2320: The river rolls over the pebbles and carries them down to the sea, and so the voice of the Mountain King rolls over me. I stand upon my mountainside, standing as I have stood for more winters than I can name, a promontory weathered by wind and rain, and the voice of the Mountain King moves me, calls upon me, and like a pebble to the sea, I lift my feet, shaking off centuries of moss and lichens, roots and loam, and I step down from my mountainside, and go for a while - a little while like the blinking of sleepy eyes - to oversee my people's travel among the stars. As the Mountain King himself ordained, as Thrawn the Great began, we travel to the deeps of space, there to find ourselves new homes - and I must watch over our good works as I so long watched over the valley below from my mountainside.
I sing in the ringing voice of mountain stones, and I sing of Artemis and the beauty of its glowing landscape, irradiated by rare earths from within and across its surface more than even by proximity to its old red sun, and my people are moved, and millions depart - enough to fill the world with the help of its people's slow, steady accretion of new beings, by the time they arrive, and I am glad. I sing of the future, of the deep abiding joys of seeing the galaxy peopled with crystals and minerals, gems and stones, that shine like us with their own inner life and light, and some millions of my people set about the shaping of ourselves: Of further children of the stone to take the place of those preparing to pass on to Artemis, through the void. The good work set out by Thrawn for the building of factories on this the eldest of our worlds has come to its fruition, and we will need no more than we have today for many years to come. Even a few of the technicians from our labs emerge, moved by the spirit of my words, but many remain behind to carry out the good works long ago dictated by Thrawn the Great.
2321: The laboratory flagstones unearth new measures, heretofore unknown, of shaping the worlds on which we stand, of which we are, that more of our people may dwell upon their surface and below, yet they can still delve deeper into the soil and the rock that being of Cryslon is of ourselves, and one day unearth more secrets by which the land can be reshaped still more, the better to support our people in their bond with the planets themselves. And then among the stones that shape our laboratories and do their work, there rises a low, deep rumbling of pleasure, and they sing that it is in our power to shape more than landforms alone: The metal hulls of the vessels that carry our people to the stars can be shaped as well to contain the element hydrogen, gaseous and volatile, and capable of carrying us deeper - no faster than before, but nevertheless deeper with the passage of another year - among the stars. And slowly though we may travel, we may one day journey deeper still, for the cells that now hold hydrogen may in some distant future hold Irridium as well, a fuel thus far of the imagination or of theorycraft, harvested not from the rare earths of Artemis but as it were from their radiation itself.
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It will be years ere we learn these secrets, but though good fortune has smiled upon me to bring these new discoveries so soon, I who stood for ageless time as a promontory upon a mountainside reck not the passage of mere years in discovering the secrets of our world - of our worlds - of the galaxy around us that one day too, perhaps, shall be ours.
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The reshaping of our worlds begins at once, and here at Cryslon, the great majority of my people begin the quest to learn how best to reshape them even more, but some few millions still hearkening to my song of Artemis still set forth for that shining world as in celebration of the other fruits of the great Thrawn's labors, our newest colony ship sets course for Tauri, to carry our people nearer to the magma-core of the galaxy, with our second pair of scout ships already taking shape to follow close behind.
2322: Two worlds reshaped in a mere year - the blink of an eye - as still more of my people - another million, slow but sure in their response - still answer my song of Artemis, the first song of my reign, departing Cryslon for the warm glow of its surface beyond the night sky. New scouts set out to take the places of those that already are on their way to learn still more of the secrets of the galaxy's deeps - as now, on Cryslon, amidst the songs of mountains and of stones, of the rivers that run over us, whose course we shape as they shape our bones, all my people concentrate our powers of thought on new ways of shaping earth and stone, river and pebble, sea and mountain and stream alike into a union of still greater harmony, that still more of our ancient people may dwell upon these our worlds.
2323: The magma in all my people's cores is strong and hot as I never have known it before. Already, with only three years' passage, the last of my people called by my song of Artemis are ready to depart, as though there were some urgency to their travel across the void, to their new home star: An urgency greater than can be answered the steady turn of years, the shaping of stone by stone and water, heat and wind. Already the colony ship I myself dispatched to Tauri nears its final destination, where it shall become a part of the barren world it is meant to reach with yet two million more of my people, and no doubt even more will join it there. And still my people sing to earth and stone, crystal and ore, learning from Cryslon how to shape it and how to shape ourselves in harmony with selves and world.
