Seonid

Link's in my sig (the Thousand Realms is the overarching setting, Edassa a planet within it). And yeah, I think you were. BreathTakers familiar, if I recall right. That was a fun one. Maybe when I graduate I'll start another.

Welcome back, Joe. I'm still planning on running a sequel to LG14. Here's hoping you're still around to play it. If I recall right, you were in the Edassa RP with me - if you're interested, I finally got the worldbuilding thread up, and I'd appreciate probing questions to help me close any holes there.

I am excited for you! If only I could watch that series again for the first time... I suppose I'll have to settle for rewatching it. Then again, it just gets better on subsequent runs!

I told my research professor that I would have a rough draft of my project done for him by tomorrow. But I have an Arabic test the same day. Between trying to do both, I've ended up doing neither. I hate myself right now... In (slightly) good news, I've worldbuilt a good deal of my City of Mortals setting. It's even more frustrating that my creativity peaks right about the time when I'm overwhelmed with other things to do.

That is correct - the Nameless are heavily dependent on finding other beings to either influence the Realms for them - like mortal sorcerers - or to give them access to bonds, either through investment or possession. Nameless invested by a god only have access to the fabric of Realms the god has created, but it is still a step up from nothing. It should be noted here that although Nameless and Unmanifested are incapable of drawing energy from the Spiritual Realm, they can still do so from the Chaos - and that, even in the center of the Realms, the Chaos can still be drawn upon. The energy surges that characterize the Chaos are damped out by the Spiritual Realm, their energy slowly drawn off to be stored in the fabric of the Realm. But even in the center of the Realms, some part of the energy surges still ripple, low enough that it does not present a threat to the stability of creation, and this energy can be drawn on by any being - no permission bonds restrict it. On the edges of the Realm, where the influence of Chaos is far heavier, much more energy is available. Nameless can indeed power spells from type B magic (both IB and IIB) - and most of them are powerful enough to break the restrictions built into the spellforms. This means that it is exceptionally dangerous for a mortal to perform this type of magic around and especially against a Nameless, as they can take the offered bond, hijack the spellform, and use it for their own purposes. Fortunately, their access to the Material bond expires quickly, as spellforms are not long-term bonds. The magic user does not need to be willing to let this happen, in fact, most are not. It is possible to build spellforms with restrictions that prohibit Nameless from powering them, but that requires a great deal of specialized knowledge. Nameless, like all unembodied beings, communicate mind to mind. The experience of an unembodied being is that of floating in a sea of awareness, including awareness of what every other being nearby is thinking or feeling. In such an environment, it is hard to hide or protect your communications, and most beings are aware - at least at a general level - of all conversations happening nearby. It is possible to hide your thoughts, and the Nameless are very practiced at this - deception on this level comes naturally to them after all these eons. Of the embodied beings, Immortals - along with Manifested and Unmanifested bonded to non-sapient life - are loosely bonded enough that such mind-to-mind communication is still their preferred method, and Ascended have their awareness opened enough that they can communicate with bodily speech or mental links with equal facility. But mortals are unique. Their bonds have caused their awareness of things in the Spiritual Realm to be veiled, and they cannot innately perceive the standard mental communication of other beings. With some effort, another being may initiate a mind-to-mind communication with a mortal. Under the most ideal circumstances, this is perceived by the mortal as a voice speaking inside their head. More commonly, the mortal gets a series of feelings, intuitions, or similar phenomena. These can sometimes be difficult for them to distinguish from their normal thought processes. Tehcnically, any being could make an investment bond with any other. However, it is just about useless to make an investment bond with a being of greater power than you, because you won't be able to increase their abilities by any appreciable amount. And mortal and Immortal coilbondings (and animal/plant ones too...) tend to interfere with doing so, so they are out. Ascended can certainly do so - the gods are all Ascended, after all. Non-god level Ascended could, but almost every Ascended interested enough in the Material Realm to do so is a god already. That leaves Manifested, Unmanifested, and Nameless. Manifested do so on a semi-regular basis - this is the foundation of Type IB magic. Nameless can do so in the same manner (either Type IA or IB, depending on their power), though they must cover their tracks - they may be powerful, but even the most powerful Nameless does not approach the power of the highest gods, or the Stewards themselves. An unmanifested being could create an investment bond to a mortal, but it would be restrictive for the Unmanifested and not very useful for the mortal. Most Unmanifested are not concerned enough with mortal affairs to be willing to tie themselves to a mortal like that. The loose coilbinding is a genetic mutation, although it is possible to replicate the effects through genetic engineering - in fact, a number of advanced races in the Material Realm have done so. It is also possible for a higher being to loosen the bonds of an individual - it has been known to happen on a number of occasions.

So where did you seraphim come from? Are you guardians of all life, or just sentient beings? Were you created for this purpose, or is it something you have just taken upon yourselves?

I totally missed this. I could join you, perhaps. What would I be joining you in?

Interesting. I was expecting rather more questions and/or comments on the setting than I have so far received. Feel free to ask! That's what this thread is for. I've reserved enough posts at the beginning of the thread to cover everything I can foresee wanting to elaborate on. Over time, I plan on filling out each of the empty, reserved posts with information on various bits of the setting. The Thousand Realms covers a fair bit of ground - in fact, I intend it to be broad and expansive enough for me to tell all the stories I could ever want to tell within its expanse. So far, I've posted the background cosmological stuff. I know that a lot of you are waiting for me to get back to Edassan stuff, and that's the start of the next phase of this project. I'm posting now just as an update - I've added a rather extensive section on power, it's uses, and how it translates into mortal magic. I've also added the structure for the cosmological history, although the historical sections haven't been written yet. That's the last bit I have to do to finish this phase. So go ahead! Ask away! Questions, comments, criticism (preferably constructive) and the like is always welcome! I'm also going to use this post as a compendium to keep track of any Thousand Realms stuff that gets posted elsewhere on the Shard. If I write a short story piece, or do an AMA with an Edassan character, or even start another RP, it will be linked here, in a convenient place to find. Stories of the Thousand Realms: Adventures in Edassa - Information Thread Adventures in Edassa - RP Thread AMA - Chaod Leu Priest AMA - The Edassan Lorekeeper (Me!) Hearthstide - Short Story

Welcome, and glad to have you here! It's cool to see how this is spreading all over the world.

I'm sorry to hear that things aren't going well for you. I hope that you can find ways to make things work again. When my parents were in debt trouble, they used Dave Ramsey's FPU (Financial Peace University) system, and it worked out well for them. My wife and I have followed it since we've gotten married, and it's working so far. Until things get better for you - we're pulling for you!

Hope you don't mind comments here (I know I'm hoping for comments on mine, so I'll assume that you feel the same way). So, with that out of the way, could Aspects be considered different planes of reality? Or dimensions? Or are Aspects different ways of looking at the same thing? I'm a little confused on that point. Also, what kinds of races inhabit your universe? I've seen mention of humans, seraphim, God (a separate type of being? or the evolutionary end of other forms of life?), and Children of Shadow. Are there others, and if so, what are they like?

Yeah, the double posting rule is more about not spamming a thread. If nobody has responded and you have more to say, and its been a while, go ahead. I don't know the exact amount of time that is considered polite to wait, but a day should be fine.

I'm glad you enjoyed it. I've drawn a great deal on Mormon theology - especially the speculative theologies of the late 19th century, and added to it a number of insights drawn from Canaanite and early Israelite religion (as reconstructed by modern scholarship). I've also drawn a great deal on modern physics, which is a field I am highly interested in. And then pushed and pulled and prodded in the ways that seemed the most likely to create opportunity for interesting fantasy writing. I'd be interested in seeing your setting when you get a worldbuilding thread. I've found things like this to be immensely helpful for my worldbuilding, because folks ask questions and I have to come up with the answers. Nothing plugs holes faster than other people pushing on your world.

Hello all you Edassa-interested folks! If you remember, once upon a time I promised to put all of the information into a nice, easily accessible master worldbuilding thread. That thread is now live, and I invite anyone who's interested to go on over and take a look! This seems like a nice place to put an official closing on this RP as well. It was really fun while it lasted, but life happened, and it petered out, like most forum RPs do. If anyone's interested in another, send me a PM, or ask it in the worldbuilding thread. I'll be back to a semblance of normal life in May, after I (hopefully) graduate, and I might be interested in starting up another one then. Thanks for all of the fun we've had here, and I hope to see all y'all around Edassa again!

And I've done it! The master worldbuilding thread for the Thousand Realms is now live! I'm so excited about this, actually. Just about as excited as I was for the Edassa roleplay. Maybe more...

Since I posted here to get an idea of interest, I thought I'd let y'all know when the actual thread went up. Here is the new master worldbuilding thread for the Thousand Realms. Hope y'all enjoy it!

