A Historian's Preface

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. We can, however. Oh, not the normally expected vocal scream of sound waves, as you may be thinking. Rather, our race is psychically attuned to the mental scream that accompanies it, the anguish and despair of the dying, or the horror and fear of those enduring brutalization. Strong emotions carry farther more easily, and the moment of acknowledging death is strongest of all.

Our elliptical galaxy rides along at the literal edge of the universe; the First Galaxy, we call it, since we believe it was the first to solidify into solar systems and evolve sentient life after Exscendence, the Birth of the Universe. It glides through space at a leading edge of the great universal expansion, with nothing but virgin darkness of the unknown ahead of us, and all other galaxies trailing behind or fleeing to the sides.

Our race was the first of three (that we know of) within the galaxy to ascend in evolution to become Ameliors, what our people calls those who display the extra-sensory perception and manifestation capabilities of the mind and who live lives of devotion in service to the good of the planet.

At our final stage of this evolution, a typical Amelior Sensitive could sense across Thelisar, our planet, and as far as our moons, Jandis, Lornic, and Semil. The average “good” Amelior would sense things within Vordin, our solar system of seven planets, their moons, and its star. The most sensitive and gifted Sensory Ameliors, when concentrating with Amplifiers and deprived of external, mundane input in specialized chambers for the purpose, even reached several nearby star systems in various directions. (This last was so vitally important to the survival of our people, it would come to pass.)

At least, they could. Note that I reminisce about days past, from a time when we actually used to live on our planet. Not since the great Ravaging, the invasion of our system by another evolved race, the Keth’Narr, have we lived there.

Where our race looked to our evolved powers as tools toward easing existence and assisting our exploratory endeavors, the Keth’Narr viewed them as new and improved weapons of conquest. At first, they shunned their Soothers and Healers, their Sensitives, Plantsingers, Lightweavers and Shadeweavers, and they almost failed to discover their Foreseers and Architects (and it probably would have benefited the galaxy-at-large if they had missed that last,) Instead, they initially cultivated their Energists, Telekineticists, and Amplifiers almost exclusively. Our hypothesis, given our current cat-and-mouse chase with them, is that they have not yet evolved anyone capable of demonstrating the final arts of Transporting and Warping, much to our relief.

Our knowledge of them and their habits emerged from their interaction with the third of the three evolved races, the Ziltari, who were the first victims of the Keth’Narr approximately four centuries ago. When our Sensitives felt the initial, emotionally charged psychic disruptions of large-scale battle, the lead Amelior of the time conducted a mass-empowerment projection with no less than fourteen Amplification contributors to discover what was occurring and witness the events taking place four star systems over.

He saw the Ziltari adeptly defending themselves against a fumbling Keth’Narr invasion force of several dozen ships encircling and transporting down to the planet surface. While the Ziltari deployed persons displaying a majority of the vast array of capabilities which we ourselves were accustomed to using, the Keth’Narr only displayed a few limited ones, and this fact combined with home turf advantage led to a nearly lossless defense for the Ziltari and a resounding rout of the Keth’Narr who had attempted the invasion.

A bruised ego can be a great motivator, however, and the Keth’Narran desire for revenge over their denied victory festered. The surprise at learning they weren’t the only mentally advanced race didn’t last long. They acknowledged they needed their Healers and Soothers to recover from the physical and mental damage levied against their forces, and they discovered Architects could make mentally-resistant materials with quantum-level enhancements. They recognized the tactical advantage Sensitives could provide. They no longer exterminated the "weak" skill practitioners as useless. Fortunately, they only used their Architects to physically enhance their ships and hyperdrive engines as their primary form of augmenting their travel capabilities and had not thought to test for people able to open portals connecting distant locales together, or for anyone who could encase a ship in an exempt warp space that could then travel faster-than-light in physical space while contained within. That last secret was ours, and ours alone, and for that, we yet remain at small advantage in our plight.

For the next half-century, our Sensitives would communicate with those of the Ziltari. We then established mutually-anchored Gates that would later become so much more. Only having to power half the distance from each end was a great help. Cross-diplomatic envoys and trade traveled both directions, and ultimately, despite cultural differences, we considered ourselves allies versus the Keth’Narr together, training each other in skills the other either lacked or was weaker.

The result of the grudge from the Keth'Narr would not end well for the Ziltari, sadly. The Keth’Narr temporarily moved on to conquering lesser, unevolved races in other star systems while they trained and honed their psychic forces for their showdown. When the next great battle occurred with Ziltar a century ago, the Keth’Narr defeated the Ziltari, and their spite led them to physically destroy the planet rather than simply take it over.

Using the Amplifiers to augment their Energists at redirecting the forces of the local sun, the Keth'Narr obliterated planet Ziltar. Instead of just subjugating the race, they would be satisfied with nothing less than its complete destruction. Our previously peaceful Gateways were flooded with endless streams of war refugees, accelerating during the last few days, but the strain of diverting the Ziltari Amplifiers from holding open the vital transportals to defending the planet from the redirected solar energy in order to protect civilians was too much, and one by one, the Gates dissolved. From a planet of tens of billions, only twenty million Ziltari could be saved before their escape routes completely collapsed. Seventeen of our Thelisian citizens also perished on Ziltar as they were too far to make it to a Gate home in time. A public pair of memory crystals was made, and many came to touch their minds upon them and attune to the communal grief of their loss as a unifying force within our and the remaining Ziltari people.

The use of trans-system Gates did not go unnoticed. The Keth’Narr now knew there was an additional skill they lacked, and they put their Sensitives on it, and they traced the psychic energy trail and detected our part in them to our homeworld. We felt the feathery touch of their distant, passing scans over our minds, and a month later we felt it again, minutely stronger, and we now knew that they were closing the distance and we had to prepare. They were coming for us, and in stronger force than the Ziltari faced. Little did we know that it would be the last century we would enjoy on our homeworld’s surface before the Keth’Narr turned us into the homeless, spacefaring people we had to become.

I am Merith Lozane, First Historian to Fleet Leader 72 Melinia Vadori, and this will be the tale of the Thelisian struggle versus the Keth’Narr: the last battle of our planet in a bid to save our people in the Ravaging, the Exodus – our peoples’ (with the Ziltari descendants) flight in one hundred and two directions to escape total annihilation, and the arrival of our race’s savior, Veladris the Sublime, the first Adaptor whose birth and rescue of our people would be discovered by our Foretellers. May the struggle, loss, and determination of my people serve as both warning and preparation should the Keth’Narr come for your people, as well.

They will, one day.