Vehement, Unbidden, Aberrant - TheGiraffe3/Endless-Sky-Creators-Handbook GitHub Wiki
Original text by the_legendary_m
Navigation
PROLOGUE
The South of the Galaxy, is also the Graveyard of Empires. Of the three species extinct, two were situated in the Galactic South: The Builders and the Sheragi. The Builders arrived at the Galaxy first. Colonising middle Ember Wastes, the Builders would move to the Graveyard following a wormhole opening. For millennia, the Builders lived peacefully, building megastructures and countless spacecraft. The Builder modus operandi was similar to the pre-exile Korath. Organics being on the ground, while unmanned spacecraft flew above, ferrying resources from world to world. Very occasionally, interstellar buses would take Builders to different worlds. There is one similarity between all these ships: They are unshielded and unarmed. After all, who needs guns when no enemies are around?
The Builders maintained two lines of utility ships that survives to this day. The Ka’mar are mostly responsible for logistical and mining, and the Ka’sei, which are long-range probes sent to nearby systems, hyperdrive-less. Then, a rogue Hai expedition arrived, and all hell broke loose. Confused, the Hai opened fire on a Builder vessel, when the latter refused to give the Hai food. Despite being outnumbered ten thousand to one, the lone Hai Ladybug prevailed, if only due to it being the only ship with any sort of weapons on board. From that day on, the Builders grew paranoid. To defend against these randomly-appearing invaders, the Builders had to build a new type of ship never conceived before, A Ka’het.
The Ka’het ships are the first and last kind of them ever appearing in the Galaxy. Lacking any combat AI, the Builders looked at the Subsidurials floating around them. Evolution depends on out-living your competition, and so the Subsidurials must understand combat, at least better than the Builders do. In a move of infinite wisdom, the Builders built their new warship around Subsidurial pilots, granting the seemingly harmless animals the ability to control the Builders’ most powerful warships. Common wisdom dictates that, when something seems to good to be true, it probably is. Common wisdom also dictates that, when you see a shop in a busy street with no customers, you avoid that shop. The Builders lacked common sense in these departments.
You see, when animals are placed in an unfamiliar place and situation, they tend to get frightened. When animals get frightened, they freak out. When animals freak out, they attack the closest targets they find. For the poor Subsidurials forced into Ka’het vessels, the targets are the Builders themselves. In a most brilliant display of the “fuck-around-and-find-out” schadenfreude karmic twist, the Subsidurials unleashed their Ravager Beams at their creators. Caught with surprise, and with no way to fight back, the Builders were forced back onto their worlds. Despite their repeated calls for help, neither the Pug nor the Quarg responded. Desperate, the Builders released massive waves of Ka’sei probes throughout their settlements in the Graveyard, hoping to get some help from beyond the Graveyard.
No help came. The Builders were on their own.
The Builders, finally figuring out the reason the Ka’het turned against themselves, built a new series of Ka’het. Incorporating what they knew from the Hai vessel, its crew lynched to death once they ran out of supplies and landed, the Builders would construct their second-tier Ka’het vessels with shield matrix installed. Ravager beams, as it turns out, are bad at dealing with shields, and the second-generation Ka’hets a huge advantage of their first rogue models. To placate the Subsidurials, the Builders fit expensive all-round LED screens in the cockpit, emulating the outside environment as closely as possible. Instead of mechanical controls, electronic sensors are built to track the Subsidurial pilot’s movement, as to minimise interference to the Subsidurials and prevent freak accidents from happening again.
With great fanfare, the second-generation Ka’het were deployed all around Builder worlds, and the new ships did do a great job at destroying the first rogue models. The Builders are elated. Their gambit paid off. It did not. See, the Builders forgot one crucial piece of psychology for herbivore animals. The herd mentality, in which an individual would perform an action if enough peers are doing it already. The Subsidurials are insterstellar herbivores, feeding on the ambient Ember Wastes energy.
