The Second Old Wave: Goblins, Orcs, Ogres, Hobgoblins (Half-Goblin/Half-Orc,) Bugbears (Half-Goblin/Half-Ogre,) Ögakooga (Arcane Magic gifted Savannah dwelling kin of the Vanaras,) and Monkey-Goblins (Half-Goblins/Half-Ögakooga produced through magic.)

It is history taught to every schoolchild in the Federation, the Unhuman Empire, and the federation's first true interstellar war. Oh, there had been numerous "police actions" against the Negoi, Illithid, and Beholder pirate fleets, but nothing like this, a true rival interstellar nation, and this time the federation was victorious, yes, but it was not the resounding and crushing victory of those previous conflicts, they were to sue for peace, and make certain concessions to achieve it, including giving up several recently begun terraforming projects and three partly settled colony worlds to form the first of the several buffer zones known as "The Border Stars."

However, the federation added most of the human-sized or smaller member races of the Unhuman Empire into its ranks, and it is hoped by many to this day that one day the Unhuman Empire will agree to a treaty of union with the Federation and En-Mass join with the Federation in some future age.

Let me give a brief accounting of the First Federation/Unhuman war, however, for it is something which the reader should know. The war began over a simple enough misunderstanding: two scout ships, one Federation, one Unhuman Imperial, entered a system known at the time only as KVX-371. What the Unhumans called it is not recorded, due to the subsequent loss of their long-range scout, as you will see in a moment.

The Federation scout vessel, the "F.S.S. - Bounty" was a Federation 'Privater'-class scout ship and did not notice the Unhuman's presence, but was quite aware of the presence of a size G Earth Body in the Primary Biosphere zone with evidence of being Mishar-Class. They obviously set their course for that planet to investigate, doing divinations all the while. The divinations gave dark tidings for landing on the planet, but darker still if the ship turned back and did not, and so the crew of the bounty forged ahead.

They made planetfall off the coast of a major landmass which looked a likely place to find local natives if any were to be found, with some evidence of humanoid constructions slightly inland. The First Officer, one Irasco James DeGaulle took a party of Draconian marines and a few other notables like the ship's priest and chronicler and they headed inland, to investigate the ruins after claiming the Planet as a protectorate of the Federation pending contact with its native government. That specific wording was to prove significant.

When they arrived at the city that they had overflown briefly the preceding week they found it under attack by a group of Hobgoblins, Goblins, and Orcs from what could only be described as a 'scorpion ship' landed outside the city. The party wasted no time weighing in with their wand-pistols and power cutlasses and soon put the unhuman attackers to flight, being hailed by the locals as rescuers. A quick use of 'Sending' with federation code phrases had the Bounty out of the water and in hot pursuit of this 'scorpion ship' resulting in a pitched battle above the planet with quarter neither asked nor given, ending with the Unhuman scout ship detonating a "final-strike" weapon that snapped both of the Bounty's masts and largely stove in her port side, forcing her to make land fall on the planet below in an attempt to make repairs.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the crew of the bounty, the dying Scorpion Ship had launched what the federation would later term a "Mite Probe" back to the Unhuman Empire with details of the battle and a report of their scout's destruction. This probe would rouse the Empire to prepare to launch a war that would prove both savage and brutal for both sides, but it would be years before the full extent of the repercussions became known.

The Bounty's crew made contact with the natives again and discovered the REASON that the Unhumans had attacked: the native religion was a savage and brutal Blood-Cult overseen by strange, vile, were-serpent-vampires: who were harmed by moonlight and silver but unphased by sunlight... The crew of the Bounty called for reinforcements from the Federation with their most powerful magic and then abandoned their ship to fight a brutal and punishing ten-month guerilla war against the serpent-priest-kings of the local cities, during which the managed to rescue the last three surviving Unhuman envoys taken captive by the High-King of Texpherkan, the nominal capital of the local civilization which the Unhuman Scout Ship had been attacking in its attempt to rescue its people...

When the Federation reinforcements arrived, their retribution against the Were-Serpent-Vampires of the world now dubbed "Irasco's Folly" was as brutal and vicious as it was unrelenting. Not one of those Hell-spawned abominations was permitted to live, the fleet struck on the night of the full moon and dragged every last one of the undead demon-kin out into the cleansing moonlight to burn in balefire, their temples were razed to the ground and their books of religious ritual burned, only six other times at that point had a civilization been proclaimed "Hereticus Diablous" but this made seven, and lucky number seven got the full wrath of Federation Armed Services dumped upon it. When the fighting was at last done, scarce three months later, and every last vestige of the old religion's trappings utterly obliterated, all its priests and priestesses to forswear their oaths and break their codes of conduct or die, the surviving native humans were rounded up and resettled to other regions of the world in single-family units, along with many thousands of new Federation settlers. Within the next 150 years, the more savory aspects of their culture suffused and came to underpin that of the entire planet, while those that the federation at large would never have accepted fell by the wayside: just as planned.

