Your world is broken and may never be as it was again.  It was our mistakes and our misdeeds that shattered it.  Those of us who have survived are trying to help you nurture it into something worth fighting for once again.

I am here to help you understand what happened.

Once there was a species known as the Kettan.  In some ways, they were much like humans; in some ways they were very different.  A male Kettan is not sapient.  A female Kettan is sapient only until she attains sexual maturity, at which point she becomes sessile and slowly loses the ability to think or reason, though they are still capable of perceiving their environment, recognizing other Kettan, and feeling emotions.  The term for this process in English is "rooting."  Male Kettan physically resemble male humans, both internally and externally, though may be easily distinguished by their green skin tone and their behavior; none are known to exist in this solar system.  Pre-root female Kettan likewise physically resemble female humans of the appropriate developmental stage, except in skin tone.  Upon rooting, they remain recognizably Kettan but are no longer humanoid.  You may view photos of adult female Kettan in this facility if you wish.  Several settlements of Kettan survivors, inhabited by pre-root female Kettan, rooted female Kettan, and Kettan HOPEFULs and DOLEFULs (see below), exist on Earth.  Some, though not all, allow visitors, if you are able to reach them safely.

Earth has no native magic.  Siivan, the Kettan home planet, had a great deal.  Multiple post-industrial Kettan civilizations made use of this native magic to create military programs that, subsequent to the political unification in the year EST-40412, were synthesized into what is now called, in English, the Battle Princess program.  This program existed to fight beings known as wraiths, which were only able to form in Siivan's magical environment; there are no wraiths on Earth.  The Battle Princess program imbued magical abilities into mature but preadult Kettan females that were powered by their hope for, and determination to build, a better world.  It also arrested their physical development, insuring they would never root and lose their ability to use their magic safely and judiciously.  These Kettan were the titular Battle Princesses; in time they became known, more specifically, as HOPEFULs.

The magic of the Battle Princess program had a critical flaw, however: a Battle Princess who underwent an emotional crisis, or overused her magic, could lose the feelings of hope and determination that fuel her magic, triggering a transformation into a dangerous and unstable magical entity similar in some ways to a wraith but more powerful and dangerous.  These entities were designated MISERIEs; it is at this time that the term HOPEFUL for an un-immiserated Battle Princess entered common use.  HANDLERs like myself were originally created to help HOPEFULs manage their emotional state and magic usage, and assist them in tracking and fighting MISERIEs.

However, a series of natural disasters and sociopolitical crises on Siivan caused a feedback loop of HOPEFULs transforming into MISERIEs, who then worsened the conditions that encouraged their transformation and in turn caused more HOPEFULs to transform.  The pandemic could not be contained, and eventually caused the collapse of Kettan civilization.

At this point the Kettan civilization had not permanently settled any planets other than Siivan, but we had several large self-sustaining space stations, and before our civilization collapsed completely we were able to construct multiple seed ships and send them away from the Siivan solar system in the direction of identified Siivan-like planets.  One such planet was Earth.

The seed ship dispatched to Earth was named the Foolish Notion.  While en route to Earth, Kettan researchers on board were experimenting with Battle Princess technology and magic in search of a way to transform MISERIEs back into HOPEFULs.  This precise goal has never been accomplished, but the research program did discover a way to transform a MISERIE into a being much more similar to a Kettan than to a wraith, which would retain some of the MISERIE's magical abilities as well as regaining some of the ones she possessed when she was a HOPEFUL.  These beings were named DOLEFULs.

Shortly after the announcement of this development, it was leaked to the population of the Foolish Notion that this program had been carried out by secretly transforming young Kettan into HOPEFULs and subsequently into MISERIEs in order to experiment on them directly.  This revelation caused the immiseration of many HOPEFULs on board the Notion into MISERIEs, and simultaneously provoked an attempted mutiny and coup d'etat.  At the end of the violence, most of the Kettan on board, including many critical crew members, were dead or immiserated, all onboard dens of male Kettan had been flushed into space, and the survivors were unable to prevent the Notion from crashing into Earth.

Surviving HOPEFULs and HANDLERs tried with limited success to evacuate the Notion as it crashed, but they did not have the capacity to evacuate most of the people trapped on board.  For the last hours before the Notion hit the ground, the fear and hopelessness among the trapped survivors made it into a crucible for the MISERIEs also trapped on board; they grew to unprecedented size and power, and began multiplying rapidly.  When the Notion hit the ground, the MISERIEs were released, and overran the planet within weeks.  Human militaries lacked the magic and technology necessary to fight them effectively.  In a last-ditch effort, HANDLERs and HOPEFULs attempted to create new HOPEFULs out of humans.  Unfortunately, while our species are similar enough that humans can in principle use our magic, the process is only reliable when applied to adolescent or immediately preadolescent female humans; other genders and life stages of humans confuse the process, or are interpreted as inadequate or inherently untrustworthy hosts.

The rapid recruitment and deployment of human HOPEFULs, colloquially known as "Magical Girls", was instrumental in preventing the entire human species from being wiped out.  However, we failed to account for the psychological sensitivity of preadolescent humans.  Many human HOPEFULs were not suited to combat; they were overwhelmed by their responsibilities, and were killed or immiserated soon after their recruitment.  Specialist weapons were distributed that Magical Girls could use to convert MISERIEs into DOLEFULs, who have been instrumental in restoring and sustaining what islands of order exist.  However, none of our efforts were capable of preventing the collapse of virtually all social and economic institutions that operated on scales larger than individual settlements, nor the death or immiseration of 90 percent of humans.

Hope exists.  There are many communities scattered across Earth, of humans and Kettan both, protected by HOPEFULs and sustained by DOLEFULs.  It is even possible to travel between them, sometimes.  But your planet is no longer a global civilization, and it is our fault.  Our mistakes have reduced you to islands of relative safety in a sea of chaos and terror that our magic and technology created.  We are doing what we can to help protect what is left of you.  We are doing what we can to help you rebuild.  But even if all MISERIEs on the planet are destroyed or rescued, even if you become once again a global civilization, we cannot undo what we have done to you; we cannot resurrect the people our mistakes have killed, or restore the culture and institutions our mistakes destroyed.  You did not deserve this; you did nothing to bring this upon yourselves.  This apocalypse was wholly the fault of the Kettan aboard the Foolish Notion.

No conceivable apology could possibly be adequate to what we have done to you.

We are sorry.