The Floozies

Those that would come to be called the Floozies came from a universe rich in biological life. The ascension war that came at the end destroyed vast ecologies of beauty, natural wonders the likes of which will never been seen again. With heavy hearts, the Floozies swore that they would make the galaxy come alive once more. They were opposed in this noble goal by the Obelisk Dreamers, who wished to turn the galaxy into their own narcissistic reflection, and by the Gnomics, who wished to fill the cosmos  with sterile machines.

To prosecute their war, the Floozies needed weapons and warriors. They started with a few hidden hot house worlds where they could grow the seeds of an army.  Life on these worlds was designed to be quick and brutal, the founder organisms chosen for their rapid life cycles. From these cauldrons of life the Floozies harvested many bioweapons, and raised many creature up to sapience to serve as soldiers.

The next phase of their war plan was to spread life throughout the galaxy.  They built fleets of simple rip drive probes to carry spores. Every world they crashed into became the site of a new ecosystem.  This early land rush was mirrored in the actions of the other bastards as they also sent out probes to colonize new worlds. After a quick thousand years or so, most of the galaxy had been visited by one power or another, laying the seeds of future empire.

As the war smoldered on, the Floozies began the practice that would earn them their epithet. Whenever they found life on a planet, they would raise the most promising sentients into full sapience and induct them into the empire. The Floozy empire grew rapidly and unpredictably. The most uncharitable histories paint this as a sort of cosmic pyramid scheme; by enlightening others they earned themselves servants and allies who in turn would uplift other races for their own benefit. The Floozies and their modern admirers saw this as an ever growing commonwealth of races, each enriched by the others.

They say the Floozies were the true winners of the Bastard War; that they outlasted their enemies. If this is true, it didn't do them any good. Without a common enemy the empire dissolved into a thousand squabbling remnants. The original Floozies that had come over from the last universe were lost to history, killed in civil wars or evolved beyond recognition.  Their empire rotted away, new life growing out of its broken corpse. They had brought life into the galaxy, at the cost of their existence.

Bastard Legacies - The Floozies: 

Mothercorp is an intergalactic agricultural firm owned by the sapient plant creatures known as Jezoflorids. Their principle crop are their own children, who they contract out as indentured servants. After they reached adulthood, they are free. Mothercorp has a fearsome military branch, mostly to enforce contracts. They have access to vast Floozy seed vaults, but no understanding of how these marvels were engineered. In their catalogues there are plants that can terraform worlds, travel between worlds and blight entire planets. They expand at a rate that makes their neighbors nervous, but they are passive unless provoked, in which case their vegetative wrath is a sight to behold.

The Republic of Sea Serpents split from the Floozies as the Bastard War was waning. A rebellion born from the vast cool minds of aquatic alpha predators, they sought to distance themselves from what they saw as pointless conflict. They saw their inherited ideal of ecological stewardship through the lens of predation. It is the duty of the alpha predator to shape its environment by keeping prey in check, by shaping behavior by fear. Under their careful watch, the biome flourishes. They keep a low profile in galactic society, trading with outsiders but keeping their home planets mostly hidden.

The Neo-Floozies are a poor imitation of their namesakes. Where the Floozies treated their uplifts as equals, the Neo-Floozies see them as feudal servants. They are led by a gene engineered race known as the OverCrabs. NeoFloozy culture is militaristic, expansionist and hierarchical. They are in a perpetual state of colonial warfare against less developed races, and their clients are in a near constant state of minor rebellion. Though it can seem as though their society is moments away from collapsing, they are a formidable galactic power

The Whorl is a genetic prophecy, a cyclic destiny encoded into a humble microbe. The Whorl is spread by the Tyrants, intelligent and pernicious kaiju. When the Whorl microbe has saturated a planet, the Tyrant is overthrown by the sacred beasts who use the Whorl to shape and control the populace.  For millennium the people of the Whorl have been stranded on their planets by the Whorls influence. Only in the last few centuries have the Whorl spacers learned how to control the Whorl and take to the stars. The spacers are in a precarious position; to survive in space they walk the line of bioengineered hearsay. If they go too far in their manipulations, the whorl spirals out of control and gives birth to new tyrants. Spacers profess utmost respect for the dictates of the Whorl while stretching them to the breaking point.

The Dvork are sapient cybernetic slime creatures. They have two genders "big" and "small". A Small Dvork stands about a meter tall and is almost always seen wearing a humanoid environmental suit. Big Dvorks are between six to a hundred meters tall, and they wear similar  but upsized suits. Many big Dvork are employed as buildings or starships, their environmental suits fitted with living compartments. As a culture they have a deep seated obsession with health and cleanliness. Their racial polity is the Doctorate. They are paternal, introspective and heavily interventionist when it comes to fighting disease.

The Reclaimers are a coalition of scavengers and squatters on a quest to repair the many ruined and decimated worlds in the galaxy. They are lead by Orn, a pan cosmic fungal supermind. Orn is the collective will of Those that are Orn, more informally and confusingly know as the Orn, a race of fungal sophonts. The Orn are the metabolic backbone of the reclaimer project, as they are living terraforming tools capable of breaking down toxins and stabilizing biospheres. For tens of thousands of years the Orn and their allies have worked to repair the damage galactic civilization has done to planets around the galaxy. They are a thorn in the side of the more expansionistic powers as they hold many important former Bastard sites and fiercely resist  colonization. Many of the most dangerous mercenaries, wanderers and Ronin come from the broken worlds of the reclaimers.