Meanwhile, the remnants of "The Scorpion Ship" (those that hadn't fallen into the atmosphere) were diligently tracked down and whatever could be learned was gleaned from the wreckage. The Federation didn't gain very much from studying the wreck, except one thing: they unlocked the secrets of how to construct Terrestrial Landing Gear.

Before this Federation ships could only land on water except for the incredibly expensive Z-Landers which had to be dropped off the deck and fall to earth with parachutes. Thanks to studying the remnants of the Scorpion Ship they finally understood the principals that would let them make a reusable and fully space flight capable terrestrial landing craft. Beau ships were ecstatic, but a lot of the admiralty groaned at all the "experimental designs" that were about to need testing...

They learned far more from the three captives they had rescued, or, I should say, one. You see, during the ten-month guerilla war, one of the rescued captives, an orc called Gurshegguntag, had sold his life dearly to buy time for the other two to be evacuated when their camp was attacked one day, tragically meer days before the Federation rescue arrived. The second, a Hobgoblin named "Chuf-Kah" Tharvol, (First Officer of the Ship,) committed suicide when he discovered the full extent of what had happened following his capture: believing he was in the hands of an enemy military, (more right than we knew at the time...); the last one, however, was a Goblin called "Gumsuk" and she was all too happy to talk.

There are those in the Unhuman Empire who call Gumsuk, "Gumsuk the Betrayer", and blame her for the Empire's defeat in the three wars it has fought against the Federation, and they are not WHOLEY wrong, but while the intel Gumsuk provided was a powerful advantage in the early stages of the first war, we would have won, regardless.

The Unhuman Empire had, Ironically, been founded by the Goblins, but they were soon eclipsed by their own bastard half-breeds the Hobgoblins, the results of many goblins liking the kinky aspect of dominating and controlling an orc twice their own size in the bedroom. The problem was, while orcs were strong and tough but slow and stupid, Hobgoblins got the best of both, a Goblin's cunning and intellect with an Orc's size, strength, and stamina: and just to make matters worse, 1 Male Hobgoblin + 1 Female Hobgoblin + 7 months = about 4 baby Hobgoblins, not Orcs, not Goblins, more Hobgoblins. It had only taken about a hundred years for the Hobgoblins to take over, and then they'ed started reorganizing and expanding. They had made one interesting concession to the old goblin regime, goblins were the yardstick of the Empire, to be admitted as a full member race, a species had to be able to form a stable crossbreed with Goblins somehow, everyone else would be perpetual slaves, at best, more likely just exterminated. The first such race they found, 57 years later, were Ogres, who with very careful acrobatics work by the male Goblin, created "Bugbears", and so became a full member race. Then, just a few decades ago, almost 200 years since Ogres were admitted to the Empire, they encountered Ögakooga, who some argued shouldn't have been made members because they 'cheated' with potent arcane magic to make the pregnancies possible which created the first 4,000,000 "Monkey-Goblins" and without that magic were quite infertile with goblins at all, let alone creating a stable crossbreed.

Each race produced two types of the ship for the Empire, typically a warship and a civilian vessel, but there were exceptions. For the Ogres, these were the Titanic 'Mammoth'-class Battle-Ships, the largest pure warships in the empires arsenal, and the 'Whale'-class star-liners, which ferried goods and people across the Empire. For the Orcs they were the lithe and swift Tiger-Shark-class Boats, which sailed into the thick of the fighting and delivered dozens of Orc marines onto an enemy ship from behind their armored grappling ram 'jaws', and the 'Hammerhead'-class Cruiser, the workhorse of the Empire's war fleet. For the Goblins they were the old and reliable 'Dragonfly'-class Sprint Trader, ferrying small high priority cargoes across the empire at speed, and the 'Mosquito'-class Interceptor, a Light Attack Craft designed to operate with only six crew, the helmsman, a rigger to steer, two ballistae gunners and two "spares" in case one of the others were wounded. For the Hobgoblins there was the redoubtable and deadly 'Scorpion'-class long-range war-scout, and the durable 'Lobster'-class Armored Cargo Transport, which was used primarily to ship weapons, ammunition, and supplies to the empires many war zones. For the Bugbears, these were ungainly and unsightly Orca-class Transport, a smaller militarized variant of the Whale-class Star-liner, and humble "Tradesman" aka 'Koi'-class Long Range Trader, the workhorse of the Empires non-military fleet. For the Ögakooga these were the Swiftwind-class traders which were rapidly taking over bulk transshipment in the Empire: larger and more maneuverable than the Koi or Lobster classes, their potent Ögakooga helmsmen made better time than anyone but the experienced goblin shamans of the Dragonfly-class Sprint Traders: and the strange 'Librarium'-class research ships based on the 'Koi'-class chassis mounted with the Ögakooga's immense "Knowledge Digester" idols, which were fed books or scrolls to burn and slowly condensed them into a more scholarly and compact format in one of their 'formation slots' on the back of the idol. (How many slots the idol had decided how good the idol was, with numbers ranging from five to fifty.) The Monkey-Goblins hadn't settled on any designs for themselves yet, but there were rumors of something called a 'Trop' that they were cooking up...

