Remnants

Mankind is dead. The last members of the genus homo died out long ago, in the form of Martians. While animalistic forms still survive on Venus and Mars, there are no traces of mankind left on Earth, or rather what remains of it. Though, this is not to say the galaxy is devoid of humanity.  

In the years following the Dwarves' completion, the Humans were focusing on more distant bodies. The most obvious choice was Titan, and so a new goal was set. The Titan colony, "Olympus" was a flourishing place, an Eden, if you will. The flora was derived from grapes and pomegranates, as an artistic choice, and as such, this resulted in a lot of alcohol. Soon Titan was the number one producer of illegal materials in the system, making many strong drinks and drugs. While this made the moon quite popular amongst "unassociated" parties, it rendered them criminals, on a planetary scale. And when mankind took to the stars, they left the Olympian colony without warning.

Titan fell into anarchy.

As if the moon wasn't bad enough from the fighting, wars, political fury and abandonment, it was about to experience the most important part of humanity's history. Contact with alien life. It was all very sudden, the ships appeared in the sky, and stayed there. Utilizing the extremely think atmosphere, human soldiers flew up on arm-powered wings and attempted to destroy the devices. This resulted in a reaction from the newcomers, this reaction being: Destroy all human life on the planet.

Wave, upon wave, upon wave, upon wave of bullet-shaped ships rippled across Titan's sky. And in a mere 12 years, homo sapiens was erased from the system. The invaders came to Titan to merely view it, so the humans attacking them was like going to the cinema, and having the film shoot you in the foot. And as such, Titan became the second world of the Lok.

Enceladus was always theorized to have life on it, and those theories were correct. The Lok were the most powerful biological force the galaxy had ever seen. They quickly went from a nomadic race of creatures that dwelled in the glacial "lichen valleys" of Enceladus' surface. After colonizing the moon's deep oceans, the Lok set out for the stars. This was no easy task, as in order to obtain the necessary materials, they needed to mine the ocean floor itself. After finally mastering transmutation, they converted the very valleys they lived in into factories to produce sleek, near-invisible ships that could travel at the speed of light.

But they didn't stop there.

After they finally took control of every moon of Saturn, they converted the moons themselves into starships. They then linked these ships and, over generations, transformed Saturn into one, immense, indestructible mobile home. With Saturn acting as their mothership, each moon was converted back to the original state, then terraformed to the Loks' needs. Each was essentially a giant national park. The Lok had achieved lightspeed, the galaxy was now theirs to explore.

After millions upon millions of years, every single star system was being watched, discreetly, by the Lok. Until one visionary known only as "Eight" considered transmuting the Lok themselves. The species was immediately on board. After several failed attempts, they did it. They converted the entire species to indescribable sentient energy, becoming one with the third dimension itself, and ascending the universe.

To date, the Lok are the only species ever to master transmutation, the only things to break the speed of light, and the only beings in the history of time to ascend the mortal plane.