Reserved for information on the City of Mortals

Reserved for information on the Hatharin setting

Reserved for Technological Development and details on the Starnet

The Starnet: An Historical and Cultural Overview Eons ago, an alien race spanned the galaxy, exploring world after world in an unbroken chain. To bridge the black void between the stars, across whose vast reaches even the most advanced stardrives seemed to creep slowly, this civilization built massive gate stations, through which a ship could pass and find itself light-years away in another system. Though these aliens have long since faded away, their network of gate-stations remains, connecting thousands of star systems in a vast web - the Starnet. These, along with other technologic relics left behind by this precursor race, form the basis of modern interstellar society. Gate Stations The gate stations are marvels of mega-engineering. Each station has a diameter measured in kilometers, and the largest are more than 40 kilometers across. A gentle spin imparts artificial gravity in the interior, and the pressurized interior is fully breathable. Micrometeorite impact measurements estimate that the stations have been exposed to outer system space for nearly 1.5 million years. Despite the vast span of time since their construction, most of the stations are still fully functional - a technological feat that often strikes awe into the human scientists who study them At the core of each station is a wormhole - hundreds of meters across - stabilized by some sort of exotic matter. The configuration appears highly robust against minor deformations, and even head on impacts by mispiloted spacecraft have failed to render a wormhole permanently inoperable - although several of these incidents have resulted in wormhole configurations that cannot be traversed until the station’s automated systems complete repairs on the stabilizers. The wormholes anchored by the gate stations are single-tunnel, so each station connects to only a single end-point, a counterpart station in another star system. As a result of this, almost all of the systems in the Starnet have at least 2 of these stations orbiting in their outer systems, and some have many more than that. A few dead ends do exist, however, systems on the outer edges of the network. Terraforming and Manufactoria The same precursor race who fashioned the gate stations also left behind other relics of their civilization. The most telling signature is the prevalence of habitable worlds among the network - all of them with a breathable oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, liquid water, and fully functional ecosystems. Genetic analysis of the flora and fauna of these worlds indicate that the plants and animals are all related to each other, and possibly descend from a common source. These worlds, while still comparatively rare, are nevertheless far more prevalent than theories of planetary distribution predict. In addition, many more systems show signs of attempted terraforming in the past, and a number of these still have ancient terraforming equipment and installations - now inoperable due to the weight of years - indicating that at one time there was a massive push to create a garden of inhabited worlds. This massive terraforming initiative indicates an incredibly large industrial capacity, to create and maintain so many large-scale mega-engineering projects, not to mention the construction of at least thousands of gate stations. The exact number may be orders of magnitude larger. Although to date no industrialized world inhabited by this race has been found, a small handful of manufacturing complexes were established in the Starnet. These seem to have been regional production centers to support various local projects, rather than large-scale industry; however, the scale of even these small regional complexes is staggering. Each of them was provided with at least one space elevator, and massive automated surface and subsurface mining operations. In orbit, built up around the terminus of the elevator, these complexes support dozens of massive refineries and manufacturing plants. Over a thousand millennia, most of these have deteriorated past the point of functionality. However, a small number of this already small handful are at least partially operational. These working manufactoria are the single most coveted strategic resource among the Starnet, and their presence has shaped the rise and fall of the political entities that have expanded through it. Some of these are so damaged that they function largely as mere resource collection operations, lifting millions of tons of raw materials into planetary orbit. Even these are incalculably valuable, allowing human refineries and construction yards access to an embarrassment of riches. But even the most intact manufactorium is mostly silent, the automated systems that ran most of the orbital refineries defunct or damaged beyond repair by a thousand millennia of exposure to the harsh orbital environment, and resource collection operations on the surface are sporadic. In the most well-preserved examples, though, some of the orbital fabrication complexes still run, producing advanced stardrives that function on technology beyond the ability of human researchers to understand, let alone replicate. It is not known whether most manufactoria were dedicated to turning out stardrives, or whether the stardrive manufacturing centers proved more robust over a thousand millennia than those dedicated to other artifacts. But of the 6 known manufactoria that still have functioning orbital production capacity, all are producing stardrives. Although the technical details of these drives are beyond modern engineers, the overall effect is well understood. The stardrive creates a region of warped spacetime, and then accelerates it to somewhere near 0.2c. The spacecraft inside is dragged along, although it experiences no relativistic effects. When the gravfield encounters a sufficiently steep gravitational gradient, the field collapses, and the ship re-enters normal space. The gravfield appears to impart no momentum vector to the craft inside, though external gravitational and other field effects appear to propagate normally on the interior. Therefore, when the ship reverts to normal space, it has the same velocity relative to the rest of the system as it had when it began, plus the influence of any forces it encountered along its journey and any thrust it applied while in the field. The rapid transit that these drives permit has enabled interstellar colonization and trade, and so the manufactoria that produce them are strategic resources beyond compare. Thus, the production and control of these stardrives is the foundation of human politics in the Starnet. Human History in the Starnet The origins of the human presence in the Starnet are lost to the mists of time. Many records were destroyed in the collapse of the First Empire, and the records of refugees from that event are spotty and inconsistent. As a result, historical research into the prehistoric eras of human occupation is fraught with speculation. Nevertheless, a few propositions are accepted as axiomatic by most researchers. The first is that humanity spread from a single point of origin. Tradition holds that the lost capital of the First Empire was that location, but historians differ on the matter. It is certain, though, that none of the worlds currently known are the primordial homeworld of mankind, as distinct and clear records exist of the first human settlement on every world currently in the sphere of the great powers. Second is that the entirety of human spaceflight in the Starnet has lasted between one and two thousand years. The nearly eight centuries since the collapse of the First Empire have seen the advance of human technology from being barely capable of spaceflight after the collapse to the present era of grand warfleets, inhabited deep-space stations, and large-scale interstellar trade. After correcting for stagnation during the ossification of the Second Empire, and for the jump-start provided by archival data brought by refugees to their new homes, the best estimates for the length of time needed to reach the supposed technological levels of the First Empire range from 500 to 1400 years, depending on the assumptions made about political and social stability during that era. The First Empire and its Fall Of the First Empire, little is known. Records recovered from archaeological sites describe technological feats beyond the capability of modern engineers and other scientists. Reaction drives and power generation powered directly by antimatter annihilation, experimental creation of micro black holes, and large-scale genetic engineering and longevity treatments seem to have been standard. Although such feats pale in comparison to Precursor technology, they represent a high-water mark of human technological achievement that has not been met again since. Politically, the Empire seems to have been remarkably unified. Analysis of recovered records yields no signs of political instability until shortly before the fall. Even those references are cryptic, seeming to indicate that whatever unrest occurred was not widespread until after the cataclysm. All signs point towards Empire-wide contentment up until the last five years that the excavated sites were occupied. Prevailing theories place the abandonment of these outposts at around the same time as the refugee exodus, although it is hard to tell for certain. The reasons for the fall of the First Empire are unknown, and theories range from widespread cataclysmic warfare to a plague of surprising virulence, to invasion by an advanced alien race. Unsurprisingly, the reports generated by the outposts available for archaeological study are sporadic and inconsistent. References to dire events are dropped casually, leaving few clues as to their nature, and it is hard to distinguish reporting from rumor. The accounts left by refugees in the vaults of the oldest colonies - Sigil Prime, Chimera, and Beiratus - do not match up with each other or with the outpost records. (The traditional belief that the colony of Luxor was founded by a group of religious refugees well before the final collapse is generally discredited, although the theory does have its proponents.) All describe a terrible fear that the refugees fled from, but the nature of their terror varies from planet to planet and even from personal account to personal account. All of it is hearsay, as well - none of the refugees were eyewitnesses of the terror. Whatever the cause, however, the effects are well documented. The collapse of the First Empire led to a mass exodus of humanity. Colonies were established on terraformed worlds as exhausted refugees finally ceased their flight. Successive waves of refugees colonized further and further out into space uncharted by the First Empire survey teams. The current inhabited worlds include dozens of terraformed planets that were likely never entered in the records of the Imperial Star Charts - though the fact that not a single complete star chart has survived makes such an assertion difficult to prove. However, the majority of the territory controlled by the First Empire remains beyond the edges of currently charted space. No ships have come from that area since the waves of refugees stopped, indicating that whatever happened left behind a civilization unable or unwilling to step out into the stars. Or perhaps even more ominously, whatever happened left behind no civilization at all. The Great Collapse The refugees from the terror that destroyed the First Empire originally hoped to rebuild the civilization they had left behind on their new worlds. Some of them even had had experience running colonization operations during the final years of the Empire. But, as they found out, trying to reproduce the entire production chain of a civilized world with no outside help was a far different task establishing a high-tech colony with the support of the Empire’s massive industrial base. Year after year, more high technology brought from the ruins of the First Empire fell apart. Without the deep industrial base of the Empire