So, a new species for the setting!
These silly, little bugs are the Yontu, dog-sized insect-analogues.
They were "uplifted" by the less AI-friendly factions of the Anyu-ki, during the height of their empire, to serve as engineers and maintenance workers for Anyu-Ki structures.
Their "home world" in the modern day is "Maker's Eye", a large ring-structure built around a massive lamp that dims and brightens to simulate a day-night cycle.
This, of course, is not where they actually originate from. They do know where the homeworld of their ancestors actually is. The Yontu just kind of do not care about it. The eye granted to them is what their home is.
Even then, their old homeworld is inhabited by those ancestors of theirs who weren't involved in their "uplifting".
It is weird for them to interact with what to them look like Yontu, but do not have the mental capabilities of Yontu.
While the Yontu were "uplifted", they weren't granted anything like speech by the Anyu-ki, instead they were given arm-bands that they could type on and have their writing converted to speech. That way, an Anyu-Ki could disable it and shut them up if they wanted to.
Even as the Yontu were repeatedly used and abused by the Anyu-Ki, the Yontu continued to worship them as gods.
When the Anyu-Ki were defeated and their local remnants slowly died off, the Yontu went into mourning, thinking their gods had abandoned them.
This started short, 60 Earth year era of their history that they refer to as the "Dirt Despair". Believing themself unworthy of their artificial sun and their creators' tech, many abandoned their old cities and went to live in burrows underground.
This era only ended, when the last, remaining Anyu-Ki on the ring, whom they came to refer to as "the Absolver", officially "absolved them of their sin".
The Yontu would from there on come to spread across the rest of the ring, settling distant regions and attempting to understand the tech of their gods.
Something to be understood about the Yontu, they didn't view Anyu-Ki tech as magical or something like that. Magic to them was a seperate concept. They believe that advanced technology is what makes a god. If your tech vastly outparses theirs, you are a god to some degree. That is how they view that.
Millenia of history went on to pass. Wars were waged. Love was loved in whatever form the Yontu were capable of of it and advancements in understanding were made.
As the injunction on FTL-Travel broke eventually, they started to take tentative steps out of their ring first, then started to spread out into every direction, hoping to reunited with their gods of old.
These days, the Yontu are mostly very pro Anyu-KI, despite their ancestor's suffering under them. But, to be fair, not even their ancestors really understood their mistreatment. They didn't know anything else.
Their relationship with more anti-Anyu-Ki factions like most humans and overwhelmingly the Sier-Zu is a strained one.
Anyway, that is it on them for now!