Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of All Trades

Many thousands of years ago, in a distant part of the galaxy, an alien race called the Ehrban has grown an empire across the galaxy they call "Quelouva" — the "Spiral of Lights". They have spread from their homeworld of Ehrba, transforming and colonizing new worlds, all connected via a network of artifical wormholes. Though they have grown much more peaceful than earlier eras of their history, misunderstandings and conflicts still arise; and now, the fledgeling empire is threatened by civil war, as the fringe worlds struggle for independence from the rule of the imperial government on Ehrba, and the core worlds it largely represents.

Though Ehrba itself is internally democratic, the other worlds the Ehrban have spread to have no seat in the galactic ("Quelouvan") senate, though they are free to make and enforce their own additional laws, so long as Quelouvan law is obeyed. The core worlds, now well-established and independent, have resources and services to offer the homeworld, and thus may influence legislation in their favor through unofficial channels; but the fringe worlds, still developing and heavily dependent on aid from the core worlds, have little influence at all. The older of these fringe worlds, bordering on self-sufficiency now, were settled many generations ago by the ousted royal families of the old empires of Ehrba, seeking to re-establish their lost power. And now that they have established it, they turn against the empire in the name of "independent" sovereignty, though in truth merely making a bid for further power.

Amidst this brewing strife, xenobiologist Keius Meij works in an imperially-funded laboratory on one of the outermost fringe worlds, Asira. This world is a rural backwater in the most distant reaches of the portal network, and their small facility is the biggest thing in the biggest settlement on this mostly-unpopulated planet. The governor of this world, Goran, is the agent of the Quelouvan empire sent from Ehrba to represent the Ehrban government on this world; but despite his imposing role, he is quite close and amiable with the science team here, for they are virtually the only reason anyone is on this world to begin with.

The primary research team, lead by chief scientist Tatia, is investigating the possibility of sapience in non-Erhban species, which has hitherto not been discovered anywhere else in the galaxy. They are observing a variety of high-potential alien species native to Asira, both in the wild and in captivity. More recently they have begun conducting breeding and genetic engineering experiments to attempt to accentuate the budding sapience, and this is why Keius has been transferred here.

Keius is researching one of the greatest biological mysteries of his day; the significance of a peculiarly dense and complex organelle found only in the cells of life from Ehrba, even though the basic building blocks of all life the Ehrban have found elsewhere is otherwise similar to their own. Of particular interest is the question of whether this organelle is at all responsible for the development of sapient life on Ehrba, as it is unlike anything thus far discovered in alien biospheres. It is hoped that Keius' research might suggest directions that Tatia's team should look in their genetic engineering experiments.

Over the years that Keius has worked under Tatia, her interest in him has grown more than merely professional. Keius is aware of her affections, and not averse to them, perhaps even inclined to reciprocate, but he hesitates for a variety of reasons. On one level he has always been somewhat stoic and unemotional, a trait he inherited from his father, who remained single his entire life and even eventually died in isolated meditation. On another level he is dedicated above all to his research, and has felt driven to uncover the secrets of sapient life for as long as he can remember. More personally, he senses a history of interest between Tatia and Goran, and would prefer to avoid the potential drama of interfering in the romantic affairs of two of his superiors.

In the course of his research, Keius discovers the mysterious organelles unique to the Ehrban biosphere to be in fact tiny nanoscopic machines of incredible sophistication — of a level very difficult to explain by natural selection alone. These nanites each possess intelligent, programmable computing abilities and sophisticated energy-field sensors and manipulators; and further still, they appear to communicate with each other via some sort of phenomenon resembling the ansible links used to establish the Ehrban's interstellar wormholes. Goran appears disturbed by this news, and worries that a discovery of this magnitude may have profound impacts on the religious beliefs of the various worlds — which are very much polarized along core-fringe lines — and further exacerbate the existing political tensions. Tatia, however, has the final say as the head of research at this facility, and urges Keius to continue, fascinated by his results thus far. But as Keius is preparing to begin experiments with these nanites, the laboratory is shut down by the imperial government, which is apparently withdrawing its important installations from the fringe worlds in preparation for war.

