Encyclopedia Hiigara (In Collaboration With Taiidan Republic Mod); Added Kadeshi
 

Hi, guys! You may know me as DerKommissar's story writer or you may know me as the guy that has been writing the Vagabond (due to the lack of replies I find this unlikely). Anyhow, I've always been somewhat of an amature historian and I will be writing a bible for Homeworld fanfiction now called the Encyclopedia Hiigara, in collaboration with my good partner DerKommissar.

A careful note, this combines several universes together except those that in no way can I see realistically fitting in with the Homeworld-Homeworld: Catacylsm-Homeworld 2 timeframe. Unfortunately that includes both Kadeshi Crusade and its sequel as well as the excellent novel Kadeshi Survivors. By no means do you have to use this or am I even asking that you use it. I am simply asking that you consider it as I will put a lot of work into making it.

Thank-you.

PS: For those of you that are reading my novel (and please do, its my first and I think its good even if it isn't great or wonderful) the foreward and some references in the "Struggles" part of the History may contain spoilers. So don't read those ;).




ENCYCOLPEDIA HIIGARA
Centennial Edition

Foreward

One hundred years ago by the Hiigaran calendar our people arrived on our homeworld after three millennia of exile. It was this return that brought us into the galaxy as equals and companions after our long isolation. We were no longer alone, we were one of many.

As we awoke from our cryo sleep and learned of the genocide at Kharak (see, KHARAK) our race could barely resist the ancestral urge to take vengeance. But it was thanks to Karan Sjet (see, SJET, KARAN) and the remaining officers of Fleet Intelligence (see, FLEET INTELLIGENCE) that we did not turn as we might have, we remained as peaceful companions, not violent ones as the Imperium (see, IMPERIUM, TAIIDAN) had been.

Now a hundred years later the Dust Wars (see, DUST WARS, THE) have come to an end and again the galaxy is at peace. Though the Vaygr (see, VAYGR CRUSADES) Crusade Makaan (see, MAKAAN) has emerged as a victorious conqueror in the Mid Rim and has taken much of Taiidan space, he has promised not to engage hostilities with the Hiigaran Federation (see, FEDERATION, HIIGARA) unless he deems it a thread to his sovereignty. In return our Daiamid has agreed to not intervene and this has left the galaxy in a state of calm.

During these one hundred years we have come to know our fellow species and welcome them into our fold. We expanded during the Dust Wars and became the dominant power of the galaxy, reclaiming our ancient destiny. It is now, after all this time, that we no longer our strangers.

Though this encyclopedia was not there from the start of the search for knowledge, as it appeared around 17 AHL or 9537 GSY, we have been a great help in documenting the knowledge of the many nations in this universe and cataloguing them in the language of Kushan’la (see, KUSHAN’LA). Many people have contributed their lives and work to this encyclopedia and it is now that I thank them for passing this gift on to me.

One of the primary assistants in this encyclopedia came from an unlikely source. Though many were making contributions to the lore known to our race, it was a little-known captain by the name of Ilak Niirfa’sa (see, NIIRFA’SA, ILAK) that contributed the greatest gift of all, a chip containing nearly all knowledge known to the Frerrn Aggregate (see, AGGREGATE, FRERRN) and former Imperium. With this chip in the sole hands of Kiith Niirfa, now brought back together by Ilak’s return from exile it was a great trouble to acquire the information. Eventually Ilak agreed to allow research teams the chip and in fact funded the creation of the Encyclopedia Hiigara and became its first editor before giving up the title about four years later to my grandfather, Mikaal Kaalel.

Now I present it to you, dutiful reader, after eighty-three years of tradition. And with this hopeful future ahead of us, let it be known that forever will the name of Hiigara, our Homeworld, be known to the galaxy.

-Professor Johan Kaalel





HIIGARAN FEDERATION, THE

Introduction. The Hiigaran Federation or Hiigarans are an organization of kiithid under one confederate government, loosely united although recently brought closer together by the treaties that ended the Dust Wars (see, DUST WARS, THE). In total, it consists of approximately twenty-eight kiithid and about three thousand colonized systems. Each of these kiithid have divided the systems amongst one another although claims to the colonies are still under debate in the Daiamid.

TOPOGRAPHY

Relief. The Hiigaran Federation accommodates for a little less than one eighth of the galaxy’s volume outside of the galactic core. Hiigara itself is just outside the core, about four hundred to six hundred light years away. The core itself is impenetrable to our methods of star travel at the moment for the gravity well caused by the black hole (see BALCORA) at the center is large enough (five hundred lightyear diameter) to cause an immense gravity well that causes hyperspace to be impossible using conventional or even far jump drives (see FAR JUMP). For information on Hiigara’s own geography see HIIGARA or if you want a general layout of the geography of colonies within Hiigara, look further in this section for the list of Hiigaran colonies.

Human landscape. The expansion of the Imperium (see, IMPERIUM, TAIIDAN) and Aggregate (see, AGGREGATE, FRERRN) (the owners of most of Hiigara’s colonies before they came under Hiigaran dominance) led to the industrialization of most colonies as resources in the economic might of both empires. Because of this, most of the colonies under Hiigaran rule are already quite well developed, some better than Hiigara itself. On rare occasions planets that have not been colonized and/or terraformed have come under Hiigaran rule and under extremely small circumstances planets have been found that are already inhabited by a pre-jump civilization. But for the most part, the Hiigaran Federation has expanded into systems formally inhabited by the Taiidan or Frerrn.

POPULATION

The Federation’s population was originally very much Kushan dominated. However, with the recent expansionism during the Dust Wars (see, DUST WARS, THE) by Hiigaran forces, the Kushan have become minorities amongst their own government. Although it is generally true that the colonial populations before Hiigaran conquest were not that large, a fair number of Taiidan were already living on several worlds and when the colonists arrived they were greatly outnumbered by the Taiidan and/or native peoples. The majority of the Federation’s population is in fact Frerrn however as a good portion of the Aggregate is now Hiigaran.

Historical Perspective. The Kushan. The ancient ancestors of the Kushan people, the Kushaana (see, EMPIRE, HIIGARAN), originated on the planet Hiigara and during the years that followed colonized several planets. It was thought that during the aftermath of the War of Sajuuk (see, SAJUUK, WAR OF) that led to the exile of the Kushan all those millennia ago that all the Kushan that did not leave in exile were executed by the Taiidan. However, there is recent evidence that suggests that not all the Kushan died out but that some melded into society through biotechnology, allowing them to dwindle. Genetic research has revealed that a fair portion of some planets’ population contain mutations in their genetic structure similar to the Kushan, suggesting technologically aided reproduction, before, or after the war and/or Exile. Regardless, the Kushan people have dominated these worlds for centuries before their Exile and now, after their Exodus.
The Frerrn. The expansion of the Aggregate led to many of the worlds now occupied by the Federation to be once part of the massive Frerrn dominion. The Frerrn are in fact, the majority of the Federation citizenry although they have little political or economic power, the Hiigaran colonists having taken many of their jobs and positions throughout their former colonies. The Great War (see, GREAT WAR, THE) about three centuries ago established the Frerrn’s presence despite the Imperium’s efforts to stop it and the conflicts leading up to the Dust Wars gave the Frerrn a short-lived supremacy over the area. There are few Frerrn immigrants, even as the Frerrn fight a desperate war for survival against Makaan (see, MAKAAN)
The Taiidan. The Taiidan number slightly over that of the Kushan as the area was dominated by them for several millennia before they were thrown out by revolutions following the Homeworld War (see, HOMEWORLD WAR, THE). The Republic (see, REPUBLIC, TAIIDAN), hoping not to engage hostilities so young in life allowed worlds to vote for their government. Many chose independence and several Taiidan colonists were either driven out or left out of spite. It became worse for the Republic during the Dust Wars when the Frerrn came to occupy the region. Taiidan have more power than their Frerrn rivals, especially in economics, where their position along the trade routes are important for the Hiigaran Federation. With the recent annexation of remaining Republican space by the Vaygr the population of the Taiidan people is greatly increasing within the Federation’s borders as refugees flee before the Vaygr can close the borders.
The Regvali. The Regvali, a religious people that have been oppressed by the Taiidan and Frerrn alike in the past, welcomed the rule of the Federation, seeing at as liberation. Unfortunately, just as with those within the Taiidan Republic’s former borders, they were generally ignored although not discriminated against by the Kushan. However, because their ancient kingdom was reasonably large before its conquest by the Taiidan during the Taiidan-Regvali War (see, TAIIDAN-REGVALI WAR, THE) they are well spread throughout the Federation and due to their vigilance and optimism, they have managed to keep themselves large in numbers. Those few Regvali that have risen to high stature are generally well off due to both the economic strength of Hiigara and the generally high charisma of the Regvali people.
The Turanics. There are not very many Turanics in the Federation but those that are usually are either refugees who refused to back Makaan or citizens that become the Federation’s subjects when the Dust Wars ended and Hiigara’s borders greatly expanded. They are generally viewed with distrust due to the bad reputation of the Turanics. However, the Turanics are generally a fun-loving people and can be easy to get along with if you get to know them.
The minorities. There are many minorities within the Federation due to the number of sentient lifeforms within our galaxy. On a whole there is estimated to be one hundred to two hundred different intelligent species in the galaxy and about one third of those have some presence as natives or immigrants to the Federation. This is mainly due to the fact that Hiigara’s borders are extensive and many of the different races have access to hyperspace technology, either by their own or due to conquest, trade, or assistance. Because of the diversity of the Federation many people have come to visit it, including several Vaygr crusades whom have taken a previously unheard of interest in affairs outside of the Reaches.

Languages. There is, as in most nations of the galaxy, two recognized and official languages within the borders of the Federation. Those are that of Galactic Common and Kushan’la. Kushan’la is most commonly used within the Inner Rim and the Outer Core but in the reaches of the Federation the official trade language of the galaxy is used most commonly, along with any native tongues. Kushan’la, despite many protests, is taught as the primary language in schools, whether they be dominated by a Kushan population or not. Galactic Common is taught as a second language while native tongues are spoken as a third language. This is the same form of education that empires have been using for centuries. Some of the major native tongues include Taiidan and Frerrn but most native speakers resort to using Galactic Common.
Galactic Common. This is the official language of not just the Hiigarans, but also of the entire galaxy. Galactic Common, which has changed little except for slang in the years that have passed since the War of Sajuuk, was originally adopted as the galactic trade language by the Galactic Council (see, GALACTIC COUNCIL) about the year of 6148 GSY under the urging of the Bentusi (see, BENTUSI TRADERS). Because most races, including the Galactic Council, were unwilling to accept the Taiidan language as supreme after the Kushan’s long dominance, the Bentusi were willing to compromise and offered the ancient ancestor of Kushan’la as the official language of the galaxy. It should be known however that Kushan’la and Galactic Common bear almost no resemblance. Because that people only use it formally or in diplomatic or political affairs, Galactic Common has been kept intact throughout three whole millennia. In all matters of the state, Galactic Common is the language of choice in the Federation.
Kushan’la. Despite Galactic Common’s official use, the Kushan, being very patriotic, prefer to use the second official language, Kushan’la. Even on military duty or in the Daiamid, the Kushan will revert to Kushan’la by instinct, not just because it is the first language they learn, but also because that it is socially allowed. However, because that there is more emphasis in school on learning Galactic Common and a foreign language such as Taiidan, the Kushan’la language changes rapidly and slang evolves at an astonishing pace.
Taiidan. Although the Taiidan too used Galactic Common, they, like the Kushan, were very proud of their language and because of their long dominance in the galaxy; they could afford to use their language. Also, most of the races in the galaxy already spoke Taiidan as a second language when the Hiigarans arrived and some even spoke it as their official language after such long Taiidan rule. Therefore, despite the Taiidan only numbering a little over the Kushan, their language is the most commonly heard minority language.

