Lesser species

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This is a catalog of species that do not have a noticeable effect on the galaxy. Many of them have not even entered space age yet and are unaware of the existence of other civilizations, but nevertheless, they are interesting enough to be mentioned.

Vainurs

The Vainur Directive is one of the civilizations that is not part of Alliance. An attempt was made to offer the Vainurs a place in the Alliance after their discovery, but the Vainurs rejected the proposal and established hostile neutrality, stating that the true race has nothing to do in the community of intelligent animals. Nevertheless, the Alliance allowed the Vainur ships to move freely through their territory because, despite the aggressive statements, the Vainurs never showed open aggression. It seems that Vainurs were satisfied, and they began to conduct moderately limited trade deals. However, attacks and kidnappings began to take place soon throughout the Alliance. As it turned out later, the Vainurs were extremely interested in the ability of the raharr to assimilate any organic matter and poisons, so they began to hunt them for the purpose of extracting and processing the raharrs intestines. In addition, they were anatomically interested in not only the raharrs, but also other species as well. By the time the true motives and culprits were revealed, the total number of deaths reached several million. In response to the indignation of the Alliance, Vainur, in spite of the quantitative and qualitative superiority of the Alliance, openly declared war. Following this, the Alliance organized a punitive action, destroying all Directive ships and deporting all Vainurs to their homeworld. A blockade was imposed on the planet and the Vainurs were forbidden to have any kind of space fleet, although they were allowed to leave the planet only if they had a special visa. A vote was also held, the theme of which was the invasion of Vainur itself and the forced change of the form of government, but the necessary number of votes “for” was not received. Afterwards, the Vainur Directive cut off all ties with the Alliance and refused all offers of material assistance. They also sent a warning that "any nonhuman who set foot on the holy lands of Vainur will be immediately killed." Since then, the planet has remained isolated, remaining faithful to its warning and firing on any ship descending into the lower atmosphere.

Alnus Thinkers

An unusual and only example of a flora consciousness. Thinkers originate from the planet Alnus II, and were unintentionally discovered by Sashli'sftonodo. The first time after landing on the planet and the subsequent formation of a colony, no one even suspected that there is sapient life on it. Thinkers are made up of individual plants, resembling trees, piled in small groves. They have some degree of mobility and can move around the area. Contact with the Thinkers is extremely difficult, since these creatures not only have an extremely slow thought process, but also seem to have a short-term memory. If the plants are not occupied with any thought for a long time, they will completely forget about it as soon as their attention is distracted by something else. Making contact with the Thinkers was one of the hardest trials for AI translators, which still cannot be successfully completed, not least because the Thinkers communicate using chemical compounds transmitted by roots. They have no hearing and their vision is provided by bundles of photosensitive leaves, which has an extremely low resolution. It is unlikely that Thinkers will ever build any technological civilization, let alone space flights. Their origin is a seperate mystery, since both biologists and florists could not put forward an evolutionary theory that allows the emergence of such a form of life.

Dead civilizations

It is quite obvious that the current civilizations are not the first after the Ancients, which is confirmed by archaeological data - currently 320 planets are known where a civilization could exist, but the traces are ambiguous and weak; 114 planets with strong traces pointing to a past civilization; and eight planets where the existence of the ruins of a civilization is undeniable. The age of the remains of these civilizations varies in estimation from 300 thousand years, to tens of millions of years. Perhaps there were even older civilizations, but their traces become almost indistinguishable from natural fluctuations without a long and detailed study of the entire planet. Most of the already confirmed graves of civilizations were found either by accident or by global geological traces, such as the presence of radioactive dumps and/or the general depletion of mineral deposits. According to statistics, most civilizations die before reaching the space age, many of which died out immediately after the discovery of nuclear energy. 6 out of 8 planets with an undoubtedly confirmed former civilization were discovered thanks to artifacts of obviously artificial origin, preserved on the moons of these planets - probes or even buildings. Besides this, however, neither the equipment nor the structures of most civilizations are preserved in a form ideal for archaeological research. The only exception to this day are the artifacts of the Ancients, as if they ignore the processes of entropy. According to estimates from current statistics, every thirteenth planet capable of supporting life and old enough for it has hosted sapient species in the past.

