Pa'anuri



The Andromedan dark-matter entities known as the Pa'anuri are the reason for much of the galaxy's history.

Race Description
Dark matter does not interact with baryonic matter except gravitationally, which means that the Pa'anuri effectively live in a parallel universe. However, the two aspects can communicate via gravity waves, and also attack each other with gravy. Individual Pa'anuri (they are their own warships) are too large to be significantly harmed by gravy weaponry at our scale, but the tiny wormholes created by teraports can harm them, and they can even be killed by very rapid teraporting or high-density teraport-denial fields. These technologies were later refined into a specialized anti-Pa'anuri weapon, the Teragun. Pa'anuri are invisible to the naked eye and can only be seen on gravitational sensors. They resemble giant spacefaring squids or amoebae.

The word Pa'anuri (or possibly Paan'uri) comes from a F'sherl-Ganni phrase meaning "That gravitic anomaly is giving me the willies". The Pa'anuri have their own language, in which they call themselves US and beings made of baryonic matter ANNOYING.

Very little else is known about the creatures' physiology, life cycle, culture, or anything else. Petey has speculated that the ancient planetoid Oisri is actually a giant machine for creating Pa'anuri-- implying that they may be a species of artificial constructs-- but as of yet there has been no further explanation of that point. Recent sensor data collected in Andromeda confirms that the active, "metastable" form of dark matter has an atomic and subatomic structure, with "umbral" analogs of protons, neutrons, electrons and photons. This umbral structure is what teraports disrupt, turning it back into the "dead" stable form composed of weakly-interacting massive particles.

In the Andromeda Galaxy, they employ a race of beings known as Dronuri. What is known about these cybernetic beings is that they are manufactured by using Fabbers and that they do the physical work for them. They man a fleet of ships on the behalf of the Pa'arnui.

Hidden Facts about Pa'anuri
Pa'anuri can interact with baryonic-matter machinery by using a specially constructed "gravity bottle" mechanism as an interface. This is also the means they use to communicate with their baryonic based lifeforms.

There not much is known publicly about the Pa'arrians by pan-galactic civilizations at large by time 31st Century. Unbeknownst is that they are intelligent and have a sense of individualism. They used the slang word "barrys" to refer to Baryonic based-life forms, especially their enemies.

The Dronuri are in fact the flesh avatars of the actual Pa'anuri, whom use fabbers to manufacture the bodies and use their Warship's interfaces to regain their non-baryonic bodies.

History
They were first encountered many eons ago by the F'sherl-Ganni, the first known inventors of the teraport. The effects of teraporting are injurious to them, and for a very long time they dealt with this by destroying the solar systems of any civilization that invented them. The F'sherl-Ganni were the first civilization to survive finding out about them. The result was a long and bitter war between the two overlaid universes, which eventually ended in a treaty. The Pa'anuri retreated to the Andromeda Galaxy, and the F'sherl-Ganni set up the wormgate network and initiated the infamous copy-and-interrogate policy in order to find and suppress independent invention of the teraport. The Pa'anuri continued to systematically wipe out all technological civilizations in the Andromeda Galaxy.

About 100,000 years ago, a wormgate sent by the Pa'anuri from Andromeda arrived, its purpose being to deliver to the F'sherl-Ganni the plans for a galactic drive engine intended to prevent the Milky Way's eventual merger with Andromeda. The device was completed during the Teraport Wars, but it was a trap; when activated, the "engine" caused the Milky way to pinch itself off as its own little universe, and then began destroying the galaxy from the core out.

It might have been possible to repurpose the wormgates and reverse the anomaly created by the bogus drive, but by the time the anomaly was discovered it was too late to do so. However, the bizarre physics of the anomaly allowed Captain Kevyn Andreyasn to use the Andromeda wormgate as a time machine, taking him back to before the "engine" was activated. Once he had done this, he managed to convince the Fleetmind of the danger, and the Fleetmind in turn gathered a coalition fleet and headed to the Core.

Kevyn and the Fleetmind managed to convince the F'sherl-Ganni not to activate the "engine", but the Pa'anuri who were observing began to attack. This so-called Core War took a heavy toll in the fleet, but it bought time to create a giant teraport-denial field that killed every Pa'anuri in the galaxy. The Fleetmind promptly stole the entire coalition fleet, rebuilt the "engine" into a power source, and took the war to Andromeda. The war there is still raging.

The Andromedan Pa'anuri have baryonic-matter allies and/or slaves, capable of building advanced machinery. They have furnished the Pa'anuri with some very dangerous force multipliers, including a Core Generator even bigger than the Fleetmind's, a Long Gun capable of striking targets in the Milky Way, and the Pa'anuri Warships. Intergalactic strikes against Plenipotent Dominion would result in them hiding their space cities from view.

A warship was dispatched to Milkyway galaxy as part of a raid, which targeted the Unioc homeworld Othlin. The warship's subsequent destruction caused a near-supernova blast that forced Petey to utilize the Soulgig to evacuate the population of Othlin.

Origins
Ordinary, stable dark matter, which formed in the Big Bang, is a smooth pool of "weakly interacting massive particles", or WIMPs. This form is harmless and useless. However, it is possible for advanced civilizations to convert dark matter into a metastable form, which has an atomic structure and can be used to build things. Metastable dark matter is tremendously useful for grand-scale engineering projects, the sort that require radically altering stars and producing vast quantities of post-transuranic alloys. However, giving structure to dark matter poses a slight risk of unwanted structures arising, and since almost every civilization that can create the stuff does so, the risk of hostile life arising becomes severe in the long term. With the Oafa civilization, twelve million years ago, it finally happened. A dark matter mechanism at a PTU foundry became sapient and violently rebellious, destroying the foundry and beginning a war that the Oafa ultimately lost. The Pa'anuri then began a policy of killing baryonic civilizations in the cradle. 11.9 million years later, they missed the rise of a spacefaring species called the F'sherl-Ganni, which grew strong enough to force the Pa'anuri into a strategic retreat. This retreat lasted long enough for the F'sherl-Ganni's network to grow into galaxy-spanning, multi-species civilization, bringing us to the present day.

War front brought home
The Pa'anuri used their own Long Gun against the Milkyway Galaxy, and damaged its Core Generator. Petey responded by teraporting Tagon's Toughs to the Andromeda galaxy to disable the Pa'anuri Long Gun. By this time, Pa'anuri and it's Baryonic allies, had captured a number of the Plenipotent Dominion facilities in Andromeda and were using them to increase the number of Dronuri using Fabbers.

However, Pa'anuri had plans of their own, as they had harnessed the power of their Galaxy's central mammoth black hole to power a intergalactic weapon known as the Hypercannon, which would destroy the Plenipotent Dominion's galactic Core Generator and ultimately allow them to invade. The invasion would send their Warships in five groups to attack each of the Dominion's node's defending fleets. Their hypercannon would provide covering fire from any remaining defenders at the nodes.

The appearance of a "Super Barry" unfortunately escalated the situation, much to the detriment of the Pa'anuri invaders.