The Culmination of some rambles, half cooked worldbuilding ideas, and a lot of floof. Critique welcome~
EDIT: added better line breaks in the description so it can more easily be read without downloading.

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Val’s universe, post big bang, was incredible energy dense. This manifested itself in the form of magic and what turned out to be an incredibly complex solar system. Trinary stars, Numerous planets, moon systems, and asteroids. Life develops in a number of places, but Val’s people, the Vessarian, came about on a massive planet, sporting numerous moons and an incredibly volatile ecosystem. The prevalence of magic in the world caused the dominant biology to Vary by region, and often the magic was an intrinsic part of the organisms.

The Vessarian in particular were the evolution of pack hunting predators, Nowhere near the largest beings in the jungle, they relied on ambush tactics to take down their prey. Of special note should be their genetic adaptations, where when exposed to foreign DNA with advantageous traits, their body would incorporate it into itself. This would be facilitated by specialized organelles that seem to be some form of subjugated bacterium. When the race hit their tool using stage, They retained much of their predatory nature and the pack dynamics that had allowed them to survive to this point. Further Development was made difficult by the same ecosystem that created them, and the natural woes of the planet itself. The planet suffered from constant tectonic activity, in part due to its own mass and in part due to its massive moons. It was also fraught with Tidal flooding, and electric storms, both conventional electricity, and magical events.

Like an Earth-wolf pack, each Vessarian pack would center around a breeding pair and their immediate family. Proto-Language and culture would be spread between packs whenever two came together to exchange members. Because of this, the genepools wouldn’t stagnate and language would be fairly consistent within any given region.

Even with the advent of language and a growing culture, the packs remained nomadic simply due to the stressors of the land. Food constraints, Territorial desires, and natural disasters. As they built up a working language, However, Mages and magical study began to come into their own place. Given the lack of other pursuits, nigh every pack member ended up with some level of mystical capabilities. As the Best/eldest mage of any given pack became powerful enough to sense their equals in other packs, Inter-pack connections would slowly form.

Packs would begin to consist of more than one breeding pair, and would grow in size. This eventually forced the establishment of a stationary group and a nomadic group. Initially a measure to allow for better caretaking of the sick and injured, it became a way for packs to more easily meet and exchange members with one another. As the settlements grew larger, undertakings like mining and metallurgy would be explored. With the advent of Agriculture, the size of the pack structure utilizing a settlement would increase dramatically, and the nomadic component would be less hunters, and more explorer/diplomats.

Given their existing understanding of magic, learning metallurgy ended up accelerating their development rapidly into the steam age. While one would expect this to be disastrous to the less advanced packs, the Vessarian displayed an odd principle. When they became technologically more capable than other packs, instead of fighting them for resources like they normally would, they would offer to either subsume the lesser pack, adding their genetics to the breeding pair of the larger pack, or would just avoid them and let them develop on their own. The reasons for this universal tendency are unknown, but it has prevented the possible genocide of countless minor tribes.

Before too long, the electrical storms would be studied and harnessed, leading to the advent of electricity and thus, long range communications of a multitude of forms. While Arch-Mages already had this capability by means of their magic, Conventional communication allowed for far more throughput between city-states. The increased communication and roughly equal levels of tech, however, caused city-states to begin to engage in increasingly bloody conflicts.

This would spearhead the development of military coalitions for mutual protection, and as leaders recognized that it was advantageous, trade routes would be formed to help provide for the group as a whole. Trade in particular helped pushed the City-States into a legitimate country. This newfound unity eventually forced the nations into a cold war, as no one felt safe enough to attack or let down their defenses. Tensions would deescalate as new generations came to be, and the old countries would slowly meld into a massive, overarching pack.

For the most part, the world was pushing pretty utopian. A sense of curiousity takes over the species, and research just takes off. Prostetics, robotics, material sciences, genetics, Rocketry, it all pushed forwards in a monstrous wave of discovery. And this is where Val-Prime comes into things properly.

Val was a mil-tec recon specialist, a soldier from the last massive buildup before all the tension bled off. She had seen her number of skirmishes, and moved into a piloting program when the militaries were formally disbanded. Magically attuned, Technically minded, and incredibly capable, She was chosen to pilot a test vessel on a task to observe the crystalline entities colloquially known as ‘Space Dragons’.

Resembling eastern dragons of Earth, the massive creatures were known to feed off the atmosphere of gas giant planets, and seemed to exhibit intelligence, though little was known about them. Among the other oddities of space, they seemed to be pretty par for the course. The Solar system supported crystalline forests, Asteroid oddities, and exotic planets.

