I, Arkasa Sargosan, sarpan ambassador to human kind have written down an orderly account of recent events so that you may know of humans, and come to understand them better.  Not all sarpans regard humans as prey and I wonder what secrets humans harbor, hidden even to themselves.

In the 500th year since the ascendance of paramani Kashendra Ashastra to the Emerald Dais, to rule all humans in known space across the twelve Great Houses of the Altari republic; humans have been the newest and most suspect members of our galactic civilization which calls itself the Commonwealth of Stars. Bound in a tenuous peace for millenia under the Seven Precepts, the Commonwealth Battlefleet enforces the peace, but the mirrors of the amari, mysterious space-time portals allow faster than light communication among the capital worlds of each race helping bind the civilization together. 

In the Litany of Stars, short-lived humans are likened to sparks that dance among the flames. Some say that they will ignite a fire that will collapse the galaxy into civil war.  For this reason, the human nobility have bound themselves under a code duello to channel their ambitions, the vendamasthra, the “game of knives,” to prevent open war.

Among humans, the quantum champions, a handful of single combat warriors enforce this custom, ensuring that peace continues.

But there are always those who follow no code but their own will.