Unspoken Histories - TheGiraffe3/Endless-Sky-Creators-Handbook GitHub Wiki
Original text, by MasterOfGrey
Navigation
INTRODUCTION
PREHISTORY
THE GAP
THE VISIBLE EXTINCTIONS
LIVING HISTORY
INTRODUCTION
Caveat Emptor
There is insufficient information in the game to reliably project entire histories. Even a perfect projection from what exists already would have holes in it which could only be filled by speculation or Word of God*™. I have in-filled such holes with speculative events which I believe provide the appropriate material to reinforce existing narrative, and to provide material for future story-telling. Such areas in this are thus presented as-is, and only direct in-game contradiction or clear identification of a continuity error will be accepted as a source of review. This is my personal conception of how I think it went down, and subjective opinions will only be treated as cause for review of this entirely at my own discretion. (If you don’t like it, lump it.)
PREHISTORY
The Pug
A fair while ago, in a galaxy at least decently far away, the Pug fought a war. This was a great war, a war which defined their species, demanded everything of their society, and threatened the existence of far more than themselves. A war to end all wars, one lengthy and extensive enough to utterly erase individuality from their culture, and possibly to even demand erasing it from their genome to survive.
This war was against a terrible form of life. A swarm species, likely silicoid in nature, which escaped the confines of its evolutionary home and began spreading and consuming as it went.
Caught in the cradle this would not have been a threat but, like a wound allowed to fester, once gone wild they would only become more and more dangerous over time. Perhaps they grew from their roots in a fallow area of the Pug’s home galaxy, or perhaps they arrived by seed or by spore from some other distant galaxy and were fortunate enough to land somewhere remote and uninhabited; fertile ground for their development.
In any event they had grown almost beyond hope of control before anyone had a chance to prevent them, and this would lead to the annihilation of all species from the Pug’s home galaxy (except perhaps the Wanderer’s, though we’ll get to that later) except for the Pug themselves. Eventually, the Pug would develop such technologies as to allow them to erase stars, drag planets whole through space, and burn space itself to cleanse it of this threat.
When the dust settled though, there was nothing left. Not one habitable world remaining in their galaxy, and scarcely a single stable star. Only a single splinter of the Pug, sequestered in new colonies in a tiny distant galaxy, remaining as a home for the Pug fleets to return to.
With only the barest splinter of their original population remaining and with their culture burned out to a frail husk of what it once was, they were left with the tools of a race that could straddle galaxies, and the spirit of an old master, whose only animating purpose is to find someone to pass the torch to. Too broken to advance. This would become the sole driving raison d’être for their civilisation. For they could never know if some spore from the great swarm was still out there, slow-boating its way to another galaxy where it might take root in fertile ground and begin its horror anew. Even if not, if such life could evolve once, it could always evolve again...
The Drak
The Drak history is defined in the Lore Dump provided by MZ.
The Wanderers
There are two possible explanations for this, and I think they’re interchangeable.
Option 1: The Wanderers were a primitive, though highly adaptable species in the Pug home galaxy. This allowed them to survive, with assistance, being relocated repeatedly by the Pug ahead of the encroaching destruction caused by the great swarm. Since they lose much of their recalled history each time they metamorphose and adapt again, it is not unreasonable that this might be forgotten.
Option 2: The Wanderers were discovered in the galaxy the Pug made new colonies in, busily going about making beautiful worlds all of their own accord. The Pug arriving there would have been so far beyond them by the late stage of the war as to appear like gods, and the Pug might have seen in them a way to restore those fallow areas of galaxies, left destroyed by crisis, to support life which might resist the re-spawning of a great swarm while it was still in the cradle.
In either case, the Pug then choose to shepherd the Wanderers onto a path, making use of their innate talents and adaptability to inure the universe against a repeat of the great crisis. With the hope that one day, in the far future, the Wanderers may grow in themselves enough to become inheritors of the Pug’s original home.
The Quarg
(This contains a small but deliberate deviation from MZ’s lore dump.) The Quarg were mere children when the Drak were busy wiping themselves out, but children with eyes to see nonetheless. The Quarg were discovered only near to the end, and during the great civil war the Drak were able to maintain but one single common ground: the Quarg must be protected.
The Drak saw in them everything that they did not have. Tendency to consensus, willingness to compromise, predisposition towards patience, disquiet with the use of violence.
