By the Omec. They're a race of carnivores that eat sentient beings. Kill, conquer, devour. It's all they lived for and they made us as their little helper elves.

But they made us good at adapting, and we made ourselves good at pretending to be other people. And by happy accident, all of their arks leaving the doomed Votanis system were destroyed. Oops.

[Well, apparently one ark survived but she tries not to think about it. If only two survived, hopefully they'll be killed off soon enough.]