The Sentient Collective views your stories with dismay. She proposes an alternative.
Collectivity of Sanath/Thlayli
Species: Qii (agriculturalist, spiritualist, scientific), Kasekral (militaristic, hierarchical, traditionalist), Nitha (mercantile, industrious, collectivist)
The planet of Nept (Water-Sphere) is a mostly (~79%) panthalassic planet with several large archipelagos. The planet is approximately 2.4 times larger than the Terran biosphere, though only 1.3 times as massive. Much of the equatorial planet is semi-periodically hit by large storms, which served to more effectively isolate separate terrestrial biospheres. Several different species achieved tool-using capability within the past several hundred thousand years, developing on independent subcontinents due to the vast distances separating them.
The second species on this planet to achieve civilization called themselves the Qii. We will get to the first later. The Qii are large pseudo-amphibious salamander-esque creatures with a firm yet pliable regenerative cartilaginous endoskeleton. The Qii are able to change their gender at will, eliminating the basic need for primate dominance mechanics seen in human behavior and as a result, war or intra-species conflict. Bioluminescent markings served to separate regional tribes of Qii: Qii'te grassland mistfarmers, (green and ochre) Qii'na coastal pikehunters, (silver and blue) and Qii’ve nomadic seafarers (red and purple). In time these colorations, and subtle gradations between them, would denote established cultures with various traditions.
Being excellent swimmers, small groups of Qii periodically traveled between local island chains, though the deep oceans surrounding them were usually impossible to cross due to storms and monstrous beasts. With abundant resources and lacking any physiological or sociological need for conflict, the island cultures peaceably traded together. The reed boats of the Qii’ve gradually grew into major floating convoys and then cities, serving to spread trade and ideas like pottery, and metal working. The Qii industrialized (in a manner of speaking) after approximately 10,000 years of peaceful technological development and population expansion. First wood-analogue and then metal were used to construct their floating cities, which soon began to explore out of the home island continent. While some were destroyed by disease or the leviathans of the world-ocean, many began to bring new crops and species to the home islands, beginning a brief golden age of techno-pastoral bliss for the Qii villages, supported and defended by the floating cities.
But it was not to last.
Some of the first convoys of Qii spiritualists and traders to leave the home area discovered the land of Kral, a major continent stretching northward towards the pole of the planet. Relatively rocky and dry, this region was also inhabited by an intelligent species, the Kasekral. The Kasekral are large (2.2m or above) warm blooded creatures with a black or steel-grey chitinous exoskeleton (often painted various colors), and wings which emerge from these. They are bipedal, with three hearts, one large conjoined breathing cavity and a long spiked tail, and they stand almost upright. They look like a cross between gargoyles and armored beetles. The Kasekral had been intelligent for at least 200,000 years, but had stopped advancing technologically for the last 100,000. Kasekral societies consisted of city-states (at a roughly medieval level of technology) fighting each other in a ritual pattern dictated by religious traditions. Every thousand years or so a Kasekral state would achieve temporary hegemony and then be deposed, according to a scheme of ritual combat described in the Kasekral holy parchment, the Vakashka.
First contact between the Qii and the Kasekral ended very badly, with the slaughter of much of the convoy and the imprisonment of the surviving Qii explorers. While far advanced, the Qii had no concept of war or struggle, and were (initially) deeply opposed to the idea of killing another intelligent creature. The Kasekral city-kingdom of Matak enslaved the Qii explorers, forcing them to surrender their technological secrets which they then used to conquer the other nations of their species. The Matak Hegemony proclaimed a new era of ecumenical domination on Kral, consolidating religious and political power around that city, and using enslaved Qii to organize their government and advance their technology. While enslaved, the Qii tried to covertly introduce values into Kasekral society in order to mold them into a species which would be less brutal towards their own. Their written works in several of the Kasekral languages began to alter the values of the traditionally hierarchical warrior species.
However, it was too little, too late, as the now-industrialized Matak Hegemony prepared an ironclad warfleet to conquer the Qii home islands. Dozens of the floating cities were pillaged or destroyed in the initial invasion, and the peaceful villages were enslaved en masse, the Kasekral establishing fortress-enclaves on the high ground to serve as settler colonies. However, the golden age of exploration for the Qii had already begun, and several Qii cities had dispersed to other areas in the globe. They were also advancing at an incredibly rapid rate, unlocking genetic secrets and fully mastering electromagnetic power and communications, despite having little to no weaponry.
