Volume 1: Prologue
---Scholarly analysis of the Baes historical archives, in regards to "Galactic History". The following abstract, written by Chronicler Anen Norhi, details the summary opinion found within the collection of volumes titled " Comprehensive History of "Humanity" " volumes 1 - 9.---
This is the abstract of my account regarding the cross reference and study of achieves within the various noble houses of Baes. I, Anen Norhi, provide conjecture based on the accumulated knowledge collected from our ancient records, and what few records we may have been gifted to us by our Lords. My opinions may be based on unreliable narrators, and what little information was provided from a shared knowledge-base within the collective nobility of Baes. While most people are unaware, or uninterested, in our ancient history; the noble patronage of our great houses allows for my organization of what few records we maintain. I strive to create a comprehensive opinion on what history we have collected and preserved, and seek to understand better our role given by our great Lords.
Note: I, Anen Norhi, coin several terms and phrases to give a generalized understanding of certain events and peoples. These descriptions are not intended to be completely accurate, to their finest degree, and each is explained further in the readings of their respective volumes within the " Comprehensive History of "Humanity" ". For further explanation, please read further into the beginning volume where I define, and organize, every term and phrase used within my research that may not be directly understood, in its definition, to my audience.
Starting where all must, the interlude of the old world and beginning of the new.
Society, and all places known, seems oft governed by the aristocratic houses of ancient days. When it is told that peoples first set off in search of homes in the stars and faraway places. While there are several rumors and legends of where and whence people came from, most conclude it is a trifle to the age of true expansion. The age of expansion, a time when all people left their respected homes and made the slow journey into the stars. In this old and barbaric time, space travel was little more than throwing a rock in a great pool whilst hoping what current may there be took it to your desired destination. Large interlocking colony vessels bound together by a central gravitational force artificially frozen to preserve the interior for long travel. Truly a barbaric measure by any standard, the chances of survival being a violent crash landing on distant planetoids at best, and a destiny to be burned in a star at worse.
The age of expansion left many lost and underdeveloped for their eventual colonization of their desired targets. The people forgetting whence they came and how to get there, as well as changing physically so much that species and race is said to have become less of a concept than a topic of study for only the most archaic of scholarium. What few archives could be gained, from visiting Lords, over the many centuries detail other colonies and some of their most basic records. While the accuracy of the records is in question, due to the lack of sources and potential unreliable narrators, the details within the records almost always vary drastically from our own founding. Depictions of humanity cause us to believe that we are not the template of what is considered, "human", but this idea is considered radical by most of my peers.
Within the acquired records most people are described as extremely different than us, and the cause is theorized to be rooted in the erosion of genetic codes. Mutation, as it has labeled by my peerage, ran rampant in the frozen depths and the eventual reintegration of people created new and diverse societies that each expanded in their own way. While the most common of which being an ancient frame of reference word “humanoid” many shapes and sizes abounded in any one colony. The idea of being Human seemed to dwindle to the comparison of a moon technically being a rock floating in space, only true in the strictest of senses. The age of expansion is oft translated to the age of strife, or some similar terminology denoting civil difficulties and societal issues, where kin fought against one another due to their appearance and disposition rather than creed or resources. As explained, a barbaric time.
These events soon lead to an almost universal implementation of a similar system of government that is used within our own society within Baes, though it would be developed many times over the course of each society’s evolution if not entirely destroyed. The people who gained the most, fortuitous, mutations are said to have become the leaders of their small clans on their barren and hostile worlds. Leading from a position of strength, most governments of this time would prefer force of arms than cooperation and community. While this would develop, in some cases, to extremes and outright devilish productions most societies settled on agrarian and feudal lifestyles due to the lack of technology and available resources not dissimilar to our own moon's finite resources. Some colonists never reached a livable planet or even descended from space into a gravitational well.
While most colonists would find their target markers, without being terribly molested by the ravages of time and radiation, many were lost or otherwise caught. Some records of salvagers, or even space-faring societies, give records attesting the acquisition of these ancient vessels and their database records becoming corrupted after unknown eons without maintenance. Yet some amount of our shared records make a curious suggestion. Finding their colony caught in a great blackness, but their crude ship systems heating and awakening regardless, some colonists may have discovered the Barges.
The Barges, great and powerful ships larger than cities wide while taller than bursting mountains. Massive behemoth adrift and derelict, with barley functioning systems, the colonists could have descended into the various Barges one by one These people, who were once known to us as our people, soon would become more. They became that what the Barges needed, Magi.
----This abstract is a placeholder for the collection of volumes titled " Comprehensive History of "Humanity" " volumes 1 - 9. It will remain a placeholder until further access is permitted by order of the Noble Council of Baes.---
---The " Comprehensive History of "Humanity" " is no longer made available by order of the Noble Council of Baes following the excommunication, and execution, of its author by request of our Lords Above. Respect and reverence be to our Lords.---