Twis'rin
The Twis'rin homeworld, Matul'it
Home Planet: Matul'it, Periodice? System
First Colony: Pekka II, Pekka? System
Date of Establishment: July 1, 244
Population: 624.9 billion
According to themselves, the Twis'rin were the first species in the galaxy to achieve sentience, the first to make strides into space, and the first to do virtually everything in the galaxy worth doing. Certainly, if anybody came before the Twis'rin, they made sure nobody found out about it.
The Twis'rin hail from the planet of Matul'it, a predominantly oceanic world in the Periodice system located within the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way galaxy. Even today, the few islands of Matul'it are mostly wild and unused, as the Twis'rin are true water-dwellers. Interaction with land-dwelling species has forced them to develop special suits - essentially transparent, water-filled bowls on legs - which let them move about land freely, but they are far more comfortable in the water and when left unprotected on the land they will die a gasping death within minutes.
Early on in their history, every example of first contact with the Twis'rin was bloody and brief. The very first of the Twis'rin interstellar colonies, the oceanic world Pekka II, was in fact inhabited by a pre-industrial civilization on its few land archipelagos. Without transmitting so much as a hello, the Twis'rin used nuclear missiles to eradicate the native Pekkanese from history and established a colony deep underwater, safely away from the radiation.
The Twis'rin had an immense head start on the other species in the race to space, and they took advantage of it. More than one other sentient species met the fate of the Pekkanese as the Twis'rin languidly stretched their tentacles through the galaxy. Such one-sided encounters confirmed in the Twis'rin what they had always suspected: that they were the greatest of the galaxy's species and that none other could dare challenge them. The pace of their expansion slowed and, eventually, stopped, their science began to diminish, and the Twis'rin grew complacent.
In the year 2441, a Twis'rin fleet of sleeper ships? met the Balorim. Another ordinary extermination was expected. But by this stage the Balorim were a moderately advanced spacefaring species, and the Twis'rin had merely discovered one of their colonies. The Balorim colony was destroyed but a distress signal was sent, taking ten years to reach the Balorim homeworld at Shyaloum. Fifteen years later, a squadron of Balorim battleships reached the newly-established Twis'rin colony and obliterated it. Over the coming decades, more Twis'rin colonies were lost to the Balorim, and the light-speed transmissions of the era meant it was decades before the Twis'rin realised what was happening. The First Galactic War had begun.