Neh glances to Sierra for help. Sierra is busy in a different conversation.

"The Federation."

"What was the quarrel about?"

Sierra should really be able to read her mind and come rescue her. Why can't they be linked like Borg.

"We wanted to help people and they weren't happy about how we did it."

"Huh, did it turn out they were fine after all, or was the cure just worse than the condition?"

"People liked it. Federation didn't. We're at peace now though."

Sierra....

Sierra finally notices her friend is having A Time, and heads over the join the conversation.

"So they were a third party to the whole - hello there!"

"Sorry don't stop on account of me, just making rounds to see how people are doing and answer any questions. What were you discussing?"

"Apparently there was a war!"

"Ah. Yeah. I'm beginning to think that this would be better addressed sooner rather than later. It's a somewhat delicate subject and I didn't want to drop it on you all right away."

"It's sad but hardly surprising that there would still be war among people who travel the stars," says Pahatun. "But I'd like to be able to tell the folks back home what interests and norms we need to be on the lookout for ourselves, at least."

"Mhm. I'll give a presentation on it when we finish dinner if you'd like."

"I think we'd all appreciate that, thank you."

Sierra sends a message to Lucien to prepare a few visuals, and goes to check to make sure everyone else is enjoying the dinner too.

Spree is having by far the best time, though Chi Katme is also enjoying finding out what star the amaliens came from and so on.

After dinner winds down, Captain Sierra stands up at her seat.

"I'd like to thank everyone for coming. It's meetings like this that really em-body the goals of the Amalien Expanse and the progress we hope to encourage, between all species."

The lights dim as she's saying this.

"A few times today questions about Amalien history and experience with other cultures and warp have come up - sensitive topics I'd hope to save for when we had a better understanding of each other to help us communicate about a delicate situation. However, I think this was an error - and onee I apologize for. Being evasive is not a good way to open dip-lomacy. Amaliens are still new to this, and this is in fact the first major first contact we've had since the end of a dark period in our history - one we are still learning how to address and communicate about."

"In the interest of transparency, I'd like to talk to you now about the Federation, the history of the Amalien Expanse, and the Prime War."

A globe appears in the center of the room, hovering over the table.

"Amaliens, about a quarter of one of your centuries ago, were not very ad-vanced - we didn't have a very clear gov-erment or eveen mass pro-duction. We knew things, but didn't really use them. We don't repro-duce, we don't age, need little, are coop-eratively in-clined, and are really really hard to hurt. But, somee of us still re-searched science things for fun, and Vira - " she gestures towards her " - was attempted to test a theory she had, using a cobbled to-gether craft she had built up all the parts to make. Her idea was that if she was right, it would go fas-ter then light, us-ing something called a warp drive."

The hologram zooms in on vira traveling in a ship - details of the ship are blurred and impossible to make out.

"It worked, and a scouting alien ship - detecting this - made first contact with Vira. They welcomed us to the greater universe, and opened dialogue about our interest in joining the United Federation of Planets. They also gave us access to much of their technology, so that we might improve ourselves and ally with others who had reached a similar stage of development."

The holograms zooms out, to reveal the many systems of the Federation.

"During this time, their were some difficulties between us and Federation, but we were optimistic and hopeful about eventually joining."

The hologram zooms in, to a ship passing by a remnant of a shattered planet. 

"A small Federation vessel, ferrying a few Amaliens to a meeting with the Federation about our application to join, discovered the Ranthir. The Ranthir had segregated themselves by sex into two separate hemispheres of their home planet. Less than a decade of your time prior, a rogue black hole had passed nearby, tearing their planet in two, flinging the members of the two sexes apart. They were facing extinct-ion, with space flight nowhere near fast enough to connect the two groups."

A hologram illustrates this process, before returning to the prior view of the remnant.

"The Federation's Prime Directive forbade inter-ference in pre-warp cultures, opt-ing instead for a policy of letting civilizat-ions develop on their own, for good or bad, on their own. Thus, the Federation re-fused to do anything."

The hologram zooms in on the ship, displaying the faces of a few Amaliens next to it.

"The amaliens on the ship decided this wasn't okay. They mut-ineed, taking over and making contact. Handing the Ranthir plans from Fed-eration archives on how to construct warp cap-able ships, and offering their help in building them. The Feder-ation came to try to stop this. Ama-liens came too, to defend the Ranthir."

The hologram illustrates the battle - it's clear their are federation and Ranthir casualties. Eventually, a single lone amalien is flung by an explosion into the rogue black hole.

"Everyone lost some-one. We tried, after that, to make peace with the Fed-eration. They wanted that too."

A recording of talks are shown. Both sides appear tense.

"It didn't work."

The hologram zooms in towards a ship, labeled as belonging to a Ranthir criminal syndicate.

"Us-ing warp, some Ranthir's be-came pirates, and stole more Fed-eration technology. A pol-itical faction within the Fed-eration, previously not the most powerful one, be-came pop-ular enough to force a cond-ition of peace that the Ranthir, who they said weren't 'mature' enough as a civ-ilization, would have to give up warp. The Ranthir didn't want to and we told them we would help protect them."

The recordings talk show people becoming annoyed, and then go dark.

"War broke out."

A montage of images - showing battles, broken ships, explosions.

"We advanced ourselves, built ind-ustries, and attempted to make allies along the way, finding people who were left behind by the Federation, and finding new species as well - many of whom were will-ing to risk joining the war to rec-ieve warp from us. We did not make it a cond-ition to help us in the war, but many did."

Different species and groups are shown. A species with dolphin heads, a species of humanoids with four ears, a cybernetically upgraded person, Moira, and a species that look like unusually fit humans.

"The war was bad, and accidents and attempts to gain adv-antages on both sides meant a lot of people died."

A planet is consumed by metal in a timelapse, a ship crashes at warp into a space station, bombings occur on primitive planets.

"Even-tually, we were able to comp-romise. To prevent more blood-shed and to avoid the risk of even great-er disasters. Systems we gave warp too were allowed to keep it, and even join the Federation. How-ever, we promised to never again give out warp, or any related tech-nology. We are allowed to help, this was some-thing we could not com-promise on, but we are not allowed to help in that way. Not again."

The holograms fades. A moment later the lights come back on in the room.

"You are the first major civ-ilization we've made contact with since then, and we're still figur-ing out how to talk about this with new people."

"If any of you have questions I'll do my best to answer them now."

"Why is it that the Federation is so opposed to the distribution of warp?" says Pahatun, suppressing some alarm.

"They think that species that aren't ad-vanced enough to discover warp on their own aren't ma-ture enough to handle it respons-ibly, and that giving it out is like play-ing god and per-verting the nat-ural growth of a civi-lization, which they think is very important."

"That's - disappointing in the extreme," says Pahatun faintly. "We don't know how close our people are to the key insight - do you have a guess?"

Sierra grimaces.

"I can't say. Sorry."

"Did many of the systems you gave warp to choose to join the Federation even after they started this war?" asks Pahatun.

"Not many as of now - three of the twenty four. Mainly for the eco-nomic benefits the free trade brings I think."

"And only after the war - none were allowed to join during."