2280-2300
Raiders of the Lost Empire
The Finu declared their intention to launch another large-scale raid shortly after Liuva's decision on humanity's genetic future. But they had a problem: their gate to imperial space, the Serpess system, was by now well-fortified, with multiple border skirmishes having seen just a few battered would-be raiders return to nomadic space.
The raiders went through the wormhole in the Ijaagin system, deemed unstable at the time of Yupanqui's survey – and were never heard of again.
Shortly after, the Bodranite Archivists, a highly-advanced lithoid realm, made contact. Likely due to the Makrelogos nearing their space, but... could the Finu raiders have ended up there? Trying to loot some incredible technology? One might never know.
In any case, with the apparent loss of this raiding fleet without a trace, no Finu clan managed to raise a force big enough to challenge the Empire, at least not in the near future. The Bodranites on the other hand declared themselves to be “keepers of knowledge”, who would keep a close eye on the “development of the lesser races”. The advent of advanced genetics and robotics in the Empire was apparently not enough to draw their attention.
The caravaneer home system didn't just host the Galactic Senate as a neutral venue, they also provided a popular inter-species casino and routinely held auctions to sell various artefacts found across galactic space.
To nobody's surprise, Princess Cixila was a most welcome guest and basically had a second home in the casino. Most of the reliquaries she bought had little use beyond spicing up her quarters with ancient alien stuff. But not all of them.
In one of these boxes, the Sol system was called an important station of an intergalactic trade route. While this knowledge was hardly useful in itself, it explained the relatively high density of alien artefacts – if one wasn't inclined to believe the time-travel theory. Of more interest was a trick to increase the speed of trading ships – it wouldn't work for the military, but intra-imperial trade would profit.
Not Hallucinating After All
Space proved to be a truly mysterious place time and time again. First, the discovery of the moon Zariadnus IIa... which wasn't there. Just a projector. Probably there was some strategic value in faking a planet there at some point...
The Rubricator on the other hand, an alien replicator the crew of the Makrelogos was hunting, was certainly real. But they were soon faced with something which only Thorismondi had seen before... in a drug-induced hallucination. It turned out to be quite real – an enormous space dragon, hoarding treasure – like the Rubricator – and looking to turn the experienced crew and their ship into its next meal. Sentient and capable of communicating, too, though she (apparently a female calling herself “Shard”) made her stance perfectly clear.
Managing to escape, Yupanqui advised against engaging the dragon with the fleet, at least not as it was now. The beast was enormously powerful, and just like in a fantasy story, a normal army would be no match for it.
The High Emperor and his ailing Marshal were not about to disagree, especially as the Vailons won their war against the Figyari, soon called the Bloody Wing War, the 3rd January 2282. With the Hegemony's fleet in tatters after the Bloody Beak War, it was not to be expected that the Vailons had suffered great losses, at least in their spatial military.
Marshal Audaric was offered to be relieved of his post so that he may spend his final days back on Earth, but he disagreed, the Sword being his home for longer than most people lived just two centuries ago. So he died in the sole survivor of Earth's first spatial military crafts, the 19th February 2282, after ninety years as Marshal of the Empire.
It was decided to follow his will and make the venerable
Sword his tomb. Landing it on the site of the final battle for what was back then known as Evari Prime, the old Marshal would be able to watch over the planet named after him from his command seat.
Succeeding him, Melanie Leroy became the first French Marshal of the Empire. Not leaving Wyvern, admiral Lucia Lanckoronski assumed command of the Griffin fleet, with the first cruiser, the Deimos, serving as its new flagship.
Intercepting a distress short-range transmission, Lanckoronski, after her first battle cleaning up ancient violent mining drones, acted quickly. Criminals had set up an apparently quite successful base, calling themselves “Ransomeers”.
The distress signal came from a civilian transport, the “Luxion”. The admiral's fleet was nearby, and moved in. But not without doubts. Why was that message using just a short-range transmission? Why was there no “Luxion” recorded in any imperial ship register?
