1 Prologue - The Big Fondue Fountain

At their home-world, it's said that, at the very advent of humanity, there were few enough of the species to congregate on a single land mass. Soon, their horizons were broadened and they discovered far off lands which they, humorously enough, called the 'New World'. As they settled this New World, they set their sights on expending far and wide across the Great Frontier of the untamed West.

They never recognized the Irony in having dubbed something so small 'The Great Frontier'. Even so, with an endless frontier hanging above their heads.

Above their heads was a vast dark sky dotted with tiny specks of light. Humans would looked to the sky with wonder in their eyes. Some ascribed those flecks to the spirits of the past, and in a way they weren't exactly wrong.

Others saw them and they imagined that some day, if they dedicated all of their hearts and efforts into it, they could reach out and touch them. They could examine and understand them up close. It was an ambitious view that fostered their development of space travel and technology.

A few others that saw those distant stars, shifted their sight to the darkness in between and what they saw there was emptiness. It made them feel so small and alone. They felt uneasy knowing that there was so much space with so little light. They were wrong though. Not for feeling scared and small, but because the in-between areas weren't empty and humans weren't alone. There were things in the vast black. There were riches to be made and monsters to afraid of.

Humanity grew until their large world was overflowing and when they realized that there was no more room for them, they spread themselves out to the nearby planets and the moons above those planets. They found ways to make the inhospitable environments hospitable. They were able to thrive on the barren rocks floating around their sun. And when they filled those rocks they expanded again.

It was like the universe was a tiered fountain and home-world was the very top center that flowed out and down to fill up the next and the next after that.

The resources that they were able to plunder were traded for the things that they needed to survive. The lifeblood of those worlds were the space ships that traversed the vast black in between with the cargos that were moved to the places that needed them.

It seemed that humanity had no opposition to their expansion and for a long time they met no other sentient life and were able to grow their technologies and expand their reaches.

It wasn't until galactic year 7742 that humans encountered the first opposition to their seemingly endless expansion, the Trilone. The Trilone were a technological based life form that displayed the ability to adapt and learn.

Humans didn't know their adversaries origins, but they suspected that they must have been created as a defense weapon by some other life form that, as of yet, has never been encountered by us.

The Trilone looked like robot crabs. Though, crabs aren't typically 3ft tall with long saber like spikes in place of their claws. They piloted their own space ships and they showed a propensity to slaughter anything that they deemed to be a threat. Their definition of a treat was anything that they saw moving. It was pretty broad.

It was a bloodbath from the start, and humans continued to lose ground to them for a long time. By galactic year 7800 humans had lost their home world and the milky way galaxy.

What must be understood is that, humans had already spread so far and wide throughout the universe that even with the tragic loss of their home world, they had reached a point where they were impossible to eradicate.

The threat to any one galaxy, posed by the Trilone was enormous, but the threat to all of humanity was non-existent.