to rely on, repairs were either sporadic or impossible. Starship engines failed, fusion reactors went cold, automated resource extraction operations shut down. Many colonies reverted to an agrarian state, relying on subsistence farming to survive. Some maintained an industrial-level society, tapping hydrocarbons for power generation and building small-scale factories. And a few of the most populated were able to manufacture chemical-powered rockets for rudimentary space travel. But even among these, interstellar trade and travel was nearly dead. Travel time to gate stations using chemical rockets was measured in years, and to reach another inhabited system often required traversing several other empty systems. Gravfield drives on the few derelict spacecraft that remained required more power to run than could be supplied by the rudimentary space technology of even the most advanced worlds. Within 20 years of the last wave of refugees, almost no ships remained that could travel between the stars as a practical matter. The few expeditions that left the confines of their home systems were massive undertakings, comprising nearly the full industrial output of the worlds that sponsored them. Of the worlds that attempted such things, only one built a sustainable interstellar initiative - Chimera. The Awakening Uniquely among the worlds initially inhabited by refugees, the Chimera system contained both a habitable planet as well as a manufactorium capable of producing stardrives. Uniquely among known manufactoria sites, the facilities were located on the inhabited world - in all other cases, the resource collection and processing facilities were on an uninhabitable world. Interestingly, although the Chimera manufactorium does maintain resource collection facilities on the surface, the mining efforts seem to have been much less extensive - possibly in a bid by the Precursor builders to maintain the habitability and resource base of the planet. Instead, the orbital production facilities are served by an advanced network of automated mining drones that tap the resources of the trojan bodies at the lagrange points of the gas giant in the inner system. Modern modeling indicates that the collection of asteroids is too large to have been a natural consequence of the system’s formation, and the current working theory is that a large number of the bodies in the trojans were repositioned there so that the drones would have easy access. Like the rest of the refugee worlds, the population of Chimera was not able to maintain a high standard of technology. Long after a sustained space program was established, the majority of the Chimeran populace were still agriculturalists. The early development of Chimera was likewise unremarkable. Planetary hydrocarbon reserves were tapped early in the settlement process, and when the technology the refugees brought with them failed, the newly built generators managed to maintain an electrical grid and a rudimentary computer network. The presence of the manufactorium, however, created a divergence from the trajectory of the other refugee worlds. The facility was activated within the first decade of the colonization, either by engineers familiar with the details of other such installations in the First Empire, or through the use of instructional records. With the space elevator providing easy access to space, and the newly operational orbital facilities turning out space drives, the initial hurdles to creating and maintaining a functional interstellar program were swept away. Still, it took nearly two centuries before the colonists made any real attempt at venturing out of the orbit of their new homeworld. This was spurred by the development of sufficient industry to manufacture fission power plants, which also enabled the construction of ships with enough onboard power to activate the gravfield drives produced by the manufactorium. By the 218th year since planetfall, a dozen interstellar craft had been completed, and began surveying the surrounding systems. Although costly, the manufactorium made these expeditions economically feasible, and they almost immediately began to pay dividends. Within a single gate-transfer from Chimera was the terraformed world of Mieracin. The inhabitants of that world were technologically advanced, and had even established orbital space installations and a colony on it’s exceptionally large moon, Vox. Diplomatic relations were established quickly - despite early tensions that nearly erupted into an orbital conflict before cooler heads defused the situation - and luxury goods soon began to flow back and forth between the worlds. Chimeran foreign policy in the early decades of the Awakening was to trade gravfield drives to the new worlds they encountered at highly generous terms. Not only did such policies foster tremendous amounts of goodwill, they jumpstarted interstellar trade as new worlds acquired the means of traveling between the stars. Prices for goods imported from off-world were still exorbitant - as transit was still expensive, but the market for luxury items was large enough to tempt entrepreneurs into the business of transportation. Many of the inhabited worlds discovered by Chimeran survey teams were fully agrarian - the old electric power generation facilities were derelicts and the population was so caught up in subsistence farming that there had been no time to try to build lower-tech infrastructure. These were claimed as protectorates - Chimeran officials were sent to supervise massive infrastructure projects aimed at improving their standard of living. For a few decades, the system worked admirably. New worlds were quickly added to the growing network. The gravfield stardrives that the Chimerans traded came home in the ships of their new trading partners, and a low-volume but robust trade economy began to prevail. Soon, survey teams began to encounter worlds who had already acquired stardrives from other Chimeran trading partners. These worlds were much less welcoming towards Chimeran trade envoys, and seemed to resent Chimeran economic dominance. But even in the face of mounting tensions, Chimeran diplomats were confident of peaceful negotiations. The discovery of a second manufactorium at Chezh in the 56th year of the new Chimeran reckoning - counted from first contact between Chimera and Mieracin - changed everything. The Chezh manufactorium was unable to produce stardrives, but it was only one orbit out from a terraformed world, on the third planet orbiting the star. The Chezh colonists had - at some time in the past - developed enough of a space program to reactivate the manufactorium. A rudimentary colony had sprung up around it, both on the ground and in orbit, overseeing the collection of resources and the Chezh-built shipyards that utilized the materials brought on-orbit by the space elevator. Although the manufactorium could not produce new gravfields, the locals had apparently salvaged a few drives from the ruined orbital infrastructure. The Chezh had apparently developed a strong xenophobia, and the Chimeran envoys were fired upon by the orbital missile defenses. The surviving envoys quickly retreated. The team of trained negotiators sent a few months later fared little better. In response to the new contact, the Chezh began to prowl the spacelanes using the few gravships they possessed, pirating their neighbors’ ships to acquire more gravdrives. Alarmingly, the system was only two gate-transits away from Chimera itself - the survey ships had not discovered the Chezh gate in the first survey of the intervening system. To add to the growing discord, tensions were rising between many of the other systems that had acquired gravfield drives, as the new wave of violence began to cast trade disputes and other interstellar incidents in a graver light. Paranoia began to set in among many of the smaller systems, and small-scale skirmishes began to break out as new threats - either real or perceived - began to endanger the security the community had become accustomed to. In response to a wide spectrum of new threats, Chimera and several other heavily industrialized worlds began to commission dedicated warships to escort their trading vessels, and even civilian starships started mounting heavy weapons for self-defense. Chimeran warships began to patrol major trade lanes, and for a time, their shipping losses were greatly reduced. However, many of the outer fringe worlds refused to allow Chimeran ships to police their space - seeing it as a thinly-veiled excuse to leverage the economic dominance into political sovereignty over them. Some even openly questioned whether the piracy was a false-flag operation to make the offer of Chimeran protection seem more inviting. Diplomatic negotiations to ensure trade security failed, and Chimeran trade convoys began to stop appearing in the outer fringe. To ensure trade security in the fringe worlds, a number of independent traders began to band together - first in convoys for mutual protection, but many quickly acquired heavy weaponry and took it upon themselves to take the fight to the pirates. Although it was often costly, piracy losses in the fringe began to be greatly reduced. By CY 60, they had become a loose organization - funded by the pooled efforts of several fringe worlds that had rejected Chimeran protection, naming themselves the Starguard. Over the next several years, the Starguard became more and more organized as Chezh piracy intensified, and more and more independent traders and captains joined their ranks, and increasing numbers of fringe worlds began offering financial support. Quickly, the organization became somewhat of a peacekeeping force in addition to an anti-piracy guard, and several charismatic captains gained notoriety for negotiating the end to long-running hostilities. Although Chimera and the worlds most closely aligned with it did not grant official recognition to the Starguard for more than a decade, individual core world warship captains often cooperated with their Starguard counterparts. Although unsanctioned, several joint anti-piracy and reconnaissance operations were performed. One of these, late in CY 63, brought to light covert protection agreements between the Chezh and a dozen fringe worlds. In exchange for immunity from commerce raiding, these worlds would acquire stardrives secondhand and pass them around the Chimeran embargo to the Chezh navy. In response, a more strict embargo on Chezh space was put into place, and interstellar trade with the colluding worlds was interdicted. This embargo was enforced by both the Starguard and the core world navies, and was remarkably effective within just a short time. Seeing their only reliable supply of interstellar drives drying up, Chezh warships began raiding more frequently, and the rulers of the world began to lay plans for an outright invasion of Chimeran space. In the face of expanding Chezh aggressions, Chimera and Mieracin signed a mutual defense pact in CY 65. Although the traditional view is that the Empire came into being after the battle of Caminara, more modern analyses mark this treaty as the beginning of what would become the Second Empire. The Chezh War Even by this early date, much of human interstellar civilization perceived itself as centered on Chimera. Chimera had been the world that reached back out into the stars after the great collapse, and it was Chimera that controlled the production of the gravdrives that supported interstellar commerce. Within months of the Mieracin-Chimera pact, all of the core worlds became signatories to the mutual defense agreement. Although the worlds remained independent, Chimera was widely seen as their leader, and political institutions to make joint decisions were quickly put into place. Still, the increasing presence of Pact warships met with a great deal of political resistance. Many worlds on the edge of the Chimeran sphere rejected their authority, and many were wary of falling under Chimeran sovereignty. As tensions over violations of sovereign space, the economic impact of the embargo in the fringe, and other hot-button issues rose, relationships between the independent worlds of the fringe and the core worlds continued