Galactic Cycle

The Galactic Cycle is the phrase used by modern historians and xenoarchaeologists to refer to the separate time periods of galactic civilization. Each "Cycle" is a separate, millennia-long age of interstellar contact which typically ends in a cataclysmic event referred to by historians as a Crisis. Modern historians classify the past into three broad cycles: the earliest Alpha Cycle (also called the Precursor period) of the Vultaum civilization whose Crisis was its own self-induced destruction followed by the First Intermediary, the Beta Cycle (also called the Forerunner period) of the Messenger Empire, the Old Scawic Empire, the Jalaekudan Hegemony, and Loju Empire which saw its fall with the cybernetic-psionic monsters known as the Dark, and the current Gamma Cycle of modern galactic civilization.