Alliance History, part 2: Alliance of Five Powers

The Alliance of Five Powers began with the Glis. Much of the origin of this ancient race is long since lost to time; in their own records, history seems to begin roughly 30,000 years ago, at the peak of the Glis Empire. The Glis were never conquerors, but built their empire through trade and alliances. Acting as science brokers among their allies, they were able to build a powerful warfleet that kept pirates at bay and kept their borders safe, but their battles were won through superior technology and firepower rather than tactics or training. This lack of skill in war would continue until the Fall: some 20,000 years ago, the Glis Empire collapsed under its own weight. Glis civilization had not been built to endure the collapse of central authority. The empire was thrown into confused panic, and former allies and neighbors rushed to devour the corpse.

Since the Glis had not been accustomed to wars of conquest, most of the myriad factions left after the Fall attempted cutthroat diplomacy as a first option, and were easy pickings for enemies using sheer force. Among those were thousands of Glis merchant-warlords who recognized the vulnerability of their own people; over millennia of fighting, these many militant enclaves consolidated though alliance and conquest into eight. The Eight Remnants eventually settled into an uneasy detente when it became clear they could not conquer each other—at least, not without leaving both the victor and victim vulnerable to any third faction. Pirates and external foes remained constantly testing the Glis borders, reduced to less than a quarter of the Empire's territory at its peak.

After over two thousand years of cold war stasis, the Kiliak Remnant made a bold grab for power. Rather than military, the move was symbolic: they renamed their capital to Gliris-Sha (or Gliris II), invoking the fallen near-mythical capital of the Empire. The response was immediate: the other seven Remnants united and fell upon the Kiliak for their presumption. To their own shock, they found cooperation much more satisfying than hostility and fear; after fully dismantling the Kiliak as a political entity, the remaining seven laid unified claim to Gliris II and, over the course of several more decades, slowly consolidated into a single Glis Remnant.

Unlike the former Empire, the Remnant would remain warlike. Though wholly uninterested in conquest, it was still fighting a nearly endless defensive war; in fact, the Remnant constantly refused offers of peace, seeing its struggle as integral to its unity and identity. This besieged mindset led to a sort of complacency in itself. When the Fourth Kingdom of the Drule Supremacy arrived, the Glis rejected their diplomatic overtures. They were seen as just another vulture to be driven from the Empire's carcass… until they obliterated the defenses of the border world of Sikril and claimed it for their own.

The infuriated Glis dispatched an assault fleet to Sikril, which swiftly became a brutal meat grinder for both sides, yet the battle there failed to stop the Drules from launching their next wave of conquest. It soon became apparent to Glis analysts that the unknown invaders had far greater resources than the Remnant possessed; while their ships were equal to the Drule vessels one on one, the Drules could field greater numbers faster. Compounding the issue was the fact that the technology and facilities to build the most powerful Glis warships had been long since lost in the Fall, despite efforts to rediscover their secrets. Their leadership was still debating the proper response to this realization when the Drules raided Gliris II and decapitated the Remnant's war effort. (To add insult to injury, they would much later learn this had been a coincidence. The Drules were wholly unaware that they had raided the capital.)

Much like what was recorded in the Fall, the Annihilation caused the rest of the Glis to collapse into panic and anarchy. Planets, fleets, and even individual ships took whatever action they saw fit to save whatever could be saved. Rushed evacuations occurred throughout the Remnant, while others opted for a last stand that would severely bloody the Drules. A few even surrendered, though no official Glis source will acknowledge this  A call was sent out for survivors to rally at the original Gliris, and ultimately four waves of refugees aboard hundreds of ships arrived there.

In orbit over their original homeworld—once a jewel of the galaxy, now a long-ruined pirate haven—the survivors made a pact that the Glis would never again be complacent victims. Instead, they would become the aggressors. Nearly every Glis soldier took an oath that so long as a single weapon remained in a single Glis' paws, the Drules would never again know peace. And thus launched what was originally known as the Glirian Crusade. Their first action was to bombard the surface of Gliris to glass, purging it of the pirates they had once feared and any hope of future habitation as a symbol of their new path.

The Glis fleet organized into four Grand Convoys: Alitra, Shiriki, Varesi, and Ka-glira. Each of them would develop a distinct culture, becoming akin to four new nations, united by spiteful rage. Each operated independently but stayed in close contact, attacking Drule forces wherever they found them, destroying as much as possible and fleeing before reinforcements could punish them. It was the Ka-glira Convoy which, some thirty years after the beginning of the Crusade, detected a large Drule fleet and arrived to find a new planet holding out against conquest.

