Milky Way

Biodata

Geography

Scale and Structure

Major Regions

• Galactic center — Historically a gathering place for advanced civilizations. The central black hole is essential to the survival of every species born in the galaxy 6 393.
• Solar System — Located near the galactic edge; later designated the center of the Star Ring Alliance’s proposed territory 6 461.
• Perseus, Orion, and Sagittarius spiral arms — Selected for the Star Ring Alliance’s expansion, with territory extending from the end of Perseus to the middle of Sagittarius 461.
• Galactic edge — Initially considered safer for humanity because resources were scarcer and powerful civilizations were concentrated farther inward. Old Hu later chose the edge for concealed reconnaissance and development 6 345.
• Insect Zone — Swarm-controlled territory extending into the fourth dimension. Both the Mechanical Civilization and Li Shun concealed bases there 423 612.
• Treant Civilization’s hidden system — Isolated from normal galactic movement through spatial manipulation. Its elders repeatedly adjusted its position to avoid surrounding celestial bodies, eventually leaving Ninety-Seven unable to locate it 215.
• Alliance Space — A refuge and fleet-production center used by the five Great Star Region Civilizations and dozens of Small Star Sector Civilizations. It is explicitly described as outside the Milky Way and provides a time advantage 497.

Galactic Consciousness

Central Black Hole

• Origin — The central black hole developed consciousness while the Milky Way was forming more than ten billion years earlier. Initially instinctive, it acquired thought and self-awareness over billions of years 624 625.
• Connection to native life — All life born in the galaxy has consciousness fields connected to the black hole. Its destruction would instantly kill that life, regardless of whether the galaxy’s stars and planets could otherwise survive 393 689.
• Control over consciousness — The Galactic Consciousness could strip native beings of their consciousness fields, but this authority did not extend to civilizations originating in other galaxies 624 689.
• Physical limitations — Early Galactic Consciousnesses could scarcely influence matter directly, despite their control over native life. Their ability to act improved over time 624.
• Range limitation — A galactic consciousness weakens as it travels farther from its central black hole 689.
• Memory archive — The black hole records events throughout the galaxy, including civilizations’ histories, technological development, and biological research. Its accumulated information became a major prize for those seeking control of it 649.

Daozi and the Weakened Consciousness

During the Deep Space Civilization’s assault on the central black hole, the Galactic Consciousness expended most of its energy transferring its consciousness field. Daozi emerged from that transfer, while the consciousness remaining with the black hole lost its sense of self 625.

Daozi subsequently fostered life across the Milky Way and created the first humans using the Insect Race’s Consciousness Field. The black hole’s consciousness later began recovering, but the Insect Emperor’s consciousness attack forced it back into slumber 626.

• Identity revealed — Hu Yu identified Daozi through a consciousness field detectable throughout the Milky Way, but detectable in the Secondary Universe only when Daozi appeared 624.
• Later representative — Ninety-Seven secretly became the Black Hole Consciousness’s representative during the reconstruction era 686.

Civilizations and Governance

Civilization Hierarchy

The Destroyers’ early explanation distinguishes technological rank from the amount of territory a civilization occupies 4.

Galactic Alliance Policies

• Purpose — The five Great Star Region Civilizations brought together more than a hundred Small Star Sector Civilizations to seek a lasting solution to the insect infestation 4.
• Membership — Small Star Sector status was the minimum qualification for joining the alliance 4.
• Independent development — Lower-level civilizations remained outside the alliance system. The major powers generally did not intervene in their wars, hoping diverse evolutionary and technological paths would produce a solution to the insects 4.
• Patrol network — After unusual insect activity was detected more than 50,000 years earlier, civilization-held territory was divided into inspection regions. Patrols searched for infestations; Destroyers handled threats beyond a Patrol’s capabilities 4.
• Black hole restrictions — Interference with black holes was prohibited. Permitted research was limited in scale or conducted using artificially created small black holes 590.
• Travel restrictions — During the Fish Horse Star crisis, visits to neighboring galaxies were restricted to avoid provoking additional conflicts 587.

History

Formation and the Snow Tribe’s Unification

The young Milky Way was densely packed and unstable. Stars frequently collided or disintegrated, and more than 99 percent of emerging civilizations vanished before developing the means to withstand nearby stellar explosions 44.

The Snow Tribe rose from Snow Star and challenged the Knight and Doomsday Civilizations. Their war spread across the galaxy, destroying celestial bodies through antimatter annihilation, dimensional collapse, radiation, and energy tides 687 688.

The Galactic Consciousness negotiated a temporary settlement: Knight and Doomsday withdrew to satellite galaxies, allowing the Snow Tribe to unify the Milky Way roughly 50,000 years after its emergence. Other civilizations were confined to smaller territories or relocated outside the main galaxy; Snow Tribe beings eventually occupied 90 percent of its planets 690 693.

