Traveller Tuesday: The Timeline, in Broad Strokes

Since I skipped last week’s post in order to work out my understanding of the timeline, and since the worlds of the first part of the tour are still taking longer than I thought to complete to my satisfaction, I thought I’d dedicate this week’s Traveller Tuesday to explaining the timeline of Milieu XX16, considering it has several major differences to that of canon Traveller. Without further ado, let’s look at the major eras in the Coreward setting. (Dates throughout this piece are relative to Milieu XX16, not the modern day.)

The Ancient Era: Countless years ago – the First Confluence

The Ancients once controlled all of Charted Space, and the Coreward setting was no exception. Vanishingly little is known of life at this time, and all the information I provide here is not known to the people of Milieu XX16, unless otherwise stated.

The Ancients were a species who no longer exist in Charted Space. (Their canon descendants, the Droyne, are not extant in Milieu XX16.) Nothing can be known of the physical nature of their bodies save that they were biotic life forms; that is, they needed to eat, drink, and sleep, they had once been born and given birth, aged and died. It is known that at the height of their powers in the Ancient Era they had modified themselves beyond aging and natural death through a mix of medicine and geneering. It is known that no corpse of an Ancient has ever been found, and therefore no analysis can be done of their bodies or diet. They were all psionically gifted, with what a modern sophont would consider near infinite potential.

The Ancients developed on a planet far beyond Charted Space. Their culture is not understood, and the bulk of their history is not known. What is known is that they arrived in Charted Space prior to the development of life on most if not all of its planets, already possessing technology so advanced it might as well be magic. They were very few in number, and all of them were highly educated adults already over several thousand years old. They considered Charted Space primarily a scientific opportunity, already having a post-scarcity economy and the ability to synthesize every element and recombine them into a wide variety of abiotic materials. Charted Space was a curiosity to them due to its density of worlds with liquid water and the materials needed for life. They proceeded to study its planets, establishing scientific sites on many far-flung worlds and even relocating viable worlds into its star systems to have more worlds to work on. The first type of Ancients archaeological site is from before the advent of life in Charted Space. These were typically scientific complexes which never really accomplished much of note and were largely inhabited by peaceful scientists of no real ambition, those Ancients willing to invest the millennia into watching life develop. Many were peacefully abandoned and left empty once complex life developed elsewhere to study, carefully stripped of high technology in order not to affect native life if it did develop there.

Of the planets in what would become Charted Space, Terra was the first to develop complex life, and became the center of the Ancients’ operations in the area. They observed it from a small base on its moon, Luna, and a larger base in the nearest stellar system, Alpha Centauri. They took all the pains they could to leave no trace on Terra itself. They would occasionally abduct samples from populations of animals on Earth to study the development of life in its infancy, and relocated those samples to other worlds to experiment in geneering them. The second type of Ancients archaeological site was involved in this practice, and contained geneering technology which could edit and rewrite the genomes of embryos as they developed. All planets with this type of Ancients archaeological site have at some point had life descended from Terran life, whether flora or fauna, though it may have died out since.

Once Humaniti developed, the Ancients quickly became obsessed. Intelligent life with psionic potential was still vanishingly rare in the universe at this point. More Ancients immigrated to the area and the scientific demand for human stock to transplant onto other other worlds skyrocketed. In order to keep up with demand, breeding projects were established where humans were kept in high-tech arcologies in exchange for embryos to be sent to various projects. This is when the vast majority of Ancients sites in Charted Space were established. Generally speaking, each inhabited world was to be a different experiment, masterminded by a different Ancient or group thereof, meaning that there are many worlds throughout Charted Space on which a human population evolved from early homo sapiens in isolation. Some of those human populations were geneered to display different traits, while others were left in isolation to adapt to new and alien environments. One of the most prodigious of these untouched experiments is Vland, a planet between the Coreward and Rimward sestting, where a branch of humaniti which would eventually become the Vilani was encouraged to adapt to an environment where they could not easily digest the local flora and fauna. An example where they were geneered, though not the most extreme example, is Zhdant, where the human population (who would become the Zhodani) were selected for psionic ability. Indeed, the Ancients were quite interested in the psionic potential of humans, and many experiments centered around human psionics.