2324:
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Is this the cause of the urgency that has driven my people to such impossible acts of motion as I have witnessed? Can it be that in the song of the galaxy itself, the Mountain King or the mass of our people sensed something to which none could put a name? The colony of Tauri is built upon the peaceful surface of its world, dimly lit by the pale red light of its star, and from it - even as I sing of its quiet beauty and millions of my people in the company of another new scout set off to travel there, and even as my people begin in earnest to investigate means of refining irridium - a signal comes, announcing that another scout has come in sight of our trans-light scanners: A scout not of Cryslon origin, but bearing as it seems some living creature vaguely similar in form to the furry things that scuttle about upon Cryslon itself: A starship of the "Humans," as the scout appears to proclaim itself. There is no more to learn of it as yet, but mine is the patience of the stones; there is always time, and I can wait.
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2325: Out beyond the pure white light of Centauri and the steppes of its most important world, the dull red glow of Tyr shines at the edge of the galaxy. It is an old star - deeply old, even by the reckoning of stone - and around it there oebits the largest rocky world we have yet encountered outside of this our ancient home, with nearly two thirds the land area that we knew even here before we learned to shape our world and ourselves to better meet each other's needs. Its arid slopes beckon to my people, and we begin work anew on a starship that might cross the deeps of space and take some millions of us there, but the scout that just discovered it has not finished exploring, and must move on toward the nebula while another departs Centauri to take its place. The Human scout meanwhile continues on its course, having come no doubt from the white star that points our way toward the galaxy's magma-core, where another of our scouts will arrive next year, toward red Bootis and the world that orbits it, geothermally dead and incapable of supporting such life as we understand the Humans to represent, but a fine place for my rocky people. When it arrives, one of our scouts will gladly meet it there, and learn perhaps what manner of beings these Humans truly are.
2326: I see now why the Human scout was so quick to abandon the blazing white star - blazing with heat - that I supposed might also blaze a trail that we might follow into the magma-core of the galaxy.
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No planets have yet formed in its volatile neighborhood: Only the Vulcan asteroid field surrounds it in the emptiness of space. Perhaps an older star, like the red giant nearest to Vulcan, will offer greater opportunities. The scout departs in that direction while at Bootis, patient as the stone of which we are made, another waits.
2327: The humans prove as rash and as flighty as the small, swift-moving furry things that live little momentary lives upon Cryslon, among the stones. Their scout rushed blindly in to meet ours in orbit at Bootis, and then as soon as it reached hailing distance, spun on its axis and retreated into hyperspace. Our own scout, unmoved, waits on in case some other visitor may prove less flighty and more willing to join us in sharing knowledge of the galaxy. Certainly it seems there are other peoples than ourselves who are more curious than these Humans - or more capable of sustaining and following through on their curiosity.
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There are songs among my people of an ancient time when strange and wondrous beings, swift in motion and in thought, flitted across our world and every world from out of the endless deeps of space. Some call them the Precursors or the Ancients - for their history is perhaps more ancient even than our own, and unlike we of Cryslon, who sustain like the stone of which we are made, it was thought that they had vanished, leaving no vestige except perhaps at a legendary star known only as Orion. Yet this is a powerful vestige indeed: A golden droid, six-eyed like the songs of legend, transmitting a message across the galaxy, announcing the scientific progress of each of six different peoples: The Humans are our inferiors in this respect, as they are in their patience and ability to sustain, but if the droid can be believed, four other peoples are even more advanced than we, with the Alkari, Sakkra, and even Meklar all bested themselves by a Psilon people of whom, like these others, we as yet know nothing.
2328: The first Artemisian colony ship - the first starship of my people ever to be built beyond our home of Cryslon - shines like another star in the skies above our ancient home. It shall shine here only briefly, for already it lays its course to depart for the steppes of Centauri, there to build our people a new home and a fuel base that one day shall enable more of us than the pilots of our scout ships to reach Tyr and to make it our own.
2329: The star that shines at the edge of the nebula, its light as golden as our own, harbors one of the secrets hinted at by the ancient droid: The most fertile of the system's planets is home to the Sakkra people of whose technological progress the droid spoke so highly, and though we have not as yet succeeded in communicating with them, they did convey one message to us, loud and clear:
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Eleven defensive bases announced by launching missiles from three silos apiece, while seven destroyer-class Spirit starships in orbit advanced in combat formation to drive the point home more clearly, "Get out. No visitors wanted." Our scout, understanding and patient with these Sakkra people - the population on the surface of their single planet there at Sssla is almost as great as all of ours across all three of our worlds - departed immediately. Mere moments later - some very small amount of time, not more than twenty or thirty days - another of our scouts, arriving at Tyr from Centauri, met another Sakkra scout, which - perhaps aware of the welcome our scout had received at its homeworld - promptly fled. I wonder now if the Sakkra learned of the arid world harbored by that old red star before our latest scout arrived. If so, they may not take kindly to our presence at that world, so near to the home they protected so zealously from a harmless scout. Though no doubt advanced technologically, I have my doubts about Sakkra patience or their interest in cooperation or in peace. In time perhaps ... but we shall see. At least we did not receive so harsh a greeting at Phyco from the Humans.
