Timeline, Part Six

[stickmaker]

Sixth part of a timeline I created as part of the background for some science fiction stories I'm writing.

Timeline

Part Six

12 MYBP     The Osran become a starfaring species.

Before this time, the Osran have already been a technological culture for several million years, but until contacted by the Ferg they had little thought for such nonsense as spaceflight. They have an extraordinarily strong set of dominance instincts which shapes their culture in ways not commonly seen in technological cultures. Their drives lead to them to seek personal power with little thought beyond themselves or occasionally their kin. This includes developing ways to make their own, physical persons as powerful and resilient as possible. The Osran don't organize armies, they are armies!

Their obsession with the pursuit of personal perfection and individual supremacy has meant that few large projects requiring cooperative effort - such as spaceflight - have been suggested, much less completed. Once they begin to realize just how much has been accomplished by cooperative societies elsewhere they collectively and uniformly vow to take what those fools have invented and apply it to themselves so they can show them all!

The realization - and opportunity - come when a Ferg commercial exploration ship contacts the Osran homeworld. One family takes a chance this isn't some trick and responds to the contact. The Ferg, assuming they are speaking to either the government of the whole planet or the leaders of the most influential nation, rather than a family of a few dozen individuals, land where indicated. They are immediately overwhelmed. 

Once other Osran realize what has happened, the estate is attacked by multiple individuals and families. Most of the members of the initial family quickly die and their personal possessions as well as what they have taken from the Ferg are seized. The larger pieces - including the Ferg ship's hull, which is far tougher than anything the Osran have - are fought over by latecomers. The strongest - or sneakiest, which include the most cunning members of that first Osran family - are able to make off with enough tech to gain great personal benefits. Though they do not always live long enough afterwards to take advantage of this. 

These scraps are fought over - often being destroyed in the process - Osran who try to extract some advantage from them. The most successful such individuals are those who recognize the function of data storage and processing units. This includes some of the surviving members of the family which invited the Ferg to land. The fact that these idiot Ferg had not only stored data in a barely secured format instead of simply memorizing it, but actually expected others to share such a valuable treasure amuses them no end. 

Soon, multiple individuals and families among the Osran are building FTL capable ships and attempting to bring home yet more treasures from these fools. They are astounded to learn there are hundreds of such cultures in the galaxy. Such sweet, easy pickings!

Until local defense forces respond to their attacks...

The Osran eventually learn the hard way the advantages of social cooperation and sharing of burdens... though most never actually understand these lessons. Few members of the species survive more than a thousand years after the Ferg contact. Even their home planet is soon sterilized. Hopefully, that got the last of them. 

Meanwhile, Osran in deep bunkers on their homeworld or in hidden bases on bodies in their home system or systems they had conquered emerge and begin rebuilding in secret. They are used to "scorched earth" attacks; though the response by their attacked interstellar neighbors is far more thorough than anything they have experienced before. They begin rebuilding, and trying to understand how they lost to such inferior creatures. 

11.5 MYBP A routine stellar and planetary survey of the Osran system falls victim to one of the rebuilt families, which is based in a major asteroid. A rescue team sent to investigate the sudden silence from the ship also falls victim, to a different family. Realizing what has happened, the Ferg and others send military teams to the system. Though any of the Osran families could resist a single warship of up to cruiser potency, none can withstand assault by multiple such ships. Destroying those who captured the survey and rescue ships is not difficult. Even when several military craft coordinate to wipe out each of these two enclaves, the other Osran just smirk at how those weaklings let themselves be destroyed, saving them the trouble, while desperately trying to upgrade their own protections and taking other measures. 

Given the independence of the various Osran factions, The Management will not allow the forces sent against the direct offenders to take action against other families. Legally, the military intervention cannot proceed beyond those immediately responsible. However, now that the continued survival of the Osran is known many in the larger starfaring society are concerned about them. The Management responds by declaring the Osran an interdicted species. They are to remain in the systems where they are already present, with any travel not inside or between those prohibited. Though the Osran are informed of this decision, they disregard it. If those fools could destroy them they would; this must be some sort of childish bluff. 

10 MYBP The largest of the point masses from the former satellite merge with the Milky Way's core point mass. Many of the results of this - Fermi lobes (bubbles created by the resultant polar jets, above and below the plane of the Milky Way) and clusters of massive young stars - can still be detected.

The Osran take advantage of the disruptions these events cause. They populate worlds in volumes of the Milky Way where ambient radiation has made spaceflight dangerous, trusting their inherent superiority to let them go where others dare not. Working individually and in small numbers - usually family groups - they conquer and subjugate entire worlds for their purposes. Major sectors of native populations on these worlds are put to work on projects which the Osran - reluctantly - admit can not be performed by individuals or small groups of even the most capable members of their species.

