INTELLIGENT STARS
Around 5,000 years ago the first real application of stellar husbandry took place under the supervision of stellar theorist Cristina Zurita of the Instituo de Astrofisica de Neove Canarias in the Tenerife System. Stellar husbandry is the concept of controlling the evolution and properties of stars, especially to stabilize them, prolong their lifetimes, manipulate the stellar wind, lift off useful material, or create new stars. Typical methods would be star lifting or mixing the stellar core with envelope material to make hydrogen burning last longer. During the initial tests on stars for this process, scientists were shocked to discover that some stars are intelligent! High-level Anciene Republik AIs were eventually able to break the language codes of these stupendous beings and discussions took place on 45.877 with the supergiant Antares, a elderly star in the Orion Arm of the galaxy 550 light years from Olde Earth. Antares told a fascinating story; all complex objects in the universe have the capacity for intelligence, although most stars (mainly red dwarfs) are now dead. Over time more stars became communicative with mankind at the urging of Antares, although the stellar bastard Rigel continued to fill his region of space with errant stellar flares, radiation spikes, and solar wind eruptions to keep humans away from his system. Much has been learned since that day millenia ago and "the Compact" was signed, a long-standing agreement between human states, alien empires, and intelligent stars that star mining techniques would only be used on "dead" stars, stars with no "heartbeats" like those shown below. Surprisingly, the white star Vega (only 25 light years from Olde Earth) has been very open and communicative and much has been learned from this stellar leviathan. Vast and ancient intelligences, most stars are not fully concious until the end of their lives. They dream-speak in a language of heat and magnetic fields, lazily communicating with their neighbors as they slowly rouse to wakefulness. These stars also watch and keep track of everything in their area, and pass along information to other neighboring stars, thus these enormous minds have and retain the entire history of the galaxy: who came before mankind, what alien races are nearby or have passed through, all sorts of uber-science, including that of many races and cultures. Vega has taught the Anciene Republik much in the area of science and history and remains one of the preeminent allies of that stellar nation to this day.
Stuff on Vega here....
Stuff on larger stars here....