Fur World Ch. 01

Welcome to the start of a new series, a new setting from me. This is... a passion project for me. It's intended to be a kind of universal RP and setting prompt for those who want to play in a furry playground. If you don't want that? Well, I hope you enjoy the story anyway. This chapter does not have sex in it, just establishing the world and some characters, since the same Chapter 1 is being used everywhere I post it. NSFW chapters are coming here to Literotica. I will post the SFW ones if asked. Neither branch of it is needed for the other.

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His glasses were secure on his nose. His lab coat was straight. The door to the lecture hall was before him, and though this was not the subject he usually taught the university staff knew he'd be good for it. At least now. There wasn't a 101 on campus he couldn't teach with authority and expertise. He set one paw on the door and pushed it open, walking in perhaps a hair slower than some others might, with a slight twitch of his whiskers and a toothy grin. The hundred students in the hall quieted... mostly, if not completely. The ones near the front would be more attentive.

It was a very diverse bunch of anthropomorphs in Professor Otterly Ruddertail's Intro History class. A couple of Crows hung out chatting off to the left, one looking much older than his friend. Far in the back, a Fennec kept an ear to the front as she trusted the distance to keep her safe from instructor attention. Some bored Ferrets and Weasels closer to the front, a few Bats (including one unusually bright-red woman), a Moth under the brightest light, and even a Human in the crowd. The Cascadia Bay University was near sea, forest, mountain, and river. Not all that far from tundra, either. It took all kinds, and everyone had to go through their General credits. That, of course, is where one particular Otter in a lab coat came in. He knew he didn't have to wear it here, but it helped set him apart from the students when his kind were slow to show signs of age.

There was a podium in the front, a microphone conveniently set there. It was even pointing slightly down at Otterly's own 1.6 meters instead of up at 2.1 for usual teacher, a Giraffe. Otterly's grin got a bit more tooth in it. Clearly, he was the last to find out about this. Again. He stepped up, and clicked a couple of times. Most of the remaining murmuring stopped.

"Welcome to Introduction to World History, everyone. I am Professor Otterly Ruddertail, and I will be teaching you about the basics of how the world got to where it is." There was some suppressed laughter at his name, there always was. His parents had not been particularly imaginative folks, and neither was whichever ancestor of his who had picked up the family surname. Flip side, it was probably during the period he was getting ready to teach about. "This class will not go into depth about pre-Change events, save only that the world of 650 years ago was vastly different from the one we enjoy now. You should all know at least roughly what I'm going to teach today, but we need to get a kind of structure up before the rest of this semester can progress. Any questions or objections so far?"

There was a hand. Odd. Otterly liked to ask that question at this point to get students used to not doing so for things that didn't need to be asked. "Yes, Miss...?"

One of the Ferrets in the front row, brownish of fur and looking shy, lowered her hand and stood. She was shorter than he expected. "Isabel, sir. Why aren't we going over the pre-Change world? How we spread across the world, and originally established the cities and old technologies that let us be there before the modern era?"

Otterly thought. It was a good question, but one that required some hideously in-depth explanation. Certainly more than one lecture. He was, however, nothing if not willing to drop unexpected loads of knowledge onto students. He'd try to be brief. Try. "The Change is an impossibly large factor to take into account, Isabel. It unites us, shows the world who we are to our core, brings us closer together and to the world. Humanity was a fractious and destructive bunch at the turn of the millennium as the old calendars reckoned it. Despite looking so much like one another, unity eluded mankind. Lives were lost over the least causes, and people were unable to unify behind even basic standards of treatment for their fellows. Priorities skewed as a result, and held the world back. This is why we will focus on more recent times. Does this make sense?"

She nodded in her seat. Otterly noticed that the murmurs had stopped, he was thankful for the question. If he ever had this class in the future (which, to be honest, seemed likely), he'd have to keep that in mind for his intro. "It is now the year Six Hundred and Twenty-One of the Era. Since the very first people started to show their inner selves to the world in the way we are all familiar with now. Some of you were fortunate enough to be born into the skin, fur, or feathers that best represent you. Others underwent changes that show down to the genetic level as you went through the first half of puberty. To this day, we do not know what causes it or why it suddenly began. What we do know is that for the first fifty years of it, as more and more people underwent the first Changes the world had ever known, there was chaos."

Another hand, this one the Human. A boy, looked a bit young to be in this classroom but one could never tell. Otterly nodded at him. "Bryce, sir. Why would revealing one's true nature cause chaos? You would think it would make things easier." He sat back down.

Otterly sighed. There was always one. "Today, you would be right. Then, though, so much of the world focused so hard on concealing it, on projecting an image of what they wanted others to think, that the truth forcibly coming out was not always to the person's betterment. We know now that one's truest self and one's perceptions of the world around them are the primary factors determining what one becomes, but then? People would become the very worst stereotypes of their inner demons. A politician turning into a literal Snake instead of a figurative one, with a prominent forked tongue, because of what they saw as a symbol of the twisted lies they led? A Python today might just really like giving hugs, or admire the calm focus of the serpent, but at the time it could literally be a death sentence. Only the fact that eventually it was happening to almost literally everyone led it to persist."

The worst of it didn't cross his lips, but it was on everyone's mind. Gangs, supremacists, religious zealotry, and abuse of one's Change-granted skills and abilities were common for a hundred years even after the majority of the population was wearing fur 24/7.

"This doesn't even count infrastructure. Imagine being a talented artist and multitasker living in the Southern deserts, and coming to find your inner self best represented by a Squid? Without the ability to find wetsuits, without support for migration to where you could live more easily? It was a problem pre-Change, and it took a long time to resolve. What about finding food for a suddenly-changed diet? An obligate carnivore might starve if supplies of meat could not be easily procured, and the more esoteric diets that can occur were still unknown, without the base to swiftly figure out what one was becoming in time to secure access to even something as basic as sunshine, depending on where one lived. Why, even needing buildings, furniture, and clothing suited to someone significantly outside the normal ranges for a Human would make life difficult."

