Prologue

Sol system
Sol III (aka Terra or Earth)
Time: irrelevant

Here I am watching the world end. All too much has already passed away and now it is time for Sol to go the same way as too many other stars. The life cycle of the universe must go on. I am still somewhat nostalgic of the previous times I walked here rather than flew past. Terrans have come and gone and now even our successor species are branching out into space. The next crop of races has begun to take to the heavens, much as we did when the opportunity presented itself to us. The urge to interfere as the First Ones did with us is strong, but our own desire to see them succeed has made that a moot point. It is a shame to see Terra go away, so many fond memories of the world and the movements that were spawned from it across the galaxy.

All that we are now is proof that the First Ones have interfered in our advancement as a species. Even the thrice-damned Vorlons with their attempts at seeding psychic powers attempted to force us into saving their own society. How the mighty have fallen. Even their partners in crime, though they would never admit to that appellation, the Shadows are no more. The Shadows' crime against our mentors has been avenged and they have been erased from history. Perhaps an ending that was too soft on our parts, but one that was just indeed.

With a sigh, the individual watched as Terra was slowly consumed as Sol expanded into a Red Giant star. His sensor clusters filtering out the harsh light that showed the work of millennia reduced to nothing as the universe's own life cycle came to an end once more. Floating as he was just outside Terra's gravity field, his body one with his ship, the view brought to mind the first time when things truly changed for Terra's descendants. How time itself had been flipped and torn asunder by the very First Ones who had watched it come into its own. With a quiet chime, the individual watched for a short while later, but his mind was reaching back to the past in remembrance of what had come before…

Z'ha'dum
~ 1250 A.D.

Gathered together once more, before their Great Crusade to finally prove who was right, the entirety of the Shadows met in psychic congress to discuss their war plans.

"We all know of the attempts by the others to force an end to our discussion. They are short sighted and do not see that without conflict, races cannot become stronger. To that end, we must plan for all contingencies, especially if we are to win the debate."

"We all agree, but what about the usurpers who deigned to attack our realm while we slumbered. What shall we do to avenge this insult?"

The usurpers in the minds of every gathered Shadow were the Kirishiacs. Those who had lead a massively successful invasion of the various First Ones without too many difficulties. The fragmented nature of the various powers had made the Kirishiacs bold enough to attack Z'ha'dum itself, but that also spelled the end of their conquests. The Triad was the first to bring the others notice of the actions of the Kirishiacs, but it went unheeded by the other First Ones. Even the Walkers lost several systems while they were elsewhere mapping only what they found interesting. In this vacuum of responsibility, the Kirishiacs did as they chose. Only the direct intervention of Lorien along with a combined force of Shadow, Walker, Torvalus, Vorlon, and Triad forces were the Kirishiacs removed from their conquered territory. To the previously slumbering Shadows, it proved to be too much for their sensibilities. This rage and motivation for revenge slumbered with them and when they began their Great Crusade against the Vorlons and their thrall races, their own plan to punish the Kirishiacs began.

"It has begun and now the interlopers will be dealt with in a manner most fitting. We have found an unassuming star system with four large worlds to imprison the Lords of Kirish upon. Their ships will be destroyed and their entire population will be moved there. We will place ships nearby on the fourth world and in the moons of the largest of the four largest worlds as guardians."

And so it began… The Kirishiacs were stymied on all fronts by the more powerful Shadow ships and their more powerful Thralls. Reduced in size to a mere handful, they were imprisoned in a star system with a solitary yellow star and nine small planets. Close enough to their previous domain, yet far enough that they could do no more harm, the Shadows exiled every member to the worlds they had selected. Here the Kirishiacs would be watched until such a time that Lorien himself could be brought in to render judgment. The Shadows content in their plans and confident that they had removed the threat of the Kirishiacs went back into their cycle of slumbering. Their dreams, if such beings could dream, were on their eventual triumph over the Vorlons.

For the Kirishiacs, all they had were the thoughts of revenge against the Shadows. Their High Lord and his council were all that truly remained. The Shadows had made the mistake of leaving the council together or maybe it was their sense of rightness that truly caused this lapse by the elder race.

"It is much as we had feared my brothers and sisters. Our fleet is no more and we barely have the sensors that we need" said High Lord Ch'Lorn'a. "We are very fortunate in that the Shadows did not remove our technology, nor did they find the remains of the technology we were able to acquire from the others." Such was this advanced technology, did the Kirishiacs begin to plan their eventual escape from their prisons. They still had communications with the other worlds, but the strange orbital mechanics of the star system soon rendered line-of-sight communications to even smaller windows of opportunity. The few shuttles that tried to launch were all quickly destroyed by the Battle Crabs placed in orbit by the Shadows.

Despair soon began to overtake the once proud race; it would be nearly 640 years before the Kirishiacs were able to throw off their despair when the unexpected happened. They began to detect crude radio signals coming from the third world. These broadcasts soon were a constant for each of the four worlds of their reduced dominion. With the detection of these signals, High Lord Ch'Lorn'a convened the council once more on the fifth planet.

"We've detected a number of signals coming from closer to the star of this system. Triangulation using our passive sensors has shown that it is coming from the third planet. It looks as though the inhabitants have developed to an important scientific principle. I place before the council a proposal to use these primitives as our revenge tool against the other First Ones and especially the Shadows. We will use our remaining stealth tools taken from the Torvalus and observe the worlds. We will then infiltrate it with agents and impersonate different scientists there to further their understanding of the universe and of science. We will bring them together and into the stars and we will have our revenge against the Shadows!" Such an impassioned speech by the leader had the rest of the council ready to render aid. It was decided that all six members of the council would be present on the shuttle that would travel to the third world, or Earth as it was known by the inhabitants. The presence of their advanced technology would be hidden as ably by the Torvalus technology as it hid its own inventors from detection by countless other races. Their mission would be observation of multiple scientists with the eventual goal of replacing them fully. Names like Edison, Fermi, Tesla, Von Braun, Einstein, and Schrodinger were strange to the Lords, but these would be their targets for the first part of their mission. Instead of killing each subject, as the implications could be dire when their manipulations came to the fore, the assembled Kirishiac Lords decided to become something different for each scientist. Lovers, friends, spouses, and children were to be the preferred method of intrusion into each life. Slowly their ideas began to take form and the world began to change as the sciences of the Kirishiacs became more widely known throughout the world's scientific community.

A/N: It appears that some people have confused when the Kirishiacs began their program of changing Earth's scientists over technology wise (evidently not reading the names of the scientists who received doubles, all prominent in the 19th and 20th Centuries). I have gone back and edited this chapter to make the time difference from when they were imprisoned to when they detected radio signals more noticeable.