The tale of how the qidan first acquired faster than light travel is in interesting tale to say the least. About 8,500 years ago, an astronomer named Kibelstein Hard-Stone was fed up with other members of his species making jokes to him about getting drunk from a nearby nebula composed entirely of alcohol. He spent his entire life developing a form of long-distance space travel just to prove to them that type of alcohol is not for drinking.

His travel to the nearby nebula caught the attention of the Alliance, who asked the qidan to join them. So essentially, what began as a scientist’s angry joke that escalated and wouldn’t stop snowballed and eventually lead to the species joining an intergalactic senate. This tale is well known among the other species whom see it as a joke.

To this day, qidan cannot shake the reputation that they are a group of "icebrained" warriors who only discovered faster than light travel because of booze.

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Personal work. I've been doing some writing on my qidan species and this is an excerpt from it. Since they are seen as a warrior species with more brawns than brain, I wanted to some up with a slightly stupid way that they discovered FTL travel.

I also just wanted to paint a nebula.