(A Brief History of the Ellendrí, translated into Terran English)

  We have very little recorded data from the times of our earliest ancestors. Most of what we know today has been pieced together from those few surviving ancient records, along with oral folklore and legend, archaeological studies, and scientific investigations into the natures of the plants, animals, and people that populate the Hél?w?r, a portion of one of the spiral arms of the J?laeth Dannaig Sér?en, the galaxy where we live. The Ellendrí’s home space, the Ll’Ellendr?n, is located about halfway between the center of the galaxy and its outermost edge, along the Hél?w?r. This region appears to have been colonized by groups of closely-related peoples during a period of time spanning approximately seven million years. We believe that these waves of colonization, extending outward along the Hél?w?r, were initiated by an ancestral people, which we refer to as the Ellendorí, the ancient ones.

  What little we know of the Ellendorí comes from our oldest information. Many of our records describe the Ellendorí who were our direct ancestors as slender, ageless, and sexless beings with fair skin and grey eyes. In truth, we really don’t know what all Ellendorí were like, and certainly the many races of people who have evolved from them vary widely in physical characteristics, some to the extent that they are now considered almost distinct species. All we do know is that it’s likely that the Ellendorí had a very high level of technology, and traveled widely throughout the galaxy.

  When one considers the genetic similarity shown by the organisms inhabiting the Ll’Ellendr?n, it is quite clear that colonization in this area was carried out in a rigorous and meticulous manner. In order for our people to survive on a planet, the plants, animals, and microbes inhabiting that planet must share our common chemical building blocks—their nucleic acids, amino acids, sugars, and fatty acids must be the same as ours. Any significant differences in basic chemical structure would result in incompatibilities which would not allow our people to integrate into the planetary ecosystem. That there are so many nearby planets on which we can survive comfortably suggests that there must have been some early bioengineering on these planets. We believe that this work was undertaken by the Ellendorí. Given our own peoples’ studies in planet bioengineering, we believe that the Ellendorí likely selected candidate habitable planets on which life had not yet evolved. These planets would then have been seeded with select bacterial and fungal species—the early photosynthetic, chemosynthetic, and saprophytic organisms of a developing biosphere. If these organisms proliferated successfully on the planet, the second phase of bioengineering, the sowing of plant species and the establishment of a viable atmosphere in which animals could subsist, would have followed. Again, depending upon the success of the second step, a third step involving the introduction of animal species from the Ellendorí homeland may have occurred.

  What is not fully understood is how the Ellendorí operated within the time frames of these grand bioengineering projects. Paleographic studies on a number of the planets in the Ll’Ellendr?n suggest that it takes approximately 2,500 million years for a planet to evolve from an abiotic state to a point at which human colonization occurs. However, since archaeological evidence of hominids only extends back to about seven or eight million years, how could the Ellendorí have bioengineered planets thousands of millions of years before their own existence? While this may, at first, seem like an unanswerable paradox, our own experiences with traveling throughout the galaxy have provided the most likely explanation. Our use of temporary gravitational anomalies, or “gates”, to travel nearly instantaneously over large distances of space provides the necessary clue. Not only do these “gates” allow travel in space, they also permit travel in time, and potentially even between parallel universes. Although time travel is feasible, there is the prospect for confusing, and possibly dangerous, paradoxes. Early theories suggested that even insignificant changes in the past might be enough to alter our present time completely. However, more recent theories propose that time travel can result in a closed causal loop—a situation where a chain of events is created that loops back in time, so that an event turns out to be amongst its own causes. In the case of the Ll’Ellendr?n, it is believed that the Ellendorí went back in time to create the bioengineered planets which encouraged their expansion into space, thus stimulating the development of the technology necessary to bioengineer planets and carry out time travel, and finally resulting in the closure of the causal loop. If the Ellendorí were as long-lived as we are, planet bioengineering was probably pursued with far-removed goals in mind.

  Since the process of planet bioengineering would have taken many millions of years to complete, some degree of independent evolution probably occurred on each planet, with resulting species diversification. Indeed, this is what we have observed—planets in the Ll’Ellendr?n which have the same basic biochemistry, but sufficient biodiversity to be unique. As these bioengineered planets matured and stabilized, they provided new home worlds for the first wave of Ellendorí colonists. These first colonists expanded and diversified, interacting with each other and those people remaining on the Ellendorí home world, resulting in the complex patterns of colonization and genetic variation seen amongst the related peoples of the Ll’Ellendr?n.

