Origins

In the beginning, were the Divine.

Well, that would be their take on the story.

In the thirty odd systems the Divine spontaneously and dramatically manifested in exactly 66 years ago, then populated and influenced - in other terms, invaded - there existed flourishing, advanced and interlinked civilisations of bipedal creatures calling themselves humans.  Native to a planet of this galactic sector they had, some eight centuries ago and after roughly a million years of evolution, begun to explore their own solar system.  Roughly four centuries after that, they accidentally figured out how to jump spaceships between the stars, and had spread out among them.  Amongst their many reasons for doing so was an existential quest for other sentient life in the Universe.  Bet they regret that particular impulse now...  

No-one knows where the Divine came from, and definitely not why, but they brought four things with them to every solar system they colonised.  To reformulate the original sentence, it would be correct to say that a lot of things began with the Divine. First, they popped out of nowhere in huge disk-shaped habitats, made of some unknown metal and imbued with a density considerable enough to cause gravitational upsets in local space.  Second, they brought their internal quarrels.  Third, they came with an obvious disdain for humanity, mingled with a tendency to meddle with their trajectory as a means to further their own, obscure personal and collective goals.

Fourth, they brought Chaos.  Not in the metaphorical sense - well, that too - but as their existential and physical negative, and quite possibly what they were fleeing from in the first place.

No-one seriously claimed to understand the actual science behind near-instantaneous interstellar travel when and since it was invented, but the most important thing was that it worked.  It worked, until Chaos came.  It seems that everywhere that intelligent life cannot thrive, Chaos can spread and reign.   It thrives where neutron stars crush everything that is within their grasp, where pulsars irradiate every celestial body in proximity with deadly radiation, where giants expand and engulf everything they once nurtured; and more importantly for the present discussion, it thrives in the space between stars, both visible and invisible, the medium through which interstellar travel tunnels.  

It seems to be hungry.  Literally.  Chaos does not sleep, and those who which to travel through it can only pray that it is currently looking elsewhere.

With interstellar travel having become extremely difficult, exceptionally painful and dramatically perilous, it dwindled dramatically.  Any individual in their right mind would avoid it altogether, but it is exceptionally profitable, and so sometimes a particularly brave, foolhardy or desperate soul will give it a shot.  They do not, generally, succeed.

Every star system inhabited by the spreading human species was occupied by the Divine, and although humankind will only know this in a few thousand years from now, the Divine only occupied such star systems.  Which is not, of course, a coincidence. 

 

What is actually known of the Divine ?  They do not travel between the stars, but they can cross the void and stride between planets as if it they were on a playing field.  Their numbers vary wildly : in the Brahman System, there appear to be thousands of them; in the Eden System, there are only three, two, one, or about fifty thousand, depending on who you ask; in the Olympos system, there are exactly thirteen.

What the Divine look like in a physical sense, nobody can agree upon (so everybody makes them look like humans, or humans with weird animal heads on), and it is widely thought they have no true physical existence in our plane, and can hence appear as they would like.  What their goals are, nobody knows.   The different groups of the Divine definitely do not mix well together, and some conjecture that this is part of the reason why they came to this part of the galaxy in the first place : each to their own, so to speak.  If that was their reasoning, they didn't completely work it through, since within any one system the Divine do not seem to get on too well either.  There generally appears to be one leading figure, presiding more or less violently over a bunch of turbulent brethren. 

Nobody knows anything.  All that they can do is believe.  Belief has always been a means to try to make some sense out of the founding principles of the universe, which were pretty violently overturned those 66 years ago.  Human societies have always believed in superior, invisible entities and so it was no great ordeal to modify or resurrect those practices to tune in to the new reality.  In many senses, religion became easier, as raised eyes and joined hands could now be pointed to the aliens' disc-shaped home, rather than to some ill-defined segment of the sky or earth.

Religion is not the only method of exploring the meaning of the Divine; science can objectively measure a certain number of things about them.  They are definitely beings, whose physical presence, despite a lack of corporeal form in the usual sense, can be measured by distortions at an astronomical scale which are relatively constant from one manifestation to the next; that is to say, they do seem to be individuals.

They are clearly able to bend the forces of the universe to their will, and it is generally believed, and there is good evidence for the fact, that not all Divine are equal in this respect, and that not all are as proficient in every field.  Some, for example, like to manipulate electromagnetic fields, creating anything ranging from solar flares to devastating lightning storms : like the Divine that the inhabitants of the Hellas System call Zeus, or those of the Enuma Elish System label Adad.  Others like to mess with gravity waves, creating ripples of space time as easily as they create whirlpools in the middle of otherwise calm oceans.  Zeus' comrade Poseidon is of such a bent.  Yet others seem to be able to manipulate life at a molecular level, causing all kinds of sudden and unexpected effects, and so forth. 

Why they do this ?  Nobody knows.   All of them interfere on a regular basis with human society, both positively and negatively.  They definitely do it to get one over each other, but there is also a general consensus, formed from solid statistical data, that there is an overarching purpose.  The most popular theory on that is that they are using humankind, or intend to use it, as a shield against Chaos, and perhaps as a spear.  Then again, perhaps that is simply what humans would do if the tables were turned, and maybe such motivations are as far removed from those of the Divine, as those of humans are from an ant.

Most certainly they push key (or random ?) individuals, or entire groups, in one direction or another.  The practical consequences of it all, for the intelligent species that try to get on with their lives in the thirty-odd star systems, range from the entirely unnoticeable to the absolutely earth-shakingly dramatic.  People, whomever they are, generally prefer to live through the former periods than the latter, because as recent history has shown, there is literally nothing they can do about it once it starts.  They can only hang on to the proverbial cliff-edge with their metaphorically slipping fingers, and hope not to be among the millions to perish.

Worshipping the Divine has universally proven to be something that intelligent peoples can actually do to stop the unstoppable from actually starting.  There have been various theories put forward as to why this works.  These range from attributing compassion to the Divine, to suggesting that they in some way benefit from eating or inhaling the offerings made to them, to notions that they like to judge dead people, and welcome the worthy into their home in the sky.  That all this is almost certainly baloney has already been figured out by many enlightened people.  One more realistic theory that has caught the imagination is that making weird noises in architecturally impressive buildings has the same effect on the Divine as the bright and harmonious colours and cute shape of a butterfly has on human observers.  They remind us that the butterfly is there, and that there are perceived moral consequences for stepping on it.

A certain number of otherwise intelligent beings would go ahead and step on the butterfly anyway, especially if it was in the way of some material advantage, and that, at least, the mortal inhabitants of this corner of the galaxy and the Divine, have in common.

Welcome to this particular corner of the galaxy, do pray have a pleasant stay.