When the second generation Ka’hets were deployed, the Subsidurial pilots sensed the first generation pilots, frightened and attacking Builder vessels and stations. With less reason to attack their fellow comrades than to attack the Builder stations like their peers were doing, the second generation Ka’hets soon joined the First Generation in attacking the Builders. Though the Builders continued to make more Ka’hets, developing a new anti-shield Annihilator Turrets to counter shields, there was no saving them.
All around Builder space Ka’hets marauded around, destroying the last Builder space installations. Any Builder vessels attempting to leave the atmosphere were targeted and destroyed mercilessly, with no exceptions. Eventually, the Ka’het learnt that the source of their pain lies on the planets below, and begin bombarding them. Two millennia after incessant orbital bombardments, the last Builders died out. Not with a bang, but with the most pathetic of whimpers.
Before the collapse of the Builder civilisation, however, the Builders finished their last great project, a hope of building spaceships that can avoid the Ka’het’s wrath. To do that, the Builders infused Subsidurial tissue into metallic hulls, joining both using complex organometallic complexes that give off the same pheromones as live Subsidurials normally do. With limited resources owing to the constant bombardments, only one copy was ever completed. With grim, desperate hope, the prototype, dubbed “Twilight”, took off, flanked by every single spare Ka’sei ship the Builders could find. Out of all Builder ships, only the Ka’sei and Ka’mar were never targeted by the Ka’het warships. The Twilight did not disappoint, passing Ka’hets ignoring it as it broke free of the planet’s gravitational well, heading towards the West. All tracking data are lost twenty years after the fall of the Builders. That was the last any being heard of the Twilight’s flight.
Tens of millennia later, the fledging Avgi civilisation would be suddenly attacked by strange, Ka’sei-like vessels. Nobody made the connection between the two. What happened in between would be one of life’s greatest mysteries to all. Except the Pug and the Sheragi, that is.
THE VEHEMENT
The Pug are an enigmatic species. From their entry into the Galaxy, the Pug have worked tirelessly to meddle with different species. While their methods vary, from playing God and guiding them like they did the Wanderers, to acting like a despicable enemy and thus uniting them like they did with humans, there is always one factor that never changed. The Pug love backups. The first thing they do while meeting a species, is that they abduct a few samples, and put them elsewhere. Just in case something happened to the main group, and the species go extinct. For the Sheragi’s situation, the Pug’s decision was right.
The circumstances of the Sheragi’s evolution was very different from any other races. The ancestors of humans, of Korath, of Hai all faced natural predators far stronger and more vicious than they were. To survive, they needed cunning, will, and, most importantly, tools and tactics. Only by multiple individuals working together can a predator be subdued. It is precisely due to these ingenuity that the sentient species we know nowadays exist. The Sheragi needed none of the above, as from their inception, they had been the apex predator of their planet. With strong hides, and sharp claws, no other species could defeat the Sheragi in melee. The Sheragi’s psychic abilities, as well as their signature fire breath, mean that any and every enemy the Sheragi came across never could hide or escape from them. Deception and bluffs, vital components for strategy and tactics, never really worked on the Sheragi, and so battles between Sheragi are determined by individual prowess and bravery alone.
The Sheragi were a proud race, valuing honour over all else, up to a fault. Millennia of Sheragi societal evolution have constantly awarded the brave and the daring, and those who refused to fight head-on are considered dishonourable cowards. For Sheragi, being Dishonoured is the greatest insult possible to an individual, bringing their very character and credibility into question. The best Sheragi warriors charge into battles without care. Lesser Sheragi follow the best, and charge into battles without care. All Sheragi charge into Hai ambushes, and were slaughtered.