Because it was most assuredly a Figyari or Vailon trap in order to place spies within the Empire, some renegades who had switched sides. They were willing to sacrifice a sizeable group for a few assets – but to their dismay, the admiral's fleet was stronger than they anticipated. Their base and the five ships guarding the place were annihilated. There were no discernible escape pods, thus no survivors.
Lanckoronski then moved Griffin to destroy a void cloud. The remains of that strange creature – if “creature” was the right term to describe it – held great military potential. The lightnings with which the thing defended itself bypassed a ship's shields and armour and would make for a terrific weapon.
In the meantime, while the wormhole of the Uflao system was stabilized, connecting to the Endurga's Carmenekke system right across the entire galaxy, Thorismondi – who else – discovered a strange machine. A machine with a tempting lever. Some people might be able to resist the temptation, but not the eccentric scientist. Despite being far, far away from Sirius, the effects of the lever manifested in this system, creating a wormhole, leading further west – to the Wendel system, at the edge of current imperial space. A fully imperial shortcut, in the end.
Another wormhole led to a decidedly less friendly place. The Skat wormhole led to Toropia, severed from the hyperlane network – and roamed by some malevolent thing. As the
Makrelogos' footage was shared with the scientific elite, Thorismondi was quick to point out that thing looked like it came straight from the Shroud.
Liuva felt vindicated in his decision not to delve deeper into harnessing the Shroud's powers beyond SPELL. If “psionic avatars”, as the implants' creator called them, manifested like that, they could be a great boon if controlled, but – as the thing's very presence suggested, around a potentially habitable planet – also become highly dangerous. The dangers of genetic mastery were ridiculous in comparison.
The
Jacques Vermeil, on the other hand, experienced yet another temporal anomaly. Caught in the upper atmosphere of the gas giant Scheat II, the ship was only freed the 5th July 2289 – four years later. But for the crew, merely a few days had passed. The gas giant most assuredly didn't have enough mass to distort space-time so heavily – what exactly happened would likely remain a mystery.
Different kinds of Paradise
Many claimed that the Empire lived in quite the paradisical region of space. Multiple habitable planets within few hyperlanes of Earth, some of them gaian in nature. But for fringe elements of imperial society, it wasn't exactly a good place to be. They found their home on Blubanir.
The planet was low-priority insofar as colonization was considered. Unlike Atlantis, the first human colony on what could be called an ocean planet, Blubanir had both less land and less resources, making it more important to settle other worlds.
The name of the planet thus comes, as one might expect, not from official imperial naming, but from the fringe elements which established their bases on Blubanir – all kinds of criminals, from smugglers and pirates all the way to terrorists. With the system quite devoid of resources – and relative proximity to the Finu raiders –, Blubanir was the perfect hideout for all kinds of scum. On land, but mostly underwater, over a few decades the planet had gained a sizeable population as a pirate haven.
As the gangs of Blubanir started to become a real problem, Liuva didn't hesitate cracking down on them and sent the army. The planet became a large battlefield and saw heavy resistance from the gangs, who not only consisted of mere street thugs but also some elite, SPELL-wielding killers, dropouts of the Imperial program aptly named “Wizard”. The generals treated them as they would any military foe and set up a strong military infrastructure on Blubanir.
After years of campaigning, the crime war was won. The planet itself had not become any more desirable due to the gang presence – but it now had all kinds of military installations, both from the army and the gangs. It was decided to place the planet permanently into the army's hands, where training and testing could be done without having to take civilian matters into account.
From criminal paradise since close of first contact with the Finu to military paradise in the 2290s. At least contacting the Hulfir Marauders, some kind of fungoid blobs, wouldn't have similar effects as they lived between Vailon and Endurga space.
The discovery of fossils of multiple different species that were all but naturally from Blubanir suggested that the planet had quite the history of conflict already.
