Some sensible moves with regards to the new telepathy rules. Glad to see this back. 
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Part Nineteen: A Shifting Balance (2366 to 2397)
The Titan YSS Hannakon the Victorious on her shakedown cruise, 2393.
Part Nineteen: A Shifting Balance (2366 to 2397)
As the shuttle cleared the furthest habitation dome of Oros there was an audible gasp from the passengers. Almost all of them - Yldar, Kammarian, Glost-Werheni, Glirr - were experienced naval officers, the cream of the crop who had served of everything from corvettes to battleships but they had never so much as set foot on a vessel like that one that filled the viewsreen from edge to edge, a dark grey wedge with thousands of lavender lights glittering along her bow. The YSS Hannakon the Victorious, a titan, a veritable city in space, miles long and fitted with the most powerful weapons, armour and engines available. The brand new ship gleamed in the light of the sun, ready for her shakedown cruise.
'She's magnificent,' breathed one young commander, his eyes glued to the sight of the warship as they sailed towards the Hannakon's docking bay (itself large enough to comfortably accept a corvette.)
'And expensive,' muttered Admiral Rhass. The ancient war hero seemed alone amongst the complement in not being awed by the warship... but then he had designed her. Perhaps nothing could impress the ninety something year old officer. He'd seen too much during his career.
Rhass flickered his blue forked tongue in amusement at the stares from his senior officers. 'Let's hope she lives up to her looks gentlemen. She'll have a lot to do - as will we.'
~~~~
The (Pseudo-)Yldar Horde in 2370 at the time of the Great Khan's death.
The Yldar victory over the Kobarians would buy the Free Traders three decades of peace and prosperity, give or take the occasional pirate raid, but beyond the Golden Monetary Compact it was not a clash that loomed large in the galactic consciousness. Two other wars and their aftermaths had far more impact on the galaxy at large.
Vikal Mikon, the Great Khan of the Pseudo-Yldars (or 'Yldarans' as they were sometimes called) had first revealed himself to the galaxy in 2343. For three decades thereafter his fleets and warriors ran rampant across the far southern edge of the galaxy. The Autocracy of Makaria bore the brunt of his campaigns, suffering defeat after defeat as the barbarian warlord drove them to the brink of total collapse and ultimately the status of autonomous vassals within his wider empire. The Great Khan's fleets also raided the Pelsimius Free Union and the Sovereignty of Yaanus and had even pushed into isolated pockets of the galactic north, travelling through obscure hyperlanes. In 2370 the galactic conqueror's reign came to an abrupt end when he was poisoned by a Makaru concubine.
The Great Khan was a strange figure, a man of galactic ambitions and visions and genius who ruthlessly demanded obedience yet operated with an enigmatic code all of his own. The primitive humans of Sol III would have been a easy source of slaves yet though the Pseudo-Yldars easily drove the Makaru from the system the Great Khan was content to leave Sol III untouched. Whether he had some greater plan for the inhabitants of the small green-blue world or whether he simply viewed such a battle as beneath his notice must remain a riddle. Whatever the reason the humans remained blissfully unaware of the great events going on around their solar system.
The death of Vikal Mikon almost shattered his Horde and in the immediate confusion the weakened Autocracy of Makaria declared true independence. Most outside observers expected the Khanate to collapse, imploding into warring petty chiefdoms. Remarkably that didn't happen. Ilmas Vis, a loyal officer of the Great Khan and a cunning and ruthless leader assassinated his rivals and claimed the throne for his own. In Fourthmonth 2371 he was officially crowned Khan of the New Yldar Khanate. The vision and ambition of the Great Khan could not be conjured by his successor but the Pseudo-Yldars would keep what they had gained and even, tentatively, open relations with their neighbours on the galactic stage [1].
The 'New Khanate' formed in 2371 would prove surprisingly stable.
