#iokath

This unassuming planet, orbiting an unassuming star, was not quite so hospitable as one might expect in order to support life. The atmosphere was thin, and the magnetic poles were weak, and it meant that quite a lot of solar radiation made it's way to the surface in levels that might otherwise have proved fatal in other species. These bipeds, however, were determined to live, radiation be damned, and through a stubborn series of evolutionary quirks over the aeons, managed to survive long enough to establish a society.

Their society developed a language, and mathematics. They developed metallurgy, and physics. The caves they inhabited beneath the surface, away from the violent touch of their sun's light, began to become communities, and then townships. Then cities. They had music, and architecture, and medicine, and art. Against all odds, they lived. Possibly one of the first sapient species to do so in all the great expanse of the galaxy.

But there was a limit to what they could achieve beneath the surface. Travel was a difficult and dangerous task, and tunnelling safer channels between the subterranean biomes was a tedious effort that took generations. Progress demanded risks, and challenges, and so they took it upon themselves to mitigate the risk posed by their sun, to find a way to move about on the surface.

They were excellent miners, and their command and craftsmanship of metals was second to none at that point in history. First they built metal shells for their bodies, segmented and insectoid as the bulbous sections slotted together. These early attempts were cumbersome and slow, and only provided scant protection against the ferocity of the solar winds which could unravel your DNA faster than the time it took you to realise you'd made a terrible mistake.

Over time, their experiments yielded fruit slowly, and these bipeds began to emerge from their deep caverns to view the expanse of the universe above them. The beauty and horror of their sun, so powerful it was almost beyond reckoning. In the early days they might have viewed it as a god, were any trace of their history to have survived across the millenia.

But those who journeyed to the surface in the metal shells still died in great numbers, their bodies literally unmade by the radiation at a molecular level, and it warranted further and further experimentation. It became the driving force of their society, to mine more metals to build more shells to study and conquer more of the surface. There was still art of course, and music, but as a people they pivoted en masse towards this future.

It will never be known who first broached the possibility of machines. Was it an inspired idea, a moment of clarity borne from desperation? Was it a happy accident, merely reappropriating something that had already been in use for some time? Was it a mundanity, something decided upon by a committee after months of painstaking research and caution? There are none who remain on that hollow world to offer us an answer.

What we do know is that there, in the far corner of the galaxy, tens of thousands of years ago, a stubborn people built the very first automaton. It would have been a primitive creation by modern standards, a mindless machine that simply followed a series of input commands, but it was the first, and it would not be the last. From that first machine, the bipeds would go on to conquer the surface after millenia trapped underground, and the beauty and horror of their sun did not seem quite so insurmountable.

With the entire surface of the planet at their disposal, their society exploded outwards. Haggard surface outposts became cities, and then metropolises. Astrology and meteorology became burgeoning fields of study. They grew and grew and grew and eventually, the memories of cowering in caverns deep underground was just that - nothing more than memories.

But they wanted more.

First came flight, and then forays into low orbit. Gravity was fairly weak on their unassuming planet, but not non-existent, and there was still trial and error to overcome. Again, into this new frontier, they sent their metal servants first, to assess the risk posed without the loss of their greatest minds. They explored the moons, and found them to be barren and irradiated, hardly better than their world had been before they began to shape it. They pushed further out, to the other planets in the system. All of them were the same, cold and scarred and barren, lashed by irradiated winds and solar flares that would have scoured any life from them aeons past, if any had existed to begin with.

Not everyone was as clever as they were, after all. Not everyone could survive when pushed to a breaking point like they had.

They began to dream grander dreams. Their star had given them much, but in the true manner of all eldritch horror, it had taken much in return. It hungered and it consumed, a vast and ever raging maw to which they found themselves bound in ever resentful servitude. They were alone in the vast sea of the cosmos with only an undying god for company. For aeons, they had cowered beneath the dirt, imprisoned by the infinite wrath of the sun.

It was only right that they should grow to cage it in turn.

More experimentation, more frontier science. Countless metal servants sacrificed in the name of progress. They cannibalised their moons, one by one, breaking them down into ores and metals that were fit to serve as a cage. Yet more was needed, so they turned their attention to the other dead planets whose corpses were dragged like macabre puppets around their brutal star. It is no small thing, to break an entire planet into its components. To do it twice, three times, many times over... there would never be such an accomplishment in all the ages of the galaxy that did not require the use of the Force to do so.

These unassuming bipeds did not have the Force.

They kept pushing outwards, always seeking new materials for the cage of their god. They found other species, learned they were not alone in the vastness of space. Learned that they too had gods, but theirs were kind and compassionate. Inspiring. Their gods gave them powers the likes of which these bipeds could only dream of. And they coveted that power so badly, because their science could not explain these god-gifts, and it enraged them to know that they could have been gifted the tools for survival long, long ago.

Thus they began the first experiments on other worlds. Other races. Any who survived such experiments might call them warfare. Genocide. But this was science, this was about uncovering the mysteries of the universe and unravelling every last thread so that there were no secrets kept from them again.

They built more of their machine companions, and they built them with ever increasing complexity to match the species they sent them to conquer and study. They became more advanced, more sophisticated, capable of complex analysis and understanding that rivalled the intelligence of the species they were culling.

And then.

One day.

The machines were more intelligent.

The first droid in all the galaxy to achieve sentience powered on, and the bipeds celebrated riotously. They had defied their god. They had killed other gods.

They had birthed a god.

They could not be stopped.