Even then a Quarg lived longer than a Drak, and exposure to great violence tended to make them permanently incapacitated in some way. So “the patient children” were to be taught, and protected. When things got very close to the end, and no Drak could spare the effort to deal with them, it was with the Quarg that the Archons sheltered. They temporarily sealed the Quarg off in a bubble of slowed space-time and watched their race destroy itself. Eventually, the Archons unsealed the Quarg’s bubble once all was safe and continued to foster everything they’d seen that was good about the Quarg, without revealing the whole truth to them. They had presented themselves as teachers, protectors and guides before the end, and now they explained they had been left behind by the Drak who had burned stars to open hidden paths into a deeper reality that lies beyond this one. Driven by their need to explore and to discover new things. (This provides an explanation for the stellar carnage the Quarg could not help but notice when they travelled out into the stars.)
The Quarg, of course, are not unclever or unwise, and were quick to learn lessons from past crises and build cultural institutions to ensure that their society would be resilient. Something they were uniquely qualified to fine-tune, with individual generations able to live long enough to see the outcomes of a decision and then iterate on its issues a number of times before they passed from working society. This made veneration of the elders a cornerstone of their society, and also fostered a high value on incremental progress and fine-tuning.
“Never judge a person who makes continual progress, however small.”
This would become the defining characteristic of their culture. The Archon’s praised this, and reinforced all things which leant Quarg society stability, and in this way the Quarg came to see themselves as partners in the noble mission of the Archons to prevent future civilizations from driving themselves extinct.
(In this way, the Archons still watch their race destroy itself and are alone for a long time while the Quarg are inside a safety bubble, and the Quarg history is effectively the same length, just with a blip in the middle where they didn’t experience normal space-time. Additionally, this provides additional reinforcement of the Archons being very powerful, and maybe being able to manipulate leftover Drak technology. Plus having an explanation for stellar carnage, and having “The Drak” actively protect them from the fallout creates an origin story mythos that is inseparable from their veneration of the Drak, which helps to emphasise the depths of the Quarg connection to the Drak and why they might be willing to go up against the incredibly powerful Pug on the matter of a principle they learned from the Drak.)
THE GAP
The Theorycrafting
The Archons watch as, after a long dark with only the Quarg who spent most of it in protective isolation, the first new species begin to emerge in the galaxy. Using themselves and the Quarg as initial data points they develop a theory for nurturing species without disrupting them from the outside, lest they risk passing on some idea which might result in a new species following the path of the Drak.
The Quarg were a slow, considerate, passive race, who thrived in a constrained space, even going so far as to self-constrain once the galaxy was open to them. In contrast the Drak were aggressive explorers and expanders, and the Archons conclude that with such aggression the Drak were too unconstrained. They were able to grow beyond all reason and balance before reaching the point of having to address their internal issues.
Thus the Archons decided to adopt a garden approach; assessing the aggressiveness of a species, and tending the systems and hyperlanes around their birthplace to create a space with the ideal volume of space and quantity of resources to let them achieve their potential, but force them to learn how to exist sustainably before they grew beyond their capacity to self-regulate.
At least initially, this approach causes no great issues to arise.
The Arrival
The Pug arrive in the galaxy for the first time and see a great deal of emptiness. This arrival is initially met with joy, for the appearance of new species is a joyous thing to the Archons and the Quarg, but the first disagreement arises when the Pug propose bringing in the Wanderers to start filling it. They are denied by the Archons who wish to see species arise naturally and, unwilling to step on the toes of the locals, the Pug go about setting up outposts from which they can watch for disaster in peace.
One of these outposts is in Aki-il. It is chosen because of its isolation, disconnection from nearby systems, and its central vantage over an expansive, uninhabited, and free-resource rich corner of the galaxy (perfect fertile ground for their ancient foe).
It is from here that they observe the Builders rising from obscurity to feel about the space around them. The Pug tell no one, and begin making plans to ensure the Builders’ success. They bring the Wanderers secretly into a cluster of disconnected systems between Aki’il and the Builders’ homeworld to prepare a place for them to expand into.
The Loss
Eventually a race subject to the Archons’ plans, quite young and new, encounters a crisis. A disease of their own making which is unmaking their society. The Pug offer to intervene, but the Archons insist that they’ve given the species everything it needs to work things out, even going so far as to have allowed them to meet their neighbours at a time when they thought they were ready and stable, with the belief that this would empower them to progress safely and securely. The Archons are wrong and, as this alien species dies, massive ecological collapse finishes them off quite suddenly and renders most of their worlds toxic or barren. Eventually the Pug are allowed to officially bring the Wanderers into the galaxy to clean up. (In actual fact only relocating them from the cluster near Aki’il, and opening the wormholes to connect Builder space together.)
(Ideally I would place this species directly east of the galactic centre, for the purely selfish reason that if/when I get the Xapleaux off the ground, they would have interacted with this species briefly during its decline during the earliest stages of their own history.)