Imperial scientists also discovered a far more usual paradise. After Kirill Dragomirov found a drifting generation ship, the man had only one thing on his mind – find the place these “Mardak Vol” (of a quite similar biology to terrestrial life) had designated as their utopia.
After scouring the alien computers for any kind of data, Dragomirov finally discovered the destination of the ship – and a great problem. The Mardak Vol aimed to reach the Matar system – at the speed their sub-light ship was going, it would have taken them millions of years. Though fairly close to Earth, humanity would face similar trouble.
The Matar system had no apparent hyperlanes and was thus beyond reach of conventional travel. Even with the most advanced thrusters, it would take generations to reach a place which might as well be a desolate wasteland. The science officer could ask as much as he wanted, he found nobody willing to support such a mission.
What he did achieve was infecting many more people with the “Paridaydan Dream”. Their demands grew ever louder, and the High Emperor couldn't really ignore them any longer. Before engineers were put to work on a great generation ship, Dragomirov and Thorismondi were tasked with opening a new hyperlane.
An insane task. But if someone could have a chance to succeed, it was Thorismondi and her knowledge of the Shroud. And succeeding she did – by having the Empire's entire SPELL-wielding forces interfacing with a ship-sized SPELL-like device, imperial will forced the Shroud to create a connection to Matar, a project which gobbled up a humongous amount of resources.
It gave more credit to the theory that the entire hyperlane network was built by ancient aliens (or time-travelling humans).
In any case, Dragomirov was given the honour to explore the system he had been so obsessed about, now a mere three hyperlanes from Earth – and potentially suffer the consequences of it all having been for naught. He swiftly made way for Paridayda. Despite his crew quickly being disillusioned by what they found, he was a man possessed and landed on the planet with nothing but a suit and a pickaxe.
They were ready to abandon him and hope for his sake that no imperial soldier ever found him when Dragomirov started laughing like an absolute maniac before swinging his pickaxe. Once. Twice. A third time. Then he fell, managing to use the suit's thrusters to stop his fall.
With nothing but a pickaxe, his intuition (and most likely his SPELL), the science officer had solved Paridayda's riddle – some kind of shielding device made the truly utopian planet appear like a barren one.
Some Mardak Vol lived there, too. Far from being some advanced beings, they were mere primitives with bare mastery of fire. There was no hesitation or any kind of protest from Earth – an army was mobilized to cleanse the planet from the aliens.
They found an alien quite similar to the Mardak Vol in some sort of cryo-stasis and woke him up, only for him to proclaim that he had gone all the way to make up for his mistake. Having unleashed a parasitical fungus on his people, the very same fungus had brought his society near collapse (it likely had by now) and only managed to evict them with great effort. The Vol individual was sent into Exile after them, only able to return if he destroyed every last one of them.
He was pleased to learn that Liuva III had already ordered the fungoids' extermination, and provided the troops with the instructions to create a highly efficient chemical weapon which would leave the world unscathed save for the Mardak Vol. After seeing the last fungus melt away to nothingness, the old alien died, his mission finally accomplished.
Imperial colonists soon arrived. The planet would henceforth be known as Eden.
Thorismondi also assisted some kind of gaseous being to reach their new home, another gas giant which must be like their kind of paradise.
Collective facepalming was one option how to react to these news, but “it's Thorismondi, what did you expect” made this kind of thing quite normal.
The L-Cluster and Doom
Zopahua Yupanqui died the 9th September 2292. The Makrelogos' discoveries no longer dominated the headlines, but the old science officer had long since become a legend. While his old ship continued to write its saga under a new captain, the newest imperial science ship was named in honour of the great scientist and explorer.
The
Yupanqui's captain was the promising Camille Le Roux, author of a respected treatise concerning the L-Clusters – with a functional theory of aborting their maintenance cycle. Le Roux managed to activate the L-Gate of Succubus' Bawl the 2nd August 2298, only to find something waiting for her...
