by Erl Tyriss
What is Unwelcome Neighbors? It is several things. It is a setting for various fictional creations, but also encompassing a thematic series of creative works.
UwN (UnWelcome Neighbors) is in setting terms three a parallel universes of Earths and Milky Way galaxies. Each has been touched by similar events in ancient civilizations. These civilizations were able to bridge the dimensional barriers of each universe and contact their counterparts in the parallel universes.
Over 200 million years ago a species, later to be called the Deiwos by humans, built a series of very advance technological constructions. One of those constructs is an advance set of hyperspatial gates, that the Deiwos built at many sites throughout the Milky way galaxy. These gates twist space/time to allow travel between the gates at all points within the network. Those gates had the potential to even cross outside of the universe.
The other construct was a basement pocket universe that underlay, but connected to, the local galactic group. The Deiwos filled this lumscent space with energy and particles till it became a complete plenum. This lumscent plenum became a power source and communication medium for the Deiwos civilization.
In one of those universes the Deiwos decided to advance the work of their predecessors by combining these two massive construct. This plan was considered significantly in three universe. The outcomes were drastically different in each of these three.
The first universe is identified by the writer title of the Dissolution Wars. In setting, once the Deiwos started to communicate between the universes, the Deiwos would come to be called this universe the Bleak. In the Bleak, the consens between the Deiwos feel apart about connecting the hyperspational gate network to e lumscent plenum. There was great concern that the result could cause sufficient spatial distortion to slowly destroy the whole local galactic group by collapsing the local space into a large galactic size singularity.
The disagreement lead to eventual total wars that spanned millenia and destroyed the galactic wide Deiwos civilization. The result was to treaty that split the galaxy with a clear neutral dividing line between the various Deiwos societies. The Deiwos lost most of their past civilizations influence and capacity. New species would go to the stars and build new civilizations in the place where the Deiwos had lived and walked.
The second universe is identified by the writer’s title of Taraka Indriya. In setting, once the Deiwos started communicating between the universe, hey called this universe the Bliss. In the Bliss, the Deiwos were able to discover the flaw in their merger plans and adjusted the engineering designs. The leaders of the Deiwos galactic civilization were able to persuade all of the dissenting factions to allow the project to go forward, and thus the Deiwos civil war was avoided in this universe.
The lack of galactic level strife would see the Deiwos continue to dominate the stars for millions of years. As younger species developed into space faring technological societies, they would always encounter aspects of the Deiwos presence. This would and did lead to minor strife and tensions, yet the Deiwos made room for these newcomers.
The third universe is identified by the writer’s title of the Enduring Realm. In setting, once the Deiwos started communicating between the universes, they called this one the Broken. In the Broken, the Deiwos pushed through with the engineering merger, despite the violence of the dissidents. The fear of an eventual galactic collapse into a singularity was found to be incorrect, but such vast metric engineering was found to have another price. The adjustment done in the Bliss were not done in the Broken, so dimensional tensions and strain was created . These stressors caused volumes of resulting hyperspatial lumscent plenum to be unstable. The new structure placed strain on prime space/time, but also tore into other space/times showing the Deiwos wee not the first civilization with these vast space construction ambitions.
From these other spaces came strange forms of life, some not even following the natural laws of the prime universes. The Deiwos of the Broken would find themselves having to defend their home galaxies against some of these strange life forms.
These three parallel universes would find connection through the actions of the Deiwos. In time the Deiwos and other civilizations would find ways to communicate and travel between the Bliss, the Bleak, and the Broken.
These three universes each represent connected but separate settings for a variety of fiction, each with their own genre. The next post will discuss the worldbuilding aspects of the human civilizations of each universe of UnWelcome Neighbors.