“Welcome, to the land of the Infinite Councils!” I yelled out over the rest of the humans. There was only us that used to be Almani, but, everyone starts off somewhere. We still needed to hammer out what the Foorn and the Xiz’tooh would have to give away to join, but it had also only been four hours after the meeting, so no other humans had joined.

“Let’s lay down so infrastructure, did we bring all the right shit?” Asked Oxy.

“Yeah, Mantis should be bringing it in, with a transport ship or two in a few hours. Lemme mar where they should come to.” Wrang said, eyes glued to a screen.

“Well, I’ll set up a signal fire, should we start laying out some benches as well?” Yttri asked.

“I actually brought some cards. Anyone wanna play some poker?” Buo said, taking some out of his back pocket.

“I’ll actually get a head start clearing some trees and brush.” Sulf said, pointing with her thumb towards the jungles.

“I’ll help,” I said. Over the next few hours, two acres of land was cleared, and we all played a few games. And just as Wrang said, Mantis was seen, with enormous crates stacked all over him, and some much bigger transport ships behind him.

Hey Rade! Mantis seemingly screamed in my head. I yelled over to everyone that they were here, and there was a resounding feeling of happiness.

“Finally! Something to do!” Said Zin. We opend up the crates pulling out extremely heavy, 10 by 10 blocks of metal. 4 of us pulled them out together, than we began to pull it apart. It expanded, unfolding, into an enormous metal building. The others began to load parts into it, and unfold other metal blocks. In the end, we had four of these enormous buildings. Two were made to be harvesters, where we would collect resources, mine, you name it. One was the base of operations, and was going to be used as our headquarters. The last was a factory, and we would create stuff from there. With the infrastructure set up, we re-found the fabricator we’d discovered when deciding where to put our territory. No one else knew it was there, so it was perfect. Me and the rest of the humans called for negotiations tomorrow, set up our tents, and went to sleep. We’d open our borders over the next few days, and begin to let other humans and anyone else in, or out if they so pleased.

In the morning, we went back to work. However, me, Chom, and Wrang would be discussing terms. We had a few ideas about what we wanted from the Foorn, and the Xiz’ tooh, but we knew that neither of them would like it. “So,” I said to Jio’kiln, the representative for the Xiz’tooh, “We would need your people to help and work. We are assigning people jobs, and they will have to take, and perform them adequately.”

“Sounds fair enough”, she responded.

“We will also need your tech to help us with our infrastructure. We need not the most part of your amazing biotech, but we do require your infrastructural tech. Also, we would require some of your help genetically engineering the crops we grow, we need not much help, just tell us where we could improve.”

“Well, our infrastructure tech is closely guarded and highly valuable, so that might be a bit of a stretch…” She said, drawing it out.

“Too bad, you take it or leave it. We know your technology is very valuable to you, but it’s high time you share some of it!” Wrang was putting his foot down. They wanted to be a part of this, they were going to have to earn their way.

“I’ll… talk with the Queens.” She responded. The next meeting went pretty badly.

“No way in hell will we give you our magnet tech, and by no means are we going to working for the likes of your primitive civilization!!” Screamed the Foorn prime minister.

“Then fucking leave!” Responded Chom. “You don’t like the terms, then go!” They began to leave, but just then, the prime minister turned around, and his bodyguards shot their powerful plasma beams. However, we were prepared for the situation and had our shields up. One blast had nearly taken out my shields, so I ducked beneath the table as Wrang pulled out a bolt spitter, and tore apart one of the bodyguards. Their shields shattered after half a second, and the electricity ran through the armor, electrocuting him to death. As the prime minister ran, Chom finished charging up his spell, and launched plasma lances from his hands, cooking the old Heiive alive. I then jumped up and tackled his other bodyguard to the ground, and broke it’s neck.

“Well, I guess we just take over the faction?” I asked, confused.

“Actually, no. Not yet. If the guy had an heir, that’ll take his place, and if they want to avoid war, they just give us control, or, their faction votes on whether or not to make us the rulers.” Wrang replied.

“So get ready for war?” Chom remarked.

“Probably, yeah.”