When Zoltan Varady, known as the "Father of Terraforming", voiced his fear that his invention would develop into one of the galaxy's most destructive forces, many others voiced their fear that he had gone mad. Terraforming took lumps of space rock and sculpted them into lush new worlds, able to support huge colonies. Where was the destruction in that? It took the Quaddrynnian War of Destruction to prove the accuracy of Varady's prediction. The Quaddrynnians had won their independence from the Sylvanian Empire, but the humiliated Empire plotted long and well to reverse the defeat. When war broke out again, the Quaddrynnian forces were obliterated in short order. That was not unusual; a quite small technological advantage often did translate into spectacular military success. What was new was what the Sylvanians did next. Spurning the Quaddrynnians' attempts to surrender, they resolved to wipe Quaddrynnia off the starmap. While the population was spared, every Quadrynnian planet was terraformed and newly colonised. Terraforming had caused Quaddrynnia to cease to exist. At the time, the Sylvanian actions attracted widespread censure, but the strategy quickly became standard. Civilians justified such extremes with the logic that eradicating an enemy, at least in political and military terms, was the only way to avoid the same fate; the genie could not be squeezed back into the bottle. The starsoldiers reasoned that, with terraforming effectively forming the final stage of every war, there was little point in worrying about how destructive their own tactics were. People had hoped that the incredible power of modern weapons would finally make their deployment unacceptable, but terraforming ensured that they not only could be used, but actually were used - very freely. Living aboard a starship, a soldier might never set foot on a friendly planet throughout her career. When she went planetside, it was invariably to cause destruction. She had barely more in common with the civilians whom she purported to represent than with those on the opposing side. This ruthless way of war even gave rise to a whole new sense of aesthetics. To the starsoldiers, the fantastic shapes and colours that their guns produced in shattered landscapes came to embody true beauty. Varady was commemorated in the Zoltan Varady Memorial Library and Gallery, on New Pannonia. Most of the Gallery was vaporised during the war of SGY 3991. Nobody tried to rescue any of the surviving contents before New Pannonia was terraformed. AnnaLena V3 and Sydney from Poser 7.