The Allied Systems’ next contact was with the Shadow Syndicate, a disparate collection of species that had banded together after being exploited after by a distant and extremely powerful galactic megacorporation, which called itself ‘Minamar Specialized Industries’ (MSI). The founding members of the Shadow Syndicate had decided that they would much rather be the exploiters themselves, and had thus built their own (criminal) enterprise on the other side of the galaxy, with extensive spy networks dedicated to uncovering any information that could lead to MSI’s eventual downfall.
The Shadow Syndicate’s headquarters, located in a system they called ‘Omega', was in close proximity to the Allied System’s new colony on the relic world in the Cidar System. The Syndicate desired Cidar’s relics for itself, and immediately began espionage operations against the Allied Systems, while criminal cells began setting up shop across the frontier.
The Quavarian Admiralty’s relations with the Allied Systems proved brief, as less than six years after first contact, the Admiralty was wiped out by the Gammeth Confluence, bringing their long war against their creations to a definite conclusion. Quvarian survivors scattered in a Diaspora across the galaxy, but their great void habitats were lost and occupied by the Gammeth.
The Gammeth’s envoy to the Allied Systems simply stated that the Quavarians had refused to leave the Confluence alone, so it had done what was necessary to neutralize the threat they would otherwise continue to pose.
But within the next two years, many other alien nations would establish contact with the Allied Systems, proving beyond a doubt that the galaxy was simply teeming with intelligent life... and all of it had developed their civilizations within the last 50,000 years.
“Greetings. Very honored. I represent the Sathorian Union. Pleased to meet your species. Hope you appreciate value of technology as well,” the diplomat from the Sathorian Union said, speaking in a rapid cadence of short sentences through his translator.
The Sathorian Union was an oligarchic technocracy with a cutthroat political culture, with a well-developed espionage and special operations agency. However, even more strikingly, they had recklessly modified their own genome. They had augmented their already high intelligence and elevated their synapses to transmit nerve impulses far more efficiently... at the cost of reducing their average lifespan to a little over forty years, about half of the average of the typical spacefaring organic species that the Allied Systems had encountered. Not only were their lifespans brief, their builds could not generate the same degree of physical power as could a humans.
But they were among the most productive researchers in the galaxy.
The Alari, from the Illios Corporate Interests, were on the complete opposite end of the longevity spectrum. They lived for over twice as long as the average Milky Way sapient species, and even more curiously, seemed to consist entirely of females, reproducing, albeit slowly, by a form of parthenogenesis. Their desert world of Illios was dotted by shining spires, and conglomerated media companies provided a never-ending stream of entertainment, though any manner of hedonistic pleasures could be found in Illios' seedier underside.
It was soon learned that Illios was in fact a splinter colony of the distant ‘Alari Republics’, though the Alari of Illios were reluctant to reveal the location of the Republics to contact who was still largely an unknown quantity to them.
While most humans who beheld them couldn’t help but find the Alari strangely beautiful, the Blorg were anything but that. They were misshapen fungal lumps with a pair of tentacle-like appendages. Yet they were already familiar with human culture, or at least human culture from when radio and television had proliferated across the globe, and seemed fond of it. Perhaps
too fond of it. They were certainly forward, rushing to give their new ‘friends’ a hug that was uncomfortably tight, and it took a long time for the Allied Systems’ envoys to convince the Blorg to let them go.
It would soon become clear that the Blorg were desperately lonely individuals, leading them to embrace their new ‘friends’ in the growing galactic community with an eagerness that verged on fanaticism.
But the next species the Allied Systems encountered was anything but friendly.
“
I AM ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL,” the being who only identified themselves as the Harvester-General said. “HUMANS. EVOLUTION CANNOT BE STOPPED.
ANY DELAY IS POINTLESS.
OUR ATTACKS WILL TEAR YOU APART. WE ARE LIMITLESS."
The transmission promptly cut off there.
It appeared that the Harvesters were part of a Hive Mind, and the true speaker was not the Harvester-General, but some as of yet unknown entity.
Perhaps it was due to the presence of such an obviously hostile neighbor as the Harvesters that the Yaln of the Preddack Regime were themselves extremely xenophobic, or so more charitable interpretations went.
Most, however, correctly observed that the Yaln were already rather vicious and unpleasant in disposition themselves, having evolved as a fierce predator species on their jungle world.
The Courts of Decunia was the monarchial government of the Elthir species, very large arthropods that had evolved on a pristine world with unusually high gravity, and so tended to avoid conflict, as any fall could be exceedingly dangerous. Unlike most spacefaring civilizations, they had few large cities, but their bureaucracy had developed robust mechanisms to stall whatever they perceived as reckless change in their society.
The Vhellus Combine hailed from the world of Irustune, which had an atmosphere that most other species found to be highly toxic. Indeed, the Vhellus breathed and exhaled a unique mix of exotic gases, meaning that they had to wear respirator masks whenever they traveled off-planet.
The Vhellus were traders by nature, who had a vast network of outposts from which to conduct commerce, and like the Elthir, they avoided conflict where possible, largely seeing it as unprofitable. However, the Vhellus’s leading merchants were said to have recently taken on a somewhat xenophobic outlook, faced with the imperialistic ambitions of one their neighbors.
Said neighbors took the form of the Tezekian Hierarchy and its allies, the Fjasivlin Imperium and the Hydarian Dynastic Union.
The Tezekians were an avian species hailing from the world of Pallden with natural, metal-enriched armor protrusions covering much of their bodies. They were highly militaristic, and had implemented mandatory military service for all of their citizens, along with a highly meritocratic system of promotions. Early on in their history as an interstellar nation, they had subjugated their closest neighbors, the fungoid Fjasivlin and the gecko-like Hydari. Yet instead of merely enslaving the Fjasivilin and the Hydari, they had granted any who were willing complete a term of service in the Tezekian military citizen rights.
Over the course of generations, Tezekian cultural hegemony over the Fjasivilin and the Hydari was all but complete, and the three were firmly united by shared ideals of martial honor.
And the three species of the Hierarchy were eager to bring others into their ranks.
Near both the Shadow Syndicate and the Harvesters, was the space of the Vurxac Chiefdoms.
Believed to be a former genetic experiment of the Sathorian Union that had succeeded all too well, the Vurxac had excessive amounts of endurance, could secrete large amounts of hormones to stimulate muscle growth and aggression, and had the traits of several extremophilic organisms spliced into their own genome, allowing them to live almost anywhere.
They also only lived for a bit more than twenty years on average as a result of crippling side effects that these modifications had left on their physiology.
Those that happened to have more robust physiologies than their brethren tended to gain the experience necessary to become leaders among the Vurxac. But so much aggression had been engineered into them that whichever Vurxac managed to establish themselves as their Chief Warlord usually did not survive for long thereafter before being brought down by infighting.
Thus, the Vurxac existed in a nearly continuous and anarchic state of banditry, scavenging technology from anyone foolish enough to cross paths with them. Making any sort of diplomatic agreement with them was difficult, as it seemed that they had a new Warlord every few months.
In all, the star nations of the Milky Way were varied, but the Allied Systems was going to have to learn to co-exist alongside most of them. And seeing an opportunity to leverage the influence of its rich Zro trade, and the Citadel within its borders offering an ideal meeting place for diplomats from across the galaxy, the government of the Allied Systems pledged its support for the creation of a Galactic Community.
It was then simply a matter of seeing how the Milky Way’s other nations would respond to the proposal.