THE VISIBLE EXTINCTIONS
The Builders
The Builders arose in the area of the galaxy most violently afflicted by the stellar carnage left by the Drak’s “ascension” (wink, wink, nudge nudge). The area of space is one that the Quarg typically did not travel, out of veneration for what they believed happened there. The Builders arose before the “civilisation boom” but weren't discovered until around that time, and were benefited by the prevalence of heavy metals and other useful elements made free by the carnage and then easily accessible as they formed onto the crusts of habitable worlds and made rich planetoids out of whole cloth (metaphorically speaking).
With this advantage their society learned to build faster than it learned to grow, and they were capable of engineering feats that even the Quarg would view with begrudging respect by the time the Quarg stumbled upon them. Here in the ember waste reality was too fragile for the Archons to do extensive tending of the hyperlanes, nevermind that it would show their hand to a species that was already spacefaring and capable of great feats, so the builders were left with the haphazard collection of systems already made available to them.
This discovery of the Builders occurred at a similar time to when the Quarg were also befriending the Hai and setting about making Hevru Hai a place where they could coexist. So, the Quarg showed up to the Builders, picked an empty system, and started building their ring exactly the same way. Things carried on fine for a while, though the Quarg never quite get the Builders to trust them wholly, and cannot be impressed by the strength of Quarg ships in the same way the Hai could be. The Hai, much to everyone’s surprise (even the Pug’s), discover the unstable wormhole to the Ember Waste and travel through with an expeditionary fleet to explore.
The Pug see an opportunity to spur the builders to greater heights by exposing them to someone comparable, whom they might impress and be impressed by with their respective technologies. When the Hai expedition becomes lost and confused after reaching Insitor, losing probes and then reaching Antevorta, the Pug use their technology to ever so subtly, and in absolute secrecy, encourage the Hai sensors to view Ossipago as their way back home. Unfortunately, communication is unable to be established and the Hai expedition, critically starved of supplies, moves to land on the Builder world. The Builders are threatened by this and open fire, before having their paltry security forces annihilated by the moderately superior Hai ships and their Ion weaponry. The Hai then functionally invade the world for supplies, so desperate is their plight, and before the Quarg can get wind of it and intervene the Builders bring a more serious fleet to bear and destroy the Hai expedition, gaining their first exposure to ion weaponry technology and its effectiveness in the process.
Unfortunately, the Builders are encouraged towards xenophobia by this experience. After so long alone in their little disaster-space, they’ve now met 2 aliens. One hostile, and one aloof, both apparently from less hazardous and friendlier areas of space, both powerful, and neither helpful. When they get wind of it the Quarg berate them for the disaster, but are forced to admit that the Hai are indeed aggressive as a species. With this admission all hope of the Quarg truly gaining their trust is lost, after all, can the Quarg really be called friends if they keep such secrets?
The Hai, having never received word back from their expedition, write the whole thing off. Future events in their history will proceed to distract them from ever getting around to a second attempt.
Nevertheless, the Builders resort to their primary talent, building, producing the Ka’Het to fight the Hai. The builders use their exposure to Hai ion weapons to build Ion torpedoes, and find them to be shockingly effective, at least against their own ships. When the Quarg advise them that their path is folly the Builders react negatively, and become obsessed with a strong independent defence, expanding and growing the Ka’Het to try and make themselves feel safe. Until it all goes wrong. Once the Ka'het grow out of control the Pug rear their head to get involved, they do not want to stand idly by a second time, and they move to give the Builders better tools with which to fight the Ka’Het. However, the Quarg see a fight against the Ka'het to be a way to recover their friendship with the Builders, and see the Pug's form of meddling as unnecessary and damaging. The Builders, after all, have not shown any evidence that they can be trusted or have gained the maturity sufficient to deal with more tools of destruction.
Cue Pug-Quarg conflict. The Quarg intervene to prevent the Pug from helping and the Pug retaliate, refusing to be cowed out of helping prevent one of the few species in this galaxy from going extinct. The conflict escalates between the Quarg, who by now have a huge advantage in numbers, and the Pug who have unlimited mobility and many force-multipliers.
When the Builders are forced back to their outer space and build a second round of “improved” Ka’Het to fight the first lot, the Quarg see the crisis as escalating and elect to go for a decisive strike, their lack of history with conflict contributing to planning this attack to strike indiscriminately against both civilian and military targets. They send a massive fleet to the Pug outpost near the builders, more ships than the Pug could fight on terms that didn’t involve breaking space-time. The Pug decide enough is enough. They evacuate the world before the Quarg can arrive and reach out with their other technologies to snap the ring to pieces and drag it through space time to World’s End. Leaving a wormhole in the Pug system for the fleet to go through, and then discover the evidence of the Pug’s awesome power, and provide evacuation efforts to the Quarg dragged out there with it.