But determined not to be put off from his research — and hoping, contrary to Goran's worries, that a discovery of this magnitude might draw his people together and forestall the oncoming violence — Keius remains illicitly in his laboratory and conducts experiments with the nanites on himself. Tatia urges him not to stay, but refrains from ordering him to leave, respecting his dedication. But when word of these activities eventually reaches Goran, he warns Keius that he is risking not only punishment by the empire for unauthorized use of their laboratory, but also the wrath of the rebel alliance which will very likely strike at the lab when the inevitable war begins — not to mention the condemnation of Geiana for this unnatural abominiation. But Keius then cuts himself severely with a piece of lab equipment, and when the wound almost instantly heals, Goran is amazed. Keius explains that the nanites can be used as intelligent nanoassemblers, and that he has programmed his own to repair any damage they find to his body. Goran is shocked by this development and leaves Keius to report to his superiors.

Alone once again in his lab, Keius continues his research, experimenting further upon himself. He begins to toy with methods of linking control of the energy manipulation capabilities of the nanites with conscious thought patterns, which could hypothetically allow an individual much finer, more subtle projection of gravito- and electro-magnetic fields and waves than the gross energy manipulation technology used in such devices as the wormholes. But just as he has his first success with this technology, moving — to his own amazement — a piece of lab equipment with his mind, a rebel strike force appears in the sky above his lab, having come to destroy the "bioweapons" or "supersoldiers" that are rumored to be under development there. As Keius scrambles to save what of his research he can, the rebel forces bomb the lab to rubble, and Keius is left for dead.

"Keius?"

"Keius is dead."

"...but you knew him?"

"I was him, Goran. I was a part of him... or he was a part of me. But now we are one, and I am all that remains."

"...and who are you?"

"I am Meij." The stranger rose and turned to face Goran. "Keius Meij. But not the Keius of the Meij family you once knew. I am the spirit of the Meij family, as passed down through Keius; and though he is gone now, he lives on in me, as do all his ancestors since time immemorial. And it is only by our fortuitous discovery that I have assumed control of this body after Keius' passing, and am thus able to speak to you now."

---

Goran returns with Tatia and an imperial forensics crew to the ruins of the lab, but even after an extensive search fail to find any remains of Keius, or damage enough that no remains should be found — he, or his corpse at least, is simply missing. But given the onset of the war, discovering his fate is not considered a priority by the empire. Tatia must return to Ehrba for reassignment, but Goran is now on administrative leave as his colony is evacuated, and she asks him to please do anything he can to find out what happened to Keius. Goran obliges, and after following a long string of apparent hunches — in fact seeing and hearing flashes of Keius' visage and voice in the oddest of places — he finally locates him, still alive, on another remote colony world, and reports this news via the network to Tatia before investigating further.

As it turns out, Keius secretly fled here after dying and being resurrected by his nanites after the lab was bombed. In the process Keius has become one with Meij, the "spirit" of his family — a mind that resides within his nanite network, the likes of which all Ehrban have, but few are consciously aware of, and fewer still are able to commune with. Having merged entirely with this inherited personality, he hears the minds of others across the whole of the nanites' ansible web, as well as the voice of "Geiana", the cacaphony of inner voices of the entire Ehrba-descendant ecosystem. With subtle reprogramming of others' nanites — a feat he is now capable of accomplishing by will and proximity alone — he is also able to speak directly into the minds of others, as their own inner voices do; and through this connection he may exercise his newfound powers by proxy of such people. It was by this method that he arranged covert transport to this secluded world; and it was by his continuing links to those people that he was able to lead Goran here to find him.

Keius has spent his time here in meditation, communing with the life on this tiny colony, both Ehrban and wild, perfecting his newfound skills, listening to the roar and hiss of Geiana like the crashing of waves on the shore — and plotting a secret plan all the while. Now one with his ancestral spirit, he recalls the memories of his father Sovos as though they were his own, and realizes that all his life has been leading up to this plan. His very name, Keius, should have given it away: derived from gheieous, "possessing the quality of silence, stillness, clarity, or tranquility", his name is the literal antonym of Geiana. He was named of course by his father, who, during his life as an ascetic, became one with the Meij spirit, heard the voice of Geiana himself, and formulated a plan to bring tranquility at last to her stormy mind — a plan which he has been working toward, through Keius, for many years already, and which is now coming to its culmination.