While the barbarians in the far south had grown settled the galactic north was in turmoil. In 2366 the Zelvan Interplanetary Empire left the Golden Monetary Compact. The gnome-like aliens had always been an ill-fit for the Compact. Distant, disdainful and autocratic the Zelvans had a poor reputation among both the libertarian Yldars and the royalist Kammarians and their perceived greed in the wars against the Rothakans had won them few friends in the west. It was the continuing Yldar veto on renewing war with the Rothakans that proved the straw that broke the karlack's back however. There was no appetite among the merchant princes for a fight that promised to be bloody and hard for little reward and for most of the Twenty Fourth Century the Yldars saw the Rothak Fire Tribes as no great threat. The 2366 exit of the Zelvans came after yet another such veto.
Bluntly few in the the Yldar Free Traders or the Centralized Kammarian Systems cared about the departure of the Zelvans, especially as Yldar merchant interests in the Interplanetary Empire remained intact. There was even some talk in Oros about wooing the Rothakans into the Golden Monetary Compact; even with all the past clashes there was a level of respect for the stubborn and capable reptilian Rothakans and they made up a strong minority in the Yldar habitats, most refugees from the Zelvans.
At the time the Zelvan fears were seen as a rich brew of paranoia and greed. The Rothak Fire Tribes had suffered so terribly in the Great Interstellar War that it seemed impossible they should recover. Yet in 2371 they conquered the Uindar Star Hegemony. The Uindars, warlike arthropoids from a xenophobic dictatorship had been losing territory for a century to all their neighbours but it was the Rothakans who delivered the final blow, annexing the Uindar homeworld and sending a crowd of refugees fleeing across the cosmos to Yldar space. The Free Traders had become an unlikely beacon for galactic refugees and the habitats had also absorbed those who had made the long and dangerous trek from the galactic south.
The Uindars arriving on the Yldar habitats brought with them alarming stories but those words where swiftly lost in the general hubbub. By the 2370s the Yldar habitats were perhaps the most cosmopolitan places in the galaxy, billions of sapients crushed into the continent-sized artificial structures. This brought a rich variety to Yldar life but it also brought overcrowding; a habitat might have the mass of a small moon but that still imposed limits on space that simply didn't apply to a natural planet. Even the building of two new habitats in what had been Kobarian space only delayed the problem and it was considered likely more would have to be built in the future [2].
Besides refugees and immigration the population had also grown thanks to the chance discovery of the 'Omnicodex' on the abandoned world of Mosthavon IV. This remarkable relic from an aeons old cyborg empire had the complete genetic data of many extinct species and the fascinated Board, recalling the actions of the Domanna Ancients in reviving the Bothrians sought to do something similar. Carefully sorting through and decoding the arcane Omnicodex, an exhausting time consuming effort, Yldar scientists would eventually manage to restore the Armonicans, a long extinct race from the galactic fringe. By 2385 several million of the distinctive worm-like aliens would reside in the Yldar habitats [3].
The formerly extinct Armonicans, recreated via cloning and memory files in the 2380s.
One suggestion, occasionally made to deal with the overcrowding, was to colonise the planets already within Yldar space of which there were many with breathable atmospheres. There were enough of most species to consider such an option and lithoids especially could live almost anywhere. The issue was that some Yldar would sooner jump into a vaporisation chamber than set foot on a mudball and even those at the opposite extreme who regularly visited foreign worlds would think twice about actually living on one. The Yldar suspicion of planets was partially physical; with their hyper advanced sense of smell a meadow or a swamp that might tickle or trouble a human nose would knock a Yldar reeling from sensory overload and their reaction to pollen or spores was a hundred times worse. There were rich odours aplenty on the habitats from damp Glost-Weherni fur to Kammarian perfume but every Yldar from hatchling on knew and grew up amongst those smells, learning them as a more visual species might colours. The other aspect was more cultural. After more than three thousand years living in the controlled, artificial settings of the habitats the chaos and unevenness of a natural planet was terribly unsettling and almost... unnatural.
The anathema toward planetary settlement was another reason why the Free Traders had vetoed war with the Rothakans. Despite their previous clashes no Rothakan inhabited world had been annexed by the Yldars, and the uninhabited systems on the border was not such a feast of riches that it was worth war over.
In 2373 the long expected war between the Rothakans and the Zelvans fnally broke out. The Golden Montetary Compact stayed neutral, though financially at least there was a certain tilt towards the Zelvans.