Shocked and stunned by the loss of their home territories to this aggressive species, the Qii colony-cities developed their technology as fast as possible. The Kasekral, having undergone a thought revolution after enslaving many Qii, were developing powerful military technology which the Qii simply did not have the psychological desire to create. The Qii, scientists, however, had by this point unlocked the power of the genome. If they could not fight the Kasekral, they would create something that could.
In one of the major southern island subcontinents is a vast rainforest. The Qii discovered the third tool-using species here, a small, tree-dwelling race which had begun to use sharpened stone tools to hunt and prepare food. This species was a small, furry creature that glided between trees. They were omnivores, unlike the carnivorous Kasekral, and lived in large proto-tribal family groups in great platform-nests hundreds of feet above the large predators on the forest floor. Among themselves, however, the Qii noted that different nests often fought each other, throwing rocks with slings and using stone spears and knives. They had the capacity for combat which the Qii did not.
The Qii captured a small group of these proto-intelligent creatures, and experimented with cloned embryos, attempting to stimulate various higher cerebral functions by selectively altering genotypes and adding genes from the Qii and even the Kasekral. The experiments were not initially successful, but after several decades of attempts, they managed to create a prototype creature capable of creative, intelligent thought, and of understanding the Qii language. The Qii named these creatures the Nitha, and their first action as higher sentients was to worship the Qii as gods.
Rapidly educated in mathematics, music, and language by the Qii scientists, the Nitha rapidly proved capable in ways that the Qii were not. They were incredibly skilled machinists, designing automated reproductions of several Qii machines. Their amazing sense of coordination and ingenuity was also much better adapted to circuitry design and engineering. Furthermore, the Nitha seethed with rage at the injustice done to their creators. The Nitha themselves designed various exoskeletal constructions into which they placed their tiny frames, and these warmechs rapidly reconquered the Kasekral-occupied home islands, and even established a foothold on Kral itself. In their desperation, the Kasekral worked to uncover some technology to turn the tide against these fuzzy demon creatures, and in collaboration with the descendants of the original Qii explorers (some of whom had ironically converted to variants of the Kasekral religion) unlocked the power of the atom. [In fact, the Nitha had already been using nuclear reactors to power several of their more ambitious creations, but the Kasekral were the first to weaponize it. The Nitha had come up with the idea for nuclear weapons earlier in the war, but the Qii forbade it.]
When the first atom bomb was detonated over the largest and oldest Qii floating city, Ili’li’i, the Qii were paralyzed by collective anguish. As a species, they decided to collectively break their millennium-long policy of pacifism. Huge battles between Kasekral and Nitha airfleets soon raged over the Qii home islands. Despite their technological inferiority to the Nitha, the industrial power of Kral began to turn the war back in the Matak Hegemony’s favor. The Kasekral had regained the initiative, and their fleet of nuclear missile bombers soon began to hunt down the remaining Qii/Nitha cities that opposed them, on land and sea. Luckily for the Qii, they had not yet developed more advanced ballistics technology. In desperation, the Qii and Nitha designed a super-weapon, the Qii perfecting the molecular structures while the Nitha designed the delivery system. It was a bioweapon, designed to eliminate almost every Kasekral on the planet.
The bioweapon (technically a cocktail of various agents) initially worked as planned, killing 96% of the Kasekral species in a few scant weeks. The Matak Hegemony was annihilated, and the surviving members of the Kasekral conceded defeat almost immediately in return for protection from the plague. Of course, the Matak Hegemony had managed to destroy over half of the Nitha and Qii on the planet with their nuclear weapons and extermination camps. But things were about to get worse for the survivors on Nept. The atmospheric disturbances from the nuclear bombings across the planet caused devastating climatological changes, increased storms and global tsunamis of terrifying proportions.
To make things worse, the high levels of radiation probably contributed to mutation in various agents of the Qii/Nitha bioplague, changing it into strains which soon infected other plant and animal life, including the three intelligent species of Nept. (OOC: No, you cannot call them ‘Neptiles’.)
Facing a planet which was rapidly turning into a stormy, contagion-ridden hell, the surviving members of all three species, in desperation, decided that the only prudent course was to pool their industrial resources and flee the planet, until the global storms and diseases had died out, or could be somehow cleansed. Working in concert for the first time in history, the alliance of peoples, named the Collectivity of Sanath, built seven great city-ships which they launched into orbit. Once-idyllic Nept was abandoned to the ravages of fate, and the seven ships, named after great heroes and cities of the three races, took off.
The largest of them all was named Ili’li’i.