The Meij lineage had long been one of the most powerful in Ehrban society — the name itself literally means "power" or "might". Keius' ancestors in ancient times were some of the earliest rulers of his peoples' great empires, and though their influence had ebbed and waned over the aeons, the Meij family had always held some degree of power somewhere. That is, until their lineage grew corrupt and despotic, and at last, only three generations ago, the last world over which a Meij held dominion banished their ruler and joined the civilized galaxy in less barbaric forms of government. The outcast ruler raised his son with great aspirations of one day returning the family to glory; that son in turn realized that the path to true power and glory lay in knowledge and just leadership, and his son Sovos in turn was raised as a philosopher. Sovos took the path of the ascetic, turning inward in contemplation for all his long life, postponing childbirth until near the end of his life, by which point he had come to the realization that to be a truly great leader, he would need to find a way to induce harmony in his followers; and that the key to this harmony was to understand the true nature of Geiana. Thus, after dying alone in meditation and birthing Keius from his corpse, Sovos, through the Meij spirit with which he became one, has subtly guided Keius down his path of research, and now at last the key to fulfilling their destiny is at hand.

Keius' plan is to speak directly to Geiana, and through her to the ancestral spirits of all Ehrban, establishing a communion between them, giving them all a single point of common focus — Keius himself — and priming them with dialogues on ethics and justice. Simultaneously, a few key individuals in positions of social and political power would be manipulated to put forward motions that their respective societies take certain just and ethical courses of action, and the people, having been subconsciously primed by these inner dialogues, would of course respond positively. In the process, as the inner minds of all Ehrban reached consensus and agreement, a single harmonious voice would emerge from the cacaphony that was Geiana, and though the individual minds of all Ehrban would remain, they would be subtly guided by the collective wisdom of their entire ancestry and civilization.

But to do this, Keius needs representatives on both sides of the war; and that is where Goran comes into play. Keius tells Goran that he will be the pawn on the Imperial side of the war, to say the things Keius needs him to say, and that through this process Goran will become a popular and thus powerful political leader, perhaps even Chancellor of the Empire someday. Keius meanwhile will become a captive of the rebels, and from the safety of his prison cell manipulate their leadership as well. Though Goran knows he should be appalled by this devious plot, he finds himself, for some reason he cannot quite place, inclined to consent to it. Keius is calmly pleased, though not at all surprised, that Goran is willing to help him, and the two return to Goran's ship and plot a course toward Ehrba.

Shortly after leaving this remote world, however, a rebel warship arrives in the system, having somehow followed the same trail of hunches as Goran. They order Goran's small ship to halt and prepare to be tractored to the warship's fighter bay. Keius instructs Goran to remain on course, which prompts the warship to threaten weapons fire. Goran is terrified but maintains course as ordered. Keius stands meditatively as he explains to Goran that the nanites he has learned to control are powered by the metabolic energy of the organisms they inhabit, and that in accessing the ansible network between the nanites he is able to access not only information, but also that energy, from the entire Ehrban-descended biosphere, and channel it into the energy fields he can now generate at will through his own nanites. Keius then instructs Goran to cycle an airlock and let him out of the ship. Perplexed, Goran questions Keius, but Keius assures him that everything will be fine. Placing faith in his friend as he never would before, Goran does as he is told and vents Keius from the ship, as the rebel warship fires its weapons. But to the rebels' surprise, their missiles are mysteriously torn apart midway to their target, and an object appears on their sensors quickly inbound to their ship. They deploy countermeasures but those are somehow deflected. Their weapons systems go offline without explanation, and the unknown object breaches the hull of their fighter bay.

Within the fighter bay of the rebel ship, Keius Meij forces open an airlock, but holds back the atmosphere within by force of will alone. Within the halls of the ship, he effortlessly deflects weapons fire and renders rebel soldiers unconscious but unharmed with just a thought. As he brashly walks toward the bridge of the ship, disabling security locks with a wave of his hand, the command crew begins to cower in terror before whatever kind of superweapon has gotten on to their ship. When Keius finally reaches the bridge, all are too frightened to fire upon him; but Keius kneels before the captain, arms outstretched and wrists together, and speaks. "My name is Keius Meij. I am your prisoner."

Once captured and brought to the chief rebel world of Berona, Keius tells his captors that he is the supersoldier they were looking for, and no he won't fight for them, but he won't have them fighting over him either, so he has turned himself in. Furthermore, he won't tell them anything about the research that produced him, and nobody else knows how to reproduce the work and make another like him. He is initially given plush accommodations, not the least because he is a Meij, royalty by blood, and thus supposedly kin to this rebellion; but this royal treatment is really only to butter him up for information. When he is not forthcoming, they resort to torture, and even try to experiment on him against his will, but unsuccessfully. Keius resists, violently but nonlethally, and finally agrees to be kept in a regular prison and not cause any trouble — though he could easily escape — until the war is over.

