Landok - The Stranded Fugitive

Introduction

Who am I

My name is Landok. I am a reptilian humanoid alien from the distant planet Quaecalamara, which is pronounced koo-ay-kala-marr-a. I am of average height for my species, and slightly taller than one of the average males among your human species. I have small, tough, knobbly scales as skin covering my entire body, which are varying shades of green, darker on my body and lighter on my limbs, especially around my face. I have two arms, two legs, two hands, two feet, a single head, and usually wear a black leather jacket, black leather trousers, a dark coloured shirt and dark shoes. I have no hair anywhere on my body, so I'm totally hairless, and sharp silvery teeth in my lipless mouth, with small golden eyes with slitted pupils, and elongated nostrils on the edge of my flat, boneless nose. My long, spidery fingers have sharp and black fingernails, my toes are small and stubby with black, blunt toenails, not that you're ever likely to see them. Basically I look like a bald human man crossed with an iguana.

I can eat. I can sleep. I can lose or gain stamina. I have emotions. I can get excited, I can get angry, I can get sad, I can love, and I can be bored. We're not all totally different from you humans out here in the galaxy you know. I have a family, yes, parents and siblings and extended relations, most of them on my home planet but others spread out throughout the universe for one reason or another. I have a job as well, or rather I did before I became a fugitive. A stranded fugitive.

I was a writer on my home world of Quaecalamara. I wrote short stories, poetry, articles for newspapers and magazines, and even a best-selling novel called Too Hot For Some - The Quaecalamarians In Search Of The Best Places For Sunbathing, which has now sold in excess of 400 million copies! My entire race is reptilian you see, and we require several hours of direct sunlight to get going each day, being cold-blooded creatures. All these publications were electronic, as the children of my race tended to eat them when they were made of paper, so we switched to electronic publications to solve that little problem. I was working on a sequel to my best-seller, called The Quaecalamarians Who Learnt How Painful Sunburnt Skin Can Be, when everything changed. And I became a fugitive. A stranded fugitive.

The Shadows of Yesterday

My family has a long history of involvement in politics, and it wasn't long before that history caught up with us, well, mostly me actually. To cut a long and dull story short, I was accused of being involved with a rival political party that were responsible for a terrible war on Quaecalamara, which wiped out a great number of my race. I couldn't prove my innocence, and belief in my guilt was unanimous, so I was sentenced to exile. Permanent exile. I could never go back home, never see my family again, never complete the sequel to my best-selling novel. I wasn't involved with the political party, just for the record, but some of the most dodgy and brilliant lawyers in Quaecalamarian legal history worked against me during the trial, and the outcome was certain. But I had a plan.

I was on board a prison vessel carrying other members of my race who had also been exiled, en route to the uninhabited planet Skarra, where my life-long exile was to take place. Once released from my containment cell, I put in motion a prearranged plan organised with one of my fellow inmates, my former publisher as it turned out. He was a bit of a smuggler before becoming a publisher, and had smuggled the security card to the escape pod of the vessel. He gave this card to me, hidden inside a book, which he presented as a farewell gift to me, and I was able to break away from the guards and use the card to enter the escape pod.

Luckily, the planet Skarra is not too far from Earth (I've often wondered why you humans haven't discovered it yet), and by tampering with the escape pod's guidance system, I was able to direct it towards the Earth. I crash landed in southern England on a set of islands you humans call Great Britain or the U.K., and on exiting the escape pod, I realised I was a wanted fugitive stranded on an alien planet. My people would never let my escaping of justice go unchecked, and with all eyes and ears among my race now firmly trained on finding me, I now have no option but to keep a low profile here on Earth, in England, while I figure out what to do next.

You may wonder why I chose to leave a vessel heading for a planet where I was to be exiled, only to land on a planet where I can never leave due to the heavy damage sustained to my escape pod. The truth is, a planet populated by human beings is better than a planet populated by nobody at all, and what's that old saying that you humans once came up with? Oh yes, "While there's life, there's hope."

Quaecalamara

My home planet Quaecalamara, which in our native language means "Scorched Soil," is a very hot and humid planet, which explains why my race is a reptilian one. There are few trees, another good reason for making electronic publications, and our climate is like one of your best ever summers, only it lasts all throughout the year, which is a lot longer than your year of 365 days, since the planet revolves slowly on its axis. It's mostly made of inhospitable rock and molten mud, but we have compensated for that by building our towns, villages and cities high above the ground, on firm supports embedded in the rock, which makes our lives easier and happier.

Our society closely reflects your own here on Earth, so I didn't need to skip any prepatory research like a certain Ford Prefect (a good friend of mine by the way) when coming to the planet Earth.

I wonder if I'll ever see Quaecalamara again...

About Me

My real name is Louis.

I'm a 20 year old male student.

I live in Bournemouth, southern England, U.K.

This is a very rough homepage at the moment. I will improve it and make it complete at a later date when I have more time.

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Landok

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