THOMASPENZHORN11: I'm interested now. Can't find the story you mentioned, however. Can you enlighten me? Thks

"...thank you for the information, Director," the reporter said as she shuffled around for a bit in her seat. "But, can you also explain your reasoning for this as well?"

The Director of the Nìr Avìr Zhasa Ui (NAZU), Mito Hikēwä, nodded as she proposed her point, her ears folding and unfolding them again as she did so. "For starters, the exhaust. Normally, our engines would be leaving residual trails of ionized plasma as exhaust, trails that linger for quite a while before dissipating. Not only did we not find any trace of an exhaust trail of any known type whatsoever, but as if to hammer the point home, in it's stead we found emissions of gamma-rays and pions, both of which are commonly found as the explosive remnants of a matter-antimatter annihilation reaction. That is indication number one."

"And you think that's an important thing to consider?"

"Antimatter power systems are still in the development phase," pointed out Hikēwä. "We haven't made a system that can be mounted onto a ship yet. And there are other indications, too. The images are too fuzzy for definitive analysis and conclusions, but the ship is of a model that we've never seen before nonetheless, and she was presumably in the area for quite a while, too, but we never spotted that ship come or leave, there's no warp signatures detected even on early-warning FTL sensors. And the clincher is at the first recorded data logs of the incident alongside data logs on the last moments, they both picked up an abnormal and abrupt surge of radiation and residual gravitational signatures. Individually, each fact is suggestive; combined together, the chain they form is definitive. There is no other possible explanation for this: that we are not alone, and that whatever form of FTL they have on their ships, it's not warp systems like our own. And I strongly believe that their methods and approaches are undoubtedly superior."

The reporter seemed amused. "Is this another case of primary and secondary inference?"

"Indeed. A ship that we've never seen before pops in out of nowhere, and we never saw it come or go. Inference; that the ship is most likely alien in origin. Secondary inference, that it comes and goes in a manner that we've never seen before, and thus it must've got a totally different approach to FTL."

"What do you think about this?" asked a single humanoid being inside the living room of her apartment as her companion—an individual inherently human enough to be mistaken easily for any other schoolgirl straight clean out of a Tokyo high school save perhaps the rather long ears on top of her head which were folded both at sixty-degree angles in her current relaxed state of mind—stepped out of their shared bedroom to watch the live broadcast as it was being displayed on a wall-mounted TV.

"No idea, really, to be honest," answered Tsuiihō Mishìr as she played with her ears around with her fingers. "We're tech researchers, why should we bother? Leave astronomy to the experts, or as I should say, the folk at the Nerd Battalion. My job's in engineering, not xenobiology, so I'm calling myself out. Might dunk in later if we get some xeno tech to study and doctor with, but for now...I'm out."

Shìryo Mai sipped away at her drink before looking at her partner. "You don't really seem interested, eh? I'm kinda excited here."

Tsuiihō blinked. "You've always been that extraterrestrial lover, eh?"

"My love for anything that's not in the Salzear star system," confirmed Shìryo, "Is about the same as your love for all things mechanical or digital."

Tsuiihō shrugged. "Hey, you got me. Research on anti-gravity is my job, after all. A nice billet to fill, though."

"Speaking of which, how's it going lately? Not too bad, I presume?"

"Pain, and lots," Tsuiihō said as she sank herself into the soft embrace of the sofa. "Figured what a graviton is, alongside the generators needed to make it run, easily enough. Crafting an FTL drive that can reliably cross more than half a dozen light-years a day, to the contrary, is an entirely different headache to contend with."

"Welp, that's gonna suck."

"Yup, it sure does. Ever tried to craft something from scratch when you have literally no idea how to even craft said item in the first place, using only a quarter of the ingredients needed to make one proper? That's our situation right now. Didn't even know where to start, for God's sake..."

Shìryo sighed. "My job's in Observation, but it's basically to stitch together theories into a chain from a line of clues, three-quarters of which don't even exist in the first place and the remaining quarter a jumbled mess in no logical order whatsoever, and they don't have conveniently-placed time-stamps for me and my colleagues to stitch together, either. I know how you feel."

Tsuiihō reached for the half-empty glass on the table and took a sip. "I wonder what's happening amongst the stars right now."

"We might as well just skip the briefing altogether," Prime Minister Walter Schröder said as the Director of OSHA settled himself into his chair, "For the attached files got the job done well enough. Director Henderson, what's the real issue?"

"Let me start," butted in the Minister of Foreign Affairs, "That apart from them being a race of mono-gendered bunny-girls who reproduce with tentacle opivositors inside their breasts, alongside their asymmetrically matched technology compared to ours, Idon't see any problems."

Hilda Sternau, the Minister of Commerce, flushed red. "You just had to use that analogy?"

Yoshida Ayumi casually sipped away at her cup of tea with a trolling smile plastered across her face. "Aw, come on, you're the Minister of Commerce already, and you still can't handle something a little bit naughty~?"

Yang Wen-li ignored the two female Ministers as he cleared his throat. "Stop bickering around like schoolgirls in the seventh grade, you two. Anyways. Henderson, your point is that we shouldn't be fucking around with these so-called 'Espers' and instead just look on and monitor their deve from a distance, right?"

"Yep," confirmed Henderson. "Normally, protocols would be dictating us to just casually waltz in and add another line to our list of first contacts and treaties, but this is warranting a different approach. They're developing their technology to the point where it readily rivals our own, having literally everything short of our anti-gravity tech, and that includes terraforming, AI, and even primitive FTL. Their population of 152 billion is scattered throughout their home system of Salzear, alongside every other star system in a 100-LY radius of their homeworld. They only need a working navitasium generator to directly compete with us, really."

Yang pondered internally some ideas for a moment, but Industry cut him off. "So what's the problem? Why can't we just go in and blow some horns?"

"Inferiority complexes, the after-effects of which can be brutal," explained Foreign Affairs, Yoshida. "When we made our first contact with the Citadel, we got ourselves on edge readily enough, even when our technology rivaled theirs and our ships were superior. These guys had tech equivalent to ours on paper, but in actual practice they are still significantly inferior, especially their FTL tech. From our perspective it might seem like an innocent first contact move, but from theirs, it's not going that way. Even if we make it clear that we don't want things to come to blows right off the bat, they're still going to be wary of us nonetheless. And for a good reason; if we look at things from the perspective of an outsider, they'll be compelled to agree to any demands we may make, their position is far weaker than they'd like. It's the same reason the batarians and the krogans went to blows with the Citadel before; in the case of the former, the turians attacked them after they opened a relay without knowing of the rules against such an act, triggering what amounts to our First Contact War, essentially, and in the case of the latter, they were uplifted to galactic standards by the salarians. They quickly devolved into Russia v. America really fast, and in the case of the batarians, it's not going to get better anytime soon."

"The quarians also ate the short stick, so to speak," agreed Lütjens. "They were kinda inferior compared to the Citadel when they first showed up, their position can be described as being roughly analogous to the UNSC in Halo compared to the Covenant from the same franchise. They tried creating the Geth as a way to at least compete with their peers, only to fuck it up, unfortunately, and their peers turned their backs on the quarians, bullying others into doing the same as well."

"And the volus were forced into the role of a banker-cum-bookie-slash-middleman because their physiology made them ill-suited to combat, which is why the krogan were the turians' hired guns, and the krogan got shafted as a result," added Henderson. "And let's not forget, the hanar were an uplifted race themselves, so were the drell. In fact, their position is more akin to the quarians; they got chanced across by the asari while they were still in their infancy of space-travel, and ended up being a second-rate power for centuries until the hanar started to catch up with the asari. In terms of relative technology and military strength, the asari have a clear edge over the hanar, and that's not going to change any time soon."

"I think," said the Minister of Industry, Schlossman, "That we are all members of a rapidly-expanding club. Should've called it 'Club Fuck the Council'."