Now years have passed. From his prison cell, Keius has a vision of Chancellor Goran concluding talks with the rebel leaders, signing a treaty with the fringe worlds, agreeing to transform the empire into a federation, devolving power to the individual worlds and giving each world a seat in the Quelouvan senate, now separate from the Ehrban planetary senate. The war is officially over.

Keius' cell mates question him as to what he is smiling about, and he informs them that the war is over. They don't believe he could know this, of course. Later, word arrives from the treaty talks and Keius is released. He travels back to Ehrba, and requests to meet with the Chancellor. Keius congratulates Goran on his successful management of this great crisis. Goran simply asks Keius what he plans to do now, and Keius reveals that he plans to search for the origin of his powers, somewhere on Ehrba.

After Keius leaves, Goran contacts the Church of Geiana to warn them about Keius. Because of their religious training in mental discipline, Goran and his church cohorts are able to hide their thoughts from Keius; and though Keius knows, by their silence, that they are hiding something, he does not see it as his place to monitor the thoughts of those who would wish to keep them secret from him. Yet Goran and the Church are not so benevolent, and see Keius as a dangerous heretic or perhaps even something far worse.

Keius now has access to the collective memories of his entire ancestry, tracing back to times far before the Ehrban even evolved. He plans to use these memories to guide him on his quest. He meditates to recall the experiences of his ancestors, and then follows back the trail, retracing the evolution of the Ehrban further and further back in time, seeking the earliest of inherited memories, and hoping to find from them the site from which these mysterious nanites originated.

He traces the memories of his ancestors back through the colonization of new worlds, back to the figurehead royalty which left Ehrba seeking real power on new worlds; back further into their history to the line of true kings which ruled their lands for for so long; back further before the advent of the Church of Geiana, to the great emperors who were worshipped as demigods, descended from the high god Meij himself. And still back further before those empires, to more primitive kingdoms, before the rise of the notion of 'gods', when Meij was only a great hero of the past, the great Dragon-slayer. And back, back further into the era of simple tribes, back further and further to the days of Meij the Dragon-slayer himself, who had united his kin for the first time and together driven back the savage beasts which had terrorized Ehrban kind for so long.

But there Keius hits a snag, for not long before those times, the Ehrban did not have language at all; and so the memories of those so distant ancestors are unorganized and difficult to access. So Keius travels to the site of those earliest accessible memories, to see if the sight of once-familiar landscape will jog his ancient memories. But those lands are now the center of the densest part of Ehrban civilization, so he ventures to the Great Library to access a historical simulation of what these lands once looked like. It works; the sight of familiar landscapes conjures images of what once transpired there.

While conducting his research at the library, Keius encounters Tatia, who is now a professor as the presigious university adjacent to the library. She says it is thanks to some favors from Goran, but Keius assures her it is her own abilities that got her this position. Keius, no longer in any dire urgency, decides to postpone further research for the day, to share a meal with Tatia instead. Over the course of his return visits to the library, he meets with her many times, and the seeds that lingered so long during their days together on Asira finally begin to grow and bloom.

Via the library's simulator, Meij continues to trace his ancestry back, through the days before civilization, when primitive Ehrban lived in fear of the great dragons which once ruled the whole of Ehrba. Back and back further, and across the lands, watching Ehrban kind grow larger and less upright, and less intelligent, devolving back into their raptor-like ancestors, as the dragons they so feared likewise grew smaller and smaller, returning to their bipedal ancestry, and the lines of Ehrban and Dragon converge once again. This fact is of course no surprise to Keius, who as a biologist is quite familiar with his species' evolutionary history; though witnessing geological time unfold in reverse in such vivid memory is thus an even more fascinating experience to him.

By this point Keius has traced the migration of his ancestry back into lands which are still to this day wildlife preserves, lands where the few surviving dragons and other megafauna still survive, just barely, under the watchful care of endangered species wardens. So Meij leaves the Great Library and travels to these wild lands, to witness the world he seeks to remember first-hand rather than only in simulation. Tatia wishes to come with him, and has leave time she can use; but Keius fears for her safety, expecting trouble along the way, the likes of which he will not specify for Tatia, except to say that is not the wilderness that he fears for her — he knows she can handle herself in the jungle just fine. Though disappointed, Tatia heeds his warnings, and remains at the university.