Throughout the entire Sheragi-Hai War, the conflict did not resemble modern spacecraft combat. Kiting and dogfights, the most basic of tactics seen everywhere throughout the Galaxy, never existed. The Sheragi ships always charged forward, winning many battles at first as the Hai were shocked by their bravado, but the Hai soon learnt of the Sheragi’s inflexibility. Hastily-drawn battle lines became pockets of waiting ambushes, as the Hai developed new generations of long range rapid-firing Pulse Cannons, and pounded advancing Sheragi warships from all sides. The Sheragi did not care. Amber Axes, Peridot Pikes, and Ruby Ranseurs still charged straight like the olden days. The closest analogy of the ensuing bloodbath would be a World War I trench battle, one without artillery, and one where the opposing side had hundreds of machine gun nests defending their trenches. It was not surprising that the Sheragi had an astonishing loss ratio of 1000:1 against the Hai. For comparison, the Second Sino-Japanese War had a ratio of roughly 3:1 in favour of Japan.
Those who understand basic biology would realise that, the larger an adult individual of a species is, the more resource is needed to nurture one to adulthood. Each Sheragi lost in a battlefield represents a large investment of resources gone forever, and the Sheragi soon found themselves starving and underpopulated. As conflict dragged on, the Sheragi became desperate. Instead of finding ways to outsmart their Hai enemies, however, the Sheragi looked for wonder weapons, one that could destroy entire ambushing armies without difficulty. After years of engineering, the Dragonflame Cannon was born. The Dragonflame Cannon was a terror to behold in the battlefield. A new type of warships, Emerald Swords, were designed around these Cannons, and were able to blow up multiple Hai ships with ease, the Gamma Ray bursts outright killing many Hai officers before any could react.
The invention of this terror weapon came at a cost, however. Like Nazi Germany in her twilight days, pumping resources into such wunderwaffen ended up depleting the Sheragi of their last reserves. Each Emerald Sword cost twice as much as a battlegroup of Ruby Rapiers, but are far less flexible and more prone to destruction. As the Hai focussed their firepower on the large Emerald Swords, the Sheragi economy finally collapsed.
The Hai would soon observe that Sheragi attacks on their positions became scarce. Instead of fighting the Hai, scouts reported, the Sheragi began to fight over themselves over their more productive and fertile worlds. Without a stable supply of food, Sheragi, or metal to make more ships, the Sheragi grew desperate. Throughout the war, Hai logistic strikes have disrupted the Sheragi supply chains, robbing the Sheragi of stable supply of anything and everything. The Sheragi society quickly collapsed, even as the Hai initiated their last offensive to try and unite the Sheragi. The last days of the Sheragi civilisation were spent with rabid Sheragis scavenging for food and attacking each other on their planets, having regressed to their most primal instincts. Out in the distance, the Drak howled in anguish, eyeing their second biggest failure.
Like the Builders, the Sheragi breathed their last, not with a bang, but with the most pathetic of whimpers. Or at least it should be, had the Pug not evacuated a large coven of them south before-hand. In a small, isolated pocket of space in the northeast of Twilight Space, northwest of the Graveyard and south of the Rim, lies the Pug Sheragi backup. With honour still strong, food plenty, and knowledge intact, the Sheragi civilisation survived and thrived. The community, now restricted to a smaller cluster of systems, are more tightly-knit and less prone to conflicts, beginning a halcyon period.
Like the Sheragi’s previous home, there is a ring-dwelling species living near them. Unlike the big-eyed dismissive aliens, however, these pale, tall “Pug” seem far more friendly and sociable. Not only do they share their technologies, such as particle stabilisers and organic ships, the Pug are also great mentors, able to provide counselling and offer suitable solutions that fit the Sheragi’s needs. Quickly, the Sheragi befriended the Pugs. Soon enough, the Pug ring, named “Querii”, became one of the most popular Sheragi travel destinations.
The Pug quickly grew to like the Sheragi. Although the dragon-like sentients have no concept whatsoever about battlefield strategy or tactics, they were masters in forging weapons that punch far above their technological level. Despite them being inferior technologically to 3000s humans, the Sheragi’s Particle Waveform Turrets were much more potent weapons. Through subtle and overt encouragement, Sheragi research boomed. Each passing decade saw the Sheragi living situation improving, their mental health fortifying, and their weapons more terrifying. Occasionally, the Pug would introduce hostile indigenous wildlife for the Sheragi to test their weapons, and each time the Sheragi would pass with flying colours. As the Sheragi continued to develop, they managed to surprise even the Pug with their creative usage of Jump Drive Cores for their own uses. A wholly new generation of Jump Drive derived shield regenerators, hull reshaper repair stations, and power planets were created. For the first time in millions of years, the Pug research laboratories would reverse-engineer and develop alien-derived technologies.