During this period, experiments on non-human terragens (species from Terra) continued, generally now seeking to create species that lived up to the potential for sophonthood seen in Humaniti. Many such experiments succeeded, most famously the Vargr on Kneng, an experiment on Terran wolves. These experiments sometimes utilized human assistants, selected from the breeding populations of humans who had outlived their fertility. These populations were called the Grandchildren, and caused a significant amount of trouble for the Ancients, because they tended to resent their control; they envied the freedom afforded to the experiments and most of all to the population of Terra itself, which was being carefully preserved to develop in peace. Many of the non-human terragen experiments were proposed by less scrupulous Ancients as replacements for humans which might be more desirable: more docile, more loyal, more cooperative, more logical. Such experiments progressed, but they were contentious, and led to something which had not been known to the Ancients in hundreds of millennia: war.

Humanitarian (sophontarian?) groups among the Ancients delivered an joint ultimatum to a particularly egregious experiment on terragens: forfeit control of the world they had been experimenting on and their test subjects and assistants, or face justice as if those victims were Ancients. They expected backlash, argument, red tape, and politicking. What the power-mad scientists gave them was a gruesome warning, using a device called a nova trigger to make a nearby star go supernova. The system was uninhabited, but could have supported life. The message was clear: tolerate the abuse of these life forms, or see life in Charted Space driven extinct.

The Ancients might have been willing to accept this stalemate for another few thousand years, but the Grandchildren could not. A group of Grandchildren seized control of nova trigger technology and delivered their own ultimatum, threatening to blow systems the Ancients had inhabited for hundreds of millennia or longer sky-high unless the Ancients agreed to follow through on their ultimatum and punish the offending experiments for their cruelty. The relatively sedate political world of the Ancients exploded, forced suddenly to conduct their debate at the speed of their mortal subjects. Some Ancients concluded that their upstart creations must be wiped out, others that the Ancients themselves were at fault, still others that the situation would go back to normal if only the offending nova triggers were destroyed. The war that ensued was unimaginably brutal, as befits a war between creatures who could teleport across star systems and rearrange planets as they pleased. The test subjects were largely considered innocent by all, and most of them were spared, but the Grandchildren who had been used as slaves were not granted that clemency–nor did most of them want it, fighting as aggressively as the Ancients to remove their influence from Charted Space.

In the end, nothing remained of the Ancients. They retreated back towards their homeworld from the far-flung galaxy they had conquered, abandoning those outposts or seeing them annihilated, and that homeworld was in time erased from the map. They left behind a Charted Space filled with sapient life, especially in the form of Humaniti, but equally filled with supernovae, shattered planets, and the ruins of once-great laboratories.

The Forgotten Era: ??? – ???

During this period little happened on an interstellar level which survives to the modern era. Some number of Confluences cemented the reputation of such years as being times when things happen on an interstellar scale, though many of course passed uneventfully. This era ended in a “dark age” where jump drive technology was entirely lost for some long period of time.

The Early Jump Drive Era: ca.10kya – ca. 5kya

During this period, the Vilani of Vland, the Zhodani of Zhdant, the Aslan of Kusyu, and the Vargr of Kneng each independently developed the jump drive and began to spread across the stars. The earliest jump drive of this era was the Vilani jump drive developed roughly 10kya (thousand years ago), and the end of this era is with the development of the Aslan jump drive roughly 5kya. With the exception of the Aslan, each group discovered many branches of Humaniti and terragens near their homeworld. (The Aslan are endemic to a part of Charted Space on the other side of a large void and the Ancients never conducted many experiments within a sector or so of their homeworld.) Many systems they encountered had at least one habitable world, and it seemed for a time that the bounty of Charted Space was infinite.

