(The creatures I'm writing about belong in he same world as the planets
Cryolith, Behemoth, Cauldron, etc., hopefully for a future mod. To make
things a bit more interesting, I'll try and describe the three species
involved from each other's point of view, although the "Human"
perspective will be the most basic.)
Early History
Records are sparse for our earliest history. Our visionaries and prophets, but today and from the past, have been able to sense some events from this time, and a few prophets have been able to catch whispers and calls from powerful individuals during this period.
In our earliest history, our species mostly lived as hunting and gathering groups, living off of prey and plant materials that could be found in the area. Groups did not need the large organizations and leadership we have today, most were like large family groups or work groups, small enough that everyone could sense everyone else's emotions and thoughts easily. Most groups kept to territories, and mixed occasionally for exchanges, having choldren, or occasional social connection. When a group sensed resources were rare, it would move, or join another group in a more safe feeling location.
During this time, our ability to sense the future was enough to avoid almost all injuries, and the need to move gave children the necessary exercise and toughness to avoid later injuries. Poisons and disease could be avoided by sensing longer into the future, and groups generally learned quickly which areas and food to avoid, and which were safe.
Our prophets have sensed that, during this time, groups gradually got bigger and bigger, as more techniques for finding food, and organizing such groups, became more commonly known. Eventually, groups became too large to keep together without some more formal organization, and we turned to prophetic leaders to lead such groups. These leaders have been easier to sense from later times, and we know more about this period than he earliest history.
It was during this time that farming began, and has grown since than, as we have seen that it can feed more people than hunting methods when land is not available. Still, resources were often scarce, and we sense leaders at war during this period, and a few stories from later speak of large battles, and tell of annihilated tribes from this time.
Religion Founding
Our first religious records started from the work of a visionary prophet called Pyth, the prophet who envisioned a method to link minds across long periods of time. Though we are now far more capable than Pyth was, future prophets respected Pyth to such an extent that we have kept contact ever since. A contemporary prophet, Vorkum, organized the first archives. These ideas rapidly spread, and within 20 years of Pyth's creation, were both in common use amongst most of the world.
The time of our religious founding was a stable one, but according to our archives, little changed from previous times. We lived in medium sized groups, with a mix of cities, towns, and in the country, with farming gradually replacing hunting as a source of food.Trade and diplomatic networks had started to appear between our tribal and city groups. During this time, government were largely handled by small groups of prophets leading smaller groups within the city areas.
The addition of archives and communication across time changed all that. Our societies became far more organized, as religious priests and archivists filled in many of the roles of leadership. New tools were developed much faster, as archives allowed us to preserve previous knowledge far more easily. Priests began as well to determine the workings of the universe, determining that we were on but one of many worlds within existence, and getting some sense of how existence operated outside our senses. The first communing groups were created during this time, led by priests searching for a way to communicate with large numbers at once.
Big Conglomerates
Soon after the spread of priestly archives, the smaller city states and tribes that had existed until that time began merging together into larger empires. All three leadership structures became far more common, with communings involving thousands, and great leaders emerging to lead vast empires. Inside these empires, we built our first major road networks, taught ourselves more intense physical training methods for laborers, and organized our first education systems.
Towards the end of this period, education and practice greatly improved our mental abilities, and large numbers of visionaries made long term plans, proposing great projects and multigeneration plans for the future. Our most important meeting forum was started as one of these projects.
The Great Wars
We had fought many tribal wars in the past, but as our settlements and religion expanded, wars was almost nonexistent. However, as our empires grew and became more ambitious, We began to fight over longer goals, and visions of the future.
The first few wars involved arguments over the building of an irrigation structure. Some visionaries saw that the irrigation was the only way to organize food, while a neighboring community felt that the irrigation would lead eventually to ruin. The high stakes of the project and disagreements over what results would be, led to strong disagreements. Eventually, the arguments led to an attempt to sabotage the project by some opponents, that led to the injury of some of the project's workers. Feelings of anger built on themselves from there, until the killings started. At that point, thousands came out to fight, and both empires sought allies.