The Pug were elated. The Sheragi are their second model children, after the master terraformers in the shape of the Wanderers. Where the Drak failed, the Pug succeeded, with flying colours no less. The Milky Way is safe, with these amazing Sheragi inventors, all was well. All was, in fact, not well, as the Pug would soon come to realise.
THE UNBIDDEN
Those familiar with the various fauna throughout the Milky Way would quickly realise that, although incredibly diverse, the Milky Way lacked a crucial type of sentient life. Gegno, Human, and Hai are all mammals, while the Korath, Rigra, and Sheragi are reptilian. The Naltok is an amphibian species. Avgi, Bunrodea, and Kimek are insectoid, with the Aert and Saryd being bizarre six-limbed insect-mammal hybrids. Arachi are spiders, Wanderers are birds, and Xapleaux are millipedes. The Incipias and Octyl represent the molluscoid side of living beings. Even single-celled space-faring organisms exist, in the form of the Nepetel. There is one thing in common for all these species however. They are organic.
Inorganic sentients do exist, in the forms of Human, Korath, and Bunrodea creations. They, however, were mostly made to serve a single purpose, and specialised like that. The Galaxy lacks a truly independent machine civilisation. The Pug scoured the Galaxy for millennia. None existed. Until a fateful day.
The blue-hazed region of the Galaxy west of the Ember Wastes had always been a hidden paradise. A Shangri-La region of space uncolonised by any species. With many young stars and nebulae, deuterium concentration is much higher than anywhere else. Also because of that, life, at least the complex form, have yet to emerge. That is why the Pug chose part of this here to nest the Sheragi Remnants. One day, a patrolling Pug Arfecta found a group of strange, silvery ships slowly making its way through interstellar space, eventually getting captured by a system nearby. Closer analysis revealed that the ships are partially organic, and partially metallic. No crew seem to be onboard.
The Pug found the Builder Twilight expedition. To the Pug, it was the machine intelligence they were looking for. Elated, the Pug made hasty alterations to their Sheragi plan. After all, pairing up the Sheragi ingenuity and the lack of maintenance of automaton ships could very well form the Galaxy’s most formidable military force. Like how von Siebold introduced Japanese knotweed to the Isles as decoration, the Pug introduced the Twilight Ka’sei to the Twilight region of space.
The Twilight expedition did not do much originally. Acting just like the Ka’sei in the Patir sector back in the Ember Wastes, the Ka’sei drones landed on nearby habitable planets, and began building an outpost. Just like how their Builder masters programmed them to be. Sensing that they are once again in a star system, the Twilight Mothership awakened and the troubles began.
Those who think critically might notice a discrepancy in the prologue section. Wasn’t it weird that the Builders can access space-borne Subsidurial tissue when they were confined to their planets? The answer, my friend, is cancer.
Evolution is an amazing biological process. It allows less-optimised species to change over time, and become the best version they could possibly be. Without evolution, there would be no kelp in the ocean, no oak trees in forests, no longcow grazing on Saryd planets, and no sentient species the Galaxy is filled with.
Evolution also created a byproduct: cancer. For evolution to work, mutations must happen. While benevolent mutations, which evolution hinges on, do exist, the vast majority of mutations either have no effect or are downright harmful. Most mutations are sought out by the body’s immune systems and destroyed. In the rare case, however, harmful mutations manage to evade the watchful eyes of Helper T-Cells, and start forming tumours. Tumours who spread by blood are cancerous. Thus, while behaviour might differ between species, cancer always behave the same: rabid survival at all costs.
