(The creatures I'm writing about belong in he same world as the planets Cryolith, Behemoth, Cauldron, etc., hopefully for a future mod. To make
things a bit more interesting, I'll try and describe the three species
involved from each other's point of view, although the "Human"
perspective will be the most basic.)
Discovery
When our first scouts met the humans, they sensed emotions much like our own colonists; fear, confusion, determination, alertness. On Phobis Terra, we could sense the differences from other animals, on Cauldron and Cryolith, any creature is a unique sight. The sight of our scouts appeared to unnerve the humans, but they quickly learned to shape and present themselves in a way that calmed the human scouts down, and most chose not to attack us.
As we contacted the humans more and more, they became confusing to us. On the one hand, they were clearly highly intelligent, making numerous tools that we found difficult or impossible to make, and seemed to be well organized. On the other hand, they ever seemed able to sense emotions, much like an unconnected or a simpler creature, and yet were not frightened by this.
Human communication was learned first as body language to communicate emotions, than as spoken tones, and finally as words. Without the ability to sense emotions, humans need a great variety of body movements and spoken language to communicate, and a great deal of effort is needed by one of us to use these techniques successfully.
Body
Humans are shaped much as we are, but with simple, rounded heads, and most are larger than we are. The human body is stronger and more resistant to damage as well, even slothful humans can start physical activity and only suffer small injuries, and large wounds or broken bones that to us are life threatening are survived and healed in almost all humans. Their entire brain is kept inside a bony structure, with no lobes coming out as ours do, and as a result survives much greater strikes with only small personality changes, if any.
Mind
Anyone who interacts with humans, in any way, quickly picks up on the human mind's tendency towards organization, rules, or systematic thinking. They are comfortable with patterns, or fixed rules, and use these ways of thinking to make decisions. Even individuals the humans cal "rule breaking", "flighty", "unpredictable", and many other terms, use patterns from past experience as expectations, or to make decisions. When confronted with new situations, humans attempt to adapt old knowledge to determine what to do, but with varying amounts of flexibility. some rapidly learn the rules of whatever they find themselves in, but less successful ones often cling to old techniques.
Although humans cannot directly sense others, most can work out emotions or thoughts from watching body position, movement, and other activities. Humans who have interacted with us for enough time have learned to read us in this way.
Society
All human societies, whatever their organization, are based on having some set of rules that most within it are expected to follow. All societies have rules for large scale organization, and many have rules or expectations for single person interactions as well. Many humans are highly attached to these rules, and punishments are routinely used to force obedience. Wars have even been fought over disagreements in rules.
Within human societies, a bewildering collection of organizations exists, some highly specialized for a small number of tasks. Humans themselves may be a part of several of these organizations, but in most societies, family, political, and/or production organizations are the most important. Most organizations create rules for their own members to follow, but rules for an entire society are mostly created by political organizations. These political organizations are often a site of much strife, as different groups within a society attempt to decide who will have more power, or who's preferred rules will be used.
Despite these issues, human society can be extremely efficient at getting things done. Humans do not need to consult prophets for decisions that we might need to, and instead focus on getting the task done. They can organize extremely complex tasks, breaking the tasks down to simple parts for smaller groups to focus on.
Religion
Human religion confused us the first time we encountered it. We had learned, by this point, that humans could not sense the future or the past, or sense emotions or thoughts, and yet most of their religions appeared to be based on just that. Even today, human religion confuses us. Though it has changed over time to become more like our own religion, that our own society has successfully used for all of our history, suggesting that the humans have some ability to sense the world, the humans themselves we meet show none of this ability.
Human religion is divided to several large groups, many that seem opposed to each other. Most of the larger religions seem based on individual people, a few are based on long traditions, while many humans claim to have no religion at all. We have attempted to contact some of these prophets, such as the people called "Jeezes", "Boota", and "Mohamid", but have not been able to. Some humans who follow the religions of these prophets have been angered by these failures, some calling us "agents of Satan", while others suggest that, being in human, these people lack some ability we have that allows us to be contacted through time.
Human religion mostly acts as another group in society, and is a source of rules for personal interactions. As with any other groups in human society, humans in certain religious groups often disagree about which rules to follow, to the point where even similar groups (Such as the ones called "Joos", "kristins", and "Muzlims"), despite appearing to be factions of one group, consider themselves to be separate, and often opposing, groups.Religion is a source of great emotional attachment for humans, and it is recommended that challenges be avoided to a humans religion as much as possible.
Science and Technology
The human focus on patterns and rules shows itself most obviously in their craftsmanship, and their understanding of how the world works. Human craftsmen routinely adapt their tools, and make small experimentation and improvement to their designs. They are good at spotting small details, that we would miss, that will interfere with or improve a device, and as a result consistently produce high quality tools with far less effort than we could. In larger scale industry, the humans apply these same abilities, and their plants and machine shops produce enormous amounts of higher quality materials and devices, which are always being improved on.
Contributing to this success are human scientists. Without any skill at sensing the future, the scietists instead find rules and patterns in the world by testing it. Contact with human scientists has almost always proven useful for understanding how some aspect of our new world works, and they have even helped us understand how our own bodies and society works.
Combat
Warfare is far more common amongst human societies than it is in our society. Human groups fight each other for a variety of reasons, from control of resources, to disagreements over how society is to be run, to disputes between different groups in other matters. Human wars are approached with varying levels of organization, from tightly controlled large scale armies, to weakly controlled collections of small groups. Humans seem to use violence much more commonly to settle disputes, perhaps because they cannot communicate or trust as easily as we can, and must settle disputes in other ways.
Hearing about all the wars in human history, many of us were surprised that the species was not extinct a long time ago, but humans seem surprisingly willing to stop wars after only a small number of people can be killed. How the humans can callously ignore the violence of their enemies, and accepts surrenders of treaties, and even work with former enemies, without restarting the war is something we will never understand. Even more surprisingly, human veterans of wars are strangely able to form friendships with former enemies, with no regard to the violence those enemies attempts toward the human's own friends and themselves during the war. Perhaps the callousness towards friendships and their own society is caused as well by their lack of sensation of emotions, although human friendships and social bonds are still quite strong even without these.
Human armies must spend a great deal of time learning to work together, and much of the training of more organized armies is in teaching human soldiers to work together and feel a part of a group. Humans also cannot sense the future, and communicate as easily, reducing their fighting ability in a number of ways. However, human also bring their technical skill into combat, equipping themselves with extremely deadly weapons, such as fast and accurate guns, artillery, and missiles, and being highly skilled in their use. Although we can often avoid the weapons by sensing where they will hit, the weapons can overwhelm our ability to sense all of them, and any hit is usually crippling or deadly. Humans are also exceptional at supplying their forces, and moving rapidly, due to their ability to organize supply use, and maintain fast moving transport equipment.
