The Starward Exiles Entry 2

The History of Earth Up to the First Nordic War

This is Nicholas Petrov again. In my previous entry, I explained the oddities of time travel, which led to my attempting this project. In that entry, I promised to explain the history that has led mankind to its current crisis since I do not know where these journals will appear in the annals of time.

At the turn of the twentieth century, strange lights shone in the sky. This was the beginning of the aliens’ reconnaissance of the planet, which coincided with man’s fledgling steps towards flight. What followed was over two hundred years of confusion and chaos. Some alien races continued their surveys, others began abductions, others began making deals with the governments in exchange for abductions, still others began mining the Earth’s minerals without the various governments’ knowledge. Other aliens began interfering with men’s wars or trying to position themselves as a priestly class among the elite. And all the while, partial information was leaked to the public, but never the whole story, which led to steadily growing pantheons of benevolent extraterrestrials and galactic councils until a wildly inconsistent lore evolved that was equal parts truth and lies.

But a few facts managed to rise above the muck of guesses and false religions, and those facts were confirmed in the year 2205 AD. Among the countless names for the alien races, many turned out to be true. The Nordics, a race of tall blond men and women, were real, as were their two planets of origin, Erra and Temmer. The various Reptilians and Grays also turned out to be real, as did many of the human variants mentioned in the lore. The lies mostly revolved around two points. The first was what the aliens were doing over the previous two hundred years. If there were underground bases, it could only have been a few, and the Nordics had no knowledge of them. The abductions were conducted by rogue actors, and the world governments insisted that they had no knowledge of them, even after the Nordics announced themselves. Whether this is true is another matter. My point is such actions were few and far between, and they were meant to remain secret, even from some of the alien races. Most of the aliens were content to steal our minerals and survey our land and people. Very few had actually interacted with our governments on a consistent basis. There were many complaints about the aliens robbing us of our resources, but the people of Earth were told that such grievances would be set right during the Treaty of Introduction.

The second set of lies is much more crucial, and those are what eventually led to the first Nordic War. Over time, an idea had developed. Some people had come to believe that the Nordics weren’t just another race of people in a world that had turned out to be much larger than we’d dared to imagine. To these people the Nordics were gods, saviors. The old alien lore was filled with tales of the Nordics having telepathic abilities, a benevolent temperament, and the means to help men reach enlightenment. The Nordics had no such abilities or temperament, but they knew the lore, and they leaned into it.

I was born in 2680, so obviously I was not there during the Treaty of Introduction, and much has been lost over the last five hundred and eighteen years, but a few recordings of that fateful day remain, and I’ve seen most of them. The cameras of that time pan over a large crowd, hundreds of thousands of people standing in front of what was then called the Washington Monument. That monument now stands a broken spike in a smog-filled sky. The camera cuts to a stage, where world leaders crowd around a podium while seven-foot-tall warlords loom over them with smiling faces and shining blonde hair. On the flanks of the warlords are the Reptilians, the serpent races, some with rough scales, others with smooth, glistening scales that look almost like colorful skin, but all of them have slitted irises, and none of them smile for fear of revealing the forked tongues behind their jagged teeth. The serpent had returned, and no one was asking questions.

Shuffling up and down the stage were the Grays, offering drinks and snacks to the performers and warlords alike. Their heads were different sizes, but all those skulls were bulbous, all their limbs were thin and long. They were a gaggle of deformed imps, meant to put the world at ease, but unable to help that sense of dread that crawled up one’s skin whenever he looked at them.

The politicians, the performers, each took their turns at the microphone, promising love and peace and prosperity, promising a space age, and promising the next step in their supposed evolution. The crowd cheered and laughed and clapped, and the whole time, no one asked an obvious question: where were the others? Since the Nordics had first announced themselves to the politicians, others had admitted their own existence as well, and each race had begged our leaders not to do business with the warlords, although the people didn’t learn this until after the Nordics’ true intentions were revealed, but rumors had spread since the Nordics’ appearance. There were supposedly 150 races all circling the Milky Way’s habitable zone, and yet only twelve races, each a variant of three basic types—the Blondes, the Reptilians, and the Grays—were standing on that stage. Why had none of the others dared to appear? Someone should’ve asked questions, but no one did, and the warlords kept smiling.

