Oa
Oa is the home of the self-proclaimed Guardians of the Universe. It is also the source of power for the Green Lantern Corps and the origin of the Martian Manhunters.
The Oans are technologically substantially advanced, cunning manipulators and far-seeing strategists. Oa has no culture except what their armies bring back to them. Oans are cold and merciless, almost universally obsessed with preserving law and order.
- History***
Oa is one of the oldest races in the universe. Locked in an endless and eternal war with the Celestials, Oa has been an instigator of many proxy wars and cultural shifts across the galaxy for the last billion years.
The modern Oans derive from an even more ancient race called Maltusians. They were born with an inherent capability for controlling the Emotional Electromagnetic Spectrum, a source of energy derived from the willpower of all sentient beings. The Maltusians were lifted out of their rather primitive lifestyle by The Watchers early in their civilization's development. This proved to be a catastrophic choice, as the Oans rapidly developed into a Class IV civilization and engaged in violent encounters with the Celestials.
The first major play of their endless detente came when they armed a faction of Celestials called the Aspirants with the Godkiller; weapons to combat other Celestials. Though the Aspirants were annihilated, it was a provable concept to outfit other races from Oa's advanced knowledge of technology. This also resulted in the Watchers withdrawing from the universe and protecting their own technology jealously.
Over time the Oans pooled their collective cosmic power into the Central Power Battery on Oa, creating a repository of surplus energy that could supplement their already awesome powers.
Oans had begun to analyze and even control magic, in the earliest days of their ascendancy. One of their earliest battles was against the forces of entropic necromancy, battling the Empire of Tears, an early offshoot of Celestial engineering. They successfully destroyed the weft of magic in dozens of sectors-- condensing all that power into a meteor that would become the Starheart.
One Oan scientist, blending magic, cosmic power, and technology, dared to look at the moment when the hand of the Creator deposited the Cosmic Egg from which all reality would flow. Foolishly, he tried to interfere with it, thinking this would disarm the Celestials and pre-empt the endless war. Creation shattered and reformed in an eternity and an eyeblink, doing incalculable harm to the universe. In punishment, all of Oa was cut off from the flow of power called The Source. Mighty though their technology was, Oa was unable to recover from this blow. Without a connection to the Source, Oa could never access the Power Cosmic again.
Oa focused on refining their mastery of the Electromagnetic Emotional Spectrum. This innate power and advanced technology made Oa proof of Clark's Dictum that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
The Krypton Detente
The most significant event of the last fifty millennia was the rise of planet Krypton and the Kryptonian Hegemony. The military might of Oa was strained to the breaking point trying to contain them, depleting the entire reserve of their Martian Manhunters. Oa enlisted allies such as the Kree in the battle, and helped the mad god Darkseid tap into the power of the Omega Force.
Oa attempted multiple strategies, but their most far-reaching one was the creation of the Demiurge. A sentient magical presence, the Demiurge was guided into producing armies to fight Krypton. The most prominent of these New Gods was Buri of Asgard, who led the armies of Asgard to crushing victories over Krypton.
The military rout was launched along with genetic plagues, radioactive bombardment, and even dimming Krypton's main sequence star. Sabotaged from within and without, Krypton passed into history when the last of the Kryptonians saw their sun go nova as the Oans implemented their final sanction.
