During the Shutdown War between the alien species known as the Arweli, and the Robot collective known as Groupthink, massive planetwide bombardments occurred.
Arweli industrial planets were targeted particularly as a means of slowing their war effort. Several times, Groupthink suicide ships equipped with a preciously irreplaceable drive crystals would jump deep behind the battle lines and into Arweli territory to unleash a planet wide barrage of atomic weaponry faster than the defenses of the planets could react. The resulting devastation of industrial facilities on the surface of these planets released unimaginable amounts of toxic byproducts into the environments.
After the war, many species including humans would make expeditions to these dead worlds in pursuit of resources, but would find mutated and degraded offshots of the Arweli species clinging to existence in the ruins.
(Sorry this is a repost, Beehaw defederated and apparently the original post I made disappeared)
The war was between an alien race known as the Arweli, and a bio-organic robot collective known as Groupthink. The Arweli had been constantly expanding their territory by annexing the worlds of less powerful races. Eventually they brushed up against the territory of the Groupthink. What started as a minor dispute over the world of a third race situation on the border, which was attempting relations with both sides escalated somewhat uncontrollably into a total war.
The name of the war was retroactively applied. It was given that name as it marked the shutdown of Groupthink, when the supercomputer ships that maintained the group consciousness were infiltrated and poisoned. This caused a shutdown of Groupthink, reverting robots back to isolated individual consciousnesses only, and stopped the war it's tracks.
Some humans also suggest the name applies to the shutdown of the Arweli central government, who were the other side of the war. After the war the central government was fractured and a shadow of it's former self, with numerous leaders claiming to have legitimate leadership, and many other groups splintering off entirely.
Yeah, the mods are having a moment, they defederated from lemmy.world for mod drama reasons. It kind of sucks because some of my old posts are up, but some aren't and a lot of comments of mine and of people who commented on my stuff disappeared. I'll post things for lemmy.world from this account from now on.