The Endless Story of the Horde

This story was not told to me, it was put in my mind while I wrote it, you can say I imagined it, but then, who knows, maybe I did not.
There is more between heaven and earth as we can ever imagine.

I refer to the subject of the story as 'Aelim', of course that is not their real name, but we generally know them as such.

The Aelim were the first to live in this universe, their civilisation was already old when the ancestors of homo sapiens left the ocean the first time.
Since the Aelim had a terrifying appearance (for other races) they genetically altered their bodies in such a way that they could change into any shape possible in seconds, whenever they had contact with other species, they changed into a innocent looking shape.

The Aelim dedicated themselves to educating the new civilizations they encountered on their space travels.
Their latest target was Homo Sapiens, also called Human, a rather fragile looking two-footer, living on a small planet in the outback of the Milky-Way.

Due to their almost immortality there was never a need to reproduce for the Aelim, at the moment this story starts there were only 15 Aelim able to travel in space, most of the others decided to leave their bodies completely and scout the universe as bodiless ghosts.
During the history of Humanity many Aelim were also killed by human.
The stories about Dragons roaming Earth encouraged Human to hunt them down, "if you can't control it, kill it" was their motto.

Since the Aelim tribe 'Horde' responsible for Earth development was from the Dragon Warrior class they looked more like monsters to humans as their brothers:
About 30 ft long, tail, big fangs, sometimes Horns, Spikes along the back, and long claws, this all covered with a colorful skin of scales.
The fire-spitting was optional for the Warrior class and mostly caused by the alien food they sometimes had to eat.
One of the most famous Dragon slayers was declared Holy after killing one of the Dragons who was changed back to his normal shape of a dragon during a hunting event.

Since that event it was mandatory to dress up like a human on Earth at all times.
Human started to forget the 'Dragons' and they degraded to fairytale figures.
Even the dragon skins, once salvaged from killed dragons and used as festival item in Certain parts of the planet, one by one disappeared and were exchanged by paper imitations.
But still, they were there, being shape-shifters they could live on any planet and between all kinds of populations.

Human developed very fast, before the Aelim realized they lost control over the universe to their students.
One day the Horde found out that human had become adult, and was ready to enter space, this is the moment when all cultures have to say goodbye to their initial teachers and have to move on to a higher class, the Ghostly Aelim.
All leaders of Human were conditioned to contain a fragment of an Aelim ghost, this way they were guided during their childhood towards their destiny, the differences in character of the various Aelim caused the different points of view of the space clans in which human split up.

Several thousands of years went by, the Dark forces emerged from the depths of the abyss again, got beaten, and came back.

The Horde had no new assignments since the last Humans left Earth, after a while they left the planet and returned to their homeworld, a dark planet on the end of the universe, their sun had almost finished her lifecycle and was nothing more as a bright star, seen from the planet surface.
To keep them happy, the government had provided the Horde with all they could possibly need, a house, servants, firepool in the back garden, everything.
But still there was the urge of the caste to explore the universe, help those in need and develop them to an acceptable level.

They managed to create a Clan, named after their regiment, after many adventures they joined a large alliance of clans for Mutual defense.
A war broke out, alliances were ended, new were made, points of view changed, threats were made, inter space tension was building up.

Nobody knew what was going to happen in the near future.

One day they found out not all human left Earth
The left over tribes at Earth had a hard time after they were disspelled from the reservation they were living in as protection against unwanted interventions of the Dark Powers.

After some natural disasters human fell back to the stone age, a small, now Ghostly, team of the Horde went back to Earth to guide humanity to their destiny again.

One day they decided to intervene.
And that changed Earth history dramatically

more to follow, watch this space.

I invite other storytellers to add to the story as I do not know all, others might have heard other stories that might be of interest