"For a while, Imperial explorators had taken the nephilim to be a mid-tech-level species with a relatively benign profile, sluggish in their reaction to the expansion of the upstart Terran star empire - not a civilisation worth expending vast amounts of effort to subdue. That, it turned out, was a mistake. The diplomatic embassies sent in those early days were discovered years later, their husked bodies bolted to the interior of the nephilim's empath chapels."