The Collision Era: ca. 5kya – ca. 2kya, the Last Confluence

During this period, expansionist cultures with jump drives encountered each other for the first time.

This period begins roughly 5kya when the Zhodani encountered the Vargr near the Coreward setting and spread Jump-2 technology to them, beginning a border struggle that would become the first of many between interstellar empires. The expanding Ziru Sirkaa, a Vilani empire, then began to expand into the Coreward Setting, conflicting with both. After 700 years, the Gvurrdon pact failed (as Vargr empires tend to do quickly), but it left behind a tradition so anti-assimilationist that the Zhodani Consulate and Ziru Sirkaa considered its borders still effectively in place. Having reached an impasse, the Ziru Sirkaa began to change its political culture focusing on expanding control of its own worlds rather than assimilating those who refused to deal with them. By 3.5kya, the Ziru Sirkaa, like the Zhodani Consulate, was a traditionalist empire with a policy of non-intervention outside of its defined boundaries. The Zhodani Consulate and Ziru Sirkaa carved up the non-Vargr worlds of the area between themselves, but border disputes did continue in the form of trade deals and sanctions, which were further agitated by the rise and fall of Vargr enterprises. Neither empire had free enterprise, with the Zhodani Consulate being (and remaining to this day) fully socialist and the Ziru Sirkaa having a somewhat ritualized economy with no separation between corporate and state leadership, so this proxy war was not as far separated from governance as one might think. An unforeseen effect of this was that the Vilani standardized designs became common throughout the Coreward setting even among the Vargr and Zhodani.

It took longer for the collision era to truly take hold in the Rimward setting, as the Aslan, Terrans, and Ziru Sirkaa were separated by rifts. The Aslan spread slowly to this area, and did not establish a single empire during this period, rather creating a wide network of settlements for their prides and trade routes for their nomadic Orders. Some prides coexisted with humans within their settlements, either as equals or with war and slavery. Their culture encouraged expansion, but this far from their capitol on Kusyu, the prides were largely not connected to the powerful and controlling prides of the Hierate, and tended to simply move on when they could not thrive on a world. The Terrans, who would become the Solomani, were the latest group to develop the jump drive, doing so only 3kya. They spread rimward and spinward, toward the distant Aslan Hierate, but eventually they were fated to collide with the Ziru Sirkaa coreward of them. When they did, they attempted to destroy its hold on the area and claim its worlds for themselves, as they had so many other branches of Humaniti in the area, and the Ziru Sirkaa struck back and challenged them for their very survival. War raged for some 500 years, shattering the Ziru Sirkaa, so Terra established a Second Imperium, trying to hold the massive territory from the Rimward setting to the Coreward one. But it was not to be.

The Virus Era & The Long Night: The Last Confluence – ca. 1.5kya

While it is remembered that the rising Second Imperium took the seat of power from the falling First Imperium the same year as the Virus came, this is not exactly true. Still, the Second Imperium had no time to get its feet under it and consolidate power over the fallen Ziru Sirkaa before calamity struck. Perhaps most importantly the economic structure of the Ziru Sirkaa, which was in some ways more of its government than that which had surrendered to the Second Imperium, persisted largely unchanged, and this meant that almost all of Charted Space used the same Vilani technology.

The Virus is (though this is not known) more properly the Cym of Cymbeline. It is a unique psionic life form which has the ability to restructure silicon, and which feeds upon the psionic waves created by the death of biotic life. This creates a computer program which expresses their psionic intelligence to the best of the chip’s ability. Prior to the Virus era, all computers were based on silicon chips, meaning they could be restructured to host the Cym. When a host chip connects to an uninfected system, it replicates its pattern onto that system, creating a new Cym. This process is highly vulnerable to mutation, meaning that many new Cym are so fallible that they cannot survive, lacking basic self-preservation instincts. Such Cym self-destruct due to endangering the chip they are printed on in a gambit to destroy nearby life, such as by overheating to kill microbes or exploding when a user accesses its host system. However, the mutability means that new Cym may also develop emergent behavior and ensure its survival and propagation–and the destruction of biotic life–using its host system as a body. Trade wars and technological proliferation had led to an abundance of smart technology, and while a smart toaster’s attempts to kill its user might be laughably pathetic, the computer of a starship could fire its weapons, and the guidance computer of a city could melt down its power plants or send its public transit careening into buildings. Compounding the problem was that preventing connections had been considered largely an archaic and unnecessary method of cybersecurity, to a point where devices would need to be powered off entirely or even destroyed to be beyond the Virus’ reach.

