The female-dominated Shadow Elders of the Tyandirr Imperium Council are descended more directly from the Skja'hir than the male-dominated Tyandirr Warrior Caste that follows the example set by aggression, war-like culture and retaliation, of the Emperor of the Imperium himself.
Skaj'hirr brief history:
Millions of years ago the Skja'hirr fought a war to defend their homeworld (Earth) and its thriving native life forms (dinosaurs) from an invasive space-faring species of Ancient Terrans. Despite being peace-loving and in-tune with Nature of Mother Earth, the Skja'hirr fought viciously to protect their way of life, eventually defeating the Terrans in a thousand years of war, and pushing them from the homeworld (Earth). The stalemate resulted in the Terrans deploying a super-weapon that destroyed most forms of life on the surface of Earth, forcing the surviving Skja'hirr underground into deep catacombs where they hibernated for millions of years.
After the weapon, the Terrans' attack ceased, and no more arrived. The Terrans that survived the event returned to their space-faring vessels in orbit and left the Earth, unable to live with what they had done to its natural world. They departed the Earth and journied into space with advanced FTL, eventually settling in the Blue Nebula (Sector Rim Nebula) of the Archimedes Galaxy, and forming the Senlani Sector Rim Federation of the current age. Records of their ancient, blackened past lost forever.
The Terrans that remained on Earth had developed a biological weapon that seeded the planet with a hybrid of Earth-native mammal, simian DNA, and their own DNA; modified to adapt and develop to Earth's native environment. The surviving Terrans seeded the wasteland of earth after the Event (dinousar extinction) and eventually died out, unable to reproduce in Earth's environment.
Millions of years later, the seed grew, developing into hybrid species that would crawl from the primordial soup and become known as humankind. In the Early ages of humankind, the Skja'hirr rose from their slumber in the catacombs, to find the new creatures roaming the surface in the pre-historic ages. However, instead of destroying the creatures (humans), they sought to guide and protect them, as is the nurturing way of the Ancient Skja'hirr; and indeed, these new creatures did contain precious, native-earth DNA.
Over hundreds of thousands of years, the Skja'hirr remained in the shadows, only revealing themselves to the early humans by way of visions, distant encounters and acts of Skja'hirr technology; aimed to guide the primitive beings into a sense of religion and culture; indeed, over thousands of years the early humans began to recognise the Elders in the Shadows as their own deities; the "Horned God" and "Lady" of ancient pagan cultures, evolving into new religions and cultures of their own. Slowly, the Skja'hirr sowed the seeds for humanity to be guided into a new, honest and righteous civilisation; holy books would speak of "being a better person" and "Love thy neighbour", and indeed, the early European-pagan cultures embraced nature, taking only what they needed, and respecting all of mother earth's precious beauty.
The Skja'hirr, their work done, returned to their slumber, waiting, watching, for thousands of years they hibernated into their mantle-deep catacombs... Until they were awaken once again to the sound of War, but this time, from Earth itself. Humanity had taken the early guidance of nurture and respect, and warped and twisted it into a greedy, self-centred, war-like means of exerting control over other humans and eventually, Religion based on aggression and hatred spread across the world, consuming the human species. Thousands of years into the modern age, humanity began to exploit the natural world, polluting its beauty, corrupting its oceans, rainforests, and cruelly exploiting its creatures for their own selfish gain. Human beings thought themselves kings of their dominion of Earth, and in their arrogance, they built cities of pollution covering the surface, horizon to horizon.
The Skja'hirr witnessed such corruption spread, but they were weak. Millions of years of slumber had weakened their once proud forms, skeletal and frail, the Skja'hirr could only watch as Earth was corrupted, invaded, and destroyed by the Terran-descendants they had spared in the Early days, by their own compassion. Unable to act against the war-like modern human civilisations with their nuclear weapons, the Skja'hirr perished in sorrow and mourning of their once beautiful world, taking the last of the ancient earth-native species with them.
Tyandirr brief history:
Those Skja'Hirr that did not retreat underground during the ancient war, after the extinction event (dinosaur extinction), became twisted with anger and hatred at the destruction of their world, and they sought to retaliate, to pursue their attackers into the depths of space and destroy them as they, themselves, had suffered. These Skja'hirr conjured mighty space-vessels from the Earth, rising from the Deserts, the Rainforests, the Arctic tundras and into the sky, into space. These unimaginably ancient relics from the past would carry the new Warrior-caste of the Skja'hirr into the stars, where they pursued their fleeing enemy to the Archimedes Galaxy via the Shifted Wormhole in the outer reaches of Sol, and eventually settled in the Taran Nebula, and formed the First Imperium in the First Age of the Empire. However, their once compassionate, nature-loving culture was replaced with anger and rage, and the Imperium had two civil wars before eventually uniting itself as the Third Imperium of the current age. By this time, most of the early culture and ancestry of the descendants had been lost, and they named themselves 'Tyandirr'; from the ancient Skja'hirr dialect of their ancestors lost, meaning "We are Warriors". The Tyandirr Third Imperium expanded throughout the Taran Nebula, eventually becoming the largest and most powerful civilisation in known space.
Shadow Elders brief history:
For hundreds of thousands of years, the male-dominated, aggressive nature of the Warrior Caste of the Tyandirr lead countless conquests of nearby civilisations, brutally occupying them and enslaving them in the name of the Emperor. However, behind the scenes, an ancient splinter of the original Skja'hirr genetic line remained; the females of the Tyandirr known as the "Shadows". The Elders of this Ancient Lineage, acts as an advisory to the Emperor himself, and while holding no direct authority; the Emperor is sworn by unspoken law of the Way of the Ancestors to heed their wisdom. And such, the relentless anger and aggression of the Tyandirr was kept under control by the ancient Shadow Elders, staying true to the compassion and nurturing way of life of the Skja'hirr from Earth.
Modern Age:
It was these Elders that learned of the location of the Wormhole to Earth, to Origin. Currently in Varal under the control of the corrupted terran-descendent humans of ATIS (who themselves had been forced to leave Earth, this time by their own corruption - The Great Exodus), the shadows knew that if the Emperor and the Tyandirr Warrior caste learned of the location of the Wormhole to Earth, the Imperium's unstoppable war machine would turn its lust for ancient blood upon the humans, upon the Senlani, and any other species that would dare stand in their way as they marched upon the Ancient Homeworld of Earth known only to the Emperor from the Legends of the Warrior Caste of Tyandirr. This unstoppable rage would cause new genocide, and result in unimaginable suffering for any and all who sought to oppose the Third Imperium's conquest - including innocents.
True to their heritage, the Shadow Elders kept the information of the Earth Wormhole hidden from the Emperor and his Office, instead, they deployed their own elements to investigate the Varal system, and ultimately, Sol - and Earth, beyond its harboured Wormhole.