Twenty are the oracles that rise up from the stone, one for every age of the galaxy. The first begins our people. All bring guidance from on high. The last but one rules all the stars lest when the last comes, all things die.The Chronicle of the Nineteenth Oracle of the Rock Beings - RBO-19:
I am the mountain. I am the stone. Years pass me like moments, centuries like days. I mark their passage but reck them not, the crystal in the watch's heart that makes its time tell true. Waves may crash upon me and winds roar through my sky, but though they wear me down, it shall be eons ere I die. I am Cryslon. I am Silicoid. The peace of the mountains is long.
2303: My people of the rock still work upon the soil, to make our worlds more our own. Millions are crossing space already from Cryslon to arid Rayden, the nearest star to ours, toward the galaxy's core, and slow news percolates back to us from a place dull red and large, the other star nearby. The worlds of such a star are likely good for soft-skins' life, but poor, and we care not what short-lived soft-skins think of living at our stars. Remember this moment, people of the stone: What is likely is not always so.
Ultra-rich Phantos is the key to our rule over the stars. All the efforts of my rock beings are now bent toward taking it for ourselves.
2312: Only Hydrogen Fuel Cells can extend our range now, but we look to a farther future and know that in the end, all will be well.
2316: Larger than Rayden, richer than any other possible star, the icy world of Phantos at last joins the Silicoid fold.
2320: Our first lessons in terraforming lead not to more, but only to the making of deadly spores. These do not serve the peace of the deep mountains, but we must learn to tame them ere we can learn more.
2324: Long is our stony vision, but slow is our outward flow. With hydrogen ready to fuel our ships, we seek no quick, jerky stabilizers, but nuclear engines for long, sustained power once we begin to roll.
2328: Sometimes the hasty soft-skins steal a march on long and slow.
I knew better than to leave Guradas unguarded, but my attention slipped to the flow of Cryslon's fiery mantle and the ice sheets of Phantos laden with their neutronium crystals, and only now does my returning ship find that the Sakkra arrived in my absence and made the wide jungle world their own.
2330: As our industry improves, we see the way to improve it more, but a stony sigh goes out for duralloy which would have helped our colony ships reach farther. The sigh is soft; our vision is long, and time is ours.
2335: It has begun. Whynil and Volantis are the first worlds claimed, both at once, by Landers launched from the frozen plains of Phantos. There shall be many, many more to come.
2340: Like a tumbling stone, our study of nuclear engines is going on toward sub-light drives, and now the first products of our engine research gleam like jewels in the night sky: Twink 2.0 long-range destroyers will stand like walls of stone between the soft-skins and the worlds they would steal from our rightful rule. The timing is auspicious, for even as we claim Endoria, we meet the first soft-skin leader, Tyranid the Sakkra, who tries to hide his skin beneath the flimsy hardness of green scales.
Does he seek to emulate the rock beings with his scales? Does his pacifistic bent speak of trusting the long peace of the mountains? He has wisdom enough to grant us 75 BC in trade, but will forever differ from us, an ecologist whose six life-choked worlds will never know the beauty of barren wasteland, empty of all but the stones themselves, to we who ourselves are the stone.
2351: A golden droid, millenia old, speaks from its stores of knowledge, and in keeping with its words, we find neutronium deep beneath the surface of Whynil. In the same breath, the droid adds, "Also in the news..." and tells us that with Spica far to our north and the Sakkra's east, the rock beings are first to thirteen worlds.
It is time to broaden our research into all possible fields, for the rock of knowledge is the strength of the Silicoids throughout the galaxy.
2358: Endless is the course of our colonization, like the lava flow that emerges from the mantle to flood the surface of a living isle. As our research into battle computers, shields, and hand lasers proceeds, passing over only ECM for now, another improvement to our industrial technology completes, and a rumble of pleasure rises as we see how it can lead to more, but make our way instead toward automated ship repairs.
2362: A song of mourning rings through the caverns of the worlds, for a fracture appears in the peace of the galaxy, between we of the peace of the mountains and Tyranid the pacifist. In the skies above our young Draconis colony, our northwestern fleet met its first true skirmish, with a Sakkra colony ship attempting to take the planet.
Our swift-moving Twink destroyers are victorious, and peace reigns again, but for how long? Precious little time, I fear. For in this very year, as rock beings soak for the first time in the gentle oceans of Trax, contact is made with Bladrov II, called an honorable diplomat, and a mighty soft-skin emperor. The peace of the mountains is not broken yet; the humans agree to trade 325 BC per year, and as yet have made no hostile move - but there is no longer room for doubt: There must and shall be an eruption, and I believe the volcanic force must strike against the soft-skins Bladrov rules.
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Next: High Density
