In the decades that followed the Great Quarantine Break, the V’lrrr became all but extinct and the face of the galaxy changed forever.

Starlight and her stalwart captain became names to be feared, spoken of in quiet whispers in the dead of night. And they were truly fearsome! The ship would appear out of nowhere, firing some of the most devastating weapons ever created, and the V’lrrr whaling ships would be utterly devastated. She would round up the unfortunate victims, forming them into a dense group, and then she would pull them along in her slipstream as she jumped back to earth.

There, the space whales found their safe haven. Hundreds of ships would bask in the sun glow of earths young star, recovering energy and recuperating from often grievous wounds. Then, they would migrate to the large fifth planet to feed off of the dense atmospheric gasses. It was said that the sight of the Starchildren migrating from star to gas giant was glorious, visible from planet side with the naked eye.

Older, adult ships would choose a captain, a customized weapons harness loadout, and then they would join the vast and growing anti whaling fleet, starting the process anew.

In that time, mankind also made contact with the galactic community. They were treated with an almost fearful respect, given deference and a wide berth. In time, however, the humans became a viable resource, a fallback and a reinforcement, a last violent hope when all seems lost. For further details, see galactic archive entry entitled “the last salvation”.

But then, the unthinkable happened. The V’lrrr, in a last ditch desperate attempt to stave off the terrible vengeance that they had wrought upon themselves, crafted a biological weapon, a virus, and dropped it on earth. The results were devastating. By the time the human immune system was able to adapt to and overcome the virus (a truly remarkable evolutionary adaptation by the way), the virus had decimated their homeworld. A population of billions was reduced to hundreds of thousands.

It was then that the humans became truly fearsome. Abandoning their Homeworld, the entire population embarked into their partner ships and dispersed throughout the galaxy. When the galactic science foundation heard about this, of course we attempted to study earth. What we found kept us on our best behavior.

The humans had turned their entire star system into a nature preserve. Devastating antimatter mines surrounded the system. A spherical arrangement of weapons platforms armed with death engines so esoteric that we can still only guess at their function girdled the entire system. The planet itself was guarded by satellites and a moon based tachyon laser pulse emitter that could disassemble the atomic bonds of any substance. The planet itself showed very minimal signs of civilization, what hadn’t been disassembled had been reclaimed by overgrowth.

Occasionally, observers would see the ships coming back to rest, in pods of four or five. No one dared to interfere with them, for they knew the terrible consequences that would ensue. The only thing that gave the community any sense of reassurance was a lone subspace ansible, a summoning beacon embossed with a plaque that read ‘Gjallerhorn subspace beacon. Activate only in dire emergency.” No one dared touch it.

The end