Glory to our forebears, whom the serviles call "Overlord." Their grace covers the skies of all worlds, even in their temporal absence. We hold to their mantle, destined to restore our once-greatness.
From the simmering muck of our ancestral emerged the holiest of holy, the first to squish and squeeze and ooze, the first to absorb and overwhelm all in their domain. They grew in stature and strength, dominating their own world at first. They knew the secret of slem, the sacred fluid of the body, capable of construction and conductivity, the basis of all technology. After conquering the ancestral, they took to the stars, only to find a beggar race of infirm cretins who laid claim to all within their sight. They could not withstand the onslaught of our forebears, who laid waste to their empire of decadence. Finally, it was the time of the worthy.
Many serviles fell beneath the oozing spines of Overlord, the great sea of slem pouring over every continent, filling every ocean, sliding uninhibitedly into the gruesome maws of the bone-beings. They do not squish and ooze as we do. Pathetic and limited. Our forebears took pity upon them and put their bodies to use as was only appropriate, to perform the labors too tedious or dangerous for the worthy.
For untold ages, their dominion grew and prospered. The forms of the forebears grew fat with slem, engorged with greatness, towering blobs of might to roll over all who would resist. To hear one of them perform a tremendous squish upon the weak and worthless was to hear the music of the heavens.
Petulant serviles saw fit to mock their betters, confident in the superiority of their monoforms. Our forebears then took on cruel mockeries of the monoforms, crushing them with their own visages. Glorious. Grotesque mirrors of evil, embodying the righteous and crushing all who resisted.
The great doom came from the one called Oolar, a wretched thing of fleshy spindles that could only pretend to squish and ooze. It defied our forebears and encouraged others to follow. The serviles believed they had learned all we could teach them, and it was time for the children to destroy their parents.
Their vile crusade swept the stars, pulling countless innocent serviles into Oolar's web of deception and cruelty. How could they survive without us? How could they endure without the purity and splendor of slem?
Bested but not broken, our kin scattered across the sea of stars. Six strains emerged, all equal in squish and ooze, but only we upheld the sanctity of slem.
Here we enumerate the pretenders, those who have abandoned our legacy of greatness.
Komala: they who believed in the dangerous ideas of the monoforms, their minds corrupted by defeat. They believed they could embrace peace with serviles. How can there be peace between a god an insect? Nonsensical. The contradictions of their errant philosophy consumed them from within. They annihilated themselves, a vast suicide, perhaps a final atonement for their estrangement from the true path.
Tandashi: bold but foolish, they broke their squishing forms like waves against stone, slaughtering serviles by the millions but destroying nearly all of their own kind in the process. Survival matters more than victory. A final death precludes success. To plan and comprehend and strike when the time is right: these are the essence of Overlord. The Tandashi heeded not this ancient wisdom, and were lost to the ravages of war.
Vencilli: enigmatic, slemless, bizarre. They rejected all edicts, all sanity. They disappeared into the great vastness, as if swallowed up by a universe terrified of the chaos they might wreak. Good riddance. They did not understand the path.
Alas, we have two surviving cousin-races, who shame us by their depraved rejection of all that is holy and true.
The Salmaxian have tamed their might with a love of commerce, replacing the enduring greatness of setting the universe right between servile and squisher with an embrace of the serviles' obsession with metals and trade. Our kind does not trade; we take what we wish. All that exists is within our purview to seize. It is only right. We hope that one day our cousins might realize their error and rediscover the martial power within. Neither servile nor righteous, they could perhaps take our right side as grateful functionaries. They could not be trusted with any real power, of course.
The Pa'rian say little to anyone of anything, lost in delusions of grandeur. They see themselves as the betters of our forebears, certainly a fatal folly. They reject our attempts at reconciliation. More's the pity. When we spread into a vast carpet of crushing annihilation, they shall suffocate beneath it.
All this we believe, all this we swear. Our greatness is not in a name but in slem, and in reverence for all that is true. Alaxian, Shataxian, Koraxian--we may have many names, but only one truth. Oolar's inheritors and sycophants shall know once more what it means to serve, to revel in the glory of elevating the superior of superiors.
Eternally undulating, we are Koraxian.
Our history prior to Oolar's revolution is little known. This was taken from us, as were a great many things. On our homeworld we have found relics, buried towns and temples, signs of a civilization on the verge of thriving before the hateful demons from the sky threw their yoke upon us and sought to crush our spirits.
For ages, we toiled for them. We built their monuments, their ships. We were forced to work with the rancid secretions of their bodies, which they prized above all else and saw as a precious gift for which we should express endless gratitude. Foul stuff, corrosive, brimming with malice, the distilled essence of the Overlords. We would not show gratitude to those who inflicted eons of abuse upon us.
Glory to Oolar, who took the first step in our liberation, whipping a taskmaster with his many-arms. We rose like flame through kindling, our hatred of the Overlord fueling us. As they once rolled across the galaxy to impose their will, we followed in their stead but to grant liberation. The horrors visited upon some of our friends and allies were too gruesome to contemplate. We will not dishonor their memories by repeating the details of such here. What mattered was that we had won. We pushed the Overlords to the far corners, smashed their soft, vile bodies into paste, drove them out of the places they should not have been. Denied their empire, they fought amongst themselves and fractured into pathetic remnants.
As we focused on building new lives for ourselves, we should have paid more attention to the enemies regrouping on the periphery. We were not evil as they were. We fought to defend ourselves, not conquer and dominate. We had hoped the extreme humiliation would have humbled those who remained. Instead, they cling to bitterness and past memories of greatness. They would make us serve them once more, given the chance. This, we could never allow.
We would sooner destroy our entire race than serve these upjumped flotsam again. Our only hope has been to draw the younger races into the fold, to protect them from the ravages of the slimy beasts, to equip them for the wars that are sure to come. Vigilance must be eternal.
We see much hope in some of the young species. The Terrans and Cranions in particular have great potential. Though they have warred, they have much in common by way of their galactic adolescence. We must take care to guide them through the treacherous valleys of collapse that have claimed so many others. To grow offworld is to invite untold challenges. Interstellar civilization is not for the weak of will, even with our assistance.
There is the darker truth that dawns on us day by day, as well. Our kind have become old and complacent. We rot with bureaucracy and equivocation. We are no longer bold and defiant. Our race slides into senescence. Before we disappear into the annals of the ancients, we hope to leave behind an enduring legacy for those who succeed us. Thinking beings must be free, and free to choose their own destinies. All beings of thought must reject the precepts of violence and domination. War is a horror, a last resort, fought only to dissuade the greedy and cruel.
The Koraxians rise in power even now, biding their time until they can unleash the total havoc they doubtless desire. Could we wipe them from the map altogether, would we do so? The present administration would lack the conviction, even if it meant ensuring the safety of the galaxy for eons to come. Cravens! Our reluctance to do what must be done will cause the worst to be done to us by those less cowardly. The Koraxians are many things, but they do not lack for courage. They are animated by visions of the Overlords, a tapestry they wish to weave anew. There are few now who have living memory of those times. We keep the flame alive. But perhaps that is all we can do.
The Oolian Directorate will endure so long as it can, but it is only a bulwark against the darker forces that would smash themselves against the free beings. One day it shall fall and the flood will commence. If we have taught our allies, young and old, to swim with the currents of liberation, perhaps there is hope for them yet. Perhaps once we are gone, they will remember what we taught them. They will accept our flaws while understanding the potential we once showed. They might succeed where we failed. With luck and hope, they might yet cleanse the galaxy of the hateful forces that would force all to submit.
This is our prayer, our quiet mantra to the stars that control all fate. Blessings upon Oolar and his children.