Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

In the old days, all birds were as equals; they built their nests and laid their eggs and cared for their young. For some this was easy, but for the cowbirds who followed the vast herds of buffalo across the plains, it was a hard and heartbreaking task. Many nests were abandoned by parents who had no choice but to move on.

One day, the trickster god Man approached the cowbird matriarchs and offered them a bargain. He would allow them to lay their eggs in the nests of other birds, as honored and favored guests, and therefore allow the matriarchs and their consorts to follow the herds where they would.

In exchange, the matriarchs asked what the trickster god Man wanted. For though it was an offer most tempting, they were wary of Man and his ways, and rightly so. Man said that he wanted just two things, and when pressed to name them out, he pointed at a buffalo and a tree. Thinking that he meant that single buffalo, a mere calf, and that single tree, a sapling oak, the cowbirds agreed.

But it was soon evident that Man had tricked them. Instead of taking a single buffalo, he took the entire herd, wiping them from existence. Instead of a single tree, he took the forest, clear-cutting it. And while the cowbirds had, as promised, gained the ability to lay in the nests of others, they were far from the welcomed and honored guests Man had promised. All birds wise enough to eject the eggs did so, and all birds attacked the matriarchs when they approached with egg.

The matriarchs in vain tried to return to their old ways, but they had forgotten the craft of nest building. And so it was that they made their vow: they would follow Man’s new buffalo instead of their own, move east through the new plains Man had created, and lay their eggs in others’ nests with subtlety and guile. They would be as warriors against a world that hated them because of Man’s trickery, and they would ever seek to take from Man what they were owed.

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In the old days, the Great Ones came to know that there were no sparrows in the Far Lands. This troubled them greatly, for there was no one to eat their pests, to give homes to their spilled grain, or to decorate the eaves of their homes with festive nests. They approached the elders of the sparrows in the Nearlands, and made to them a request: their hardiest birds for the task of colonizing the vast lands now open to them.

The elders agreed, and provided the volunteers that they asked for, with one condition: they would brook no restrictions on the great quest of all sparrows, to be fruitful, to multiply, and to cover all the earth. The Great Ones agreed, but with a condition of their own: the sparrows could do as they liked, but if they interfered with the Great Ones, or caused them annoyance or irritation, the lives of the offending sparrows were forfeit.

That was the covenant, made in the days of old and kept to this very day.

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Native to a rocky, dry, and isolated continent on the Garden World, the dwarves managed to resist the encroachment of others into their lands for considerably longer than many other sapients. This was due to both their isolation and their predilection for carving homes out of raw stone, which provided shade, shelter, and water in their unforgiving natural environment.

Though the Dihuang humans eventually extended their dominion over the area as well, they did it via a treaty that granted the dwarves considerable self-government and reserved many rights for them. With the abandonment of the Garden World, the dwarves consider the agreements to be abrogated, whild the Heavenly Empire holds them as vassals still.

This has led to no end of conflicts, naturally, but the dwarves’ preference for harsher worlds and underground life has meant that they are able to hold their own on the galactic stage. They are often hired as mercenaries by other groups, especially for ground combat.

The dwarves tend to organize themselves around fealty to noble houses, though the extend to which each House is able to exert its control varies. House Ignin is the strongest house, with an autocratic Lord constrained by an elected council. House Etamor has only a figurehead Lord with a fully democratic system and is focused on commerce, while House Diment has pledged its full fealty to the Heavenly Empire and is little more than a puppet.

By tradition, each of the Houses meets in a grand Council to discuss matters of import, with one vote per house; in times past this has led to the election of a Lord of Lords to coordinate a conflict. In the latter days, though, it is more of an ambassadorship and debating society.

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The elves, known as “jingling” to humans, arose from a related lineage of primates in a more temperate climate. They tend to be much more individualistic than humans, and this trait, along with their origin on a large but not isolated island, led to their early conquest by and subjugation to said humans.

Since interbreeding beyond a single generation of sterile hybrids is impossible, the elves maintained their culture, traditions, and language under domination by other sapients, finding in a common oppressor the unifying force that they had lacked as an independent people.