During these first years of war, we were highly disorganized. Most fighting was done by mobs of citizens, armed with sticks, knives, or other such easy to access tools. Cities were emptied out as large numbers of citizens heard of events and, in their anger, rushed off to war. Very quickly, our armies learned to kill far more effectively. More experiened or well led mobs learned to go after leaders. New weapons were created, longer knives, thrown weapons, and spears becoming the most favorite. Mobs learned to organize themselves into specialized groups, with some of us fighting up front, some searching for leaders to kill, some scouting, andsome filling other roles. Most importantly, we learned, even in the midst of \anger, how many should fight and how many should stay home.
As each empire brought in allies, and accidental ambushes and deaths embroiled more of us in the conflict, the war spread throughout the entire world. Over 50 years, empires fought in huge alliances, sending waves of soldiers at each other, and destroying huge areas an land, and much of the cities we had built before. As empires continued to mobilize, the wars only began to draw to an end around 40 years after they started. Over these final 10 years, the citizens of the loosing empires began to loose hope and motivation, allowing themselves to be killed by the winners. Once their morale was lost, the winning empires could finally destroy most of the leaders and important workers in the loosing empires, and over the final 10 years, These empires were eliminated, and the wars finally ended.
Strangely, some citizens of these empires managed to survive, finding members of winning empires who had not been exposed to fighting and would offer pity. Surprisingly, almost 1,000 members of the original loosing empires managed to survive in this way.
The great wars killed off almost 3/4 of us, and destroyed much of our infrastructure. Recovering the archives of the losers took a long time, almost 5 generations after the end of the war were needed until leaders and priests of the loosing side were willing to communicate without feeling or sensing a strong hatred from the winners. After this period, most empires and groups maintained armies, or taught members to use weapons and plan for a fight, to prevent the certain annihilation that would flow from another war.
Rebuilding and Development
After the great wars, life largely settled back into how it had been before they had occurred. We divided ourselves back into large empires, reorganized our religion, and lived as we always had. However, long term visions and prophecies had become far more common, and large projects became routine. We also maintained greater military forces at all times. Two wars broke out during this period, annihilating three empires, and further refining our skills at fighting.
Industry
After centuries of this style of living, we accumulated enough knowledge to turn to mechanization, such as windmills, watermills, machines, and large scale boiling and chemical processing, to serve our needs. We learned slowly at first, but accelerated our accumulation of knowledge, organizing even larger and larger mechanical and chemical projects.
Our industrial development occurred alongside developments in our own powers as well. We learned to consistently sense greater and greater details of the future, able to predict almost exactly the results of a project or course of action, no longer just sensing fear or enjoyment. We learned to communicate thoughts far more effectively than before. Archives from this period became for more detailed and organized, needed to hold records of the rapid changes and new technologies in existence.
Unconnected revolts
However, these industrial changes were also dangerous. Mechanical devices could injure far faster and more easily than any previous devices, often faster than the in danger worker could sense the change. Chemical spill and fumes could injure over time, weakening workers against future injury, and sometimes directly destroying mental function. Our prophets could sense the dangers, and tried to design devices to prevent injuries, but we lacked the skills to consistently build our new devices safely. Even worse, some children were being born unable to
The resulting injuries led to a larger swell of unconnecteds, and large camps of these injured ones emerged in most regions. These unconnecteds were a drain to us, staying out of contact was a great challenge, and in some highly industrial areas the unconnected made up almost 1/6 or so of the population.
It was in the region of Packstor where a prophet called Mikstor envisioned a future where hordes of unconnected, led by a skilled commander, and equipped with unusual weapons, and far tougher than normal for our species, would threaten the uninjured population. Following this vision, he left his home for the unconnected camps, and started to train the unconnected physically and in weapon skills, while also developing new devices. Other prophets followed, teaching the unconnected to live without our mental abilities, showing them how to use other methods of thinking.
After a few years of this, rumors spread quickly, and several of us felt fear that these unconnected might actually organize. Ambassadors were sent to the camp to negotiate and head off any fighting before it started. The ambassadors were at first repulsed by the unconnected, but were surprised to feel far less fear than they had been expecting, and many switched sides as well. The unconnected camps gradually became economically important, producing unique products and materials that our own industry could not commonly produce.