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We have yet to learn their language well enough to share more than the most rudimentary information, and in any case the humans seem as reluctant to communicate at Phyco, where sixty-five million of their people on a terran world that could support nearly twice as many, as was their scout when it met ours in the skies of Bootis, but from orbit we at least can watch them scuttling about across their world, among the factories they've assembled there - thus far only ten, perhaps because they inexplicably seem obsessed with cleaning up the neutral byproducts of their industrial output - perhaps for the same reason that similarly-scuttling creatures on Cryslon's surface avoid the byproduct dumps from our own factories? Be that as it may, the world the humans have claimed is truly a beauty, and it would be a pleasure to see my own people dwelling there as well someday. In the meantime, distant as it is, and claimed by a people with whom communication has been minimal at best, we shall leave Phyco to its Humans, and the scout will continue onward toward the white-hot star nearby.
2330: Skittish though they seem, short-lived, incurious, and soft, the Human people dwell upon immensely beautiful worlds. Already the scout from Phyco has arrived at Ukko, the nearest star, and under its blinding full-spectrum rays, the humans have colonized a little world where lies and has lain since ancient times an enormous ruined city not of their own making, for its architecture is alien and its stones sing of ages unmoving in their places, and its shape and its form match the legends of the Precursors that we sing still among the mountain stones: Legends of the Ancients who built the six-eyed golden droid and long ago ruled over the galaxy.
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I long to explore this beautiful world, and learn the secrets it may yet hold of the Precursors of whom only legends speak - only legends and this world, and the droid we've seen but once - and perhaps to learn from within its ruins something of the ancient techniques by which the Ancients gained and held their sway over all the galaxy.
2331: Already - so soon! - even across the vastness of interstellar space, the first Artemisian colony ship has reached its destination, and its final resting place: The rolling, wind-swept steppelands of Centauri. There they shall forge a new home for our people, and prepare the fuel base we need to reach a world with even greater promise that orbits the red dwarf Tyr. So I sing to my people of Cryslon of the beauty of Centauri, and so they respond in their millions, departing across the void find welcome in our new-home to be - for small though its lonely planet may be, its steppes are indeed as beautiful as our ancient stony dreams.
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2332: Again an Artemisian star shines in the Cryslon sky, and again it will depart almost at once: Even now, another leaves from Artemis itself for the steppes of Quayal - a larger world than Centauri's, but with far less strength and mineral resilience to its crumbling soil - to build a fuel base and a home beneath that star's green light, but here our new and fleeting star is bound for the galactic edge and the arid plains of Tyr, close by Sssla. And meanwhile, through the deeps of space, my song of fair Centauri has reached the rocky bones of our people on distant Tauri. Two millions set out to see the steppes, to help to build our home, and to look outward, toward the rim - toward Tyr.
2333: Two millions more, Centauri bound, slower than the first wave but still swift by the mountains' reckoning, depart beloved Cryslon for the stars. I wonder what the hurry is; we always in the past have lived at our own speed, letting the little things with fur and scales scuttle rashly as they will without the need to hurry as they always feel they must. Yet here we are, competing as it seems, with all these short-lived people in the sky.
2334: There is no song that can express the glories of Paranar. Tiny though it may be, and so close to its neutron star on the far edge of the nebula that it bathes in a constant stream of heavy radiation, echoed and reflected from its own deep neutronium core, its stones bear all the riches of the supernovae themselves, fairly glowing with their latent power. Our people must dwell there one day. It is destined to be ours. So as another million depart Tauri like those before, heading like the others for Centauri and - perhaps one day - for Tyr, I sing the glorious stony song of distant Paranar. Yet it shall be my final song as leader of our people: I can feel the Mountain King rumbling once more.
2335: The time has come for me to return to my high mountainside, to resume my watch as a promontory once more.
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With Sssla of the Sakkra found and Paranar discovered in all its glowing glory, with the alluring human worlds of Phyco and Ukko mapped out close to the magma-core of this our galaxy, with Tauri and Centauri growing into rocky homes for us, with starships traveling out to claim yet three worlds more, I feel greatly exhausted after these mere fifteen years. It is more than I would have thought to do in fifteen centuries! Yet now the mountain king sings out with yet another call, and I am content to serve the next rock who will lead us all.
