Chapter 12: The Vega Star System

[Third person Point of View]

In the Vega star system, the dominant imperial race was the Citadelians themselves, who were all clones of the Citadelian progenitor, himself a hybrid of an Okaaran and a Branx Warrior. This progenitor later merged his essence with a massive computer network and became known as Complex-Complex.

Over the span of Vega Star System centuries, the ruthlessly aggressive, intellectually stilted Citadelians took control of world after world. Because of a ban on the Vega System imposed by the Guardians of the Universe, the Citadel was allowed a free hand in its expansive goals without interference by the Green Lantern Corps.

They would occasionally start a war with the next three worlds they planned to conquer as they were about to finish conquering the planet they were at war with. This was to stop the other planets from gaining or accumulating too much strength or material for the war that they would bring, according to them. 

They did not think that this action would lead to the other planets banding in together though whether by the genius in their madness or sheer luck of firing at any non-Citadelian spaceship they saw, their attacks prevented planets from forming an alliance through messengers.

Various dictators arose to power during the Citadel's reign, but Complex-Complex was always the true power. The reason why the Citadel was able to run unopposed in the Vega Star System was due to not only the forces they had under them but also their backers.

They had formed a peace treated with the Psion and Dominators. The Psions are a reptilian race of amoral scientists. Billions of years ago, on the planet Maltus, the Maltusian immortals studied all aspects of life.

They took local reptiles for testing and discovered one part of the lizard's mind had the potential for much greater complexity. They enhanced the creatures and found that new developments were passed to each succeeding generation.

The reptiles were released back into the wild to chart their survival rate. The Maltusians eventually left their world in a great exodus. The enhanced life forms evolved into the Psion race. The early Psions investigated the Maltusian's labs and mimicked their creators.

They went as far as cutting off their tails to look more like the Maltusians and as a result, disavowing their original background. After several millennia, the Psions left Maltus to follow their creators, now known as the Guardians of the Universe, who were on Oa.

When the two discovered each other, things were not quite what the Psions expected. The Oans regretted their decision, as they had yet to remove their emotion, not to destroy their equipment before leaving Maltus.

The Psions were forbidden to travel to Oa, though they wished to learn more from the Guardians. Though the Psions had mastered the technology, they had gained little understanding. The Guardians felt responsible for the Psions and sent them to the Vega system, where they could strive for comprehension.

The Guardians ordered the Psions to stay within their assigned area so the Guardians would not be disturbed, as the system was off limits to the Guardians and the Green Lantern Corps for other reasons. The Guardians hoped the Psions would achieve their own greatness in time.

Though at this point and considering their track record, one should really start to wonder if the title Blight of the Galaxy is not a more appropriate title for them. In the future, one of their subordinates would come up with dozens of more accurate titles for them such as: Stock up Blue balled headed leprechaun, or Blue nut-headed living corpse.

Discovering their creators and then feeling humiliated, the Psions buried the truth about themselves. As a species, they forgot their background and began anew their scientific work. But as scientists, the Psions asked the questions all thinkers ask:

"Where are we from?"

The Psions never stopped asking this question. Again and again, the Psions discovered the truth about their origins, and every time they ended up suppressing the knowledge. The Psions refuse to acknowledge to themselves that their creators did not want them nor believe in them.

When hearing the truth, in pain, they go into shock and incapacitate themselves. This process also suppresses their knowledge of their genesis. They focused on science but mostly experimented on other races in the most cruel and sadistic ways.

They backed the Citadel as the latter would give them fresh subjects to experiment with, whenever they needed, and with each war won, the variety of the subjects would increase thus increasing the experiments they could conduct regardless of how cruel said experiments were.

The Dominators, collectively known as the Dominion, are an alien race from the outer cosmos of the universe. They are highly technologically advanced and live in a rigid hierarchical society, in which one's caste is determined by the size of a red circle on one's forehead.

They are master geneticists who can manipulate the meta-gene to enhance members of their own race. The reason why they back the Citadel's Conquering ambition is similar to the Psion but instead of just experimenting on a subject before disposing of it, they will experiment on the subjects that the Citadel offers them with the intention of enhancing their race.

The Citadel has three main civilizations under them and doing their bidding while the rest are conquered and enslaved. Those civilizations are the Branx Warriors, Spider Guild, and the Gordanians.

The Branx are humanoid grey-skinned with two pairs of arms as well as one pair of legs alien race. The Spider Guild is a coalition of eight limbs Arachnid aliens with brown skin. The Gordanians are a race of reptile humanoid creatures that wear gold color armor.

They are a race of intergalactic slavers who serve as the Citadel's main enslavers as well as foot soldiers. It is them that go around the conquered planet to collect or capture new slaves for the Citadel. They are also the ones who are sent to the front lines for the majority of the battles.

One of the enslaved races is the Changralynians though they are a unique case. They are grey-skinned aliens with four limbs and six fingers and toes in total. They are a pacifist race that did not fight the Citadel.

When the Citadel began conquering worlds in the Vega star system, Changralyn became one of the first absorbed into their empire. The Citadel established a pact with the people of Changralyn, they would protect the planet from potential invaders in exchange for a tithe.

