Prologue

Deep within one spiral arm of a small galaxy that would one day be referred to by some as the Milky Way, a millennia-long conflict continued to rage. Its reason had been lost to the depths of time long ago, so nobody really knew what it was they were fighting for – all they knew was that their side HAD to win, at all costs. The battles that resulted from this attitude were bloody and brutal, usually ending only when one group had been completely wiped out.

But this story is not about that.

In the midst of the carnage, advances were made. The first development was faster-than-light travel – while neither side would admit that it had been developed independently, each was quick to accuse the other of espionage in order to justify their continued hostility.

One side learned how to rapidly transform planets from barren rocks into habitable worlds, and the technology was quickly copied. Under any other circumstances, this would have been cause to end the conflict – but the each side sought to deny potential colonies from the other, the fear of being overwhelmed their only motivation.

But this story is not about that.

Time progressed, and the battles intensified. It wasn't long before all other pursuits were abandoned, as the demand for resources to continue fighting overshadowed all other considerations. Planets that would, in earlier eras, have been thought of as potential colonies were turned into blackened cinders as they were either stripped of resources to build ships and weapons or obliterated to prevent the enemy from doing the same. Both sides eventually developed the means to destroy planets from a distance – and soon after, a weapon was created that could cause a star to explode and vaporize any planet that could be thought of as useful.

Thus is was that a battle for survival turned into a war of spite, as both sides annihilated star systems by the dozens – not for any tactical advantage, but simply to ensure that the other could not possess it.

But this story is not about that.

It would come to pass that the leaders of both sides, in their obsessive quest for victory, sought to stage a final battle that would lay waste to both civilizations – ensuring that whatever advances they made would be lost to the fog of time... forever.

But this story is not about that, either.

Before that happened - a few on each side came to see that the war was not something that could be won, and took steps to create a third race that would ensure that something of themselves would survive. One such experiment would result in a new race of people who would settle and grow on a planet known as Terra.

But this story is not about them.

Because, it turned out, both sets of combatants were unaware of another race that already existed – a race that had remained outside of the conflict that raged on relentlessly around them. A race that would not want to be involved in the conflict, even if they had been aware of it. A race that would find itself involved, whether it wanted to be or not.

This story is about them...

Or, at least, one of them.