Religion. As in almost all nations, Sajuuk is the center of about 75% of the religions that inhabit the Federation. There is only one religion with a moderate following that does not hold Sajuuk supreme and that is the religion of the Regvali who have been stubborn throughout their whole history, holding their monarchs supreme as gods and demonizing Sajuuk and his various companions. The most widely spread religion is that of the former Taiidan Empire, which, though it holds Sajuuk at the center of their religion, is very different from that of the Kushan one, and holds Sajuuk as a single and supreme god while most religions state that there is more than one god. However, Sajuuk is the only deity within the Taiidan dogma. Anthropologists still speculate over why religion throughout the galaxy is still similar although a strong theory is that an empire spread a common faith throughout the galaxy long ago. With the spread of science and the tensions caused by religion however, many are coming to doubt the truth in religion. But it will be a long time before atheists are a substantial portion of the population although fair portion is indifferent to religion.

Demographic trends. Death rates have always been around average in the colonies of Hiigara but Hiigara itself has been the butt of every joke regarding birth control since the Homeworld War. Due to the Daiamid’s position towards birth control the birth rate of Hiigara has gone up significantly. Birth control is taxed and unusually high priced while fertility drugs have lowered in price and prescription has become easier. Abortion, already expensive, now required not only a licensed doctor, but a licensed patient. Most importantly of all, the unusually long reproductive age range of Kushan females (from late teens to their late sixties) has led to a surprisingly high birth rate. Kushan mothers, on average, have about fifteen children in their life. Foreigners have generally opposed this policy, saying that the Daiamid is turning women into nothing else but resources. However, the mourning over Kharak, now set as a holiday on the Hiigaran calendar, left many Kushan indifferent or supportive of the Daiamid’s policy. Immigration from the former Republic has vastly increased due to the Vaygr invasions, rising the Taiidan population quickly and steadily.

ECONOMY

Hiigaran imperialism. Though once the champion of civil liberties, many accuse Hiigara of being an imperialist aggressor now. After its involvement in the Dust Wars, it conquered, rather than liberated its enemies’ subjects. They have said this has been to increase galactic unity and have pointed out that many do not suffer under Hiigaran rule and this is true. But some of the native races are unsure. It cannot be denied that Hiigara has not exploited their new colonies and profited from it. They have continued the strip mining that the natives and the Taiidan or Frerrn before them started. They have continued to industrialize the areas and have exported many Hiigaran products to these colonies. The markets have balanced and consumerism has led Hiigara to being a main producer of exports, easily becoming the richest nation in the galaxy.

Agriculture. Agriculture is as always, a primary source of economic growth and profit for the Hiigarans. Best of all, the agricultural output possible by Hiigara is much greater than that of the needs of the Kushan people, their numbers still under two hundred million. This has led to much of the agricultural surplus of Hiigara being exported to the Vaygr Dominion (see, DOMINION, VAYGR) as well as other states outside of the Federation. Most crops are grain but Hiigara and its colonies also produce a large amount of tubers and caffeine drinks. Other products include all forms of tubers, fruits, roots, and meat products.

Mining. Mining is a large industry amongst the Hiigarans both on its colonies and in space. Mining methods have grown more advanced for terrestrial mining over the last century and the Hiigarans have kept up with the advances, allowing them to drill farther and better than ever before. Off world they do their best however, thanks to Somtaaw (see, SOMTAAW, KIITH) technology. After the Dust Wars the Hiigaran Daiamid ordered the Somtaaw to give up their technology to the public and the Worker Mk.3 became the standard resourcer amongst the Federation, commonly referred to by its old name, the Resource Collector. Asteroid bases are common on larger asteroids but due to the efficiency of resource collectors a fleet can strip mine an entire star system in a few months with just two-dozen collectors.

Industry. The industrial development, as listed earlier, is actually better on many colonies than it is on Hiigara. This is due to the long history of conservation on the great capital world of both the Taiidan and Kushan, dating back to when the Kushan Emperor submitted to protests to rebuild Hiigara’s landscape. Ever since Hiigara has been a great tourist trap, its jungles and rainforests replanted and its biosphere cured. There are still some colonies under industrial development but the vast majority of colonies were previously occupied before Hiigaran conquest.

Transportation. Terrestrial transport. Hovercrafts are now in common use in Hiigara and its colonies although in the outer limits of the Federation primitive hovercraft with cheaper technology are used, skimming over the ground but unable to lift higher than one foot at maximum power. Also, as a tradition among Kharakid life, the Kushan have brought the sandsail (see, SANDSAIL) to Hiigara. Though there are not many deserts to use it one it is popular both on colonies and on beaches. As well, the sandsail has been redeveloped for water use.
Aerial transport. Though hovercrafts are technically aerial-based they do not go higher than two hundred feet, limiting their use significantly. However, there are still planes in use although their advance from Kharakid levels is significant. They are now powered by cold fusion drives and are much faster, flying farther and higher than before. Commercial planes are frequently adapted to vacuum conditions, allowing them to dock with stations in orbit such as the Mothership station. Aerial transportation is fairly common as it is much faster than ground or water transportation while being inexpensive compared to air to space to air transport.
Interstellar transport. Though conventional drives are available for traveling between planets and stars it is hardly used to do low speed. However, for a pleasure cruise expensive transports travel at a slower speed and hold banquets for the outrageously rich. Ironically enough these same transports travel faster than most ships in hyperspace.
Due to laws passed by the Daiamid the Kushan have agreed to take the Unbound (see, UNBOUND RACES, THE) strategy, to avoid using far jump drives (see, HYPERDRIVES) for commercial and civilian use and to only allow far jump drives to specially licensed citizens or military personnel. To speed the otherwise slow short jump drives the Daiamid has issued construction of hyperspace gates (see, HYPERSPACE TECHNOLOGY, ALTERNATIVE) or even have bought slipgates (see, HYPERSPACE) between stops to assist transports in their travel. This allows the Federation to keep its military supremacy.
However, such limits are becoming less useful. Though the Vaygr still mostly rely on hyperspace gates, Makaan has begun issuing far jump drives. This is because that Makaan has apparently recently found a third far jump core in the Bethlim Ice Fields (see, BETHLIM EXPEDITION, THE) and now has the technology that originally only the Unbound and Federation possessed. This has begun to upset the balance of power and worries the Daiamid.

GOVERNMENT

The Constitution of 98 AHL. The Constitution of 98 AHL (see, HIIGARAN CONSTITUTION) was the revision to the original constitution approved for use by the Daiamid over five hundred years ago when the Age of Reason (see, REASON, AGE OF) began. There have been other revisions to the constitution over the half millennium that has passed, but none have been as extensive at the Constitution of 98 AHL. It is also the last constitutional change in history. After the Dust Wars the civil war between the kiithid resulted in the Hiigaran government rethinking their original decisions. The first change at hand was to increase federal control and they did this by forming a Hiigaran Defense Fleet (see, HIIGARAN NAVY), a fleet that held no loyalties except to the safety of Hiigara. The second change was never actually added. It was to make sure that the Kiith governments elect a single leader every two years and that he would only serve one term. This was proposed by the victorious kiith’sa of Kiith Paktu, Kyostii (see, PAKTU’SA, KYOSTII). However, the rest of the Daiamid immediately shot it down, even the powerful and ambitious Kiith Naabal (see, NAABAL, KIITH), criticizing as it as an attempt to destroy kiith sovereignty. Kyostii gave up the attempt. Other changes were made, eliminating kiith taxes but creating a federal tax or social reforms. All in all, the constitution, rather than adding one amendment, deleted two amendments and added three. It was the first step towards unity in the Federation.

Legislative. The Federation works much differently than any other government although the Vaygr Dominion has come to act somewhat similarly. However, Makaan leads as the God-Emperor and Sajuuk-khar of the Dominion. There is no central leader or executive office for the Federation, but just a conglomeration of kiithid. There are two houses in the Daiamid, one lower, and one upper. The lower house is made up of representatives based on population of a kiithid, one representative standing for every two thousand, though there can be no less than one representative. Such representatives are appointed by their respective kiith’sa. They pass laws and appoint government officials within the kiithid. The upper house is made up of the actual kiith’sa and this is a hereditary position. There is only one kiith’sa per kiith and together they either veto laws passed by the lower house, declare war, or appoint foreign ministers or military officials. Together the Daiamid make up the legislative branch of the Federation government.

Judiciary. The Daiamid specially appoints the members of the Supreme Court of Hiigara and each official can serve for life. The justices, as they are called, declare laws to be unconstitutional and can remove them from use by force if necessary. They hold control over the police forces and other law enforcing groups. In the past any case that cannot be solved in the kiithid and their courts is brought before the Supreme Court of Hiigara. Time and time again, the court has ruled and solved these disputes once and for all, except in rare cases.

CULTURE

Cultural milieu. The culture of Hiigara is very much Kushan dominated but the Federation has welcomed the Frerrn and Taiidan into their grasps, especially the Taiidan. Together they have created a rich blend of cultures and languages that make the Federation much what the Imperium once was. Many of the traditions of Kharakid life still remain such as sailing and duels. Men and women are both held equal before the law, by cultural acceptance. The Taiidan also have an influence as imperial culture still sticks to the galaxy, whether they loved the Imperium or hated it. Popular sports that remain from this era, such as the popular vaermyl, survive. Even the Frerrn have an effect and their code of honor is a spot of interest for young teenagers with little to do. The Regvali of course, keep to themselves and make little influence upon culture, for good or ill. Their own culture revolves mostly over the social hierarchy with the male leader of the family at the head. Each year, during a great festival, the Regvali celebrate their culture and religion by appointing a God-King to worship as the reincarnation of their supreme god, Xachila.

Daily life. The daily life of a Hiigaran, whether he be Kushan or not is fairly simple. For the adult life usually revolves around business deals and labor contracts and whether you are ground based or not makes all the difference. If you are ground based you wake up around 8 A.M. and go to work in the city you work in, whether it be handwork or cubicle work. Around 1 P.M. lunch is served in most places, a custom that goes down from early life on the farms of Kharak. It is a light snack, usually with a pass of drinks. Around 3 to 4 P.M. work ends and you go home. Children go to school from about the same time until 3 P.M., working on their traditional studies and then going home or to an after school program. If you work in space you either don’t have children or give them independent study and generally the work involves mining or merchant work, rarely is a man involved in mercenary work unless he has former military training. Mining and merchant work never ends really; you just take breaks and go to sleep when your shift or deal is over. In mining shifts usually last from about 800 hours to 1600, 1600 to 2400, and 2400 to 800. Food served in most fast food chains and diners is Kushan but Taiidan food and even Frerrn food, which usually turns the Kushan stomach off, have been brought into common use as foreign cuisines on the street corner.

