So you’ve discovered the existence of the élan vitals on your own, and that’s led you to us. Excellent. We need new hands and minds with a desperation that’ll curl your toes, but that’s life, jo? OK, here are the basics.

Freedom started 31 years ago, half as a solution to our first contact problems and half as a solution to the fact that all of our founders were about to be arrested and executed for acts of terrorism–not all of which they’d committed. The idea was to spend some time in secret getting to know our alien neighbors and then, when we knew enough about each other not to risk accidental mutually assured destruction, we’d collaborate with the government and reveal the whole she-bang to the world, public-like and whatever.

But of course that didn’t happen. Because humans are small-minded and selfish and élans are skittish and weird and it all blew up in our faces long before we could make anything of it.

So here we are. The last twelve cells in Freedom’s network, along with the last two Pathfinders bonded to sentient dimships. You can relocate to one of our other cells if you’d like, or just hang out here for a while. Maybe others will figure stuff out like you did and find us and we’ll be able to get back to our original purpose. Or more likely we’ll die out, a failed experiment. Either way, at least none of us, no matter what our genetics, are forced to live in slavery here.