"That would've been a good name," concurred Lütjens, "But the acronym for that would be CFTCC. Not going to happen, really. But getting back to the issue, it's not worth it for us to go and try and make peace with these Espers. Or Ethosians, if the data on the name of their homeworld is correct. We'd be risking that 'Superior First Contact Effect' that some of our historians proposed quite a while ago on this endavour, and most likely we'd have them running a rivalry with us like the kind we're already doing with the Citadel. They can be our allies, and even our friends if we do this correctly, but just walking in from the start and asking for a press conference...that would be a no-go, at least for now. They're not ready for it yet, and neither are we, rushing things would only result in disaster. And we've got our own history to prove this; anyone can look back at the exploration of the Americas for proof. Wasn't pretty."

"Indeed," nodded the Prime Minister. "The problem here, though, is what are we going to do about this situation?"

Yang pondered things for a moment. "How about we go pull some strings?"

"How are we going to influence the internal affairs of a race that we have literally no contact with, much less control, let alone directly pull the strings to steer them to our agenda?" asked Yoshida. "It's not like we can just waltz in, dial two numbers, and ask their Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister to coöperate with us for a quarter of a billion pounds each, either. You guys know that, right?"

"They have plenty of AIs, similarly to us," Yang pointed out. "All we need to do is to send one of our AIs in, maybe two, and have them apply for a job at one of their research agencies, and then, bam, job done. Their technology is pretty advanced, even by our standards, and all they would need is for someone to invent an anti-gravity system that works better than their current ubihexium systems, that, while still working well nonetheless, would be rendered obsolete the moment they figure out how to make navitasium, which has the same properties and potential, but can be synthesized as opposed to mined, is much more efficient to use, as well as being more safe, and also, much cheaper. We just need let our undercover engineers jimmy them into figuring out for themselves how to craft the stuff, and we're good. As long as we keep this secret as a long-term project, we're good."

"Why is this sounding more and more like a conspiracy theory by the minute..."

Yang shrugged. "You clearly have played Deus X, eh? Or watched The X-Files?"

Yoshida sipped away at her coffee. "Watched and played both. I find conspiracy theories fascinating, actually went out of my way to research them when I was younger. Never thought we'd be plotting the conspiracies as opposed to unraveling it, however. Feels weird, to say the least."

Yang proceeded to light himself a cigarette and took in a long drag. "That's what we at the Intelligence Arm do all the time, duh. It's literally our job."

"Damn. So many classified documents inside your office and you brain. Nice."

"You wanna take a look?"

"I'm gonna take a wild guess that it's probably gonna be locked and booby-trapped like crazy, eh?"

"Correct. Only a select few people have the privilege, and the clearance, to access the archives."

"So you're asking me for clearance to proceed, eh?" asked the Prime Minister. "Yang, you're up. Get it done."

"Alright. We're starting this project to-night, by the way. I might as well kiss my sleeping schedule goodbye."

"Tsuii, do you have a moment?"

"Uhh, sure, what for?" Tsuiihō asked as she swiveled around in her chair to get a look at her addresser, a steaming cup of tea in her dominant hand and the button to set her HUD-eyeglasses back to normal view of the outside world in her other.

"...yeah. Sorry for having to disturb you in your break-time, but we have a new researcher joining us to-day. She did send us a copy of her own research project this morning, which is the file you're viewing right now, and she said she'd be transferring herself over to our department this afternoon to work on it with us. You may have forgotten."

"...yeah, I figured. She's right behind you, right? I was expecting her; I don't mind the intrusion."

"Uhh...yeah. Still, sorry, nonetheless. Step in, Michi."

"Excuse me," Michi replied, stepping into the room with her hand-bag held in front of her by both hands. A pair of bi-colored emerald-and-lapis-blue eyes were amongst her most striking features, alongside silvery-white hair flowing down to waist level in contrast with her pinkish, half-folded ears. Her outfit was as typical as any other outfit would be, a light gray jacket with an A-shaped lower trim design coupled with a red zip-up collared shirt and a dark gray skirt, and dark blue leggings reaching up just above her knees, the upper edges of which were folded over for decoration.

Tsuiihō set down her cup against the table-top and de-polarized both lenses on her HUD-glasses to get a better view of her new companion. "Michi Shimizū, I presume?"

Michi nodded. "That would be me. Pleasure to meet you, Senpai Tsuiihō."

Tsuiihō smiled. "We're casual around these parts here, there's no need to be formal, really. I've some colleagues here who have some pretty weird antics, you'll have to get used to them pretty quickly, in fact, especially because you're probably going to be glomped to death by literally everyone else, especially considering that, err, lolita appearance of yours. And I mean that quite literally."

"...eh...what?

Tsuiihō was about to answer when the door flew open. "Mishìr? Do you have—"

The intruder—sharing the same outfit, overall human appearance, and rabbit-ears as everyone else inside, but with light blue hair trimmed neatly at the jaw-level alongside purple-and-golden-eyes—stopped dead in her tracks as her eyes fixated themselves upon Michi—the new arrival. "Who's she, Mishìr?"

"She's the new researcher who'll be working with us from now on, Tōka," explained Tsuiihō. "Michi, Michi Shimizū. She's the one who sent us that anti-gravity research files earlier this morning, remember?"

"Shimizū..." Tōka thought for a moment before something clicked in her mind. "Oh, right. She'll be working with us from now on, eh?"

"Yep, she is. Now get your screws back in order and stop being a lolicon or else I'll...welp, scratch that, I give up..."

"Uhh, what is she..." asked Michi confusedly as Tōka began to come closer. "Hey, what are you—"

"Awwwwwwwwww, soooooooooo cuuuuute~" Tōka cut her off as she practically jumped onto her and glomped her into a choke-hug, causing the latter to yelp with good reason, but she was either totally oblivious to her newfound colleague's struggles, or didn't even bother to notice, even as Tsuiihō let out an audible sigh while she buried her face into the softness of Michi's bust. "Soooo sooooffffttttt..."

"Welp, you get it now," Tsuiihō said as she buried her face into her hands. And for good reason.

Michi could do nothing but let herself be pinned onto the floor by her overeager colleague.

A gloved hand gripped the handle of the engine order telegraph and pulled it to ring a command down towards the computerized engine controls to set the thrusters to run at Ahead Standard. The human bridge officer looked onwards as the quarian sailor manning it turned to other duties, his biosuit reflecting the light of the overhead lights onto the wooden interior of the ship's bridge, dotted here and there with splashes of brass and silver, such as the handles, spokes, and decorative linings on the engine order telegraphs and helm control telemotor.

"How are the preparations going so far?" asked a high-ranking quarian, Admiral Rael'Zorah vas Rayya, as he entered the bridge from the door that led to the conning tower.

"Your officers and seamen are doing well, Admiral," Captain Josiah Barents replied as his XO ordered a course change to heading 2-7-1, the quarian manning the helm control telemotor ringing a heading dial down to Engineering Command to comply with the order. "Three days, maybe six, and your crew'll be able to get the ship running at optimal capacity. We'll be hanging by for extra assistance should you need it, but there's the basics. They got the hang of our systems quickly enough, surprisingly. They're good sailors."

Rael'Zorah cast his gaze around the bridge with its half-dozen electronic instrumentation panels displaying navigational data alongside sensor readings, as well as the hilariously archaic roundish engine order telegraphs and helm-control telemotor. "It still goes over my head every single time, however. Why would you be using that archaic setup when you can just use the more modern throttle levers instead?"

"I have no idea myself, either," shrugged Barents. "It's been that way for quite a while now, and as far as I can remember, it's been that way since I signed up with the Cunard line some thirty years ago. And it's basically the traditional setup for even navy ships it seems, and that design's around ever since the first ships were commissioned into the Alliance Naval Arm in 2171. It's just tradition now, methinks."

"Well, to be fair," commented Rael, "They do look nostalgic. And exotic. It's not like you get to see a ship controls setup as archaic as this one, much less on one of the biggest ships in the entire galaxy. And, they still look appealing enough, to be honest."