On that fateful day when the Builders sought out living Subsidurial tissue, they came across a dying Subsidurial breathing its last near the South Pole. Too excited for such a gift from Heaven, none questioned why the Subsidurial was dying in the first place. Carefully, they cut out many, many pieces from the fresh corpse, and transported them back to their laboratory. Most tissues reacted badly to metal, except certain cells excavated near the Subsidurial’s brain. The Twilight mothership was an unholy abomination, a cancerous blob infused with metal.
Away from the Pug’s prying eyes, the Twilight mothership disintegrated. Rather than operating from a single location, the cancer cells knew that affixing them to multiple vessels would be a far smarter modus operandi. Within months, all Ka’sei probes were now infected with cancer.
Of course, the cancer gestalt was not stupid. They knew that they could not survive with a limited number of ships, and so a rapid industrialisation of the sector began. The Ka’sei probes were blessed with metal arms that allowed them to build the pre-determined outpost. Now these metal arms, augmented by additional cancerous tentacles, worked hard to build factories, mines, and all sorts of production facilities. As more and more Ka’sei probes were built, so did the cancer army. Soon, the entire sector was colonised, and the cancer gestalt worked to recreate hyperdrives, and expand their territories.
All the time, the Pug gazed. Each step the Twilight Cancer took, the happier the Pug were. They were blind to the mindless rabid expansionism the Cancer were espousing. Rather, the Pug saw a genius machine race quickly industrialising and seeking to expand. The rate the machine’s technology advanced was exciting and encouraging to the Pug. Pairing the innovation of the Twilight cancer and the Sheragi MacGyvering, the Pug drooled, would defend the Galaxy from all future crises. The Twilight Cancer became the Pug’s third favourite children.
The Cancer did not stop there. After getting Hyperdrives, they started developing all sorts of weapons, as well as conducting war games against itself to develop strategic and tactical thinking. When the Ka’sei base model start to show their inadequacies, the Cancer started to break down the hull plating itself, and model it to different shapes and sizes, and test the effectiveness of them. The Cancer grew exponentially, both in strength and in numbers. Their newest invention, the Nucleolytic Beam, could even drain fuel from their opponents, preventing them from escaping and allowing the Cancer to harvest their material for use. Entire covens of Void Sprites and Subsidurials were wiped out this way, and yet the Pug watched on, optimistic about the Cancer’s development.
THE ABERRANT
The Pug never forgot their first star child, the Wanderers. The only surviving species from the Pug’s own galaxy, the Wanderers were protected by the Pug every turn. The Wanderers have mostly finished fixing the former Sheragi planets. Compared to many, the Sheragi’s damage was light, and twenty thousand years was all it takes to make them into pristine planet once more. Next stop, northern, abandoned Hai worlds.
Just like clockwork, the Pug set up wormhole generators in Zubenelgenubi and Ka’ch’chrai. The Eye shall open soon, and the Wanderers shall get to their new homes. It was a pity that few species exist. The Wanderers, after all these years, are still reluctant to stand on their own. Who could blame them, though? They are the Pug’s last brothers, and deserve all sorts of protection. Maybe making some belligerent Hai could work.
Just as the Pug pressed the big, red “Activate” button on the wormhole generation machine, however, something unexpected happened.
Saquergen, a quiet, unremarkable star south of the Rim, suddenly went supernova. It appeared that, in the excitement of the Pug, they forgot to check the stability of nearby stars. The first sign anything went wrong, was that the Eye never opened at their intended location. Frustrated, the Pug pressed the button a second time. This was the biggest blunder anybody could commit. Any other courses of action would have prevented the cataclysm to come.
In an instant, two wormholes spring into existence. One appearing between two uninhabited systems, one between the Dirt Belt and the Rim, the other near a cluster of system, one in which several species of amphibians began to display the earliest signs of intelligence. Hmmm, the Pug thought. Worth exploring in the future. The Pug would never do that, however.