Sure enough, almost as soon as he arrives in the wild lands, his quest is interrupted, as he is captured by a task force sent by the Church of Geiana. Skilled religious practitioners such as those sent on this errand are strong of mind and will like the ascetics from whom Keius descends, though they use this psychic strength in stubborn and dogmatic ways; and they are thus able to resist Keius' mind control. Keius could of course easily dispatch them and force his way to freedom; but as he is invulnerable and thus in no personal danger, and as he seeks to be a just and ethical person, he refuses to use violence to escape from his captors, and so they are able to impede his quest.

Instead, he converses with his captors, denies any malfeasance on his part, and explains to them his quest and the origin of his phenomenal abilities. Though at first they simply deny his story as heretical lies, he manages to convince some of the younger ones amongst them by drawing their attention to the voice of Geiana, which is far calmer and more harmonious now than it ever has been. He further amazes them when a dangerous wild Dragon is drawn to their camp at night, but is easily subdued by Keius' empathic connection with all Ehrban life. Combined with Keius' invulnerability and other powers, these young church men come to believe that Keius may not be some sort of demon but rather their savior, sent by Geiana to redeem the Ehrban, to usher in a new era of a more peaceful and loving Geiana. Keius of course denies this and explains again what he is really doing, but it falls mostly on deaf ears; one way or another, enough people side with him that he is freed, against the will of the others, and together they resume his quest.

After further meditation and much wandering on foot through the ancient wild lands, tracing the evolution of his raptor-like ancestors back to their airborne predecessors, back further through tree-dwelling gliders, and further still to lizard-like insectivors which hid in the forest litter, Keius leads his new disciples (and the begrudging remainder who still oppose him but tag along to keep watch on things) at last to the site of his oldest of memories. He recalls visions of an ancestor, a tiny, mud-dwelling creature, like a six-limbed worm, stunned and reeling in the upturned earth around the edge of a recently-formed crater. In the center of this crater shone a gleaming, silver, metallic form, roughly egg-shaped, which must have fallen from space. Back in present time, Keius is thrilled at this discovery, and warns the others to stand far back. Closing his eyes, he feels through the ground with senses unknown to any other Ehrban, utilizing the advanced sensory capabilities of his nanites. Then, opening his eyes and raising his arms, he summons a great whirlwind which blows the soil from the ground, drilling downward and raising up what lay beneath, until out of the ground comes a gleaming, silver, metallic egg, nearly twice a man's height.

The whirlwind settles and restores the earth to the ground beneath the egg, and Keius approaches it. His followers approach with him, though keeping a step behind, as Keius peers reverently into the egg. Curiously, he speaks; perhaps to his followers, perhaps to himself, perhaps to no one...

---

"They can hear us. They're listening. But they're not talking back. I wonder if they're waiting... for something."

His followers ask him, "Who? Who is listening?"

Keius replies, "Worlds. Minded worlds, all thinking together; hundreds, maybe thousands of them, each a unique and organic entity; a whole society of minded worlds, somewhere galaxies away. I can feel them all through this probe, as clearly as I can feel Geiana; though they are far more coherent in thought. But they're not saying anything. They're just... watching us. I think they're waiting."

"Waiting for what?" asks one of his followers.

"Waiting for Geia to say her first words," answers Keius demurely.

---

On the site of that dig would come to be built the greatest temple of the new Ehrban religion. As word of Keius' powers spread, and the changes in Geiana became apparent to the priests and spiritual masters around the world, nearly all of the Church of Geiana came to worship Keius as their messiah. Though he wanted no such authority, he would come to accept the role that was thrust upon him, to use it to do good and to further the work he had already begun in quelling the galactic civil war. With the liberal changes he advocated in terms of doctrine and dogma, which were eagerly adopted by the lower regional churches, many of the holdouts which had resisted communion with the Church had a change of heart, and the Church's prevalance became almost absolute, not out of proselytization or domination but out of a true love of Geiana, whom they sought to make Geia — a love, that is, of all Ehrban life, to whom they sought to bring peace and harmany at long last.

But there still remained some holdouts in the old Church, whose leaders still refused to acknowledge Keius as anything but some demon, abberation, or crime-against-nature incarnate. Hiding their thoughts from him, they began to plot and scheme some way to put the fear of Geiana back into the Ehrban people; and amongst their ranks was Chancellor Goran, who now greatly (though secretly) resented Keius for overshadowing him in power...

