The two dominant races of the Fab'Rini Federation - the now-barbaric Chilkit and the current masters, the Fab'Rini - are worth mention in this article. Each species has risen to become head of this area of space in unique ways, and each deserves mention.
The Chilkit for millenia made their homes on the floor of shallow seas and lagoons. It was only logical then, as time went on, to build their first space flight programs on the sea floor, sometimes up to 100 feet below the surface. The early rockets, powered by igniting hydrogen, helium, or xenon, were blasted into orbit from the sea bottom.
The Chilkit's interest in the cosmos grew with each generation. The Chilkit then decided to build massive launch pads on land, several miles from the oceans. The incredible force needed to drive a rocket through water and then air was still there, however the water was not. As a result, the rockets fired by the Chilkit were substantially more powerful than their ancestors. They discovered life on a nearby world, intelligent life.
During the Unification Wars , space flight suddenly took on a whole new meaning. Orbital space stations were constructed for research - and for weapons. After the Unification Wars were over, the unified Chilkit planet had more than 100 fully functioning massive orbital platforms. When the world economy had recovered, the Chilkit mounted expeditions to their neighboring planet, Jokylt, that was inhabited by intelligent life.
When the first colony ships landed on Jokylt after a 5-month voyage, they immediately started building cities along the coasts. The primitive inhabitants of the planet, the most advanced of which had just discovered agriculture, were quickly subdued by the massive numbers of Chilkit colonists pouring in to the planet. As the colonization continued on this and other worlds in the Chilken system, the planet Jokylt and it's inhabitants, the Klarr, became buried in pollutants. This gave rise to the Klarr Rebellions later in history.
After the colonization of most of their home system, the Chilkit set off in solar powered massive ships to their nearest neighbor, the Kriost system. Here they found intelligent life as well. The free-flow of information between these two cultures sent both into a state of shock that lasted about a century.
With the acquisition of the Kriost system, the Chilkit Coalition was born. Subsequent systems were contacted in much the same way, with varying degrees of cultural shock. Most were never as drastic as the contact with Kriost.
After centuries of peace and prosperity on the planet Manu, the Fab'Rini people set about exploring the cosmos. Early attempts at rockets often resulted in the explosion and loss of the rockets and crews. After a rocky start, however, the Fab'Rini people finally established three oribiting platforms.
The first off-planet colony was established on the largest of Manu's moons. But within a few decades, the Fab'Rini had spread to their two nearest neighboring planets - Minas and Minos. With a little bit of terraforming, these planets each became thriving population centers.
With the arrival of the Chilkit people and culture, the Fab'Rini met the alien race with open arms. Immediately integrated into the now-vast Chilkit Coalition, the Fab'Rini people had vast amounts of information available to them in a very short time.
Their space programs went on the back-burner for a long time, and never really recovered. They took a back seat to all politics and rarely voiced an opinion.
However, the terraforming on Minas and on Minos suddenly failed as biospheres collapsed and hydrospheres were either vaporized or frozen. The Fab'Rini on these worlds rushed to the home planet of Manu. This incredible wave of immigration nearly tripled the population of this one world. Disease, hunger, and later war thinned out the ranks of the Fab'Rini people.
After this, the near-extinction of their people, staved off by High Clerist Kyrill, seemed imminent. Shipped off to forced labor camps and factories for producing Fab'Rini eggs and hatching them, the Fab'Rini left the Coalition en masse in what is most likely their greatest space exploit of all time. Carrying their newly born chicks from the hatching factories and their eggs from the hatcheries, the Fab'Rini people made a paniced flight for the Three Sisters systems. There they hijacked 50 massive city ships in orbit of several moons and asteroids and left the Coalition.
They returned later after the Coalition was signifigantly weaker. During this time, the whole population of Fab'Rini were in space. Truly, it is a remarkable event.