Their downfall comes from their strong reluctance to act together in large groups. Other cultures, detecting these events and worried by the Osran aggressiveness, unite against them and - presumably - wipe them out. Due to their extreme individuality, the Osran discount the operations against them as long as those are only ending the lives of other - usually unrelated - Osran. (Good riddance!) By the time they realize they are becoming extinct - All of us, even me! - there are only a few thousand left. Despite controlling several entire star systems they don't last long. Largely because once the inhabitants of those conquered worlds learn of the success efforts against their "masters" they rebel. These former servants tend to be very thorough in their extermination the Osran.

The Osran homeworld is not only sterilized (again) but seeded with many types of autonomous weapons, some of them biological. A few native enclaves remain in their deep bunkers, undetected.

Individuals and small family groups among the Osran do escape, largely by fleeing their known territories. Some move to other bodies in their systems. Some move into interstellar space or empty systems. A few even head out below the galactic plane of the ecliptic to globular clusters outside the Milky Way proper. Over the next few million years groups of Osran are occasionally discovered by accident. Usually the discoverers do not survive the experience. However, to the confusion of the Osran someone will come looking for the missing ships, and have to be eliminated, too. Only then, someone comes looking for them and have to be eliminated, and then, likely as not, an entire fleet shows up! What is wrong with these people?! Don't they have their own interests to look after?!

These clusters of Osran are eventually hunted down and extinguished. The Osran threat is finally over. Everyone hopes.

Meanwhile, the Osran homeworld becomes a target for treasure hunters. This in spite of a full interdiction by The Management and the dangerous environment which has evolved there.

8.0 MYBP A cluster of massive stars near Sol System - all roughly the same age and close to the same mass -begin going supernova in a chain, the process lasting millions of years. Besides seeding the volume of space around Sol with heavy, often radioactive elements it pushes much of the surrounding medium away. This produces a bubble of very hot but unusually tenuous plasma around Sol System and many neighboring stars. 

7.5 MYBP A supernova near Sol System seeds Earth with traces of heavy elements. These include radioactive isotopes.

6 MYBP A major eruption occurs in the core of the Milky Way. 

Once again, the Osran take advantage of the resulting disruptions in travel and communication to take over worlds and use them for their own benefit. Entire star systems drop out of contact for centuries before The Management - which had learned what to watch for from the previous examples but as usual is slow to react - organizes a significant response. This time the Osran are completely destroyed. Maybe.

3.66 MYBP Early hominins leave footprints in wet volcanic ash in what would later become Laetoli, Tanzania. 

3.5 MYBP The supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy unleashes an enormous burst of energy, reinforcing the galaxy's Fermi Bubbles. It persists for roughly 1 million years. The outburst was caused by a large hydrogen cloud up to 100,000 times the Sun's mass falling onto the disk of material swirling near the central black hole. The resulting outburst sent cones of blistering ultraviolet radiation above and below the plane of the galaxy and deep into space.

3 MYBP Earth's atmospheric carbon dioxide levels reach peak concentrations above 400 parts per million and Earth’s temperature is 2°C warmer than in pre-industrial times. Sea levels are up to 20 meters above current levels. 

2.6 MYBP A supernova occurs approximately 150 - 200 light years from Sol system. Among other signs the event leaves are traces of Iron-60 and Manganese-53 incorporated into some bacterial structures. 

Marine Megafaunal Extinction at the end of the Pliocene. This was likely caused by a relatively nearby supernova. 

2.2 MYBP Iron-60 traces peak. 

1.8 MYBP The middle-aged Threlk Consortium Sphere is conquered by the Balt. The latter culture is much more ambitious, and even though less than twenty thousand years old at this point already occupies nearly four thousand systems. They have known of the Threlk for many centuries, and both envied them and desired their resources. Well before their expanding realm would engulf the Threlk, the Balt leapfrog past the less developed systems between the edge of their volume of influence and the Threlk Consortium Sphere. Later, they go back and fill in the gap.

The Threlk seem befuddled by the attacks of the Balt. Their initial defense consists largely of protesting to anyone who will listen that the Balt are behaving in a most improper manner. By the time a new leadership takes over the Threlk and begins to mount an effective defense the remnants of the Consortium Sphere have too few resources to stop the advance. (If they ever did; though older, technologically more advanced and better organized, the Threlk occupy far fewer systems and worlds.) The Threlk are completely conquered and reduced to second-class citizen status. They are now a few steps above slaves but several below being allowed to decide how to run more than small portions of their lives. 

1.7 MYBP Iron-60 traces fade. 

850,000 YBP Isolated populations of the common ancestor of Homo sapiens Neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens Sapiens and a few other hominin sub-species begin genetically diverging. However, sporadic crossing of the various lines keeps them reproductively. 

790,000 YBP Massive meteorite crashes into the Bolaven plateau volcanic field in the southeast Asian nation of Laos. The site is later covered in lava.

773,000 YBP Matuyama-Brunhes geomagnetic reversal.

500,000 YBP The first possible crude depictions of the human form appear in early artwork.