Keius grants magical powers, though not invulnerability, to a select few of his pupils, thus beginning the archmage tradition. Tatia is the first of his pupils, and becomes the head of the mages' academy once Keius hands over the reins. After a number of years, some secret members of the old church manage to become initiated in this tradition, trained not by Keius directly but by the disciples of his disciples.

Keius, Tatia, and colleagues return to Asira to continue their research. In addition to studying and experimenting on the native life of Asira as before, they work to create artificial life, designed from the top-down, by programming some nanites appropriately and feeding them biomass from the Asiran biosphere. The result is a race of organic robots; the Asiran.

But the Asiran are hyper-intelligent and quickly develop not only civilization but a fascination with megastructures and the modification of their world. Fearing for the nearly-sapient native life of Asira, not to mention what might become of the Ehrban when the Asiron leave their own system, Keius & co. work to 'tame' the Asiran, giving them tasks and directives which occupy their vast intellect and dedication to purpose.

Keius and Tatia decide that after all this play at creating life in new-fangled ways, they'll go about it the old-fashioned way too. Keius carries the child and plans to raise it.

However, during his pregnancy an outbound portal, extending the portal network, finally reaches its destination, and when the subsequent exploratory team goes through, they find a world in the new system which is not only already habitable, but inhabited by intelligent, though primitive, alien life forms — humans. Absolutely fascinated by this discovery, Keius designs a plan to put the entire solar system inside a time dilation field, modify and train some of the natives to inconspicuously observe and record the evolution of human life and civilization, and at regular intervals shut off the field and report back their findings to the Ehrban.

Keius becomes so enthralled with these newfound Humans that he decides to leave the child, named Lievus, to Tatia, completely counter to Ehrban tradition. (Normally only the 'mother', in this case Keius, rears the child, because the 'father' is difficult to determine and there may actually be multiple). But Keius tells Tatia that she is his only partner ever, so the child is as much hers as his. She has mixed feelings — surprise and honor at learning she is Keius' only mate ever (as the Ehrban are a naturally promiscuous species), but also derision at his lack of responsibility — but ultimately decides to raise Lievus alone and let Keius go be Space Jesus or whatever.

The world of Berona volunteers to be the testing grounds for the time dilation field, for they already have a great concentration of gravitic research happening there. Chancellor Goran comes to Keius and offers to govern inside the time-dilation field, as the people of the rest of the galaxy really all follow Keius anyway, and Goran has only retained his Chancellorship this long due to Keius' continued endorsement. Keius replies that he was going to ask Goran to do so anyway, for although Goran has been hiding his thoughts from Keius for decades, he has never done anything to betray Keius' trust; and so, since Keius will be unable to monitor what happens inside the time dilation field, he could think of no one more trustworthy to keep watch than Goran. Goran is shocked to learn that Keius is aware that he has been keeping secrets; but very pleased to be given this opportunity.

Goran selects the team that he will need to keep things running smoothly while the field is operational, including scientists and engineers from all fields. Tatia is selected as a part of this team, and she is willing to go; there are hints that her and Goran may have developed a relationship since Keius began attending to "more important" things. But Keius asks her not to go, because it is a dangerous experiment after all, and he couldn't stand to see her hurt — and especially their child, who she is still raising. Tatia reluctantly agrees to stay on Ehrba.

Also amongst Goran's designated crew are a team of trusted sub-governors, all of whom are secret members of the old church...

The time dilation field is completed and activated. Time within the Berona system is accelerated infinitely faster than time in the outside universe. To someone within the system, the outside universe appears frozen, and thus black and starless, for the entire time the field is activated. Meanwhile to someone outside the system, only an instant passes between when those inside activate the field and when they deactivate it, and after a bright flash of accumulated starlight shines out at once, all the changes which have occurred inside, no matter how long they took in internal time, appear to occur instantaneously.

Inside the field, now free from Keius' influence, Goran and his team immediately begin to enact their plan. His geneticists go to work breeding the hideous half-dragon mutants they have been designing for all these years, and set them free in the wilderness of Berona. When they begin to attack the populated areas, and are not easily turned back, Goran declares a state of martial law. With the aid of his sub-governors, some of whom have been trained in the archmage tradition, a state of panic is induced in the populace, and in desperation, absolute power is turned over to Goran. But still, "somehow", the monsters manage to ravage Berol civilization, which collapses around the world except for an underground refuge in the capitol...