The Hydrans were in fact descended from Drules, tracing their history back to when the Supremacy first spilled into the Milky Way via the Maw of Indurkra wormhole. An early colonization effort from the Tenth Kingdom went awry when crossing the wormhole: a navigational error led to the fleet being flung violently through extraplanar space. The colony ship Touch of the Dark found itself stranded over a lifeless planet of active volcanic islands. With few options, they settled the planet anyway, naming it Hydros: Crucible, in the Tenth's dialect.

Lacking any of the expected support and equipment, the settlers turned to their priests and witches to make their new home habitable. Neither had much initial success. Drule occult science was heavily reliant on technology and reagents, and the witches' stocks were swiftly running dry; the priests found themselves unable to contact their gods. This was the point that the settlers ceased to call themselves Drules, believing they had been found somehow unworthy. Their fight to survive became an equally fierce desire to prove themselves.

For nearly twenty years the Hydrans were able only to maintain their small population, living on food from the Touch of the Dark's subsistence gardens and carving shelter from the rocks. Then a nearby volcano, the Spire of Rulika, began to erupt. A small delegation of witches and priests journeyed to the site. Their plan was as simple as it was desperate: to use the volcano itself as a reagent of sorts, to amplify the priests' pleas to the gods. Such a thing had never been attempted before.

The delegation got a response, though not the one they were expecting. Afterwards the priests would describe a sense of energy invading their minds in sync with the eruption. Emboldened by this, both groups redoubled their efforts, melding their methods into a mystical discipline that fed on the chaos of Hydros' surface to seemingly commune with the planet itself. It took another decade for Hydran shamanism to reach a recognizable form. But soon they were able to not only tame the violent surface and stormy seas, but cooperate with them.

Shamanism revolutionized Hydros in the same way industrial revolutions affected many other worlds, and soon a thriving civilization began to spread over the planet. Formally abandoning their silent gods and lost technology, the Hydrans fully embraced their new identity with pride rather than shame.

Though they no longer considered themselves Drules, the Hydrans bore no ill will against their ancestors; they welcomed the Fourth Kingdom as brothers when their scouting vessels arrived. The Fourth was far less impressed. They engaged in diplomacy until it became clear Hydros had no empire and minimal defenses, then declared their lost brethren a shameful abomination and attacked in force.

Believing shamanism to be only a weak facsimile of occult science was, to say the least, a tactical error. Dismissing that the Hydrans had once been Drules was even more so. Fourth Kingdom fighters found skies filled with volcanic ash, while infantry was all but neutralized by deadly storms. Then the Hydrans began to issue sol adroce challenges to grounded troop ships, demanding the right to battle for possession of the vessels. Not about to lose face by refusing challenges from their inferior cousins, the Drules accepted the challenges and were roundly defeated. Within two years the Hydrans had reverse engineered the captured vessels into technomystical warships of their own, though these ships were not enough to break the siege.

By the time the Ka-glira Convoy arrived at Hydros, the situation had settled into a stalemate with sporadic flares of new combat: the Drules blockading the planet out of sheer disgust at its existence, the Hydrans not interested in going anywhere but nonetheless offended by their presence. The Glis wasted no time in removing that presence for them, then inviting the Hydrans to join in their crusade. By this time the Hydrans were more than irritated enough to accept. Elements of the Ka-glira would remain in defense of Hydros, while the Hydran warships joined the Glis fleet. Even more valuable were the advisors they sent along, with a wealth of information on Drule culture and tactics. Soon Hydran tacticians were present in each of the Grand Convoys.

The intervention on Hydros was the exception rather than the rule, given the relative scarcity of intelligent life in the galaxy. Continuing to follow the Drule advance, the crusaders usually came across supply posts and mining colonies rather than besieged civilizations. Though able to use captured supplies for some maintenance, attrition was becoming a serious problem in the fleet.

When the Shiriki Convoy came across a large Drule maintenance station being built in an unnamed system, it was too tempting a prize to pass up. Upon eliminating the defenses they found the station playing host to thousands of slaves. The liberated slaves were quite willing to continue construction for their rescuers. But a half-complete space station proceed to be a wholly indefensible resource; when the Drules sent reinforcements, the Shiriki defenders could do nothing to stop them from destroying the station before focusing on their ships. Guilt-stricken by the needless deaths, the crusaders agreed to be far more careful about what they attempted to liberate and hold. It would be another twenty years before their next defensive battle.

