Discovery of the Yor

During this period of slow reaching out across the void, the Drengin and Arceans first encountered the Yor. This synthetic race had been created eons previously by the Iconian race, now thought to be extinct. Not being biologically alive, the Yor explored the galaxy in huge ships flown by a single occupant.

The Yor had inherited their civilization from the Iconians, which they had risen up against and exterminated on the Iconian home world. The Iconians were the oldest of the “younger” sentient races in the galaxy, and had their own limited form of space travel. They had been servants of the Precursor civilization called the Arnor. When a rogue faction of Arnor later called the Dread Lords split off and began a Precursor civil war, the Dread Lords gave the Yor sentience and malevolence in retaliation for the Iconians’ loyalty toward the true Arnor.

After the Precursors disappeared, the Yor gradually explored their area of the galaxy. Lacking the technology to create stargates, the Yor spent many hundreds of thousands of years searching in vain for other alien races.

In time, the Yor observed the subjugation of the Torians by the Drengin. Their cold mental circuitry approved of the brutal tactics and wholesale slaughter of filthy organic lifeforms. The surveillance also led the Yor to the knowledge of how to build their own stargates.

Their cold mental circuitry approved of the brutal tactics and wholesale slaughter of filthy organic lifeforms

While stargates offered a significant upgrade from sublight travel, the immense structures are astronomically expensive to build and require placement both at the point of origin and the destination. Expanding into new parts of the galaxy via stargate took literally ages, since a stargate had to first be sent through normal space to the target star system.

While the science behind the stargates was well-understood by those who constructed them, Arceans, Yor, and Drengin alike remained unsuccessful in using the theories behind them to construct a stardrive that would allow individual ships to fold space and travel to a particular location.

While the great races looked outward for more opportunities for expansion, the Torians learned at great cost how much effort it took for the Drengin to maintain their forces. The Torians leveraged this advantage to wage a guerilla campaign over hundreds of generations that eventually forced the Drengin to abandon the planet. The Drengin had long exhausted any innate value in controlling Toria. Having no concept of honor or even pride, the Drengin merely determined the planet was no longer worth the effort and left.