Saturday October 12, 2002
Kssthrata 'troops' are often referred to as 'teeth'-- it's a cultural thing. This is reflected in their ranks, as well: 'Foretooth' is the equivalent of 'column leader,' which term evolved into 'colonel' on ancient Earth.

One might wonder at the rank of 'sergeant' which in English (and hence the corrupted Galstandard West) originated from the latin word for 'servant' and through the passage of centuries went from meaning 'soldier-servant of a knight' to meaning 'I am your momma, your poppa, and your shoulder to die on.'

In the Kssthrata tongue the word has a different (albeit rather parallel) history, and stems from the tooth-related word "serrator" and the word "gentle(man)." Literally, the rank of sergeant among the Kssthrata is the leader of the 'serrator' troops, or 'gent responsible for serrating our enemies.'

A kindly gent indeed.

Book 2: The Teraport Wars
 Part III: Schlocktoberfest 2002
Saturday October 12, 2002

Transcript

Kssthrata Foretooth:Get me a jaw of your sharpest, sergeant. I'm being paged with new orders from our ob'enn allies.
Kssthrata Sergeant:Tooth and claw, sir!
Console:Take your best troops to the command deck. I've enclosed instructions for tripping the ship's allegiance relay.
Console:Hurry. We have about five minutes befor the ship's A.I. kills us all.
Console:And don't talk about what you're doing, or the ship will kill us all anyway. The walls have ears.
Kssthrata Foretooth:(thinking) I gotta get rid of this pager. It never sends me good news.