First Steps: Childhood's End
From the Personal Journal of Emperor Oktavianus
6th of Maltis, 2560
Following Cassius's death, things mostly went back to normal. The Imperial Navy commissioned a new scientific vessel to replace the full loss of the Zenith and all her crew, and soon enough something was becoming evident to government, populace, and myself.
We needed to spread beyond our homeworld. We very well can't claim our place in the stars while staying in the cradle of our race eternally. As such, a colonization effort was put forth, drafting and taking on volunteers from all castes and races of Lykos to create a proper settlement on another planet. The ship was completed rapidly and christened the VIL Naiad.
Its voyage took a few months, traveling the waves of warp travel as they made their way to their destination of Alpha Centauri. Once they arrived and sent word they were beginning the colonization process, setting up the landed colony ship Naiad as their Base of Operations beginning to set up their first city and the eventual capital of the world, Naiad.
The planet was soon named Destinikon as well, a name chosen by the colonists rather than the Tribuna Karsis Provenkya, the Provincial Tribunal Council, whose role was expanded to help administrate the colonies of the Imperium instead of simply the Provinces of our homeworld. Once a world is settled enough it is given proper administrative divisions and its own seat in the council. Shifting from the old way of having each provincial head sit on the council, I instead reformed it so each world would have its own council of Provincial governors and send a representative to the Karsis Provenkya. Imperial administration is never easy, but bureaucracy helps us run efficiently.
Naiad a beautiful city, even a few decades after its creation its becoming a jewel of the Empire rivaling the grand cities of our homeworld in many ways. My family and I will be visiting the planet for its 50th aniversary of colonization in a few months along with inaugurating the memorial of my reign on the world just outside the capital. The successful switch of our Imperium from a Terrestrial to Stellar Empire is already considered my crowning achievement after all.
Speaking of achievements. In a years time two major scientific advances occurred.
The first was the completion of our habitable worlds survey initiative, the data brought in from intensive exploration of the jungles and marshes of Destinikon helping fill in gaps in our definitions of what made life exist on varied worlds, along with data gathered from other life-bearing planets we discovered.
Along with that was the refinement of our administrative AI to work with the new communication systems we've created for communicating between colonized worlds, letting the various government organizations and researchers at a level never before seen. The AI's can handle administrative heavy work letting our researchers discover new heights of science and technology never seen by intelligent life.
Sadly though, this early period of relative peace(as long as our ships avoided the dangerous interstellar life and machines we found on some worlds and systems) was not to last. Within the year, it seems some of our new colonists slipped off into the void of space, trickling away from homeworld and new colonies in sporadic trickles of exploration into the unknown. Our magistrates thought nothing of the trickle at first, it would be expected to lose a few individuals as they went off to become spacers or explore the cosmos, with small private ships able to be easily commissioned and bought as more materials became available.
But some of them must have turned foul, out there in the vastness of the void. Shortly we received word that shipping between worlds was being disrupted by some unknown force. This force decided to reveal itself to us, calling themselves the Dread Suns.
Pirates. Since the subjugation of the Naumes Kingdoms and Islands the species has been a thorn in our side. Now it seems they along with some rebel Brar-Khydir and members of the other races decided to create their own little 'free state' as they liked to call it. Or more honestly Pirates.
This affront to the gods would not last long. In a lightning campaign against their forces, Cassius Brutus began hunting down these pirates. They assembled their fleet in the Alpha Centauri system, and our fleet gave battle above the Desert world of Alpha Centari IV.
Their fleet was no match for the Imperial Navy, and soon the hunt began for their base. Their fleet wiped out, cornered into their home system, they soon were to meet Illdir's cold embrace for all eternity.
This is the fate of those who openly defy the Empire. Death. Any pirates were to be killed on sight from this time on, any nest of them rooted out and vaporized with all hands. There is no mercy for those who defy the gods. None defy the Emperor either, for I speak for the gods, and as a result all should follow my will as it is the will of the gods!
The final part I shall discuss in this entry is one of the most defining points of my reign so far: Our first encounters with a similar interstellar power.
They flew in strangely shaped ships, and we first noted them in what is now called the Avyrra system. The people of Lykos and the Empire wait tentatively for what our new neighbors will be like. Irreconcilable aliens, or new converts? This very well could have turned to war instantly.
As it turned out. They were filthy heretics who denied divinity in its entirety to worship their false gods of science and reason. Science without faith is pointless, and all morality and reason stems from the gods will for Lykosians. The people already clamor for a crusade to purge them. To convert those who are willing to the worship of Khydiric gods and those who won't to be destroyed. It did not help that they were so alien looking. While they may respect the power of the whole like we do, when directed by an emperor. Their fanatic devotion to atheistic rationalism makes us irreconcilable enemies from the start.
Soon we did meet another power, one much more agreeable. While not entirely religious as a species, and rejecting of outside influences, they are much more willing to hear our priests than the infidel atheists of the Yalon.
The Sibulans may be more agreeable, but still stand in our path of conquest. the Darkspace between the arms of the galaxy make it impossible to jump between arms, and as close to the core as we are, there is no other route of expansion. Either way, Allies will join us or die the same as heretics.
