Long before the first men walked the earth….
In fact before there was any earth, the universe was home to a race of bipedal beings of unmatched power, technology and intelligence. They traveled the universe nay, sailed it in all its glory of creation and toiled away at prying out its secrets and to learn all that could be learned in their incomparable push to knowledge.
Like most life in the universe, they started out as a pool of amino acids brewing on their home planet. The first true blown life in the universe was found in a planet much similar to earth (in terms of capacity for life).It had a steady temperature suitable for liquid water and life thrived. Eventually, a life similar to ours was sprouted, one that thirsted for knowledge. When a position of comparative literacy and knowledge was achieved, they called themselves the Varen, firstborn in their ancient tongue.
Indeed, firstborn they were-the first sentient life in the universe. A logical race though not without emotion, they conducted themselves in a rather practical manner, throwing their full weight now behind eliminating war, now behind eliminating poverty,, and in the culmination of effects they went to space. And they never looked back since.
In a space of scarcely a century in earth years, from satellite to practical space ship, they managed to fully plant their feet firmly in space and set out to explore the universe. Of course they could do this because of a few (obvious) reasons. One was that they were in a time of prosperity; there was no mismanaged economy or climate that they had to solve before taking off. Another was that in their state of complete peace, there was no military to feed or pour their resources into-all resources went to peaceful uses. And finally they had a single unified government that took care of everything on their planet and so did not have any problem of conflicting interests. They were an ideal society.
The Varen set out to traverse space in their by now gigantic ships. But being Varen, they refused to be idle and set out to explore the intricacies of themselves. In a manner of speaking, they turned from space travel to medicine and unraveled the mysteries of their bodies in absolute terms. And being the workers that they were, they soon turned to genetics and tinkered with their basic structure to increase their capability to perform activities of any sort. And their efforts were crowned with success-they achieved immortality-they could now live without fear of old age. And now freed of the fear of death, they traveled the universe at first slowly then quickly as they discovered faster than light travel.
Fleets of Varen traveled the universe looking for life like theirs but they did not find any life at all. So the Varen decided to do a little experiment. They decided to seed the universe with life to see if they could create life if they couldn't find it. And so their lifelong toil began, using their newfound knowledge to give a head start to life everywhere.
They found they were successful in one planet far, far away and left it under a Varen ship that would watch it for all eternity and began the same process on the next suitable planet.