to worsen. Only the dedicated efforts of the Starguard prevented these tensions from spilling over into conflict. Over the course of the 5 years of their existence, they had come to be seen as a reliably neutral party, interested only in keeping the peace in space. Many of their captains were shrewd negotiators, and all of them maintained extensive personal relationships with a wide variety of government officials on many worlds. Many Starguard captains began to run missions in independent space on behalf of the Pact military strategists, to avoid triggering even more hostile reactions among the independent worlds. Between the joint operations of the Starguard and Pact forces, Chezh raids were largely blunted, and piracy began to be brought under control. Even so, by CY 75, tensions were at an all-time high all around the new interstellar sphere. The legitimacy of Chimeran sovereignty over the low-tech agrarian worlds was challenged from many sectors, the authority of the Pact among independent systems was at an all-time low, discredited by various internal political machinations. Even worse, fault lines between Pact member worlds were deepening as powerful industrial worlds like Denhara and Mieracin questioned the need for Chimeran leadership. The lack of a major act of Chezh aggression in 8 years had pact members and outside parties alike questioning trade embargoes, and conflicting visions about just how independent the various pact worlds were of each other had relationships strained almost to the breaking point. Prominent voices on many worlds had begun to call for a dissolution of the Pact’s political machinery in favor of something more directly responsive to the governments of the individual worlds, and some even called for an end to the treaty. In retrospect, that would have been disastrous. In CY 76, twenty years to the day of first contact with the Chezh, a massive strike fleet emerged from the Chezh-Khiramet gate. The few Pact patrol ships that were enforcing the embargo were swept aside before reinforcements could join the battle. The in-system reinforcements - already enroute - were engaged and destroyed piecemeal. The world of Khiramet was subjected to orbital bombardment sufficient to level the cities and industrial centers. The fortifications protecting the Chimera-Khiramet gate held, barely. Pact warships were recalled from assignments across the sector, but many found themselves cut off. Among the independent systems, several of the worlds which were most dissatisfied with the Chimeran political order announced their allegiance to the growing Chezh Dominion; the fringe worlds within striking distance of these systems quickly surrendered to the Dominion or fled to the safety of the Chimeran Pact. Starguard resources were stretched thin protecting civilians across the fringe, their lightly armed patrol ships quickly proving no match for the dedicated Chezh warships. Still, the captains risked their lives to evacuate civilians from space stations and bombarded worlds alike, while trying to defend themselves against superior firepower. Despite heavy pressure from the increasingly unified pact, the Starguard refused to take part in offensive actions against the Chezh. Chezh atrocities continued as the war went on. Isolated agrarian worlds, many with no understanding that there was a war going on at all, were wiped clear of colonists with surgical precision. Losses of soldiers and materiel mounted on both sides. Non-military interstellar travel nearly shut down, and commerce was dead, except for the transfer of gravdrives from the manufactorium at Chimera to shipyards across the sector. Eventually, the industrial weight of the Pact began to score telling victories. Although the Dominion managed an offensive that resulted in two fully industrialized worlds being orbitally bombarded to rubble, the escalating atrocities began to drive subject worlds out of their control, and the cost in lives and ships was Pyrrhic. In a last-ditch, desperate effort, Chezh warships launched a concerted assault, focusing their remaining forces in a retributive strike against the defecting world of Caminara, a highly industrialized world that had been one of the original worlds to sign a protection agreement with the Dominion, and the largest ship production center outside the manufactorium at Chezh itself. Pact forces met the Dominion warships in a decisive battle in CY 84. When it was over, more than 80% of the Pact warships in the defense fleet were beyond repair. But the Chezh Dominion no longer had a battlefleet. Within two months, the high orbits of every Dominion world were occupied by Pact blockade ships, and the assault on the Chezh shipyards had ruined the Dominion’s orbital industrial capacity. Although isolated Chezh warships-turned-pirate vessels were hunted throughout the next three decades, the war was over. The many atrocities committed by the Chezh Dominion led many voices in the Pact to call for the orbital bombardment of the world - retributive justice for Khiramet, Denhara, and many other worlds. The alternative - a full-scale ground invasion - would be costly in lives and coin, and could prolong the war indefinitely. After all, the entire military strength of the Pact would hardly suffice to occupy an entire planet of hostile natives. And even a siege would require starships to remain on station for an indefinite period of time, eating up massive amounts of resources in fuel and supplies. In the end, Marcus Vareis - interim commander of the Starguard, after his predecessor was killed evacuating orbital habitats at Caminara - offered an attractive alternative. The Starguard would locate their central offices in Chezh orbit. No long-term siege would be required - the Guard’s normal operations would, by nature, interdict traffic to and from Chezh. Limited ground insertions would secure key industrial centers and spaceports, and only a defensive presence would be required from that point. The motion was accepted by the Pact Senate, and reconstruction of the destroyed orbital infrastructure began. The ground assault never happened, although other operations did seize the manufactorium on the third planet in the system. Constant delays due to unfavorable simulations, unpredictable weather, funding diversions, and other obstacles ensured that the operation would remain on paper. Stark divisions in Chezh society, culminating in a planet-wide civil war that began in CY 86, eventually rendered the point moot. When the dust settled, the Starguard were on the scene helping with rebuilding the shattered world, and Pact assault troops were pressed into duty as engineers, construction workers, and day laborers. These humanitarian efforts were received graciously by the populace, and by CY 95, the former Dominion leadership and their xenophobic followers were nothing more than terrorists fighting a guerilla war against a citizenry and government that was happily negotiating membership in the Senate. Over the next ten years, their following dwindled, until finally the last token fighters surrendered themselves to a populace that had largely forgotten they existed. Rise of the Second Empire The war had a marked effect on politics in the Starnet. Although the individual core worlds still retained a strong sense of independence, as a block, they had accepted the Pact Senate as a binding institution. As the war concluded, however, many of the fringe worlds which had entered military support treaties with the Pact began to talk about either demanding their own representation in the Senate, or leaving the Pact altogether. Without the spectre of Chezh aggression to bind the fringe systems together, many returned to their suspicious view of the core worlds. For two years, negotiations between the Pact core worlds and the fringe systems failed to reach agreeable terms to both sides. As negotiations dragged on, system militaries began to act in increasingly territorial manners, and confrontations increased. Although none of them had yet flared up into full-fledged conflict, many politicians on both sides were convinced that another war was around the corner. The crisis was averted by Marcus Vareis. By now the official commissioner of the Starguard, he personally oversaw a vast web of negotiations with all parties. Determined to prevent another war, and convinced that welding the disparate factions into a single political body was the best way to achieve that goal, he pursued his vision with tireless energy. Core worlds were persuaded to open up the membership in the Pact Senate to all systems by the vision of the vast fringe markets. But even with guaranteed trade equality and individual sovereignty for each system, fringe worlds remained skeptical until Vareis proposed that the Starguard be adopted as the official peacekeeping and diplomatic arm of the new interstellar order. After several months of heated debate in the Pact Senate, Vareis’ proposals were accepted by the core worlds, and most of the fringe worlds followed suit within a year. The new Senate convened in CY 89, and included representatives from almost every world except the still-occupied worlds of the Chezh Dominion. Even there, provisions were included to rebuild the infrastructure and institutions of these worlds, and representation in the Senate soon followed. Although the old core worlds of the Pact still represented a powerful voting bloc, it quickly became apparent that many political factions had influential voices in the Senate, and a new, unified interstellar society began to take shape. At the inauguration ceremony for the new Senators and the body they were to join, the Prime Minister, Armand Daschai, gave a speech in which he praised the assembled delegates and the worlds they represented for coming together in unity to form a Second Empire of humanity. Although the claim was laughable on its face, as the new government was largely impotent, it tapped into deep cultural memories of the First Empire, now some 300 years past. The phrase stuck, and within a decade, the United Congress of Star Systems had been officially renamed the Imperial Senate for the Second Empire. The change in terminology did not bring any change in jurisdiction - in fact, direct intervention in local politics was largely restricted to diplomatic negotiations for trade and territorial disputes and sanctions against worlds which had violated established norms - but it conferred a surprising sense of legitimacy. Even the most skeptical of fringe world senators could not help but feel a sense that they were part of a grand project to restore the glory of the fallen First Empire, even as they fought to maintain their own personal independence against interference by the governing body. By CY 100, orbital infrastructure had largely been rebuilt across the war-ravaged worlds and interstellar trade was more than double the highest levels it had hit before the war. Survey teams from various planets continued to explore the Starnet, first new colonization efforts were sent out. As new inhabited worlds were discovered, they were generally added to the political orbit of the system that had funded the expedition, mimicking the Chimeran annexation of agrarian worlds decades earlier. As more and more conflicts began to arise over who should administer these newly discovered worlds, the Imperial Senate deliberated incessantly on how to solve the problem once and for all. Several prominent Senators advocated for imposing a strict ban on independent surveying, and for consolidating all survey missions under the auspices of the Senate. New worlds would be immediately offered membership instead of being represented by a parent system. The proposal was extremely divisive, as none of the worlds wanted to give up the potential for increased influence and prestige that new protectorates represented. The loudest opponents were the most successful of the one-time fringe worlds, who viewed the measure as a means for the core worlds - which, due to their deeper industrial base, had managed to fund large-scale survey programs much more effectively - to permanently enshrine the status quo in their favor. After a great deal of negotiation, a compromise