The Void Crossing

Long ago, the governing body of the galaxy became corrupt. Instead of serving the common good, they sought power for themselves. They passed laws that made it nearly impossible to remove them from their positions. In time, they came to be known as the Incumbents. In theory, anyone could seek a seat on the ruling council, but no one could succeed, unless the Incumbents approved.

Eventually, one of the Incumbents became even greedier for power than all the others. He began to curry favor within the ruling council for a position of First Incumbent. His words beguiled them, and they elected him to the office. Within a few years, he dissolved the Council of Incumbents, naming himself Supreme Lord of the Galaxy.

The lesser Incumbents, horrified at the realization of what they had allowed him to achieve, sought to remove him. The Supreme Lord had many allies, though. After a bloody civil war, he defeated them and had them executed as traitors to the realm. His word became law.

The Supreme Lord decreed that every world should send a new delegate, who would pay him tribute and communicate his laws back to the masses. Many worlds refused. Most of them banded together into a Free Republic and simply ignored him.

The Supreme Lord was furious. He declared the Free Republic a rebellion, and branded their leaders traitors. He vowed that all the worlds of the Free Republic would return to his rule, or be exterminated.

The Free Republic worlds scoffed at his decree. They asserted that a person only had the right to govern by the consent of the people, and in service to them. He neither served them, nor did they consent to his rule, so they simply ignored him and went about their own business. As more worlds saw that the Free Republic continued to defy the Supreme Lord, they also ignored him and joined the Free Republic.

The Supreme Lord had developed strength and power that they knew nothing about. He had conscripted countless scientists to work for him, developing weapons that could level cities and evaporate seas. Some could even turn thriving planets into lifeless rocks in space. When they showed him the immense power of the weapons, he was pleased.

He detonated the first device over a city that was home to eleven million people. In the blink of an eye, the city was burned up. Not a soul survived in the city. People who lived miles away were blinded when they saw the city burn. Within a week, many of the blinded were also ill. Within two weeks, most of them were dead, and the rest wished they were.

“This is what happens to people who defy me,” said the Supreme Lord. “Unless you submit to my rule, I will burn your cities, one by one. The ones who die will be envied by the ones who survive.”

The Free Republic continued to resist. More worlds defied the Supreme Lord and sought the protection of the Free Republic. Some of the very scientists who had helped the Supreme Lord build his weapons escaped from his prisons and secretly built similar weapons for the Free Republic.

Every world saw their largest cities burn, but still they resisted. Eventually, the Supreme Lord fell victim to his own creation. His capitol city was burned around him, along with his entire planet. Two trillion people turned to ash in the blink of an eye.

At first, the people rejoiced, thinking they had defeated the Supreme Lord.

In time, they came to realize that they had killed themselves, as well. Every world upon which the terrible weapons had been used became uninhabitable. Entire civilizations died out from the radiation they had unleashed. Of all the worlds that had once been thriving civilizations, only eleven races remained, and they saw that their own worlds were also dying.

In order that the Eleven Races might survive, they built massive colony ships and placed the sum of all their knowledge into data cores on each ship. The strongest and the healthiest among each race were chosen to board the ships and seek new worlds on which to settle.

The Eleven Races, in their colony ships, fanned out across the Void. The ship that bore the Jhelin never again returned to their home world. Neither did they ever hear from any of the other colony ships. For generations the ship flew across the void of intergalactic space in hopes of finding inhabitable worlds in a faraway galaxy.

The Jhelin Colony Ship entered this galaxy, eventually making contact with several systems, including Deneb, Aldebaran, and Polaris. The people welcomed them into the galaxy and tried to help them find a suitable uninhabited world, but locating pristine worlds was a lengthy undertaking. After several years, no ownerless planet had been discovered. Finally, the Polarans offered them a planet that they once had colonized, but no longer desired. It had very little in the way of mineral resources, and they admitted that there were polluted areas that would be dangerous to approach, but it could sustain an agricultural community.

It was not long before the Polarans learned of the Jhelin Data Core, and the knowledge that it contained. Having narrowly escaped annihilation themselves, the people of this galaxy were fearful of the sort of weapons the newcomers might be capable of producing. There were some, though, who coveted the same weapons themselves, and tried many times to convince the colonists to share the Data Core with them.

The colonists became suspicious and decided to hide the Data Core, promising to divulge its secrets only after they had learned more about the history of the galaxy and could discern which technologies might be beneficial, and which were best left forgotten.

The colony ship was dismantled and its parts used to build the first colony, which was named Pristali, The Place Where We Landed. The Data Core was placed in a protected underground vault, and a group of individuals known as Keepers were entrusted with its protection. Only the Keepers knew how to gain entrance to the vault. The Jhelin promised the people of this galaxy that they would, in time, share what knowledge they possessed with all civilizations, that no one civilization might become stronger than the rest and repeat the mistakes of the past. They wanted to avoid another war.

War came anyway. The very same Polarans who had given Vega to the colonists became impatient and demanded to be granted access to the Data Core’s knowledge as payment for the planet they had given them. Fearing their motives, the elders of Pristali refused, reiterating their promise to parcel out the knowledge gradually, and to all races. The Polarans became furious, and dropped incendiary bombs on the city, burning it to the ground. Many Jhelin were injured, but most survived by fleeing into the woods.

The Polarans captured all the surviving Elders and sought to force the location of the Data Core out of them, but the Elders did not know. Only the Keepers knew, but they had all vanished, never to be seen again. The Polarans searched, but they could never find the Data Core. Eventually, the Polarans gave up their search and left Vega in ruins.

From that day on, the Vegans never fully trusted the Polarans. Pristali was destroyed and rebuilt several times, but no trace of the Data Core was ever found. When the Galactic Union was established hundreds of years later, Vega pledged to share the knowledge contained within the Data Core, should it ever be recovered intact.