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Human
Ascent to the stars...
2125 CE was when humanity came to the attention of the galactic powers. The war with the Ke'Ras was at its height and the Ancients were on the losing side. The galaxy was falling, sector by sector, and the fleets of the Republic could not stop it. When the first human interstellar vessel, the ITS Prometheus, completed its first interstellar jump to the star system Alpha Centauri, it found itself in the middle of a battle. If the ship had been destroyed then, Human history would have been very different; it might have been a little less tragic. The ship was hit by a blast wave and sent spinning, out of control, into the Republican armada. The Ancients boarded it and took the crew prisoner. Back on Earth ten years passed. All hope of seeing the Prometheus return was abandoned. Most thought that something had gone wrong with the experimental propulsion system and the ship had been torn apart. The International Space Agency was in the process of building an updated version of the ship set to launch at the end of 2136, when a Republican Fleet, with the Prometheus in its midst, appeared around the Earth.
Panic swept the planet as humanity watched in shocked awe as huge alien spacecraft spewed out thousands of satellites that enveloped the Earth. Hours passed and riots erupted in every major city on the planet. People, driven mad by thoughts of invasion or Apocalyptic doom, rampaged through the streets. Then the transmission from the Republican fleet began. It was received directly by every living mind on the planet. An image formed in those minds of the Republican ambassador and its words were innately understood by all. It was a message of hope and a warning. The threat of the Ke'Ras was explained in total detail ... simply by their name. The vastness and strength of the Republic blossomed before their eyes, in all its radiant glory, and then faded as the dark stain of the demons swept across it.
The Choice...
Then humanity was given a choice: ally with darkness or with light. We chose light and in that choice our world changed. Humanity was swept up into the galactic conflict. Millions of us were recruited into the Republican army and navy. Humans joined the ranks, trained and armed by the Ancients, and marked themselves as fighters with such heart and determination that we gained respect from our new allies. Our solar system was strip mined and made into a construction yard. Fleets of ships were manufactured by human hands. Resources and wealth beyond anything humanity had ever known flooded to Earth. Poverty, hunger, disease, and all of the things that had tormented our species since it began were wiped away within ten years. Still, we were only a minor shipyard in an outer sector, but the vastness and wealth of the Republic was beyond any scale we had ever known. Our insignificance did not shield us from the Ke'Ras.
The Well of Darkness...
They came not with force but with subtly. They slipped into our minds and hearts and fed our greed and ambition. They capitalized on our inexperience. We had been flung into a new level of existence and we were blinded by the glorious advances that joining the Republic had given us; the dual euphoria of phenomenal wealth and perceived invincibility. We were ignorant and we did not act as our species slowly slid further and further into the darkness. If it had not been for the Ancients, we would have fallen completely into the Abyss. Thankfully they were aware and knew what to look for. The decadence and corruption of our society had escalated into almost complete depravity, and civil decay had progressed to the point where those left behind on Earth were no longer able to function.
In the end our world erupted into civil war. The evil of the Ke'Ras blossomed into a full infestation and our world fell. Our population was consumed, twisted and mutated, made slaves of the darkness. Those humans who had been serving in the navy and army were recalled to fight the battle of Sol. It was, however, too late. Our world was lost and our species was destroyed. Only those few millions who had joined the service survived. For the remainder of the war the survivors lived, fought, and died in the ranks of the Republic. Humanity became a hard race, utterly dedicated to the destruction of the Ke'Ras. Those of us that survived through that time learned much from our allies. The secrets of magic and technology were revealed to us and we became masters of those secrets. We were fighting for a lost home, one we could not return to, and let ourselves hate the Ke'Ras.
The War Eternal...
Eventually the tide of the war shifted. The ancients had found a way to end the struggle and forever return the Ke'Ras to Hell. In an act of utter sacrifice all of the ancients performed a ritual, the specifics of which they did not share with us who stayed behind, that forced all of the Ke'Ras out of our universe. There was a cost, however: the ancients were utterly consumed and passed beyond into legend.
The war was over and both sides had lost. Those remaining humans, who had now lived for seven generations with only the knowledge of war, returned home to the ruins of our world. I was there, two thousand years ago, and I saw the blackened ruin that was Earth. The land was barren, the seas black with pollution, and all life extinguished. All that remained of our former home was the memories in the few of us that had seen it as it had been.
For a time we bickered over our course of action to take. Some wished to leave and forget this forsaken world while others wanted to restore what had passed into history. The solution was as simple as the problem was obvious. Using the technologies and the magic that the Ancients had taught us we joined our wills together and restored our world in a moment. We renamed our world Eden and began the long slow process of rebuilding a shattered society off of the base of thirty two million survivors.
The time between the wars was one of expansion and growth for humanity; not only spiritually and technologically but physically as well. As one of three races that had remained after the Passing we had little competition in our expansion into the universe. When we did meet the others, relations were respectful but distant as we each kept to ourselves. In this time, devoid of the overriding purpose that had guided us through the war, human society fractured and formed into a mosaic of social structures and governments. The only thing that remained constant throughout our worlds was our tendency to gather and express power and influence through relationships and their manipulation. This tendency has survived into the current political culture of the New Republic and has given humanity the reputation of being hard bargainers and shrewd merchants.
"Eldest and the wisest. Dreamers that have dreamt for two thousand years. Children of Eden. We are those that have been and will be."
— Kaelin the Immaculate, Reflections on Timesummary | return to top
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