Fiction:Xervona

The Xervona Empire were a very old empire that has been lost to time. The Xervian race began on a small, tropical T3 planet called Sertarri, in the Kynistia system. Xervians were relatively tall, thin, bipedal creatures suited to the low gravity of their home planet. They have a pyramidal rostrum with four fleshy mandibles. Depictions of related animals from their home planet have longer snouts, presumably for catching small prey. They also have spiny protrusions on the arms for a similar purpose, though these are cut off at an early stage, most likely to prevent them from injuring peers. They also had vestigial fanned tails and sides, which were found to be aerodynamic. These probably helped early Xervians escape from predators. It should be noted that any physical information about Xervians were recovered from depictions, artifacts, and severely damaged partial skeletons from battlefields and select crashed ships. What the Xervona were truly like isn't clear. Records from neighboring species usually describe them as nondescript merchants or traders, but sometimes as "pitiful" or even "stupid" by species that had a history of warmongering.

The Xervona had fairly bulky, inefficient spaceship designs, but their technology in artificial intelligence was notably ahead of other races at the time. AI technology was most likely often utilized to conduct trade and economy, as it is today with other more recent empires. They also used AI for a strategic advantage during times of war, notably in many of their spaceships. Often, AI-controlled drones the size of a helicopter or small plane were used for large-scale space combat. Xervona often used standard lasers and projectiles in combat. Some types of the pilotless drones they used had spikes or hooks at the front, so they could latch onto larger ships and push/pull them into nearby planets or larger ships. These were called Pusher Drones. Some drones were even armed with explosives or warheads, effectively serving as giant homing missiles. These are called Termination Drones.

As Xervians had a long history with Artificial Intelligence, some eventually suggested having their governmental system partially or fully run by AI, so that they didn't have to work on political or economical debates and could instead focus more on environmental or resource issues. At this point, many of their planets had starving populations, and couldn't afford to be terraformed to an acceptable level. Almost 40% of Xervians lived on T0 planets, which made them hard to maintain due to their colonies' constant need for a surrounding force field as to protect them from the harsh radiation of their parent stars. This dispute eventually divided the Xervona into two parties: the Pro-automats and the Anti-automats.

The Pro-automats and Anti-automats, as their names suggest, are the parties which liked and disliked the idea of an AI government respectively. Their dispute eventually led to a split, with each side able to pursue their own governmental system. The Pro-automats adopting an Autocracy, and the Anti-automats adopting a Democracy as the empire previously already had. However, the two parties still rivaled, as each one was only half the size of the empire they both formerly were. They eventually had an Arms race, with each side building more and more weapons than the other. Eventually, they were each producing weapons at an unsustainable rate, with each fearing the the other would surpass them if they ever stopped making weapons.

Then, due to each of them needing to sustain their weapon creation, they both set out on a quest to befriend similar empires, and pirate rivaling ones. Eventually, both parties had become sustainable again since their economies grew just enough from trading and pillaging that they were able to afford the weapons. Though now their ideologies had evolved even more to the point where each party weren't even the parties they used to be. The Pro-automats became a very scientific and technological empire, now known as the Logivona. The Anti-automats became a knight-like empire, spreading the faith of their new religion, Spodism, through their force and sheer numbers. These are now known as the Palavona. The Logivona and Palavona now hated each other more than before.

The first blow was done by the more offensive Palavona. The Palavona sent a fleet to the Logivona's third poorest planet, Cerinom. Cerinom is a T0 planet with a cold, thick atmosphere and is mostly covered in CO2 ice. The colony on Cerinom was easily taken over, and converted to a Palavona colony. A similar takeover occurred on one of the Logivona's other T0 planets, Terix, but the Palavona fleet was sent crashing back to Terix by an army of Logivona Pusher drones. The Palavona resumed their one-by-one takeover of Logivona planets, but by that time, the Logivona had begun taking over Palavona planets as well. Eventually, takeover was proving to be a stalemate, so instead, they started ruining each other's planets altogether. In the following years of combat, almost every life planet that they owned were terraformed back to T0. Eventually, each side was left with only four planets, being each side's most difficult to take over. The final battles that ensued were on proportions that were fairly large for the only somewhat significant empires. Both sides began resorting to crimes of war, breaking the Galactic Code multiple times. Asteroids were sent careening into planets with the assistance of large rockets, and armies of spacecraft were being torn apart. At last, the remnants of each empire were torn between one planet, which was the former political capital of their empire, as well as their former home: Sertarri.

The final battle that ensued was one fo the greatest yet. It was full-on warfare between each empire's entire military. Both empires, already broken, were near equal in power. Eventually, the Logivona emerged victorious, though there were hardly any left. After a war that arose from a concern about maintenance of their planets and their populations, the populations of every former Xervona planet was completely decimated. After the battle, the Sertarri was in ruins, and the Xervians as a whole were never able to return to their former glory. After only a few million years, Xerviformes stopped showing up in Sertarri's fossil record.