was reached in CY 136, allowing member systems to adopt newly contacted planets as protectorates if they fell below a certain technology level, while also offering full membership in the Senate to any newly discovered planet with sufficiently advanced technology, or to a protectorate which later developed such levels of technology. The compromise molded foreign policy for Imperial worlds for the next century. Large-scale infrastructure projects ended within a decade, as member worlds scrambled to retain as many protectorates as they could. Although the provision granting full membership to developed protectorates was intended to disrupt existing political voting blocs and bring a semblance of equal footing to the Senate, in practice many of the new member worlds maintained strong political ties to their former patron systems. Over the next decade, newly contacted or colonized worlds became little more than backwater fiefs of the powerful senatorial systems. Rumors also began to spread of deliberate sabotage of infrastructure and industry on new worlds, to ensure that they fell below the level that guaranteed full representation. In CY 154, evidence came to light that the worlds of Chiron and Hammur had both committed blatant atrocities against several newly discovered worlds, leaving formerly industrialized planets in a subsistence agrarian state. In response, the Senate authorized military reprisal - in the face of overwhelming evidence, even the most vocal opponents of Senate interference relented. The planets that were then held as protectorates by the two systems were stripped from them. Negotiations on new patrons stalled, and for eight years those nine systems remained in legal limbo, lacking representation or a patron system. In CY 161, a reform-minded faction introduced legislation allowing the Senate to adopt protectorates of its own, not tied to any one world. The bill included appropriations measures to fund official Senate survey projects to find new worlds and adopt them as Imperial protectorates. Although the companion measures attempting to ban or at least limit the adoption of new protectorates by individual systems failed, the original piece of legislation was approved the following year, and the Senate began to send massive survey projects out, exploring a dozen systems at once. Senate protectorate worlds proliferated quickly. As newly funded survey missions began exploring many systems, the number of newly discovered inhabited worlds dropped precipitously. Although habitable worlds were still found at roughly the same rate, those with existing populations - or even signs of past habitation - became few and far between. Scientists tasked with studying the patterns suspected that Imperial survey ships had passed the frontiers of where the majority of First Empire refugees had fled. The sudden scarcity of worlds to adopt as protectorate led to some instability and internecine strife in the Senate, but the conflicts were resolved quickly after the courts ruled that new colony worlds supported by a patron or the Senate should be treated under the same legal constructs as existing protectorates. Although, with one exception, no new contacts were made past CY 187, the proliferation of protectorates continued apace through colonization efforts. Some of the new Imperial protectorates were given directly to the Starguard, providing additional bases along with trade and tax income. The perennially overstretched organization accepted stewardship of these worlds only grudgingly, but they would come to allow a massive expansion of ships and an increased local presence among the fringes of the Empire. Appointment of representatives in the Senate for these new protectorate worlds was assigned directly to the office of the Prime Minister, dramatically increasing the power and influence of the office. Overnight, it went from being a largely ceremonial office whose function was largely to break tied votes to being the sole appointer of a large bloc of representatives who could significantly influence policy and debate in the Senate. Although the earliest Imperial protectorates were the beneficiaries of infrastructure and technology investments, the office of the Prime Minister soon began to engage in the same sorts of practices as patron worlds had done, restricting growth and technological advancement to maintain its political influence in the Senate. Within a decade, the Prime Minister's office had commissioned a private fleet to provide security for its protectorate worlds, in parallel to the security fleets operated by patron worlds throughout the Empire, before legislation limited the number of ships the office could control to the same number of ships as any single world was allowed to maintain. The Great Secession War and the Fall of the Starguard By CY 230, the relentless ambition of a series of Prime Ministers - who, through the representatives-in-trust of the Imperial Protectorates, directly controlled nearly a quarter of the seats in the Senate - had forged a powerful political bloc with several core worlds and their constituencies, and this coalition ruthlessly exploited any signs of perceived weakness or disunity in the traditional political alliances. Through backroom political deals, outright bribery, and other secretive methods, the voting of the Senate rarely, if ever, went against the Prime Minister’s will. Although a number of watchdog groups raised strident concerns about the growing unresponsiveness of the Senate to the needs of their constituents, the growing injustices done to the protectorate words, and the increased corruption among the Senators, few with any decision-making power paid any attention to them. The election of CY 232 brought [Last Prime Minister name], former Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister, to the seat of power. During his twenty years in the office of the secretariat, [name] had coordinated the efforts of the last three Prime Ministers to consolidate and expand the power of their station - aided by their personal ambition. In that position, he had also set a number of plans in motion, setting up shell corporations to take actions and make purchases without revealing his involvement, establishing foundations - both publicly linked to him and ostensibly independent - to build diplomatic and political relationships with various political factions, corporations, and other interests, and augmenting the Prime Minister’s intelligence-gathering network with highly-placed agents of his own. As the result of his schemes, when [Last Prime Minister name] rose to the highest office in the Empire, he controlled more power and influence than his predecessors could have only dreamed of. The only organization to remain indifferent to his influence was the Starguard, and he quickly formed an antagonistic relationship with their commander, [starguard administrative commander]. Over the course of his first few years in office, high-profile Starguard investigations prosecuted several key individuals among his staff for corruption. [Last Prime Minister name] inherited a troubled nation, however. Abuse of protectorate worlds overseen by both the Prime Minister’s office and the powerful core worlds was common, and unrest was growing among many of those worlds - some of whom had been denied full Senate membership for over a century. The decades before his ascension saw dozens of protectorate complaints against their patron worlds, although Starguard investigations seldom found enough evidence to bring governors or their home systems to trial. Despite rising tensions, few of the powerful officeholders foresaw any serious difficulties in the future. In fact, many of the worst perpetrators seemed to believe that the system could go on forever. However, a few far-sighted individuals understood the implications of the increasing unrest, among them [starguard administrative commander], commander of the Starguard. Investigations by his subordinates had revealed disturbing patterns of poor conditions on protectorate worlds, with economic resources monopolized by interstellar corporations from the core worlds, with the patron worlds getting enormous kickbacks in exchange for suppressing competition. Hard proof of collusion was almost impossible to find, however, and complaints died in the Senate. [starguard administrative commander] joined forces with a like-minded bloc of Senators to try and address the issue before things spiraled out of control. Their efforts were strongly opposed by the Prime Minister’s office and other powerful coalitions, however, and failed to get any traction. As tensions rose ever higher, other disturbing trends began to emerge. Between 230 and 238, eighteen systems attempted armed revolution against their patron worlds, with ten of them occurring in the last 2 years of the period. All of the revolutions were crushed, although the Starguard refused to participate. Official investigations found no common link, although private Starguard evidence files showed suggestive connections between the revolutions and a secret coalition of powerful industrialized worlds. By the election of 238, many of the individual commanders in the Starguard had become sympathetic to the protectorate worlds, as they had seen first-hand the results of the abuse but did not have sufficient evidence to force the issue in the Senate. Despite the tireless efforts of [starguard administrative commander] and his Senatorial allies, the Empire had become a powder keg, waiting for only the smallest spark. The spark that ignited those tensions appeared little different, at the outset, than any of a dozen of its fellows. In 234, the protectorate worlds of [troubled protectorate 1] and [troubled protectorate 2] had entered formal complaints against their patron world, [patron world name]. Coming shortly on the heels of a half-dozen other formal complaints to the Senate, the reform faction was able to propose an investigative committee to take the now-massive number of reports of corruption and see what merit they held. Although the bill held broad popular appeal, the special interests that controlled the Senate were able to kill the bill before it ever got to a popular vote. In reprisal, [patron world] secretly funded a covert blockade of the system by a corporate fleet supposedly “protecting their interests from piracy.” After the election of 238, which saw the reform faction gain more seats than they had ever before held, [Starguard administrative commander] secured support for an investigative committee from one of the powerful core blocs, who saw it as a tool it could use against rival factions. With the possibility of the issue being brought to a vote in the full Senate, where increasingly high profile Starguard investigations made opposing the measure a suicidal position for many representatives, a group of [troubled protectorate 1] expatriates renewed the complaints, using nearly the same text as the 4-year old petition, as a pretext for re-introducing the bill. The bill passed the committee in less than two weeks, and a full vote in the Senate appeared likely to pass the legislation, despite the opposition of the Prime Minister. As a last-ditch effort to derail the law, a number of the Prime Minister’s surrogates filed a challenge to the bill, attempting to redirect the issue to the courts. The bill stalled in the face of the challenge, finally dying after [last Prime Minister] covertly called in sufficient favors to break the alliance between the reform faction and their core system associates. The specific case that sparked the bill was referred to the courts, where it was expected to die a long, slow death. By 240, almost a year after the filing of the court case, that prognosis seemed to be accurate. However, in the early months of that year, Starguard commander [starguard commander name] intercepted a group of refugees who reported running a blockade of the [troubled protectorate 1] system, and informed the patrol group of horrific conditions on the surface of the world, including forced labor, life support rationing, and even breeding programs aimed at isolating genetic adaptations to the high-gravity environment. According to