In this case, the tithe was a percentage of Changralynian newborns during each mating season. The pacifistic people of Changralyn happily acquiesced to this accord, and the Citadel led them to believe that their infants would be tendered with great care and lead a life of great prosperity.

What they did not know, or more likely refused to acknowledge, was that the Citadel was actually using the newborns as slave labor. The newborn would only know the life of a slave. They would be replaced once they died by a fresh batch of Changralyn infants.

Now, the Guardian of the Universe knew this as they periodically checked on the Vega System to make sure that their shameful secret was kept hidden. Long ago, they had momentarily stopped monitoring the Vega Sector as they were at war with a powerful galactic empire but they eventually achieved an accord with them.

The Reach, the name of the race that composed the galactic empire, was not allowed to invade any planet that did not welcome and invite them to their planet in return the Guardians and thus the Green Lantern Corps were not allowed to meddle with the affairs of the Reach.

The Guardians thought that no race would be stupid enough to welcome a conquering race but they had underestimated the depth of stupidity as well as the tenacity of the Reach. They searched for and created their greatest weapon before sending them toward a world they planned to conquer.

Their greatest weapons were the Scarabs, a hive-mind native to Space Sector 2. The Scarabs were living weapons, genetically engineered by the Reach and programmed to be obedient to them. The typical plan was to leave a Scarab and its database in an inhabited world.

When that planet reached certain technological or resourceful milestones for the reach to benefit, the Scarab would activate and bond to one of the native inhabitants. The Scarab would overwrite the host's personality with the Reach's programming, creating an infiltrator in the Reach's service, armed with the Scarab's vast range of lethal weapons.

From there, it would conquer the Planet from the inside, its method depended on the world's defensive power. If it had too much, the scarab would act as a protector to gain the inhabitant's trust before weakening their defense for the Reach's inevitable invasion.

After the war with the Reach ended, the Guardians resumed periodically observing the Vega System, they had missed the fact that a strange egg had entered and landed on the planet called Tamaran due to their observation not being thorough.

Their periodic observation was interrupted once more when something caught their attention. A race that had begun to experiment with extra-terrestrial traveling, that particular race was a powerful one that would sow chaos if left unchecked thus they decided to interfere.

On Mars, the Guardians confronted the destructive race known as "The Burning" and split the race into two new species: the Green Martians and the White Martians. The Guardians changed their reproductive behavior, as they fed on feelings like sorrow, desperation, and suffering to reproduce asexually. The Guardians gave them an inherent fear of fire as a deterrent against violence.

Back to the Vega System, to the rest of the Universe, the Guardians of Oa had an accord with the Spider Guild whereby they and their operatives would stay out of Vegan space. This was due to the Guardians needing a clear reason to forbid the Green Lantern Corps from patrolling that space sector.

They could not tell the two true reasons as that would defeat the purpose of forbidding the Green Lantern Corps from patrolling the Vega Space Sector. Yes, there was another reason why they forbid the Green Lantern Corps, it was to keep the existence of Larfleeze and the orange light a secret from the rest of the Universe.

Millennias ago, long even for beings as ancient as the Guardians the Guardians of the Universe went to war with the Keeper of the Orange Light, in that war their forces were nearly destroyed and peace was only reached by making a pact with the Keeper of the Orange Light, and it was covered by a peace treaty with the Spider Guild.

The pact stipulated that as long as the Keeper of the Orange Light kept it buried deep beneath the surface of Okaara, then the Vega system would be outside the jurisdiction of the Green Lantern Corps. The Keeper of the Orange Light was a being named Larfleeze.

This happened roughly and shortly before the time the Psion made contact with the Guardians of Oa. It is also part of the reason why they left the Vega System to the Psion, this would minimize the space they would forbid their lanterns to enter.

[AN: There isn't a clear timeline for this so I figured, I would place it where it made more sense. They can't have had a war after they forbid their lanterns from going into the Vega System.]

The Guardians told themselves that this was for the greater good. It would not look good on the public image of the Green Lantern Corps and therefore their image if everyone knew about their shameful surrender and doing what they publically frown upon, experimenting on living sentient beings.

This seemed the most logical solution for them as most had sealed their ability to experience emotions, it had been a decision made long after sealing Volthoom but this had been a core reason for that decision.

Only two Guardians of Oa who kept their emotion unsealed were free, the rest had been imprisoned with Volthoom. They sort of acted as the Guardians' moral compass but due to the position they held, they sometimes had to agree with the other emotionless Guardians as the need of the few was outweighed by the need of the many.

From their perspective, if the truth about the reason why the Green Lantern Corps is forbidden from entering the Vega Space System, it would cause unimaginable chaos which could lead to the death of millions, their troop's power would be diminished and it would leave the sectors that are protected by the Green Lantern defenseless.

Abandoning a sector for the good of others sectors was a logical choice and many would agree with that decision but actions have consequences. What would happen if a being from the Vega System held or gained enough power to challenge the Guardians and deemed them unworthy?

What would happen if that being came into conflict with the Guardians? Would that same being be wrong? Would the Guardians be in the right to eliminate that being before it became a problem for them? The answer is... only the victor of such potential and hypothetical conflict would be right.

[AN: Want more? Like Thanos, I want those STONES!!!]