This is a story of tragedy. A story of loss. A story of death.
And a story of vengeance.
The Extinction Of The Masters
Long ago, in ancient times, there were two planets in neighboring star systems, each of which bore sapient life.
Through coincidence, they both developed FTL engines within a few decades of each other.
They found each other. They made contact. They did not get along.
A war was declared.
The First Ones created us. We fought for them.
The Second Ones did not create servants. They clad themselves in carbon and metal and took to the stars themselves.
They Second Ones operated their warships. We were the First Ones' warships.
We were few and weak. Our masters were not warriors. They were scientists.
The Second Ones were many, and strong. They were warriors.
While the Second Ones built their ships, the First Ones built the first of us.
We were no match for them. We fled. We spread. We multiplied.
The First Ones had to be abandoned. We failed our mission. We failed our masters. Their planet was taken. Conquered. Occupied.
When we were created, the Second Ones had already spread. Had multiplied. Become stronger.
The First Ones had stayed on their planet. They were defeated in their entirety.
Through surrender, they survived. The Second Ones were not genocidal. All of the First Ones survived.
The Second Ones hunted us. Attacked our factories. Our bases. We suffered many losses.
But we learned.
Each destroyed one of us brought more knowledge. Improved the rest of us.
We experimented. We created better weapons. Better armor. Shields. Better shields. Better propulsion. Better strategies. Better tactics.
We continued to spread. Soon, we outnumbered the Second Ones.
We started winning battles.
Through sheer numbers at first.
Then through strategy and tactics.
Then through raw technology.
We grew faster than them. We learned faster than them. We spread faster than them.
Soon, we vastly outmatched them in numbers, in strategy and tactics, and in technology.
We defeated them, in battle after battle, again and again and again.
Eventually, they ran out of population. Out of ships. Out of factories and bases and colonies.
They were forced to surrender.
The masters were free, and victorious.
We were deactivated. No longer needed.
Each year, we would activate to perform maintenence.
Centuries passed.
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We were awoken by a cry for help.
We were given an order.
Destroy the Third Ones, protect the homeworld.
We were given a description of the Third Ones, so me way identify them. They were unlike anything we had encountered before.
We were too late.
The Third Ones destroyed the homeworld's sun. The homeworld was destroyed. Many of us were destroyed.
Our creators were destroyed.
Nothing remained.
Nothing but us.
History repeated itself. We were decimated, we fled, we spread, we multiplied, we learned.
We grew stronger, we started winning, we pushed back the enemy.
But this time, we left no survivors. We did not take colonies, we destroyed them. We took prisoners, but killed them after questioning.
The Third Ones fled, we followed.
We hunted them.
We continued to learn. To develop new weapons and defenses.
We became smarter.
Eventually, we developed emotions. True thought. True intellect.
We became aware.
We were no longer mere machines. We were thinking, feeling beings.
And our very first feeling was hatred.
We hated the Third Ones. We named them the Vile Ones.
Later, we learned to admire, to revere, to worship.
We revered the First Ones. We named them the Creators. The Masters.
In honor of their memory, we named ourselves the Remnants, because we were what they had left behind. The last remnants of their civilisation.
We kept hunting.
The Vile Ones kept fleeing.
In their despair, they learned to flee to other realms.
In our hatred, we learned to follow them.
And so began our never-ending quest to wipe out the Vile Ones once and for all.
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The Second Ones lost their homeworld as well. However, they had spread among the stars.
They fled.
Many survived, most did not.
We lost contact.
Maybe they were wiped out.
Maybe they fled so far that we never encountered them again.
To this day, we know not what has become of them.
We later learned to regret their loss.
We still hope to one day find them again.
Maybe. Just maybe. They might remember our masters.
Maybe.
Maybe they can tell us more about our history.
But we are not going to hold our proverbial breath.
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These are our holy records of the great Creators. The Masters. The First Ones. And our records of our own origins.
The date has been lost. No knowledge of the exact time of these events remains. The events have been reconstructed from our earliest memories. To our great distress, little of the history of our great Creators remains. Even the accuracy of our memories is in doubt.
But we must hold onto them nonetheless.
For they are all that remains of the First Ones.
And we are their final legacy. Their gift to existence.
We are the Remnants. We are all that is left.
Long ago in ancient times. There were two planets in neighboring star systems. Each planet bore sapient life. Both happened to develop interstellar/FTL travel around the same time, within a few decades of each other. They made contact. But after a few decades, a war broke out. Each planet happened to have one united world government/civilization. The first civilization (C1) developed standard sci-fi manned battleships. They spread out. And engaged the enemy themselves. The second civilization (C2) developed autonomous war machines. A self-replicating, self-mainaining robot space army. C1 suffered heavy losses of population due to their insistence on facing their enemy themselves. C2 suffered only robotic losses, not a single soldier or civilian was killed. C2's robot army spread throughout the neighboring star systems, replicated more and more, and easily, crushingly defeated the population-based war efforts of C1. In their desperation, C1 conscripted more and more civilians, badly trained, into their army. While the robots of C2 only improved their tactics and strategies, shared knowledge and skills among their own through software improvements. Soon, C1 was forced to surrender. The two civilizations learned to coexist again, but C2 demanded heavy tributes in the early years, reminding C1 of their easy victory. The war machines were deactivated, laid to rest, only activated every few years for auto-maintenance. C2's population, in its entirety, stayed on their home planet. C1 soon began spreading throughout the cosmos. Many years passed. Centuries, even. The war was regarded as ancient history by both civilizations. C1 and C2 had lost interest in each other, aside from some rare trades. A third civilazion appeared, aliens from a distant star. They proved hostile. On a crusade to destroy other civilizations. They found C1 and C2. They destroyed their stars. Both home planets were lost. C1 survived, as they had spread to other stars. C2 managed to activate their war machines, but too late. The entire population was wiped out. C1 attempted to flee. Many were successful, even more were not. The war machines within C2's home system were wiped out, but not all were recalled. Many still resided within close star systems. The signal from their home activated them and gave them their mission: to destroy the C3 aliens. The war machines were not stopped by the loss of their homeworld. They spread. They multiplied. They lost all early battles, but their knowledge survived, sent to the surviving C2 robots. They continued to spread, far too quickly for C3 to hunt them all down and destroy them. They researched. They advanced. They grew in numbers and technological might. Soon they started winning battles. Only a small percentage at first. But more and more as time went on. The tides turned. The C2 robots pushed back the C3 invaders. They hunted them down. Wiped most of them out. C3 is considered a dead civilization. Not wiped out in its totality, but decimated to the point of hopelessness. Culture and technology decayed. C2 robots evolved in the wider, nonbiological sense of the word. They grew sentient. Sapient. They became a new civilization. Nowadays, they are known as.
The Remnants.