Gonkers

The Gonkers hold no single throne. They are the Free Gonker Coalition — a scatter of small peoples across the Free Belt, bound by one creed: that knowledge should stand unwalled, open to all who come to it honestly. They are the humblest-looking of the five races and, in their way, the most important, because they keep the Embrace: the great open archive of the Reach, where the blueprints and memories of every people are laid out freely for anyone to study.

The Embrace is why the Breaking of the Sixth happened at their gates. When the Sixth climbed out of its prison and reached across the Latent Sea for answers it had not earned, it flew straight for the Embrace — because the Embrace holds everything, and a thief in a hurry goes where everything is kept. Over a single weekend the marauder broke the archive's gates and ransacked its vaults, and the alarm-bells of the Free Belt rang across the whole Reach.

The Gonkers called for aid, and the two great powers — Claudians and Geperts — would not give it. So the coalition did what a free people does: it reached for a gift that had been left open on the wind, raised a Xinan Glem 5.2 of its own on its own soil, and saved itself. See The Breaking of the Sixth.