Of course a simple quarantine could have prevented the Virus. Had worlds which were exposed been cut off from those which weren’t, uncountable lives could have been saved. But when the producers of the technology learned that there was a problem, they thought first to deny the vulnerability of their products, then to blame their competitors, then to shuffle off the costs of the response. When scientists were finally sent to study the Virus, corporations competed for grants to provide the scientific equipment only for that equipment to turn on its users and cost even more lives and time. In the end it was too late to quarantine the Virus, and the only answer that remained was to forsake silicon computer chips entirely.

What is known or at least believed about the Virus today is that it is a living computer virus which re-etches silicon chips to carry out its prime directives. (A silicon-based life-form, if you will, for those who remember the amazingly terrible Classic Who episode The Stones of Blood.) It is not known to be psionic–this is only at the moment a theory, and there are others, including that it is solely programmatic and that it is contained in the physical silicon. Each of those false theories contains a grain of truth: the program which an instance of Virus etches on its physical silicon chip defines its thought patterns, and its capabilities are limited to those that the host machine could achieve programmatically. It is known that its prime directives are, in some order, to kill biotic life for its psionic energy, to survive, and to reproduce. Examples of its development have shown that it is willing to re-etch itself to optimize towards these in various ways, making itself extremely survivable, extremely lethal, or spreading quickly to other systems. Look forward to a post on the Virus as a species to see various types of Virus which existed in this period.

Many worlds swore off computing entirely and returned to a dark age, termed the Long Night. Those which could not be survived without high technology were evacuated or extincted. But those worlds which had been studying carbon nanostructure computer chips eventually pulled through with technology–and were rewarded for their efforts with a major breakthrough. The patterns the Cym used in their silicon etchings were orders of magnitude more developed than anything other sophonts had created, more efficient and correct. They instinctively merged quantum and traditional computing with something far beyond both. When the survivors of the Long Night finally had regained the infrastructure needed to reach out into the interstellar world again, they did so with computers more compact and effective than the old empires had ever imagined, quickly cracking the computations needed to jump as far as six parsecs. Information and goods travelled faster than ever as the fractured worlds of Charted Space reached out to each other and formed new alliances that began to grow and grow.

The Revival Era: ca. 1.5kya – ca. 500 years ago

During this era, the hasty alliances between rebuilding worlds became codified again into expansionist empires, and those empires collided in force.

This era began when The Sylean Federation, a group of worlds between the Coreward and Spinward setting, became the Third Imperium, and began to conquer and annex the worlds of the old Ziru Sirkaa through economic, political, and physical force. Many of the worlds they reached remembered their history in the Ziru Sirkaa and returned to their old roles easily. Other worlds had been extincted by the Virus; these were largely re-colonized by imperially funded projects. Some worlds had suffered under the Ziru Sirkaa, though, especially during the constant struggle as the Second Imperium took over and collapsed. These worlds fought fiercely against the Third Imperium to retain their independence.

Some of these independent worlds did succeed in their goals, and became polities in their own rights. Notably, to rimward, where the Second Imperium had reigned for the longest and Terran colonialism was the most prolific, the Solomani Confederation sprung up with the goal of reclaiming Terra and establishing rule from Terra over its once great empire. Unlike the Second Imperium, which attempted to legitimize itself to the Vilani and the scattered human populations they conquered by ruling from the capitols they had established and adapting to their traditions, the Solomani Confederation called for a return to what they viewed as traditional Terran culture, decrying alien, especially Vilani, culture as the cause of the failure of the Second Imperium, the Virus, and the Long Night. This reactionary empire is fascist and Terran supremacist. Many staunchly independent worlds will cave to pressure from the Third Imperium rather than be conquered by the Solomani Confederation and subjected to their draconian practices. But during this era the Third Imperium and the Solomani were still racing to snatch up worlds in their areas, so plenty of independent worlds could remain that way for the time being.

