A Light Not Extinguished

Chapter 8: Beneath the Mountain

CR-367: "...I see. So the ecosystem itself is a self-sustaining containment apparatus for the anomalous entity. It is fortunate then, that you arrived before we were to commence terraforming procedures. But how did you bypass the security perimeter?"

Unnamed entity: [DATA EXPUNGED UNDER PROTOCOL CA-12]

CR-367: "It appears that we have the same common goal, then. I believe that we have much to discuss."
-Excerpt of audio recording taken from SHEOL Site-97, located on Caliban.

***

Before the Federation came to be, before the Age of Conquest, before the Great War where tyrants and heroes stood against the fell armies of Rangda, man reached out to space amidst the ruins of the Lost Age, after having given their all to resist a hunger that came beyond the stars.

As they rebuilt their empire, they set their sights on the circle of light nestled in the center of the galaxy. There was much treasure to be found there, the ruins of long-lost civilizations and untouched deposits of strange and exotic minerals. And so a fleet was sent there, to harvest the resources within for all mankind.

However, there was one complication- the Galactic Core itself was awash with strong radiation, and the planets there were often barren and devoid of life. To adapt to this, the colonists sent there underwent genetic modification, becoming extraordinarily resistant to environmental hazards such as heat, radiation and dehydration in exchange for a significant decrease in height. It was assumed that after the fleet had arrived and terraforming was complete, this gene-mod could be discarded. However, things did not go according to plan.

Those were the times when humanity had not created the Navigators, and so ships had to rely on short Warp jumps to reach their destinations. The path to the Galactic Core from human territory was long and arduous, and combined with the gravity anomalies and null zones that plagued the Core, most of the fleet was lost in transit, with the surviving ships heavily damaged and forced to make emergency landings on planets, with most of the onboard equipment damaged, including the vital technology for terraforming.

But the colonists persevered, digging underground vaults to survive the worst of the radiation, and establishing hydroponic algae farms for nutrition, forming the first Strongholds. As decades passed, they eventually abandoned their original mission as they forged their own cultural practices, while humanity forgot about them, deeming the fleet lost in transit. When the colonial remnants managed to contact each other after repairing their ships, it was decided that they would not risk the dangerous journey back own, instead banding together as Leagues and carving out their own empire in the Core. And that was how the Dawi, otherwise known as the Squats, first came to be.

When the First Galactic War came, the Dawi hunkered down in their strongholds, grids of orbital defences stopping Rangdan ships in their tracks while on land layers of gun-walls and minefields stopped them from gaining access to Dawi strongholds. Eventually the Rangdan forces would lose the war of attrition and retreat from the Galactic Core, and not soon after the alliance of galactic nations defeated the Rangdans.

In the Age of Conquest the existence of the Dawi became known, and as human technology developed exponentially with the creation of Navigators, some human polities sent armies to attack the Dawi Leagues and plunder the mineral wealth within the Galactic Core. Bitter wars were fought, each one being recorded in the Book of Grudges of each Dawi stronghold, and for a time the Dawi and humanity were most bitter enemies.

Then the Second Galactic War came, and even the Dawi with their famously long memories were forced to put aside their grudges with humanity as the Green Tide swept over the galaxy. It is said that at the Encirclement of Tarshik, if not for the Dawi defenses the troops there would never have lived long enough for reinforcements to arrive, and at the Siege of Harkenstone only the timely arrival of Human kill-ships stopped the last Stronghold of Karam-Hal-Dur from being annihilated.