Investigating the First Ones brought an incredible wealth of new information into the coffers of the Tzen. It is difficult to determine which was more fantastic to us-their technology, which allowed them to travel and colonize the Star-lanes, or the fact that they had no concept of War or violence. Realizing the latter, however, we found it easy to see how they came to the abrupt end that they did.
Even before pushing out into the reaches of space, simply from our race’s history in the Black Swamp of our home Planet, the Tzen have learned a basic principle of survival: not to take anything, not to build anything, unless you can defend it. Whatever you have, whether it be a source for water or the blood in your veins, there is bound to be someone or something else that wants it, and the only thing stopping the Enemy from taking it is you.
The First Ones apparently never learned this lesson. Whether they thought that nothing wanted what they had, or that others would be content with sharing, was never determined. However, when they first encountered the Insects and detected intelligence, the First Ones attempted to share their knowledge with them. They taught the Insects about the Star-lanes and the vast number of inhabitable worlds in the universe to demonstrate that there was no need for territorial-food wars. They even showed the Insects how to operate some of the cruder interstellar transports to make these new worlds available to them.
The Insects worked on a much simpler logic process. Being a population-sensitive culture, they felt there would never be enough worlds for everyone. Realizing this, they could only view the First Ones as potential competitors for the inhabitable worlds. Following this logic, they used the ships the First Ones gave them along with the knowledge of the locations of the other colonies and launched an attack, an attack that brought the First Ones and their culture to an abrupt end. Then, having eliminated the known competition, the Insects pulled back to their home system, expanding out slowly as the population pressures dictated. This process had continued uninterrupted until the rise of the Tzen.