A Little Bit of History

As I adjust to the sweltering heat, high gravity, short days, and unbearable insects of Kesata, I've decided to distract myself by getting back on my digging into the history here. Of course, suddenly it's not that hard to get at it. The yela'kaja here gave me a good rundown of it in his original briefing, and my talks with the Kesatans seem to tell pretty much the same story that the Xala tell.

Basically it goes like this:

When the Xala first began experimenting with their new gâ'axao, they found quite a few uninhabited worlds. In fact, they even claimed quite a few of them for themselves and build remote bases, most requiring their own life-support. There were a few of what they call "living worlds", but no indication of intelligent life . . . until they met the Kesata.

This was all happening about four thousand years ago, very soon after the discovery of the gâ'axao, and apparently there were differences among the various factions of the Xala in how to use the technology and the resources they were finding. Jed itself had only been unified a few years previously, and the first cloning experiments were just gaining enough acceptance that the eggs were allowed to hatch. In this environment there were some tensions between the traditionalists who opposed genetic engineering and a younger, more liberal group that had grown out of an idea that genetic engineering could aid the species.

The traditionalists, who were called je'e edag (xala ga' je'e edag, "people for true life"), wanted to expand Jed's territory at all costs, and often proposed completely razing life-bearing planets to exterminate native wildlife so that they could reseed it with Jed's life, which they believed was created by their god, do'kajex ("the Mind") to rule over all of existence. Meanwhile, the genetic engineering promoters, who called themselves xala ga' kajex ta' ka'xao (roughly "people for knowledge")*, wanted to study these worlds and look for new medicines, genes, what have you to experiment with to improve the Xala.

Anyway, to get back to Kesata, It didn't take long after finding the planet that the Xala discovered the Kesatans. The reports coming back from the planet initially mentioned them as an interesting animal species that communicated with color and gestures. It wasn't until later that several explorers recognized the signs as a form of language and began to learn it.

This of course, inflamed the whole conflict. The Kajex ta' Ka'xao people wanted to accelerate their genetic engineering program and create an "intermediary" species to communicate with the Kesatans, while the Je'e Edag crowd condemned them as lexala, or "false intelligence", and considered them vermin to be exterminated.

Anyway, as luck would have it, the Kesatans were spared the deadly fate that many human civilizations faced when the Xala turned against each other in a bloody civil war. The Kajex ta' Ka'xao people pulled together and the capital and the gâ'axao stations on several colony worlds, effectively cutting off the Je'e Edag crowd from the rest of the multiverse. The Je'e Edag tried to fight back, but within a period of several coaxrorol, Kajex ta' Ka'xao had taken over government. The war apparently lasted long enough through terrorism and sabotage for them to continue genetics research and apply it to the war effort, eventually overrunning Jed with clones.

Here's where the whole story gets fuzzier. My yela'kaja admits that the story of how Kadjex ta' Ka'xao took over is unclear, and how they were able to advance their cloning technology so quickly is a complete mystery. There is even a legend that spirits from Coaxta gave them the knowledge and the power to do all this. Plus, when I talk to the Kesatans they seem to be very insistent that there was actually a third species involved that actually did attack them, while the Xala insist that any attacks on the Kesatans were committed by Je'e Edag terrorists that slipped through the cracks somehow.

Whatever the case, the Xala that exist today seem to be the descendants (in a weird, genetically-engineered sort of way) of the Kajex ta' Ka'xao. Wherever the Je'e Edag went, I wouldn't expect that they're around anymore. I don't expect to get much more on this subject. After all, it happened four thousand years ago. I am told that the play I'm going to see here has a bit of the war history from the Kesatan point-of-view worked into it. Of course, that'll all be in the Kesatan sign language. I certainly hope my interpreter can understand their dancing better than I can understand some people singing.