445,000 YBP The Balt encounter strong resistance to their continued expansion from the Ceftin, an older and more deeply entrenched culture holding more worlds. After thousands of years of conflict, the two civilizations agree that both sides will withdraw and leave an unoccupied buffer zone one hundred sixteen light years wide between them. The entire former Threlk Consortium Sphere is within this zone. 

Though now free of their conquerors, the Threlk are faced with a monumental task of rebuilding; not only their physical civilization but their culture. Isolated by being in a zone between two aggressive societies, they are left to themselves. Though this is what they desire, it may not have been the best situation for their recovery. 

Ironically, many millennia later both the Balt and the Ceftin are reduced to isolated populations within other civilizations while the Threlk are still busy with their work.

426,000 YBP Still in the process of recovering from the Balt occupation, the Threlk find themselves conquered by another young, aggressive culture, the Yalten. These new masters are relentless and ruthless. Their first acts include attacking the surviving Threlk infrastructure. Entire cities simply stop functioning. Billions die. Their collective spirit broken, the Threlk culture collapses. Whereas the Balt incorporated the Threlk into their own civilization, the Yalten essentially enslave them.

425,000 YBP Under pressure from other cultures due to their vicious, aggressive natures, the Yalten withdraw from the Threlk homeworld, leaving a devastated planet. Despite pulling back and consolidating, the Yalten continue to lose ground. They soon evacuate from all the Threlk worlds. Eventually they are squeezed into a tiny, isolated cluster of a few systems, barely maintaining starflight capability.

The Threlk, reduced to near-savagery by the depredations of the Yalten and their sudden withdrawal - which takes much of the surviving technology of the Threlk with it - gradually develop a culture of isolated city-states on all the worlds where they survive. On their homeworld, over the next three hundred thousand years these slowly coalesce into a unified culture with an odd mix of technologies. They are not able to create anything with a sophistication remotely approaching what their ancestors possessed at their species' peak. They depend on the few scavenged ships which survive the looting of the Yalten - plus deals with traders from other cultures - to maintain communication between their scattered worlds.

 

Today, the Threlk continue their work to restore their civilization. Many times they advance two steps and fall back one. Or even three. Still they labor. The phrase "Patient as a Threlk" comes to imply someone lazy and procrastinating. Those who know what the Threlk are facing in their struggle don't think it's funny.

320,000 YBP Following the development of large-brained hominins on Earth, activity by outside species in Sol System is ordered greatly reduced by The Management. In part this is due to suggestions from the Vig and the Fliring and - later - the Kulkong, who want to see what happens to the apes without interference.

310,000 YBP The Kulkong become a starfaring species, and rapidly assume a role as the dominant culture in their section of the Milky Way. 

Currently their primary influence encompasses a roughly spherical volume over 12,000 light years across, with Sol System well inside. They are the most powerful single culture currently existing in the Milky Way after the Vig, and they are still growing rapidly. They rarely resort to physical force, preferring to negotiate, recruit or purchase. Even much older cultures voluntarily join their nation.

The Fliring politely tap the remaining few Vig who pay attention to such things on their collective and figurative shoulder and point towards the Kulkong. The Vig begin a low-profile program of contact and support. This leads to an interesting partnership between one of the oldest existing cultures and one of the youngest. The Fliring and the Vig believe the Kulkong show promise. 

Partly due to the rise of the Kulkong - whom the Vig see as potential successors, to compliment the Fliring - the Vig pull something out of their files for further development. After a very long period of contemplation and experimentation they slowly begin withdrawing from the affairs of material creatures. However, they remain involved in The Management, setting - and sometimes enforcing - policy.

329,000 YBP Middle Stone Age begins on Earth. 

300,000 YBP First known use of pigments by humans. 

268,000 YBP The Betped send a covert mission to Mars to loot various deposits left there by the Demmit S'Tee and others. Their main target is the large chronostasis enclosure under Olympus Mons. Unfortunately, a combination of a narrow window of opportunity and the hazards present in the method of access they choose results in most of the party dying after part of the ancient lava tube they are traversing collapses. 

The group had already found several minor items and scanned a few larger ones. These provide little advantage in the long, long war with the Peclery. 

265,000 YBP Oldest confirmed human and animal carved figures.

150,000 YBP The P'thaliani become a starfaring species. Nobody likes them; few respect them. They couldn't care less about the former, but the latter irritates them no end. Why, the Vig have pets which get more respect! (Of course, the Fliring are more intelligent, objective and even-tempered than the P'thaliani, and have been around far longer...)

110,000 YBP The P'thaliani discover Sol System. They are just beginning to appreciate both the biological potential of the Earth and the artifact potential of Mars when The Management discovers their presence there and chases them off. The P'thaliani describe this as the Great Martyr Battle For Our Legitimately Acquired Properties, despite the fact that there were no casualties on either side. The Management's records describe this as a minor police action resulting in the eviction of looters.

The P'thaliani still protest the theft of their discoveries.

101,500 YBP The Dekabor become a starfaring culture.