Meanwhile the Free Traders were facing a political changing of the guard. In 2375 the post of Chairman came up for election again. Chairman Listhim, the seventy seven year old incumbent was supported by the powerful Council of the High Priesthood, the voice for spiritual-religious citizens. His opponents included Mikaba, the young and opinionated silver scaled female who was chief administrator of Oros, Yndana, the slightly older and more conservative administrator of Tiltar's Palace and for the first time a serious non-Yldar candidate, Luut Lentaam, the one hundred and thirty two year old governor of Khebb's Domain. Lentaam, a Glirr (a lithoid species shaped rather like a giant rocky crab or beetle) was a sharp voice in the Committee of Technological Mastery, a scientific faction that pushed a materialist view of the galaxy and pressed against further contact with the Shroud.
The Yldar Free Traders election of 2375.
In the end the surprise winner was Mikaba. Young and passionate she was personally impressive and managed to become everyone's second choice over Listhim and appealed to those merchant princes who always grew nervous of a leader remaining in power too long. She was known by people and respected. The Free Traders was a plutocratic oligarchy not a democracy but the merchant princes of the Board who actually did have the vote were not blind to the sway of public opinion.
Mikaba had championed a stronger military presence, departing from her predecessor's relaxed view of galactic affairs. She was one of the few - Admiral Rhass was another - who predicted a Rothakan victory over the Zelvans and while she was not keen on fighting them she was prepared. Over the next two decades the Yldars would turn to two ambitious warship projects. First there was the development of the so-called 'Titan' class of multi-mile long warship. So huge and powerful were these behemoths that initially no dock in Yldar space could hope to build or house them. Even getting to the point that work could begin on the ship took more than a decade and it would not be until 2391 that YSS Hannakon the Victorious was launched on her shakedown cruise.
The second project was even more ambitious and spurred on by the Rothakan triumph over the Zelvans that saw the reptilians recapture their old homeworld of Rothak, annexed by the Zelvans during the Great Interstellar War. By now no one could deny the Fire Tribes had regained much of their old power and even the most optimistic considered war possible. Admiral Rhass drew up a plan to secure a second warship, more powerful even that a Titan and enough to put the fears of the gods into the Rothakans. That second warship was the 'Automated Dreadnought'.
The Automated Dreadnought had lurked in an isolated and unclaimed system for seven million years according to the Order of Curators. The idea of claiming the mysterious ship had been raised from time to time but only in the last decade of the Twenty Forth Century was there the right mix of political will and military muscle to make that goal viable. The abandoned vessel was stationed near to the borders of the Rothak Fire Tribes and there was always the possibility that if the Yldars and Kammarians did not seize the most powerful ship known the Rothakans would.
Naturally command of the expedition fell to Rhass. Grizzled as he was, his once soft charcoal scales hardening and turning speckled white as those of the Yldar did with extreme age the admiral was still the man who had defeated the Kobarians and fought the Rothakans and Kazams in the Great Interstellar Fleet. In Eightmonth 2396 he led a combined fleet made up of both Yldar vessels and warships of the Golden Monetary Compact Federal fleet against the Automated Dreadnaught. Even with a titan, three battleships, sixteen cruisers and eighty eight smaller ships it was still an unimaginably fierce clash. Hannakon the Victorious, serving as Rhass's flagship proved herself well in her first battle and weathered the worst of the fight but many smaller warships were not so lucky and twenty Yldar or Federal ships were lost, along with thousands of sailors.
The Battle of Ambor costs many thousands of Yldar lives but secured the mysterious automated dreadnought.
Now came the hard part. As the exhausted crews and their battered Yldar warships limped home via hyperspeed, a collection of scientists and engineers (and their guards) boarded the inert dreadnought to see if she could be restarted. It would take a long time but the feeling was that it could be done.
At least assuming the Yldars got the chance that is. At the end of 2397 as the Yldar warships were still in repair in their home ports and with the numbers of ships in the Navy still well down the Rothak Fire Tribes rolled the dice, claiming the Ambor system where the wreck of the dreadnought was painstakingly being studied. For good measure they declared war on the Kammarians and thus the Yldars too.
The 'War for the Dreadnought' had begun.
