LF Friends, Will Travel

Why we said yes - Introduction

Date: 74 PST (Post Stasis Time)

"The Terran Alliance was pushed from the planet by the Estorian Empire."

That sentence made Zantari pause for a moment, staring down at the screen hovering in front of themselves. They understood the words, of course, Zantari hadn't spent their thousands of years of existence being illiterate, but one of them was a new word, one they hadn't seen before.

"Terran"

Zantari liked to consider themselves well-read and up to date on the latest goings-on in the universe. In fact, all of his species would consider themselves as such. Most species can be defined as having one goal or another, one word that broadly describes their culture. Warrior, explorer, conqueror, trader, healer.

The Ghirlinn could be described as watchers, archivists, cataloguing and learning about the millions of species that inhabited the near infinite universe, over the near infinite number of galaxies.

When you got to the technological level of the Ghirlinn, there really wasn't much else you could do. Sure you could go and conquer planet after planet with your technological advantage, but not only was that boring, eventually your grand empire would either collapse into infighting, or worse, you would end up attacking a species with some form of higher protection. Becoming a god was a thing, although there were only so many types of life you could create and civilizations to form before that becomes stale too.

Ascending to a higher form of existence was always an option, and something many Ghirlinn had chosen to do at this point, although Zantari didn't quite feel that their hundreds of thousands of years of physical existence had been enough yet, and wasn't quite ready for that next step. Besides, you couldn't get a stiff drink after ascending.

So, instead, they watched. The millions of species, trillions of people, all doing interesting, special, and fun things. Like a never ending soap opera: they fought and loved, they laughed and died. Seeing betrayals and alliances form as various empires and governments rose and fell made for a level of entertainment. Which was why Zantari was confused that they didn't know the word "Terran". It wasn't a species in the Ghirlinn's central repository, and finding something new was always interesting.

Zantari sat in the comfortable 'den' of their creation, a mass of blankets and snacks suspended in a white void, perfect for some light reading about the goings-on in the Milky Way. In the middle of this pile of comfort, lay the Ghirlinn. Describing a Ghirlinn is a difficult thing, since they can choose their appearance as they see fit, able to shift and change their entire being with a mere thought. Right now, they chose to take the form of a small furry brown mammal nestled snugly in between the literal mountain of white soft pillows and duvets.

No, this wouldn't do at all. This is the environment for chilling out, not for doing research on an unknown species.

In an instant, reality moved at Zantari's mere prodding, the room changing to a simple study of brick walls and oak furniture, faux books lining a shelf on one wall, and a roaring fire on the other. Their own form took on a more reptilian professional appearance, adorned in silken robes of red and gold, six fingered hands covered in light grey-blue scales, all four of their arms reaching out to various hovering interfaces as they started looking through this galaxy's various repositories for more information on these 'Terrans' and their alliance.

They soon found what they needed in various textual descriptions. A species of primate, recently appearing on the galactic scene a mere [74 years] ago. B+ level technology, and if their propaganda was to be believed, hadn't just built an AI that didn't kill them, but claimed to live together with their AI, unified under one name. Now that was a rarity. They weren't the first species in the universe to survive the creation of an AI, but most of the time it ended with a 'mutual separation', where creator and created decide to go their own way. There were several Ghirlinn AI civilizations scattered around the universe, and their creators wished them well, but left them to do their own thing.