A Brief History

 

It all began sometime after the Humans found their new home. They had traveled an unknown distance from the Earth of their ancestors in a ship they called the Ark 3. The Humans had been searching for a new home when their craft fell into a wormhole and was catapulted across the galaxy to our region. They found a habitable planet, which they called Sol in memory of their own system, and colonized it.

It wasn’t long after this event that each of us acquired light-speed technology. Our historians are still puzzling over the seeming coincidental timing of these discoveries, and each of the seven races presents their own stories and theories, but we have yet to verify that it was by some grand design, as many suggest. Regardless, it took most of us over a thousand years before we ventured into space far enough to discover that we weren’t alone.

When we did discover each other, there were mixed receptions. The Reln discovered the Humans (though they might tell you differently) and we exchanged knowledge and cultural ideas. The other races, unfortunately, often exchanged weapon fire more than knowledge. The reptilian Krissethi aggressively attacked anyone entering “their” region, most likely set on that path by the even more antagonistic Chiraktis Empire, a race of insectoid creatures bordering Krissethi space. Meanwhile, the peaceful, plant-like Erwani were constantly defending themselves against raids by their chaotic neighbors, the unicellular Omul.

It was obvious to both us and the Humans that all of this needed to stop. We needed a form of government that reached beyond our homeworlds, beyond our regions of space—regions that were ill-defined and likely the cause of such warlike disputes. The Inter-Stellar Union (ISU) was formed, and each race joined this government so that we could learn to work together. We all agreed upon our borders (though there are still some occasional skirmishes on worlds that traverse these borders at times) and we developed a language together that we could all use to improve our communication. It wasn’t long before trade, a cultural exchanges of ideas, and prosperity began to flourish among us.

During our joint explorations of unknown space, we then discovered the Archaeloids, a peaceful, aquatic race that had not yet ventured out of their system, though they had also attained light-speed travel when the rest of us had. The Archaeloids seemed quite caught off guard to learn of us, and though they were kind and welcoming, the surge in their military production gave us all pause. The Archaeloids joined the ISU and assured us that they desired peace, but also indicated that they thought it was foolish to assume our treaty would last forever, or that the seven of us were the only intelligent life in the galaxy. How right they were…