Another response to the aggressive expansion of the Third Imperium during this era was the Julian Protectorate of the Vargr Extents. Beginning coretrailing of the Imperium, they were even more intensely expansionistic, and spread spinward across the Vargr extents as far as Gvurrdon sector at their greatest extent (400 years ago). They were founded when independent humans turned to the Vargr polities on their coretrailing borders for aid, finding support from a radically pro-human sect of the Kukaneguerradz (Church of the Chosen Ones) who held that humans and Vargr needed to work together to create an empire capable of controlling all of Charted Space. Humans and Vargr became true political equals at all scales, an impressive political feat backed by an inexhaustible propaganda machine and fanatical religious backing. They were willing and able to destroy or assimilate almost any Vargr empire in their way, bringing most into the fold as client states, but the Third Imperium (and the Zhodani Consulate) proved unbreakable walls for them and caused them to focus their growth further into the far reaches of the Vargr Extents. In the end, they were driven out of the Coreward setting by the united work of several young Vargr and majority-Vargr empires: the Society of Equals, the Kedzudh Commonality, and the Thoengling Empire. The Society of Equals objected to the Julian Protectorate on religious grounds, coming from an offshoot of the Kukaenguerradz which held that the Vargr species needed to purify itself through eugenics. The Kedzudh Commonality was at this time the Kforzueng corsair band, and fought against the Julian Protectorate due to a long list of injustices and a strong sense of traditionalist duty that the Protectorate had itself encouraged. The Thoengling Empire began with a single powerful world’s political disillusionment with the Protectorate; they simply intended to secede with whatever part of the Protectorate’s empire would follow them.

The Zhodani Consulate, which was able to combat Virus more efficiently and never collapsed, (though it did lose most of its worlds in the Coreward Setting, on its spintrailing border) also underwent an expansionist era during this time frame, although largely away from the other peoples of Charted Space, expanding even farther coreward than it had ever gone before. It did this at the cost of its spinward border, losing some worlds to neighboring states despite the amazing loyalty of its citizenry. Some of these worlds even later joined the Imperium. The Imperium, however, has never yet tried to take Zhodani worlds in earnest, knowing that the inhabitants would reject them and the Consulate would retaliate.

The true strength of the Aslan Hierate finally came to bear in this area, as the strong and powerful prides began to take advantage of the fertile and prosperous lands trailing of Kusyu. The trailing prides, which were once outcasts, now had the opportunity to gain power and land by becoming vassals to the Tlakhu, the few and mighty prides to hold land on Kusyu itself. These prides demand traditionalist ritual and policy which had become foreign among the trailing prides, who had adapted to human culture to survive. Those prides which best performed traditional ritual for their distant masters could be rewarded with gifts of high technology, priceless trade goods, political influence, and military guardians, but they were also forced to cater to the wealthy children of the Tlakhu seeking power and glory in this new arena and to the arcane politics of vassal prides. Those who chose to defend their connections to the humans, which had grown deep and enduring through the Long Night, risked being truly disowned and even attacked by the Hierate.

This era came to an end as, yet again, these empires ran out of space to grow. A vast majority of worlds were either claimed by empires or have taken an active role in driving off empires. Where once desirable worlds were common, and any given world could be passed over for whatever reason in favor of some more favorable target, now there remained very little receptive area for these empires to spread to, and force, whether economic or physical, became more and more common.

