The Quints: Rise

Ours is a history that repeats itself, and at times we don't even realize it. Perhaps it's the cold logic that we follow, our nature to depend on numbers that makes us blind to the events of the past and how they reflect the events of the present.

A billion years ago, when the multitude of sentient beings were just discovering the ability to travel faster than light, the creatures of our original homeworld were already masters of travel. Their technology was greater than all others, their wisdom born of hundreds of millions of years of living, of being the masters of their world, of being the true rulers of the galaxy as no other could rival them.

At their height, they were an unstoppable power, a force that could shape the nature of the galaxy itself... but their power came at a cost; their numbers were immense, their needs for resources vast in order to sustain them all. For in those days, all were made of flesh and bone; there were no machines that were capable of thought, of feeling.

The great many machine worlds that dominate the galaxy now were but a distant thought.

In order to lift their burden, in order to make things faster and cheaper, to lessen the strain on their ever draining resource worlds, they began to craft machines which could do the work. It was here that the greatest mind in the galaxy at the time, perhaps the greatest mind in the history of the universe came into play. He was the Primacron, the chief scientist of our homeworld and leader of the scientific community of the galaxy.

Despite his great mind, the first machines he crafted were simple, clumsy... they were in the form of animals. His great many early projects ended up as pets to the leaders of their empire, but they could not command the ships and worlds. It took him many tries, years of research and error before, finally, he created the first truly sentient machine. Called the Oracle, this creature was a large, ape like creation... and within it was a power that the Primacron had never expected, nor could he ever recreate.

The Oracle, the assistant to the Primacron had the power, the ability to give life to other machines, to make them sentient as well. Try as he may, the Primacron could never make this happen again; and so, the two began to work together, creating new, more powerful machines and giving them sentience.

In time the empire became more and more mechanized, and the beings grew comfortable with having intelligent machines doing their work. The desire for machines for more applications increased, and the Primacron answered the call; we were finally being born. One faced at the time, our ancestors were given two legs and two arms, but their minds were more advanced than those before. Cold and logical, they became a part of the government... and they began the creation of the single most important object in the galaxy, with the blessing of their masters.

A golden, oval object with a gold encased, glowing blue crystal lattice; it was the culmination of all science, of all wisdom, of all information. Within its structure all was kept; it was the legacy of the homeworld, and even the Primacron entrusted his sheer brilliance to it, allowing for all of time his inventions and knowledge to be held within.

The time passed, and more of our kind were made; we were very successful in the government and private sectors. Instead of two arms and two legs, we began to be made with multiple tentacle like appendages and anti gravity devices, allowing us to float in the air and move with swift ease; we were multitaskers to an extreme extent. To further this we were given large, bulbous bodies that housed ever increasing advanced technology with vast wisdom installed; we became scientists in our own right, far smarter than most of our homeworlds inhabitants.

It was here that we truly began to change, to take the shape that we have now; the scientists began to create new versions of us, first with two faces with two different personalities, then with three, four... and then, finally, five. Each one had its own purpose, its own use; the two and three faces became new members of the government, used to multitask many different areas where each face specialized in. The four faces became commanders of ships and planets, their vast array of specialization making them the best choice for the tasks that came with such a position.

The five faces, in turn, became the judges; they were the legal system. With five different minds and five different voices, they were judge and jury. They were helped by the specially created single faced prosecutors, beings whose job it was to push the system along with the cold efficiency that was the ideal of those we served.

But service was a hard thing to take; the makers became lazy to a point where we were left in charge of all things. We began to wonder why we even needed these flesh creatures, why we needed to keep their system sustained when we could just so easily do away with them and BECOME the system.

We moved, slowly... we first restricted access to the storehouse of knowledge that we ourselves created, to ensure that none would begin to see the changes over the generations. The only one besides ourselves who had access to it was the Primacron, for his inventions and wisdom we could use, and only he may have been able to stop us.

Over the generations, we began to take more and more control, we began to make them simple minded; in time they were a population of fools and idiots who depended on us, and only us. Where once they were an empire, they were now cattle to OUR empire. But, even as we were solidifying our position things were working against us, no matter how it seemed, at the time, that it wasn't.

The Primacron, for all his wisdom and knowledge was a flesh creature; he had feelings and desires. He became arrogant; he had a right to, for his was the most brilliant mind in the galaxy... but he became too engrossed in himself. Using plasma energy, which runs wild and is all powerful, he began to craft the greatest creation of his entire existence, and the greatest folly in all of history.

A giant, planet sized machine with the ability to alter its form... it would consume worlds to fuel its mission of destruction. For the Primacron, in his madness wished to begin anew; to wipe the universe clean to remake in his own image, in his own idea of what creation was supposed to be. He grated it immense power, immense intelligence... and such was his error.

With its mind, it saw little use in serving the Primacron; it rebelled against his will. Badly wounded, the Primacron had to flee while his assistant, the Oracle, was destroyed; it was then that the great machine planet began the process that would make it infamous in all the universe...

We barely managed to escape in time as the immense monster set its sights on our homeworld, the collective knowledge of our makers safely in our tentacles. We fled, then, to the furthest reaches of our home galaxy as the beast began its grand mission to rule a void.

There, where we were safe, we set to work building an empire of our own making; an empire of machines.