Name: Ari [The Custodians]
General Galactic Location: The inner third of the Sagittarius arm 
History: 
[i]Set Aolimun[/i] - The Age of Ignorance/Apathy

Those humans who have had the opportunity to meet individuals of the Ari almost-universally describe them as a species with scant regard for humanity. While generally peaceful toward humans, the Ari make no effort to keep their condescension toward humanity a secret. Human xenobiologists find this cold sentiment toward their kind perplexing, seeing as humans and Ari share so much in common. Superficially, they are extremely similar in appearance to humans, appearing as slender, lithe humanoids with fair skin. Their faces are gaunt and gracile; their ears long with pointed lobes. With only minor anatomical and physiological differences distinguishing them from humans, it is perplexing to many humans that the Ari do not show a greater appreciation for their similarities.

The Ari, contrary to the beliefs of some human xenobiologists, do indeed recognize the similarities between themselves and humans. They see themselves in the human race, a darker, more primitive form of their own race. To the Ari, humanity harkens to their own bleak past.

The race that would become the modern Ari arose on a world phenomenally similar to the Earth: a mild planet with an agreeable nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere and a world of large landmasses rich in diverse biomes. Like humans, the Ari evolved from tree-dwelling beasts that learned to walk on two legs and went about the grasslands in a bipedal fashion. Their kind developed from hunter-gatherer clans into specialized societies as humans did. Agrarian city states became empires that vied with one another for dominance. Weaponry advanced, empires ascended and died out, but war was a constant on the Ari homeworld. The wars were fought - as they were on ancient Earth - for greater dominance of the planet's natural resources.

The ancestors of the Ari, known in this epoch as the Aolimi - the ignorant - developed the ability to travel across their own star system; a technology derived from the construction of ballistic weapons for their wars. The first terraformation efforts of the Aolimi were attempted soon thereafter, but their aims were shortsighted and bellicose in nature. Terraformation in this era was performed only to allow future colonies to develop so that native materials could be harvested for conflicts. It was in this dark, primitive time that the Aolimi first dabbled in the art of creating life on dead worlds. In this age of ignorance, the Aolimi could have never guessed that they were setting the foundation for what would become the very purpose of their race.

[i]The-sem Sarac[/i]- The Catastrophe

The earliest of the terraformed worlds - both of which confined to the home system - increasingly became factories for conflicts being fought on the homeworld. The Aolimi homeworld had at this point suffered catastrophic environmental changes caused by a swollen population and exploitation of resources. The society had become one of decadence and consumption - native cultures having long been assimilated and forgotten.The richness of life on the planet had been stripped clear. Two biomes now existed on the Aolimi world: vast, swollen megalopoli and barren wastelands .In their greed for greater control of their world, the Aolimi had failed to recognize that anything worth fighting for on this planet had been consumed.

The rape of their world saw its climax in one final globe-spanning war. In desperation or unbridled hatred, a weapon of last resort was used. A machine that focused the energy of the sun itself was activated. In a single, blinding flash, the homeworld was bathed in sunfire. The oceans vaporized, continents melted, and more than twenty billion souls perished. The Aolimi had all but annihilated themselves. Those spared of the Catastrophe watched from the colony worlds as the world that had birthed their species was obliterated.

The survivors were wracked with grief to see the fruits of their greed and savagery. They mourned their dead, but most importantly, they grieved the loss of their world. Expanses of smoldering glass rising from seas of magma were all that remained of the world that had given birth to their ancestors. The perfect nitrogen and oxygen atmosphere had been addled in the Catastrophe as well; noxious gasses released during the melting of the landmasses had permanently rendered the very air toxic and thick. The refreshing thundershowers that rolled across the ancestral plains of their race had become hazy mists that yielded only drizzles of sulfuric acid. The paradise that had birthed the Aolimi had been transformed into a sterile hell through their own recklessness.

In the aftermath of the Catastrophe, the Aolimi as a race came to agree that what had transpired on their homeworld was a heinous sin that would disgrace them and their progeny for all time.The survivors recognized that it was not just the lives of their own kin that had been lost. An uncountable number of living things had been destroyed forever, an entire living world had been snuffed out. It was not sufficient for the Aolimi to vow that the errors made on their homeworld would never recur. As species, they felt the need to atone for their destruction.

No longer would they allow their greed to poison and destroy another world. As a race, they vowed to foster and create life - never to destroy it except in the preservation of other living things. From thence onward, they referred to themselves as the Ari - the Custodians.

((To be completed later.))