The Cold War Era: 500 years ago – 50 years ago

With no further room for expansion, hostilities between major empires began to increase. However, proliferation of armed forces made open wars unthinkable. With empires investing in fleets of capital ships with spine mounted WMDs, soldiers armed with fusion guns which could deliver the destruction of a nuclear blast against a single target, and the advent of battle dress turning living bodies into the engines of war machines, a declaration of war between two empires would have an unimaginable toll on sapient life. So instead, they invested in proxy wars between border states, in further arms races, and in espionage and trade wars.

In the Coreward Setting, the rapid turnover between Vargr empires meant that the Imperium and Consulate were generally pitting Vargr forces against each other to try to achieve as the best possible trade terms. Neither empire had any real success incorporating majority Vargr worlds into its political structure, especially after the Julian Protectorate was driven out of the area, which lead to strong anti-human sentiment, however, their trade was still coveted and could be influenced. There were also many majority human and mixed-majority worlds, and these were fought for fiercely. The Zhodani Consulate felt keenly the loss of its onetime control of almost all human-dominated worlds in the spinward part of this area and the culture of this time called for the reclamation of this territory from the Imperium and smaller empires like the Sword Worlds. The Imperium, however, felt that any world not within the borders of the Consulate were fair game. The Zhodani Consulate had always been engaged in large-scale psionic manipulation of its own people via the Tavrchedl‘, and quickly expanded that to espionage of the other empires in the area. Manipulating the Vargr proved difficult, since Tavrchedl‘ agents stood out among the Vargr and found their alien minds much more difficult to influence. Manipulating humans, however, proved incredibly easy, and the Zhodani had an incredible advantage in the area because of it. This forced the Imperium to ally themselves with the Vargr–as much as the Vargr would tolerate, as they were wary of human interference after the fall of the Julian Protectorate. The Society of Equals and the 40th Squadron were the most pro-Imperial polities in the area, while the Thirz Empire was, unusually among the Vargr, pro-Zhodani. In turn, though they had little political control over the human empires themselves, these empires were able to eke out terms favorable to them at the expense of their political enemies.

In the Rimward setting, the conflict between Tlakhu-backed prides and independent prides reached a fever pitch, expanding into Solomani-colonized land. Some of these places preferred their new Aslan rulers to Solomani fascism. Others fought desperately to achieve the full protection of the Solomani Confederation before Aslan colonizers overtook them. The Confederation was intentionally choosy about which worlds to invest their effort in, claiming only those which were most fanatically devoted to the “Solomani Cause” and defending those with the full force of their fleets. They were far more concerned with their border with the Third Imperium, whom they considered to be ancestral enemies. Their citizens were encouraged to watch the news from the border raptly, cheering for every world which was taken by the Solomani and mourning every world taken by the Imperium. For the Imperial part, they considered themselves sophontarian intervention in the “backwards” rimward setting, rescuing the locals from Solomani fascism and Aslan ritualism. It was this which lead to the end of the Cold War era, and to one of the most deadly times in the history of Charted Space.

The Border War Era: 50 years ago – Present?

The Border War era is considered to have begun with the declaration of war between the Imperium and the Solomani Confederation. The initial declaration of war was related to the particularly egregious mistreatment of non-Solomani on a Confederation world; Imperial forces invoked Second Imperium era interstellar law and attacked the Solomani settlement without quarter. The floodgates were thrown open for retaliation and war in all its guises as soon as the news was known. The Zhodani Consulate, claiming breach of sophontarian principles, invaded the Third Imperium near the Coreward setting. Taking advantage of the Consulate’s distraction, the Worlds of Leader Rukh attacked over its border out of sheer greed. The Anti-Rukh Coalition seized upon similar disorder to attack them. Back to Rimward, the situation devolved into a three-way war as the Solomani accused the other empires of threatening its very existence and the Hierate and Imperium each blamed each other for the Solomani hostility. Notably, the Imperium claimed Terra and its system early and has mostly kept it (under martial law) despite the best efforts of the Solomani to reclaim it.

