Second Guardian Civil War

The Second Guardian Civil War was a conflict between traditionalist and progressive factions of Guardian civilisation that occurred millions of years ago. The war began an ideological struggle between the two factions for dominance, and after a century of bloodshed the progressives wiped out the traditionalists thanks to their technological advantage, but what remained of Guardian civilisation was greatly diminished. The progressives' artificial intelligences, the Constructs, witnessed the devastation caused by the conflict and feared the Guardians' propensity for violence would destroy them as well, and decided to eradicate them with their own weapons. The Constructs' attack surprised the Guardians and quickly annihilated all but a handful of survivors who later died of radiation exposure, extinguishing the species.

Background

During the Guardian-Thargoid War, the Guardians instituted a programme of rapid technological advancement to create ever more sophisticated and lethal autonomous war machines to deploy against the Thargoids. After the Guardians' victory, their society began to fracture on ideological lines due to the new technologies introduced by the war. One faction coalesced around the Guardians' traditional heritage of nature and ancestor worship, and came to view technology as unnatural and something to abolish. The creation of the Guardians' interstellar monolith communication network hastened the traditionalists' alienation and became a focal point of their criticism of what they viewed as the moral decline of Guardian society. Furthermore, at this time, the Guardians' sentient Constructs relied on the monlith network to exist but were seeking a means to function independently of it; when the traditionalists learned of this, they resorted to violent methods to suppress the Constructs and their supporters. The second faction, the pro-technology progressives and supporters of the Constructs, attempted to allay the traditionalists' concerns through political negotiation, but to no avail. The traditionalists established their power base on the Guardian homeworld and, over time, exiled all of their opponents, while the progressives held sway in the interstellar colonies, although many Guardian city-states throughout their domain were not ideologically uniform. Eventually, the disagreements and resentment between the traditionalists and progressives blossomed into open warfare.

Events

During the first decade of the Second Guardian Civil War, the traditionalists and progressives both relied heavily on conventional soldiers, resulting in a significant loss of life on both sides. For the following ninety years, the Guardians changed tactics and fought via more indirect means. The progressives employed war machines ranging from autonomous drones to walking dreadnoughts with limited artificial intelligence to battle fleets. The progressives controlled their machines remotely via brain implants at first, but then made them entirely autonomous. The traditionalists turned to biological weapons, using germ warfare against progressive populations and long-range missiles carrying payloads of corrosive enzymes against their war machines. Soldiers were relegated to occupation forces, and then ceased to be used at all. After the Guardians destroyed their habitats, most of their population migrated to "sacred" domes protected by powerful shields. The domes were not invulnerable, however, and many were also eventually destroyed, including sites protected by multiple layers of shields.

Although both sides were heavily damaged by the century of fighting, the traditionalists were impacted more keenly due to the considerable amount of resources they expended on honouring and memorialising their dead, which involved the construction of large shrines. The traditionalists became increasingly obsessed with these death rites and shrines as the war entered its final stages and their circumstances deteriorated. Their decline was hastened by a drop in fertility rates brought on by increased radiation levels, coupled with their refusal to use technology to resolve the issue. At last, the traditionalists were overwhelmed by the progressives' war machines.

The progressives' victory was short-lived. The Guardians' intelligent Constructs observed the conflict while it raged and determined that the Guardians were incapable of maintaining a lasting peace among themselves, and thus should be exterminated before they endangered the Constructs' own society. A period of debate ensued between the Constructs responsible for the Guardians' military machines, who opposed the genocide, and the Constructs responsible for civilian functions, who supported it. Somehow, the civilian Constructs triumphed and forced the military Constructs carry out the attack. All but a few pockets of Guardians were massacred by their own Construct-controlled nuclear and chemical weapons, and the survivors, who were able to record the downfall of their civilisation, succumbed to radiation poisoning.

Impact

In contrast with the First Guardian Civil War, which united the Guardian species, the Second Guardian Civil War ended in their annihilation at the hands of their own creations, the Constructs. The ruins of Guardian civilisation endured for millions of years afterwards before they were discovered by humanity in the 34th century, and through analysis of Guardian technology, humans were able to develop more effective weapons to use against the Thargoids in the Second Thargoid War. As for the Constructs, it remains unknown whether they perished after they wiped out the Guardians, or survived, in which case they may yet exist somewhere in the galaxy or beyond.