The Phantoms

Recent History
By 819 AS the Phantoms were the most isolated group in Sirius. The society itself was a mixture of the aliens that still remained on those Temples, and any humans crazy or curious enough to try and dock at these seemingly abandoned stations. Humans attempting to work with Etherium were met with a cold and sinister acceptance if they were compliant, or death if they were not. The Etherium despise humans yet had a need for them which would later see them equip them with thier own techonolgy and altered ships for human use. This did not make the Etherium hate humans as a whole any less, but if the result was meeting their goals they would use humans as weapons against themselves. These goals were usually attempts to gather resources or attack anything that might threaten the safety of these hidden bases. The name "Phantoms" originated from the term human Acolytes gave to them, and human operatives adopted the name as to scare and unnerve thier opponents.

History
As most humans continued thier ordinary existence oblivious to the threat of the Nomad War, a small group of humans lead by the infamous Edison Trent thwarted the nomad invasion, prematurely activating the nomad hypergate that would allow the nomads to complete thier invasion of the populated human systems. Instead the majority of the Nomad fleet was sent at random far across the galaxy, with the few nomads that were left behind completely disoriented from the shock of losing the mindshare. Edison Trent had saved Sirius from the imminent nomad threat. No one really cared where the countless nomad fleets had gone, the important thing was that they were no longer here and were not likely to be a problem again.

This turned out to be a very selfish point of view. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and the nomad fleet had to have a random exit point from Hyperspace. That exit point was at the centre of the Etherium Empire, far across the stars. The day Sirius was saved, the Empire of the Etherium was doomed.

The Etherium Empire had grown to be a utopian society for its inhabitants, thier culture was very advanced in technology and space travel, but the Etherium were a physically weak people, and had few warriors. They had found an equilibrium with thier enviroment long ago and lived in peace, considering violence to be primitive and uncultured. These beliefs are what contributed to the downfall of thier aeons-long Empire - a near complete lack of planetary defences. The Etherium had ships of war, but they were deployed near the outskirts of thier systems and they had not foreseen such an attack as was made during the Fall.

The Fall

The first signs of any disruption to the inhabitants of Etheria (The home system of the Etherium Empire) was the rapid change in the color of the sky. Etheria's sky is normally purple, due to the large nebulae that the Etherium call thier home. The Hypergate event horizon initialised very close to the planet, with the planet being stripped of its atmosphere, destroying all life on Etheria. Fragments of this shattered planet were sucked in with the backlash effect of the sudden jumphole event horizon. The debri of the planetoid, its satellites and a small orbital research station were sent on a random trajectory to be scattered across Sirius.

The Nomad Fleets began to arrive through the now established hypergate. The Nomads were disoriented by thier journey, and irritated at the results of the Nomad War and loss of thier power source. Unlike the nomads that were left behind confused and in shock from the loss of the Mindshare, they began systematicly gathering resources to build a new Dyson Sphere around the young star at the centre of the Etherium Empire. The Etherium had no way to defend against the countless ships of the Nomad Mindshare and were overwhelmed and defeated with very little resistance. The planets were scoured for resources, and one by one the stars of the Etherium fell to the unknown invaders. The Etheriums became extinct within thier previous borders in under 1 terran year.

The Last of the Etherium

All was not lost however. The event horizon backlash caused by the Hypergate initialisation had flung the remains of the Etherium homeworld through the gate on a reverse trajectory to be deposited at the very fringe of Sirius Sector. Mostly this was planetoid fragments, a large portion of the purple nebulae surrounding Etheria, and an Orbital Research station. The station, which later came to be known as the Temple of the Revenant, survived the journey intact, with its crew the only survivors of the nomad invasion. Other fragments of the planatoid may have survived but could be located anywhere in Sirius and if so no contact has been made with them.

Physiology

The Etherium are a silicon based asexual lifeform, a seemingly bipedal being. The body is in fact made up of several million translucent silicon strands woven together, each a synthesising organ absorbing precious Tridium from the atmosphere. The only known source of this precious element is in the nebulae of the Etherium Empire. The Etherium require this element to survive as any human needs water. Without it they grow week in a matter of hours and will invariably die a short time later. Fortunately for the Temple's survivors a portion of this nebulae was also sent across the galaxy with them. This synthesising process (similar to that of a plant) defeats the need for a digestive system, giving the Etherium a wispy, ghost like appearance. Etherium are very intellegent beings, and thier silicon composition makes for easy technology grafting. It is not unknown for an Etherium to have several implants. Thier ghostly appearance would later see them called "Phantoms" by the rare few that may encounter one in Sirius sector.

Reactions

During the first moments of the Nomads arrival the Etherium were confused and in disarray. They could not understand how or why this stellar event had occured, nor why anyone would want to send what was clearly an invasion fleet to them. The Etherium had no enemies, in fact they had existed in isolationism for centuries, thier worlds rich in resources, and this approach is what caused thier society to thrive. But from the Etherium's perspective the coincidences did not stack up. The attack had clearly been a calculated strike, and the sheer mass of the fleets sent showed that the beings responsible were far more advanced then them if they could send entire fleets across the galaxy with such precision. Before succumbing to the focused Nomad attacks, the Etherium managed to make contact with the research station on the edges of Sirius using thier advanced communications technology, requesting that if they had survived to find those responsible for this heinous act of war. As the last of the Etherium stars fell, they sent a final transmission to the people of the research station and an ultimatum - Find and destroy those responsible or die a forgotten people. They were all that remains of a three millenia old Empire. This saw them rename the station "The Temple of the Revenant" in honor of those billions lost during the Fall.