It was a new era for the Ezo.

We had resolved our systems issues regarding

food sustainability. Violence ceased to be an issue: all of the reasons that
the various rebellious groups and alternate political parties had seceded
from the Ezo Technocracy were no more. Through compromise and a focus
on the betterment of the entire Ezo race, sweeping reforms of every
possible facet of the social, military and political worlds – and everything in
between – were implemented. Food was no longer controlled by the few, the
chemicals and technology required to live off the planet Ezo-1 were mass
produced, jobs were plentiful due to the decision that every Ezomyte voted
on: that the Ezo race would colonize first its own system, and then in time,
other systems.
Ezo philosophers had once theorized about a concept known in the
ezo tongue as “thraz-endo” – total war. Where every single Ezomyte, from
little hatchling to full grown Ezo, would put all effort into a war effort. Every
means of production would be turned to the military complex and the
abilities to raise soldiers and war machines. Of the old Ezo nations, before
the Technocracy, only one tried to implement the theory. At first, it saw
great success, conquering all of its neighbors. But soon it grew to a size that
was not sustainable, and it crumbled almost over night. The Technocracy
liked the idea, but not the purpose. So they pushed for what they called
“hrasha-endo”, which is best put into human tongue as “total science”.
Nearly every means of production was put towards the use of creating all of
the tools and needs of the entire Ezo race to further propagate the
technological advances of the race. New chems to help Ezomytes breath on
planets lacking the strange mixture of chemicals, suits to protect them on
planets rich in resources but filled with the deadly carbon dioxide. Space
ships and means of travel, devices and machines to better harvest and
produce food and other resources, fuel systems that did not produce any
kind of pollutant. There was a still a military, so warships, weapons and
more were produced in case of any problems.
For over three centuries, the Ezo Technocracy spread through the stars,
colonizing hundreds of worlds, and amassing such resources that even if
they were to run dry on every planet at once, they would be able to survive,
as a race, for one hundred years. During this three hundred year expansion,
only a handful of races had been encountered: the Diomaks, large,
lumbering chitinous creatures who would later be dubbed “crabs” or “reds”
by humans due to the similarities in appearance (however, the Diomaks had
6 legs and four arm pincers, and were much, much heavier than their
Terran affiliate). The Diomaks at first wanted nothing with the Ezomytes,
but eventually sent a diplomat to offer trade and alliance – the meeting and
eventual signing of treaties took a very long time, because the way that the
Diomak communicate was unfathomable to we Ezos – and still is today,
despite much studying and experiments. The Jyyrks, who immediately fired
upon an Ezo vessel upon first encounter. The Jyyrk-Ezo war lasted 17.5
hours, in which 75 percent of the Jyyrk population was consumed in
firestorms due to a terrible accident in which a Jyyrk ‘warspear’-class
cruiser was shot in low orbit and exploded, which lit the entire atmosphere
of the planet on fire. If it had not been for Ezo intervention, the Jyyrk would
be completely extinct. The Jyyrk surrendered all to the Ezomytes, and asked
only for a single vessel, one that was large enough and well enough
supplied so that the entire race would live on it and travel. That ship was
provided, and they left Ezo space.
Then, the Vren Empire was met. It was not nearly as large as the Ezo
Technocracy, and not as well developed, but its people were completely
pacifistic. There were absolutely no large scale weapons, only small arms to
deal with various predators on the onset of Vren colonization. The small,
cephalidic race almost immediately offered trade treaties and an integration
into the Ezo Technocract, which after five years of deliberating, were
integrated into the Technocracy. The Vren proved immeasurably useful to
the Ezo: they were able to communicate in a variety of ways: through color
change sequences in their flesh, just like the Ezo, through vocalizations like
the Jyrrk and Humans, and through whatever means of communication the
Diomaks had. The Vren proved to be master communicators, able to talk to
just about anything, and became the mediators and communicators at all
levels of Technocracy society.
We met a variety of other races, beings that were categorized at tech-levels
below that of spacefaring, some even below forms of fuel or power. Most of
these races we touched base with, to let them know they were not alone,
but that we would not interfere with their progression. Other races we
encountered were still primitive, or just beginning to explore their own
moon. We steered clear of them. Other than the Jyyrk, there had been no
violent interactions with any race. That is, until the worst thing to ever
happen to the Ezo Technocracy occurred.
