Foundation of the Zxaah Empire (~50,000 BCE)

The Zxaah first came to inter-stellar travel around 55,500 years ago, colonizing local stars with normal propulsion inter-stellar ships. Shortly after the Zxaah discovered warp and gate technology, the "Zxaah Empire" was formed. The Zxaah Empire was, by Terran standards, a socialist hegemony which for the first several hundred years of its existence focused on expansion and colonization. At the Empire's height over 320,000 star-systems had been colonized; having met no significant external threat the Zxaah were free to expand exponentially*. The Empire spread through a significant portion of the local region of the Galaxy, stretching from the bars of the galactic core, to what is now Terran-controlled space.

One surprisingly beneficial factor of the Empire was the almost feudalistic warfare between the sub-ordinate states. Each faction would push for colonizing new systems with populations loyal to them, then use the colonies to boost their industrial infrastructures, allowing for more war-related resources to be manufactured, as well as more colony ships/Gates for colonizing even more systems. This somewhat regulated internal conflict continued for hundreds of years, and spawned the largest Mid-tech civilization known to Terrans.

*There are recorded incidents where one Zxaah faction or another would brush against an Elder civilization (such as the Foo or Arbiters). They quickly learned their lesson: do not meddle in the affairs of the older species. Those factions abruptly disappear from history shortly afterwards.

The Zxaah/Fae Wars (223 BCE - ~1,900 CE)

Around 200 BCE, the Zxaah Empire makes first contact with another space-faring civilization of Mid-tech; the Fae (also known to the Terrans as "Floaters"). An unnamed system on the edge of the Empire closest to the Galactic Center suddenly found itself host to an armada of alien warships. Both sides hold contradictory accounts of the event, with the Fae claiming it an armed colony fleet that the Zxaah attacked unprovoked, and the Zxaah tradition saying the fleet was an invasion force and that their colony was attacked first. The Zxaah Empire reacted to the battle as the forefront of an invasion by an unknown enemy, quickly sending as many warships as the sub-ordinate states could spare. Sending scouts to nearby systems, they found the Fae had colonized much of the region and supported a massive military force comparable to, if not exceeding, the Empire in its entirety.

The inevitable military build-up quickly boiled over into open warfare. At first it started as a border conflict, occasional fleet engagements over contested star-systems, but then reported atrocities from both sides against civilian populations spurred both civilizations into a state of total-war within decades. Each side became bent on genocide, scorching the other sides' worlds to ash from orbit at any given opportunity. The resulting conflicts raged on for centuries, one side occasionally gaining ground, only to lose it again. "Cleansing" campaigns were used by both sides; suicidal forays into enemy star-systems meant only to decimate populated worlds to slowly eradicate the other side. At some point during the conflict, the original Zxaah home-world was raised and de-populated in its entirety, as well as every other planet in the system.

During the last century of the conflict (most of the inhabited worlds on both side were lost at this point), the struggling Zxaah states learned that the Fae had been gaining reinforcements through a massive Gate near the galactic core. This confirmed to them what had been gleaned through intelligence and torture over the centuries; that the Fae originated from another galaxy and this war was and had always been an inter-galactic invasion. Gradually, the Zxaah forces put together an armada to end the threat once and for all, spear-heading through the remaining Fae forces, commandeering Gates when able, jumping through inter-stellar space when not, eventually coming to the system that held the inter-galactic Gate. The Gates were massive, the size of a small world each, and relied heavily on the gravitational forces at the cores of both galaxies. The Zxaah fleet gained control of the Gate on the Milky Way side, and sent the fleet through. The fleet on the other side destroyed the Gate there, and supposedly fought to the last against whatever forces they met, while the Gate on this side was set to self-destruct.

The Zxaah victory was short-lived, as the strike against the Gate left their forces thinned. The remaining Fae forces made short work of most of the remaining Zxaah seats of power, however taking heavy losses on their own drained fleets in the process. By this time, neither side had any sort of central government, and their remaining worlds could barely sustain themselves, much less massive fleets. So gradually, both sides began to withdraw their forces (intentionally dismantling most of the Gate networks as they went), never coming to any official peace. What remained of the Zxaah civilization was heavily factionalized along social and ethnic lines, and old rivalries quickly emerged in the form of feudal warfare. Its still not known how many fragments of the former Zxaah Empire still inhabit the Galaxy, but several border Terran-controlled space.

The Fae provide a slightly different version of history. According to them, they hadn't come to this galaxy as an invasion force, but as an exodus. They claim that their home galaxy had been beset by an enemy they could not hope to defeat, and so they pulled together the resources of their entire civilization to build an inter-galactic Gate for their species to flee through and re-settle. The Fae claim that by the time the Zxaah had launched the strike against the Gates that they had been just about to dismantle the Gates themselves, having left a substantial force on the other side to prevent their enemy from seizing it and continuing their destruction in the Milky Way, and that the 'reinforcements' being delivered through the Gate were a combination of settlers and warships being pulled off the front-lines of a losing war to defend their new colonies against Zxaah aggression.

Its not known how many Fae worlds actually survived the war, but the ones that did were few and far between. Being a gas giant-inhabiting species, the Fae are slow to expand (due to how time and resource extensive it is to 'terraform' a gas giant), and despite much less inter-faction fighting as the Zxaah, have still not fully recovered from the conflict after all this time. Only one modern Fae civilization is known of, bordering Terran space.