Quoted By:
<span class="mu-s">Year 152 of the Resurrection Era</span>
The stranded colonists have found a solution to their protein shortage.
<span class="mu-b">”...Did you get most of the valuable data from them by now?”</span>
“Good enough. I can tell you are distressed. I will send the rescue teams immediately, sire.”
The experiment ends “successfully”, with the Threemind grabbing the useful data from its pretend-inactive robotic eyes and watchful sensors. Regardless, a lost colony ship and the aftermath has reduced some of your habitation progress in the colonies. But at the very least, the <span class="mu-i">water shortage has ended</span>, your Growth Rate returns from negative.
<span class="mu-s">Year 153 of the Resurrection Era</span>
Your Beta Fleet has made contact with the independent states. Growing up in the warring border region between the Aristocrats and Esaal empires, the local strongmen mostly in the form of wealthy galactic under-ground members, and especially pirates, have began to establish themselves as controllers of planets, moons, and solar systems. Beyond this early conflict and confusion, the power vacuum will soon be filled by one of these groups...
Most common among these are a race you have had minimal contact with, the <span class="mu-s">Urgi</span>. These are a race of avians, who did not evolve the same upper-body focused bipedalism as most races in the galaxy did, instead retaining their wings. While long thought that any intelligence species would lose any abilities of flight via evolutionary pressure towards higher levels of intelligence, the Urgi seemed to have retained their wings, instead using their feet and talons as grasping tools. The other curious feature of the Urgi is they do not seem to have a homeworld, or it has been kept hidden for this long, as they instead seem to be a spacer species, living almost exclusively in space habitats, starships, and so on.
The Urgi are split up among multiple pirate factions; a few of whom you have fought in the past, though never to much difficulty given your distance and technological superiority. Still, they have been known to be terrors to the Esaal, Aristocrats, and to a lesser extent the Consortium and old Hazaar colonies. Your diplomatic vessels extends greetings from the Hegemony, of which all the major pirate groups accept graciously, almost as if seeking legitimacy. Culturally, it seems the Urgi may also have more in common with the Hegemony then you think, highly valuing hierarchy and stability. Only time will tell what will happen with them...
