Attention sentient beings that inhabit galaxy 2219B3, the galaxy known to your species as the Milky Way! Pay close attention. This is your first and only warning. This galaxy and all inhabitants are the possession of the Eternal Ones. All sentient creatures contained herein must now cease performing their essential biological functions in order that we harvest the energy by-product of sentience.

Our sentience is our own! You can't have it!

Can we talk about this?

We're close to being able to feed you guys without sentients dying. Give us more time!

No one owns my galaxy, and no one owns me!

Submission to the sentience energy harvesting will marginally reduce the discomfort caused by the life termination process. Sentimental sentients will spend these final moments in close proximity to other creatures with shared kinship bonds. Impudent sentients will spend their final moments mounting a panic-stricken assault in a futile attempt to stop our inexorable harvesting.

Put me down for "impudent".

We won't mount a panic-stricken assault. It will be a very well-planned assault.

Don't you want to help us find a non-lethal way to feed you?

I'm giving you ten seconds to get the hell out of my galaxy before I end your Eternal existence.

Let those who wish to engage in such doomed defiance now come forward to meet a painful death in the cold vacuum of space.

Oh, yeah? I'll show you doomed, ophthalmology-boy! Come on and eat hot photons!

That has got to be the lamest threat I've ever heard. You think that scares us?

I eat threatening toads like you for breakfast!

It doesn't have to be this way! Let's share technology!

You have no chance of winning. Resistance only makes the harvesting process more painful. You have one more chance to surrender.

Ah, looking to avoid a fight, huh? Scared, huh? Afraid we'll fight back, huh?

Let's see just how "Eternal" you really are!

Will you give us a chance to feed your sentience silo without us dying?

Any more last words, eyeball kid?

Our fleet will now exterminate you.

Why must we die to feed you? Why?

Come on, then. I'm gonna get Late-Twentieth-Century on your butt!

We surrender.

OK. We surrender.

You made your point. I'll surrender.

Forget it. We surrender.

Good. You will now cease to exist, and your sentience energy shall feed the Eternal Ones!

You have utterly humbled my forces. I unconditionally surrender.

IN YOUR FACE, SIX-EYES! We kicked your posterior!

Now, aren't you sorry you messed with us?

Surrender? No way! I've got you guys on the ropes and now I'm going to wipe you out!

This is an unprecedented event. We have never been defeated.

You guys think you're so tough. But you're no match for League ingenuity!

Die, Eternal One scum!

You think you have won a great victory. But you have won nothing.

We won our continued survival, you so-called Eternal One!

Nice attempt at a psyche-out Eternal-boy, but we won't fall for it!

We won everything! You Eternal Ones lost everything.

We are not the Eternal Ones. We are merely their Heralds. Harbingers of their coming. Little more than glorified errand boys to the gods.

Then tell me all about the Eternal Ones, or suffer the worst punishment the galaxy has known!

I will tell you not because I fear threats, but because I wish to tell you. You deserve to know what is about to befall you. The Eternal Ones are mighty beyond the comprehension of physical life-forms.

Liar! You're trying to wriggle out of your defeat!

Don't try to trick me with your Eternal One deceit! Prepare to die!

You may not like the truth I tell, but it is no less true because you fear it. The Eternal Ones are mighty beyond the comprehension of sentient life-forms.

Gulp. Uh-oh.

The Eternal Ones are mighty beyond the comprehension of sentient life-forms.

They stride across the stars like giants, and can destroy star systems at a whim. They were old when the Precursors were young. An eternity ago, long before the appearance of the Precursors, the Eternal Ones had physical forms and conventional sentience.

They consumed other biological entities to sustain their life energies, just as you do. As they evolved, they transcended their physical bodies and mortal biological processes.

And then they disappeared beyond the stars, eternal and immortal. But not all the first ones have gone away. Some of these beings feared leaving the physical realm.

So they desperately clung to the threshold between the corporeal world and the world beyond, afraid to transcend, but unwilling to return to mere mortality. And so their hunger remained.

First they fed on the energy of other biological entities. But as their energy forms grew more and more rarefied, so too did their appetites. Soon, only the energy by-products of sentience could sustain these Eternal Ones.

So sentient life is now cursed to die, that the Eternal Ones might live. And sentient life is cursed to never evolve to the level of the Eternal Ones. All such evolutionary potential is snuffed out long before it can aspire to Precursorhood, let alone so lofty a state as the Eternal Ones.

Why do you serve such monsters?

We have no choice. We are the remains of a great race that flourished before the previous galactic cataclysm. Our ancestors led this galaxy's last doomed charge against the previous fleet of Heralds.

We sought to save the galaxy from the Eternal Ones, just as you did. But unlike you, our ancestors were defeated. The Eternal Ones gave them a choice. Serve as Heralds, or see our species utterly extinguished.

As long as we serve the Eternal Ones, our species is allowed to live on. This has put grave constraints on the development of our race, but at least we endure. Our race has long been thought to be dead. And so we are. We are the walking dead, bringing damnation to our home galaxy.

Had we defeated you in combat, your race might have been offered the chance to serve as Heralds. Your genetic material could have lived on. But since you have done the impossible and defeated us, it is likely that the Eternal Ones will destroy you out of irritation.

When will they get here?

When the Sentience Silo is full, the Eternal Ones will translate one infinitesimal portion of their immaterial essence to the galactic core.

If the silo is not filled soon, the Eternal Ones will arrive to personally pacify the galaxy. They will open hundreds of thousands of HyperSpace portals throughout the galaxy, and channel all the sentience energy to the silo.

We'll stop your vile masters before they destroy us!

So you say.

So how do we beat them first?

My people have never discovered a way to stop them.

Those portals are destroying spatial reality! Don't they know that?

Tell those vampires to stop that before the galaxy is destroyed!

The Eternal Ones appear to be aware of the interstellar breakdown caused by their feeding method. Systems or quadrants inevitably break down. Occasionally an entire galaxy is obliterated.

The Eternal Ones don't like to go away hungry from a collapsed galaxy, but they see interstellar breakdown as an inevitable consequence.

They expect to despoil some natural resources to maintain their way of life. There are more galaxies where this one came from. Although some Eternal Ones seem concerned with the loss of entire galaxies, most Eternal Ones see galaxies as a functionally limitless resource.

The Eternal Ones think that if they hurt and destroy enough galaxies, they may one day "train" a galaxy to freely offer up its sentience energy to them. They see this punishment the way a sentient breeds wild herd beasts to meekly submit to the butcher's ax.

What? Do they think our galaxy is some junkyard?

That's an appropriate metaphor.

It's bad enough they want to kill us and end our evolution! But I won't let them put our physical reality at risk!

I understand such determination. But what will you do to stop them?

Not for long. We're going to use your technology to stop them. We're sending our tech teams over there for tech loot. And you WILL cooperate!

We're sending our tech teams over there to pillage your technology, got it? And you WILL cooperate!

I will cooperate with you. I will open all archives on Eternal One technology and records.

That was a quick conversion, Herald. Why are you so eager to cooperate?

Because there is a chance you will succeed.

What? You want us to succeed?

My race has sought the destruction of the Eternal Ones for millennia before my birth. There comes a time when a sentient must pledge himself to something greater than himself to be worthy of the name. This is my time. You may send your tech team now.

You better cooperate. Because your existence is in our hands.

You may send your tech team now.

Here they come. Over and out.

May you succeed where all others have failed.