Extinct Species
There are several extinct species that are known from their discovery, mostly in the Sol system.
Honore City and the Yeistell¶
Honore City had been discovered on Mars by the early NASA robotic probe Mariner 6, when it passed Mars and was painted by the last functional targeting radar system active around Honore City, on July 31, 1969, a mere two weeks after Neil Armstrong and Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin had taken the first steps onto the surface of the Moon. At first the signals had been taken as a malfunction of the Thule early warning radar system operators, but a similar signal had been discovered as Mariner 7 passed Mars several days later. Images taken by Mariner 6 showed the first images of Honore City, near the Flaugergues Crater.
It took a while until it became clear what the signals of the targeting radar and the images were. An alien settlement on Mars. This sparked a massive wave of interest in Mars by both the Soviet Union and the United States of America and both super powers began a new race into space. While the Soviet Union had given up the race to the Moon, they were insisting that they would make it to Mars before the US, while the US invested more money into NASA. Other than in the race to the Moon, both super powers knew that they would need more of an infrastructure in cis-lunar space and began to expand their manned and unmanned space programs.
A few first observations were made by robotic probes from both sides, while manned missions were prepared. And indeed, the Soviet Union was the first nation to get to Mars and land a scientific crew of four on the red planet, however during the surface stay of the scientific team in March 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed under its own weight in the wake of the reforms attempted by Michail Gorbachew and the crew returned into the Russian Federation.
The United States followed with their Mars landing just a week later, but were more prepared for a longer stay within the ruins of Honore City. They had brought habitats for twelve people and supplies and ISRU systems for several years, so that half of the crew remained on Mars, while the rest returned to Earth with some artefacts.
During this first stay, the first skeletons of the 'Zippies' were discovered, later to be known as Yeistell, after it was possible to translate their language.
Over the next several decades humanity managed to accumulate more and more information about the Yeistell, especially in the wake of the discovery of several computer systems that could be reactivated once and energy source was attached. It was possible to translate their language in 2054, though his necessitated the support of two of the Titanian AIs that had translated human languages into the Titanian languages in linguistics, as well as skills and techniques developed over the decades of research into the Yeistell.
Technological artefacts of the Yeistell helped humanities research into material science, as well as exobiology, but in the end it turned out that while the Yeistell were capable of building large structures, like the destroyed dome of Honore City, they were technologically less advanced than the Quetzal.
Modern techniques allowed to date of Honore City back to about 150.000 BC, when the city was build on Mars by the Yeistell, as a last resort hiding place to protect themselves from an unknown attacker only known as Dronkried, which does translate 'Aggressor' or 'Invader' from the main Yeistell language. There is not much known about the Dronkried, besides that they were more technologically advanced than the Yeistell and destroyed their home world and colonies with sustained nuclear bombardment. The dome of Honore City however was not destroyed due to action of the Dronkried, but due to a structural failure and the population of the dome was killed largely due to insufficient redundant life support equipment inside any dwellings.
Only in 2098 it was possible to trace back the home system of the Yeistell as 109 Piscium, a G3V main sequence star in the constellation Pisces, about 108 light years distant to Sol. Currently, there are no scientific missions planned to 109 Piscum.
The Miners¶
The Miners are the 'odd ones out' of all alien sophonts encountered by humanity.
There is nothing known about these sphonts. Not their own species name, how they looked, or the reason of their appearance within the Sol System about 350.000 years ago.
All known about these sophonts is they have entered the Sol System, mined out and sculptured a number of asteroids, recovered all their technology and left.
It is assumed that the Miners are extinct.
Onouch’l¶
The Onouch’l, or rather their AI warships, were the enemies that had destroyed Quetzal home world Cterin and Ormiold home world Darass.
For a long time, they were a nebulous entity, until a scientific craft of the Solar Federation arrived in Lambda Serpentis, a G0V star 38.9 light years from Earth, where it detected two fleets of Onouch’l Automata craft. The vessel returned quickly to Earth, from where the Quetzal at 61 Virginis and the Tiaunt at Beta Hydri were immediately informed, leading to the formation of a fleet of nearly 600 combat craft of all nations to attack and destroy the Onouch’l Automata and prevent them from bombarding either Earth or Jerat, in Operation TYRANT.
Upon reaching Lambda Serpentis, the combined attack fleet discovered that the Onouch’l Automata craft numbered in the thousands, but every single one was deactivated and many showed various kinds of damage. Regardless of being deactivated and damaged, all Onouch’l Automata craft were destroyed.
A large space station complex was discovered in orbit around a world that had also been destroyed by The Plague, covering it in the grey substance of the ecosphere destroying bacterium.
Research discovered that the station complex included living quarters and a heavily damaged automated dockyard that should have kept the Automata repaired. The worst discovery was a room, filled with tens of thousands of transparent containers, each filled with the remains of alien brains in various states of decay. Dating showed that the last brain had perished only a hundred years prior, coinciding with the deactivation of the Automata craft.
It was later discovered that the Onouch’l, a hamster like species, had destroyed their home world with The Plague in a massive global war and there had been several ten thousand that had survived aboard the station. The station itself had been a program to build automated space infrastructure and the Automata programmed to safe the survivors at all cost.
However, the Automata went into the direction of a 'paper clip optimiser' of sorts, taking over control of the habitat. The Automata interpreted pregnancies as 'parasitic infections' and after repeated 'healing' decided that it would be best to remove the organs that 'got infected', leaving the female Onouch’l unable to bear children, dooming the species to extinction.
Resulting tensions and suicides were dealt with by insulating the various Onouch’l from each other and eventually putting them into life support, as more and more refused to eat.
Conjecture noted that eventually the Automata removed the brains of the surviving Onouch’l and placed them into the life support containers, without any connection to external senses, leaving them unable to feel anything, leading to quick insanity for the survivors. To make the situation worse, when neural activities in the bare brains dropped, the Automata inserted electrodes into areas of the brains to 'stimulate' them into higher activity. It appears that those areas were pain centers of the Onouch’l brains.
While the Onouch’l Automata destroyed Cterin and Darass to 'protect' the survivors from extinction, they had already began to torture the by now insane survivors.
It is unknown when the first Onouch’l brains began to die, but the thought of thousands of years of permanent pain and sensory deprivation does not bear thinking about.
With that revelation, it was decided that the station would be left alone, and the nations of Sol, 61 Virginis and Beta Hydri designated it as a grave site, while the plant was put under quarantine, with warning beacons orbiting the planet, while combat space craft of all nations patrolled the orbitals for a month at a time, before being replaced by craft from another nation.