[TO DO: FIGURE OUT THIS SEGUE]

Eventually an equilibrium is established whereby the warrior-class of Berol believe that they have enslaved the scientist-class, and the scientist-class believes that they have enslaved the warrior-class, when in fact both are serving only their God-Emperor Goran. Centuries pass, Berol civilization builds back to a spacefaring state, Ehrban history is completely forgotten, and Goran — sustained for so many years by the genetic and cybernetic technology of the Berol scientist-class, no longer truly Ehrban even — goes mad with power, completely forgetting his ostensible aim of putting the fear of Geiana back in the Ehrban people. Once the entire Berona system is buzzing with the massive fleets of the Berol, Goran deactivates the time-dilation field; the rest of the universe suddenly appears for the first time to the Berol, and their God-Emperor sends them to destroy the "invaders".

Keius is at Earth instructing his modified-human creations in their upcoming task, when suddenly he senses a great disturbance in the collective subconsciousness. The time dilation field has been activated hours ahead of schedule for the first test, and something has gone horribly wrong. He can feel the Berol, and they alone are strange and disturbing, particularly inasmuch as they seem completely oblivious to any communication from the collective subconsciousness and so are unresponsive to Keius' queries and commands. But more disturbing still are the hundreds of deaths suddenly occurring on the ships monitoring the time-dilation experiment, as they are unexpectedly destroyed by the Berol fleet. Mortified and confused, Keius lapses into a deep trance and assumes mental control over everyone he can, coordinating an urgent emergency response action. A huge fleet of ships is ordered to the Berona system, which mutually annihilates with the Berol fleet. But then, to everyone's horror, the Berona system flashes again, the time dilation field having been activated and then deactivated, and another Berol fleet appears ready to continue the attack.

More ships are sent to counter them, but with the time dilation field at their disposal, the Berol can replenish their losses instantaneously and indefinitely. Several flashes of time-dilation elapse in but a few moments, and an undefeatable horde of Berol ships begins to pour through the portal from Berona and across the portal network, infiltrating the galaxy, attacking all the Ehrban worlds. In desperation, Keius orders a mass retreat of any ships already in the air back toward the core worlds, back to Ehrba; and the closure of the portals from any systems the Berol have already infiltrated. But it may already be too late, for the Berol ships travel at near-luminous impulse speed just as the Ehrban ships do, so there is no hope in outrunning them, though with the closure of the portals the onslaught can at least by slowed to subluminal speeds; which, given galactic distances, would give Ehrba thousands of years to prepare, if they can survive those forces already en route, which are already too late to stop. So simultaneously a message is sent to the Asiron ordering an all-out attack on the Berona system and the defense of Ehrba at all costs.

As the portal network shuts down and the First Galactic War begins, night falls on the once-great galactic civilization of the Ehrban. Keius leaves his ship at Earth in the hands of his modified humans, who he tasks with the care and protection of their kind. He closes the local portal from the Earth side, to keep the rest of the galaxy out should they decide to come this way; and as only mighty Keius could, he departs without a ship across the galaxy back toward Ehrba, travelling at near-luminal speeds, hoping against hope that his homeworld might still be there when he arrived, tens of thousands of years later.

The advanced wave of the Berol fleet would arrive at Ehrba just minutes after the refugees from the many worlds would; and though only hours later the Asiron would arrive and defeat the Berol fleet, it would prove too late, for the civilization of Ehrba would be set ablaze and utterly ruined; and though some few Ehrban would survive — huddled inside their grand temple in the ancient wild lands, praying to Geiana and the Minded-Worlds, shielded from the Berol attacks only by the combined might of Tatia and the other surviving archmages — it would be twelve thousand years before their civilization once again reached a level even approximating what it had been before the war.

The Ehrban leave their bubble; mages dominate.

For many generations the Ehrban have been forced to live inside a magical bubble generated by a constantly rotated team of mages, as the world outside was ravaged by global fires and then storms of ash and snow before settling into a perpetual winter. In this time magic has been essential to ensuring the survival of the Ehrban race, trapped inside this tiny artificial biome, and so nearly the entire population has been trained as mages, though to varying degrees of success. Now the time has come for them to leave their bubble and repopulate the world, to settle this new Ehrba, "Niarba" — and Keius and Tatia's child, Lievus, now greatly aged but still alive due to his powerful heritage, leads the way.