the refugees, these had been imposed as harsh reprisals to the complaints brought before the Senate, and conditions were only growing worse. [Starguard commander name] brought his patrol group to [troubled system 1] to investigate the accusations, but was trapped by blockading forces, who were attempting to keep a complete communications blackout on the system. After a running battle, [starguard commander name] sacrificed himself and the majority of his patrol to get two light ships out, with the refugees onboard and instructions to ensure that the Senate found out about the whole affair. Pursued by corporate raiders and cut off from communications routes, the fleeing ships followed a circuitous route to avoid being cut off by ships aligned with their enemies. After several narrow escapes over the course of months, they finally re-entered space with dedicated communications links to the rest of the Empire. When the news finally broke in the Senate in the waning months of the year, it sparked a fire that would consume the Empire. In the ensuing months, outrage and anger spread from world to world, resulting in calls for justice for the suffering inhabitants of [troubled system 1], reform to prevent similar abuses elsewhere, and increased oversight to enforce it. Deftly managing the public mood, and with the explicit cooperation of a number of powerful core systems, the Prime Minister focused attention on atrocities and stoked outrage at the perpetrators through his public appearances and other activities. When the Senate voted for swift and harsh repercussions against the offending worlds, nobody batted an eye, and again when they quickly passed an aid bill to relieve and rebuild the suffering worlds. Raising a fleet to accompany a Starguard police action against the blockade was just another logical response to an extreme situation. When the flames of outrage inevitably cooled, satiated by punishment and humanitarian missions, only dedicated activists realized that the potential for reform opened up by the opportunity had been deftly averted. The resurrected bill for an oversight and investigative committee to conduct a wholesale overhaul of the protectorate system was soundly defeated in early 241, and other attempts to reform the system were similarly stymied. Against this background, Starguard investigators finally concluded an investigation that conclusively linked one of the largest of [last prime minister] shadow corporations to systematic abuses across protectorates of multiple core worlds, confiscating four dozen secret warships hidden across several different systems in the process. Despite their heroic efforts, however, the investigators were unable to prove any link between the corporation and the Prime Minister or the political apparatus of a core world. Further investigations found obstruction from many sources, many quietly killed by political influence well outside of official channels. In the face of powerful interests entrenched in the support of an aggressively abusive and sometimes murderous system, the reform attempts finally broke. The reform faction had been divided for years between a radical wing, which had advocated for arming the protectorate worlds to defend themselves against their patrons, along with other judicious applications of force to remedy the situation, and a moderate wing, which was intent on currying alliances with the powerful core worlds and creating a solution from within the existing system. The radicals were further divided into squabbling factions with competing priorities, and for years, the moderates had exercised complete control of the faction. However, by 230, the radical factions had formed a political alliance, although they kept the pretense of squabbling in order to deflect suspicion away from themselves. In secret, their worlds had built warships to arm protectorate rebellions, and had funded - and in some cases instigated - nearly all of the protectorate rebellions since then. By 238, some of the most radical cells had begun a campaign of targeted violence against the corporate targets most closely tied to the abuse of protectorate worlds, and against the patron worlds that colluded with them. After the defeat of the investigative committee bill in 241, the radical wing began gaining the support of many formerly moderate senators, and more worlds began producing ships in secret. The assassination of [senator], the de facto head of the reform faction, and the most articulate and influential moderate in the Senate, lead to a massive shift in the party’s representation in the Senate during the election of 242, and the majority of the reform-minded worlds explicitly aligned with the radical wing. The political process deteriorated from there, and in late 242, preparations were underway for formal secession from the Senate. Negotiations with [starguard administrative commander] ensured that the Starguard would remain neutral in any conflict that came from secession - as they had in previous revolutions, asserting that their role as the peacekeeping arm of the Senate required them not to take sides in an internal civil conflict, so that they could be unbiased negotiators of a peace settlement. This secured near-parity between the covertly constructed warships and system defense fleets of the secessionists and the system defense fleets, armed corporate vessels, and the defense fleet of the Prime Minister. The original plan was to peacefully secede at the New Year, presenting a fait accompli to the Senate, forcing any military response to be a public display of force against a target that had taken no aggressive acts against the Empire. Furthermore, the new government would have military power sufficient to fight the existing warships available to the Senate to a standstill. Worlds currently under protectorate status would be invited to join the new government, where they would be given full representation and protection against reprisal. With the Starguard officially neutral, and unofficially sympathetic, the secessionists hoped to prevent a civil war and end with a peaceful divorce from the Imperial Senate. These plans were derailed, however, when a small handful of the most radical worlds broke with the main faction after the secessionists refused to adopt requirements of restitution from core worlds for abuses perpetrated on their protectorates. These radicals seceded well in advance of the rest of the bloc, and immediately started fighting a guerilla war against the security fleets of every patron world in the sector. Several protectorates accepted their protection, and the Senate convened to adopt a state of emergency to force the rebel worlds back into the fold. The majority of the reform-turned-secessionist faction was unwilling to authorize full-scale military intervention on secessionists, and a month before the end of the year they formally seceded from the Senate. Three months later, the Senate voted to consider the secessions acts of treason, and declared martial law in the rebel areas. Although the war started as only a series of skirmishes in the outer systems of protectorate worlds, it quickly turned bloody as the Empire attempted to bring its wayward systems back by projected force, and the [insert new nation’s name] attempted to destroy its ability to project force. Despite increasing pressure from both sides to enter the conflict, the Starguard remained completely neutral for over a year, although individual captains started to render aid to one or the other side in increasing quantities as their political preferences started to shape their policy. As the war went on, the Starguard grew increasingly unpopular among both sides as they steadfastly refused to pick a side. In the Empire, public smear campaigns branded them rebel sympathizers who weren’t willing to give the service that loyalty required, while in the [new nation’s name], they were derided as cowards who weren’t willing to back up their high-sounding moral code with action when the time came. In early 244, a fleet of corporate warships arrived in [troubled protectorate 3] to re-assert their control over the system after a revolt had destroyed the corporation’s presence there. When the low orbitals and their landing ships were violently contested, they withdrew to the high orbitals. Several Starguard ships were in-system, commanded by a high-ranking commander in the organization. As the attack was repulsed, they assisted in evacuating civilians both in orbital habitats and on the ground. Frustrated with their inability to land their superior forces on the ground, the corporate ships ever more desperate. After several weeks, they decided to bombard the planet and destroy the little colony as punishment for their resistance. As per their training, the Starguard ships in system converged on the corporate fleet, attempting to prevent it from carrying out the bombardment. Although they failed to prevent the action, they did engage and destroy many of the ships that took part in the war crimes. The move was immediately derided as a partisan identifier, and public trust of the Starguard, already low, waned even further as the months went on. Seeing his chance [last prime minister] made preparations for a move against the Starguard, removing the last real obstacle to controlling the Empire as a whole. Within two months, a large flotilla of warships had amassed in the Chezh system, striking and capturing the Starguard administrative headquarters. The whole organization was charged with treason, and the actions to seize the headquarters was authorized by the courts. A week later, the Senate had voted to strip the Starguard as an organization of its right to maintain and operate warships, and denounced the organization as a rebel group. Suddenly deprived of their senior leadership and their strategic headquarters, the majority of the Starguard patrol commanders defected to the rebels in protest of the high-handed actions of the Senate. This gave a much-needed boost to the rebel fleet, which had suffered severe losses in a number of key battles, and were hard-pressed by the warships built in secret by the Prime Minister before the war. The defection of the Starguard provided the pretext needed by [last Prime minister] to create an Imperial Navy, nominally under the Senate’s control, but controlled in practice by the Prime Minister as the commander-in-chief. At first, the Senate commandeered the system defense fleets of various worlds, welding them into an official Navy, but as the war progressed, they were replaced by purpose-built warships constructed under the authority of the Senate. The strategic situation by the end of CY 244 was grim for the rebel worlds. The influx of veteran Starguard captains into the rebel fleet had allowed the [nation name] to make major gains in a number of sectors, recovering several captured industrial worlds and liberating dozens of protectorates. However, the powerful dedicated warships of the new Imperial Navy were beginning to press the rebels hard, and the strategic momentum was beginning to shift. To disrupt the momentum of the Imperial war machine, the rebel strategic command planned a massive multi-pronged assault, aimed at disabling or destroying several important shipyards in the core worlds, thus preventing new warships from reaching the front lines. The Starguard, now reconstituted under the leadership of [new Starguard commander], agreed to participate - the first offensive action their ships had been involved in since the beginning of the war. The initial stages of the assault were crushingly effective. Three of the four major orbital shipyards targeted were completely obliterated by the surprise attack, and the fourth suffered damage sufficient to force a complete shutdown until repairs could be completed. However, the offensive was costly, and the Navy counterattack drove the rebel fleet back hard through their own original defensive lines and several system jumps back before the Navy’s spearhead could be blunted. After a few months of skirmishing and small engagements, a sustained push by the rebel fleet returned the battle lines to something near what they had been at the outset of the offensive, but