With the sudden loss of their ring the Quarg are not in any position to be interfering with the Builders, they have their own crisis of evacuation to deal with. The Pug return to offering the Builders better tools to fight the Ka’Het, but by now the crisis is dire and the Builders are distrustful of gods who would toss them trinkets. The Archons are also not thrilled at all by this sequence of events, but hordes of Ka’Het with cloaking and ion torpedoes are no joke, and the Builders are already a husk of their former selves. In the end, between the bickering, and the Builder’s mistrust of others, and the Ka’Het’s insidious ability to swarm in under cloak... well. The end comes for the Builders, and all sides are forced to confront their failures and their shame.
The Sheragi
With the Builder disaster still recent, Archons blaming the Pug for meddling, and the Sheragi being a theoretically perfect case for the Archons’ methods. The Pug stay out of it and the Archons get to witness their perfect example case fail right before them.
The Pug, for their part, judged the Sheragi to be a species poorly equipped for advancing into the future, and left them to their fate. Sometimes a lesson that needs teaching must be taught absolutely. Principles are, after all, worth dying for.
LIVING HISTORY
The Coalition
The Coalition are not subject to Pug involvement, so much as a Pug suggestion.
The Quarg decide to get in on the space and ensure the Pug do not meddle in the Coalition races, and the Archons do the usual thing of sectioning them off. It’s imperfect, and the Pug go nowhere near them, for there is no point provoking a conflict before it is necessary.
Despite their best efforts, the Coalition races simply do not have enough space, but the drak judge the inherent division that would exist between the two parts of the space they would occupy if they were granted chunks of Sheragi space would cause deeper issues still. The Quarg are still fiercely against cooperating with the Pug after the horrific loss of their Builder ring, but when things start to go downhill the Archons are more open to ideas. They’ve witnessed too much failure too recently. The wounds are too fresh. The Pug suggest to the Archons that connecting them all together and letting them share their common enemy of the Quarg could provide the necessary pressure to ensure they find a way to avoid self-annihilation.
Over the Quarg’s protestations, the Archons do exactly that. The thin edge of the wedge is driven between the Archons and the Quarg for the first time in literally millions of years.
When the Coalition races decide that conquering a ring is a necessity, the Archons implore the Quarg to abandon them rather than fight the Coalition. The Archons are acutely aware of the consequences to the Quarg from conflict-related trauma, and do not wish that upon them.
Some of the Quarg listen, some do not. The greatly diminished contingent of the Quarg are eventually overrun, and the Archons do nothing to rescue them. The Quarg mythos of the Archons as protectors takes another blow, and the wedge drives in further. Especially when the plan actually works, at the cost of many Quarg lives.
Humanity
After the success with the Coalition the Archons give the Pug free reign to develop the plan for protecting Humanity, the Quarg start building their ring for humanity because no one objects. They are told though, not to interfere with the Pug plan for humanity. Resentment against the Archons stews among the Quarg for a while, and the wedge goes in further.
The Korath
Having been around for a decent bit, the Korath were set up under the Archons’ plan. Their ultimate disaster did not occur until quite late though, after the success of the Pug’s suggestion for the Coalition. When it became clear that the Archons’ plan would not work for the Korath, they handed over the reins to the Pug. The Korath, however, were more intent on self-destruction than any race before them, and that soon looked set to fail too.
When the Korath started developing self-propagating war machines, the Quarg could not help but draw parallels to the Builders and the Ka’Het, and begged the Archons to intervene.
By this point it was almost too late, the intervention was messy. The Pug who had never intended to intervene here simply went back to the areas they cared about, the exiles were relegated to the edge of the core, and the Quarg defied all history and convention to defend the Efreti from the encroaching war machines.
This abject failure of the Archons to guide the Korath, the collaboration with the Pug and then subsequent failure of that, and then the messy intervention dividing the Korath drives the wedge home. Some among the Quarg insult the Archons, calling them feeble and ineffectual. They raise doubts about the Archons having ever been suited for the role they appointed themselves to. They do not come to blows, but Quarg society becomes fractured between those who still support the Archons, those who support the Archons’ ideals but not the Archons themselves, and those who believe it is time the Quarg start acting independently.
Contact between the Archons and the Quarg cease, though no one besides them is aware of it. The collection of Drak trinkets that the Quarg have, and their long history of association, helps them retain their status as the perceived mouthpiece of the Drak, and they begin to position for their own future, on their terms.
Unwilling to provoke a conflict with the Pug though, they do not interfere in the Pug’s plans for humanity. After all, the Quarg are not unclever or unwise, and are quick to learn lessons from past crises.