Infestation by space parasites

A "cigarette", as the majority of the population of the Alliance calls it, is a space parasite, relatively common in the territory of the Alliance. Cigarettes are either a silicon-organic life form or an autonomous robot of an unknown civilization. In appearance, they resemble long and thin cylinders 10-25 centimeters long and up to four centimeters in diameter, consisting of inorganic substances, silicon and various metals, dark gray dull color. Cigarettes are extremely delicate creatures that do not tolerate any G-force or vibration. By behavior and function, they very strongly resemble biological viruses, and that is why they are considered a pest and must be destroyed. There is still no consensus whether cigarettes are naturally evolving organisms, or are these "mutated" self-replicating mechanisms used for military purposes, or for autonomous exploration of the universe.

Usually, the development cycle of a cigarette looks like this: an individual enters the system from outer space. Having fallen into the inner system, they start to receive enough photons from the stars to start generating energy (the outer surface of the cigarette is coated with a compound that acts as a solar battery). This awakens them from their hibernation, in which it resides in during its unhurried flight through interstellar space, and it begins to search in the system for metal asteroids or artificially created orbital structures, preferring the latter. How exactly they find the metal is still not exactly known - the cigarette emits nothing and apparently uses some kind of passive method of navigation. Having reached the source of the necessary elements, the cigarette "sticks" to the surface and begins to absorb matter through one of the ends of its body, slowly moving forward and leaving behind a small groove. The cigarette simultaneously begins to lengthen from the other end until it doubles its size, after which it breaks down into two separate organisms, reproducing in this way with the analogue of dividing unicellular organisms. The process can take different amounts of time, depending on the cigarette itself and on the material it feeds on. If the cigarette is fed by an artificially constructed structure, like a satellite, its behavior is somewhat different. At first, the cigarette multiplies just as it does on any other source of metals, but after some time (the number of cigarette on the casing of the affected equipment may amount to dozens or even hundreds at this point), the cigarette begin to stick to the casing with their ends and then eat their way in like worms, leaving the old shell outside. Once inside, the stub creates a new shell for itself, and then continues to multiply as usual, primarily attacking small electronics containing a large amount of pure processed rare metals and other elements. If the infection is not stopped, cigarettes can gobble up the entire unit, giving rise to thousands of new parasites. The new generation then rushes away in all directions to other sources of metal as well as to other stars, accelerating with the help of a miniature analog of a ion engine. Each generation of cigarettes differs slightly from the previous one in terms of characteristics; it is not clear whether this is a viable evolution or simply errors in the replication process. Despite the relatively high acceleration due to the small mass of the parasite, the flight to the next system can take from several thousand to several million years, so cigarettes were most likely made long before modern times, perhaps even during the time of the Ancients.

Cigarettes are extremely fragile and their thin internal structure can be destroyed by any sufficiently strong vibration. The outer shell is inferior in strength even to thin foil. However, the damage caused by cigarettes is compounded by the fact that the parasite, due to its small size and inertness, cannot be detected most of the time. It gets into the fertile "soil" and does not begin to reproduce, but even then it can be detected only visually, or in the event of a leakage of the air or system failure, with the cigarette beginning to advance deep into the machinery in the case of the latter. Given the size of interstellar distances and the frequency of new cigarettes appearing in the systems, many researchers are inclined to believe that the galaxy is currently in a state of extremely heavy contamination by cigarettes and, in interstellar space, there are now at least hundreds of quadrillion cigarettes aged from hundreds to millions years old. The fragility of cigarettes, on the one hand, makes their removal an easy task, while at the same time making their study extremely difficult - any vibration destroys their internal structure, leaving only gray dust from various elements and a viscous oily polymer liquid.

Some distant colonies claimed cases of infection with cigarettes which are extremely resistant to vibration, continued attempts at reproduction even after a direct physical blow to them, but these cases remained unconfirmed.