The galaxy in 2397. The Yldar Free Traders are marked in dark green, the Centralized ammarian Systems in purple and the Rothak Fire Tribes in red.
Footnotes:
[1] Surprisingly this would include alliances with the Khanates old enemies in the Autocracy of Makaria and the Sovereignty of Yaanus.
[2] The new habitats were Mantar's Citadel and Usal's Bastion.
[3] The Omnicodex, along with genetic samples and breakdowns also included uploaded minds, including those of the Armonicans. The ability to reverse engineer this technology - to record new minds and write them into blank bodies - remained just out of practical reach but it did excite those Yldars who clung to traditional materialist views of the universe and saw such science as a far more palatable step towards conquering death than trusting in the Shroud.
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That's a good way of putting it. I felt a tiny bit sorry for the Kobarians but their constant demands for geld was getting very old and I imagine the merchant princes would have jumped at the chance to crush them!
Well some of them anyway!
I was reminded of Babylon 5 too.
As I said in my first Stellaris AAR I'm afraid I'm a Deep Space Nine fan.
Definitely! I mean why take chances?
Thank you!
It is back!
Heh, yeah.
Thanks!
Thank you!
Some sensible moves with regards to the new telepathy rules. Glad to see this back.
Thanks and thanks!
I did feel I had to address the telepathy issue in-universe.
The recovery of the Rothakarans is quite unexpected. Also, what technological level do Humans have?
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I'm mildly surprised to see the Khanate stay in one piece. Regardless, despite not impacting the proper Yldar all that directly, it seems as though they've made quite an impression on their little corner of the galaxy.
The revival of Rothakan fortunes is also rather surprising as well, especially the way they managed to turn the tables on the Zelvans (though perhaps the fact that the latter were no longer under the aegis of the Pact helped account for that). They're certainly taking a gamble worthy of an ambitious Yldar now -- they might be able to pull off a quick smash-and-grab to net them the Dreadnought while the Yldar fleets are still in port, but I imagine in any prolonged struggle the Pact's greater strategic depth (and possibly greater resources) will be the deciding factor.
The revival of Rothakan fortunes is also rather surprising as well, especially the way they managed to turn the tables on the Zelvans (though perhaps the fact that the latter were no longer under the aegis of the Pact helped account for that). They're certainly taking a gamble worthy of an ambitious Yldar now -- they might be able to pull off a quick smash-and-grab to net them the Dreadnought while the Yldar fleets are still in port, but I imagine in any prolonged struggle the Pact's greater strategic depth (and possibly greater resources) will be the deciding factor.
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Well, the galaxy is definitely set up for some sort of big galaxy-wide war in the not-too-far future. But first you gotta deal with those pesky Rothakans, show them who's boss.
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Ironic, the ship powerful enough to deter aggression has caused intergalactic war.
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Oh silly stardancers, let your fellow aliens colonize the planets for you. It’s for the betterment of all’s pockets.
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Just caught up on the new chapters, and I have to say, I'm glad this came back.
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Thanks for this AAR, it was a good read! Hope you will come back again.
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Part Twenty: The War for the Dreadnought (2397 to 2401)
YSS Hannakon the Victorious in combat at the Battle of Sadalbari (Firstmonth 2399.)
Part Twenty: The War for the Dreadnought (2397 to 2401)
In more peaceful times the upper viewing domes of Yltar's Bulwark had been a popular and profitable tourist destination where the rich and those desperate to appear rich could stroll the boulevards of the habitat's most prestigious district and watch the stars turn and dance overhead.
Now, after more than two years of blockade and raids by the Rothakans a different sort of pleasure could be found for the exhausted inhabitants: gambling. The inhabitants took bets on how many Rothak strike craft would bombard the habitat today, on whether the enemy would try and land soldiers and where and if the relief forces would finally come (not many bets on that last one.)