The Kolaliri were once conquerors themselves. Though they were originally a skilled and disciplined warrior society, their greatest advantage was technological: in a process known as crysforging, they could take raw metallic material and use resonance to crystalize it into whatever armor and weapons a current situation required. When conditions changed, their equipment could be repurposed rapidly to match. The speed and efficiency of crysforging, as well as the strength of the base material, was constantly being improved throughout their initial conquests. This adaptability, along with rigorous training, made the early Kolaliri a nearly unstoppable juggernaut.

Over several centuries, the Kolaliri built an empire around their homeworld of Kolair, enslaving any other races they encountered and using the principles of crysforging to help terraform even the least hospitable planets. Even civilizations that were in many ways more advanced were only able to muster minimal resistance, and the uninterrupted victories made the Kolaliri arrogant. It became a matter of near-faith that they were the superior race in the galaxy. The pace of conquest slowed, as even the warriors became more interested in basking in past glories rather than acquiring new territory. Soon the expansion of their empire ground to a halt entirely.

After nearly a century of decadence, the Kolaliri began to run low on resources. Their first step was to exile all the slaves from the Empire. There was, they reasoned, no need to expend their limited resources on inferiors. Though it eased some immediate pressure, removing one of the Empire's major sources of labor—not to mention the segment of the population afforded the least resources to begin with—did not alleviate the problem for long. It soon became clear that the Kolaliri must either reduce their consumption or acquire new territory. Giving up any luxuries was unthinkable, so the invasion fleets were reformed.

The first planet the Kolaliri attempted to conquer is unknown: they did not know or care what its name was at the time, and now prefer to ignore that it ever existed. The planet's inhabitants wanted nothing more than to be left alone, and had built powerful defenses to that end. Military research and training had been two of the first things to fall by the wayside as the Kolaliri descended into complacency. The result was inevitable: the tactical flexibility of crysforging was useless against the sheer power of the defenders. Nearly as soon as the first ships were lost, the invaders broke and fled. Defeat had been unknown and unthinkable.

Immediately, weapons research was restarted in earnest, but it would take time. Reestablishing any semblance of warrior discipline among the decadent Kolaliri would be even more difficult. The resource issue was immediate. Finally, the Emperor came to a decision. Petty crime, and worse, was common within the Empire—law enforcement was as lax as anything else. To reduce the population to sustainable levels and encourage better behavior among the rest, a 'death lottery' was instituted. Twice a year, a number of criminals would be randomly chosen and executed, no matter their crime. This policy proved both surprisingly effective and surprisingly popular.

The death lottery had been in place for roughly a decade when the Fourth Kingdom arrived. Having captured and interrogated some of the Empire's exiled slaves, the Drules offered the Kolaliri an alliance: unlimited resources and glory in exchange for crysforging technology and military cooperation. (Though diplomacy is often the Fourth Kingdom's precursor to conquest, later intelligence indicates this offer was sincere: their philosophies were quite similar, and Drules allying with civilizations as a more efficient alternative to conquest is not unheard of.) To their surprise, the Kolaliri rejected the offer outright. Their death lottery had saved them; they had no need to rely on the aid of lesser civilizations, and were insulted by the mere suggestion. Additionally, they found the Drules' appearance hideous, and demanded the ugly intruders leave them be.

This disastrous diplomacy was immediately followed by the Drules sacking three of the Empire's border worlds, slaughtering the populations, and sending the Emperor a message that the Kolaliri would be granted all the death they could ever want.

Though their research after their last failed conquest had improved things, the Kolaliri were no match for the Drule armada. The Drules specifically encircled the Empire, wiping out border worlds first, slowly tightening the circle of conquest around Kolair just to further humiliate their foes. But this twisting the knife also led to their detection by the Varesi Convoy. The Varesi traveled to the center of the circle, assuming they would find the Drules' ultimate target there, and found Kolaliri forces rallying for a last desperate stand in their home system. After convincing the defenders not to attack them, the Varesi asked if they wanted assistance.

Much as the Kolaliri bristled at the thought of accepting aid, the thought of being entirely wiped out was far more disagreeable. They handled it the only way they knew: by announcing their delight at finally encountering 'other superior beings' in the galaxy, and inviting the Glis and Hydrans to join them in annihilating the attackers.