Otterly reached up and grabbed the mic, which thankfully was wireless. He didn't like standing behind a lectern, pacing the front of the auditorium a bit was more his style. Helped him see who was paying attention. Helped him get nervous energy out. This topic was also not exactly a comfortable one. Not taboo, certainly, but nobody liked hearing about the kinds of suffering that shaped the world.

"I am glossing over a lot of details here as I outline things, but we will get into them over the course of the semester. Around the year e155, people realized that the course the world was taking was both destructive and pointless. The largest nations at the time, the greatest groups of power, came to the table for what would be one of the final times as separate entities. They set down the ground rules for what the world SHOULD be, and this time people were finally inclined to listen. Please open your books to the world map on page five."

There was the usual clatter and rumble as students once again realized that they had books and should probably have had them on their desks, then dug through whatever bags, satchels, and pouches they had them in. The expressions on their faces were always the same. Furrowed brows, concern, shock.

"This was the state of the world at that time. It would take nearly three hundred years of dedicated efforts to repair much of the damage old humanity had done to it. Carbon was pulled from the atmosphere, fossils left in the ground. Plastics cleansed from the water supplies. Garbage fished from the oceans, wildlife reintroduced where possible. Disease had to be fought, wasted materials reclaimed, and alternatives found to bad habits long held by the most prosperous in the world. A generational effort, multigenerational. Eventually, the seas receded and the weather calmed. The summers returned to a survivable state. Humanity adapted. Above all, they adapted to who they now were."

The older Crow from before was looking thoughtful. Unlike most of the students in the hall, he had brought a nameplate. Helped. "Viv, you look like you want to ask me something?"

The Crow's voice was a bit rough. Looks like the gray around the feathers was not just for show. "Actually, I do, professor. Good spot. You mentioned about people's inner nature combining with something to determine their forms after their Change? Never heard of that."

"Yes, their perceptions. Not surprised you hadn't, it's a relatively recent hypothesis, but data is backing it up. Still, it is relevant to this time. Cultures around the world express concepts differently, this should not be a surprise and is something that we will go over more of. Where one person might perceive Owls as wise sages, someone else seeing them as perceptive, and another might think of them as flying feather pillows full of anger. All might become Owls for very different reasons."

The Crow grinned. To someone who had dealt with as many corvids as Otterly had, the expression was usually one he was usually wary of, but no mischief seemed about to manifest. Others laughed in the audience, thankfully including the Owls. The joke, though illustrative, was not always received well. He decided to get along with the day's other priority, an icebreaker. The students would be working together frequently due to the nature of people being people, and these people influencing the course of events. Today's would be a hair different than his usual, though.

"Alright, class, I count about a hundred of you here. We've talked about the Repair the World period of our history, and since you seem to be curious as to what happened before the change, I don't see why I should discourage this. Get into groups of three or four, nobody who was sitting within a couple seats of each other to begin with, and get talking. What do you think could have caused those damages, and what form did the repairs for them take?"

His slightly-feral grin returned as the student body dissolved into chaos for a moment. Those who would normally want to group up usually did so at the outset, and his little restriction had the effect of obliterating that comfortable groove. Good. Part of the point was to mingle. It was more than just making friends, it was continuing to erode those fractious differences that killed so many. Otterly was self-aware enough to know he wasn't personally immune to bias and stereotype no matter how hard he tried, perhaps in a few hundred more years the descendants of these students would be.

He wandered. In one corner, Viv was talking to the red Bat, a Human, and Isabel about manufacturer waste. Two brightly-colored Lizards (Geckos, perhaps. though it was hard to tell from the front), were chatting the Fennec's ears off on the topic of desert logistics.

"We speak of the ills of the world in part to help us show what we still do to this day. National borders softened, merged, and eventually evaporated. We know the regions now, not the nations. However, prejudices and stereotypes do still persist. No matter how hard we work for it and support those in need, we still have fixed forms of currency for exchange. Perhaps the day will soon come when those are no longer necessary, but it is not yet. Every day, we find another relic of the past, and it is incumbent on us to decide if it is one worth keeping or if it should be discarded."

The Moth, eyes closed for focus, raised a hand this time. He proceeded almost before Otterly paused. "What kinds of things did we keep, if the old world was so messed up?"

That was a new one. Perhaps he'd need to teach this class more often. "That is an interesting question. Off the tip of my tail, there is a surprising amount. All of you are carrying or wearing several things that were based in the technological developments of the period, like your phones. We may use different materials now, but we remain interconnected on a global scale. Satellites, networks of roads and rails, and the core of most sciences come from that era. We keep a modified form of the global government, and utilized pieces of the foundational documents of nearly two hundred nations in crafting its charter." He looked at the clock. Time, as it does, had flown. "And that gives us a good place to pause. I will see all of you tomorrow, and we will be discussing the functions of the global government I just mentioned, in case any of you want to come ready to go. Dismissed."

The word might as well have been the buzzer at the start of a race. Students almost literally (and in at least one case QUITE literally) flew out the closest doors they could reach as they left to seek food, friends, or their next class. Silence was what remained in their wake, a silence the professor had come to appreciate over the years. A brief moment of meditation, of re-centering. The semester had just begun, after all, and there would be...

Ping

... a text message from the University Hospital that they had lost internet access and all the usual techs were otherwise occupied, so could the IT professor with an open period please come help. Otterly sighed.

"Ah, well," he said to the empty room, "At least it will make the day go more quickly."