Now nothing more than a debris cloud and a handful of frigid, dead worlds orbiting a quiet black hole, the long-abandoned ruins of the Ringstar bear testament to a bygone golden age of galactic civilization; a paradise long since lost.
History
The Ringstar (
Koronasterum, in Arcadian) was one of the most intensive orbital engineering projects ever undertaken by galactic civilization prior to the formation of the
New Unity. Created by the
Aehr over several hundred cycles, the end result was a constructed solar system with nearly a hundred planets, dozens of them habitable, orbiting a central singularity with a constantly-fed accretion disk to provide light and energy. The delicate gravitational balance of the system was partially maintained by vast megastructures -a signature feature of Aehr systems. Various worlds and constructs within the system had designated purposes: many were used as wildlife preserves; others optimized for power generation, computation, or agriculture on enormous scales; and a few were built solely as centers of commerce for galactic trade. One world, an artificial planetoid called
Synora (Arcadian for "Harmony"), served as the capital of the
Galactic Democratic Federation for most of the Late War period.
Destruction
The Ringstar was, to the shock and horror of the Federation, destroyed in an unprecedented attack by the
Khraakgn Empire toward the close of the Khraakgn War in 1
BGU. The central singularity was violently destabilized by the collision of a large warpship at superluminal velocity. This was followed by bombardment of the disk-fueling structure which caused massive thermonuclear devastation throughout the system. The last known instances of over a dozen unique biospheres -including that of
Thyor- were sterilized or, in the most extreme cases, consumed by the destabilized singularity. Well over sixteen trillion sapient lives were lost. This tragedy, which remains unmatched in scale to the present day, was the catalyst for the Aehr's involvement in the war, and in turn the decisive Invasion of J'khagh that put an abrupt end to the conflict one cycle later.
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