Children of the Fallen Authority (5KYA)

The Children of the Fallen Authority or CFA are a faction of Gems who split off from the rest of gemkind in the shattering of the Gempire 1000 years in the future. They are notable for being one of the few Gem factions to learn how to create new gems without help from a Diamond, and the only one to reduce their damaging impact exclusively by mimicking organic life.

History
Initially ruled by two Diamonds, an early thirst for conflict led to their diamonds' demise at the hands of neighboring factions, leaving the common gems without leaders nor a vital ingredient for gem production. However, these gems chose not to resign themselves to their eventual extinction and used what leftover material and gemetic engineering knowledge they had to gemetically modify all new gems of their faction to be capable of producing the same gem-creating material as a diamond. Somewhere along the way, the term "Children of the Fallen Authority" was invented for these gems to refer to themselves.

Roughly 500 years into their history, the Children of the Fallen Authority became increasingly aware of their impact on organic life. Without a ruler to tell them to move along and ignore it, they sought out a solution which would allow them to proliferate while coexisting with organic life, eventually leading to the invention of a variety of tools and modifications to future Gems designed to reduce the impact of every gem produced and revitalize the soil afterwards. While they are not the only Gem faction to do so, they are the only one to do it exclusively by mimicking organic life. The end result was machines resembling lizards designed to soak in sunlight to convert to vitality, flying bird-like injectors carrying modified injector solutions designed to scar up the ground as little as possible, and, most bizarrely of all, Gems that emerge at a small size and get bigger using light as an alternative energy source over a period of a few hundred years.

While these changes were of great benefit to the Children of the Fallen Authority, the lattermost alteration was the most visible to Gems of other factions, who were disturbed by the concept of a gem who was not a hybrid growing like an organic creature. While "adult" gems of the CFA were, at the time, visually indistinguishable from classic gems, the growth period dramatically affected how they interacted with the world and with other Gems, making them easily identifiable as different from only a short observation. Even worse in the eyes of other Gems, as time passed the CFA went on to modify themselves further so that younger, smaller gems filled different roles from their full-size counterparts--and even repurposed Pearls, as an entire gem type, to be trainers and caretakers to support this.

Eventually, the CFA were invaded by a neighboring faction whose name is lost to time, which believed the strange growing-Gems to be unnatural and immoral. With the increased reproductive rate caused by their modifications, however, the CFA was able to fight back and win--though not without massive losses. This created a population bottleneck, followed by CFA's first brush with the consequences of their modifications.

Up until that point, every new Gem had a single parent and as such had nearly identical gemetics. With the initial starting population this hadn't caused any issues, as there were already a large number of Gems in existence whose genomes were used as a base to create the first generation. However, not much care was taken to have so much variety when the first Gems to grow up were created, resulting in them only having 1/3 the gemetic diversity of older gems. The population bottleneck made matters even worse--even though their population recovered, the mass death left the gemetic state of the CFA to being equivalent to fewer than five individuals per gem type, across thousands of gems each. This meant even less individual variety between Gems than there ever was on Homeworld, and there was virtually no physical variety at all except that caused by mineral content. In some ways, the CFA had begun to stagnate.

3000 years into the future, 2000 years after the CFA was founded, and mere decades after CFA's populations had recovered from the war, an engineered gem disease which induces corruption-like symptoms before physically destroying the gemstone from the inside-out swept through all space known to Gems. While many Gem factions were hit and some were completely destroyed, those of similar size to the CFA generally had survivors and were able to eventually bounce back. However, they had the advantage of diverse gemetics. The CFA did not. The disease decimated their population yet again, and with their low gemetic diversity they had no hope of immunity. A handful of gemeticists, as well as a large chunk of the Pebble population, managed to escape the plague by hiding away in sealed chambers, but other than them, every single gem of the CFA on every planet, space station, and ship they had was destroyed by the disease within a year. Even those who had not yet been born were affected, as the disease quickly jumped hosts as new ones emerged, killing young Gems before they had a chance to know who they are. Only a single planet survived this, as it had only recently been colonized and as such it was years before the Gems who were planted there started to emerge; however, they were completely alone, with nobody left to teach them who they are or what their purpose is. The Children of the Fallen Authority, as a faction, had fallen--and, in a sense, was replaced by the literal gem children of a fallen authority.

So, what exactly happens when a few thousand gem children, gemetically engineered to essentially be like mini-diamonds, emerge on a wild planet completely alone with nobody to tell them who they are? They were able to figure they were created by whoever had authority over this planet before; hilariously, they independently came up with the same title for themselves--"Children of the Fallen Authority". They attempted to build a little society and initially fell into an age-based hierarchy, though that fell apart as they learned that they eventually stopped growing; after a brief conflict, they eventually decided on having each distinct gem type pick a leader. However, even their sense of what a gem type is was flawed, as they had so little knowledge; they grouped themselves based on physical similarities, but did so very loosely, so for example pearls, lapises, and zircons were considered a single "type". Still, this more or less worked out, with their initial chosen leaders consisting of a ruby, an agate, a zircon, a peridot, and an aquamarine.

These "Children of the Children of the Fallen Authority" managed to get along reasonably well, all things considered; they were eventually joined by surviving Pebbles from before the plague, who told them their own vague recollections of the Gems who were here before. The young gems quickly connected what they heard to their own observations of the organic life that surrounded them, despite the Pebbles trying to explain otherwise, and they became excited at the prospect of expanding to fill the empty cities left by their ancestors. And to do so, they unknowingly took mimicry of organic life further than their ancestors ever did, while also looping back around to what made Gems of most other factions, including the original Gempire, strong--the mixing of gemetics extracted from multiple individuals. When gem production resumed overseen by this unlikely surviving generation, mutation and selective pressures went from being the enemy of their continued existence to being what would ensure it.

Oh, and they mixed a lot initially and caused gemetic crossover between different types of Gem. That didn't hurt their gemetic variety, but after they figured out what a gem type actually is, it did result in unusual physical diversity later down the line, especially after the surviving gemeticists were discovered and immediately asked if they could add new traits to the gene pool. This ultimately resulted in the creation of a new type of lapises which differed only in that they had feathers, among other bizarre "one-offs" that spread into the general population.

1000 years after the plague, the "Children of the Fallen Authority" were back, though with a completely different set of Gems who hardly remembered what they represented, and with a ton of planets seemingly populated exclusively by pebbles. Their interstellar activity caught the attention of neighboring factions, which had been avoiding CFA space in fear of the plague still lingering. The new CFA, having only ever heard of the world outside as it was in times of conflict, were pleasantly surprised to find that surrounding factions were generally a lot nicer now. As their population grew to fill in their inherited space, they managed to reverse-engineer the vitality-generating machines to recreate them, which allowed them to enter into trade with other Gem factions. However, their strong deviation from classic gems due to their history made many gems wary of them; though this has yet to escalate to a major conflict, it seems that some things will never change.

Culture
Before the plague, CFA had a culture of curiosity and innovation. They did not shed the concept of gem castes, though they repurposed many of them to suit their needs; although they cared about doing little harm to organic life, oppressive systems remained in place simply because it was what they knew.

After the plague, the Gems who replaced those who died had no idea what a caste system was. Initially living among organic life, they considered themselves a part of it, resulting in them taking on a solarpunk aesthetic. After encountering other Gems who do not grow as they do, their belief that they were a part of organic life was only further confirmed in their eyes. This essentially became their religion. Though they have no concept of a Gem caste system, they respect the expectations of other gem factions which retain them; this has leaked into their culture somewhat in the form of stereotypes, but they remain relatively free.