The Great Dying
In the end, what was most surprising was how hard the Phyr fought. They proved a savage foe - even against virtually insurmountable odds. The Codexian invasion was well planned, well organized and ruthlessly prosecuted. It ran like clockwork; a success for the textbooks of the future. Though the Phyr had a number of advantages, those proved largely tactical... and short-lived. The Amoneth-provided stealth technology indeed cloaked the behemoth carriers preferred by the ursine threat. At the onset of the Codexian offensive, they mauled a number of Carrier Task Forces, taking them by surprise and utterly destroying them. But... the Codexian Navy was by now a remarkably resilient institution. Soon enough, counter-tactics were developed. The Phyr penchant for ramming their cloaked vessels down the throats of human carriers and unleashing an endless wave of fighter-bombers was rendered null and void when the Codexians began deploying picket-vessels light minutes in advance of their main bodies.
If the Phyr attempted to bypass them via FTL, they were invariably detected by the residue left extending from their point of origin (which allowed Codexian sensors to triangulate their vector and position). If, instead, they attempted to get into tactical range via sublight means, they would begin any engagement at a hopeless disadvantage, with even the slowest Codexian vessel being much faster than their lumbering motherships. One by one, those kilometres-long stealth carriers were hunted down and broken up by massed missile barrages. Codexian fighter pilot aces ran into the hundreds within months of the war's onset, as thousands upon thousands of their cumbersome Phyr counterparts met their ends in that darkest of places that separates the lonely points of light we call our homes. By the sixth month of a conflict that was rapidly turning into a massacre, over twenty of the Phyr super-carriers were reduced to particles of interstellar dust.
And, yet, it could all have been very different. The Phyr had obviously not contemplated nor desired a strategic confrontation with Codexia. Their forces were arrayed on the other end of their vast domain, where they still fought a desperate holding battle against the Turanei. By some estimates, the Codexian Navy faced a mere quarter of the total Phyr naval tonnage. Employed against the Codexians, such a force might have turned the tide. But the Codexian advance was being treated as an irritation, even as it choked the life out of the Phyr Dominion. The strategists could not understand it. And still, the 'bears' fought on. With dwindling forces; outgunned, outmanoeuvred... still, they fought. Derided in some quarters, they earned the grudging respect of their human adversary - bought by endless torrents of their syrupy yellow blood, and an unmatched resolve. Their sheer force of will and their immense capacity to sacrifice lent them a sort of tragic, noble air, entirely out of whack with stereotypical portrayals of this faltering race.
It was only as the Codexians carved their way into the heartland of the Dominion that they finally began to understand. Phyr prisoners and a rising flood of refugees were all telling the same story: the Turanei were determined to end their species. A war that had previously been a jostle for territory and resources had turned very, very ugly, indeed. The Phyr had 'profaned' something very, very important to the Turanei, in their single successful raid against the latter's homesystems. And now, billions of Phyr were being immolated on a dozen worlds. The weapons of the Turanei were terrible, but it still took weeks to 'kill' a world - to sterilize it utterly. There was much suffering, before the end.
The Phyr surrendered to the Codexians a week into the eighth month of the war. It was unconditional. Their only request was simple: help them avert extinction! Or, at the very least, do not interfere in their attempt to stave off total defeat against the Turanei. Their desperation was entirely palpable.
Do you... take what you can and what you will (technologically and economically speaking), and leave the Phyr to their fate?
OR
Do you... do as above, but take in as many Phyr refugees as feasible, in case they are not lying about their battle for survival?
OR
Do you... intervene militarily against the Turanei, heroically standing up for the right of the Phyr to exist?
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