Spiral history

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 * Key to abbreviations for quotes and excerpts
 * R is Renegade
 * DL is Drysine Legacy
 * KV is Kantovan Vault
 * D is Defiance
 * CV is Croma Venture
 * RS is Rando Splicer
 * QD is Qalea Drop

Author’s Summary

 * Spiral History in brief by Joel Shepherd, posted at  Facebook

Galactic Empires
Species who ruled the Spiral, in chronological order: "Erik knew of the Spiral Progression. It was what Merakis was famous for —- a succession of temples and monuments, built by each successive ruling race. Together, those monuments told the history of the Spiral, from the Ancients to the Fathers, skipping the hacksaws (who had no interest in monuments) to the parren, then the chah'nas, then the tavalai. And now, perhaps, back to chah'nas again. Was this why Fleet had allowed the chah'nas back first?' (R-20)"
 * The Ancients - Disappeared about 3m years ago. Little is known, but they were fascinated by the moon Merakis  (R-19) and cultists believe all species came from the Ancients (KV-21)


 * The Fathers - Advanced spacefaring civilization, now extinct.  The Fathers built Eve, near Merakis. "Eve was an archaeological treasure. Humans called it an O’Neil cylinder, but the Fathers had built it forty five thousand years before Gerard O’Neil was born. That made it the oldest structure of its size in the known galaxy. The Fathers had been nearly as fascinated by Merakis as the tavalai were today, and unable or unwilling to live on its surface, they’d built this huge, rotating cylinder nearby." (R-19)
 * 50,000 years ago, the Fathers built AI machines as server bots
 * Fathers restricted their machines ("they held us back" D-18) ) and knew too much about AI design, so the Machine-race wiped them out “forty eight thousand years ago, when they annhilated their original creators.” (KV-33) (R-13) (R-3)
 * But the Fathers built Eve at Merakis 45,000 years ago (Renegade ch 19) so these dates are apparently approximations


 * The Machine Empire -- Machine Age civilization with hundreds of AI branches, notably the deepynine and drysine. Synthetics ruled the Spiral for about 23, 000 years (R-12, DL-3) until The Great Machine Wars brought an end to it: The synthetic drysines allied with organic parren, and probably tavalai and chah'nas, to kill the synthetic deepynines.
 * Then the parren turned against their machine allies, the drysine, who were depleted from battling deepynines. Organics, under parren House Acquisitive, coveted Drysine tech. Organics hunted drysine with determination, killed them, pushed them into hiding, etc. Dobruta still hunts machines today (see tavalai).
 * The surviving deepynines were last seen fleeing towards alo space and perhaps beyond The Croma Wall. Perhaps as far as Reeh space...


 * Parren Empire -- House Acquisitive ruled the galactic empire after wiping out the machines. Various parren houses ruled for about 8,000 years, till chah'nas turned on them.


 * Chah'nas Empire - Turned against parrens and took over. Ruled for about 8,000 years. Made the Tavalai their honorary "tenth caste" administrators and managers because they were so good at details and organization. (Renegade chapter 20 / R-20).

"After the fall of the Chah'nas Empire, the First Free Age had begun under the primary guidance of the tavalai. That had lasted the best part of ten thousand years. During the latter few thousand of those, a new race called the krim had crawled from their sulphuric hell of a homeworld and gained access to space, thanks to generous loans of tavalai technology."(R-11)
 * Tavalai Empire - Turned against their chah’nas overlords and took control for ten thousand years, ending with the recently-concluded Triumvirate War. The tavalai called their rule THE FREE AGE.


 * Meanwhile, on the edge of the Spiral, another empire grows increasingly powerful... and increasingly crazy