Jack of Harts

The second major indigenous population center on San Lucas was further away from us than the first. It was also more united. Where the first had been a fractured amalgamation of different cultures and beliefs, the second had been a unified nation. They had slowly expanded and absorbed every other population center on the continent over the last few thousand years. Every other culture had been erased from history and a culture of stratified castes guaranteed the stability of what they thought of as the greatest and most powerful empire in the world. They might have even been right. But the conquered populations had not given up their beliefs as easily as the central government thought, and we sparked the flames of revolution. They saw our first scout ships burning through the skies, and thought they were divine messages that the time had come to strike at their oppressors. By the time we colonized their world, it had devolved into a religious and revolutionary war that was waged to the knife. They wiped out half the population of the entire continent before we realized they were there and made Contact.