The other wormhole was far more consequential, as the wormhole linked the Twilight Cancer space to the Sheragi Remnant space. The Pug would not notice that in time, with all teams busy monitoring the Weft and wormhole operations. The First Child was in crisis, and the Pug must find ways to save them.
The Wanderers were fortunately well. The Sheragi Remnant and the Twilight Cancer weren’t. In typical Cancer fashion, hundreds of Twilight Cancer scouts arrived at Sheragi space. Thinking it as yet another target practise, the Sheragi would promptly open fire on them. This proved to be highly effective, the Cancerous Scouts not able to match honed and more advanced Sheragi warships.
For what the Cancer lacked, they more than made up in two aspects: Numbers and tactics. Being an exponential grower, the Cancer fielded far more vessels, and commanded more resources than the Sheragi ever could. The Cancer’s extreme bloodlust confused the psychic Sheragi, allowing the Cancer to surround, destroy, and consume Sheragi warships. And the fall of one Sheragi warship was enough to turn the tide. One thing the Cancer excelled was learning. Consuming a type of material allow the Cancer to learn the material’s properties and structure, and it was a matter of tool optimisation and tweaking to manufacture the superior Sheragi alloys and ship systems. Soon enough, Cancer-made Emerald Swords began production, levelling the technological playing field between the Sheragi and the Cancer.
The Pug, in their infinite enthusiasm in nurturing the Sheragi, focussed on the dragons’ strength. The Pug never remedied their weaknesses: their utter disregard of strategies and tactics. Needless to say, the rest of the Sheragi-Cancer war was an utter slaughter of the Sheragi. Sheragi ships were blown up left and right, as the Cancer hordes consumed and replicated even the most advanced of Sheragi-Pug technology. Although the Sheragi captains did manage to blow up any and every Jump Drive they had access to while abandoning ship or doing suicide charges, there was no saving the last vestiges of the Dragon Race.
Merely six months since the wormholes’ appearance, the Sheragi were extinct. In their place stood the Twilight Cancer, now empowered by Sheragi metallurgy and Jump Drive-derived systems. The Wanderer wormhole situation, it turned out, cannot be solved immediately via artificial intervention. The Pug must wait for the Cosmos Fabric to stabilise before attempting another wormhole creation, lest another random wormhole would be created. Satisfied with their research conclusion, the Pug returned to their Sheragi Queri ring, only to find their dreams shattered forever.
The Sheragi worlds were all in ruins, being consumed by the rampaging Cancer masses. The Pug had their hopes up when Sheragi ships showed up, but a series of simple scans confirmed their worst fear. The Sheragi were all dead, defeated and consumed by the Cancer. All because of a wormhole the Pug placed. The Pug did not save the Sheragi. The Pug killed the Sheragi. And now, the all-consuming mindless horde the Cancer is, have access to the most pristine technology the Pug and the Sheragi developed together.
No, calling them Cancer would an insult to all cancer in the world. Those were abominations. They were Aberrant.
Just like that, the Sheragi became a sore point for the Pug. Their heads hung low, the Pug retreated from the Twilight, never willing to get back there again. After all, both former Sheragi Remnant Space and Twilight Cancer space were cordoned off, with no hyperlinks to the wider Galaxy. Without places to expand to, the Aberrant would eventually die off, like a fire cut off from fuel supplies.
And boy, were the Pug wrong.
VEHEMENT, UNBIDDEN, ABERRANT
Millennia pass.
The Wanderers eventually managed to pass from Sheragi to Northern Hai space without further incidents. Some Hai turn belligerent, as Humans slowly rise in former Sheragi space. All seemed well in the Galaxy.
Deep in the Twilight Region, west of Aberrant Space, and untouched by anybody, large dragonflies gained sentience. Calling themselves the Avgi, the dragonflies spread across their sector, eventually discovering Hyperdrives. Seeing this, the Quarg settled in a nearby system, ready to build yet another ring world to observe and guide this upstart species. Despite the region interfering with Jump Drives slightly, the Quarg were willing to tolerate. After all, if teleporters installed in their rings work, it should be all fine.
