The game I remember the fondest at the moment was also the most bloodless I can ever recall playing to its conclusion. I began with the intention of being a near-Neutral race, content to live peacefully without expansionistic bent. Imagine my delight when my home system ended up with _two_ huge native-atmosphere planets in addition to my homeworld; I'd be able to build up a nice little civilization without having to spread out at all.
Despite our lack of expansionistic intent, my people were still highly inquisitive and interested in what lay beyond their horizons. After colonizing those two big new worlds, we sent unarmed long-range scouts out through our home system's two warp points to see what lay beyond. One warp point led to the home system of the Zynarra Holdings, and the other led to the home system of a people known as the Praetorians. The Praetorians were engaged in rapid expansion, so there was some initial concern over their intentions towards us, but it seems they were happy to focus their attention in directions other than our home system and so we forged a secure and long-Lasting alliance. Ditto the Zynarra, who like us weren't interested in occupying every system they could reach.
Ah, good times, peaceful times. My little unarmed scouts penetrated all of the accessable universe on epic multiyear journeys, making contact with alien civilizations and then making peace with them so rapidly that they never wanted for resupply; there was always an ally nearby who was willing to send them on their way with a full load of fuel. The three worlds of my home system were fully developed with a population of around eight billion in total, most of them devoted to pure research.
And then those researchers reported a disturbing discovery; there was a plasma instability in the core of our sun. They predicted that it would continue to magnify, and that in three years' time our home system would be destroyed in a supernova.
Naturally, this information was a major shock to me and the ruling council. There was no explanation for what had caused this so suddenly, and no way was known to stop the explosion from happening. We had three years in which to evacuate our race's entire population, but no transports to do it with and nowhere to move them to. Furthermore, although our neighbours were our allies, how would they react to our sudden desperate need for new living space? We had only limited weapons and shipbuilding technologies, and no navy beyond a small coast guard fleet.
Fortunately, panic was not in our peoples' natures. First and foremost: Suspend all current pure research projects and devote all effort into designing bigger transport ships and cargo-hauling technologies. Second: find someplace to move our people to. There was an excellent planet in the home system of the Zynarra holdings, and since they neither breathed the same atmosphere as us nor had the technology to colonize that type of planet we felt it was a reasonable request to put a colony there. The Zynarra were most agreeable.
Still, just one planet in just one system? This sort of all-eggs-in-one-basket is what got our people into this desperate situation in the first place. The Praetorians also had a planet that was ideal for our people, though they had already colonized it with a small domed outpost of their own. We purchased it off of them in exchange for some of our technological advances.
With destinations secured, and our tireless researchers producing plans for population transports capable of hauling a billion people each in quick order, the Exodus began in earnest. It was a heart-rending experience leaving behind our race's home like that, with no overt indication that anything was even slightly awry. We'd had to keep the information secret from our own people until just a few months before we started shipping people out, in order to prevent our allies from learning of our dire straights before we'd ensured they would welcome us.
We stripped the home system bare, even taking the constellations of defence satellites with us and dismantling our planetary facilities for raw materials to rebuild on our new homes. But on each planet approximately a million people refused to the Last to board the evacuation ships. We respected their wishes, as much as it pained us.
The Last transport dropped a few sensor buoys to record the death of our star and left. Our former home system was destroyed the next turn.
Coming soon: Part 2, in which a peaceful people turn paranoid.