As she was pursuing a target dragon, she noticed a certain maneuver preformed as what seemed to be a greeting between dragons. After emulating this, Val managed to establish contact with the beast, communicating with it much like the ancient mages would between settlements. After explaining herself and her people, the Val was granted a ‘tissue’ sample of the ancient being on the basis that the Peaceful Vessarian would benefit from the genetics, and as a token of goodwill between their species.

After they split ways, Val felt some extremely primal urges. As far as her body was concerned, she had just acquired an incredibly rare parcel of genetic information. To pass up an opportunity to gain whatever adaptations it held would be suicidal, to her primal thinking. So Val consumed the gift, and before she knew what was happening, she had assimilated its benefits.

Val was flooded with sensory information. Arcane learnings, the mechanics of reality, the multiverse, and her own universe. Curiosity drove her to ask about the alternate versions of herself across reality. Had they gotten this gift? Would she meet them?

Val would not get an answer.

For a universe to branch into two in the multiverse, it has to fulfill some requirements for how particles interact. Val’s universe, however, was so ridiculously complex that this was a truly impossible feat. There were no others, it was just Her, alone, Searching for what she just ‘knew’ had to exist out there.

So with an incredible display of determination and willpower, Val had essentially managed to will herself into existence across the multiverse. This was a massive reconstruction of innumerable timelines, to be sure. But from an outside perspective, it was just a soft push. In an instant, the collective was born.

The multiverse was not just a collection of universes, however. And while it had escaped Val’s notice, Val’s actions had not escaped the notice of the being known simply as Fate. Unfortunately for Val, Fate had not taken kindly to its domain being altered. As soon as the collective came into existence, it had to pit its collective power against the ravaging powers of the vengeful Fate.

Fate tried to destroy Val’s universe, but failed due to the sheer force the collective could exert. Then fate targeted Val-Prime, Her powers, just purely hell-bent on ‘rectifying’ what Val had done. Fate itself crashing towards the defiant Vessarian. To the outside world, this happens in a few minutes. Mission control frantically calling Val’s ship, Asking what the hell just happened. The space dragons watching, waiting to see what happens, but to Val, its centuries. Eons of searching for her sister-selves, Years placing herself among the stars, hours of searing conflict with Fate. Val feels rage, She feels the collective burning out, shining bright and hard before she just lashed out at fate with a callous disregard for protecting herself.

Fate is shocked, Confused, and quickly gets torn apart by the voracious needs of the collective. The multiverse shuddered, reality unraveling and trying to resettle itself as the truly timeless being was made no more. Stealing what it could of Fates power, the collective survived. Val-Prime’s timeline came to a shuddering, jarring stop however. Closest to Fate at its demise, it suffered the most.

Val woke up on her home world, cold, alone. She remembered space, Dragons that danced across the sky. She remembered a chorus of people, supporting her… and she remembered a warlord’s attack on her tribe the night before.

Val remembers watching her loved ones being slaughtered, or often, worse. The jungles were different now. The mystical restraint of her people was gone. Aggressive, advanced tribes would push out ‘lesser’ packs with little thought. Vessarian history was far bloodier this time. The land was sieged with constant storms, little peace was ever lasting, and the crystal drakes of the sky became known as terrors. To crown it all, the Cold War went hot, Million man armies marching across the continent and razing the countryside.

The people were not idealistic dreamers anymore. They were stubborn and bloodthirsty, constantly warring to right what had happened the season prior.

But Val wasn’t idle, she refused to settle for this. She remembered what used to be, she still felt the collective, her pack across the void. The Vessarian only existed here, in this corner of the multiverse. There wasn’t the hope that there would be a ‘happier outcome’ somewhere else. Val wasn’t about to just be a soldier again, wherever she went she forcibly defused situations. She became a legend among the countries, and was older than all of them.

She was only one being, but she garnered fear from the nation-states. Her words could sway any nation’s people, given enough airtime, and all attempts to assassinate her ended in failure. It came as little surprise to the world powers when she seized control of a small nation, claiming it as her own and demanding that she be given free reign.

Val got exactly what she wanted. Then she asked for more. She pushed her nation to space. She pushed hard. The collective provided invaluable knowledge, numerous breakthroughs coming from casual statements from the eternal ruler. When they built what she wanted, she left, taking the prototype vessel straight out of atmosphere. There was no test flight, the collective made sure everything would work properly.

It had been hundreds of years since she had been in a pilot’s seat, but it was all natural to her. The way the engine purred behind her, how the throttle felt in her claws... how to maneuver just right to get the attention of a Crystal Dragon. She wanted peace with them, to stop their attacks so she could unify the people below.

The drake replied, “My fellow defiler of Fate, I accept.”

So Val returned to her nation, ruler of this domain, and of the dragons of the sky. Fate had stolen her home once, but there was nothing left of it to stop her from reclaiming it.