Conflict with Andromeda

The Galactic Consciousness presented Andromeda as an external aggressor and enlisted the Snow Tribe, Knight, and Doomsday Civilizations against it. Later side stories reveal that the Milky Way’s consciousness had itself devoured neighboring galactic consciousnesses and repeatedly attacked Andromeda’s consciousness. It also withheld valuable memories while seeking to consume its rival 689 692 695.

The rivalry escalated as Deep Space and the Snow Tribe both reached Star Cluster-Level. Knight and Doomsday secretly allied with Deep Space and began gathering intelligence against the Snow Tribe 692 695.

The Snow Tribe’s eventual invasion of Andromeda ended in catastrophic defeat. Civilizations it had oppressed rebelled, and the survivors fled to Sextans. The tribe returned five billion years before its meeting with humanity, concealing its remaining technology on Snow Star 44 45.

Deep Space Purges and Renewed Life

Deep Space counterattacked the Milky Way, nearly exterminating its civilizations and attacking the central black hole. The crisis produced Daozi’s separation from the Galactic Consciousness 625.

Deep Space subsequently returned at intervals to purge civilizations and inhabited planets. These visits stopped two billion years earlier for reasons Daozi did not know. The five Great Star Region Civilizations survived the sweep of that period, explaining their secrecy and limited expansion 498 626.

After the purges ceased, Daozi seeded life across the galaxy. Much earlier, when the Snow Tribe returned from exile, it had found fewer than a million civilizations and none of the advanced powers it remembered; its chief attributed that earlier depopulation to prolonged warfare 45 626.

Civilization Wars and the Insect Invasion

Around 2.3 million years earlier, the Milky Way held billions of competing civilizations, with incomplete estimates placing the peak above ten billion. Territorial wars escalated into widespread stellar destruction 4.

The insects then arrived through higher-dimensional channels and bubbles, occupying more than half the galaxy’s planetary systems. Civilization numbers fell below one hundred million. Five Great Star Region Civilizations intervened, coordinated the surviving powers, and recovered roughly half the galaxy before reaching a stalemate near the center 4.

The resulting Galactic Alliance spent more than two million years seeking the insects’ weakness without finding a successful permanent solution. Daozi later revealed that the Insect Emperor had also attacked the black hole’s recovering consciousness 4 626.

Mechanical Infiltration and Galactic Mobilization

The Mechanical Civilization secretly dispersed units throughout the Milky Way, prompting a galaxy-wide warning to strengthen fleets and defend celestial bodies. In insect territory, it hollowed out stars and planets to rebuild its forces while using battles to draw high-ranking insects away from valuable resources 345 423.

After ten thousand years of cultivation, nearly two million promising lower-level civilizations began building warships with assistance from Small Star Sector powers. A subsequent counteroffensive assembled ten quintillion warships at the defensive line, but giant insects broke through formations and forced a stalemate 477 478.

Fish Horse Star Crisis

Hu Yu rallied the allied civilizations after revealing that the Fish Horse Star Civilization originated outside the Milky Way and threatened its central black hole. More than a hundred civilizations later coordinated for war, with the five Great Star Region Civilizations and humanity sharing selected technologies 529 573.

The enemy’s Super Fortress resisted the Milky Way fleets’ attacks and advanced toward the center. Reinforcements, including forces from the Large Magellanic Cloud, temporarily halted it 581 589.

The threat was ultimately confirmed as an attempt to replace the Milky Way’s black hole consciousness with a false consciousness inside the fortress. Captured research also established that the Fish Horse Star Civilization had been cultivated by the Doomsday and Knight Civilizations 661.

• Central defense project — Hu Yu proposed filling the region within 100 light-years of the black hole with energy and converting it into a Reversed State shell, with a requested completion time of 500 years 630.
• Construction force — More than twenty quadrillion surviving warships began the work, joined by the Black and White Civilizations 630.
• Internal interference — Under a shadow’s orders, Leader Yun San deployed the Mechanical Civilization to obstruct the defenders and escort the fortress into the Milky Way while concealing his involvement 599.
• Extragalactic assistance — The Firefly, Aurora, Firmament, and other civilizations supplied a combined three hundred quadrillion reinforcement warships from Sextans A and B 660 662.
• Late-war devastation — The galaxy was described as separated into two halves, with resisting civilizations’ bases reappearing in the gap after leaving the Secondary Universe 657.

Reconstruction: Milky Way Era

The leader’s return marked the first year of the Milky Way Era. Reconstruction replaced lost stars, restored surviving planets to familiar systems, and expanded the galaxy 685 686.

• Returning civilizations — Those that had fled were permitted to return, but their old spheres of influence were restricted. They were promised freedom to develop in the expanded regions 686.
• Further development — Mechanical beings assisted reconstruction and the Seeding Plan. Plans were also made to use time advantages to accelerate life and scientific research 686.