Before all, there was us. We were the First. We developed slowly, resources were scarce upon our world, space travel and mining was the top priority of the government, the great families, at the time. It became simple as we discovered the properties of the only resource we had in abundance, a particle capable of altering the mass of objects when exposed to electrical currents, it was the first element. We expanded, discovered new worlds, found more resources than we could use and found other life forms.
They were not as advanced, or as civilized as our nations, at first we rejected them, observed them from great distances and did not interfere. We saw their resourcefulness, they lived on a world even more barren than ours, and had only begun to develop, they lived short lives, only around a hundred cycles, and were highly innovative, taking one third of the time we did to go from their first water vessel to air vessel. We saw them alter over time as evolution changed them. They became civilized to the point where law and order ruled and their government was stable. Then we visited, we revealed ourselves after millenia and asked them to join us, we elevated them within a generation to space travel, and shared with them the first element and it's power. They were named the Learned, for they gained knowledge with great speed and developed new and interesting technologies for us.
They repaid us a hundred times over, they were our engineers and scientists, we were their military. Their world had few predators, their green bodies, four thin legs, two arms, elongated neck and peaceful nature left them incapable warriors. With their help, we constructed a great space station, named Hub, the center of all galactic civilization. The Hub was a space station without equal, the five "fingers" of the hub allowed for easy ship docking and efficient space use. The ring in the center connected all the fingers, allowing for internal transportation and movement.
More races joined us, we elevated them when we thought them civilized or discovered them when they achieved basic space travel and communications. Eventually the great number of species and societies and their great distance from Hub made it difficult to travel the large expanses of space, the first element was plentiful, but not infinite, and resources were strained. The First and the Learned developed great transport relays, allowing even the most poor transporter to reach the Hub from anywhere in the galaxy.
But all was not well, within our civilization, civil war was beginning to break out, from only a few dozen families on our own world, we had expanded, and hundreds of bloodlines blossomed. It was difficult to represent so many families, and our politicians were paralyzed.
To protect themselves, each family constructed a Great Machine. The Great Machines were warships, larger and more powerful than any that had been made before, built to protect the creator family and wage war upon any that threatened them. Every family member gave a piece of themselves to the creation of their Great Machine, their blood and flesh combined with synthetics to create their protector. Advanced AIs were implanted in the machines, supremely intelligent, highly patient, and zealously loyal to their creator families. Over time, the personalities of the machines developed and they ceased to become a tool of the family and instead became a member.
With the creation of such weapons civil war was staved off for fear of attack from the family's Great Machine, however, this shaky peace did not last long. Spies were placed into different families, pretending to be their kin and attempting to be placed on the crew of their Great Machine. To combat this threat of espionage, the most loyal members of each family, upon death, gave themselves whole to the great machine, their loyalty becoming part of the steel and flesh that composed them. All who were near the machine felt this loyalty, and over time, would be swayed to the family. With the threat of espionage and betrayal over, peace returned.
But the power of the Great Machines did not go unnoticed by the other races. They grew fearful of our power and demanded the destruction of the Great Machines, but how could we? The Great Machines held the flesh and blood of our ancestors and our family, they had names, we would not cast them aside, not let their sacrifice go wasted, to rot among decaying ships in scrapyards to be incinerated by a star.
The races threatened revolt, they threatened war, they knew that the Great Machines held only so much power, and that combined, we would fall. Only the Learned stood beside us, oldest friends, their mantis-like nature now seen as commonly as our own within the Hub. We were torn, the threat of war was great and real, but the Great Machines were our kin, and as our society dictates, kin above all.
We refused to destroy the Great Machines, many of the races receded from the Hub, returning to their own worlds to amass their armies and prepare for war. We left the Hub, leaving the Learned behind to tend to it until our return, we gave them the knowledge of the Great Machines' signals, in case we could not contact them ourselves, the Great Machines could direct them.
The war was brutal and lasted for centuries, although the forces of our enemies were far more plentiful than our own, we were the First, and with the aid of our Great Machines, we drove them back. We extinguished all the races that warred against us, fearful that they would eventually rise again to battle us, we harvested their worlds of resources and technologies, attempting to regain what we had lost in the war. The war crippled our fleets, decimated our population, more than half of our Great Machines were destroyed. The resources spent in the war were too great, their was simply not enough metal, food and water to sustain even our decimated population.
Many of us simply died off, a dozen families left in their Great Machines, seeking a new galaxy to colonize, one with good worlds to live upon and grow again. The rest of the great machines, the hundreds that existed, but whose families had died, grieved the loss of their kin greatly. The weeping of the machines was a time of great stillness throughout the galaxy. In their grief, they blamed the Learned for our destruction, saying that our need to protect their worlds cost us our lives. They stripped the Learned of their sentience and condemned them to the maintenance of the Hub. Eradicating all Learned that lived outside the engineering crew upon the Hub.
The Great Machines vowed to keep our galaxy clear of any who would pose a threat to us, they vowed that, until we return, no species would plague the Hub or any of our worlds for long. That they would let these species grow, for a time so that they might have resources and technologies for them to harvest and give to us upon our return. They would craft more species into slaves for us, to carry out our will once we return. And until our return, they would do this, until our return, the cycle would go on.