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They do not speak, they do not bargain, they do not show mercy. They only destroy.
They do not desire our resources, or planets, our technology. They only destroy.
They do not wage war for any logical reason, striking without provocation and leaving only ashes in their wake. They only destroy.
[hr]
When they came for us the first time, they nearly annihilated us, and though we defeated them, our homeworld was lost to us in the process. We thought at the time that we had prevailed against, if not the bulk of Shivan forces, at least a significant portion of their strength.
In the time before the Shivans returned, we allowed ourselves to believe we had become superior - our technology had advanced significantly in the 30 years since the dark days of The Great War, and the first actions against the second Shivan invasion seemed to confirm that we were now on an equal footing with our Great War nemesis, that the Destroyer was no longer to be dreaded.
We were wrong - the Shivan force that almost ended two stellar empires was naught but a small scouting party. The force arrayed against us was was invincible, fleet after fleet of vessels stronger than our most powerful ship, the product of over 20 years of development and construction - a ship we envisioned would serve to defend us should the Shivans ever return. Our hubris was nearly our undoing.
We could do nothing but retreat before their hosts - that we still live is only because their fleet did not push further into our borders, instead encircling one of our more populous system's star, thus giving us the chance to retreat and cut off the jump points linking that system to the rest of our GTVA space. While we were carrying out the evacuation, the Shivans somehow triggered a supernova - we do not understand how or why, we only know that many of the Shivan juggernauts used the star's death throes to jump... somewhere.
We can only pray that collapsing the jump points keeps the gate barred, though we do not know where their first fleet came from, or where this new fleet went. In them we see the doom of all life.