The Acheron Muddle - TheGiraffe3/Endless-Sky-Creators-Handbook GitHub Wiki
Original text by the_legendary_m
Navigation
Introduction
Deep in south Acheron lies the ruins of the Rulei, an ancient, powerful race. Not only are they able to terraform planets on a whim and make exotic biological material, they are also able to mess with stars and gravity itself, defying the very laws of physics.
Then, one day, they disappeared. Some claims it's of their doing, and they deserve it. Not all is as they seem, however.
In fact, the Rulei and the Gegno are one and the same.
The Rulei were never homogenous. Instead, there were made up of two species, the ancestors of the modern Iaculex and the Usuelit. The two species evolved independently of each other, in neighbouring sectors designated by the Drak. Soon, they achieve spaceflight capabilities, and start colonising nearby sectors.
Intervention
The Pug comes, sees two fledging species, and decide to connect them through wormholes.
The Iaculex and the Usuelit quickly meet each other. Despite their smaller size, the Usuelit were more war-like. After quick debates, the Usuelit decides to invade Iaculex territories to rule over them.
The Iaculex, while more passive, wields considerably more advanced warships, being very heavily inclined towards scientific research. And so the Usuelit and the Iaculex fought to a stalemate, neither gaining ground.
As WW1 and WW2 taught humans, war promotes technological advancement. The same goes for the two species. Wanting to one-up the other, the two proto-Rulei species started a technological race. Like the Korath, however, this race eventually created more destructive weapons, threatening to end their civilisations. Seeing this, the Pug intervened.
The Pug did what no other race thought of before. They meddled with the two species' stars. Particularly the one in the home systems of Kanguwa and G-6183. Speeding up the two stars’ stellar cycles, the Pug gave the two warring races the illusion that their stars are about to end. Simultaneously, the Pug reveals themselves as the cause of this cataclysm.
The effect is immediate. The Iaculex and the Usuelit immediately stopped fighting and banded together to stop the Pug, and forms the “Rulei”, a common front against the Pug. Wanting to teach the two races more, and accelerate them to new heights, the Pug decide to fight the two races in a constant stalemate, matching the Rulei’s technological level every time the Rulei make a new breakthrough.
The Rulei do not disappoint. Advanced bio-engineering allow them to interbreed and create the Satequli. Interspecies breeding is, in fact, encouraged by the Rulei government to facilitate unity. As the wars escalate, the Rulei also started to do something the Pug do not expect, as they also start to meddle with stars themselves.
What Went Wrong
Stars are a fickle thing, and the Pug disrupted their flows by altering their cycles. Further primitive meddling by the Rulei eventually caused the stars to collapse. Brilliantly, Kanguwa, G-6183, and Yranjiu collapsed into a neutron star and two black holes. In a flash, the Rulei civilisation collapsed, its major population centres destroyed in an instant. Only a single ship, the vyu-Ir, survived the supernovae, being designed to withstand extreme stellar conditions in the first place.
The Pug did not anticipate this development, and can only watch in horror as the Rulei civilisation abruptly end in their watch. Fortunately, in typical Pug fashion, backup copies of the Iaculex and the Usuelit are created, with abduction times ranging from before the war to just before the Rulei stars collapse. The Pug settled them in north Acheron space, in the star the Rulei refugees call “Dueyu Eitch”, or Second Home. Centuries of interbreeding have eroded the Iaculex and Usuelit identities away, and a new “Gegno” identity is created in its place.
The Pug, traumatised by their stellar failure, dared not intervene in Gegno affairs again, letting the Quarg settle there instead.
Centuries pass. The memories of the Rulei have mostly faded from the Gegno collective conscious, and their trauma of the skies and the stars have faded away into nothingness. Space programs restart, and the Gegno slowly rebuild their interstellar civilisation from ground up. Memories of the Rulei megastructures have survived, but the technical details have been forgotten. The biggest question now, is the path forwards.
The Current State
This time, the Iaculex-dominated Gegno Vi advocates for military expansion, as a way to defend against unknown enemies like the Pug, who may once again mess with their new stars. Usuelits, in contrast, vows to uphold their Rulei legacy by focusing on scientific research, hoping to match the Rulei’s feats, and achieve the dreams of the newest Gegno generation. For mining rights, they fight once more. Not a fight of conquest, but a domestic argument on which way forwards.
Nobody is more conflicted than the Quarg. A race wronged by the Pug is also a race shaped by the Pug. The Quarg partly wishes to one-up the Pug by nurturing the Gegno well, but seeing the Gegno’s sorry state once again reminds them of the Pug’s immense power.
May time tell how Acheron will turn out.