Song of the Kings

The Bando speak of the "Song of Kings" which is not a song that can be heard with ears, but with the mind. It's a channel of psionic energy that ripples through the planet and acts as a carrier wave for thoughts, memories, impressions left in the collective unconscious of time.

The Ancient Kings were the first to employ this power, and subsequently taught it to their followers. When they took their empire to new worlds, they were able to "awaken" the song by geophysical manipulation of a planet's core and tuning it to the local solar winds. These worlds then lit up like auroras with immeasurable psionic energies, creating a intergalactic grid between them that could then be tapped, mapped, and traveled.

Ruined temples throughout Benu are thought to rest over areas the song can be best "heard" or utilized. These places act as amplifiers where the song can be made corporeal, (i.e., produce sounds, sights, even scents) and help bring forth bits of the spacetime stream (past, present, and future) into being.

Gifted psions can "sing" and telepathically commune with living as well as the long lost. Relics from ancient times could be permanently imbued with the song, but that technology has long been forgotten.

The Ancient Kings of Benu

The Ancient Kings of Benu are oldest know sentience in the galaxy. At a time when the stars were barely a wink, they were the first to divine the secrets of spacetime travel, immortality, and the true nature of the universe.
They would go on to build a body of knowledge that would make them "gods". The 12 original Kings came from the root tribes and included nomads, tradesmen, alchemists, fishermen, farmers, teachers, a soldier, and even a performer.

Long after they'd made Benu a paradise, they expanded their empire over the millennia, planting tribal colonies and leaving their mark on each world--each rendered more splendid than the one before it. They've long passed into myth, but relics of their ancient ways and wondrous technologies remain.

Benu is in twilight now, and the Kings may no longer be seen, but their presence is felt and it's said that the wind still carries their songs, even as it beats down their temples on a million tiny blue worlds.