Ysstra flickered her forked tongue tasting the air. Another damp day - the climate controls had been damaged months before and there were more soggy days than not recently. She stared sadly at the pile of credit chips on her table. Once and not too long ago she'd run a fashionable boutique specialising in alien fabrics and materials. The siege had put an end to that, as obviously neither imports arrived and exports departed and most of her stock was long since gone. The Yldar woman had tried design her own siege fashions. Today for instance she was wearing a cream faux-shimmersilk attire that highlight the silver of her scales well and curved in the right places along with matching heeled boots. It attracted some interest but interest wasn't converting into sales and unless she'd be broke within the month unless she won big today. The odds were not in her favour.
At the Grand Central Parkway - the best viewing platform - she made her bets, taking the most desperate odds and took a seat on the cerulean grass, trying hard not to think about what she'd have to do tomorrow to earn pay. Ysstra was an atheist but she was wondering if she should even stop by one of the Glost-Weherni shrines a few levels down this evening just in case.
There was a sudden gasp all around her and lost in her own thoughts it took Ysstra a moment to realise why. A fleet had dropped out of hyperspace in the system, the ships magnified in the dome display. Not Rothak ships. Yldar ships, Federal ships.
Two thoughts flashed through Ysstra's mind. The first was that the siege of Yltar's Bulwark was about to be broken and the second was that she had just become a wealthy, wealthy woman.
~~~
The Yldar habitat of Yltar's Bulwark in the Chimnol System.
For most civilians in Yldar space the outbreak of war was a bolt from the blue. Everyone who had been paying attention had registered the epic battle against the Automated Dreadnought and many a engineer or spacer salivated at the thought of studying and applying such arcane technology but high politics and interstellar diplomacy passed over the heads of the average citizens. The Free Traders were a plutocratic oligarchy, not a democracy and below the ranks of the merchant princes foreign powers existed as hazy trading partners or shadowy rivals.
Surprise or not the Yldars were not pacifists by nature and there was a surge of war enthusiasm. The Yldar Star Navy was flooded with recruits of every species that inhabited the habitats. The main problem was finding the ships to put them on. The fleet remained understrength and available shipyards were full repairing battered warships let alone building new ones. Many a green young ensign who donned the olive uniform and reamed of being a bridge officer in battle found themselves manning distant outposts guarding nameless mining colonies, and waiting out their commissions and commiserating themselves with card games and bottles of Kammarian kryl or contraband Zelvan whiskey.
The very beginning of the war was dicey for the Yldars. Admiral Rhass, grown ancient and thin scaled at over a century still remained the commander in chief of the YSN, and his strategy was cool to the point of ruthlessness. Rhass had fought the Rothakans before in the Great Interstellar War when he had been the youngest flag officer in the fleet. He knew the enemy well, and correctly predicted that they would launch an offensive along the North Eastern Frontier. The region was valuable in materials and home to the great habitat of Yltar's Bulwark in the Chimnol System as well as the (self governing but under Yldar protection) Curator Enclave habitat orbiting Rixkar's Maw. A vital slice of space and the way the hyperlanes fell it was more accessible to the Fire Tribes than the Free Traders themselves.
With his ships not nearly ready for combat Rhass ignored pleas for help from Yltar's Bulwark. Nor did he launch an immediate counteroffensive into Rothak space. Instead he remained at Oros, overseeing the consolidation of men and material. In anyone else such behaviour would have inspired whispers of cowardice or excessive caution, but Admiral Rhass had been around long enough and pebbledashed his uniform with enough hard won medals to be immune to such carping [1].
In the safety of the Cevant System the YSN painfully, slowly rebuilt. The core of the fleet was Suthnar's Armada: the titan YSS Hannakon the Victorious, three battleships, six cruisers, nine destroyers and thirty nine corvettes. This potent force would be led directly by Rhass from the bridge of the Hannakon.
The second formation of the YSN was Hissnak's Armada under Vice Admiral Hephanir, a dark scaled young Yldar male who had won promotion for his ability in the battle against the dreadnought. Hissnak's Armada was a light, fast moving force of ten destroyers and twenty corvettes. In peace time they were dedicated pirate hunters but now found themselves repositioned as a strategic reserve.
The third grouping was so unofficial it lacked even a dedicated name. A small flotilla of aging ex-Kobarian ships completely incapable of fighting in a modern war, rusting in orbit around Craxima. These ships were so useless that there had been serious consideration about stripping them for spare parts and reassigning their crews but such was the acute shortage of military shipping they received a stay of execution and instead remained as convoy escorts during the war.