More space dragons! Though these ones seemed to be different from Shard – peaceful. This being apparently aimed to head to the Fuaewei system in Figyari space, perhaps attracted by the new war that had broken out between Figyari and Vailons, with the former attempting to retake their lost systems.
The
Yupanqui led the first sapients in a very long time to the soon aptly-named Terminal Egress, the entry point of the L-Cluster, and the Empire swiftly established a military presence to prevent anyone else of accessing the cluster.
What the “L-Drakes” would end up doing? Well, with none of them in imperial space, it wasn't an imperial problem.
Just as the vicious Vailon-Figyari war wasn't, a vengeance campaign of the Hegemony for their defeat in the Bloody Wing War. Imperial spies reported that the Vailons were taking heavy losses, which led to Consul Ster, son of Nock, to approve drastic measures. The 14th December 2295, the consul announced that the aliens' research into the powers of the Shroud opened a new way for their people. A path which would eventually lead to their collective apotheosis – and doom for everyone else.
The Galactic Senate was swift to debate on that matter. The Endurga Councillor was concerned, the Vailon Councillor presented his elected leader's declaration as a harmless political move (“you know how politicians are”), Imperial Councillor Princess Cixila answered that it wasn't her problem.
The Figyari Senator was outraged that the Hegemony's concerns were summarily ignored, especially as the next proposal on the Senate's agenda was the Endurga's desire to ban organic slave trade, pillar of Figyari economy.
In order to make the Senate listen, the Senator dramatically pulled out a familiar container. Princess Cixila initially recoiling at its sight caused a small panic... until she began to laugh. Upon being told that it was no laughing matter, Cixila merely replied that the liquid's only danger was an intolerable assault on her tastebuds.
As the Figyar took a swig of the container, he keeled over soon after, leading to panicking delegates fleeing the senate floor while the Imperial Princess' behaviour can be most accurately described by the old internet term “rofl”. Figyari physiology was apparently incompatible with cheap terrestrial wine.
After they had realized that it wasn't the Javorian Pox felling the senator, the Senate, by Endurgan demand, merely issued an official message to the Vailon Confederacy asking them to share their discovery if it was for the good of the galaxy. The Empire abstained once again, with Cixila proclaiming between fits of laughter that the message was about as useful as a broom to clean galactic dust.
The Empire was facing little setbacks in that period. With the advanced cloning allowing for the aggressive spatial expansion being accompanied by the settlement of multiple colonies, Imperial power and numbers grew massively – as well as loyalty.
While Earth had a population of around 10 billion people at the end of the Establishing War in the 2240s, humanity's numbers had since exploded. Youthful bodies until at least a century of age, nearly limitless opportunities in space, imperial control over spatial resources leading to a wide tax decrease (around half the population was directly in imperial employ), a high technological standard – life was good, and the impact of children on a person's career and toll on their life had diminished vastly. Over the course of the 21st and 22nd century, people tended to have two children on average across the globe between their adulthood and mid-forties. Now, the average was closer to six, with couples having children all the way to their hundredth birthday. The advent of the advanced cloning methods increased numbers even more.
Within sixty years, population across the Empire had over 100 billion inhabitants. And setting the ever-present terrorists and criminals aside, imperial citizens had similar fervour for the imperial rule as the Goths of the 18th century, with omnipresent nationalistic zeal. Liuva's rule had led to the Empire being fully in his grasp.
The High Emperor embodied colonizing Gothia perfectly – he increased his control of the empire, colonized “empty land”, avoided fights with “civilized” peoples, was highly meritocratic.
That there was no alien presence within the Empire was a boon for the current political climate, certainly. But if one imagined that there would be aliens – like the Evarites – under imperial rule, then the St.Kyrillos Day Massacre would likely have seen a second edition in these days – on yet another, greater scale.
When the Bodranite Archivists contacted the Empire, demanding that scientist Euphrosyne Georgios be handed over to them, the answer was thus predictable. How the ancient lithoids would take that rejection remained to be seen.
Though it was probably a wise decision not to want Thorismondi.
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