According to the fictional background story in "Tabula Rasa", there once was an advanced alien species known as the Eloh. They freely shared their knowledge of how to convert between matter and energy with just the mind, called "Logos", to other less advanced races. One of these less advanced races, the Thrax, used this power to wage war against the Eloh, a war which the Eloh won but at a great cost. This led to a great divide in the Eloh. One faction wanted to keep on spreading the knowledge as they had before. The other, called the Neph, sought to control the development of "lesser races" to ensure they, the Neph, would always be the superior species. This inner conflict led the Neph faction to leave the Eloh and seek other allies, among them the defeated Thrax; this species along with others joined to form the Bane, which is controlled by the Neph.