"Take Your Race To The Stars"
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The story of the Pelorans had two beginnings. One was on Earth, on the island of Great Britain. When mankind first went into space, a large band of Celts from northern Great Britain took to the stars as well, wishing to make a new home in the stars. What they found was something else though. They hit an unstable wormhole and were lucky to survive, sent catapulting through the other end of the wormhole, their ship a total loss. They started over on the new world they called Pelora, the only planet their ship had the capability to limp to. As the years passed, they expected that a Solarian ship would show up sometime, but none ever came. It took them decades to realize that the wormhole had sent them much further then they expected. That they were so far from home that they would probably never find it again. They never found out that it had also sent them back in time six thousand years.
The other story was that of a Grey Master named Corlan. THE Grey Master, founder of the Grey Council the oldest Grey Master. When the Peregrine fleet moved back in time he went with them and then went to cryogenic sleep.
Centuries passed, and they slowly forgot about home as they built up their new home. Children learned of Earth first as history, then legend, then myth, and after a time it passed out of the knowledge of the race. Only a few scholars could read the ancient texts that mentioned Earth, but even they rarely thought about it much. The Pelorans had long ago passed beyond wondering about something lost to the past like that. They were too busy studying the stars, researching new technologies, and exploring space.
They were a gentle people only looking for knowledge, or so the ancient legends passed down to the modern times say. A learned race, they spent thousands of years helping the lesser races they found in their travels to fulfill their capabilities. What Corlan saw when he woke up to study them was different though. They were genetic manipulators that experiment on anything, sentient or not. They didn't help, the exploited, and all of it was so they could learn enough to alter themselves to be more powerful. They weren't interested in war, but they had met other races who were, and therefore kept a strong warfleet. But then, in 1200 AD, disaster struck. The ancient legends don't say who it was and Corlan had left, wishing to save as much of their knowledge as he could. As far as is known, the Pelorans never even saw The Enemy. Not in person at least. They saw the ships though, and they sent their greatest warships to stop The Enemy's attacks. The Enemy swatted them aside like fleas and continued on with barely a pause.
And so it was that Pelora was surrounded by The Enemy and bombarded from space until the world was dead. Its atmosphere was ripped away, the oceans boiled, the earth burned, and in the end all life on the surface simply ceased. Only the Pelorans in the deep shelters survived the bombardment and they learned to live underground after that. Centuries passed, and the Second Dark Age became all the people remembered until the days of light were mere legend, and growing into myth. It was during this time that Family became the first loyalty of any Peloran. Anyone outside The Family became at first tolerated, then watched, and then distrusted. Distrust turned into hatred, and wars erupted deep underneath the surface of Pelora.
All during this time though, Corlan built up the Grey Council deep underground in hiding places. The Families never found him, never suspected he was there.
The Pelorans grew shorter as the centuries passed, malnourishment leaving its mark, but also their eyesight grew adjusted to the new environment. Natural selection over time meant those who were shorter and with better eyesight could more easily make their way through the tunnels now riddling the planet, and they slowly grew stronger and harder and keener of sight. The Second Dark Age was a hard time for the Pelorans, but as all things must end, so did it. Three Great Families crawled out of darkness after a thousand years of hiding and fighting to meet a surface world beginning to return to life, atmosphere filling the deepest canyons and long dead plants and even some animals growing in those places. They found the surface to be less enjoyable then the caves and tunnels that had become home though, and so they never stayed. It was too bright for them, under the light of the sun and the breath of the winds. And the Grey Council waited. Waited and watched.
More time passed and The Great Families fought again and again, first underground where they lived, then above ground where few cared what happened, and then their first steps into space were marred by war as well. Always they looked for an advantage over the others, and never did they consider working together. Though deep down in their psyche they remembered The Enemy and The Great Burn, and they never let the wars go too far. They wanted to conquer each other, not destroy each other, but still they never suspected that the Grey Council was out there, prodding them slowly into new technologies. Making them grow faster in technology then they would have alone.
After a time, the family of Duron finally gained the advantage over the other two. They threw aside the ancient rules of honorable one-on-one conflict that had prevailed for millenia, and instead used the dishonorable methods of combined fire. While the other families used fighters, the Duronians built cruisers. They became, in a word, soldiers. The Cronyl and Gwynyth Families finally saw that if they didn't work together, they would be conquered and so they signed an alliance.
Decades of low-level warfare followed between the Cronyl-Gwynyth Alliance and the Duron Family, but in the end neither side could defeat the other. Each family had colonized a new world when they concluded that finding The Enemy was more important then continuing the wars. They all had room to expand after all. With much hidden pushing from the Grey Council, they agreed to end the perpetual warfare and form a Confederation that would look after all. Peace did not reign in the Confederation though. Despite their agreement, they had hated and fought each other for far too long to stop, and when they met other races they moved to widen the wars.
But Aneerin, Admiral of the Gwynyth Fleet and member of the Fifth Circle of the White Council, moved quickly to forge alliances with the nearby races. The Pelorans had entered a new age.