"That setup's been around for close to 400 years already," agreed Barents. "Got used to it soon enough, however. Normally, you'll be pushing that boring throttle lever forwards every time you want to increase the engine output, but this one? One can order engines to Half Ahead with that satisfying ring-ding-ding-ding-riiiiing every time the handle is pulled. Don't hear that every day, don't you?"

"Yeah, I figured. You humans sure do have fine tastes when it comes to ship design."

Barents cast his gaze over to the letters 'SS Ruritania' stenciled across the helm. "I've spent forty years in command of a ship, eight of which are spent as captain of a frigate, cruiser, or even carrier during the Second Abyssal War, another two piloting bulk cargo haulers, and the past thirty years commanding passenger liners for Cunard; I've been captain for the Ruritania for the past five. I know that it's weird for me to be saying this, but I'll miss her, the Ruritania."

"It's almost like a sailor's instinct, I can relate. Ships are like homes for us, given our history of being sailors, much less ones that we've served onboard for years. It's natural for us to be like this."

Barents nodded. "I'm still glad nonetheless to see her aging hull be put to good use. Take good care of her."

Oraka, the Councillor of the Hierarchy of Palaven, sighed once more as the meeting session with the other two Councillors was starting to take its toll on his sanity; the matters regarding the humans being the reason why.

Their reaching out to the quarians, refusing to join the Citadel, AIs and fleetgirls had been enough of a galactic nightmare already, and now, as if to make things even worse, they had reached out to the krogans. The humans; reaching out to the Spirits-honest Spirits-dammed krogans. As if this wasnt enough to make his job miserable enough already.

"I think we can give them the award for holding the title of 'Most Troublesome Species Ever' now," said he sarcastically, amidst his headaches.

His salarian counterpart, Valern, stared blankly into his onnimi-tool. "Indeed. Quarians, batarians, and krogans are troublesome in their own way, but humans have all of their problems combined, but given a triple dose of steroids. Quarians are currently reduced to living a nomadic lifestyle, batarians lack the capacity to challenge us directly, and krogans were defeated in the Rebellions. Humans have the ambition to challenge us directly, along with the industrial, economic, and military potential to back up their political positions. And that is something that they're using to their fullest potential."

He let a pause elapse before carrying on. "Current countermeasures proved ineffective. Must try new approaches if humans are to be contained."

Matriach Tevos Callis, the asari Councillor, sipped away at her Thessian tea. "Are you suggesting that we go on a treaty-making spree like the humans?"

"That's what STG is suggesting, yeah. There are currently two major contenders for this: the yahg and the raloi. Both are pre-FTL civilizations that we can uplift and integrate, but the latter is estimated to be an easier case compared to the former, as they already have developed primintive interplanetary spaceflight capabilities, albeit with chemical rockets only."

"You're suggesting that we should just find a few other candidates and add them to the galactic community in place of the humans, right? And by doing so, weaken their influence and ability to compete with us," Tevos finished his line of thinking.

Valern nodded. "Correct. The yahg is an obvious choice, but they are a bit too troublesome and a bit too unpredictable, and not even the STG has a definitive picture of what their society is really like, so the raloi would be the better option. They are far more predictable than the yahg, and also have a strong sense of justice, and thus, we can integrate them into our fold, and use them as a proxy to fight the humans. And they're not that hard to integrate, either, they'll get along with us just fine. Their technology is primitive, however, and so are their social and economic structures, so it'll take a while for them to catch up, but once they do, they'll be a valuable addition."

Tevos looked at her salarian counterpart's onimi-tool as he placed it onto the table for easy viewing. "What would that entail?"

"We do what we did with the krogan, essentially. Make first contact, and offer them research data alongside examples of our technology in exchange for favors and alliances. Uplift them to galactic standards as an ally, essentially. Once they're uplifted and have integrated into the galactic community, they'll act as our sword, and they'll have no choice but to follow our orders." Valern explained. "The humans would be the target, and the raloi would be a proxy."

"You do know how risky that approach is, right?" reminded Oraka. "If they find out about our involvement, things might turn sour pretty quickly."

"The humans are a major threat, and a proxy is required to neutralize that threat. The raloi will fit the role perfectly."

"What if they get out of hand?" asked Tevos. "How will we prevent them from turning against us?"

"We make them dependent upon us," pointed out Valern. "Uplift them, make sure they stay dependent upon us, and use that dependency to control them."

"Sounds risky," warned Oraka, "But it'll be worth it if the proxy can keep the humans in check."

Tevos sighed. "At least we have a way this time..."

OSHA special report #1171

Report created by crew of research vessel RV Novaya Zemlya at 0201HRS Coordinated Universal Time when scouting out star system 4546, last edited on November 5th, 2257, at 0710HRS Coordinated Universal Time. Saved to mainfest and delivered to HQ Tokyo at 0900HRS Coordinated Universal Time on 5th November of the same year.

[Document is confidental under Order to Prevention of Disclosure #813 by the Alliance Intelligence Arm. Confidental status shall remain in place until scheduled de-classification at 0700HRS on December 5th, 2280. Any attempts to breach this will be considered an act of treason and will be punished accordingly.]

We've discovered a new civilization.

...let me start from the basics. The star system marked 4546 on the auto-naming navigational system contained three gas giants, the innermost of which orbited well within the star's habitable zone, with the latter two further out and/or skirting the zone outright, and was marked Planets 4546b though d. All three had moons roughly the size of Earth or Mars, and emissions of ions were detected in the system, seemingly from ion-engines. We then went dark and skirted the outer edges of the system in hopes of finding out more information regarding this system, and what we've discovered so far was...startling, to say the least.

Planet 4546b seemed to be inhabited, at least judging by the presence of lights that seemed to be emitted from cities or towns, as well as the presence of ships, many of them, in fact. They either hadn't spotted us yet, or were outright ignoring us, but either way, it served our purposes easily enough. We then drifted around and about, trying to masquerade as a random piece of space debris, before using passive arrays to further map out the system and find anything else of interest, and amongst them were multiple emissions of radio waves seemingly tight-beamed in anti-gravity tunnels, clear evidence of a technologically advanced civilization inhabiting the area, if the FTL comm signals were of any indication. After our tech experts poured themselves over the data we were able to gain sufficient information on their code-structures to viably translate and transcribe them, and after leaving behind a probe to monitor their communications, their unencrypted ones at the very least, we commenced an FTL jump out of the area, and proceeded to monitor the region via remote.

4546b was apparently the homeworld of this species, a gas-giant roughly half the size of Jupiter and the innermost planet, named Aphrodite after translating from their language, and host to sixteen different moons, the largest of which was roughly 1.19 Earth-masses and named Ethos. All sixteen moons of the gas giant hosted settlements and showed signs of terraforming, and the largest colony world or moon they had was named Pandora, at 1.02 Earth-masses. Aphrodite was a gas giant with a thin ring system that orbited the planet, and the planet itself had a strong magnetosphere as well as a weak auroral belt, with a day-night cycle of roughly 13 hours, 30 minutes. A second moon was named Esper, after translations, and in terms of importance the three worlds could be considered roughly analogus to the relationship between Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka. Extra details on their colonies and settlements are included in the attached documents.

This species, which we are calling the Espers or Ethosians, after their homeworld and colony, had a highly advanced technological infrastructure that rivaled, if not surpassed, ours. AIs, neural uplinks, nano-regenerative materials and/or reconstructive 3d printers like our own (theirs are called fabricators, for some reason). Their civilian sector is extremely advanced, roughly on par with us in terms of raw performance alone, and in terms of principles of operation, it surpasses ours. Although we still do match them asymmetrically.

