Backstory

First, here's a Mirdan Crystal Wyrm, because you need more Mirdan Crystal Worms in your life. 

Okay, now to the backstory. I painted the backstory in very, very broad strokes before, but I thought it would be helpful to put some more meat on the bones here. I basically borrowed from everything I've done before to create a big 'ol mythology for this game system. I like the ways it leaves things open. It also borrows liberally from Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, mythology, and even a little ROM and Buck Rogers. Here's the draft I've been working on, which I will probably tweak, and which I hope formats correctly as I cut and paste it into Blogger :)

You'd think that taking something from Google Docs into a Google product like Blogger would be an instant home run, but sometimes the formatting gets all wonky on me... (EDIT: It happened. I had to go back and play with the text in Word first to get rid of formatting, and THEN paste it here. Stupid.)

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The Messari came first, an ancient race of sorcerous wraiths: creatures both alive and dead. They inhabited many planets of the Cluster, building temples to their vile gods. They dwelt in shadow for eons. Three thousand years ago, the Naru homeworld - a massive rogue planet that weaves its way across the Bright Galaxy - crossed through the Cluster. Over the course of a century, the homeworld spun among these stars, as the Naru sent thousands of exploration craft into every corner of the Cluster. They colonized with the seeds of a multitude of species they had genetically engineered or brought from other worlds. At each planet and moon they visited, they cast out the Messari, destroying their weakest, and sealing their most powerful in deep prisons. In some places, they left behind - either by accident or by their own inscrutable design - relics of their mighty empire. One of their most powerful leaders, a warrior queen named Yahalla, chose to stay here on the planet Terra, deigning to watch over the Terran race, her favorite creation. Finally, the Naru planet’s orbit carried them beyond the Cluster and into other realms. It may be tens of thousands of years before they return. 

Yahalla and her lieutenants set to work building up the people of Terra. She hid from them the most powerful technology of the Naru, allowing them to develop blast technology that would propel them among the stars and allow them to interact with the other species she knew must be developing. Initially, things went well, as their great armada spread across the stars, making contact with and developing peace along hundreds of worlds.

However, an ancient Messari vault was discovered on one planet. Then, the prison of a terrible Messari leviathan was found on another. Slowly, the Messari were unearthed, and Yahalla grew ill at ease. She ordered her ships home, and set out to strengthen the ancient seals that bound the Messari. Failing at this, she commanded that the vast armada be destroyed; tens of thousands of ships were abandoned in junk yards, buried among the sands, and left to ruin. She thought she had managed to stem the tide of chaos. She was wrong. Already corrupted by their influence, many generals among her legions turned on her, slaying Yahalla and sending the handful of her remaining lieutenants, angelic women-warriors called the Valkyr, into hiding. Decimated, the remaining Terran - loyalists to Yahalla - abandoned their homeworld, which was now in ruin after the devastating conflicts of the Terran Wars, forming an Imperium of absolute, tyrannical order born from a dread of the corrupting influence of the Messari.  

The Imperium now operates from seven massive starships, the Seven Sons of Yahalla, attempting to bring law to the Cluster. While generally confined to the core worlds, they have begun to spread further afield, searching for the lost Valkyr and looking for a way to resurrect their god queen. Their reach can sometimes be felt even in the Pale, although none of the Seven Sons has ever traveled this far.