It was two standard-Terran months before the 400th anniversary of the
Technocracy, when we first met the human race. One of our colony fleets, a
fleet consisting of over 300 b’tan class battleships, with over 500 support
ships, consisting of carriers, cruisers, interceptors, and demolishers, and
over 2000 other vessels that were population nurseries, factory ships,
medical ships, science vessels, and more, with an outstanding population of
3 billion Ezo, Diomak and Vren beings, was the first to encounter the
humans. It was not a human that they met, but a small vessel emitting a
message on all frequencies and many spectrums: “This is a human vessel –
it means no harm, and contains information about our people.” It was
collected, the information downloaded and dissected, and the vessel put
back into space. The information was promising, and we learned much
about the human race: they originated from Terra, had had problems just
like the Ezos did, and also chose to go into space to resolve those problems.
Their technology was advanced, but very different from our own: it appears
to be completely modular, as opposed to our own where each object had its
place and role. They were about three-quarters the size of us, and our
estimates were that their population was less than a quarter of our own.
The information provided got us all excited about meeting the humans, until
the ending: a small anecdote, not worded threateningly, but one that was
chilling to us, and particularly the Vren: “If you mean us harm, it would be
in your best interest to not.” Attached was a list, 15 names long: Hrung,
Jklividan, Barran, and more. At first, we were at a loss for what the words
were, but as we studied them and compared them to other notes and other
drones we had picked up, we realized that they were other races.
We had encountered small pockets of some of them: The Hrung and
Barran, who wanted nothing to do with us, and seemed almost afraid to
leave their system. We found evidence that they had once existed in the
parts of space that we were now exploring, but had left in a hurry. The
further we went past the point of the drone, the more strange things
became. Planets, ridiculously rich in valuable resources, were abandoned
completely: some still with entire factories and the foundations to gather
the resources completely set up. Colonizing them was easy, and in fact
saved us a lot of work since most of the work was done. There was no
evidence of war, no evidence for anything at all which would cause entire
systems of planets to be abandoned.
Until we reached what we assumed to be the Jklividian home-system.
We came in from the galactic west, and found emergency beacons that had
been on for at least dozens of years, with no response. The ships were dead
in space. What we gathered from them was a little beyond that the
Jklividian were very much a warrior race: on the small ships we found,
which were crewed by maybe 50 people, the engine block took up almost
half of the ship to power the engines and all the weapons systems on the
ship. The amount of firepower on that little ship was unimaginable. As we
ventured closer to the homeplanet, more and more wreckage was
discovered: near a gas giant, a new ring had developed, made entirely of
the wreckage of ships: we began to catalogue and identify the wreckage,
and through molecular identification, designate what was local and what
wasn’t. As we grew closer to the homeplanet, we discovered even more
wreckage: the fighting in this system had been terrible indeed. Then, as we
got in sight of the Jkliviian homeworld, what we saw and recorded took our
breaths away. Sensors picked up hundreds upon hundreds of emergency
beacons, wreckage was so thick around the planet that it was almost
impossible for our sensors to penetrate. What we could discover was that
the entire planet not only lacked an atmosphere, but that the entire suface
of the planet appeared to be glass. Furthermore, data we had collected from
the previous ships said that the planet had had three moons: only one
orbited the planet. After scanning and studying the area, we soon
discovered the second: it was on the planet itself, a massive crater that
demolished almost a quarter of the upper hemisphere. The third was
nowhere in sight. No part of the sector was untouched by the carnage. On
our third day in the sector, recharging our fuels cells with the local sun, our
recon units on the galactic east side of the system reported in: they had
found the third moon, and along with it, a ship graveyard that spanned a
massive area. They reported that their sensors, now equipped to identify
wreckage, estimated that over 5000 vessels had certainly met their end
there, will upwards of 7000 having actually been lost. That alone was not
staggering: the moon had been completely outfitted with weapons,
propulsions systems, and shields. It had been blown in half by unknown
means. And there were 4 vessels largely intact of note: 3 were undeniably
Jklividian in nature: massive ships almost the size of a small moon, with
multiple engine blocks to power the hundreds of weapons dotting the
surface of the bulbous ships. They were burnt out husks, largely empty on
the inside, as if something had cleaning sliced and scooped out their
insides. The last was a roughly the size of an Ezo battleship, but was of
unknown origins: scans said it had the same make up as a lot of wreckage,
but was intact, and still powered. It was broadcasting a message on all
spectrums, just like the human drone we had found. A team was sent to
gather what they could.
Their findings were horrific.
The data they recovred identified the vessel as human, and in the ship was a
recorder which had recorded the entire battle: thousands of ships, and
hundreds of thousands of attack craft light up space for weeks, a furious
war indeed. The Diomak obsessed over this recording, as they had a deep
understanding, love and passion for war tactics and strategy – it had
something to do with their slow movements and social hierarchy system – it
was also theorized that they perceived time much slower, which improved
their ability to make decisions. The retrieval team also had another two
recordings, one a horrific Jklividian recording in which it showed them
doing unmentionable things on a human world, which culminated in the
creation of what can only be described as a massive idol to some alien god
made from the entire population of a human planet. The second recording
was a human with long, golden hair, explaining that what was done in this
sector was done because the Jklividians had tormented, killed and sacrificed
an entire system of humans without provocation.