They seem to lack the same knowledge of anti-gravity and navitasium as us, with most of their tech revolving around instead hard-light technology (the Forerunners in Halo can come easily to mind). Their knowledge on gravity manipulation is massively primintive compared to our own, but it still works nonetheless, despite being vastly inferior to ours in terms of performance (their latest drives would be bested by even our earliest models of FTL drives crafted during the Second Space Race), functioning not off navitasium crystals, but instead off room-temperature superconductors (a substance named unbihexium, an element that would be marked on the periodic table as Ubh-310) coupled with ionized gallite crystals and some weird quantum physics manipulation to form a stable, albeit weak, gravitational waveform, which is then used to generate artificial gravity fields for the ship. Because their fields are not strong enough to be able to form the interdimensional slipstream portals that our systems may be able to make use of, they instead use an Alcubierre method, Star Trek's warp drive, in essence, where their ships are enveloped by a bubble of warped space and riding on a space-time wave (think that moment in Tom and Jerry where the cat or mouse, I can't remember whom, flips a carpet and smacks the other one on the other end of the place with the ensuring carpet-wave), akin to a surfer, as opposed to our interdimensional portal.

This is still extremely fast nonetheless, and they can maintain on average ~30 light-years/day with their bigger military-grade drives, and their hardlight systems are something to behold. They're still limited in terms of interstellar travel (which is why they've only colonized the star systems within a 100-light-year radius currently at best) due to the limits of their drive system, but their systems have potential, especially after they figure out how to synthesize navitasium (they haven't figured out a way to reliably obtain dark matter to craft navitasium the way we do, forcing them to rely on unbihexium systems for the time being). Their civilian sectors are extremely advanced, their economy and culture is booming, and their population is at a record high.

Their military, I need not to tell; their equipment looks like something straight out of a Cold War-era setup but futurized with hardlight shielding and similar equipment; their doctrine revolves around combined arms the same way as we do, but it is much more geared towards defense-in-depth than the turians did, relying heavily on surface-based and orbital-baes armaments to repel space-borne attackers or force them into brutal, lengthy campaigns on the ground. While they're not as effective compared to ours in terms of defense (they lack underground bunkers and shelters the same way as we do with our maginot lines, instead scattering large amounts of outposts over vast areas, and thus rendering their forces vulnerable to air attack, although they counteract this nonetheless with extremely advanced air defenses and vast amounts of drones) they still do have an impressive defensive network, and they can defend their colonies against a massive amount of enemy forces.

Anatomy-wise, they are extremely similar to us (they're a mono-gendered race btw), being visually identical to human females, but with ears on the top of their head that look like rabbit ears (like, bro, WTF? If there's a God right now, I would be straight up asking him about why is he such a horny bitch, duh) and while their hair usually takes lighter shades compared to us, like, say, gray or light blue, if you let them walk around in any of our cities we might as well think she is another cosplayer. Literally.

Their eyes are usually bi-colored, with the iris color ranging from various shades of blue, red, and green, and they wear their hair long, reaching down to waist-level at the very least. Overall, they can be described in the simplest terms as 'a mono-gendered race of bunny-girls', with their proportions being roughly equivalent to human females aged 16-25 when fully matured. They don't age like we do, once their age hits that mark, they just stop aging altogether (which removes the questions of retirement due to old age for them), although when they reach the end of their lifespans, their hearts just...well...stop. Like literally stop similarly to a car's driver slamming onto his brakes.

They reproduce with wombs and birth canals the same way as us humans do, but as they are a mono-gendered race without a male to contend with, they instead fix the problem with (insert bruh moment here) tentacle-ovipositors that extend from their breasts, and, err...well, do the job. Which is, you know, insert the eggs into the vagina and let nature do its work. IIRC, the eggs are fertilized inside of the uretus with sperm coming out of where the ovaries would normally be on a human, and the eggs are deposited into the uterus and the fetus develops in the standard fashion from there onwards...

Heck no, what the hell am I even typing...

Eggs are laid usually in batches of a dozen or more at a time, but only one can be fertilized to create a child, two, in some rare occasions. The rest are heat-soluable, and if a child is concieved, the extra, unfertilized eggs dissolve into a liquid that provides extra nutrients for the developing embryo. Their gestation period is the same as ours, and the fetus would be carried in the same manner, with the womb being positioned below the stomach instead of the upper-abdomen. Once the baby is born, the newborn will be cared for and reared in a society-wide community by their fellow sisters, and will remain at a stage of infancy until they reach the age of puberty, when their bodies will be fully mature, and, well, that's the end of their childhood.

(be noted, though, that due to the nature of their homeworld, which has an orbit sometimes crossing Aphrodite's radiation belt, life on Ethos has evolved to be able to resist radiation, at least to a certain degree. While they would still be affected by radiation sickness as Ethos crosses the belt, they'd be able to shake off the symptoms after a few days at worst. We'd be in the medbay if we ate that)

The average lifespan of these creatures seems to be around 350-400 years, similarly to us (originally IIRC it was around 100(?), but advances in medical tech extended our lifespans). The Espers, or Ethosians, seem to live their lives the same way as we would, with their society (especially given our current quasi-post-scarcity economy model) focusing instead on individual, independent projects done often by a few developers at the very most, ranging from quantum engineering to the development of new forms of entertainment and the like. There is enough cultural parallels between them and us that we might get along pretty well, but given the evolutionary differences between us, alongside developental isolation, there's bound to be a few cultural shocks. Duh.

They speak a multitude of different languages, but their primary language seems to use a curious mix of Japanese, Mandarin, and German-Hungarian phonetics with a complex system of hieroglyphs that those who can speak Chinese (or at least are familiar with it's writing system) can easily pick up. They have two primary alphabets (like Latin and Chinese scripts, to use our analogies), the former, Khufji, which has 130 characters; our Latin alphabet of a, b, c, d, e, f, and so on, plus the five vowels of a, i, u, e, o, and all 26 letters, minus that five vowels, given a...how tf do I explain this...treatment similar to Japanese hiragana, say, ka, ki, ku, ke, ko, and so on, plus an extra series of characters for sha, shi, cha, chi, tsu, tsi, and the like. Diacritics are marked beneath their letters, surprisingly enough, and they can be stacked onto each other, like, say, Vietnamese. Their primary language (Esper, from which we get the other name for their race as a whole) has a subject-verb-object sentence order and vocabulary anyone familiar with the likes of Vietnamese, Japanese, and Korean can easily understand (for example, Nìr Avìr Zhasa Ui can be read as Cục Không Gian Học, translating to English as the Administration of Spatial Research, or if we translate it literally, Administration Air-Space Research).

They are extremely curious beings, and their technological and scientific curiosity is a huge driving force in their civilization, with their social values revolving around independence, self-reliance, and curiosity (while international conflicts aren't unheard of within their history, they have gotten past that stage quite a while ago, and as a result a good chunk of their military sector is a by-product of their civilian sector instead of the other way around) and as a result, their culture is heavily reliant on the advancement of the sciences.

Lemme type up the report on their history rq...

OSHA special report #1189

Report created by crew of research vessel RV Novaya Zemlya and her associated drones at 2043HRS Coordinated Universal Time after monitoring communications and activities of Espers, or Ethosians, through their local probe, last edited on December 11th, at 0600HRS Coordinated Universal Time, following a 6-day long deployment. Saved and tight-beamed to HQ at 1900HRS following review on the same day.

[Status: Confidental. This report has a status of confidence assigned to it and will remain so until the scheduled de-classification on December 15th, 2285, 10:00HRS Coordinated Universal Time. Unauthorized release of information could jeopardize national security and will be treated as an act of treason. Any attempts to breach this will be punished accordingly.]

Their biological roots were closer to lizards and reptiles than mammals like us, hence their massively unconventional reproductive system, to say the least, but the details on that will be saved for later.

Probes left inside of their system scoured their internet-equivalent (dubbed Waypoint after translations) have archived quite the treasure-trove of information, really. Their pre-historic roots saw the first usage of rudimentary stone tools, in effect starting the Old Stone Age, some 3.4 million years ago. A million years afterwards, roughly, their evolution was spurred on by the use of fire, leading to the New Stone Age, which lasted for a good 2.7 million years. They lived initially as hunter-gatherers, and would be so for a massive chunk of their prehistory, but if Waypoint articles are to be believed, then they acquired knowledge of farming some 15,000 years ago, leading to a population boom and the start of the Agricultural Revolution. Proto-cities developed soon afterwards, and as early as 10,000 years ago, they figured out how to smelt copper, marking the start of the Copper Age. Many city-states would maintain a state of symbiosis with their surrounding countrysides, absorbing agricultural products and providing, in return, manufactured goods and varying degrees of political control, as well as military protection. Written languages also came into existence around this time, offering massive amounts of insight as to life as it was back then. Very similarly to our own history, indeed. Form really does follow function.