HISTORY

To see before 1 AHL see (in chronological order backwards) KUSHAN FEDERATION, THE and HIIGARAN EMPIRE, THE

AFTER LANDFALL

The awakening. As Karan Sjet set foot on the planet Hiigara our future was opened up to us. The story of the Kushan Exodus to Hiigara is widely known and often told; most of us already know all about the voyage. In a matter of months, the survivors of our entire race traveled from the prison world of Kharak to our once and future homeworld. The trip was a major turning point not only for the Kushan people, but for most of the civilized galaxy; our return to Hiigara was not only the end of our 3,000-year exile, but the end of the Taiidani Empire, and its tyranny over billions.
By the ancient Kharakian dating system, the Kushan people returned to Hiigara in the year 1216 (Galactic Standard Year 9,510). In honor of the momentous occasion, however, Kiith Sjet declared the beginning of a new calendar on the day the returning Kushan first set foot on our homeworld. By decree, the Hiigaran Landfall marked the first day of a new Year Zero. From that time on, "days" have been measured by Hiigara's period of rotation, and "years" according to the revolutions of Hiigara around its mother sun.
By the new dating system, then, these words are written in the year 15 AHL (GSY 9525)—15 years After Hiigaran Landfall. The past decade and a half have been a time of both celebration and adversity for the Kushan people. Nearly 550,000 of us survived the Exodus from Kharak, but our culture has been subjected to tremendous stress. There is not a single aspect of Kushan existence that we have not been forced to re-examine in light of our new circumstances. Even the simplest things, like providing our population with food and shelter, have proven far more complicated than we ever imagined.
Defending ourselves has been our most serious concern. The Bentusi and the new Taiidani Republic have established a small buffer zone around Hiigara, a region approximately five light-years in diameter. Anything within a five-light-year radius of Hiigara is considered our space, and we are obligated to defend it. Our warrior kiithid are forced to maintain constant patrols to keep our spaceways from being overrun, not only by the mongrel ships of the pirate races, but by the last bitter remnants of the Imperial fleet.
The Mothership, which once carried our people safely across 35,000 light-years of uncharted space, is no longer fully operational. Deprived of the conscious direction of Karan Sjet, the Mothership's engines are set on automatic; She serves as an orbital space station and shipyard. Manned by a skeleton crew of 8,000 engineers, the Mothership provides living quarters for those working in low orbit, and She has given birth to over 30 carrier-class ships since the Hiigaran Landfall. The result of this phenomenal output has been a new Hiigaran navy, which consists of six great Fleets; the largest of our present-day kiithid have each taken command of an autonomous carrier group. The fleets of Manaan, Soban, Naabal, LiirHra, Paktu and Kaalel take turns patrolling the outer systems, guarding our trade routes, and defending Hiigara itself.
Addressing the practical concerns of our people has been hard enough; up until the year 11 AHL (9521 GSY), food rationing was common, and on the surface of Hiigara, thousands are still engaged in construction. Difficult as it has been to provide for our people's practical needs, however, providing for their political needs has been far, far more troublesome. Kushan society has been in a state of flux since the Exodus; finding some way to give all our people a fair say in government is a serious problem, and no one is entirely satisfied by any solution.
The New Daiamid was completed in the year 4 AHL (9514 GSY), the crowning glory of our planetary capital at Asaam Kiith'sid. The Daiamid Assembly is still the main governing body of the Kushan race, although its detractors claim that the New Daiamid cannot rule as fairly as its predecessor on Kharak once did. Such hotheads denounce the current assembly as a sham, and maintain that a few families wield too much power. Sadly, there is some merit to this accusation. Over one-half of the Kushan population now belong to one of six kiithid, and by virtue of sheer population the major families have tremendous influence.
The Paktu, the Manaan, the Sjet, Naabal, LiirHra, Kaalel and Soban are by far the largest kiith groupings in existence, and their combined numbers come to almost 300,000. By contrast, the majority of other kiithid on Hiigara can boast a few hundred souls at best; most are lucky to have even that many. In some cases, kiithid which were once over 100,000 strong on Kharak now have only 30 or 40 members.
These smaller kiithid are now collectively known as the Sleepers, because most of them spent the voyage from Kharak in cryogenic suspension. Coming from all walks of life, the only thing that these men and women have in common today is their powerlessness in the present Daiamid system. Unable to compete with large kiithid that can lay claim to half a continent at a time, exhausted by years of struggle for a voice in the Assembly, many of these small kiithid have given up the fight to establish a power base for themselves on Hiigara. Dozens of Sleeper clans have chosen in recent years to abandon their ancient names and become vassals instead, joining their bloodlines to powerhouses like the Paktu or the Naabal. The family honor comes a poor second, as always, to survival; surrendering to necessity is an ancient tradition among the Kushan. It may eventually come to pass that the entire kiith system, which still connects us to the life we once lived on Kharak, will collapse.
One of the most difficult aspects of the Hiigaran Landfall was the revival of our so- called "Sleeper Kiithid," the 92% of our current population who traveled from Kharak to Hiigara in cryogenic suspension. Upon arrival on Hiigara, most of our Sleepers faced a very rude awakening; in some ways, our society is still trying to cope with what they were told when they rose from cold storage.
There was good news, of course. Every Sleeper was delighted to hear that the Mothership and its crew had arrived safely on our Homeworld, that the mystery of our origins had been solved and that the oppressive regime that once banished us to the far reaches of space had been defeated. But there was very, very bad news as well: and unlike our fighting men and women, the Sleepers had no month-long struggle for survival to cushion their shock and horror when they heard that Kharak had been destroyed.
No one awakened on Hiigara without an immediate burden of grief and loss…and sometimes guilt and anger as well. When they went to sleep, most Sleepers had accepted the possibility that they would never see their loved ones again, but it was generally assumed that those onboard the Mothership would be in far greater danger than those we left behind. The Sleepers began their mission with a willingness to sacrifice themselves, secure in the knowledge that their own families and friends would carry on and remember them, if worst came to worst. The irony of finding that the crew of the Mothership were the only survivors of our race was too much for many to bear. In the first few weeks after Landfall, there were dozens of suicides.
Only one out of every 60 Kushan was aboard the Mothership at launch. Volunteers for Sleep had been forced to meet some basic criteria for useful skills, age and health. This seemed extremely reasonable at the time, simple common sense; but some of those practical decisions had cruel consequences in hindsight. For example, no persons under the age of 17 or over the age of 50 were accepted; the freezing process was considered too great a risk for those not in optimal condition. There were no children aboard the Mothership, nor any of our elders. When Kharak burned, the majority of Sleepers lost their blood links to both past and future; we were left with nothing to hold on to but a few seconds of torturous satellite footage…pictures of our loved ones being burned alive by the Taiidani Imperium.
The Burning of Kharak has kindled a great hatred in the Kushan people, of this there can be no doubt. The savagery of the Imperial attacks both on Kharak and on their own cryogenic storage units has filled our Sleepers with what can only be described as bloodthirsty rage…and as many have pointed out, watching the video footage of the Emperor's personal guard being cut to ribbons is not the same as being there! We cope with this anger in various ways, but our society still boils with resentment of the Taiidani in general.
Of course, most of the Kushan people are capable of distinguishing between the Imperium, which wronged us so cruelly, and the current besieged Taiidani Republic, which is still ruled by the Rebels who helped us win back Hiigara…but sadly, not everyone can make this distinction. With the constant threat of Imperialist rule, for many Kushan, the only good Taiidani is a dead one and even the moderates are pushing for the annexation of nearby former Taiidani worlds in the name of security for Hiigara.
All of the Kushan have had to make some kind of peace with the past, and go on as best we can. Some of us have thrown ourselves into the hard work of construction, trying to recreate some small part of what we lost; some of us have hastened to bring new children into our depleted kiithid. Others have volunteered for military service, and spend their days repelling Imperial and pirate attacks on our borders. But for some, the ordinary means of coping do not suffice…
No one embodies the Kushan hatred of Imperials more perfectly than the man now known as Iifrit Tambuur'sa. Iifrit is the last living member of the Tambuur kiith (see, TAMBUUR, KIITH), and for the past twelve years he has lived largely in the new Taiidani Republic. Tambuur'sa and his young wife, Dava, were the only members of Kiith Tambuur who made the Gold List back on Kharak; both of them were chosen as Sleepers, and they were frozen side by side some months before the Mothership was launched. Unfortunately, when the Taiidani burned Kharak, they also turned and opened fire on our cryogenic storage units; Dava Tambuur's life pod was one of many to be irreparably damaged, and she died in transit to Hiigara.
When Iifrit Tambuur awoke from cold sleep, he found that he had lost not only his entire kiith, but his beloved wife as well. He declared Paau’ra on the Taiidani Imperium, and several Kushan survivors who sympathized with his cause became honorary members of Kiith Tambuur, in order to share in his "eternal vengeance." Out of respect for the ancient vow of Paau’ra, Tambuur'sa and his people were granted the use of a small frigate, and he has since become one of the most famous bounty hunters in this quadrant of the galaxy, credited with collecting the heads of over 300 Imperial war criminals.

The struggles of the New Daiamid. Despite our victory over the Taiidan in the war that had passed before many of the Kushan were left with old rivalries, though the hope of the Mothership had been that all kiithid would be united once and for all. However, this was not to be. Despite the remaining elders’ greatest attempts the kiithid would not stand united, though thankfully they would not war amongst one another.
One of the first struggles was the situation of the Somtaaw and other minor kiithid. The few survivors of the formally powerful Kiith Hraal (see, LIIRHRA, KIITH) resulted in their merging with the men whom had once rebelled against them. This sense of irony only spirited other larger kiithid, most notably Kiith Naabal, into trying to absorb the smaller kiithid under their wing. This included Kiith Somtaaw, the ancient religious miners who had proven invaluable during the Homeworld War as resource collector commanders.
The result was a two-year trial going from the end of 6 AHL all the way to the middle of 8 AHL until Kiith Naabal voted to allow the smaller kiithid access to the Mothership Station, now simply a skeleton ship. The Somtaaw, who had already drawn up ship designs of their own, used the Mothership Station to its fullest possible use, building the Kuun-Lan and Fal-Corum quickly, along with the small science vessel Clee-San. Other kiithid followed except for Kiith Niirfa (see, NIIRFA, KIITH) whom did not have the necessary leadership to unite and gain access to the Mothership shipyards and instead sent their cadets off to work with the Paktu navy.
This itself changed only a few years later when out of the blue the commander of a top-secret project known as “First Flame” or Khar-Lan, arrived in the midst of a Daiamid meeting, sneaking past security and revealing himself, defending his son’s claim to lands on Hiigara and through his leadership was able to gain Niirfa the land it required. This man was in fact, Ilak Niirfa’sa, long thought to be dead.
Other incidents revolving the minor kiithid and Somtaaw became the most powerful of them, the spokesperson for the “oppressed”. Overtime however other issues came up, mostly regarding the trials of war criminals on both sides. Several captured Kadeshi (see, KADESH, GARDEN OF) and Taiidan went under such trials but the most famous of the trials throughout this period was that of Pateer Paktu’sa (see, PAKTU’SA, FLT. ADMR. PATEER).
Formally the commander-in-chief of Fleet Intelligence Paktu’sa’s actions during the latter portion of the war resulted in questionable activities and at the recommendation of Colonel Jasor Kaalel (see, KAALEL, COL. JASOR) he was brought to trial before the Supreme Court of Hiigara. The trial lasted shorter than the Somtaaw v. Daiamid case but it is still deep in the heart of Hiigaran politics.
On charges of high treason, attempted murder, and conspiracy against Fleet Intelligence the former fleet admiral, now stripped of rank, was brought before the justices. His defense was that Karan (see, SJET, KARAN) was a threat to the fleet and that to achieve total victory over the Taiidan she had to be “neutralized”.
Jasor and the prosecutors charged Pateer of attempting to raise his position of power and to become the supreme commander of the fleet, seeing as he filled the power gap once Karan was out of the picture. Records brought up by Gaalsien survivors brought along as priests at the insistence of the other religious kiithid showed that Pateer had committed war crimes in the past and was indeed, if not guilty of these charges, guilty of lower but by no means less punishable crimes.
Eventually Pateer, with little for him to defend himself on and turned on by his own kiith, disgusted by his actions, was sentenced to death and was executed a few weeks after the trial. Few missed him after he had left as he had been, as Kaalel put it, “a pain in the ass from the start.”
One of the major struggles of the Hiigaran Federation during the years before the Beast War (see, BEAST WAR, THE) was that of the Imperialists (see, IMPERIALIST FACTION, TAIIDAN). After the fall of the Imperium during the Homeworld War the rebel factions had seized control of the cloning facilities and destroyed them while making the valuable trade world of Triistara their capitol world. Those still loyal to the Emperor found themselves on the run and fleeing to the Turanics (see, BANDIT KINGDOMS, THE) still friendly to them.
But even with their relatively low numbers compared to the Republic, the Imperialists were very dangerous. Using hit-and-run raids and concentrated attacks on weak points of the Republic and Federation they were able to give a lot of trouble to the Hiigarans. Four times before the Beast War they attacked Hiigara, conducting the Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Battles of Hiigara (see, HIIGARA, THE BATTLE OF). Each time they were driven back, but at heavy costs. However, the greatest advantage the Federation had was that the Imperialists, like their Turanic allies, were divided and without a central key leader.

