Okay, I'm re-pitching Skyridge, in italics for dramatic effect:
At around 6 billion years ago, in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a massive blue star died in an incredible explosion. The world of Radagast, among the smaller brown dwarfs, was created from the dust of this ill-fated star and became the twin of the star Sataranali, an orange star slightly smaller than the sun. Dust orbited Sataranali and Radagast, and this dust coalesced into worlds. The process was violent, and some worlds were obliterated in fiery collisions while others were flung into deep space, doomed to become rogues. 5 billion years ago, two worlds, one orbiting Sataranali and the other orbiting Radagast, collided, and they fell into orbit of Radagast. Skyridge was born.
Skyridge was, like most young worlds, a fiery, volcanic hell. It was tiny, between the size of Earth and Mars, and small planets are often doomed to grow cold, without volcanic activity. But the pull of Radagast, which was essentially a gas giant, heated Skyridge's core and kept it fiery. Eventually, though, the surface cooled to form a crust. Almost immediately after water seeded this world, life emerged in the primordial oceans. It was the simplest of carbon-based life, but still, it lived. For 3.5 billion years, life was little more than microbes in the sea. But as oxygen filled the atmosphere and the ocean, more complex life began to fill the waters.
Skyridge is gifted with light gravity and a dense amosphere rich in CO2 and oxygen, and sone adventurous life-forms moved directly from sea to sky. Back then, beyond the ocean was hostile and deadly to most forms of life, and only a few adventurous animals took to the air to evade predators. They were followed by plants, the aerial plankton, and they made the atmosphere habitable for life as we know it. By using hydrogen, they formed floating colonies and ultimately floated over the land, a dead, lifeless desert. Before long, fungi, life which fed and scavenged on death and decay, seeded the ground with spores, and then came the plants that spread seeds. Finally, animals came to the ground, and the great jungles of Skyridge started to grow.
For 1.2 billion years, life flourished on Skyridge in all shapes and sizes. There is evidence, in the form of stone tools, that there may have been sapience 500 million years ago, but the fate of this ancient society is unknown. More recently, about 5 million years ago, an aerial predator from the so-called "mushroom forests" of the mountains, a hunter similar in form to a small dragon in Earth's mythology, began to become self-aware and metacognitive. They began to form a tribal society, and around a million years ago they discovered farming. Civilization had dawned on Skyridge.
The Zi'nali, who were similar to bipedal dragons, grew over the course of 5,000 years from primitive Bronze Age villagers into a race that had begun to explore their solar system. Eventually, they discovered the secret of light-speed travel and began to build up an empire to rule over the stars. They were like today's humans - naïve, self-centered, confident they would someday be a great power. They soon discovered they were far from the center of the universe. They found a derelict, abandoned starship containing FTL drive and the remains of several insectoid aliens who had been killed during some sort of battle. Using FTL drive, they expanded their empire and made contact with several other sapient races. They were peaceful, hopeful. All that would change.
Over the course of a millennium, they explored the majority of the Large Magellanic Cloud and had sent expeditions to the Small Magellanic Cloud and Milky Way galaxies. They were comparable to Star Trek's Federation - a semi-utopian culture. But while utopia as a goal is a fuel that can drive a culture like a nuclear engine, utopia in practice is stagnation and death. Their empire quickly grew corrupt and weakened. As the emperors wasted money on extravagance and riches, the Zi'nali sphere of influence became weak and contested. Eventually, they would discover the identity of the first sapient race they had found in the abandoned starship - the Sectus hive mind.
The Sectus are sentient, insect-like gatherers of resources, harvesters who will destroy planets to feed the appetite of their massive empire and especially their queens. The queens dominate their race just as is the case among ants and bees on Earth. Seeing the weakening state of the Zi'nali, these raiders from the Milky Way decided it was time to harvest them.
The Sectus began attacking undefended outposts and outdated starships, recycling every resource for themselves, including the Zi'nali which would become slaves and food. The emperor on Skyridge refused to acknowledge the threat the Sectus posed, but as they marched relentlessly into the Large Magellanic Cloud, the Zi'nali were left with no option but war. 600 colonies were equipped with warships as a first line of defence. However, this defence was based on incorrect information and seeing the actual size of the fleet, the Zi'nali ordered a retreat in order to strengthen Skyridge's defences. The colonists were left to die to slow the invasion force, but miraculously many of them managed to defend themselves and survive. The Sectus, focusing on the main goal of Skyridge itself, moved on to avoid wasting resources on the colonial forces, thinking they would be easy pickings once Skyridge had fallen, and they proceeded on.
The Zi'nali defence was powerful enough to defeat the invaders and their commanding queen was killed, but the war was far from over. The colonies which had been abandoned were angry and soon incited rebellion. The weakened and unprepared forces at Skyridge stood no chance, and in under six months the empire had fallen.
The rebel government quickly fell apart and the Zi'nali sphere of influence was contested by other powers, including the Sectus, who attacked Skyridge again and this time conquered it, enslaving most of the Zi'nali. Fortunately, the slaves of the Sectus revolted centuries later and eventually managed to destroy the high queen and all the hatcheries supplied with the Sectus equivalent of royal jelly. The leaderless Sectus fell into anarchy and ultimately extinction. The Zi'nali, though, were weakened and shattered, and their civilization degenerated into a tribal state again. After half a million years, all that remained of their former glory was legend and crumbling, overgrown ruins.
Today, the Zi'nali are like they were at the dawn of their empire - just stepping out into the universe, hopeful and naïve and blissfully ignorant of the fact that the Large Magellanic Cloyd is a warzone…
Too long, I suppose?