Beyond the YSN proper Rhass could call on the services of the Golden Monetary Compact Federal Fleet, officially organised into the Devouring Star Hunters battle group. The Federal Fleet could supply six cruisers, six destroyers and twenty corvettes all under the command of Admiral Hask 'Guron, himself a Rothak whose parents had fled the Zelvans and who had been hatched on Oros. Relations between the YSN and the Federal Navy were... complicated. The Federals had their own traditions, their own command structure and uniform and better pay than their Yldar counterparts and there was a constant 'poaching' of officers and men. Nevertheless so long as the two organisations patronised different bars and casinos in spaceport brawls were kept to a minimum and they were at least nominally on the same side.
Finally there was the Avatar.
Decades after the Avatar had first emerged in the material universe Yldars could not agree what exactly it was. A great living cosmic storm, mightier than any warship, obedient to the telepathic commands of PsiCorps officers, immensely powerful yet near mindless (as far as anyone could tell.) Many found it quite unsettling, some found it inspired an almost religious feeling and some took a good old fashioned sense of Yldar pragmatism and ruthlessness to the whole thing. Admiral Rhass was in this last category and via PsiCorps he ordered the Avatar on the key task of guarding the Automated Dreadnought while it was being studied - that and eat a few unlucky Rothak outposts to keep the enemy preoccupied.
The Rothak invasion and Admiral Rhass's counteroffensive, 2398-2399.
Finally in early 2398 he was ready to take the offensive. The Yldar warships began the long journey to push out the invaders. The first great clash came at Sadalbari in Firstmoth 2399. Sadalbari was a blue-white star and little more than a hyperlane waypoint on the route to Yltar's Bulwark. Two Rothak fleets were in orbit, waiting for the Yldars. The Fire Tribes lacked a titan of their own but their forces were still formidable - nine battleships, thirteen cruisers, twenty four destroyers and forty nine corvettes.
It was a brutal clash, one of the largest in recorded galactic history. The Rothakans had the numbers on their side but the Yldars had the great citadel of Hannakon the Victorious. Admiral Rhass's flagship was everywhere, her weapons shattering the enemy from fantastic distances. The titan's shields and armour made her a floating shield as much as an artillery piece and many a YSN captain breathed a sigh of relief as he or she led their crippled hulk into the shadow of the Hannakon.
For three full days the fleets fought. The Rothak admiral Hask' Ekalim was a clever and stubborn foe while Rhass was convinced losing at Sadalbari meant losing the war. It kept the fleets in battle long after either side might have retreated to lick their wounds. Finally the Rothakans cracked and their ships that were still capable of travel leapt into hyperspace. The Rothakans left behind the wrecks of sixty one starships, including five battleships. Tens of thousands of brave officers and men from the Fire Tribes had been killed and thousands more would become prisoners of war when Yldar ships picked up the ring of escape pods and shuttles that the fleeing Rothak fleets had left behind.
It was a victory but a victory that left many defeats seem cheap. The once mighty Suthnar's Armada was a shadow of itself and Rhass had lost forty warships. Even some of the surviving vessels were so mangled that Rhass was forced to second engineers and equipment from the Federal Fleet simply to get them moving and the Hannakon was forced to take a cruiser in tractor beam tow to the nearest spaceport [2].
The Battle of Sadalbari, Firstmonth 2400.
The Battle of Sadalbari might have been the largest and bloodiest of the war but it wasn't the last. In Eightmonth 2400 the Yldars moved to relieve the siege of Yltar's Bulwark in the Chimnol System. The habitat had been under blockade for over two years at this point.
To those that had never seen one a Yldar Habitat conjured up a vague idea of a "city in space." This was a lot like comparing an asteroid with a planet. Yldar Habitats were immense structures, the scale and mass of a continent or a small moon. Each habitat contained thousands of 'city' levels but also artificial agricultural land, parks, even small seas. Hundreds of millions of beings called them home and hundreds of millions more than they were designed there had found a home somewhere. There were fanciful rumours of entire lost civilisations in the depths of the three oldest habitats.