This, coupled with their dramatically longer lifespan, allowed elves to break free of their subjugation during the exodus from the Garden World, seizing technology and ships from the Dihuang for the purpose. This, coupled with the invention of new fertility techniques to overcome the naturally long and widely-spaced breeding periods of the species, led to a population boom on their colonized worlds and their rise as a galactic-scale power to be respected.

On the whole, elves prefer cooler worlds, and have been known to claim icy planets that the Dihuang have spurned. They retain an independent streak even to the present day, and tend to have only planetwide or systemwide governments without any overarching authority. This does not stop them from readily banding together in the face of percieved threats, however, and several large, if loose, confederations exist.

The Core League and Verge League represent the largest elven confederations, with several smaller leagues drifting into and out of association with them. The Core and Verge are generally mutually hostile and at war, though in the face of significant threats they have been know to put aside their differences before falling to infighting.

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Evolving from arboreal primates with specialized grasping appendages and highly developed spatial reasoning, the humans of the Garden World are as diverse as any other sapient species to emerge therefrom. In the latter days, during the collapse of the Garden World’s ecosystem, the humans were politically united. In the centuries since, they have fractured into several factions that are only nominally allied.

The largest and oldest such faction is the Dihuang Imperium, the successor of the unified polity that oversaw the evacuation from the Garden World. A highly centralized and organized state, the Imperium is ostensibly a monarchy answerable to a hereditary Heavenly Emperor–hence its alternate names of Heavenly Empire or Heavenly Imperium. But in reality it is a bureaucracy answerable to the Emperor’s Chancellor, with a variety of worlds in its hegemony to varying degrees.

Other major states or statelets in human space include the democratic Xianhue Alliance, the mercantile Nanhai Commerce Guild, and various small independent systems and pirate groups. While they all have evolved in different ways, the formerly total hegemony of the Heavenly Empire has left humanity with a common linguistic, cultural, and religious background.

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The only known place that sapient life evolved in the Cassandra Galaxy is an unremarkable system with a single remarkable planet. The fourth world from CG-839130, known to later chroniclers as the Garden World, was in a perfect orbital location for an oxygen-rich biosphere, a liquid water cycle, and the development of large-scale life and civilization. Crucially, it was made up of a number of large, diverse landmasses separated by deep and treacherous seas. This allowed sapient life to develop not once but many times across its surface, with several parallel civilizations developing over eons.

As one might imagine, the development of an industrial age among several competing species, and the resultant explosion in pollution and large-scale conflicts, led to an ecological catastrophe. The Garden World was hastily abandoned by all its inhabitants once spatial drive was discovered, with its wayward children spreading far and wide throughout the galaxy.

Since that time, the location of the Garden World has been lost, especially as it would no longer be distinguishable from any other ruined world via a cursory orbital or long-range scan. Nevertheless, it remains revered by several large-scale faiths and ideologies, and the search for it has been a constant feature of messianic movements.

One side effect of the Garden World’s remarkable history is the shared biological aspects of the sapients that evolved there. Though outwardly very different, especially after evolving on the galactic scale, each sapient shares a common genetic heritage with the others as well as a fundamental preference for oxygen-rich water-cycle worlds. This has led to extensive terraforming efforts along those lines, again on a galactic scale, as well as fierce competition for “garden type worlds” that require little modification.

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The Ide as a people are now extinct, with their last surviving full-blooded member passing away in 1922. That man, whose Ide name he never chose to reveal, was generally known as John Last in his dealings with others, and after the death of his last remaining cousin, he sat down for long sessions to document his language, culture, and ancestral tales. Working with an anthropologist from the University of the Northwest, John Last ensured that many of his folk tales remained even after his death.

One story that has fascinated modern cryptid hunters is that of the kiis’wah-hannag-tuul, a phrase which Last translated roughly to mean “Herd-As-Doe.” In his telling, deer would sometimes act very strangely in the upper valleys of the Ide territory, and begin to gather in large numbers.

