In the Days of Archaic Oikumene

The Archaic Oikumene controlled the area of the Strange Stars until approximately 31.5 gigaseconds [a millennium in Old Earth reckoning] ago. This fabled age was even stranger than the present:

Art by Jack Kirby

An astronate, carrying within its containment suit numerous acquired minds, walks the lesser known hyperspatial paths to find the proper place and time for the transformation of all its minds into single, toposophically transcendent intellect.

Art by Simon Roy

A tlekaklek grandee from the rail city on Mercury astride a humandrill bearer (whose troop mind-consensus has chosen to side with the tlekaklek) seeks an audience with the sleeping Gaia oversoul in a temple in the Mediterranean basin of Old Earth. The tlekaklek seeks loans of computronium to support xir people's conflict with the Jovian Unity. 

Art by Lennart Verhoeff

Some principalities sponsored hunts for hyperspace worms, ostensibly because they damaged the exotic matter supports of the hyperspace conduits, but also to harvest their neural fluid (a mild intoxicant that enhances spatial awareness). Hunters scoured the spacing lanes perhaps never guessing--at least never caring--that the beings they hunted were also descendants of paleo-humanity. By the end of age, the worms (then known as hyubh) had grown to gigantic size and had become a true hyperspace shipping menace.