The Battle of Kolair lasted nearly a week, and ended with a first in the history of the Glirian Crusade: a treaty. The Drules agreed to leave the Kolair system alone, as they had no more time to waste with 'arrogant younglings on worthless planets'. Any Kolaliri who left their system would be killed on sight. It was one last humiliation of the proud Kolaliri Empire, and the Fourth Kingdom considered it a victory. What they didn't anticipate was that the Kolaliri might have come to hate them enough to sustain an alliance with others.

That, however, was precisely what happened. Joining the Glis-Hydran coalition (and complimenting the Hydrans on being 'somewhat less hideous' than their cousins), the Kolaliri added what was left of their fleet to the crusade. Additionally, though its planets were badly depleted of resources, having the Kolair system as a safe home base for the Grand Convoys was a welcome development; Hydros remained regularly besieged.

While the Glirian Crusade was transforming into a multi-species alliance, another coalition was forming elsewhere between two equally unlikely civilizations.

The history of the Biboh is even less clear than that of the ancient Glis. What is known for certain is that they are artificial creations, genetically engineered by a race which no longer seems to exist. (When asked about the fate of their creators, the Biboh refer only to something best translated as 'the plague of birth'. Historians believe this race may have unleashed a fatal genetic defect upon itself.) The prevailing theory is that they were created to serve aboard spacecraft in place of their creators, in much the same way as many other races used artificial intelligence.

Whatever their purpose, the Biboh were created with an instinctive need to please others. Originally this kept them obedient to their creators. Over time, it led them to develop complex forms of art and entertainment, both for themselves and as an offering to any others they encountered on their journeys. When their creators vanished, the Biboh continued to travel. They were often enlisted by other races as scouts or messengers, asking for no payment but the approval of those who employed them. Just as often they would put on elaborate performances to amuse local populations. Soon they were known through a large range as interstellar bards of sorts, wandering from planet to planet.

The Biboh used a tribal structure: the inhabitants of a given ship were considered a clan, while a group of ships made up a tribe. Various tribes remained in loose contact, but there was no central government—or indeed, any government at all. Gradually it became evident that a semblance of order might be helpful. With no true allies, but countless friends, the Biboh tribes were able to establish a few supply outposts of their own to increase their range. Over time several formalized routes were established, with the arrival of the Biboh celebrated as a holiday on many worlds.

How long this state of affairs continued is unknown, as the Biboh had little interest in measuring time. But eventually they would begin to find planets they had visited for dozens or hundreds of circuits in ruins, conquered by the Fourth Kingdom. Initially the Biboh attempted to make peace; they would just as happily have offered their services to the Drules as to anyone else. But the Drules were uninterested. Soon the Biboh found their vessels attacked on sight, while what defensive weapons they once possessed had long since fallen into disrepair.

Throughout their history, the Biboh had never known true enemies, nor true fear. Contact with the Drules changed both of those. They had been designed with the ability to survive and maintain their numbers, not increase them. The thought of an external force decreasing them had never been imagined. Confronted with the sudden possibility of extinction, the Biboh gathered at their outposts to try to decide on a plan. Unfortunately, those outposts were directly in the path of the Fourth Kingdom advance. Drule forces fell upon the meetings, and the few Biboh able to reach their ships fled.

After being routed at their outposts, the hundreds of Biboh tribes had been reduced to only three. The Kiya-Biboh and Zi-Biboh had managed to flee largely intact, while the shattered remains of many other tribes consolidated into the Hal-Biboh. Unsure what else to do, the survivors simply kept running until they encountered another inhabited world.

The Quasnot had never entertained the thought of life beyond their own planet. Their homeworld of Quariot had almost no accessible metal, all but preventing the harnessing of electricity. This alone made them seem remarkably primitive in the eyes of any spacefaring civilization. But the Quasnot were keenly intelligent and socially complex, with a tribal structure developed over thousands of years. Instead of typical technological advancement, they mastered domesticating the wildlife of Quariot. Centuries of selective breeding made their workbeasts as well-honed for their tasks as any machine could have been.

Most Quasnot tribes acted independently. There were no true wars; the tribes were respectful rivals, not enemies, and combat rituals were enough to settle even the most bitter disagreements. The Council of Honor, a group of elders with nominal authority over all tribes, existed to deal with extreme emergencies—it was first formed after a cataclysmic earthquake that nearly split the smallest continent in two, and over the entirety of Quasnot history had met fewer than two dozen times.

