At the very dawn of time, the universe was nothing more than the smallest pieces of matter. From this tragic amount of space dust was the birth of stars, planets, galaxies and, eventually, life. One of the earliest forms of life within Daedalus was a species known as the Architects. They had a unique amount of Psionic talent, they began to grow and shape the world they were born on, making it a perfect utopia by their standards. After that, it was only a matter of traveling to new worlds and shape those as well until they too were perfect.
On one of the earliest worlds they traveled to, the Architects discovered a species of insects that were evolving with each generation, an evolutionary marvel! The Architects saw great potential for these creatures and decided to add their own unique touch on their evolutionary path. Using Psionic channels to better control their creations, the Architects shaped their new servant species into the Swarm, a species of bugs with the unique ability to adapt offspring to be perfect for any task that the Architects ever needed them to complete. They were extremely durable, and even had the ability to have their workers give off a unique pheromone that would kick start their bodies natural healing to make them mostly invulnerable to anything non-lethal. Unfortunately, the Architects could not have predicted just how adaptable the Swarm really was. In only a matter of a few decades after the Swarm were made, they had adapted their own version of a Psionic network that allowed them to work almost like a hivemind, though not a true hivemind. This network prevented them from being controlled by the Architects, though they were still loyal to their masters and the purpose they were given. The Architects, however, viewed this as a total failure.
Following this failure, the Architects decided to make a new servant species that would not be able to reproduce, circumventing the possibility for evolving past their master's orders. With scientific knowledge gained through the genetic engineering of the Swarm, the Architects created a new species from scratch. They created the perfect servant species: durable, strong, and more loyal than any species with an evolutionary drive. To further improve upon this loyalty, they created systems within the automated cloning process to have the new species indoctrinate themselves into not just blind loyalty, but blind devotion to their masters. They called this new species their Janitors and set them upon the galaxy to clean away all that the Architects deemed to be wrong with it, including the Swarm, who had to go into hiding in order to not be completely eradicated.
For several centuries, the Architects were able to focus on their own pursuits, leading to one Architect, by the name of Lae'teryll, to focus on the problem that all species eventually face: their own mortality. After many years of experimentation, Lae'teryll was at the point of giving up completely, as she was losing funding and time to find her solution. She took one last risk, a final hail Mary. She injected herself with a virus engineered to eliminate genetic disease and degradation from her body automatically without her body rejecting it. Unfortunately, as was the nature of the Architects and their interventions with the natural course of things, there was unforeseen consequences to her actions. Rather than just keep them immortal, the virus would eat cells it deemed as irregular at an alarming rate, forcing the infected to need to continue to add new cells into them by consuming blood at an alarming rate. The virus also attached itself to the very Psionic nature of the Architects and twisted their bodies and selves into something far darker and even worse for the galaxy: the Sanguine born.
The Janitors began to notice the pathogen sweeping across the worlds of their creators and named this disease the Sanguine Plague for its vampiric nature. At first, they attempted to simply eradicate the planets that were already infected with the Plague, but the very nature of the Sanguine born made them hard to kill, and their ability to multiply was far faster than even the rapidly breeding Swarm that the Janitors had been trained against. The highest orders of the Janitors began to understand that they were not equipped to stop this Plague with the same tactics they had been using against the Swarm, as that hadn't even worked fully against them. Instead, they tried a new strategy: eliminate the very food source that the Sanguine born were reliant on. Thus, with heavy hearts, the Janitors betrayed their masters in order to serve their prime directive of keeping the galaxy safe for those living within it.
After this betrayal, the Sanguine born survived and fled to feed off of lesser species, inevitably trying to make more of themselves with these species, resulting in the Highborn. Now, the Sanguine born are few and far between, no longer willing to thin their blood at all as the Highborn spread their own numbers and grow the influence of the Sanguine Plague to new species. But, new hope was found for the Sanguine born as new Psionic species such as humans and the Pterrodii began becoming new food for them. The Janitors find these new species to mostly be an annoyance that is in the way of them fulfilling their true goal: eliminating the greatest threat to the galaxy. The Swarm, fearing the retribution they had felt once before, attempts to keep these new powers under controlled peace to keep the Janitors focused on their quest.
But Peace is only ever fleeting.....