However, as the unconnected became more powerful over a period of several year, we began to sense an arrogance among them, feeling that the unconnected might attempt to injure us and, insensitive to our emotions, would commit great harm without realizing it. A few accidents occurring due to a competing building project confirmed these fears, and several camps were attacked,
Unlike most wars, the attacks on the unconnected camps were not followed by an outpouring of the anger among the unconnected. Instead, the prophets leading the unconnected had to hear of the attacks first, and spend time organizing their armies. The mobilization was far easier for us, as once the unconnected tried to defend themselves, the injuries caused to our soldiers brought an outpouring of anger, and our armies were rapidly mobilized.
The prophets who led the unconnected thought that this was the war they had seen in their visions, and organized most of the unconnected into a large army. Our war with the unconnected lasted about 5 years. The unconnected were physically tougher, equipped with unusual weapons, and used fighting methods that we did not expect. Many of our leaders were killed in ambushes, and soldiers were killed and injured in floods of chemical gasses and projectiles. However, the unconnected could not muster the anger and aggression individually that we could as a group, and our ability to sense the future and sense our follow soldiers far out competed the unconnected's skills. Despite a few victories, the unconnected fell on the defensive for most of the war, and were annihilated along with their leaders.
Great Unification
The victory itself was costly, however. Though we had won the war, the battles had generated a large amount of new unconnected. Almost none joined the main camps, as they still hated the enemy they had just been fighting, but the same feelings of fear and anger at treatment found in all unconnected brought on our own fears of a new rebellion among experienced soldiers.
In addition, industrial technology had changed little in some areas, and unsafe methods were continuing to be used. Fear of more unconnected from these accidents brought some empires to ban industrial technology, but other attempted to retain the benefits and run the equipment more safely.
These fears, around 15 years after toe first rebellion, led to another series of wars. Most empires stayed out of these, fearfully watching as some empires fought over industrial policy, how to handle unconnected, and other sources of disagreement. Fortunately for those living in the fighting regions, only half the population of these empires was killed, before safety developments in other empires allowed them to force a stop to the wars. However, the problems if the unconnected and industrial policy never went away, and within a decade of these wars, new events seemed to suggest that a new set of wars was about to arrive.
It was at this time that two more prophets within empires that had not been involved in fighting suggested a radical solution: merge all separate empires together. It had been suggested by previous prophets that we could easily merge, but only with more recent communication abilities could we do so.
Once our empires combined, the wars of the unconnected largely stopped, and most militaries disappeared as well. Improvements in safety greatly improved our industrial equipment, greatly reducing the amount of unconnected. now far better organized as a worldwide empire, we finally began to take on new projects, including sea and space exploration.
Space Travel and Lost Colony
Our space exploration, when started, was dangerous, as rockets are difficult and tricky to design. However, encouraged by prophets who sensed opportunities in space, we persevered, building and running orbiting spacecraft, after a few years, landing on our moons. Later, we traveled to and from some other planets in our system. Our prophets insisted that we would one day be able to live on those other planets, and we tested these predictions with longer and longer stays.
After around 30 years of such stays, we finally had the confidence to send large groups of colonists. As they travelled to their destination, a cold, icy planet we call Mythfyl, they encountered a strange object floating in space. Most were afraid, and wanted to avoid it, but several prophets looked into the future of the object and saw opportunity. They soon won the argument, and we moved closer to the object, curious what it was, and sending data back to our archives. As we approached the object, we suddenly found ourselves racing along in unknown region of space. At first we were confused, but soon fear gripped the colonists, as we realized that the planets we could see did not resemble our own, and we could not reach our radio signals. Our archives were confused, and we could not communicate with the prophets or archives from the past nearly as easily.
Greatly embarrassed, the prophets who encouraged us to approach the object sat, confused. Others, however, suggested that we settle one of the planets in this system, and survive until we could better decide what to do. Searching out for settlable planets in the system, we saw three: a planet with a climate much like our own, an icy, cold world, and a cauldron like, hot world. Though our prophets sensed dangers on each world, they also sensed opportunities, and saw that all worlds could be settled.