Gold and silver, products of major value, followed shortly afterwards, but 10,000 years ago saw the first records of bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, propelling them into the Bronze Age rapidly afterwards. The invention of the wheel and pottery allowed them to transport goods faster and with less effort, and the ability to shape bronze and other metals into tools and weapons would, in turn, allow the creation of a highly efficient and effective early industrial economy. Bronze Age civilization would last roughly 5,000 years, with the Iron Age arriving 5,000 years afterwards. This period of time also saw the first recorded instances of combined arms warfare in use (in surprisingly modern forms indeed), with light cavalry scouting ahead of armies, infantry forming the backbone of assaults, and heavy, armored cavalry being used in styles roughly analogus to modern tanks. This period also saw rudimentary bows and (very advanced, actually) forms of volley-fire, arranging troops in ranks to alternate arrow fire as each archer nocked and let off a shot in sequence, similarly to how Napolenic-era armies employed their muskets. Artillery, in the form of catapults and rudimentary ballistae, were also observed, and tactics such as arching, indirect fire, although highly limited, were still employed nonetheless. They're almost like First or Second World War armies fighting with Bronze and/or Iron Age armaments and gear, really.

Naval warfare was also surprisingly advanced for such an era, with ships armed with broadside-mounted ballistae or swiveling catapults (early forms of gun-turrets), in effect primintive understandings and applications of naval artillery, as well as boarding actions carried out via the use of plank-bridges and grappling hooks. They even have understandings of line-of-battle and thus crossing-the-T maneuvers, with many Bronze and/or Iron-age naval warfare being carried out in a manner reflecting heavily on our own style of warfare during the Age of Sail; ships arranged in lines slugging it out, and smaller frigates or corvettes maneuvering back and forth to ram hostiles with spar torpedoes or boarding the enemy via the use of grappling hooks.

5,000 years ago saw the advent of the Iron Age, as well as their first forays into aerial warfare (it was roughly when they first managed to tame wyverns, or Banshees, as they called them, a species of what effectively amounts to flying lizards of our dinosaur age) and the advent of iron weapons and tools, such as spears and swords, would mark the beginning of a new era. Their military doctrines were at this point roughly on-equals with the 17th-century armies of us humans at this point (minus gunpowder), and the abundance of resources, alongside a growing population, would eventually lead to the rise of empires. 2,500 years ago saw the advent of the Axial Age, the development of a set of transformative philosophical and religious ideas, mostly independently, in many different places throughout the world. These changes, initially minor cults, rapidly grew into fully-blown religions, with their impact on society, and, ultimately, their societies themselves, being far-reaching. They're almost like our Mesopotamians and Ancient Egyptians, and later, Greeks, except without the use of slavery (their societies are strictly classless and thus not requiring any sort of slave labor). Roughly 2,000 years ago would see the introduction of the Universal Calendar (UC), their current calendar system, which clocks a year by the time Aphrodite makes an orbit around Salzear (a task massively more complex given how Ethos is a moon orbiting a gas giant), and a month initially measured by the time Ethos makes an orbit around Aphrodite, before being re-decided on splitting the year into thirteen equal parts. A month, split into two weeks, is 26 days long, although traditional calendars still base the month and week on Ethos's orbital period around Aphrodite.

The millennium from 500BUC (Before Universal Calendar) and 500UC saw a series of empires of unprecedented size develop. Well-trained professional armies, unifying ideologies, and advanced bureaucracies created the possibility for emperors to rule over large domains whose populations could attain numbers upwards of tens of millions of subjects. International trade also expanded, with massive sea-lanes criscrossing Ethos's oceans, and rudimentary air travel using Banshees in a style similar to the Pony Express. Empires rose, regional at first, before expanding rapidly into massive realms that would span vast swathes of territory. This period of time would be analogus to the empires of Darius, Alexander the Great, and Ashoka.

600UC saw the establishment of modern democracy, at least in a rudimentary form, similarly to the Roman Republic. In the previous centuries, the idea of government based upon the will of the majority had spread throughout the realm, with various forms of direct and representative government systems being tested and experimented. By 500UC, the principles behind modern democratic institutions were firmly established, and their governments would serve their populations, in theory, and were not ruled by the whims of monarchs or dynasties. Many nation-states at this period of time would be similar, politics wise, to the likes of the Roman Republic of Imperial China, especially the Han dynasty. Finely-wrought figurines, cast iron, and extremely precise and delicate metalworking also became a staple of their industrial output at this time, and their mastery of the written language at this point had reached an extremely advanced level, allowing for a high literacy rate, with their citizens having easy access to all kinds of information, both historical and current, and thus the basis for a highly informed society had been laid.

700-800 UC saw the start of the Renaissance and the birth of science, a period analogus to the Scientific Revolution, where the foundations for the modern scientific method were laid. By 800 UC, the sciences had begun to take shape as a unified and distinct field, with a new generation of natural philosophers and scientists developing and promoting a unified set of methods and principles that could be used to explain and describe the workings of the natural world. By 900 UC, the scientific method had begun to take shape, and by 1000 UC, their scientific knowledge had progressed enough for them to have successfully discovered electricity, with their use of it being analogus to 19th-century technology, in terms of its development.

1200-1300 UC marked the start of the Industrial Revolution, with the rise of large-scale industry, mass production, and the growth of cities and factories. 1200 UC saw research into steam-powered machines and engines, and by 1300, the first working steam engine was invented. 1300-1400 UC saw the advent of the machine age, with the growth of factories and the rise of heavy industry, as well as the development of steam-powered machinery and tools, with their society becoming ever more complex and specialized. This period was analogus to the rise of the industrialized nations during the 1800s, and by 1400 UC, the use of coal had become a major source of energy, with coal-fired steam-engines, along with coal-fired furnaces, being widely used for industrial and household purposes alike. Gunpowder also came into being at roughly this time (it is heavily debated within Waypoint archives as to the exact dates of it's origin, with some sources claiming that it came into being at roughly 1200UC while other sources maintain a date as early as 800) and with the rise of gunpowder came the rise of tube artillery and cannon, leading to explosive shells, rifled guns, and breech-loading rifles, which were all adopted fairly quickly, with their use analogus to our own during the 1800s.

1500-1600 UC saw the rise of the modern era, with the rise of railways, the telegraph, the automobile, and the telephone, and the birth of mass-produced consumer goods. Along with industrialization came modern globalization, the increasing interconnection of world regions in the economic, political, and cultural spheres. Steamships came into being at this period, and major powers scrambled to establish overseas colonies, giving rise to colonial powers similar to our 1800s powers. In 1653UC the first recorded instance of powered flight was made, and a decade after that, aircraft technology advanced rapidly, rendering the wyverns historically used before obsolete in every shape or form. Aerial warfare, the groundwork of which was already laid before with the concept of airborne cavalry, or air-cavalry, saw rapid advancement and the first uses of aerial bombardment were noted in the 1666UC. By 1700UC, their technology had been equivalent to the era of the First World War, but with literal dozens of empires on both sides of the world, many of them on par or more advanced than the rest, and the advent of global wars was only a matter of time.

1780UC saw the First International War—equivalent to our First World War. Four empires, the Khufji, the Ovani, the Aetos, and the Ghan, were the primary belligerents. The Ovani Empire was the strongest among the four, but the Khufji and the Aetos, backed up by the Ghan, were able to defeat them in a bitter struggle lasting from 1780-1788UC. The conflict was a devastating one, and the loss of life was immense. After the war, the Khufji Empire emerged as the most powerful among the four empires, and was able to assert itself as the dominant power in the region. The Aetos, meanwhile, had lost its status as a great power, and would continue to decline throughout the next century.