The Beast War and its aftermath. The Beast War, only fifteen years after the Homeworld War, was perhaps the most damaging blow to the Republic and Federation, resulting in Aggregate and Somtaaw supremacy over the galaxy’s economic empire. For this reason and others, the Beast War is a crucial element to the history of Hiigara.
Though the Beast War itself has a very detailed history most information regarding the war can be attained in the BEAST WAR, THE section of this encyclopedia. Needless to say, though the Homeworld War is more often remembered the Beast War cost more lives and took more time than the Homeworld War before it. Total statistics range for nearly twelve million or more Taiidan casualties, six million Frerrn, one million Turanics, and luckily for Hiigara, only four thousand Kushan casualties.
Many historians have regarded the Beast War with a lot of interest because that it is the only recorded war in our history when we fought a species more than a million years older than us and that was so alien to our biology that only the combined efforts of Somtaaw researchers and Sjet scientists has any conclusive theory on their biology and structure come out.
Hiigara did not at first consider the Beast War a threat but after receiving a distress call from the Bentusi it did not take long for the Hiigarans to realize the true threat. When the Caal-Shto returned to Hiigara later that year we discovered the true threat of the Beast as the Manaani crew gave full information on the encounter to the New Daiamid. Outraged at the Somtaaw during the first few meetings for keeping the Beast a secret, the Daiamid soon got over the shock and sent enormous combined fleets of the kiithid to battle the elusive enemy.
Finally, at the conclusive Battle of Nomad Moon (see, NOMAD MOON, BATTLE OF and NOMAD MOON PROJECT) the Beast was essentially defeated although strains of them remained for years to come. However, there is actually still one strain immune to all our known defenses still believed to be intact outside of inhabited space and for the last eight decades it has been happy to remain quiet. Few fleets have volunteered to hunt it out either.
This event actually correlates exactly with the Kor Incident (see, KOR INCIDENT, THE) in which the previously popular struggles of Kiith Somtaaw became viewed with suspicion. Fortunately for the Somtaaw, the only reparation was that of sharing all anti-Beast weaponry with the other kiithid as well as the Taiidan. This led to the quick extermination of all but the escaped experimental strain developed by the Somtaaw during the Kor Incident.
As the Beast dwindled however, the Frerrn, filling the power gap left by the Imperium began to annex nearby systems and began taking Imperialist factions and Turanics by surprise. The expansion of the Aggregate increased greatly, bringing many to a nervous edge.
The Turanics, outraged at the use of Turanic warships as test subjects for the Imperialist experiments on the Beast broke relations with the Imperialist factions for the most part. However, this was only as already said, mostly true. The fact that the Imperialists and Taiidan were still without a leader led many of the Turanics and Imperialists to conduct treaties and alliances from time to time.
Over time however the famous Triple Coalition (see, TRIPLE COALITION, THE) and the Alliance of Independent Nations (see, ALLAINCE OF INDPENDENT NATIONS, THE) formed and began to grow nervous to one another. The Somtaaw, monopolizing the mining industry formed an economic pact with the Triple Coalition and was in all but name a member of its alliance.
The most important of all these conflicts was that of the Somtaaw-Baiiju Conflict (see, SOMTAAW-BAIIJU CONFLICT, THE) in which the formerly powerful Baiiju Clan (see, BAIIJU CLAN, THE) had to give up valuable mining space to the Somtaaw after a short sixteen-day war between the two, with the Somtaaw winning easily. This led to more Turanic Clans joining the Somtaaw’s enemies, the Alliance of Independent Nations.
Perhaps one of the greatest tragedies is the fact that the Galactic Council (see, GALACTIC COUNCIL), many of the Unbound races having been scarred by the Beast War were unable to stay together and their arguments grew more bitter, the Tiamat (see, TIAMAT, THE) being the first to leave. Next were many of the minor Unbound and finally, the Unbound gave in to consent.

The Dust Wars. After the Ramsii Incident (see, RAMSII INCIDENT, THE) the Dust Wars quickly broke out. Though thought to be another small conflict at first the wars soon escalated and all of the Coalition and Alliance became involved until there were few nations neutral. The only nation that did remain neutral in fact, was the Federation who criticized the wars in the news broadcasts as a meaningless war over a little dust (not meant to mean the Imperial drug), giving the wars their name.
However, things were to change. Though the Daiamid time and time again stated they would not favor either the Republic or Aggregate and that they would trade to both nations they did put out patrol forces to keep the peace along the trade routes. The Somtaaw, who had close ties with the Aggregate and the Coalition quickly gave top-secret Daiamid information to the Aggregate, leading to the attack known today as the “Outer Limb Massacre”. In the attack almost all of the patrol ships were destroyed and the scandal reached the Daiamid quickly, Kiith Manaan (owner of the ships) protesting the bloodthirstiness of the Aggregate and accusing (rightfully) the Somtaaw of participating.
Somtaaw was removed from the Daiamid council into further notice but the conflict soon escalated. In protest the Somtaaw made a formal treaty with the Coalition, entering the war on the Aggregate’s side. The rest of the Daiamid was outraged and voted to join the war in the year of 91 AHL.
Within a few months the Hiigaran fleet was fully committed and flexing its muscles efficiently, giving effective aid to the Alliance. One of the allies of the Hiigarans was the Crusade of Juuda (see, JUUDA CRUSADE, THE), a powerful crusade that had risen to prominence in recent years and with Aggregate help produced the first Vaygr non-carrier super capital ship. Making raids into Alliance territory the Hiigarans decided they must put the troublemaker out once and for all.
Macabii Juuda (see, MACABII JUUDA) was not an easy target however and he moved quickly, using full use of his hyperspace gates. Every so often his position would change and the Hiigarans decided to hunt the lion they must get another lion. They tried the Turanics but most of the clans were so badly damaged from the war that they could do little but defend their homelands from the Coalition. Finally an ambassador was dispatched to one of Juuda’s conquered vassals, the Crusade of Ascalon (see, ASCALON CRUSADE, THE).
At the time Ascalon was ruled by the son of the last crusade, murdered by Macabii’s men to ensure no resistance. Oddly enough it had worked although the son was edging for a reason to rebel. His name was Daved and he was a little known and most ignored crusade trying to get by.
When the Daiamid offered him assistance he seized the opportunity and quickly took control of the ships given to him, defeating Macabii much to his surprise. Macabii then had a civil war to deal with and before he knew it, Daved was rising to power, treading away the Aggregate and all who resisted him.
In the middle of his Hiigaran-sponsored conquests he came across the Bethlim Ice Fields (see, BETHLIM ICE FIELDS EXCAVATION, THE) and discovered a mysterious signature coming from the planet. Sending his forces down to investigate he found the Third Core (see, FAR JUMP CORES). After finding it his own crusade and others believed he was the Sajuuk-khar and the young crusade changed his name to Makaan (see, MAKAAN), meaning prophet in the tongue of the Vaygr.
At this point, his people and him swept across the Aggregate like a storm, quickly seizing any systems the Hiigarans failed to and many of the Aggregate’s former allies such as the Imperialists joined him when he promised them glory and honor, the restoration of their empire. Soon he had the largest fleet outside of Hiigara and descended upon his former allies, the Republic.
But Hiigara, tired of war, let Makaan sweep across the Republic despite the Congress and Premier’s protests, stating that Makaan had promised all Taiidan would be treated humanely and without cruelty. And so Makaan’s newly created Vaygr Dominion and the Hiigaran Federation were the only powers left in the aftermath of the Dust Wars, ended with the Treaty of Triistara (see, TREATY OF TRIISTARA, THE).

Hiigara today. Ever since the Dust Wars ended three years ago Hiigara has been at peace and has rebuilt its navy. It has been said that Makaan has been looking for the Far Jump Cores and seeks to reunite the trinity for unknown reasons. But all that is known is that in his hunt he has destroyed all but one Bentusi ship, the harbor ship Ben Tus (see, HARBOR SHIP, THE). Many are worried about the recent expansionism of our ally, Makaan but the Daiamid considers him to not be a threat. Karan Sjet has been the most vocal protestor but thankfully no incidents have occurred and it looks as though Hiigara is prepared for peace.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Except for the first sentance my entire section called "The awakening" was based on Catacylsm manual material.

Hope you enjoyed :D.

I don't know why no one's commented on this before; this thing is bloody excellent. If you're still writing, please do some more.

--Handarazuur, Comedian.

now thats thurogh! Hip hip! Huzzah! keep going, that was great!

Thanks. I was hoping somebody would reply sooner or later. I'm glad to see I have been some help. This week I'm going to do another of the factions. What should I do?

VAYGR DOMINION, THE
TAIIDAN IMPERIUM, THE
TAIIDAN REPUBLIC, THE
KUSHAN FEDERATION, THE

I say start with Taiidan Imperium, The.

Note: I'm thinking about writing a script for a Homeworld movie/series of movies. Do you mind if I use your information for the project?

--Handarazuur

You people take yourselves waaaay too seriously.

Not at all Handarazuur. I was thinking of doing the same for a trilogy using my characters. During my section on KUSHAN FEDERATION, THE and HOMEWORLD WAR, THE I shall introduce other characters.

Two notable ones are Jasor Kaalel (remember him from Fleet Intelligence Logs?) and Pateer Paktu.

simply magnificent.

Taiidan Imperium, The
 

TAIIDAN IMPERIUM, THE

For the Imperialists after the Homeworld War see (in chronological order) the articles IMPERIALIST FACTION, TAIIDAN and VAYGR DOMINION, THE. To see the continuation of the Taiidan nation see TAIIDAN REPUBLIC, THE.

Introduction. From the end of the Hiigaran Empire (see, HIIGARAN EMPIRE, THE) millennia ago to the Homeworld War’s conclusion and the Taiidan Revolution (see, TAIIDAN REPUBLIC, THE) the Taiidan Imperium (a.k.a. Taiidan Empire) reigned as the supreme nation in the galaxy, only rivaled by the Frerrn Aggregate. Starting out as a benevolent dictatorship the struggles within the nobility for power and numerous civil wars made the Imperium very corrupt. By the Imperium’s collapse it was hated by most of the galaxy and ruled by the rich stockholders with the government holding little power.

TOPOGRAPHY

Relief. The Taiidan Imperium consisted at its height of a little over one half of the galaxy’s volume, spreading out towards the stars. Much like the Hiigaran Empire and Hiigaran Federation (see, HIIGARAN FEDERATION, THE) the Imperium was centered at Hiigara. This is due to the fact that the Taiidan homeworld Inkira was destroyed several millennia ago by the Hiigaran military (see the history section of this article). Though the planet is much less radioactive now, out of respect for the dead the Taiidan have not moved back there or set up large settlements on the planet. For now Inkira is a barren wasteland.