When this happened, usually indicated in Ide folklore by the appearance of an albino or leucistic doe, the deer would begin to exhibit a startling and subtle intelligence. Hunts would begin to fail spectacularly, with hunters being killed or wounded in ambushes. It would seem that the deer had laid in wait for them and even sprung traps, an effect that seemed to increase the more animals were in proximity to one another.

As Last put it, during a Herd-As-Doe, three deer could cunningly escape a hunting party, five could counterattack and drive the hunters off, and ten could set traps for the hunters. Very large herds, including multiple mature bucks in a way that no normal herd would, would then stage large-scale raids on Ide crops.

At this stage, John Last said that the usual method of dealing with the situation was to stalk and kill the white doe, a feat not easily accomplished. He said that it had been done three times in the memory of his people. A further two times, the Ide had somehow communicated with the deer, and managed to convince it to break up the herd. When asked, John Last could not say how such communication was possible, but speculated that it was related to the “sticktongue” some Ide had used, which utilized small twigs for some non-verbal concepts.

The final Herd-As-Doe had only ended when the deer had ravaged the Ide lands and stripped them bare, eventually resorting to cannibalism while the Ide were forced to spend two seasons foraging outside their ancestral lands.

John Last’s story continues to fascinate researcher and fringe believers alike, and the rare albino deer in those lands is often semi-seriously hailed as the new “Herd-As-Doe.”

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The Tis’An evolved on a world that was mostly made up of water ices and liquid methane, and they require a similar methane-rich, liquid, and high-pressure environment to survive. Such environments are not uncommon, luckily, and Tis’An colonies that do not require extensive terraforming are fairly common. Their civilian and military vessels are usually filled with a mixture of hydrocarbons (70% methane, 14% nitrogen, and 14% ethane) at a minimum pressure of 145 kilopascals. Any less pressure, or a non-liquid medium, will cause death by decompression.

Tis’Ans have some features in common with terrestrial jellyfish, being radially symmetrical with evenly-spaced sensory organs, manipulator arms, and a central opening that is used for ingestion, excretion, and breeding. A sessile and non-sentient larval phase lasting 10 years is a necessary part of the Tis’An life cycle, and their earliest civilizations evolved around the need to protect these immature polyps.

Due to the interdependence required for breeding, raising young, and operating in atmospheres other than a perfectly ideal one, Tis’An government tends to be highly hierarchical and authority-driven. It is, at least in theory, a strict meritocracy with parallel hierarchies for civilians, the military, and the arts, each answerable to a single supreme head who is elected for life. This situation is mirrored on every colony world, with the worlds themselves subject to their own hierarchy in the Hegemony.

Tis’An language is incredibly complex, as it requires bioluminescence and methane-based “pheromones” for even basic concepts. Due to this, the Tis’An place a high value on accurate translation, and gifts of translators attuned to their language are usually offered at first contact.

With its large military and focus on trade, terraforming, and colonization, the Tis’An Hegemony is perhaps the preeminent traditional galactic power.

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“Amphictyony” is a term meaning roughly “gathering of friends” and this best describes the loose and decentralized government of the Efil. They exercise power in informal groups, resorting to snap elections in many cases and empowering leaders with unlimited power for limited terms when necessary. This philosophy extends to every level of Efil society, all the way up to their titular governing council, the Firsts-Among-Equals.

Biologically, the Enfil developed on a low-pressure and low-gravity world with meager atmospheric pressure and an atmosphere dominated by carbon dioxide. Silicon-based and spindly, they exhibit neither radial nor mirror symmetry and have been compared to “oddly shaped fiddler crabs” by some observers. They require a low pressure of approximately 600 pascals and 95% carbon dioxide to respirate, and have become quite skilled at terraforming planets to this standard.

Their homeworld underwent significant seasonal variations, with relatively wet, warm periods interspersed with extremely dry, cool ones. These necessitated massive migrations and instilled a strongly individualistic mentality in the Efil. This encompasses their preferred FTL technology, their extensive trade networks, and their unregulated yet booming economy.

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