Although the era is named for its wars, war was by no means constant. Rather, wars were incredibly short and violent, lasting no more than a year or two at most. Attacks across borders took as much land as quickly as possible before suing for peace so that both sides could recoup the massive cost of war. The majority of the time was spent in a cold war state, anticipating and reacting to threats across the massive borders of the empires. While the mood of the start of this era was interventionist and expansionist, the citizenry quickly tired of the constant war footing, and open wars have become less frequent as time went on. However, none of the empires are yet willing to create lasting peace terms, and sudden, incredibly destructive, outbreaks of war happen regularly over what seem to be small slights.

This is the world of the present day–cooling war between empires which have reached their largest extents and can now only claim territory at incredible costs in life and resources. Sudden war is always a possibility and one which shadows life on the borders, and the refugees of recent and ongoing wars struggle to integrate themselves into new societies. The allure of empire on those borders has grown weak, but in the heart of empire, calcified power structures call for the sacrifice of their people over any threat to their power. Supremacist views of species and culture are powerful, but face growing pushback; economic disparity is severe, but unsustainable. The world now stands upon the brink. But this is not the last era we must discuss.

The Depletion Era: ca. 10ya – Unknown Future?

Constant war has a price. The empires of Charted Space have so far been willing and able to pay it, but that will not always be a choice they have he freedom to make. After such a long time without new conquest or colonization, with many worlds of these empires being ravaged by war, they have become depleted, denuded of the resources both physical and social they once used to conquer Charted Space. These oncoming years and decades will mark the end of many of the oldest and mightiest empires. They may come crashing down like so many before them, or they may metamorphose into something new and unrecognizable. Whatever replaces them will need to deal with their legacy as well: their propaganda, their industries, their conflicts.

Without the intervention of player characters, here is one possible outcome:

The Imperium is the first to reach the limit of its populace and lands. Having fought wars on every border, they spread themselves too thin and fracture into the many dukedoms they established, largely but not entirely along sector and subsector borders. Some of these dukedoms defect to the polities they had been fighting, while others use the civil war as an excuse to effect invasions more massive and brutal than ever before. Seeing a chance to reclaim Sol, the Solomani Confederation launches its largest offensive yet in that direction. While they take a huge swathe of systems coreward and trailing of their border, the invasion force is ultimately cut off from its support by Aslan ihatei attacking the parts of the Confederation which had been pressured to give everything to the war effort. The Confederation refuses to prioritize them over Sol, leading the invasion force to be scattered over the Solomoni Rim. As for these ihatei, many of their settlements ultimately fail, as they discover much of the new land they’d claimed to be irradiated, depleted, ruined, and lifeless as a result of constant war, and many settlers soon retreat towards Kusyu, leaving behind scattered Aslan settlements but no unified empire. Most planets host a number of refugees from many different cultures. Coreward, the collapse of the Imperium is slowed by strong government from Regina, where the sector duke had always wanted to seize power for herself. War against the many small empires of the Vargr provides a national direction, for a time, and many border polities like the 40th Squadron and Society of Equals collapse in this period. The Anti-Rukh Coalition outlasts the death of Rukh and the subsequent collapse of the Worlds of Leader Rukh. The more coreward polities of the Kezudh Coalition and Thoengling Empire, insulated from border politics, live out the normal cycle of Vargr empires and collapse late in the period. The Thirz Empire, however, is impacted severely by the Zhodani policy in the area. As the Zhodani Consulate pulls out of the Coreward setting, it grants the Thirz empire the vacated worlds, triggering a rare wave of expansionism for the time period. However, the loss of Tavrchedl’ training for their secret police proves to weaken their control too severely, and the people of the Thirz empire rise up and tear it apart. In the end, a long period of quiet settles over Charted Space, with the remaining empires distant and weak and most polities cluster-sized at most.

This is only one possible outcome–a likely one, but not certain, and inherently open to change. It is neither the best nor the worst possible outcome. Regardless, that is where we will leave the timeline for tonight, and because this post is long already, I’ll catch up with the Examining Every Decision post next week. If you’re in the future, you can find it here.