Warlocks arise, problems ensue.

The seed of the "mutation" which creates the witches and warlocks (who can't hear, but can still command, their inherited "spirits") is the same as that which leaves the Berol immune to mind-control, which in turn is something the secret Geianan initiates in Keius' magic school engineered into themselves as a defense against the kind of "brainwashing" Keius used to stop the civil war. Some of those Geianans survive into Niarba, and pass down that trait, spawning the first Warlocks, who come to dominate the fledgling new Ehrban civilization through ruthlessness and unpredictability. Lievus' younger half-sibling Kadia, offspring of Tatia (and thus of both Keius and Goran, and Tatia's many other lovers), is foremost among them.

The society of mages begins its decline.

Lievus, on his last legs, makes it his life mission to rally the mages loyal to his father's cause of peace and harmony, eradicate the warlocks, and save this nancent world from self-destruction. This battle drives a wedge down the fine line between forced collective cooperation and unchecked individualism which Keius had so deftly walked, and that schism becomes the driving ideological divide amongst the magic-using population of Niarba for the rest of its history.

After the Warlocks are hunted down, the trait survives only amongst those with a mutated version which leaves them no command of their spirits either, leaving them invisible amongst the general populace. But as this trait confers a competitive advantage (pre-Keius levels of ruthlessness and unpredictability), it spreads quickly as the world is repopulated, and soon the influence of the mages is greatly diminished, as they become few and far between compared to the teeming hordes of mundanes. Lievus dies, and the remaining mages scatter around the world, subtly guiding mundane society, only convening at the ancient temple on rare occasions.

 

Mages are now scattered about the world here and there, keeping only loose connections and a single remote settlement to raise and teach their children, acting on the world scene mostly as advisors to mundane heads of state, and otherwise minding their own business, except for ranger-mages who continue to hunt down Witches and Warlocks, or at least those who share the trait which makes them such. A mage of the Meij lineage and a peaceful "Warlock", who are in love and raising a child together, flee from the rangers only to be killed by the evil witch Mav, cousin of the aforementioned "Warlock". Their child escapes Mav unnoticed after witnessing their brutal murder first-hand, and is raised by Dragons in the wild.

 

Seeking vengeance against Mav, who has since become an increasingly notorious terror to mundane civilization, Darak wanders into rural civilization and is nicknamed "the Dragon-boy" by those he meets, until his Meij ancestry is recognized by a local wizard, and he is given a proper name: Darak Meij, "The Mighty Dragon". Though Darak himself is oblivious, various political forces, minor at first and then escalating higher, begin to coalesce around him and his quest for vengeance against Mav, who has been terrorizing civilization since before he was born and is only growing more powerful with time.

 

The war against Mav is in full swing, a coalition of independent nations has formed to bring her and her armies down, and Darak Meij is their greatest weapon, if they can just keep out of his line of fire. Though Darak little knows nor even cares, focusing solely on his own vendetta, this coalition of mundane powers is not especially fond of magic-using types in general, and they are especially not fond of his single-mindedly psychopathic little self, however useful he may be proving at the moment.

After Darak kills Mav in a spectacular final duel on a volcano in the South Sea, Darak's own special forces reinforcements kill him with sniper rifles from a distance, as they had planned all along. In his last moments Darak finally realizes that people don't like his violent disregard for others lives in his single-minded persuit of Mav.

Mages in general are shunned from mainstream society as the Council comes to encompass most of the world's nations. They establish their own secretive, isolated nation centered on their old temple in the ancient wild lands.

Meij Endaren (nee Endaraken, very roughly "Draconified Meij") returns to the Ancients.

Meij Endaren defects back to the Nurbal.

Meij Endaren resurrects Mav, Ancients and Nurbal unite against common enemy, Meij dies to save them — recapitulating the life of Darak.

In the treaty that follows the war, the Ancients help the Nurbal build a single, giant colony ship with ancient technology, and reveal the existence of the portals. That colony ship is sent out with anyone who might possibly be interested in exploring space, to settle a new world and from there explore the rest of the galaxy, but forever shut off from Niarba. Those who remain will be under the rule of the Ancients.

To do.

To do.

To do.

To do.

To do.

To do.

To do.

To do.

To do.