The ancient past;

Soon after our galaxy spun into being out of the greater cosmos, such things as stars and worlds began to form, and of all things, there must be a first. The first material sentiences to form in our galaxy were three, and all born of the same world.

First among them rose from the sea, dripping with waters teeming with life, and composed of not one organism, but many, living in a symbiotic colony of life, walking forward onto the land like a man, but unlike a man in all particulars. Legend calls them the Creators, the Life-bringers, the Seeders and the Progenitors. Translated into Interlac, the Tromnians called them the ‘Genesai,’ the source of all life. Great explorers, first of their own world, and later of a thousand others, the Genesai brought the gift of life with them everywhere their feet touched fertile soil, their flesh touched water, their breathe blew forth upon the air. Some say this was a process they were wholly ignorant of, that the life within them dispersed onto a thousand worlds without their knowledge, but others insist that this was a holy mission, to Seed the newborn galaxy with life. In any event, they are long gone, and the only Legacy of their passing lies in a race that is also all but dead, the people of Somahtur, homeworld of the Substitute Legionnaire called ‘Infectious Lass.’ Their true potential burned from them by a life-destroying event, the humanoids of Somahtur lay empty and seemingly lifeless until the empty places within them were once again filled, teeming with bacteria and viral life of a thousand forms. Where once they carried the seeds of life, crafted as living vessels of creation, they now carried only sickness and death, and those responsible for their transformation smiled darkly.

The second race to rise on this ancient world, called by some ‘the Cradle,’ by others, simply, ‘Home,’ and by the sinister third race, ‘the Nameless,’ were insectoid in origin. Born, as with all other life of their world, and so many others, from the teeming micro-organic stew of the Genesai, these sentiences awoke to a world in chaos, swarming with a thousand million diverse species, each breeding and killing and fighting for territory with one another. The race, called by some the Preservers, the Architects of Creation, the Hive or the Shapers, gathered together in vast hives, tunneling deep into the earth, shaping the earth, the vegetation and even taming the surrounding beasts, to form the world into an orderly tapestry. Some say that they also traveled the galaxy, taming the chaos sewn by their sister races, ensuring that the various species developing were able to co-exist in balance, and culling the most out-of-balance creatures from the nascent ecosystems. Long departed, their precepts of change, and of order, remain, in two unlikely sources, the mystical faith of the Tromnites, who developed over a thousand years the ability to express their beliefs in the transmutation of elements, and the ancient race known only as the Controllers, who claim to have learned their way from the ancients themselves, although the veracity of this claim is in question.

The third and final race to develop sentience on this world came from the skies, in the form of great black raptors, called by some the Shadows on the Sun, the Carrion Crows, the Destroyers and the Harbingers. Born from eggs lain in living flesh, the birth of one of these foul creatures always heralded the death of some other creature, the larger the creature, the more powerful the resulting Destroyer. As a result, these bloody beasts would hurl themselves in great swarms at the largest saurian life-forms, creatures they had no hope of even harming, in hopes of siring even more glorious progeny. Even when they did not hunger, they would kill simply for sport, to practice their deadly skills, and the only creature they would not slaughter was each other. They too spread across the galaxy like a plague, bringing death and destruction to hundreds of worlds, and inspiring legends of demons and dragons and a thousand other horrors in their bloody wake. While many death-cults and nihilists across the galaxy hearken back to their beliefs, they are not known to have any extant legacy. But some whisper that on burnt-out worlds yet wait glossy eggs, hard as black diamond and larger than a man, waiting for the touch of a living hand, that their occupants might burst forth to bathe once again on the blood of all that lives…