We were terrified. The humans had exterminated an entire race. However,
our council determined that this course of action would have been the same
that we would have done in the same circumstances. The action was brutal,
but justifiable, and if this race had been allowed to expand further,
uncountable lives would have been lost. We cordoned off the system with
beacons of out own, warning others that there was nothing here.
Then, a few years later, we met the humans, two months before our 400th
anniversary. The humans welcomed us onto their planet: they had
encountered our drones years before, and had prepared for our arrival: they
had developed technology to try to communicate with us via color. While the
coloration was quite off – due to the light spectrum which humans were able
to see and the what we were able to see – we were greatly honored that
they would even try. Thankfully, the Vren were able to mediate between us.
The humans were able to grasp surprisingly quick how to adapt their
machines to our color spectrum. Negotiations were going splendidly: The
Vren met with human linguistics and libraries to discover the variety of
human languages and the alien languages that they had encountered. The
Diomak met with human tacticians and found other means to perform
“wargames” – tabletop sythnization, “video games” and more. We ourselves
met their scientists and learned about each others technology, discovering
there was much we could learn from one another. Everything was
progressing so smoothly, so well. There was excitement in the air, as
everyone on both sides believed that there was a bright and promising
future ahead.
Until the day of the Ezo Technocracy anniversary. A terrible, terrible
misunderstanding occurred. The Ezo had a practice, from the days when
they were naught but rubbing sticks to create fire, that on a great
anniversary, or on the precipice of great disaster or great hope, that we
would sacrifice children who volunteered: their hopes, dreams, and
aspirations for the future would be voiced, and the Ezomytes would sacrifice
them, and eat them, making the hopes and aspirations of the young
embodied in the entire race. It seemed barbaric, particularly to other races,
but for us, it was an incredibly social and spiritual practice. It was for the
youth that we did it, so that we could make the youth’s dreams reality.
Unfortunately, this practice was not shared with the humans, and most of
the other races encountered did not ever learn of it. So, when on the day
that the Technocracy was celebrating 400 years of success and growth, and
on the day that the Ezo and Human races would unite in allegiance, of
course this ritual was going to be performed. It is also important to note
that the Ezo delegation for this colonization-exploration fleet were quite
traditional. So when, during the celebration of the 400th year of the
Technocracy, when a human male lead several hundred children of various
ages in white garb into the celebration hall, and they began to sing, the Ezo
delegation mistook this as honoring their ancient practice, and why
wouldn’t they? There were children, in white garb, just like the ezo practice,
singing songs of hope and joy, just like the ezo practice, at a great
celebration that promised great things for all involved. By all appearances
to the Ezo present, this was the greatest offering humans could have made.
They applauded the humans, and thanked them for the honor. And then the
Ezos began to kill and eat the human children, to the shock and horror of
not only the humans, but the Vren and Diomak as well. The shockwaves that
this caused is impossible to describe. The Ezo killed nearly 400 children,
and during the chaos, the Diomak aided the Humans in trying to protect the
children. The Vren watched in absent horror as the violence mounted. Soon,
military forces got engaged on both sides, and the celebration hall became a
bloodbath. What was supposed to be the greatest moment of the Human
and Ezo races became one of the darkest.
Almost immediately, the humans declared war on the Ezo: shots blazed fiery
lines in space, as on the planet landing ships were bombed. Ezos all over
the world were killed. Diomak aided the humans, just as outraged by the
murder of children as the Humans were. The Vren, mediators in all things,
tries to explain to both sides what was going on, but could not get through
the human’s anguish nor the Ezo’s shock at the disregard of their traditions.
In 24 hours, no Ezo presence remained on the planet, but in space, they
dominated. The humans sent word about the turn of events, and almost
immediately, human fleets arrived. The plaent-boud Diomak also explained
what occurred to their fellows in space, and soon, the Ezos were fighting a
war on two fronts. They quickly retreated, leaving the Diomak behind. The
humans almost immediately made pacts with the Diomak and the Vren that
sided with them, and a message was made, using the Ezo network, that
spread to all of Ezo space, and all of its fleets. It said, from both a Diomak
and a human male, “The Ezo performed an act so barbaric, so harmful, and
disgraceful that no human will ever condone an alliance. From this moment,
we declare war on the Ezo, and any who would side with them.” The Diomak
added, “We Diomak witnessed this act of child-murder and consumption,
and cannot condone this on any level. We urge all Diomak to cease activities
with the Ezo,”