Time in this land, called Rhydin by most, flows strangely. This we have known ever since we became aware of it, and we have come to accept that we cannot control or truly understand it. So it is with many things in the World.

By the common calendar, it has been approximately thirty years since the Children of the Gods found their way across the barriers, and into the land called Rhydin. Despite the strange flow of time, we have kept consistent records of our activities; and so we know that at least in the space we call ours, the years have passed the same in the Empire, and here in this place. That makes it perhaps a little easier to give the proper perspective to these histories.

Some of what will be written here is well-known to the lorekeepers and historians of the Empire. Some, they know nothing about yet. The time is not yet come for the two Packs to be reunited. We are not yet ready.

When that day comes, we will have much to say to one another. And perhaps, much to teach one another.

Legend tells us that our race is immensely old, with no histories remaining to tell us the origins of our kind. Of course, we have legends and myths - the very name of our race, A'Taran (translated into the Common tongue), means literally 'Children of the Gods'. So we have always called ourselves, with all the arrogance and pride that title assumes.

What is known to be true, speaking of the Galactic A'Tarans, is that our history dates back at least two hundred thousand years. Artifacts exist, found on several dead planets, that prove we roamed those worlds no less than one hundred and fifty thousand years ago, and some fragmentary histories preserved on some of the Mother Ships can be reliably matched up against astronomical events recorded by other races of similar longevity. However, some legends can also be matched up against other astronomical records to suggest a presence that could date back up to a million years past.

Without any more accurate or current evidence to prove or disprove these theories, then, we shall describe the birth of the A'Taran race as having been nearly one million years ago, in a region of space known to some as the Mersean Galaxy, or the Mersean Expanse. This region of space is long since uninhabitable due to a series of stellar calamities which resulted in the strange conditions known to exist there today. However, enough expeditions have braved the Mersean Expanse to gather the evidence now being described.

A full study of the surviving artifacts on board the Mother Ships is virtually impossible - they are held in such a state of reverence that few scholars are even permitted to know of their details. However, enough studies have been done to describe the faint outlines of an early proto-empire in the Mersean Expanse. For the purposes of our histories, this is known as the First A'Taran Hegemony.

It is believed that this proto-empire began in a star system now destroyed, as no records can be matched to any existing stellar bodies. There have been many attempts over the generations to find the 'lost A'Taran Homeworld', but all such attempts have been fruitless. The first real records that can be matched to known stellar observations describe an area of space roughly one hundred and twenty-eight* light-years across. Everything within this distance is considered to be the original boundaries of the First A'Taran Hegemony, though certainly not the ultimate limits.

There is little more currently known about the First Hegemony, though its absolute ending must have been approximately seven hundred thousand years ago, when the combined hypernovae of several stars caused the collapse of the Mersean cluster, and the gradual sterilization of the galaxy. The ancient ships that fled this disaster are hypothesized to have been generation ships, for even the primitive dimensional drive that must have been used at the time to expand throughout the Mersean cluster would have been insufficient to reliably travel from that region of space to the nearest inhabitable galaxy.

Little information is at hand about the time between the collapse of the First Hegemony and the rise of the Second. Indeed, not much more is known about the Second A'Taran Hegemony than of the First. What is known or at least hypothesized, is also drawn by comparing fragmentary tales of legend with some known stellar events. These connections suggest that the Second Hegemony came into being centered on the globular cluster Primelis 109, orbiting the galaxy UDFj-39546284.

The exact length of time that the Second Hegemony existed is also unspecified, as are most details about it. Its absolute endpoint is defined by the records from the Third Hegemony, which are far more complete and recent. As with the First Hegemony, no direct physical evidence has been found to mark the actual existence of the Second Hegemony - only the correlation of legends and myths with stellar records.

It is with the Third A'Taran Hegemony that verifiable history can truly begin.

* Subject to verification.

Near the end of the Fourth Hegemony, the War was going poorly for both sides. The allied races of the Seeders (as our histories have called them) were suffering greatly at the hands and claws of the A'Tarans - for whom battle has always come very easily. However, our own populations were being slowly whittled down, and eventually the leadership of the Three Clans began to realize that an end had to be made of the War, one way or another.

The decision to use Sunkiller bombs is a controversial one in the extreme - a weapon that could induce a supernova was considered the closest to a doomsday weapon as had ever existed. Both sides began to develop the technology simultaneously, in a race to see who could force the War's end by threatening the extinction of the other's homeworld.

Both our histories and those of the ancestors of modern humanity claim that the other broke the deadlock and used the weapon first - our lore says that they gave us no warning before unleashing no less than three sunkiller weapons: One in the system widely considered to be the 'front lines' of the war, one in the system where the A'Taran First Fleet was based, and the last in our own hearthsun itself. These three supernovas give the galaxy of NGC 2770 its modern name in human lore: "The Supernova Factory", ignorant of its true cause.

Texts still extant in galactic archives claim that the A'Tarans detonated these weapons themselves, either in an attempt to bring such political outrage upon their enemies as to escalate the war to a pan-galactic state, or in a horrific and suicidal 'final solution' - such that if we cannot win, no one lives.

This, of course, is nonsense. The Children of the Gods could have no possible notion of destroying themselves in such fashion. The 'evidence' given frequently points to the fact that prior to the detonations, the bulk of the A'Taran Race took to their great colony motherships and fled from the hearthworlds of the Hegemony. Why would they do this, if they did not know exactly where and when the weapons would be used?

The ultimate truth is lost to history, but it is clear enough to we loremasters that our spies must have ascertained the coming holocaust in time to warn the Elders. Knowing that we could not survive such a weapon being actually unleashed, we took what steps we could in order to assure our race's survival.

It is true that the majority of the enemy forces perished that day, leaving the races of the proto-humans decimated and setting them back uncounted generations in their development. While we too suffered grievous losses, coming near to extinction, the foresight displayed by setting out in the generation ships was enough to prevent this.

However, of the hundred ships that fled from Theta Garcellis II prior to the holocaust, many were lost in the dark years that followed. Most of the lost ships were destroyed by mishap (black holes, and other astronomical events), and others simply lost to degeneration. In part, this held true because the Elders (reeling from the obliteration of our very homesun), refused to make a permanent settlement on any planet.

The thinking was that their enemies must surely be pursuing them - it was not known at the time that the vast bulk of the enemy forces were also obliterated in the catastophe. And if the A'Tarans stopped to settle... they would be an easy target. So, on they roamed, with the Ships slowly starting to break down or become lost.

And in one particular case, lost without a trace.

For the majority of their entire history, the A'Tarans who wandered the stars have never known what happened to the Light Hope. The last transmission from it indicated that they were making a course correction due to gravitational anomaly, and they were never heard from again. The ship and the five hundred thousand aboard were believed lost to the night, and their names are still remembered.

But now, their story can finally be told. Their story continues in the thread: "The Imperial A'Tarans: Their History and The War."

As for the main pack of the A'Taran race, their story continues in the thread "The Galactic A'Tarans: Children of the Stars."