Human landscape. Because that the Taiidan had already won the political contest with the Hiigarans prior to the War of Sajuuk (see, WAR OF SAJUUK, THE) and were beginning to expand to the size of the Hiigaran Empire, it was no surprise that when the Hiigaran Empire was annexed by the Taiidan during the War of Sajuuk that it came to be that most species were part of the Imperium. In fact, the Frerrn (see, AGGREGATE, FRERRN) were very nearly swallowed by the Taiidan during their early expansionism except for Frerrn governments’ agreement to pay a tribute to the Imperium. Almost all the colonies of the Imperium were immediately industrialized and colonized by the Taiidan, leading to the Taiidan dominance as a species throughout most of the galaxy.

POPULATION

The Taiidan Empire was usually dominated by the Taiidan themselves except during very rare occasions. At the start of the Homeworld War the Taiidan Empire consisted of 55% Taiidan and 45% non-Taiidan. This is in comparison to the Taiidan Empire one hundreds years after it was founded (15% Taiidan and 85% non-Taiidan), at the start of the War of Sajuuk (27.5% Taiidan and 72.5% non-Taiidan), and its height of power (40% Taiidan and 60% non-Taiidan). However, it is a sad thing that this dominance cannot simply be given to the Taiidan for rapid breeding and extensive colonization (as with the modern Hiigaran Federation). Though at the start a benevolent ruler over its empire the Taiidan eventually began to persecute native inhabitants, sometimes killing them in the streets until it was harder and harder for the natives to remain dominant in their own worlds. This of course also led to great emigration from the Imperium, helping the Taiidan grow larger proportionally.

Historical Perspective. The Taiidan. The Taiidan were a proud people and had a long and complex culture behind them based on piety, devotion, resilience, and sincerity. Originating on the world of Ikira several hundred millennia ago the Taiidan grew quickly on their world but not because of their adaptability or their reproduction capabilities but rather because of their tough constitution. This is not to suggest that Taiidan are any less intelligent than other races but that they are generally slow to adapt to new conditions, as evidenced in their history. But because of their combined intelligence and durability the Taiidan became dominant first on their world and then throughout the galaxy.
The Turanics. Of the minorities the Turanics actually composed the largest portion of the non-Taiidan races. This is mostly due to the fact that the Taiidan claimed dominion over many of the Turanic clans, rejecting their sovereignty. This led to many wars with the Turanics until Emperor Iolon II ordered the clans to be recognized by the Imperium in the year 8801 GSY by the Treaty of Gushura. Even so, many Turanics remained within Taiidan space and it wasn’t until Emperor Riesstiu IV the Second’s reign that they had a reason to leave, as mercenaries for the Imperial Navy.
The Regvali. The Taiidan first conquered the Regvali very early on during the expansion of the Taiidan into Regvali space. First contact between the Regvali and Taiidan went surprisingly smoothly despite their differences in culture and religion. It wasn’t until the incident at Aztalan that relations broke formally, followed by war (see the history section of this article or TAIIDAN-REGVALI WAR, THE). Regardless the Regvali became a large minority in Taiidan space, despite the relentless persecution of them by the Taiidan and other races. This turned towards the Rebellion’s favor during the Revolution when several billion Regvali simply rose up and stormed the streets in massive riots.
The minorities. Because of its sheer size the minorities of the Taiidan Imperium were very great, despite heavy emigration during the latter parts of its reign. In fact, it is very surprising that the Taiidan ever reached such a huge majority within the Imperium’s borders considering the diversity of cultures and peoples within it. In total about three quarters of the galactic population resided within the Imperium at its height.

Languages. Though during the early Imperium there was only one official language it became standard policy of all nations to adopt two languages after the Galactic Council insisted upon it in 6148 GSY. Many nations clamored in joy, because though the ancient empire of Hiigara had been cursed by some many felt rebellious and cheated by the Taiidan when they had proclaimed a war of liberation and had taken control of the Empire rather than breaking it up. So was the beginning, oddly enough, of the Hiigaran Renaissance (see, HIIGARAN RENAISSANCE), so called because that Hiigaran culture began to become the popular theme of modern life.
Galactic Common. Aside from the nobility, few spoke Taiidani, relying on Galactic Common instead. This was because that the Imperium, wishing to impress the Council did not teach Taiidan in schools across the Imperium until late into its reign. As mentioned above this was actually fairly popular and the nobility were content to let Taiidan itself be somewhat a mystical language, only understood by the upper class. Only those truly wishing to either be of noble blood or to impress Taiidan nobility bothered to learn Taiidani. Even so, Galactic Common changed very little during the Imperium’s reign thanks to strict control of the language by the government, allowing slang to pass without official recognition.
Taiidan. Taiidan on the other hand changed very often, simply because the nobility created their own slang for the language and street dwellers who knew a little Taiidan often mixed Galactic Common, creating new phrases. Because that Taiidan was high language most of this slang, as with Galactic Common mostly passed on unnoticed but many a noble would hear a phrase used in the streets of his capitol and copy it for his own use, perhaps making some changes to make it proper for aristocratic usage.
Turanic. The Turanic language was generally used by many traders and mercenaries because that the Turanics, even before Iolon II recognized the clans as independent were very much the controllers of the void in all its surprises and intricacies. They knew their was out of any mess, they memorized all the back doors, and knew all the tricks to a trade. For this reason any lower or even middle-class Taiidan wanting an easy way ticket living nomadically amongst the stars would take his time to live with the Turanics.

Religion. Anthropologists have always been confused about Sajuuk’s popularity throughout many cultures, especially since none of the other parts of the religions with him are generally similar at all. But when the Taiidan religion around Sajuuk is added into the bundle it gets really confusing. Unlike every other major religion and most minor ones as well regarding Sajuuk, the Taiidan religion sees Sajuuk as the only true god and that all others are idols. This led them to be particularly hostile towards other races that did not worship one god, especially if their pantheon didn’t even include Sajuuk. Two of these races, unfortunately for them, were large minorities known as the Regvali and Turanics. Fortunately for the Turanics the persecution was a little less due to their evasiveness and their general usefulness. But the Regvali, who were resented by most species outside of the Taiidan and had little to offer were very often persecuted strongly. Some other major facts about the Taiidan religion is the establishment of covenants and the holiness of the Emperor, who is both the religious and political leader.
Demographic trends. Throughout most of the Imperium’s history the birth rates and death rates of its population were fairly balanced and birth control was effective. Overpopulation was long solved by colonization and expansion into new regions. However, during the latter part of the Imperium’s history during the growth of civil unrest, coups, wars along the borders of other nations, massive emigration, and extensive racial cleansing the Imperium’s population began to fall dramatically. It is estimated that if the Imperium had survived another millennium and continued to dwindle at the rate it was going that its population would have nearly been cut in two by the end of that millennium.

ECONOMY

Taiidan trade. One of the few strong points of the Imperium throughout its whole history was that of its dominance in trade. Several Taiidan worlds such as Triistara and Hercaalum were on vital trade spines, allowing them monotony over taxes and tariffs on the Bentusi (see, BENTUSI TRADERS) and other merchants. The Imperium was always careful not to offend the Bentusi however, treating them better than they let other races get away with. The most infamous of the tariffs passed was the Bentusi-Taiidan Economic Pact of 7612 GSY or the BTEP (see history section). This pact remained intact until the Bentusi broke relations with the Taiidan on the basis of human rights violations, most of the rest of the Galactic Council following suite (see, GALACTIC COUNCIL). Relations went worse with the Bentusi when allegations popped up with supporting evidence pointing towards Bentusi assistance of the Exiles in the Homeworld War (see, HOMEWORLD WAR, THE), opening up trade to non-Bentusi traders.

Agriculture. Agriculture was one of the Taiidan’s many sources of profit although it declined due to lack of interest by the Taiidan during the latter years of the Imperium. Many nations outside of the Taiidan began to expand their agricultural output such as the Frerrn, lessening the need for inconveniently expensive crops from the Taiidan Imperium. After the 9th millennium GSY there was really no reason for the Taiidan to continue putting so much energy into agricultural output and they cut funds on farmers.
Mining. Although resources throughout the galaxy once were very plentiful millennia of resourcing have reduced the once plentiful asteroid minerals of the Imperium to far less than their original standards though some long-industrialized sections of spaced (such as Hiigara for example) have yet to run even slightly low. Fortunately, the navy did not need to be refitted and rebuilt on a regular basis, allowing for conservation of materials. The greatest failure of the Taiidan mining industry was the fact that the standard issue resource collector was far outdated, using technology that could have been replaced several years earlier. The only race to not follow the Taiidan example was the Frerrn Aggregate and it is thought the Frerrn worker drone along with the Kushan construction worker were the inspirations for the Somtaaw’s mining technology (see, SOMTAAW, KIITH).

Industry. The majority of Taiidan worlds were industrialized, even if only lightly. This was due to the fact that for three millennia the borders of the Imperium barely changed and that colonization was, as mentioned earlier, a great goal of the Taiidan government. Conservation, unfortunately, was not high on the list of Taiidan goals and many habitats were wrecked with the exception of Hiigara’s as the Imperium continued the Hiigaran Empire’s long methods of conservation on the planet.

Transportation. Terrestrial transport. The invention of hovercrafts came very early in the Imperium’s history, dating back to the discovery and wide use of the vehicles after Elis Matar’s creation of the conventional and practical hover vehicle traffic system. This led to the Imperium being one of the first nations to completely abandon ground-based transportation and to use the hovercraft technology widely.
Aerial transport. Aerial transportation, as in most parts of the galaxy was fairly common due to its balanced relatively cheap and speedy convenience for the customer. However, unlike in other nations, the Imperium regulated the airlines and there was only a few airlines throughout the entire empire. The largest of these was Triistara Interstellar, established by a company that dated back to the late 8th millennium GSY and become popular with the Emperor Emeris IV after being the only airline that had successfully repelled assassination attempts on him, giving it a partially inaccurate view of security.
Interstellar transport. The interstellar transport was the highlight of the Imperium, being readily available, unregulated like the airlines, cheaper than rival nations’ transport services, and extravagant. However, this was one of the failures of the Imperium. By lessening prices on transport services throughout the Imperium, Taiidan companies jeopardized their profits and this caused many amateur or emerging transport services to fall into bankrupt. Also, because that though they were cheaper but preferred hyperdrives over slipgates and hyperspace gates the Taiidan economy began to plummet as a direct result of irresponsible expenses. However, because that far jump drives were not available to any of the races outside of the indifferent Unbound (see, UNBOUND RACES, THE) it was a quick and easy way to travel, even if it cost the Imperium hundreds of millions per year.

GOVERNMENT

The Absolute Rule. The Absolute Rule was the policy taken on by Emperor Riesstiu III in 8021 GSY when he proclaimed that the constitution of the Imperium, two thousand years old was to be completely abandoned. Though many students of history look on this with regret, especially ones of Taiidan descent, it was actually a smart move. The Imperial Senate was growing powerful and coups occurred often. Riesstiu III was in fact, one of the initiators of a coup that had disposed his predecessor; Iolon I. By eliminating the power of any of the nobility outside of the Imperial Family allowed for the Emperor to have absolute control over his inner circle, limiting the knowledge of conspirators and increasing the efficiency of the government. The policy was officially carried on throughout the Empire’s history and even some nobility such as P’teer Elson even believed it still really existed. But the truth was that the nobility had taken back the reins of power, now embodied in the Assembly of Lords. However, this was fortunate as the one thing that Riesstiu III had forgotten was the fact that he could not and should not trust his own family members with such matters unless he had justification. This led to many in-family coups until Riesstiu IV the Weak issued the Clone Doctrine.