When the first Biboh ship landed on Quariot, the nearest Quasnot tribes were too stunned to even duel for the right to investigate. Rather than expend time and strength on honor challenges, a cooperative expedition was sent out. The scouts were wholly unprepared to encounter intelligent life emerging from the vessel—and even less prepared for the visitors to issue dire warnings of approaching conquerors. This resulted in the first meeting of the Council of Honor in over a hundred years.

Recognizing the state of Quasnot technology, the Biboh offered to help evacuate the planet before the Drules arrived. Reeling from a situation beyond their wildest imaginings, the Quasnot declined to leave everything they knew. They would fight, and either succeed or die as warriors. Attempting to reciprocate the honor they were fairly sure the Biboh had offered them, they invited the aliens to fight and die with them if they wished.

Though the Biboh were not motivated by the thought of dying as warriors, the thought of simply abandoning another race to extinction was almost as unattractive. The Zi-Biboh suggested a middle ground of sorts: they could attempt to restore the weapons on their few combat vessels to working order, then gift those ships to the Quasnot for their final stand. The Quasnot were intrigued, pledging what resources they had to the endeavor.

As the project began, the Biboh moved their entire fleet—still several hundred ships, though most were small and completely unarmed—into the Quariot system. Mere weeks later, a massive warfleet appeared in the system. To the shock of the Biboh, the new arrivals were not Drules; to the shock of the arriving Shiriki Convoy, the ships awaiting them were not Drules either. Immediately the Shiriki were placed in something of a quandary. Given the limited resources of the crusaders, defending a planet that could offer neither martial or material support in return would be a poor strategic choice. But they were even less willing than the Biboh had been to abandon a civilization to their hated enemies.

The arrival of the first aliens had been a stunning revelation. The arrival of so many more had the Quasnot struggling to regain any sense of their own agency. As the Shiriki were trying to decide on a course of action, the Biboh relayed a message from the Council of Honor: the Quasnot were demanding an honor duel over their presence. Exactly what they were dueling for was not made clear (records from the Council would admit not even the challengers knew). But the Shiriki had an inspiration, and dispatched a warrior from each of the crusade's races to engage in the duel. The Quasnot warrior they faced easily defeated all three at once.

After this display, the Shiriki abandoned their original evaluation. If they could just get the Quasnot warriors onto Drule ships—something Kolaliri vessels could easily be adapted to facilitate—they would be devastating allies. Upon being invited to join the coalition, the Quasnot were eager to accept, but insisted the Biboh must also be allowed to join; honor demanded their fates be tied together. The Shiriki readily agreed.

During these negotiations, the Alitra Convoy also arrived to Quariot. They had been scouting the Drule advance in the region, and believed the invasion was imminent. But as days and weeks went on, the invasion did not come. After nearly a year of waiting, Alitra scouts were sent out again, and returned with seemingly miraculous news: the Fourth Kingdom had altered the direction of its expansion slightly, and Quariot was no longer in their path. Far later, it would become known that this was no arbitrary miracle, but a direct result of the Glirian Crusade: the Drules, like the Shiriki, had detected the Biboh fleet and believed it to be their enemies. Unlike the Shiriki, the Drules were quite fed up with wasting resources on the guerilla attacks, and decided to travel a path of less resistance.

Having geared up for a war beyond imagination, the Quasnot were actually somewhat disappointed to be bypassed. The crusaders reassured them that they would take the fight to the Drules. But as the other Grand Convoys arrived to Quariot to reorganize, it was becoming clear the haphazard coalition was reaching its own breaking point. Every new addition, though valuable, put new stresses on a chain of command that had barely changed since the Glis first set out to war.

It was the Hydrans who first suggested turning the crusade into a formal alliance. The Glis were immediately receptive; the Kolaliri were not, but were quickly convinced of its benefits (not least that a more integrated command structure would offer Kolaliri more advancement opportunities). It was all the same to the Biboh and Quasnot, who agreed that it sounded like a good idea. Over the course of the next several months, negotiations—mostly the Biboh doing their best to mediate between the other four—would hammer out an agreement that was still largely military in nature. The coalition was still a ragtag band of minor powers and fallen empires, but now they were a ragtag band with a plan.