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  Even our own peoples’ history is buried deep in time. Although the story of our origin has many variations, the basic pattern running through all the narratives is similar. There existed in the Ll’Ellendr?n a planet known as Gw?rdr?n. The name of the planet varies somewhat in the records, and we don’t know which sun it circled. If the stories are correct, it no longer exists, so it is unlikely that we will ever know its exact location. Like us, the inhabitants of Gw?rdr?n, the Gw?rdrí, were also hermaphroditic and unaging. However, in physical appearance they were quite different from us, often being described as a tall, dark, and broad-shouldered people. It is probable that they were descendants of one of the earlier waves of Ellendorí colonists, originating from a unique racial mix and then adapting to a planet with conditions that differed significantly from the Ellendorí home world. Approximately 15,000 years ago, the Gw?rdrí were visited by a colony ship of a very antiquated design. The people on that ship were a racially homogeneous clan claiming to have fled from Dor?anya, the planet circling Ellendor?a, which had passed into a cloud of interstellar dust and was experiencing severe glaciations. They believed themselves to be the last remaining denizens of the Ellendorí home world. Their request for a place of refuge on Gw?rdr?n was granted, and the records show that the two peoples lived harmoniously for a number of millennia.

  The Gw?rdrí were a highly advanced, technologically astute people, with a well-developed industrial base. By contrast, the Ellendorí, while technologically knowledgeable, had developed a science based on psychic abilities, requiring only a very small industrial footprint. Their divergent approaches to living maintained a cultural separation between the two races, and although some intermingling occurred, they remained as separate peoples throughout their cohabitation on Gw?rdr?n.

  About 9,000 years ago, resource limitation on Gw?rdr?n caused the formation of warring factions amongst the Gw?rdrí. The Gw?rdrí entered into a catastrophic cycle of war, leading to the development of increasingly devastating weapons. In the midst of this strife, the descendants of the Ellendorí refugees, who practiced pacifism and refused to become participants in the war, feared that their adopted homeland would be destroyed. Ultimately, a decision was made to refurbish the ancient colony ship, which still remained in orbit around the planet, and evacuate the Ellendorí and those few Gw?rdrí who had commingled with them. The records imply that the evacuation occurred only just in time, and the refugees had barely left Gw?rdrí’s solar system before massive explosions destroyed the planet. Not surprisingly, this terrible loss only served to further reinforce the pacifistic nature of the survivors.

  Neither truly Ellendorí nor Gw?rdrí, this small, highly inbred group was a blend of both peoples, and chose to call themselves the Ellendrí. The colony ship traveled until it reached a habitable planet—one circling a Class G sun (Terran classification used in translation) with no evidence of previous colonization, although it was clearly a legacy of Ellendorí bioengineering. This planet, which was named Ellendr?a, became our home, the land where our people have lived out the cycles of their lives for nearly 9,000 years. Throughout that time, Ellendr?a has been free from war and other significant violence.

  The Terran name for the Hél?w?r is the Orion Spur, one of the spiral arms in the Milky Way Galaxy.

  The Terran name for the J?laeth Dannaig Sér?en is the Milky Way Galaxy.

  The Ellendorí were believed to have evolved on Dor?anya, the planet circling the sun Ellendor?a. Eventually, the Ellendor?an solar system passed into a cloud of interstellar dust and experienced severe snowball glaciations, and the Ellendorí were forced to leave their homeland.

  Psychic abilities fall into two main categories:

  (1) psi-gamma—paranormal or anomalous cognition, often referred to as extrasensory perception (ESP). This is the ability to gain knowledge through means other than the five physical senses or logical inference. Psi-gamma includes telepathy, clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairalience, clairgustance, clairsentience, and precognition;

  (2) psi-kappa—paranormal action or anomalous operation. This is the ability to affect physical objects without physical mediation, and includes phenomena such as mind-matter interaction and survival after bodily death. Psi-kappa includes psychokinesis (aka telekinesis), out-of-body experiences, astral projection, apparitions, near-death experiences, mediumship, and reincarnation.

  The human organism can be considered as consisting of two parts located in different subsections of n-dimensional space—the physical brain/body and the extended consciousness. These two are connected by the trans-dimensional causal relations that we call psi-gamma on the afferent (inward conducting) side and psi-kappa on the efferent (outward conducting) side.

  The afferent psi-gamma causal process that unites the brain and the consciousness has not only a focus on the brain but, in addition, a penumbra (a shadow region) that allows information to be picked up from other minds (telepathy), other objects (clairvoyance), and future events (precognition). Likewise, the efferent psi-kappa causal process has a penumbra that allows for psychokinesis.

  Psi-gamma and psi-kappa causal relations are mediated by the interpenetrating energies of the energy-verse (aka the bulk, the between, or hyperspace), and these energies, which penetrate our bodies, are referred to as psychic, or psi, energies.

  Ellendrí Chronicles Backgrounder Parts I through IV and can be viewed (for free) at .

  World Building – Storytelling.

  Guardians’ Destiny – Storytelling.