their fleet had been hammered. When a new Imperial offensive began at the end of the year, the defensive fortifications crumbled, and the rebel fleet was scattered. For a time, it seemed as if the final collapse of the rebellion was inevitable. But in early 246, a terrorist attack on the Senate killed [last prime minister] along with nearly a quarter of the Senate, and the chaos this engendered in the Senate delayed authorization for military operations for months. In this moment of indecision, [empress], [last prime minister]’s daughter and one of the highest ranking officers in the Imperial Navy, assumed complete control of the fleet, and carried out the operations that blunted the last major rebel offensive. Bringing the largest portion of her fleet home to Chimera, she assumed the Prime Minister’s office, and declared herself Emperor over all of mankind’s scattered worlds. Over the course of the war, a great deal of power - including almost all of the strategic and tactical management of the war itself - had been ceded to the office of the Prime Minister, and although [empress]’s actions caused a great deal of resentment in the Senate, formal proposals for her removal never gained enough traction to threaten her politically. Several worlds did offer resistance to her extra-legal ascension to the highest public office in the realm, but their concerns were quickly allayed by the presence of a powerful fleet in orbit over their worlds. Her impressive charisma and the ease with which she slipped into senatorial politics eased the transition, and within a few months she had been officially confirmed by the majority of the Senate as Prime Minister, and the office of Prime Minister had been renamed as the Emperor. Under [empress] leadership, the regrouped rebel fleet was again pushed back, and by the end of 247, most of the major rebel worlds were either under siege or occupied, and the rebel fleet was scattered among the protectorate worlds in the outer fringes of the empire. For the next three years, scattered squadrons of rebel ships conducted raids on Imperial supply lines or garrisoned worlds, while some of the more cohesive elements of the fleet attempted to regroup and strike more important targets. The largest portion of these rallied in secret around the free world of Cyaxar, the most heavily industrialized world in the Starguard holdings. For a time, its distance from Chimera and the core worlds sheltered it from the attention of the Navy, and the rebel fleet slowly began to rebuild. Across the fringes of the Empire, skirmishes were fought in the orbits and skies of protectorate worlds as the Imperial Navy hunted down bands of rebels with mixed success. Other rebel cells struck at high-profile targets in the core worlds, even rescuing [starguard administrative commander] from prison to serve as a leader in and inspiration for the movement. But in 250, even this brief reprieve was rescinded. Information provided by captured rebel agents pinpointed Cyaxar as the control center of the entire rebel movement. Over the course of the next few months, the net began to close as Navy task forces started skirmishing with rebel elements in nearby systems. Finally, the Navy managed to assemble a strike force sufficient to assault the world’s defenses. The battle was fierce, but although the Navy took heavy losses, their weight of numbers was too telling. The last of the rebel ships took up defensive stations near the primary inhabited world, only to be swept aside as the attackers began bombardment of the surface and orbital infrastructure. When the battle was over, the Starguard and the rebel fleet alike were no more. Although resistance would continue for years, the civil war was essentially over. The Denvali Emperors Through the course of the war, [last Prime Minister] and later [Empress] had slowly been consolidating political power. Various emergency measures passed by the Senate granted power to the Empress’s office that had been traditionally reserved for the Senate, and [last Prime Minister] had worked tirelessly to normalize the situation. After the fall of Cyaxar, [Empress] continued to do so, leveraging the continual threat of the resistance to maintain the current state of affairs, and constantly working to normalize her ascension to the office. The complete personal loyalty of the Imperial Navy was a significant persuasive factor in these affairs. In addition, she ordered that all loyal protectorates be given full representation in the Senate. This served to advance her own political power - by giving her many friends in the Senate who could be counted on to support her agenda out of gratitude - and by diluting the political power of her opponents by stripping them of many of the members of their voting blocs. Many of the emergency powers were returned voluntarily to the Senate, although [Empress]’s work allowed her to retain many of her special privileges. Despite the return of these emergency powers, [Empress]’ rule marked a major shift in Imperial politics. For the first time, the office of Prime Minister - now called the Emperor - was arguably more powerful than the Senate itself, even though the current holder of the office was adept at letting the Senate feel like they were in control. In addition to the informal power that had accrued throughout the course of the war, the former rebel worlds were administered by the same bureaucracy that had once managed the Imperial protectorates. Those same protectorates, though they now had representation in the Senate, remained governed in many ways by the old political apparatus, and back-room political deals ensured that senators from those worlds supported the new power structure. But beyond the influence in the Senate gained from the war, the Emperor’s office had slowly begun to exercise power over the bureaucracies administered by the Senatorial committees. Although committee heads and high-level functionaries were still chosen by the Senate, the Emperor’s office had assumed the prerogative to fill empty positions in the committee structure during the war, to avoid the gridlock and chaos that had allowed the rebels to regroup. Unlike other emergency powers, that one was never laid down, and by CY 260, [empress] wielded significant power over the committees that actually did the work of running the Empire. In addition, the Imperial Navy remained - by and large - the private warfleet of the Empress, and contributed heavily to the power of the office. Over the course of the war, it had become a solid fixture of Imperial policy, and few senators remembered how things had been before the war, and fewer still had the political will to actively try to roll back the clock. This state of affairs continued in much the same vein until the retirement of [empress] in CY 268. Her son [son] had been a fixture in Imperial politics for more than a decade, and when she nominated him to succeed her in the Emperor’s office, support was near universal. Over the course of [son]’s rule, the Senate became more and more ceremonial as the Emperor exerted more and more control over the bureaucracy run by the Senate. In CY 284, [son] introduced a measure into the Senate making the office of Emperor hereditary. Against stiff opposition from a faction of traditionalists, the measure passed, and when [son] retired in CY 288, [Senate dissolving emperor] ascended to the office. Although he was an experienced politician, having served as governor of several worlds in turn before becoming a governor of an entire sector, [senate dissolving emperor] lacked several crucial skills of his predecessors. Unlike his father, he had little experience in dealing with the Senate and even less patience for the schemes their factions and political blocs used to acquire power and influence. Where [empress] and [son] had played the different factions off each other, keeping the entire Senate off-balance and either incapable of or uninterested in interfering with Imperial matters, [senate dissolving emperor]. Within a year, he had antagonized the entire body to a sufficient extent that they began to block every political move he made. Appointments to low-level bureaucratic offices were challenged and sometimes removed, proposed legislation was voted down by the entire Senate in symbolic measures, and they even passed a motion of censure. Smarting from political humiliation, [senate dissolving emperor] struck back by tightening his grip on the worlds held by Imperial power, and leveraging the power of the Imperial warfleet to resolve disputes in his favor wherever possible. Crucially, despite the opposition of the Senate, he enjoyed nearly the full support of the military - in his youth he had commanded a squadron of warships exterminating pirate bands in the fringe, and had seen combat in minor fleet actions against rebels or pirates under several different fleet admirals before being appointed governor. Many of the powerful core worlds objected to increasing Imperial interference in their affairs, and the opposition in the Senate only increased. By CY 290, the situation reached a head. After learning that the Senate was preparing a resolution to strip him of his office and power, [senate dissolving emperor] reacted by dissolving the Imperial Senate during the opening exercises of its mid-year session. Military police escorted the senators into “protective custody,” and Imperial warfleets stationed over the most belligerent core worlds acted as a damper on what could have been a spark of rebellion. Although a few of the most aggrieved worlds entered open rebellion, mostly mid-tier industrialized worlds and a double handful of fringe worlds, the wave of resistance they expected never came. The power of the Imperial warfleets was too ingrained in the memories of most worlds to be willing to challenge it. By 295, it was clear that no individual or organization was capable of standing in the way of the Emperor, who now asserted complete and sole rule over all human-occupied space. Dynastic Wars and the Bureaucratic Districts The dissolution of the Senate had surprisingly little short-term impact on the Empire. Although there was resistance to the move, the reputation of the Imperial warfleets kept full-fledged rebellion in check. And among the functionaries that ran the Empire’s massive bureaucracy, very little had changed. Instead of reacting to directives given by senatorial appointees - the visions and long-term goals of which could change dramatically in any given election year - the committees were run by appointees of the Emperor, whose careers would tend to last about as long as they could keep the Emperor pleased with their performance. But the nature of running the Empire didn’t change. The long-term impact, however, took time to see. [senate dissolving emperor] died - still in office - in 317, without having named an heir. Although he had had four children, none of them had been groomed for the office. After a brief struggle, the oldest ascended the throne, only to be assassinated after only four weeks. Although the remaining three formed a ruling council and jointly administered the executive power of the Empire, they remained at odds, and all three were ambitious, cunning, and willing to resort to any means to establish themselves as the sole ruler. The ensuing war was waged mostly in the shadows, using covert agents, knives in the dark, and dismantling political and intelligence-gathering networks. Several worlds attempted rebellion, seeing weakness among the Imperial leadership, but the ruling council maintained enough cohesion to prosecute successful campaigns against rebel worlds. After two years of a shadow war, it became apparent that the remaining claimants to the Imperial throne were each well-ensconced enough in their power structures to be invulnerable to a swift assault. Although disputes and power struggles continued to mark their interactions, they settled into a sort of uneasy peace as they navigated various political crises and managed the work of running the Empire. This state of affairs lasted for nearly a decade, but in 328, unknown forces began attacking the information networks of [son], the youngest of the triumvirate.