Gumsuk knew a lot about ship design, she had been an apprentice engineer for the navy, so she was able to pass on the basic schematics of each major ship type of their fleet.

The opening shots of the war, of course, had already been fired, but the first true fleet engagement wouldn't happen for another seven years. There were roughly six or seven inconclusive skirmishes between lone federation scouts and known or suspected Unhuman vessels, but it wasn't till The Battle of Shellene's Point that the war everyone knew was coming kicked off for good and all.

Federation Internal Security was tracking the activities of a registered free trader known as the Shellene, who they suspected of having made contact with Unhuman agents at a notorious asteroid border colony called The Rock Of Braal. The Shellene took on a cargo of old flintlock pistols, which are, as everyone knows, even now prescribed for export on grounds of cultural contamination and national security concerns. A top Federation Internal Security spy was able to get aboard the Shellene and confirm they were meeting Unhuman Empire agents at a star which hosted no inhabited planets, at that time known only as VCS-516, and forever after called Shellene's Point. The Federation put a small battle fleet on standby for a very risky Teleport Maneuver to ambush the Unhuman Empire ships picking up the cargo and capture the crew of the Shellene for trial on charges of Treason-in-time-of-War and Collaborating-with-the-Enemy.

Everything went according to plan, 5 frigates and 2 cruisers teleported in almost right on top of the Shellene and the 3 scorpion ships that had come to meet her.

We hadn't anticipated an ambushed-Ambush.

The Unhuman Empire had a small battle fleet of their own on standby to gate in if something like this occurred: 6 Tiger-Shark Boats, 2 Hammerhead-class Cruisers, and 1 Mammoth-class Battleship. The battle was brutal but cannon broadsides and pistol fire won the day: however, in the fighting, the traitor Shellene was utterly destroyed when a stray cannonball touched off her magazine and the resultant explosion left nothing intact from the notorious vessel larger than a thimble. (It is worth noting that the Internal Security operative had long since gotten to the relative safety of the attack group flagship "Vanderbilt".) Yet, the price that was paid was high. Of the federation attack group only the Vanderbilt, (a cruiser) Yarmouth and Xexkamak (Frigates) survived the encounter in a fit state to sail home under their own power, and NONE of the enemy ships were taken in prize as had been devoutly hoped. We learned to our cost that ALL Unhuman Empire Ships are fitted with 'final strike' devices, and will use them rather than allow themselves to be taken intact. In fact, one of the frigates, the Priestly, was completely destroyed by a crippled scorpion ship landing on the deck and doing exactly that, thus touching off its magazine as well.

The good news of the battle was in the fighting 57 enemy combatants were taken alive, including members of each Empire race.

This began the 'Active' phase of the war, with attacks and counter-attacks happening every few months for the next ten years. The only really significant event of that period for the purposes of this narrative was the capture of "Fleet-Base Metis" a hidden Unhuman Empire colony world deep inside Federation space which was how we gained a full breeding population of each of the member races of the Unhuman Empire.

After the capture of Fleet-Base Metis, the war didn't end with a bang so much as a whimper. Both the Federation and Unhuman Empire's fleets had been ravaged by the fighting, both were dealing with Negoi and Illithid raids, and both were simply sick of the destruction and carnage. It became apparent later that the Unhuman Empire was quite thoroughly spooked by the outright loss of "Metis" something which had never happened before, no colony had ever been captured by a rival star-empire... (Of course, they'd never encountered a full-blown rival star empire before either...)

The Federation sued for peace and Unhuman Empire was only too happy to negotiate for it, even being willing to concede that "The Metis System" as the Federation called it, would remain in Federation hands in perpetuity, thus denying themselves ready access to most of Federation space, in exchange for numerous concessions forming the buffer zone of uninhabited space known as The Border Stars. It was also a provision of this treaty that both empires would share contact information regarding any new interstellar empires either discovered.

After the end of the war, the Federation rebuilt its shattered fleets, while the Unhuman Empire did the same, and for a few decades an uneasy peace reigned, broken only by the occasional Negoi or Illithid raid. Both sides licked their wounds, then the Federation encountered the next major rival empire, but that's a topic for another time...