Royalty. Within the former Taiidan Imperium the rule of the noble house that held the throne was supreme over all. However, this was only in a case when the Emperor actually exercised this authority. For example, only on rare occasions did the horribly disfigured and mentally insane Riesstiu IV the Second the Mad take the government into his reins. And when he did the government completely fell apart. It is a general rule that if the Emperor orders you to do something you obey it. But if he doesn’t are you going to sit around to wait? This is the main philosophy of the noble houses when dealing with incapable emperors. Before the Absolute Rule however as proposed by Riesstiu III the noble houses had such power legally and were able to veto laws passed by the Emperor if they viewed that they were against the constitution of the Imperium. It also allowed them to declare an Emperor unfit to rule and to remove him from office. This proved to be vastly ineffective however. The other key member of the royal house is the Empress. Before the Clone Doctrine the Empress had great power as the indoctrinator of the royal children and their mother, except in cases where the Emperor had a concubine (or several as often happened). But even outside of her family duties the Empress had enough influence in most cases to sway the views of others and had a large income of her own, often taking the place of the old Imperial Senate. However, with the Clone Doctrine the Empress is little more than a figurehead.

Nobility, the Imperial Senate, and the Assembly of Lords. Since the beginning of the Imperium it was the Emperor who held supreme power but not always unquestionably. In the very early days of the Imperium the former kings, presidents, and rulers of the old nations before Ikira was united by the first Emperor, became the leaders of the noble houses, or at least those that accepted the new Emperor’s rule. They formed the Imperial Senate, in which one of the noble house’s chief figures would be elected every year to the office of senator. At first this office had very much power, up until and repeatedly after the War of Sajuuk. They were able to veto laws, remove him from office, declare war, appoint ministers, etc. However, after the attack on Ikira by the Hiigaran military the senate as well as the Emperor’s palace were wiped off the face of the planet and a holy war was declared against Hiigara. Admiral Riesstiu (see, REISSTIU I) led the attack on the Hiigarans and with help from the Bentusi defeated them ultimately, sending them into exile. He then took supreme power and through his immense popularity kept it (see history section of this article). But the remaining nobility would not sleep long and took back their positions soon. It wasn’t until Riesstiu III seized power in 8021 that the Imperial Senate was disestablished. But the nobility kept power as they were already too rich and too far spread to be eradicated. In 8823 the Emperor Iolon II the Reformer recreated the Imperial Senate, though with less power, calling it the Assembly of Lords. After Iolon’s death his son, Emeris V, ascended the throne and he exercised all authority until the Assembly sponsored the emperor’s young and slightly mad cousin, Riesstiu IV to seize the throne, giving them back the authority they so enjoyed.

Imperial Court. The Imperial Court was established by the first emperor where all crimes against the Imperium and the Taiidan people as a whole were to be tried. It was here that the Hiigaran Emperor was tried along with several heads of state after him. It does not have as much authority as the Court of the Republic in the latter republic nor the Supreme Court of the Frerrn Aggregate. But it could remove nobles from office and no man was immune to the trials of the Imperial Court. The Imperial Court controls all of the law-enforcing services and espionage units aside from that of the military police, under the control of the Emperor or in cases such as Riesstiu IV the Weak and Riesstiu IV the Second the Mad under the control of the Assembly of Lords.

CULTURE

Cultural milieu. The culture of the Imperium has been dominated by the Taiidan media for about two millennia. After it was decided that the media should be under regulation by the Emperor after one radical news channel inspired a short-lived revolution on a distant colony the minority cultures were generally forgotten, replaced by the easily available and cheap commercials and propaganda available on the vids. However, the Regvali, stubborn as ever, actually forbade any of their people to watch the Imperial vids and actually wrote into their religion such a rule. This rule did not apply however to the later Republican vids or to the Hiigarans. Another race that kept its integrity were the Turanics who were simply too uncontrollable to be ignored. Turanic fighter racing, despite early attempts to outlaw it on the grounds of its excessive dangers became popular and during the 93rd century the first government-sponsored national team was established.

Daily life. The daily life of Taiidan really depended on what they did for a living. For example, the commoners or lower class generally were left to industrial jobs. Though social security and labor laws had originally protected them by the end of the Imperial Era they were left to work in industrial attempts and the government did not enforce laws that used to be strictly obeyed. For an average employed commoner the day went from 7:00 AM to 8:00 PM with work and low paying jobs. Meal breaks would be short, maybe five to ten minutes long and occurring at about 1:00 PM and 4:00 PM. Health care was horrible and many commoners died before reaching two thirds the officially average age. They couldn’t afford to send their children to good schools which were privately funded and the public schools were in a mess. The middle class led a generally average life by galactic standards and woke up about 8:00 AM, went to work at 8:30 AM, ate lunch at 12:00 AM to 1:00 PM, came home at 3:00 PM and ate dinner around 6:00 PM. Children went to private schools and anybody that couldn’t pay the funds sent them to the best public schools possible or fell into the commoner category. The rich on the other hand were usually nobility or merchant class. If they were of the nobility they would usually wake up as late as 1:00 PM and stay up as long as 3:00 AM, drinking, talking, socializing, signing laws, making marriage arrangements, and taking vacations. Servants took care of their everyday needs but not slaves, as they would always inform outsiders. Slavery was in fact, though many wouldn’t know it, strictly prohibited and anyone proved to be enslaving their workers was immediately shut down. However, the government let them get away with the bare minimum. The merchant class generally was nomadic or if they were rich enough, lived on an asteroid base and harvested minerals for their living. Their life wasn’t as leisurely as the nobility but they could generally do what they wanted.

HISTORY

BEFORE UNIFICATION

Taiidan prehistory. The Taiidan emerged several hundred thousands of years ago as an early form of mammal. Though it is generally not known the Taiidan do in fact have mammary glands, are not reptilian but rather an early marsupial that has not diverged very far from proto-mammal status. Female eggs are fertilized differently then they are in other mammals though, even in their world, causing some to classify them as proto-marsupials rather than proper marsupials. The Taiidan egg is fertilized inside the body but functions much the way a reptile’s egg would, growing a leathery shell. Hence, when a Taiidan woman gives birth she is actually laying an egg that is broken by the contractions of her hips (see, TAIIDAN BIOLOGY).
As they emerged just as other mammals were emerging on their world it is reasonable to assume that the Taiidan homeworld of Ikira was fairly young in the evolutionary process and this is evidenced by the great documentation of large reptilian beings and predators during the rise of the Taiidan. However, their superior brain power and their ability to survive under extreme circumstances allowed for them to overcome the predators of their primitive world. It is unfortunate however that many of the animals still around on Ikira went extinct when the planet was attacked by the Hiigarans although some genetic records were left leaving cloning available and other species had been carried across the Imperium.
The first documented culture to emerge with agriculture came several years later and it occurred in the plains of a large continent known to us as Ened. Here the Enedians developed the wheel, agriculture, sophisticated religion, and later even writing. At the express permission of the Vaygr government archaeologists have been allowed on to Ikira to document remaining artifacts of this marvelous civilization who with just stone tools built large fortresses protecting against hunter-gatherer raiders who, seeing the prosperity of these cities raided them constantly.

Archaic Taiidan history. The Enedians however, did not survive independent for long and a document found by Imperial archaeologists before the attack by Hiigara revealed that an ancient nomadic herding people moved into the area and after being welcomed into the culture became powerful enough to form a coup and destroy the Enedian rulers, gradually uniting the Enedian valley city-states under their rule.
At this time however, other agricultural civilizations were growing and in turn they began to fight amongst one another, one fighting for the other’s food and fertile land, most of Ikira still being dominated by predator infested forests and plains. One of the strongest of these civilizations was the Dagdonian civilization, a warrior-herder clan that after learning how to farm from their subjects settled down along the river of Dagdon.
The most important part of the Dagdonians was the fact that although they were amongst the strongest they were not the strongest. Even so their influence remains with the Taiidan even today while most of their powerful rivals faded away into history, some permanently lost. What made the Dagdonians so powerful is that the came from a remote area in another continent and after sailing across the sea to Ened they had brought with them the religion of Sajuuk, though at the time it was polytheistic and not monotheistic.
The Dagdonians, who were excellent sailors having come from across the Medianant Sea and became dominant along the coast of Ened. However, there was little fertile land for them in this region and so they were forced again and again to make raids into other cultures of the Enedian continent. Eventually they established for themselves enough fertile land to become independent of other cultures for resources and developed peacefully until the next wave of migrations came, this time from the south.
The escaped slaves of the Ritan civilization, the Ceni tribes, came into the land of the remaining independent Enedian city-states. They came and asked for food and shelter but were outcast out of fright for the Ritans. When the Ritans followed the Ceni trail to the city-states anyway the frightened Enedians went to the Dagdonians for help. After several weeks of negotiation the Dagdonians agreed to help if they could gain land on the bank of the river Dagdon, for which they were later named. The Enedians agreed and the Dagdonians managed to beat back the Ritan invaders.
However, one of the cities refused to give up the land that they had promised to the Dagdonians, saying they would not exchange one tyranny for another. The other city-states began to grow weary and united behind the rebellious city and the Dagdonians in a fit of rage stormed down upon the Enedians and destroyed much of what was left of the first civilization, taking the river Dagdon for themselves.
The Dagdonians were kind rulers and the river’s trade network prospered under them. Their reign over the river marks the beginning of the end of the Taiidan archaic history.
Another civilization growing up outside of the Ritan invaders and the Dagdonian traders was the Vern, a large empire that had established themselves outside of the Enedian city-states for some time on the edge of the deserts of Ikira. The Vern were a proud people and though they were not conquerors they had learned to not be conquered and had spread out across the edge of the desert and dangerously close to the Ritan Empire. About 1024 GSY the Ritans and Vern went to war.
The war lasted nearly fifty years but it ended with a decisively Vern victory, leaving the Dagdonians and minor nations surrounded by the large Vern Consulate, led by the Consul Turminus. For two hundred years the Vern began their state of expansionism, spreading to the other nations until the Dagdonians were left. After several hundred years of warfare the Vern became supreme on the continent of Ened and they thought their problems were over.
However, again a disruption came. The Ceni, who had survived the exodus from Rita to the north, came in great hordes now, under the leadership of a Dagdonian-born king named Rehal. Rehal led the Ceni into the Vern Consulate and destroyed it, splintering it into kingdoms.

