Reunbuilding the world, or, 'Teenage Mutant WHAT?!'

I was looking over my old posts, particularly the ones describing my process of building the Illi Pesch region in 12W.  I realise that I built way too much, for someone whose original idea was to run a sandbox campaign.  I thought, 'wouldn't it be nice to run something, on Google Plus or even in meatspace with a small group of players at a local cafe or something, with just the first handful of things I made?'

I got the notebook out and had a look and realised the first little empire I made is populated with -- please don't hit me -- anthropomorphic ducks.  The name 'Mallardo Empire' was pestering me so I decided they were ducks.  I have no idea.  In a way it's wonderfully whimsical, but really I want to do something that's predominately humanocentric, so why the heck did I make Teenage Mutant Ninja Medieval Ducks?  I love mutant animals, that's why.  Okay, mystery solved.  But I could just make them a human empire.  The writeup in my notebook, the fourth entry after three random little seed ideas/weird details I'd planned to use later, reads thusly:

The Mallardo Empire - small nation of Mallards, anthro Mallard ducks.  Fierce, proud, isolationist.  Emporer always called "The Mallardo", Empress "Mallarda".  Culture vaguely Spanish.  Conquistadors.

Somehow it seems wrong to just make them humans.  And of course my brain goes immediately down the 'it must make SENSE!' pathway, thinking of how maybe the world is populated with remnants of post-nuclear apocalyptic worlds and these ducks are mutant animals, if anyone of this technology level knew what a genetic mutant actually was.  Maybe they're the outgrowth of a weird failed/successful magical/scientific experiment.

But the old-schoolers would have it that it doesn't have to make sense.  And I have agreed with that.  And I like the idea of this being someplace that once had high tech but it went wrong and ate them or something and so now the world is coming back from being ruined or what-have-you.

Regardless, I'm revisiting the idea of running something based here, mutant ducks or no mutant ducks.  Of course, I'm also into the science fiction at the moment, probably a side-effect of my studies in maths and science.  Oh, how my detail-oriented mind goes for building solar systems!  More 'it must make SENSE!' than you can shake a nonsensical thing at.  But I'll discuss that at another time, I expect.   It is possible for me to grab the first strands of 12W and drop some characters in and shake it around and see what happens.  This can happen.  Or I will drop some characters into the rules-light, possible d6 system sci-fi setting I've been poking at and shake that.  Adventure is afoot!