(details are in attached documents for further detail. Ripped dead from Waypoint)

In the war's aftermath, powerful ideologies rose to prominence. Ovani, the loser of the war, was burdened by a treaty that forced it to pay reparations to its neighbors, heavy ones, in fact, placing a heavy burden on it's already devastated infastructure and economy. This led to the rise of nationalist, right-wing movements to surface in its ranks, and many people called for the end of the treaty. Meanwhile, the Khufji, which was the winner of the war, was able to use its newfound wealth and power to pursue its expansionist goals. It began to assert its influence over the region, and many of its neighboring states became client-states. Aetos, a shadow of it's former self, found it's decline merely accelerated by the aftermath of the conflict and fell into revolution, the former, once proud monarchy replaced by a communist state, while the Ghan, despite playing a pivotal role in the war, suffered significant economic losses and was unable to recover fully.

Things were muddied even further when the economic bubble popped in 1900UC, a major financial crisis that plunged many nations into depression. Unemployment rates skyrocketed and the value of stocks and bonds plummeted. Bank runs became rampant, and many institutions were forced to close their doors. Governments scrambled to try and find a solution, but their efforts were hampered by the fact that they were in no position to implement effective measures due to the sheer scale of the crisis. Some nations were hit harder than others, and the effects were felt around the world. This period of time would be referred to by historians as the Great Economic Recession, and it was a defining moment for many nations and cultures.

In 1805UC, things finally reached it's peak. Ongoing national rivalries, exacerbated by the economic turmoil of the Recession, helped escalate the tensions between nations to an all-time high, and the Khufji and the Ghan, the former still an expanding superpower and the latter still a rising power, clashed on the battlefield. The Second International War erupted, with the Khufji and the Ghan pitted against each other in a bitter struggle. This time, the Aetos had joined the fray, and the Ovani, eager to avenge it's defeat in the previous war, sided with its former adversary. The war was a devastating one, with death tolls reaching unprecedented heights. Countless lives were lost, and entire cities were reduced to rubble. The conflict saw the development of most of modern warfare, namely aircraft carriers, ballistic missiles, radar, and similar weapons. It saw the first deployment of combined arms in a large scale, similarly to how the Germans waged war during WW2, in essence, it laid the groundwork for modern warfare as they knew it. This period would be known as the Great Calamity, and it would mark a turning point in the history of Ethos.

(details are in the attached documents. Ripped dead from Waypoint)

The Khufji and Ovani waged a doomed campaign of imperialist expansionism, spurred onwards by both a desire to avenge their prior defeat (Ovani) as well as the need to maintain their status as a leading power (Khufji) and they both found themselves bogged down in a series of costly campaigns. Aetos, a rising star, was determined to prevent them from achieving their goals, and the Ghan, the last remaining of a historic centuries-long empire, was determined to protect its interests. Campaigns were waged, tanks clashed in the open, and infantry, both mechanized and foot—soldier, clashed in the cities and streets. On the oceans, the battles were as bloody as it can ever be—carrier-launched aircraft clashed with each other in bitter struggles of attrition, while battleships flooded the skies in flak fire from their anti-aircraft guns. That all sides had radar-aimed anti-aircraft guns as well as quick-firing flak guns (sometimes as fast as 60 rounds a minute) weren't helping either, and the war devolved into a brutal slog.

The race to develop nuclear weapons was on, and the Khufji, Aetos, and Ovani, all desperate to gain an edge over their rivals, threw themselves into the effort with a vengeance. They all had different reasons for doing so—the Khufji and the Aetos wanted to ensure their respective survival in the face of their enemies' superior numbers and capabilities, and the Ovani, which had already been fighting a losing battle, saw nuclear weapons as their last hope for victory. The war dragged on, and as the conflict continued, the number of casualties and the cost in lives and resources only continued to grow.

The race to develop nuclear weapons ended in the time period the Ethosians would call 'The Darkest Era'; it is uncertain as to exactly how, but as fate would have had it, all sides developed their first functional nuclear weapons simutaneously, and the result could be as much of a doomsday scenario as is expected. The frontlines remained fluid, but both alliances became more and more tired of the conflict; resource shortages began to be experienced as all sides began to, quite literally, scrape the bottom of their barrels for anything that they could use to prolong the war. A war that would come to an abrupt halt on New Year's Eve of 1827UC, opening for the Ethosians one of the most trying times for their civilization.

It remains unclear as to how could nuclear weapons be deployed near-simutaneously by both sides of the conflict, as all the leaders who had ordered such attacks are now dead, but the plan was laid out clearly enough; both sides wanted the destruction of the enemy's command capability through the removal of their capital. The joint Ghan—Aetos alliance gunned for Ortoz, the capital city of Khufji, while the Khufji—Ovani alliance aimed for Xaltar, the capital of Aetos. Both plans were carried out successfully, but the resulting devastation was beyond catastrophic, with entire cities wiped off the map and the surrounding regions left barren wastelands.

At dawn, a single freighter carrying one bomber and the nuke it would drop joined the Aetos fleet, the flagship of which was the fleet carrier AV Emerald. The bomber itself was a land-based heavy bomber modified with extra fuel tanks and rocket boosters for takeoff, and a rudimentary, folding ski-jump ramp was added hastily to the Emerald to assist in the takeoff procedure. Poetically named the 'Flower of the Rising Sun', the newly christened bomber took off on it's one-way flight, a suicide mission indeed, but the pilots were willing to accept their fate. The flight was long, and the bomber took a path that evaded detection by radar and ground-based observatories, before making it's way towards the capital, sparsely garrisoned as most air force assets were either at sea or on the frontlines. Using the sun's glare to avoid detection by eye, and Ethos's positioning within Aphrodite's radiation belt to avoid detection by radar, the bomber reached it's destination and released its weapon.

The results were immediate; Ortoz was wiped off the map, the city itself reduced to rubble and the surrounding area a smoldering ruin. The bomb's fallout poisoned the surrounding regions, and the blast wave flattened the buildings within a radius of 12 kilometers. The city was utterly devastated, and the damage was beyond catastrophic. It was, truly, a nuclear holocaust. The fallout from the explosion contaminated the surrounding regions, and the effects were far-reaching.

At the same time, Ovani launched their attack, a bomber fleet numbering some 800 aircraft in total took off, aiming to use sheer numbers to overwhelm local air defense and gun straight for the Aetos capital, Xaltar. The plan was simple; use the bombers' superior numbers to overwhelm the defenders and saturate their defenses, and the nukes themselves would take care of the rest.

The first nuke was dropped at 0812HRS, and the resulting explosion devastated the city, leaving behind nothing but ruins and the corpses of millions. The blast wave and the shockwave were both tremendous, and the devastation was beyond anything the world had ever seen before. The resulting fallout from the explosion was toxic, and the surrounding areas were left a wasteland.

It was a true Armageddon, and the devastation was beyond anything any civilization had ever witnessed before. The destruction of the two capitals was the final straw for the warring sides, and a ceasefire was soon declared. Both sides had been left crippled and exhausted by the conflict, and the cost in lives and resources was beyond anything that had ever been imagined. With central leadership gone, resources depleted, and no will to fight the war left, the Second International War came to an end, 12 years after it began.

What remained of the leadership of both sides then met on the small town of Daityu, in the Khufji Empire's territory, where they would sign a peace treaty that would bring the conflict to an end. The treaty would end the war, but it would also have a lasting impact on the world. It would mark the end of an era and the beginning of a new one. It would change the world forever. After half a billion dead, twelve years of war, and two months of negotiations, the Treaty of the Two Suns came formally into effect, officially ending the Second International War for good. Through it, all nation-states, or to be more exact, what was of left of them, were dissolved, for good, and merged together into the single, supernational entity known as the Empire of New Ethos.

(attached documents will provide details and transcripts from the conference)

The resulting empire, while an impressive achievement, was not without its challenges. With the world devastated by the war, resources were scarce and rebuilding would be a daunting task. But the newfound unity and cooperation of the peoples of the world gave the survivors hope. The end of the war, and the signing of the Treaty, ushered in a new era for the world.