Civilizations outside of the cradle. Though the continent of Ened is generally called the Taiidan cradle of civilization there were several other civilizations emerging shortly after the Enedians. These cultures were spread on two other continents, that of Ikira, for which the planet would later be named, and that of Ictium.
Ictium was the continent of origin for the Dagdonians among other cultures. However, the Dagdonians were driven out by a war with those who they called the Infidels, now identified as the civilization of Huen. The Huen were one of the dominant cultures throughout the history of the Taiidan and survived up until their conquest by the first Emperor, despite later colonialism.
It turns out that all Taiidan actually originated from the continent of Ictium and it was the Huen who did not leave it along with a few other scattered tribes such as the Taborese and Yedu. A war between the Huen and proto-Dagdonians started about the time that the bible of the Dagdonians stated that the apostles of Sajuuk arrived, very early in Taiidan history, possibly as far back as twelve thousand years ago, before farming was widespread throughout the continent.
After contact with the apostles of Sajuuk the proto-Dagdonians began a holy war against all of those who opposed them. In the end the fierce Huen drove them out and these sailed across the Medianant to the continent of Ened. The Huen stayed behind and quickly conquered almost all of their rivals before settling down and setting up an isolationist policy, their culture flourishing. The Huen remained at this golden age until they met civilizations from outside the continent of Ictium.
On the continent of Ikira an important thing happened. Ikira, dominated by the jungles filled with predators, gave little hope for farming and those that sought shelter went into the mountain tops where they slowly developed primitive agriculture. They remained here, fighting predators and enemy tribes alike until one saw a sign in the sky.
Believed now to be a space battle, perhaps between the “starfarer” race that the Turanics and other races speak of (see, STARFARERS, THE) and the Unbound. Whatever the sign was they said that it was a warning from the gods that they had grown immoral and they said that they must purify themselves by offering one of their maidens to the mountains every year.
However, this drove them to find maidens of other tribes and they began to become more aggressive, attacking the others with no provocation in most cases. This culture became known as the Ikrii or “thieves” by the other tribes. However, the aggressors themselves took this insult differently and declared that the gods had favored the Ikira or the “receivers”. The name Ikira would eventually come to simply mean, of the receivers and eventually would apply to the name of the land itself and eventually, the whole planet. Hence, the continent of Ikira was officially renamed later in Taiidan history as Ikira Paen or “old Ikira”.
The Ikira eventually came to be rulers over the entire mountain range and enforced their rule with the sword, until the other tribes acknowledged the Ikira and there being little difference between each culture, they were eventually blended with the Ikira culture until they had forgotten their differences. But as the unification came late the Ikirans did not have to wait as long as the Huen did for disturbances.
First contact across continents. The short Dark Ages of Ened ended after a time with the remaining Dagdonian military managing to snag back some of their land along the river from the Vern remnants. The Ceni established a kingdom meanwhile around the Lake Alon and used it to launch raids into the Vern, Ritan, and Dagdonian kingdoms.
The Ritans had the worst of it and were invaded several times repeatedly by the Ceni, Vern, and Dagdonians. They being on strategic territory in the forest, rich with resources that now with the predators under control could be harvested, were attacked often. A conclusion to this madness came when a Vern vassal of the Ceni Kingdom launched an attack on the Ritans and seized complete control of the territory, breaking away from the Ceni. Slowly but surely this kingdom grew and the New Ritan Empire emerged with resources along the south of Ened becoming the specialty of their empire.
The Ritan Empire managed to protect itself by hiding behind deep within the forest, eventually clear-cutting areas to forge a state for themselves. They and the other kingdoms warred with one another until the Ritans became rich enough to seek out an aquatic route to the Lake Alon. However, the ships were lost in a storm and were shipwrecked near the Ikira civilization before being taken prisoner and examined.
After going through religious cleansing, circumcision, and torture they escaped through the forest and commandeered a fishing boat, making it to the shore of the Dagdonian kingdoms.
The Dagdonians held them prisoner for a while, thinking them spies. But because that Dagdon was very dependent on Ritan goods and that the Dagdonian prince had just married into the Ritan family the king allowed them to go back to the Ritan Empire. When the Emperor heard of the stories he immediately set sail to find this mysterious kingdom and went himself to lead the expedition.
Upon arriving he overwhelmed the Ikira civilization with his superior weaponry and numbers. Within three years he was crowned the Emperor of the Ritan Empire and the Continent of Ikira. However, he was unpopular and at his death several Ikira who had help from the Vern organized a rebellion and attacked from all over the mountains, driving out the Ritans and taking their guns as well.
Now, armed with the same weapons as their conquerors, very angry, and with Vern help the Ikira turned the tables and invaded the Ritan Empire, annexing it over a period of thirty years. Now it was the Ikira, not the Ritans, who ruled two continents. Over time the Dagdonians and Ikira came to be steadfast enemies and fought many wars. Many of the Vern kingdoms on the other hand were absorbed through the art of diplomacy and marriage.
The Dagdonians kingdoms were annexed one by one but not completely. The Ikira only completed conquest of one third of the Dagdonian population and this in itself turned out to be their fall. The Dagdonians, who steadfastly opposed the Ikira rule were persecuted greatly and the Ikira used the Dagdonian religion of Sajuuk against them. However, when Dagdonian maidens were taken to the mountaintops to be left in ruins they were seen as martyrs now against the Ikira. And revolt increased. Overtime the tribes of the Ikira revolted until the King Ashiil ordered the end of what he called this pointless madness and converted himself to the religion of the Dagdonians. But, much to the outrage of orthodox Dagdonians he did not convert to the official Dagdonian religion but rather to the most persecuted of the lot, the Cult of Sajuuk’s Disciples who stated that there were not many gods but only one, and that one was Sajuuk.
This in itself saved the Ikira civilization from immediate collapse but in time the Ikira broke into three empires, one in the highlands of Ikira known as the Ikira Republic, one in the land of Rita known as the Ritan-Ikira Empire, and one in the north on the banks of Dagdon called the Taiid Kingdom.
The Ritan-Ikira Empire continued to expand oversees as its predecessors had, mostly ignoring the wars that still erupted across the soil of Ened. Around 3257 GSY the Ritans found the civilization of Huen, immediately recognized as the Infidels as told in the Holy Scripture that now was the most read book on the planet. War broke out and the Ritans quickly invaded the continent.
However, the Huen were strong and were able to resist mere military force with their impressive population. The Ritans, realizing their strategy was not working went to work and signed a peace treaty. They were not finished however and in their attempts to cleanse the world of infidels they infected merchant ships between Huen and Rita with diseased commoners that were hated throughout the Empire. They immediately infected the Huen mortally and the great civilization collapsed from within, allowing the Ritans to invade without much fuss. The Ritans quickly became the first colonial empire in pre-unification Taiidan history.

The great wars. The Ritans were the most powerful now of any civilization but they were not popular. Several other empires followed their example and colonized the continents of South Ened, earlier blocked off by the jungles, Ictium, and Ikira. However, the Ritans remained supreme.
Overtime colonial warfare broke out between all the powers and it came to a height in 3792 when the Ritan-Ikira Empire declared war on the Taiid Kingdom after the accusation that they had sunk one of the Ritan trade ships.
Many criticized the Ritans for obviously framing the Taiidan and some joined in the war. Rebel elements within the Empire took the opportunity to revolt and before the Ritans knew it their entire power structure was falling apart around them. By the end of the conflict the Taiidan had used their industrial capacity and many allies to reduce the Ritan-Ikira Empire to little more than a vassal.
Warfare continued for nearly two centuries until the Great War of Unification. During this war weapons of mass destruction were already fairly common and used by all sides. However, the Taiidan, who refused to use such weapons against their own people grew popular and were able to use the unspoiled land they acquired from rival nations in fertile conditions instead of being destroyed by weaponry. Because of this it was fairly easy for the government of the Taiid Kingdom to send propaganda throughout the planet and eventually almost all of the nations were united under the Taiidan King Absolon III.
However, wishing for peace he stated that all nations not already under his sovereignty could end the war now and pay reparations without the loss of land and that they would be recognized by his government. This convinced many leaders to give up the war and they came at his invitation to a banquet in the Taiidan capital, Lutevia. However, things were not as they seemed and the heads of state were all quietly assassinated.
The Absolon III, now crowned Emperor Absolon I, sent troops into his bewildered enemies’ homelands and ordered that all heads of state step down from their positions. Those that acknowledged were rewarded with positions as members of the Imperial Senate. When the former Royal Parliament protested he executed the prime minister and abolished the parliament, replacing it with the senate. Absolon once said that his duty was not to nations but to people. He would never favor his enemies’ governments nor his own. He would only do what was best for the people of Ikira themselves.
Absolon I, extremely popular, succeeded at this and successfully united the planet under the title of the Taiidan Imperium, with him at its head. Over time, the tabris (the general name for the Taiidan at the time) became so used to referring to themselves as Taiidan rather than tabris that the old name was nearly forgotten.

THE EARLY IMPERIUM

The space age. The Taiidan slowly began to expand from their home planet but their culture was still at a relatively low technological level and they had not yet made even a temporary space station or had not landed on their moons. However, the peaceful rule by the Imperium convinced them to rapidly expand their technology and they reached out for their moons, the nearby planets, and eventually out across the whole system.
Though the Taiidan were peaceful on their homeworld, this was oddly enough not the case on their colonies. Many colonists who felt that they had built the colonies from scratch without any help from the Imperium revolted frequently, all of them put down forcibly by the Imperial government.
Stations and mining bases were established throughout the whole system and the population of the Taiidan grew and grew and grew, no restrictions left to them. As Imperium expanded and there became less need for a military the Taiidan forgot about it and let their military forces decay, giving a short-lived golden age to the Imperium.
Imperial scientists discovered in short time after the discovery of the antimatter drive a new form of transportation, hyperspace. In excitement the Taiidan sent colony ships to establish hyperspace gates to other systems, thrilled with the new possibilities that hyperspace had opened up to them.
In the year 4612 GSY the Taiidan Imperium discovered life outside of Ikira in the form of the Calmarins, a small and fractured species, much like the stasis that the Taiidan had been through barely over half a millennium before. The Taiidan established trade links with them and the Bentusi took interest.
The Bentusi, picking up the establishment of a new hyperspace gate unidentified by previous records came to the Taiidan and offered them technology they had not had before in return for resources from their rich home system. The Taiidan agreed and received the technology for short jump drives and immediately began to spread throughout the galaxy at high speed.
Not all of their first contacts went smoothly however. The Taiidan Imperium came across the Regvali in 4759 under the name of the Regvali. The Regvali were a strong and pious race, much like the Taiidan. But their ideology differed greatly from that of the Taiidan monotheism revolving around Sajuuk. Even so, the Imperial Senate opened up trade relations with them peacefully and the Emperor praised the Regvali as one of the more agreeable races they had come cross.
In 4836 the whole thing came to pieces however when the Tiamat intervened, once again starting a war for reasons unknown to outsiders, this time by causing the Regvali and Taiidan ambassadorial ships to crash into one another, outraging each race and beginning accusations of sabotage.
This unfortunate incident in the Aztalan system started the Regvali-Taiidan War and the war went well for the more technologically advanced Imperium. Even so, the Regvali had important allies that had seldom before dealt with the Taiidan but now had a reason to. This was the Hiigaran Empire, an opposing state with the same powers at their disposal as the Taiidan did.
The war was won however by the Taiidan after the Hiigaran government was forced to deal with other affairs on the borders of their empire regarding raids by the Turanic Raiders that were increasing at an astonishing pace. This allowed the Taiidan to occupy the Regvali homeworld of Tenok and establish full and absolute control over the planet, beginning the long history of expansionism in the Imperium.

