benefit from. The more dangerous the planet and its conditions, the higher value the recourse needs to be to warrant the costs of establishing a colony.

• If a recourse isn't considered valuable enough to warrant a colony but there is still something of particular interest unique to that world, a research centre can be established instead.

• The world must not be home to any other intelligent species or species that have the potential to become what the commonwealth deems as intelligent in the near future (e.g. Earth would not be considered suitable for habitation due to human presence because of this rule, but even without the existence of humans, it would likely still fail, as many other species here meet the requirements to be considered near-intelligent, such as some corvids, elphants, dolphins, octopuses etc).

Requirements

All Planetary scouts need to have done at least a course on first-aid in unusual environments which includes training in abnormal gravity (which needs to be kept up to date and retaken once every few years), as well as having a basic understanding of astrophysics and be able to pilot a variety of ships and vehicles.

Beyond that, there are different specialisations under the umbrella of "planetary scout" with different qualifications. Some planetary scouts, for example, specialise in botany and studying the flora found on planets for potential hazards, uses and more. These scouts need to have studied xenobotony or a similar field before being eligible for a position as planetary scout botanist. Likewise, a planetary scout may specialise in geology or xenozoology and will need to have studied in those fields or something similar.

Tabiri Requirements

A notable exception to the above mentioned requirements can be found amoung the Tabiri people. The Tabiri are raised in large class-like structures called cells, and members of different cells are raised from hatching to do specific jobs. In cells pre-selected to become scouts, the children are raised solely to become an efficient scout team. Different individuals can specialise in different aspects of the job, but they all work towards the same goal with little to no say in the matter.

Social Perception

Most Planetary scouts are viewed as heroes - brave explorers who face the unknown to find new lands to call home. There are some who view them with a more critical eye, especially environmentalists and those against the further colonisation of planets, but they are very much in the minority.