Yltar's Bulwark was typical of the breed in that it was overcrowded, noisy, exciting, dangerous. By the last decades of the century all habitats had become severely overcrowded and they were home to both jaw dropping wealth and desperate poverty. Even just counting those species that numbered over a million inhabitants half a dozen sapient species called Yltar's Bulwark home while a score of more exotic species lived somewhere in the vast station. Everything from wizened Kobarian pirates drinking themselves to death (but not too fast) to the rare and strange surviving beings of Sol III, plucked from their ruined world after a self inflicted atomic war and brought to the stars [3].
The enemy had controlled the Chimnol System for months but had not dared launch a full invasion of Yltar's Bulwark. Nor had they attempted to destroy the habitat (very difficult but theoretically possible.) Instead the Yldars had had to suffer a stiff blockade and occasional bombardments to sap morale and provoke unrest amongst the civilian population.
The relief of Yltar's Bulwark, Eightmonth 2400.
The relief finally came when the Federal Fleet under Hask 'Guron chased off the Rothakans. Over the following year the last remnants of the enemy would be routed from Yldar space and a counter-invasion of the enemy frontier systems begun.
For the Fire Tribes it was time to cut their losses and via the third party of the Curator Enclave they sent out peace feelers to the Golden Monetary Compact. The Centralised Kammarian Systems were eager for peace and if some among the Yldar Free Traders wished to push further and harder the usual collected, hard headed self interest of Yldar culture prevailed. The Navy was in ruins and the all important economy would take years to recover.
On 26 Eightmonth 2401 a peace was signed between the two parties. No territory was exchanged but the Rothakans were humilated. The Yldars would get to continue repairing the Automated Dreadnought unmolested.
In terms of sheer devastation the Great Interstellar War from a century before had been worse but the War for the Dreadnought was exhausting beyond measure. The YSN was a third the size it had been a decade before, the Rothak fleet was in similar shape and even the Kammarians, distant from the full brunt of the war had suffered losses. Among civilians millions of lives had been lost.
Yldar culture was not famous for it's sentimentalism and the serpentine humanoids prided themselves on their coolness and stoicism but as a weary Admiral Rhass noted to his aide as they watched the peace negotiations: "a few years of peace would be rather welcome."
Footnotes:
[1] It also helped that he was a particularly gifted psi and therefore often knew what was about to be said before it was ever vocalised.
[2] The Hannakon herself had taken some hits but the titan proved remarkably resilient in this and all the other battles of the war.
[3] The atomic warfare of Sol III in the late Twenty Fourth Century very nearly rendered the 'humans' (as the inhabitants called themselves) extinct but by chance a scientific survey from the Galactic Council stepped in and perhaps half a million human survivors would be rescued and settled elsewhere.
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Back again! It seemed a shame to drop this so late in the game so I want to try and bring this to a conclusion if possible.
The older game saves are a little finicky with the more recent patches but I think I can make it work.
The older game saves are a little finicky with the more recent patches but I think I can make it work.
I am glad to see that you have returned to this game even if your game files might not hold out. The Yldars have won this war but it remains to see if this victory will be what the humans call a pyrrhic victory or not. It will depend on the ability and willingness of the Yldars to replace their losses.
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So, so very happy to see this back!Back again! It seemed a shame to drop this so late in the game so I want to try and bring this to a conclusion if possible.
The older game saves are a little finicky with the more recent patches but I think I can make it work.
Glad that the lost navy ships still didn't convert to a defeat. - 1
Glad to see you back, Ross
A brutal and costly victory, yet a victory nevertheless. Hopefully the Rothakans will think twice before crossing the Compact again.
A brutal and costly victory, yet a victory nevertheless. Hopefully the Rothakans will think twice before crossing the Compact again.
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Oh, Stardancers is back! Always happy to see another entry in this AAR.
I kinda want to know more about where those survivors went and the stellar culture shock they went through post-nuking-and-rescue. This could be a cool concept for a Stellaris Story all by itself.
I kinda want to know more about where those survivors went and the stellar culture shock they went through post-nuking-and-rescue. This could be a cool concept for a Stellaris Story all by itself.
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