Even after all those years, the Drak and the Pug never got along. With the Sheragi being sore spots for both species, the Drak never knew anything about the Sheragi Remnant or the Twilight Cancer. Naturally, they had no idea about the Aberrant, either.
When the Drak caught wind of the Avgi, the Drak would do a quick scan of hyperlinks, choosing what systems to leave to the Avgi, and what to leave out. Curious, the Drak thought, when they saw a bubble of space without hyperlinks connecting to the wider world. Deciding to grant that bubble for the Avgi, the Drak would establish hyperlinks between existing Avgi space and the cordoned systems, blissfully unaware of the horror contained within. Naturally, within weeks of contacting the Quarg, the Avgi met the Aberrant. Being sub Tier 1, Avgi ships were no match for the advanced Aberrant horde, and countless Avgi ships were destroyed. When the Quarg reported that finding to the Drak, the Drak brushed it off as some moderately powerful indigenous space life that the Avgi inadvertently aggravated. Still, the Drak decided to ask the Pug if they knew anything.
What followed was the worst attempt of a communication throughout Milky Way history. The moment the Drak asked the Pug about the Twilight, the Pug visibly winced and tried to turn away, thinking the Drak were there to gloat. When the Drak mentioned aliens there, the Pug representative turned to the Drak and mention the Sheragi and the Builders, which ironically weren’t far from the truth. The Drak, however, took that as an insult. The Pug told the Drak to avoid that place, which the Drak thought meant that the Twilight was claimed by the Pug. To avoid another Quarg-Pug conflict, the Drak told the Quarg to cease constructing a ring world, and pull from Avgi Space. The Quarg were happy to comply, and quickly evacuated themselves from the Avgi ring world.
The Avgi were now alone against the Aberrant. Facing incessant attacks from the Aberrant, the Avgi retreated and retreated, until they moved the majority into the South, a region called the Tangled Shroud, where hyperlinks reset constantly and visibility is low. There, Aberrant ships remain disoriented, making them less able to continue their advance against the Atomic Space Dragonflies. While this arrangement did prevent the extinction of the Avgi, it was but a temporary solution. The Avgi Assembly knew that, and started debating ways to combat this unknown, strange foe.
The Aberrant were elated to find new prey. These dragonflies have neither the sophistication nor the technology to match the Sheragi, yet they were much more shrewd and tactical. Their nuclear weapons were also brand new. Another subject of investigation and reproduction. Surely, giving them 1000 years more, they would be able to produce far better missiles than anyone else. A pity they would soon become food. Of course, the Aberrant are not idiots. Only fools show their full strength at first contact, and the Avgi shall be eased into a false sense of security, having battled against only the Aberrant’s most primitive Ka’sei probes. Once they attack, the uplifted Sheragi and Avgi ships shall end the Avgi threat once and for all. The Aberrant shall rise, and none shall stand in its way.
As such, the tense stand-off in the Deep South continues.
Captain First Last, the Hero of Deneb, led the Human armada to their victory against the Pug, who retreated to wherever they came from, leaving only a wormhole to the distant Pleiades Galaxy. In that galaxy, the only landmarks are a heavily damaged Quarg ring and a small, deserted planet called Ruin. Like most explorers, Captain Last landed on Ruin, took a slight stroll, and took off, never to return.
Had Captain Last looked deeper in Ruin, they would have found numerous structures, housing beings nine metres tall, and are able to fly. They would have found disturbing munching marks left behind by a cosmic horror incomprehensible to man. They would have found large scorch marks, of battles fought eons ago. They would have found the Sheragi Remnant’s last vestiges.
As the Avgi lead their desperate battle against the horde, the Naltok descend into civil war over Alphas, and the Unfettered Hai begin to strike against the Wanderers, the loss of the Sheragi, a tale as old as time, provides an unwavering warning to the importance of damage control, to the indispensability of flexible thinking, to the fragility of life itself.
Memento Sheragi. Memento Mori.