Civilizations of the Rim

The Civilization of the Rim are the sapient, sentient, social, and intelligent species of the Galaxy of Life, hailing exclusively from the various arms of the Galaxy. Alongside the Human Republic and Noveratu Empire, which are both Terrestrial powers, there are nine other civilizations. The most powerful include the Shi'arr'un and the three civilizations of the Perseus Alliance. The Shi'arr'un are a race of avians whose ethical devotion to the protection of helpless species, combined with their ruthless combat methods, has established  massive stellar formations as nature preserves. An ancient coalition of completely dissimilar species, the Perseus Alliance is rife with weakness and corruption, but by working as a bloc, they have persevered and flourished for hundreds of thousands of years. The other six civilizations have been so thoroughly devastated by the Galactic War that they are considered rare, and some speculate that they may be extinct.



Overview
From A Brief History of History, the first Source Book. ''Relatively separate and containing relatively distant bodies, the Arms are where sentience has evolved. Without sharing genetic components or evolutionary pressures, the ecosystems of the Arms invariably produce species which are capable of considering their own existence. Many of these species are not sapient, however, and are not capable of higher reasoning and abstraction. On Earth the best examples of this are dogs and cats.''

''The Arms act as a cradle for races which engage in the art of civilization. The unique physical properties of the Arms, and the distance between celestial objects, provides the necessary isolation to evolve into a species which uses cognition and technology.''