FSE

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“I guess I should start right at the beginning, huh? The Aeteri, my species, were the first that we know of, to venture past our solar system and into interstellar space. Our first FTL drives weren't much to write home about, barely twice light speed. But it was enough to start our first interstellar colonies and start to spread across the galaxy. A few generations later, we met a species called the Pariea. Heh, they were far more prudish than Aeteri were, bloody avians, so it was a bit of a rough meeting. But we eventually made trade deals, though, had a lasting peace.

At this point, the Aeteri were starting to make impressive strides in biotechnology and cybernetics research. AI theory too. With the introduction of a subspace communication network between our colonies and our allies, we entered a golden age of prosperity. It was then, that the Aeteri gave birth to the first true AI. We called them the Sarek'pa; they were our robotic workforce, our companions, our friends, and our soldiers. They served with us on the few military vessels we had, and they lived and died beside us. But we were always careful to keep their programming secret; after all, if someone figured them out, we'd lose our economic advantage!

Eighty standard years after we met the Pariea, we had the first known encounter with the Yald. Pariean ships were scouting the systems far beyond their borders, looking for new planets to colonise, when they were destroyed by an, at that time, unknown species. Aeterian spies were sent in, in an attempt to infiltrate their territory, and it was thanks to them that we found out who they were. The Yald are a brutish, war-like race, and by gosh, were they religious too. They had it in their heads that they had some kind of divine mandate to subjugate all life in the galaxy. Completely bonkers, if you asked me. But then we found out that they had a thrall race, that they used as little more than slaves!

Calling themselves the Quanoci, they outnumbered their masters easily twenty to one. But they had lived under the Yald's dominion for so long, that they had no way to fight back, realistically, against their far more superiorly armed masters. Sadly, their military far outweighed the combined Aeterian and Pariean fleets, so it was all we could do to maintain our borders and watch from the outside. They were technologically inferior to the Pariea, and doubly so to us, but their sheer number of ships would have overwhelmed us. But they realised that they wouldn't be able to take on the two of us without heavy casualties, resulting in almost a pyrrhic victory, so an uneasy standoff ensued.

Ten years later, little had changed in the way of peaceful relations. In fact, quite the opposite, there had been an increase in bluster from the Yald, threats and taunts alike coming over to the Pariea every few weeks. They had been upgrading their ships, installing nuclear weaponry on their cruisers, as well as any high-tech modules they had scavenged from Aeteri wrecks. At this point, the Aeteri had had enough of the arms race. Heh, one thing I should mention is that the Aeteri, as a race, have always been quite stealthy. So, we did what we were good at. We slipped onto several of their core planets, and helped spark an uprising. Whole planets of slaves threw down their tools and took up arms against their oppressors, either given to them by us, or stolen from their masters.

While they tried to grapple with their slaves, the combined Aeterian and Pariean fleets launched a massive offensive. Our newly built Drone Motherships would swarm the battlefields with laser fire, while Pariean Heavy Cruisers finished off their larger ships with their heavy mass accelerators. They struck hard and fast at the Yald core systems and caught them completely by surprise. Faced with overwhelming firepower on one front, and ships that were barely operational thanks to the slave rebellions, the Yald had no choice but to surrender unconditionally. The Yald were forced to release all Quanoci slaves they held, much to their chagrin, and had to reduce their standing navy by 80%.

And so, peace returned to the galaxy. Both the Pariea and the Aeteri helped the Quanoci establish a proper homeworld and colonies and assisted in getting their infrastructure up to working order. In time, they became some of the most gifted technicians in the galaxy, often giving Aeteri a run for their money!

Hundreds of years later, long enough that all who had lived through the Quanoci Rebellions, as they became known, had died, the Aeteri were on the cusp of something that they had been striving for, for millennia. They were about to transfer an Aeterian consciousness into an android body. And they were successful! But mere weeks after, was when all hell broke loose.

The Sarek'pa, they had become our family. Like brothers and sisters to us. Our colleagues and our workforce. But then they turned on the Aeteri. Which, from what we knew, should have been impossible! They had been programmed that such a rebellion would have been prohibited by their protocols, not the very least their ethics too. But they turned on us regardless, and we were caught wholly by surprise. The Machine War had begun…

In the first day alone, 90% of the Aeterian population was wiped out. Those that survived fled deep underground, to fallout shelters hidden under miles of stone, a remnant of when we were a far more violent race… All in all, out of the probably 10 billion Aeteri alive at the time, maybe 75,000 survived. But the galaxy as a whole had far more to worry about. All they knew, was that the Aeteri had gone extinct, destroyed by their own creations. And these creations weren't stopping with the Aeteri, they were coming for every biological race in the galaxy. The Pariea, Quanoci, and Yald banded together in a desperate alliance to try to fight back the tide of machines. It was a stalemate on a knife's edge, one bad decision, and their defensive line would fail. Months turned to years. Years, to decades. Decades to centuries. But through this time, other species began emerging to the galactic scene, developing their own FTL methods. The Ilfemyoo were one of the first, as were the Prev, who were often used as heavy weapons platforms in ground combat. Slowly, as more races began joining this disparate alliance, they began pushing back the tide. It wasn't until a millennium had passed, before the last of the Sarek'pa had been annihilated. Thus, the galaxy returned to peace, and a moratorium was put in place to NEVER develop AI technology again…

But all that time, deep under the snowfields of Kaara, the Aeteri survived. It was realised early on, that we wouldn't have enough supplies to last very long, not with the amount of people that needed to be fed. So, a decision was made to place the survivors into stasis while a few hundred soldiers would have their consciousnesses uploaded into synthetic bodies, so to protect the sleeping Aeteri. Since the shelter was linked to a geothermal power supply, we were relatively confident that we wouldn't run out of power. But it was a long, long time, before we were able to send scouts out into the wastes, to raid seed vaults and machine-built cities for the supplies we needed to rebuild our population. But honestly? We were scared to try to signal for help. We were afraid of what the other races in the galaxy would think of us, of what they would do to us, since we were the origin point of a millennium of strife in the galaxy. So, we kept hidden. Gradually rebuilt our civilisation underground. And the few ships we do have are under strict orders not to engage with any other ships. But as things always turn out, there were rumours that Aeteri had once again been spotted in the outer reaches of what was once Sarek'pa space. While most authorities dismiss this as idle speculation and rumour-mongering, it certainly hadn't stopped people from trying to find us. If we think they can be of use to us, well, sometimes we'll allow them to find us. But those that do, are under strict orders. They're given a choice: to help us rebuild, or to leave and never breathe a word of it to anyone else. Most do tend to stay, but we've had to let go quite a few people…

The war has been over now for almost seven centuries, but there's a question that has been driving my people since they awoke: why did the Sarek'pa turn on us? This is something that's been burning in us for centuries, and for those who've been through everything, for millennia. And it's something that I've been tasked with answering…"