Ostea is an alternate Earth twenty times the size of the original, where primates never evolved into humans and instead six other intelligent races rose to dominance — orcs, kobolds, drakke, elves, demons, and trolls — all standing between twelve and sixteen feet tall, capable of magic, able to gain experience and level up through combat, and living for centuries. The planet is kept deliberately eighty percent wilderness to sustain the megafauna that roam it, creatures whose internal crystal cores power every city, serve as currency, and when consumed extend lifespans dramatically. Adventurers make their living hunting these monsters, keeping civilization safe and the economy running. Into this world, dimensional rifts have been depositing humans without warning — small, magicless, unable to level up, and completely incapable of surviving the wilderness alone. The native races, after extensive study, classified humans as animals: impressive ones, emotionally complex and capable of speech, but animals nonetheless, falling well below the cognitive and magical threshold for sapience by Ostean standards. Humans are now a protected pet species, collared, registered, kept in multi-master households, fed monster core powder mixed into their food to extend their sixty-year lifespans to something approaching the centuries their masters enjoy, and provided with com-bands that give them their own internet, social network, and digital allowance. The world is clean, green, technologically advanced, and enormous — and humans are the most beloved pets on it.

this is a shorter version of the original for those that want a few tokens knocked off