Centuries and millenia had spun by as the galaxy slowly turned. Humanity gathered greater skills, learned to fly to other stars, to change its very form and nature, and meanwhile entropy kept dragging at them. Civilizations fell, and rose, and fell again. Despite genetic engineering the genetic load on humanity kept increasing as the DNA strands kept getting more and more tattered as cosmic rays kept at their inalterable vandalism. The stars were lost, gained, and lost again more times, and in more places than a man could quickly count.
No mortal knew the number of humans scattered across tens of thousands of worlds in hundreds and hundreds of systems, but some guessed that it exceeded a trillion. There were at least a hundred sub-species who considered themselves True Unaltered (in important ways) Human. Some of them qualified.
Most worlds had those with the Gift. Some spurned it, hated it, and others used it, and others venerated its users.
The Valderi were the psi-lords of a pocket empire spanning nineteen stars and thirty-five worlds (not counting moons, asteroids, and space stations.) Their system was large, and unwieldy, and only gifted administrators could run it. When they failed to provide for such because they preferred to party than to lay down infrastructure for the future, they sowed the seeds of the eventual rebellion. A system that worked well with several geniuses, and a corp of well-trained and very able administrators did not work at all in the hands of some very ordinary men with no geniuses among their number.
Perhaps they were doomed in any case because their system was very awkward, but they sealed their fate by their choices.
Rebellion was followed by exile.
And so the Valderi left, and began to hunt for the star and the solar system they had come from nearly a thousand years ago. A hundred years passed, and they had not found it, but they did find a world with pleasant green skies, a gold moon and a saphire moon, and a huge red giant of a star.
It seemed deserted, and so they landed, and began colonization. But in the grasslands, in the trees, by the lake, and between the mountains there was a gatthering. The natives were not gone, although they had fallen from a technological height. Instead they hid themselves, and planned to ambush the settlers.
The attack was not a succe ss since the aliens had forcsschields. But it let the aliens realize thier dilemna. They couldn't, they couldn't stay. So they blended in with the larger population of natives.
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