Reserved for Cultural and Religious Information about Edassa

Reserved for Geographical and Historical information on Edassa

Power and Bonds The Thousand Realms are awash in energy - it surges and ripples through Chaos in vast storms, unpredictable and powerful. Intelligent beings can draw on this power, using it to affect the substance of existence, to create new things or to destroy. The measure of power in an intelligent being is how much energy they can draw from the Chaos, how much they can hold and use safely. Too much drawn, and the wards that protect the region of spacetime around the intelligence risk failing, overwhelming the being with raw exposure to the Chaos, reducing them to a drifting mote of experience, until their will can reassert itself, reawakening from its languor. Worse, overdrawing can put the bonds that connect the being to others at risk, potentially severing them, leaving the being painfully damaged as well as drifting. The Spiritual Realm tames the surges of the primordial Chaos, dampening them out as they pass through the transition region, storing that energy in the very fabric of the Realm itself. By doing so, it makes the energy available to draw upon for even the weakest of intelligences, who otherwise would risk being overwhelmed every time they drew on Chaos - as the energy surges there are neither predictable nor constant - and makes it possible for Realms to exist. The exercise of power requires three things. First, it requires a source of energy. Among the scholars of the Thousand Realms, one of the most contentious debates is the total amount of energy inherent in the Chaos. These arguments hinge on the grand structure of the cosmos - if the Chaos is boundlessly infinite, then the amount of energy available to draw on is likewise infinite. If, instead, it is finite but unbounded, then the energy available, though unimaginably vast, is likewise bounded. In either case, the scholars argue, it is possible that there exist regions in the Chaos where no energy surges. Without that source of energy, no power could be exercised. It should be noted that energy is, at all places, conserved - it can be neither created nor destroyed. Additionally, in the Material Realm, it is apparent that the law of entropy holds - that is that matter tends towards more and more disorder, over time. Though the energy in the Material Realm remains conserved, over time more and more of it ends up in forms that cannot be harnessed by physical processes. For intelligent beings, however, there is no unharnessable form of energy. Therefore, though the use of power is a strict zero-sum game, all uses of energy can break even, with none going to waste. All energy sunk into some creative act is fully recoverable by the reversing of the creation. In the Thousand Realms, the energy stored in the fabric of the Spiritual Realm forms the source of energy for almost all acts of power. The second requirement for the exercise of power is will. Both in the Realms and in the Chaos, the imposition of will is the mechanism by which energy - drawn from whatever source - is channeled into new designs and constructs. Without will to direct it, no power can be exercised. This is why no power is exercised spontaneously in the Chaos. The energy may surge dramatically, and in places, there is enough available to create the Thousand Realms a hundred or a thousand times over. But nothing is spontaneously created. Only the will of an intelligent being can guide energy into forms and constructs. Third, the exercise of power requires knowledge. The many ways in which energy can be manipulated, and the wide variety of tasks that can be accomplished with it, are not innate knowledge to a being. They must be learned. Without knowledge of how to use it, both energy and the will to impose it are near-useless. As has already been noted, the vast majority of intelligences do not have the native capacity to channel significant amounts of energy, nor the will strong enough to shape it for most ends. However, by consistently drawing at the edge of their power, an intelligence grows used to channeling that level of power. Over time, this results in growth along the Heynes-Laurel scale, as the being becomes more comfortable with higher and higher levels of power. This is a risky proposition, however, as drawing at the edge risks being overwhelmed and potentially injured. The quickest, most consistent, and safest way of increasing the power of an intelligence is to create a bond with another intelligent being. In fact, such bonds are the foundation on which the entire premise of the Thousand Realms is built. Bonds between and involving intelligent beings play a host of functions in addition to increasing power, and are divided into three broad schools of bondings. These schools, and representative types of bondings within them, are discussed below. Formal Bonds Informal Bonds Material Bonds Mortal Use Cosmological History Through eons of counted time, the Thousand Realms have stood as a beacon of light in the primordial Chaos, inviting all to enter. None of the beings remaining in the Realms were present at their inception, and few indeed remember the earliest eons. But records exist - in Alraen, Illyse, Asteros, and other major Realms, that present their history since the Word of the Rulers spoke. Though the accuracy of these records on specific points has sometimes been disputed by scholars, these accounts are regarded as largely reliable, if not entirely objective. The following historical outline has been drawn from the records publicly available on Asteros, seat of the High God Taris. Creation and the First Covenant The Incarnation of Mortals Ascension and Heylel’s Rebellion The Great War and the Intercession of Iahel The Age of Mortals

The Thousand Realms In the Beginning, the Rulers spoke, and the Realms of Being were shaped from the primordial Chaos, awaking the intelligences that dwelt in the Void. To them, Eil All-Father and his soul-sealed Ashyr offered the gift of power, covenanting with them that there would be a place made that they could grow one day to have power over the Chaos, and order it according to their will. Thus were born the beginnings of the Thousand Realms. In the uncounted eons since that event, innumerable stories have been told, and innumerable stories remain unsung. Here, the interested and curious can find information on the Thousand Realms, their structure, and the beings that inhabit them. This worldbuilding thread will serve as the repository for all publicly released information on the Thousand Realms, including Edassa, Starnet, Hatharin, and the City of Mortals settings. This information is under copyright - please do not use, modify, publish, or otherwise disseminate it without prior permission. Cosmology The cosmology of the Thousand Realms begins with the primordial Chaos. It appears to be a simple feature of the landscape, as it were, always existing and able to be influenced. From this Chaos is formed all of the Realms of Being. The oldest is the Realm of the Unmanifested (also called in various places the Spiritual Realm, the Traveler’s Realm, and the Gates of Heaven, among a whole host of other names). It most closely resembles the Chaos from which it was formed, but it has been stabilized such that even intelligences of the lowest ability can exist and experience safely within it. It is a far more benign place, connecting all of the other Realms, and serves as the base material of the other Realms - Chaos tamed so that other things may be formed. Realms so crafted are often called subsidiary realms or mindworlds. The second, and most important, of the Realms of Being is the Realm of the Manifested (also called the Material Realm or the Realm of Mortals, among other names). It is the most stable of the subsidiary realms - requiring no supporting maintenance, as far as can be discerned. It was created by the Rulers as a place for mortals, where the unembodied intelligences could gain experience in ordering brute matter to their will - the same techniques that enable one to impose their will upon Chaos. It is the only Realm inherently fit for long-term inhabitation by mortals, although a few of the Outer Realms have been crafted in such a way that mortals can live in them for some time. Because this realm seems to be permanent, unlike the others that fade away unless they are maintained, it has historically served as a baseline for measurement both in n-space and time. The remainder of the Realms are the Outer Realms. These are uncounted in number and vary wildly in their nature, based on the personality of their creator. A number were originally created by the Rulers themselves, but of those, many are now defunct, and some have wholly faded away into the fabric of the Realm of the Unmanifested. This is the eventual fate of all of the Outer Realms - they require periodic maintenance by their creator in order to remain, and without it, they begin to fail. Chaos Realm of the Unmanifested Realm of the Manifested The Outer Realms Intelligent Beings Among the Thousand Realms, uncountable numbers of beings work out their existences. Powerful gods manage planes of wonder and beauty, mortals are born, live, and die, and vast numbers of intelligences cycle through lives of non-sapience. But all of these beings are, at their core, of the same substance. In the primordial Chaos, ancient beyond the reckoning of the Creators, dwelt and still dwell intelligences, beings of will and spirit. All who inhabit the Thousand Realms were once as these, and all who will yet dwell there will come from the Chaos in the same manner. It is unknown what the origin of these intelligences is. Some believe that they are simply an artifact of the Chaos, and have existed eternally along with it. Others assert that these beings are created, either by some natural process within the Chaos or by some greater being, transcendent beyond detection or knowing. It is very likely that the question will remain forever open - however, the fact that no known process is capable of destroying the core of an intelligent being may lend weight to the hypothesis that they were not created. The Heynes-Laurel Scale Intelligent beings exist at a wide range of power levels. Over the eons, scholars studying the base nature of intelligence have developed a number of classification systems in order to organize them. One of the first popular systems was the Heynes classification, which ordered intelligent beings based on thresholds of capability. Widely adopted because of the clearly defined nature of its categories - an intelligence was either capable of achieving the referenced use of power or not - it eventually became clear that the the ability to perform certain feats, such as maintaining a mindworld, was a function of both skill and power. The Laurel Scale was proposed as a competing model, ranking beings by the amount of energy they could draw in and channel. This, too, had a number of flaws - not least the difficulty of actually performing tests on how much energy could be safely drawn. Several influential scholars adapted the Laurel Scale as an extension of the Heynes classification, and the resulting Heynes-Laurel Scale is the current standard of measurement. The Heynes-Laurel Scale sorts intelligent beings into classes by power level - a logarithmic scale from 0 to 8 (so far), and then assigns them a subclass, running from A-G, each associated with the ability to perform a particular use of power. An additional subclass - A` - was added after later study. The classes and their associated abilities are given below: Class G: Characterized by not being able to perform any of the tasks of higher classes Class F: Characterized by the ability to travel by imposing will on the Realm of the Unmanifested Class E: Characterized by the ability to maintain a mindworld in the Realm of the Unmanifested Class D: Characterized by the ability to maintain a region of spacetime in Chaos Class C: Characterized by the ability to create immortal bonded shells Class B: Characterized by the ability to initiate and guide the evolution of new biological life Class A: Characterized by the ability to initiate new species of mortals Class A`: Characterized by the ability to tame Chaos over a wide area, resulting in the formation of a region similar to the Realm of the Unmanifested. This class was added to the scale in order to extend it to include Eil and Ashyr. It remains controversial, because it is known that the process requires a paired soul-bonding, and is thus difficult to describe a single being as being of this class. Despite the controversy, it remains a useful shorthand to refer to beings of the class of the Rulers. In addition to the more exact classification scales, intelligent beings are also colloquially classified on the basis of other, less formally quantifiable traits. The most common distinctions are given below, with descriptions of what characterizes a being of that kind. Gods Mortals Ascended Immortals Manifested Unmanifested Nameless