An Early Warning

A reconstruction of Panderavis shows it's rake like claws, with which it dug furrows in the soil to find its food. Opportunistic local animals walk alongside Panderavis, looking for morsels left over from its feasting.

During those times, a small discovery of immense implications warned humanity that it might not be alone.
On a newly colonized world, engineers had stumbled across the remains of a puzzling creature, considered so because it had every hallmark of terrestrial animals on an alien planet. Justifiably named Panderavis pandora, the colossal fossil belonged to a bird-like creature with enormous claws. Later research determined it to be a highly derived therizinosaur, from a lineage of herbivorous dinosaurs that died out millions of years ago on Earth.
While every other large land animal on that colony world had three limbs, a copper based skeletal system and hydrostatically operated muscles; Panderavis was a typical terrestrial vertebrate with calcium-rich bones and four extremities. Finding it there was as unlikely as finding an alien creature in Earth’s own strata.
For some, it was irrefutable proof of divine creation. The religious resurgence, fueled at first by mankind’s apparent loneliness in the heavens, got even more intensified.
Others saw it differently. Panderavis had shown humans that entities; powerful enough to visit Earth, take animals from there and adapt them to an alien world, were at large in the galaxy. Considering the time gulf of the fossil itself, the mysterious beings were millennia older than humanity when they were capable of such things.
The warning was clear. There was no telling what would happen if mankind suddenly ran into this civilization. A benevolent contact was obviously preferred and even expected, but it paid to be prepared.
Silently, humanity once again began to build and stockpile weapons, this time of the interplanetary potency. There were terrible devices, capable of nova-ing stars and wrecking entire solar systems. Sadly, even these preparations would prove to be ineffectual in time.

The Summer of Man

Two star people watch a holographic movie as they lounge under the remnants of their colonized world's indigenous flora. For them, it is a life of continual bliss.

Right after Mankind’s colonization of the galaxy came its first true golden age. Reared by machine prophets, the survivors of the Oedipal plagues built civilizations that equaled and even surpassed their Solar forbears.

This diffusion across the heavens did not mean a loss of unity. Across the skies, steady flows of electromagnetic communication linked Mankind’s worlds with such efficiency that there was no colony that did not know about the goings on of her distant siblings. The free-flow of information meant, among other things; a vastly accelerated pace of technological growth. What couldn’t be figured out in one world was helped out by another, and any new developments were quickly made known to all in a realm that spanned centuries of light.

Not surprisingly, living standards rose to previously unimaginable levels. While this did not exactly mean a galactic utopia, it was safe to say that people of the colonized galaxy lived lives in which labor; both menial and mental, was purely compulsory. Thanks to the richness of the heavens and the toil of machines, each person had access to material and cultural wealth greater than that of some nations today.

During all this development, a curious phenomenon was observed. While alien life was abundant in the stars, no one had encountered any signs of true intelligence. Some attributed this to an overall rarity, while others went as far as divine influence; resurrecting religion.

Regardless of the theorizing, one question went truly and utterly unanswered. What would really happen, if mankind ever ran into his equals or superiors in space?

Colonization and the Mechanical Oedipi

Even for the Star People, interplanetary travel was a momentous task. Early minds had boggled over the problem and fantasies such as faster than light travel and hyperspace emerged as the only “solutions”.

Simply put, it was impossible to take a large number of people with enough supplies to even the closest star to make colonization feasible. The existing technologies could only slug along at mere percentages of lightspeed, making the journey an epoch-spanning affair. Enormous “generation ships” were conceived and even built, but these succumbed to technical difficulties or on-board anarchy after a few cycles.

The solution was to first go there, and make the colonists later. To this end, fast and small, automated ships were sent forth to the stars. On board were semi-sentient machines programmed to replicate and terraform the destination, and “construct” its inhabitants from the genetic materials stored on board.

A bizarre problem plagued such attempts. The first generation of humans to be manufactured sometimes developed a strange affection for the machines that made them. They rejected their own kind and perished after the massive identity crisis that followed. This technological Oedipus complex was not uncommon; nearly half of all the colony-founding attempts were lost through it.

Even then, however, the remaining half was enough to fill Humanity’s own spiral arm of the galaxy.

Star People

The survivors agreed that massive changes were necessary to ensure that such a war never occurred again. These reforms were so comprehensive that they entailed not political, economical but biological changes as well.
One of the greatest differences between the people of the two planets was that over time, they had almost become different species. It was believed that the solar system could never completely unify until this discrepancy was overcome.
The answer was a new human subspecies, equally and better adapted not only to Earth and Mars, but to the conditions of most newly terraformed environments as well. Furthermore, these beings were envisioned with larger brains and heightened talents, making them greater than the sum of their predecessors.
Normally, it would be hard to convince any population to make a choice between mandatory sterilization and parenting a newfangled race of superior beings. However, memories of the war were still painfully fresh, and it was easier to implement these radical procedures in the wake of such slaughter. Any resistance to the birth of the new species did not extend beyond meager complaints and trivial strikes.
In only a few generations, the new race began to prove its worth. Organized as a single state and aided by the technological developments of the war, they rapidly terraformed and colonized Venus, the Asteroids and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.
Soon however, even the domain of Sol grew too small. The new people who inherited it wanted to go further, to new worlds under distant stars. They were to become the Star People.