Since Kolair's system could barely sustain its own population and Hydros was still subjected to regular blockades, Quariot was named the capital of the new Alliance of Five Powers. Metal deposits uncovered on the planet's moons would be mined to maintain the AFP's warships. Hopes for building a proper shipyard in the system were abandoned as the limits of the deposits became clear, but it was still a much better situation than what they had before.

Each Grand Convoy would be headed by a formalized council, with at least one representative from each race. The councils would deal with any non-military matters that arose as well as broad strategy. The Glis, as the impetus behind the crusade and the source of most of its warships, still held the most military command positions. Hydrans still served as advisors and tacticians, in addition to establishing a rudimentary scouting and intelligence organization. The Kolaliri were largely responsible for resource acquisition and maintenance, as the AFP lacked any mining or manufacturing equipment except for what they could crysforge. The Quasnot would function as shock troops and boarding parties.

Though their addition had originally been nearly an afterthought, the negotiations established the Biboh as the glue that would hold the AFP together: not only were they the only ones with any semblance of diplomatic skill, their arts and performances were invaluable for morale. The Hal-Biboh, being comprised of so many tribal remnants, were far larger than a typical Biboh tribe. With the formalization of the AFP it split into six. The Qua-Biboh would remain on Quariot to facilitate communications with the new capital, while the Ali-Biboh, Shira-Biboh, Var-Biboh, and Glira-Biboh would join the four Grand Convoys. A Hal-Biboh tribe would remain, in honor of the lost; they, the Kiya-Biboh, and the Zi-Biboh would be freelancers of sorts, traveling wherever the AFP needed them.

The name Alliance of Five Powers was multilayered. It of course referred to the obvious five races that had joined together. It also referenced the organization of the new alliance: the four Grand Convoys and Quariot.

Shortly after the AFP's formation, the Fourth Kingdom advance would cease entirely. Unlike the bypassing of Quariot, this had nothing to do with their enemies: after a string of unbroken conquests that had begun long before reaching the Glis, it was simply time for them to stop and consolidate their holdings. The AFP took advantage of this lull to send the Alitra and Varesi Convoys back along the Fourth's border to carry out diversionary strikes, as well as delivering food to Kolair and breaking the blockade at Hydros on principle. With Quariot as their primary staging point, keeping Drule attention from focusing on it was a necessity.

When the Drule advance began again, the Ka-glira Convoy was given primary responsibility for shadowing it. Unknown to the AFP, part of the Fourth's consolidation had been calling in a task force to deal with the persistent thorn in their sides. A Ka-glira attempt to ambush a supply convoy saw them ambushed in turn. The Alitra were near enough to rush to their aid, ultimately routing the Drule armada. But the Ka-glira had suffered catastrophic losses, including the Ka-glira Tashi, their flagship. Reeling at the worst defeat in the history of the Grand Convoys, all AFP forces retreated to Quariot to rebalance their strength. The setback served to further enrage the survivors, but also reinforced that a single planet with a few lunar mines could not truly sustain an interstellar warfleet.

Returning to their original assignment, the Ka-glira suddenly began to discover conquered planets all inhabited by the same slave race—a first in the history of the Glirian Crusade, let alone the AFP. Afraid the Fourth had conquered some new empire while they were licking their wounds, the Ka-glira called for help from the other Grand Convoys while searching for the Drule front lines. Finally detecting a large fleet, the Ka-glira and Varesi fell upon the Drules in a fury. The natives, seemingly in the midst of evacuating, had obliterated two dreadnoughts, but there was no sign of native warships larger than fighter craft. Later in the battle, a single capital ship would arrive; though it battled fearlessly, it was clear to the AFP that it could not have destroyed the dreadnoughts either. Though confusing, any empire capable of taking down such vessels seemed like an empire worth allying with. The AFP battled for two days over the alien planet before the Fourth finally ceded the field.

Only then would things begin to make sense. The natives, called Earthlings, were not an empire at all: they were a young civilization with great ambitions, and had built a vast network of colonies without having the strength to defend them. They had been holding out against the Drule advance with narrow escapes and nuclear suicide attacks. Only one ship had aided the AFP in battle because the Earthlings only had one ship, but many more were in production… they had the resources and infrastructure, if only they had the time.

To the Drules, Earthling territory had looked like just another naive young civilization to be conquered. To the Alliance of Five Powers, it looked like the promised land.

(This report will be continued in part 3: Galaxy Alliance.)