-So, what are you thinking? That looked pretty ambivalent,- Mah Fuzzy /spoke up. He had been dealing with the Elvar more than I had, continuing the trades, and despite him being the Duke Corunsun, for some reason the Elvar seemed to like dealing with a big, brutal, and ‘stupid’ Ancient who didn’t have sophisticated designs on them and their people. They hadn’t screwed him over quite yet.

Still, they were an established power. I was dealing with another young race, a whole Alliance of them... and the Ruk.

-There was a fourth person of influence on the bridge there. I saw the reflection in their eyes. Brown skin with green patterns, brown robe.-

-One of their Masters of the Way, the race that brought all the others together?- he /nodded, happy to pore through my files of collected info on the Kappa.

-Pretty sure they are puppets of the Anti-Life, who are using the Kappa to set up a Warp-free spatial territory as a kind of safe haven for themselves. They are probably the ones who uplifted them so bloody quick, and simply set up the Masters with some sort of transpsionic ability to influence the other races of Kappa.-

That gave him pause. -Oh, no shit.-

-They are a four-Minors species. The difference in elemental biases alone should tear their subspecies apart. A fifth race was added as a balancing force to even things out and bring them under control. They may have Minor in Moon, meaning they’re at -1 in basically four Elements... meaning lagging behind the top end of the curve, but lagging EVERYWHERE at once.

-You can see the multiple influences in their tech and ships. They have excellent cross-comprehensive technologies and synergies, and are using them to replicate the effects of higher TL’s than what they actually have.

-Without that fifth race, they’d be tearing themselves apart. With them, they are a balanced elemental force that seems to be quietly pushing away the influence of the Warp from around here, and due to the post-Amourae timing of it, I’m pretty sure the Anti-Life decided the Tekrons couldn’t do the job against the Warp Gods and tried to find another scenario.-

-Cunning buggers. So there’s probably a very large number of them in the Void near the Kappa worlds, maybe even their whole Federation.- His /voice was wary. This kind of genetic manipulation and alien intelligences in the Void was straight out of Mythos, and when those intelligences probably also invented a race of undead robots whose primary job was to wipe out higher life in the galaxy every so often, well, that similarity was not a good thing.

-Which is why I’m not going exploring through the Void anytime soon... or at least until we can Angeltech the grav sensors all the way up the scale, so we see them before they see us.-

-Dammit, Mom!- Ronnie /butted in, and something else went on the List of Important Things to Do.

-Man... and they seem to be doing such a nice thing, too.- Briggs could only /sigh at the grim nature of this place.

-They were probably the ones who sabotaged the Courage of the Intrepid’s test, and then just used as it a basis for denying further work into that tech tree. It leads to Dark Matter Cores...-

-Ah.- Said in just that way. -How about the vivus?-

-While I am curious about how it would react with a lifeform designed/mutated/changed/altered/dominated by non-baryonic life, it’s something that kills the Warp, which is only good for the Anti-Life. Shouldn’t be an issue for them.-

-Are we going to have to kill the Anti-Life?-

-Those Tekrons aren’t sitting around in their Creche Worlds from their mysterious makers so they can NOT be used, right?-

He /sighed, and I /sighed with him.

Dark Matter Core bombs...

-Dammit Mom!- Ronnie promptly /erupted, as we went down new tracks again...

-------

Effing Grimdark, I sighed to myself.

The Emperor of Mankind, an Exemplar Psion all the way up the scale, defeated and made into a lich, frozen forever in his attitudes and only able to degenerate as he tried to play the game against real gods without daring to become a god himself.

Freaking idiot. I would have to crash the whole human Empire to accomplish what needed to be done, as he tried to hold it in stasis to deny feeding the Warp Gods and figure out a way to win the fight while doing so.

Now we had another player in the Big Game. No, no, not the Mythos gods. Regardless of what influence they might have Outside, for now they had no true power here. The individual elder races weren’t players as yet...

The Anti-Life.

They had already proven themselves worthy of extinction with their slaughter of intelligent life in the galaxy. Sure, they'd done it out of self-preservation, but when I weighed the galaxy against them, I found ‘em wanting.

How did you fight a race of dark matter beings? They literally had all of the space between stars to hide in. If Warp Storms were indeed meant to wipe them, even the Warp Gods were resorting to massive AoE attacks to wipe out a basically invisible foe hiding out in endless emptiness.

