Great Ones

The Great Ones was the name given by all modern Foitani to the Imperial-era Foitani who lived before and during the Suicide Wars. They were revered as demigods by their descendants. Around 3000, a research group discovered an ancient site where a squadron of Great Ones had been kept in suspended animation for millennia.

As modern Foitani were all vodranet, and as they had lost all knowledge of Foitan history and physiology after the Wars, they assumed that the Great Ones were also vodranet. The modern Foitani were horrified when, on reviving the Great Ones, they learned that they were kwopillot, and were more horrified still when they learned that the kwopil genome was the natural one for their species, and that it was their ancestors--who had instigated the war by their rebellion and had destroyed all kwopil settlements before their few surviving worlds were knocked back into a Dark Age--who were the deviants. The moderns were prepared to destroy the Great Ones, themselves, and all witnesses to maintain their version of history, but through the intervention of Jennifer Logan a peace agreement was reached that allowed the Great Ones to coexist with the moderns.

The Great Ones had a penchant for exploration and research of primitive civilizations. They would typically abduct several specimens, destroy the specimens, and store their physical and neural makeups in a computer program. As needed, they would create new specimens and conduct experiments with no thought to the comfort or safety of the specimens. They would also, if they deemed a primitive race likely to pose a threat should it ever evolve into a spacefaring civilization, eradicate that race by engineering an incurable, lethal, communicable respiratory virus and introducing it into the population. A failed attempt to eradicate humans from Earth in this fashion resulted in the creation of the common cold.