The New Era that followed the war saw an explosion of technological advancement and economic growth. With the world united under a single government, resources could be shared and economies could be expanded. Trade flourished, and the markets of the world were opened up to each other. A global economy emerged, and with it came increased prosperity. New technologies were developed, infrastructure rebuilt, and the population expanded. Homelessness and unemployment rates dropped, and living standards rose. The world was united and the people were thriving. It was a time of hope and prosperity.

The advent of computers, historically tools for calculating purposes used in weapons that had brought out so much destruction, now turned to other duties, greatly reformed information technology. Initially, local networks were created, minor, isolated pockets of computers linked together and maintained by enthusiasts with some free time on their hands, but eventually, the central government would take an interest in the technology and develop it into a far larger scale, resulting in an early version of the Waypoint networks commonly used today.

1900UC saw the Ethosians' first ventures into outer space, with small, unmanned probes at first, followed by a manned spacecraft in 1905UC, on the fifth anniversary of the first successful launch of an artificial satellite. A decade later, the first probes were sent to the other moons around Ethos, and by 1930UC, a a probe landed on Aphrodite's largest moon apart from Ethos itself, named Dionysia. Three years later, the first manned mission to Dionysia was commenced, as much a monumental accomplishment as Apollo 11 would be for us; the crew, a five-man team, arrived at Dionysia in late 1933UC, and after spending 60 hours on the moon's surface, the crew departed and headed back to Ethos. A total of thirteen successive missions to the moon were conducted between 1933-1936UC, before a hiatus would be taken as the Ethosians turned their attention to other places that were still left unexplored.

In 1937UC, the Hankyū program (lit: Pioneer) was launched, aimed at taking advantage of a favorable posing of the three gas giant planets within the Salzear system, Aphrodite, Epidora, and Poseidon, consisting of some thirteen identical probes, all designed to gather data on the atmospheres and planetary structures of the three planets. Seven probes were launched on the first wave, six on the second; and while two out of thirteen were lost on launch and three were lost en route to target, the remaining eight were still able to complete their mission nonetheless. The mission involved a daring maneuver that took the probes through Aphrodite's gravity well on an orbit that would take them around all sixteen of the gas giant's moons, using gravity slingshots from the moons to be able to escape the gas giant's gravity well and be sent on transfer-orbits that would take them in succession through Epidora and Poseidon, commencing flybys through each planet in turn and gathering data through the use of specialized sensors and cameras attached to their exteriors.

The results were astounding; all fifteen moons of Aphrodite apart from Ethos were capable of housing life, and many of them did so, with Pandora confirmed host to the largest concentration of life apart from Ethos itself, teeming with forests of algae hidden beneath the planet's oceans covering as much as nine-tenths of it's surface; many other ones, save perhaps the ones orbiting within Aphrodite's radiation belt, housed life in one way or the other, ranging from single-cell lifeforms to more complex ecosystems of their own. Epidora's moons were also found to be habitable, as the planet was skirting the outer edges of Salzear's habitable zone, but not quite at the limit. Poseidon's moons, on the other hand, were found to have very little in the way of life, but complex interactions between moons, radiation belts, and gravity interference allowed three icy moons to harbor microscopic lifeforms of their own.

With their mission complete, the Hankyū probes were sent to drift off aimlessly towards the outer edges of the system similarly to how we did with our Voyager probes, and a second project was hatched; the Hankyū-Dai (lit: Pioneer-Revived) program, aimed at sending to Epidora and Poseidon permanent, orbiting probes to study them further, at least a dozen probes sent to each with half of them carrying rovers and landers to study the planets' moons in further detail. The first wave out of 26 was launched in 1940UC, and the second wave followed three years later; after four-to-seven years (for the second and first waves respectively), they arrived at their destination, landing rovers and landers onto the rocky moons to explore, acquire samples, and study them further.

In the meantime, the Ethosians took a step further in exploring Aphrodite than just probes; in 1947UC, the Kōtō (lit: Voyager) program; a series of landers and rovers launched at the sixteen moons around Aphrodite to return samples to the homeworld as well as a series of manned landings on the eight moons that were deemed the most habitable. In 1950 UC, the first manned expedition, the first wave out of six, was launched, and the crew of 18 landed safely on Pandora, the largest moon around Aphrodite and one of the few that harbored complex life, albeit mostly subterranean. Over the course of 100 hours, the crew conducted studies on the surface, gathering data and returning samples of plantlife, soil, and the like, before boarding their ship again and making their return trip home, returning to the homeworld detailed data on the composition of the flora native to Pandora as well as soil, rock, water, and bacterial lifeforms.

Return-missions to Dionysia, while confirming that the moon was incapable of supporting complex life in it's current state, also confirmed that the moon was capable of being terraformed; a small amount of water was observed in the form of ice and liquid ammonia, and the planet's atmosphere, while thin, was composed mostly of methane and nitrogen. Similar missions to other moons returned similar results; many of them had orbits crossing Aphrodite's radiation belt at much shallower angles than Ethos did and thus had entire chunks of their atmosphere stripped away. Nevertheless, they were potential candidates for terraforming, as their host planet was within Salzear's habitable zone, and thus the only thing needed would be shielding against Aphrodite's radiation belt.

It was 1955UC when the Ethosians took another step further into space, launching a small fleet of 50 vessels, dubbed the Natsugoku (lit: Sunset) program. Unlike the previous expeditions, this one had no return trip, the ships were meant to be sent clean to Pandora, land, and construct a permanent Ethosian presence there, in effect the first spatial colonization effort ever made in history. The fleet launched from Ethos on 03/11/1955UC, and arrived at Pandora two weeks later. By 1961UC, the colony had grown from its initial 300,000 inhabitants into a bustling city of over a million. Dubbed 'New Ethos', after the Ethosian homeworld, it was the first permanent settlement in outer space.

The following years saw a steady expansion of the Natsugoku program, as more and more colonies were constructed on the moons of Aphrodite. The discovery of unbihexium (Ubh-310), a volcanically formed room-temperature superconductor was made at around this period, and while it's practical applications would be yet to be realized until decades later, it assisted massively in the development of nuclear fusion systems and would later play a critical role in the development of space-based interplanetary spacecraft, as opposed to the point-thrust orbital craft historically employed. While most spatial travel methods would be limited to chemical rockets and small payloads, alongside larger vessels with point-thrust chemical rockets built similarly to space stations, the advent of unbihexium as a fuel would allow for nuclear rockets, allowing for far greater amounts of thrust per mass and thus the ability to carry heavier payloads.

This would be a crucial factor in the eventual development of the Natsugoku-Dai program, resulting in the Tsimitōsa (Han Vietnamese: Sao Truy Hạm, lit: Star-Pursuit Vessel) line of spacecraft in 1987UC. Eight vessels were built: the Tsimitōsa, Natsugoku, Kōtō, Hankyū , Ōtotsa, Shimizū, Mitūtsa, and the Ōiro. Named for the original Natsugoku ships, the vessels were significantly larger and capable of carrying a far larger payload than the old ones, and would be equipped with fusion-ion engines to allow for longer journeys, even reaching up to interplanetary distances.

Viable means of interplanetary travel now acquired, the Ethosians turned gradually their sights towards other planets to settle. With Aphrodite now a bustling hub of human life and trade, they had turned their eyes towards other gas giants within Salzear; Epidora, the closest of the gas giants, was chosen as the next destination. The Tsimitōsa-class vessels would be the primary transport medium, in 1998UC, after a lengthy preparation and careful selection of hand-picked volunteers, four out of eight vessels set off on their journey, two laden with colonists and equipment needed to start settlements, while the other two came laden with mining, transport, and construction equipment needed to set the colony up. After a 172-day journey with constant-thrust ion engines all the way, they arrived at Epidora's largest moon and began setting up the colony, dubbed 'Tsimitōsa', after the ships that had brought them there.

The following decade would see the development of the colony into a thriving center of industry and trade, with a population of nearly a million. Tsimitōsa was not only a colony, but also a staging point for further expeditions and research. As the colony grew, it became clear that it would need a dedicated means of transportation to and from the mother planet.