Finally, the first Nordic approaches the podium. He gestures to one of the Grays and says that his people had made them. He says that his people can make bodies from scratch, and if they’re capable of making a body from scratch, imagine what they can do to a body that already exists. He then goes on to explain that his people are the true Annunaki. His people had altered the DNA of those ancient primates so long ago, and now they mean to finish what they started. They mean to perfect humanity. They mean to make the Garden of Eden real and global. Some Grays roll out a large device with a tarp thrown over it. They remove the tarp, revealing a giant tank with a control panel on the side of it. The man says that he can place any man or woman inside that tank and give them the perfect body, a body that is both beautiful and never dies. And not only that, through the little control panel on the side of the glass tank, he can give humanity his own telepathic abilities and understanding of the universe—he had neither understanding nor telepathic abilities but made the claim nonetheless, and why not? The people were already disposed to believe the Nordics were benevolent. His plan only confirmed what they’d known all along. He said that once any man or woman left that tank, they could roam the world naked without shame or fear of exposure to the elements. They could return to their friends and family and impart to them ancient wisdom that would rival the greatest sages of their time.

The serpent had returned, promising the Garden of Eden and the Knowledge of Good and Evil all in one ridiculous water tank that looked like it belonged in some cyberpunk circus. It was so obvious. The Reptilians hissed with glee as the Nordics revealed their enlightenment. The people should’ve known that the devil was back in the Garden. But Reptilians were in the background while the Nordics stood before the people, beautiful, blonde, and smiling. They’d forgotten that Satan was first an angel of light.

The Grays pushed more tanks to the foot of the stage, and the politicians were placed in the tanks first. The procedure, or alchemy, whatever you want to call it, only took a few minutes, and when the people saw the new bodies of their world leaders, they lined up in droves.

I don’t know how long this period of deception lasted. What I do know is that by the time the truth was revealed, nearly a quarter of the population had stepped into the tanks. Fortunately, the people of faith knew better. We remembered the true story of creation. There were no Annunaki fiddling with the DNA of distant primates in the unwritten past. Satan had entered the garden, and now he was back. We warned people. We fought. We destroyed those tanks when we could get to them, and in time, the truth was made known to the world. But were it not for other friends among the stars, it would’ve been too late.

It was true that the tanks did make the men and women who entered them beautiful, but as for the enlightenment, it was more of a lobotomy. The people who entered those tanks soon became little better than the Grays. The process was slow. The deterioration of the mind took weeks, sometimes months. But sooner or later all those beautiful people were sitting on the sidewalk, naked and ready to do whatever the Nordics said. The Nordics’ orders were simple. Kill your loved ones.

A few of those poor souls were eventually awakened from their stupor, but not many, and by the time the solution was found, the war was on. Abductions happened en masse. The Nordics used their ships to destroy our landmarks and level our cities. But enough of us resisted to put up a fight, inferior technology or not. And we put up enough of a fight to encourage the other races in the Milky Way to finally stand against the scourge of the Nordics. However, while the other races were helpful, they were by no means our salvation, contrary to lore that had grown over the last two hundred years, and Earth, rather than becoming an Eden, became a kill box. I’ll discuss the war further in the next entry, Lord willing.

May God grant you peace.

Hieromonk Nicholas Petrov.

“If you’d like to read more of my work, The Familiar (a dark urban fantasy) comes out February 3^rd, 2026, and now available for preorder on Amazon and Draft 2 Digital. Gerome is a Familiar who gave his blood to a vampire. But now the vampire wants his wife. This book is the first of a larger series called Annals of S.O.L.M. If you’d like to support my work, The Familiar will be found on Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, and more. I hope you enjoyed this entry of The Starward Exiles.”