Taking out the Warp Gods and leaving the Anti-Life intact was a non-starter.

My eyes, closed in annoyance, popped open in sudden and really dire thought.

“I want full statistical analysis and breakdown of the xenovore swarms. Do they have an exo-galactic presence, and are there indications of galactic orbit, or travel from another galaxy?”

There were plenty of people looking into the xenovores, trying to track the wheres and whys and hows of when they would appear. Biosphere-eating creatures were important that way.

The data came back pretty quickly, a few thousand years of information about them, and projections, tracks, and variations of their Swarm Fleets.

They only arrived here after the Amouraen Apotheosis, by everything we could tell.

Their tracks came from outside the galaxy... and not just from one galaxy. Like they had come here from more than one...

The cephalids were not members of the Compact of the Black. Their greatest enemies among the Mythos races were supposedly the intellivores. Brain-eaters vs brain replacers, as it were. Supposedly the cephs treated the ‘vores as attack dogs and interesting snacks.

Are the Intellivores members of the Compact of the Black?...

There were no records of the Xenoswarms attacking planets under the control of the Compact races. Granted, those tended to be outer-system planets with low attraction for biovores, but still.

“Get me a completely literal translation of the Compact of the Black’s name among the elder races.”

Learning deep meanings in Aklo was definitely not something that would keep normal people sane too long. The succubus in the Rantha genetics meant I had nothing to worry about, and there were enough Mythos races that contracts and records existed among them.

Killian Druggil on Bereski II came across an aether recording intercepted between the Hrosmaug and the Mi-Go, buried in an Umbran database. The literal translation of the term came across as ‘The Agreement undertaken by the Masters of that Which Is Beyond Light.’ Beyond, as in light has nothing to do with them, with some ominous, awesome, and powerful insinuations.

Light had nothing to do with dark matter creatures...

Monstrous alien intelligences out in the darkness beyond stars... with records of galactic genocide...

-Hulkamania, I’ve got stats to crunch. Here’s the datapoints, you may want some more. Query: Chances the Anti-Life are behind the xenovores?-

That was a very personal question to the world-mind, and it sidelined some other calculations very quickly as it went searching for some answers.

The length of calculation made it plain it was being very, very careful about this. It sucked in all the data it could about the xenovores, and it had quite a lot about them, although it hadn’t taken any directly from them, preferring to vivify the lot rather than let their genetics infect its planet.

-97.2%- it /returned to me after a colossal five minutes, fourteen seconds.

Anatolia /beeped me. -Mother, quit finding us more shit to do.-

-Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. The xenovore swarmfleets stay just outside the galaxy so they are outside the planar reach of the local Warp structure, and the Warp Gods can’t reach out and feed on them.-

-I can see the pattern. Short invasions that don’t allow for sudden Warp Storm manifestations. That mana-suppression effect associated with them. It’s all meant to defy Warp creatures...- I could feel her eyes moving extragalactic.

Dwarf Sagittarius, Canis Major, both Magellanic Clouds... and that didn’t include the orbiting minor galaxies, some of which were very dark-matter-heavy...

Mythos races regularly traveled exo-galactic routes. Most were nigh-Eternal, so long trips meant nothing to them but more time to study or meditate on the mysteries of the black...

Nothing said that the Milky Way Galaxy was the home of the Anti-Life, after all. Dark matter creatures would have no problems moving between galaxies, and the differing densities of the dark matter would probably be like sampling different buffets... or were staked out as individual territories.

Nobody said all the dark matter creatures were of the same species or type, either, but clearly the ones in the local galactic group were related to some extent.

Only the threat of the Warp Gods was slowing these creatures down. If the Warp Gods died, they’d probably trigger a galactic purge and use the xenosyms to make sure no more intelligent life rose up in the galaxy at all, thereby ensuring that Warp Gods never rose again.

Would they be able to do that when actual gods from outside this pocket dimension came in and introduced them to Creation the hard way?

-Grandmother,- I /addressed her like everyone else did, and felt a sliver of her attention turn to actively regard me. -Do the gods wipe things like the Anti-Life?- I helpfully sent up the details of what I’d found.

-Every chance they can,- she /sent back without hesitation, and beneath her words, I /heard some curses going on. -I imagine you thought this was going to be an easy fight.-

I had to laugh, my eyes dancing at the thought of something.

How much Karma was killing a galaxy-wiping murderer worth?... No wonder gods were so high Level!