This was the start of the Tsūhai (lit: Transfer) line of interplanetary spacecraft, designed specifically for the purpose of traveling between planets. They were based on the design of the original Tsimitōsa-class vessels, and were designed to be able to make the trip in just over 200 days, while significantly longer than the time the Tsimitōsa-class would take to complete the same journey, they were able to offset it in terms of raw cargo and/or passenger capacity, plus the ability to make the trip back and forth to Ethos several times a year.

Over the following decade, a number of new colonies were established around Epidora and it's moons, and trade between the colonies and the motherworld flourished. Poseidon's moons, unable to be settled by normal means, were instead set aside for mining and research purposes while terraforming operations were conducted to make the moons already supporting colonies better habitable. While sluggish at best, it still worked, nonetheless.

2010-2020 UC was a time of unprecedented growth and expansion. The population continued to grow and the colonies continued to thrive. New technologies were developed and new frontiers were explored. The world was moving forward at an astonishing pace and the people were excited about the possibilities ahead.

By 2030UC, the Empire had reached a population of nearly 50 billion, and their territory spanned across all of Salzear, encompassing a total of 20 moons, 6 planetoids, and 3 gas giants. Their technological and economic capabilities were beyond anything that had ever been seen before, and the people were living in a time of unprecedented prosperity. But not all was well. The rapid growth of the empire and the expansion of their territory were starting to strain their resources. The demand for raw materials and food was growing, and the supply was struggling to keep up. In addition, the cost of maintaining the colonies and building new ones was increasing, putting a heavy strain on the empire's finances.

It was in 2038UC that a solution to the problem was found; the creation of a composite material with unbihexium and ionized gallite crystals subjected to a strange, complex interaction of quantum physics to allow for the generation of anti-gravity fields, or, put simply, artificial gravity, and a means of controlling and manipulating the fields to create a means of propulsion that would not require thrusters of any kind. While the process involved the use of unbihexium as the main component, the resulting compound was far lighter than the element itself, and was used for a myriad of applications, ranging from the aforementioned anti-gravity fields, to the production of lightweight, sturdy building materials and the production of artificial gravity, a necessity in the colonies and spaceships that were far away from the pull of the local planet. It also enabled the development of viable FTL travel three years later, in 2041UC, with the first ever warp-capable vessel, the EV Hankyū-Ri (lit: Hankyū-One).

The advent of warp-capability marked the beginning of a new era for the Empire. With the ability to travel faster than light, the galaxy was suddenly much bigger and more mysterious. The possibilities were endless.

This spurred the commencement of the Hankyū-Dai-Yi (lit: Pioneer-Revived-Two) program, in effect a repeat of the historic Hankyū probes sent to explore the Salzear system, but this time capable of FTL travel. Aimed at every star confirmed to be housing potentially habitable worlds within a 100-light-year radius from Salzear, the 1000-probe fleet left Salzear in 2043UC, and began their journey towards the stars.

The latter parts of their history I need not to tell; as they were in effect a repeat of their interplanetary colonization age; they found suitable worlds in the star systems of their targets, and the process of setting up colonies would be repeated. Some were successful, and others were not. What mattered is that they did indeed find habitable worlds, and they had done so using their own power.

Things weren't to last, however. The growth of technology had reached a point where it was starting to outright blur the line between technology and organic, and the introduction of neural uplinks in 2102UC merely muddied the waters even further. And given how AIs are inherently tied to neural links, as they are both part of neural physics as a whole, their development would only prove inevitable, and the advent of AI-run factories and computer networks was the first step.

This led to a prelude that was almost the same as the events leading up to the Second Inner Planets War; some welcomed their synthetic brethen with open arms, while others feared them and tried to suppress them. The former were referred to as 'Aetherists', and the latter, 'Materialists'. The former was a movement based on the belief that AIs are a natural, logical progression of technological advancement, while the latter believed that AIs are dangerous and should be suppressed.

Things would reach a breaking point in 2112UC; in theory, there was a unified central government, but the Empire's historic values were now overturn, completely and utterly in a classic case of American political polarization; caring for naught but the destruction of the opposing party, the Aetherists and Materialists, each with their own factions and ideologies, fighting each other from newspaper to newspaper, at first, before it spread to rallies, riots, and street fights. Eventually, things hit the breaking point; one side brought knives to their rallies, and the moment they did so, the opposing side brought guns. The fighting escalated quickly, and soon enough, it was out of control.

The Empire was at war with itself by this point, with the Aetherists and Materialists clashing on the battlefield and the streets. It was a bloody conflict, with countless lives lost on both sides. Ships once sharing the fleet-stripes of the same fleet clashed in open battle, troops of the same regiment clashed against one another, and the Empire was divided. It was the Second International War all over again, except that this time, it would be fought on a scale far vaster than the Ethosian homeworld. Sister against sister, family against family, friend against friend. It was a nightmare come to life.

But there was no turning back now. The conflict raged on, and the fighting was vicious. There was no quarter given, no mercy shown. It was a fight to the death, and the stakes could not be higher. The fate of the Empire hung in the balance, and only one side would emerge victorious. As the fighting intensified, it became clear that the conflict would not be resolved any time soon. The Aetherists and the Materialists were deadlocked, and neither side was willing to give in. The fighting was brutal, and the losses were staggering. The conflict seemed to be without end, and the people were suffering.

But in the end, it would be the Aetherists that emerged victorious. Despite the fact that they were vastly outnumbered, their superior technology and organization, coupled with superior industrial capacity, proved to be too much for the Materialists. Their armies swept across the Empire, crushing all resistance in their path. The Materialists were left broken and defeated, and the Aetherists took control of the Empire. The conflict was over, but the wounds would remain for years to come.

The aftermath of it was similar enough to be compared to our post Second Inner Planets War-aftermath. With the Empire in shambles, and the population reduced drastically due to the fighting, the Aetherists were forced to take drastic measures to rebuild and stabilize the economy. They began the process of centralizing and streamlining the bureaucracy, which was in disarray. Tension remained high, but the threat of violence was gone. Slowly but surely, the Empire began to recover.

(Full details on the aftermath are attached in the sub-reports)

Tensions between AIs and their biological creators would gradually fade over time, understandably enough, as the calendar turned to the 23rd century and the damage from the war was being repaired. Biomechs, feats of bio-mechanical engineering, blurred the line between both even further, with the advent of synthetic, artificial skin grafts that could mimic biological skin, and even the internal organs. Rebuilding to pre-war standards took up to 2210, and after that, things started to slowly return to normal.

...and to the present day, 05/04/2112UC.

(Based off intercepted media transmission data, it appears that the entrance and exit of RV Novaya Zemlya from the system has been detected by the locals. The probe is still undetected, however, as of the final review of this log)

A/N:

Originally I was planning for the raloi to be the ones that the Alliance chanced across and decided to jimmy into uplifting themselves to galactic standard and speed up the process of their development, but decided to create another species entirely after the drafts began to wander too far off-track compared to the canonical raloi. I even forgot what a raloi looked like, bruh.

The logs for the Ethosians were initially concepted as far back as 2022, when I was starting to write initial logs and drafts for this story, BTW. As to their appearance: chaotic consequences of that 2019 Doraemon film (the name I can't remember exactly duh) being the first thing coming to mind when I drafted these girls; plus the asari for inspiration and some, uhh...questionable 18+ content at best. Namely, eggs

I based Ethosian script off my mother language of Vietnamese, btw. Might as well attach the initial draft of Ethosian colony ships and their Han Vietnamese translation/reading below, btw

Tsimitōsa (Sao Truy Hạm)

Natsugoku (Hoàng Hôn)

Kōtō (Du Nhân)

Hankyū (Tiên Phong)

Ōtotsa (Thiên Nga)

Shimizū (Vũ Phong)

Mitūtsa (Hoa Bách)

Ōiro (Bách Hợp)

...imma post their alphabets later. Maybe some kanji scripts as well