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In this world, the second a person is born a small creature appears beside them. These creatures take many forms, but are all functionally the same. They have a telepathic link to each other and to their individual person, letting them communicate. Their entire purpose in life, the one thing that brings them any comfort or joy, is to make their person happy and successful. They collaborate together to make sure everyone is as happy, healthy, and safe as possible. This is how it’s always been, no one questions these creatures or thinks it’s odd that they have them because that would be like asking why humans have skin.
This world has never seen war or cruelty, as it wouldn’t make people happy. The second someone decides they want to hurt someone else every creature in the area immediately works to make that impossible, and to find some way to change the person’s mind. Everyone is simultaneously incredibly hedonistic and incredibly productive. Everyone is working to make themselves as happy as possible, and to help the people around them do the same, and they have help to do so from a massive network of creatures. With no need for developing weapons or defenses against each other, humans have instead focused most of their progress on things like art, medicine, and exploration. They’re much better at all of these things than our world, but the second a threat appears they can’t do a thing but try to convince it to stop. They also don’t have any kind of long-distance communication, they just have heir critters contact each other to relay messages.
If someone in this world is hungry, someone with food who wants to make a difference will be subtly nudged in their direction. If someone is lost an adventuring-type will be brought to their aid. If someone’s sick the best doctor for the job will be notified, and instructions will be relayed to the patient within moments of their critter realizing they’re not healthy. If someone’s lonely they’ll be lead to someone who needs a friend. everyone is pretty content with their lives, their critter adjusts everything to make sure that their person has the best experience for them. If the critters disappeared one day, everybody would likely die. These creatures are needed to motivate people, to tell them what to do and how or when to do it, to advise them and teach them and help them. Without them they’d all be indecisive, antisocial, stupid, terrified and confused.
The creature's appearances vary wildly, one could be a bird, another some kind of lizard, and another a weird little fish. No two look or act alike, but they all fit their person’s appearance, personality and preferences, and all of them can fit comfortably on their person’s shoulders. None of them seem to need food, water or air to live, the only thing they seem to need to be healthy is for their person to be happy. They live exactly as long as their person does, and in every culture their bodies are kept with- and receive the same treatment as- their person’s.
Cultures are weird, none are very consistent or strict, as all of them are full of people who’s only goal is to be happy, and different people need different things to be happy. The whole planet in general has a culture that is very individualistic, goal oriented, pacifistic and selfish. Fashion isn’t a thing and never really has been, people just wear what makes them happy. If you want to wear a ballgown then go ahead. A kilt and suit-jacket? Sure! Nothing? Go ahead, just make sure you step behind that car while that one guy is walking past… and there you go! Nobody really cares. It’s the same with diet, weight, etc. things are only limited to what you have access to, and by whether or not it’s safe for you. Very few cultures have laws or leaders, they’re not really needed when everything is already organized and regulated by the critters. Education is typically handled by the critters as well, they can teach any subject as long as someone in the world already knows about it.
While things are near perfection due to the critters’ positive influences, they also caused a bit of a shift in human evolution. The vast majority of humans (about ⅘) are basically sociopaths, and that’s considered completely normal and healthy for a person. Empathy is weird, and pretty stupid to them, but if it makes you happy then sure, go ahead and do things for people out of the kindness of your heart or whatever. They’re nice to each other because it’ll help them be happy, that’s their only real goal in the end. No one else’s happiness matters to them all that much, especially if it doesn’t benefit them.
There’s another little critter, similar to the main ones, but they’re far less common and don’t work exactly the same way. Rather than providing advice and help and companionship these creatures give power. In return for magical abilities and near immortality they take just about everything else. They replace your critter, causing it to disappear, they cause horrible pain in their hosts, they can fight for control over the host’s body, they take in about half of the nutrients and such that the host has at all times, and they cause bad luck for people around the host. Everyone hates these creatures and have tried on multiple occasions to exterminate them, but they always come back at some point or another, usually in a different area.
These other creatures are similarly varied in appearance, but they all have one thing in common. They’re all so darkly colored that they’re physically incapable of reflecting light, with the exception of their eyes which tend to match their host’s. They also tend to resemble real creatures a lot less, with the others you can look at them and think ‘oh, it’s like if a rabbit and a parrot had a baby!’ but with these their traits are near unrecognizable.
It’s recently been discovered by one idiot that these creatures can be controlled and used for good, but only if their host is in a permanent state of intoxication so bad that they don’t really understand what’s going on around them, which makes the poor thing just as drunk/high as they are. He tested this himself. He’s kinda stuck now. Whoops. But, hey, he’s got cool powers and he’s so full of alcohol that if you drink his blood you’ll get drunk, so that’s fun. Kinda. His friends are working on fixing him.
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