In spite of their xenophobic nature, the Twis'rin are almost too happy to discuss the details of their glorious history with outsiders. Archaeological and other evidence have strongly suggested that the Twis'rin were not, in fact, the first sentient lifeforms to reach space but the Twis'rin will hear none of it. As far as they are concerned, the story of galactic travel begins some fifteen hundred years ago when Twis'rin sleeper ships completed a nine-year journey to the relatively nearby Pekka system, found the second of the system ideal for colonisation but inhabited, and without so much as an introduction eliminated the planet's surface population with nuclear missiles fired from orbit. There is no shame in the Twis'rin psyche for eliminating an entire species so thoroughly that even their name is forgotten. A few dozen years later, the oceans were ready to support a Twis'rin population and that is what matters to them.

For centuries, the history of the Twis'rin is similarly bloody. They did not bother to colonise most of the planets they found: they simply searched for sentient life and, when they could find it, tried to eliminate it. They usually succeeded. The Drognar of Drognituri in the Bamp system managed to hold off the Twis'rin thanks to the geography of their planet and their incredible combat skill, but they were the only exception for centuries.

But the centuries passed slowly for the Twis'rin. They were in space a full seven hundred years before the Balorim had left their solar system but the Twis'rin were content to rest on their laurels. Their people call it their golden years, the Pax Twis'rina in pseudo-Latin, when the galaxy was ruled by Twis'rin arms. In fact, they never had more than a sliver of the stars but so assured were they in their own greatness that they didn't bother seeking more. For over three hundred years, their scientists knew that conduits in space might be used for faster-than-light travel, but the Twis'rin insisted on costly and ineffective sleeper ships for their galactic wars, believing that faster-than-light travel was somehow unholy.

When the Twis'rin finally met the Balorim in the Earth year 2441, it touched off the first of the great galactic wars. The Twis'rin attacked the Balorim with their usual casualness. Their technological superiority over the Balorim was immense, but the Balorim were hungry and convinced they were fighting for their lives while the Twis'rin viewed it as another routine conquest. And they had never faced ships of the Balorim's calibre before: the Balorim weathered the storm and, after a fifteen-year trek, a squadron of battleships devestated a Twis'rin colony from orbit. In an instant, the Twis'rin's illusions were unravelled and the extent of their folly laid bare before them. Balorim battleships cruised for every Twis'rin colony they could reach while the neglected Twis'rin defenses offered only a token fight. For the first time in centuries, the Twis'rin took something seriously.

Old ideas were dusted off. Designs for warships mothballed for lack of political will were pulled out of storage. A massive military recruitment campaign took place. Long-underfunded research into jump gates suddenly became a top priority, as it became clear that the ability to strike without waiting years for the privilege could single-handedly win the war.

The Twis'rin managed to stem their losses, but the simple fact of interstellar warfare of the era was that victory was impossible. The Balorim could never touch the main Twis'rin systems: by the time their state-of-the-art ships arrived they would be comically obsolete. A similar problem baffled the Twis'rin. In 2513, however, the first jump gate was brought online. It was barely able to transport a specially designed ship, loaded with shielding that would allow it to arrive at the gateless opposite side and cargo space to build a gate of its own. But it was enough. The Balorim had been working along that line, without success, and when their intelligence service learned of the Twis'rin success they managed to shoot off a message by the primitive faster-than-light communications array the Twis'rin had developed in tandem. From that point on, the Balorim's first priority was duplicating the Twis'rin's technology lest they face extinction.

The Balorim succeeded. The war raged on, now faster and thus bloodier than ever, but the Balorim still held back the tide. Desperate, the Balorim gave jump gate technology to any who would come in on their side: the Captab, among others, signed on in this manner. Most powerful of all was the entry of the Doggei, who out of prudence in the war-stricken times had saved a formidable fleet, on the Balorim side. At long last, in 2590, the Twis'rin gave into the obvious stalemate and peace was made. A century and a half of war had narrowed the technological gap between the Twis'rin and their rivals so dramatically that even the Twis'rin could see how far they had fallen. But they no longer had the strength to hold what they had taken for granted. The three powers who opposed them expanded their empires, becoming rivals in the truest sense of the word, and the Twis'rin could only nurse their wounds and nurse their grudges. When some younger Twis'rin counselled war before the Twis'rin lost it all, the response was always the same: patience. None can say what the future would bring but of one thing the Twis'rin were certain: they would get their revenge on those who had thwarted them.