Early expansionism and the relations with Hiigara. As the Imperium expanded at a high rate they managed to swallow many of the races that had not yet reached unification and/or space flight. Those that had were usually protected by the Bentusi who after the Taiidan-Regvali War had issued protection of these races until they were strong enough to resist the Taiidan by themselves.
The Bentusi protection policy was not merely against the Taiidan but also against the Hiigarans who had been around slightly longer as an empire than the Taiidan. The Hiigarans had already taken about one fourth of the galaxy under their control by the Taiidan-Regvali War and had the strongest military in the galaxy. However, this was little compared to the immense size of the Bentusi, Tiamat, Cereban, and Sekmet empires, carved out into space by the power of the far jump core. This of course caused resentment against the Unbound both for their technological superiority and their seemingly “unbound arrogance” as one Hiigaran politician put it.
However, the protection policy could not stop the Hiigarans or Taiidan from expanding, partially due to the fact that the Tiamat were much more interested in starting wars than stopping them. The Bentusi and sometimes the Sekmet would try and stop these interventions but the Tiamat believed themselves to be superior over all the other races, including the other Unbound, calling themselves the Wheel of Fate, working towards some greater design.
In the end the Tiamat won. By harassing the protection policy long enough the Hiigarans and Taiidan made it into their own little conflict known as the Hiigaran-Taiidan War (see, HIIGARAN-TAIIDAN WAR, THE). This war lasted almost twenty years and involved over one thousand individual battles and several dozen different campaigns and approaches to defeating the enemy. The conflict started when the Hiigaran government ordered that the Taiidan stop a blockade on Hiigaran space after a diplomatic crisis in which Hiigara had started arming nearby neutral worlds with superior technology to provide a wedge against Taiidan expansion. The Emperor refused and Hiigara declared war sending several hundred battlecruisers to negotiate a new treaty.
The Taiidan, who had anticipated a war and planned for it had several of their own fleets ready for the Hiigarans’ arrival. At the Battle of the Gauntlet about one third of the Hiigaran attack force was destroyed. However, the Hiigarans, despite heavy losses, pushed on and managed to drive all the way to Triistara, disrupting the Taiidan trade network.
The Taiidan in turn pulled in allied nations to them and began to make quick raids into and out of the Hiigaran front line and resorted to guerilla tactics, attacking carrier fleets whenever they came into view before any reinforcements could arrive. The Hiigaran offensive began to slow and the war dragged on for years before the constant strangling of the Taiidan economy and reversal of the previous situation resulted into the Taiidan signing a treaty that granted Hiigara specific trading rights and acknowledged the independence of several worlds on the Taiidan frontier. This was a defeat that the Imperium would not soon forget or forgive.
What came next was a long peace and recovery by both sides, generally leading up to what seemed would be another conflict between Hiigara and the Taiidan. However, events changed. Fifteen years after the Hiigaran-Taiidan War the Bentusi Traders ordered the complete termination of relations with Hiigara and the Imperium. This outraged both nations but the Bentusi argued that both nations had violated the protection laws passed by the Bentusi, Cereban, and Sekmet.
What came then was a coalition of nations outraged by the intervention of the Unbound races that came together and formed an alliance determined to break the sanctions and Bentusi damage to the galactic economy. With the galactic stock market collapsing as both Hiigarans and Taiidan suffered from the loss of vital trade connections the coalition declared war on the Bentusi and any who dared support them.
At first little was expected to happen by the bystanders. A few shots and the Unbound would be victorious with the empires of the Hiigarans and Taiidan split down the middle. It was surprising but more reinsuring than unsupported of the theory when the Tiamat surprisingly allied with the other Unbound on this issue saying that the bound should not dare rise up against the Gods and that they would teach them as they did the mysterious and somewhat ambiguous “Children of the Unbound”.
But what happened next was surprising. The overwhelming forces of the combined empires managed to simply sweep away the Unbound. It turned out that each Unbound race had one mothership. The Bentusi had the harbor ship known as the Ben Tus, the Sekmet had the mothership known as the Sajuuk Vol, the Cereban flagship known as the Guardian, and the Tiamat megaship known as the Wheel. And even when combined, these mighty warships could not contain all the troubles of the galaxy, even with their numerous carrier fleets spread throughout the galaxy.
Over time the coalition, splitting its forces lightly were able to wear down the enemy. Each was a trial of ability but the hardest of the Unbound to crack were the Bentusi and Tiamat, both with technology and numbers superior to the so-called minor Unbound races. For every Bentusi or Tiamat ship destroyed as few as half a dozen or as many as two dozen of their attackers were destroyed. But the small numbers of the Unbound forced them to give in and on 5978 the Bentusi and other Unbound formally surrendered to the bound races.
The treaty that followed (see, IKIRA, THE TREATY OF) was simple and ordered that the Unbound limit the number of ships they constructed to one per year maximum, including fighters and resourcers. It also demanded they give up any claims to territory and relinquish several credits to the coalition. There was also something about the far jump cores but that article was immediately scratched out for good reasons.
After the treaty was signed the Galactic Council, at the insistence of the Bentusi, was founded. Its members were those of six different nations: the Hiigarans, the Taiidan, the Frerrn, the Mataar, the Calmarians, the Viir, the Vaygr Crusade of Moaab, the Vaygr Crusade of Lebaan, the Turanic Sultan of Zhar, the Koo’tos, the Prau Far, the Bentusi, the Sekmet, the Cerebans, and the Tiamat. Each of these nations were powerful and mightier than those around them and had enough money to invest in the creation of the Galactic Council, which was to have know capital world as such a move would forge the belief that the Galactic Council favored a certain world. Instead, it was to be starbound, like the starfarers of legend or the Unbound races.

The War of Sajuuk. The first major matter to come before the Galactic Council was the regards to which star systems were to go to the Taiidan and which were to go to the Hiigarans. Both empires had considerable investments in the star systems lying in the formal domains of the Unbound and it was unclear which would have the advantage should one take the systems mentioned above.
The Emperor of the Taiidan Imperium was not ready to back down to the Hiigarans again and made sure that his government ensured that the right heads of state reach power in the Galactic Council, forcing many of the original sixteen nations to resign until essentially all that was left were the Hiigarans, their allies the Frerrn, the Taiidan, their allies the Calmarians, and the Unbound races. After reviewing the situation the council decided in the favor of the Imperium.
The Imperium was happy to take advantage of this decision and the Senate forced the Council to acknowledge a 30-lightyear neutral zone around Taiidan space through which no Hiigaran ship merchant or otherwise could pass without permission from the Emperor himself. This was an outrage to the Hiigaran government but having just been worn down from one massive war they were hardly willing to press the issue. So nearly fifty years passed without event.
In 6052 the Hiigaran government came across a discovery however when mining in the Great Wastelands. There in he gaseous ruins of ancient stars they found the ruins of an ancient hyperspace core and the local archaeologists recovered it, bringing it to Hiigara for examination.
Upon such examination they found that the core, much to their amazement, was far more powerful than any core possessed by the Hiigarans or bound races as the time and it was here that the Hiigarans realized that they had come across the same design that the Bentusi had six millennia earlier. It was an astounding find and the Hiigaran government immediately monopolized it and called in all their fleets for core refitting. The core they found was placed inside their flagship, the Sajuuk-Cor and they began to make aggressive tendencies that worried the Imperium.
The Emperor ordered the Galactic Council to make sanctions on the Hiigarans due to their massive build up but the Council was taken aback by the Emperor’s order. The Hiigaran Emperor then stated that as long as Hiigara was breaking no laws that the Council should not intervene with their internal policies. Such injustice came more quickly than anticipated.
In 6121 the Hiigaran Emperor ordered the authorization of any means necessary to pacify the Taiidan threat. Taiidan security forces detected a hyperspace jump on the edge of the neutral zone and were alarmed, some thinking that the Hiigarans were making an attack. However, the Emperor negated the possibility stating that if they were using far jump drives to jump across the neutral zone that the Taiidan military would easily eliminate the threat.
Admiral Riesstiu Valois was not so sure and stated to the Emperor that this should be immediately reported to the Galactic Council. Riesstiu was from another part of the Empire outside of Ikira and was much more experienced with outer rim affairs and so many took him seriously. However, the Emperor did not and stated that the Taiidan must take care of their own affairs.
Just less than a day later the Hiigaran fleet appeared right on top of Ikira and before the defense systems could be activated launched several nuclear weapons on to the surface of the planet, destroying everything on the planet not shielded against atomic weapons. The entire population of Ikira was wiped out within seconds and there was nothing the Taiidan could do. The remaining fleet in orbit was also attacked and subsequently destroyed, leaving Hiigara supreme in the galaxy. Reporting that their job was done the Hiigarans jumped back to the Empire, ready to jump into the Imperium once it began to lose control of its border outposts.
However, the martyrdom of the Emperor had endeared him in the hearts of the public and the Taiidan and their subjects together united behind Admiral Riesstiu and his call for a holy war against the Hiigarans, a War of Sajuuk as he called it. However, the Council said such was not necessary yet. They were not however listened to and the Taiidan launched a full strike against the Hiigarans.
As war began to approach the Hiigarans as Taiidan warships jumped slowly across the neutral zone the Galactic Council considered its decision. They decided that the core was to be handed over to the Galactic Council for safekeeping and that the Hiigarans acknowledge that they would stop using far jump drives in their ships. They also stated that the Hiigarans would evacuate the neutral zone immediately and abandon any ships within it.
The Hiigaran Emperor brought the edict before the Daiamid while the fleets of Hiigara locked horns with those of the Taiidan, mad with vengeance. Malketh Hraal’sa, representative of his kiith to the Daiamid issued his famous Sands of Time speech that set the destiny of the Hiigarans into place. Upon doing so they continued the war and tricked the Bentusi, nearly destroying the Harbor Ship.
But now with the entire Galactic Council against them, aside from the Frerrn, the Hiigaran government was immediately overwhelmed by enemy forces. Just like the Bentusi before them they could not be everywhere and their fleets were defeated slowly, one by one, over a period of twenty years. The mighty power of the Sajuuk-Cor and the sharp intellects within the military could not hold off the swarms of angry Taiidan, the battleships of the Tiamat, and the power of the Ben Tus. Eventually the Sajuuk-Cor itself was destroyed in the First Battle of Hiigara where time itself stood still as Riesstiu began the surface bombardment of the beautiful planet. There the flagship was destroyed in orbit of the Angel Moon and its core thought to be lost.
The Emperor abdicated in the midst of rebellions throughout the streets and the Daiamid, with little choice, surrendered ultimately to the decisions of the Galactic Council. The Taiidan, still blind with rage, were ready to destroy the Hiigarans without a second thought but for reasons unknown an unlikely ally came to the Hiigarans aid. These were the Tiamat, who reminded the Bentusi that the Hiigarans were much like the Unbound had once been, how the Children had once been and not to make the same mistake as with the Children. The Tiamat played off the guilt of the Bentusi like they were a musical instrument, and still for reasons unknown to either the bound or Unbound. But the Bentusi agreed and ordered that the Hiigarans be exiled, not killed. This ended the War of Sajuuk, which had cost so many so much.

THE GOLDEN AGE

The reign of Riesstiu I. Riesstiu I came to power during a time of mourning for the Taiidan. However, Hiigara was now capital of the Taiidan Imperium and many clamored for Riesstiu to take the throne. He refused at first but after being ensured that it was for the better of his people he accepted. Riesstiu began somewhat unstable, still vengeful.
One of the first actions of Riesstiu that were questionable, even before his reign as Emperor and the Exile, was that of the testing of atmospheric deprivation devices upon a planet that had refused to acknowledge the new rule by the Taiidan. This world fell quickly and few rejected Riesstiu’s rule afterwards.
But except for this and incidents regarding supporters of the former Hiigaran Empire Riesstiu was a generally benevolent ruler. He viewed the Galactic Council as a failure however as it had not stopped the tragedy of Ikira’s destruction. He withdrew Taiidan support of the council and declared that the Imperial Palace would only bow to itself and not to any outside authority. The Calmarians, now a protectorate of the Taiidan Imperium followed suite before diplomatic annexation by the Taiidan. The Frerrn, steadfastly anti-Taiidan kept their stance but had to give it up eventually due to economic problems, leaving the Unbound as the only members of the Council for the rest of its existence up until the Dust Wars (see, DUST WARS, THE).
Riesstiu spent the first decade of his reign rebuilding Hiigara after its siege by his own forces. He torn the decorations for the Hiigaran Imperial Palace and redesigned it significantly to fit with the new design for the Taiidan Imperium. The old Daiamid chambers were destroyed and replaced with the great capitol building in which the Imperial Senate and later the Assembly of Lords would work in. During this time he gave special benefits to veterans of the War of Sajuuk and lowered taxes to increase economic growth. He took the Bentusi trade spines and patrolled them with Imperial vessels to ensure what he called the security of the Imperium against outside attack or economic threat. This secured the Imperium’s control over the trade routes for years to come although the Bentusi remained a large factor of the economic portion of the trade routes, the Taiidan merely administrating over the spine.
Riesstiu reformed the military, removing senate interference and placing it directly under control of the royal house, also making the law that any noble who wished to keep his status would have to serve at least six years in the military, giving the Imperial Navy not only an increase in numbers but also a dedicated loyalty to the Emperor, pulling nobles away from their families and towards the Emperor instead.
As the economic and military growth of the Imperium grew Riesstiu began to turn towards the former allies of the Imperium and ordered the immediate and unconditional surrender of Taiidan protectorates and their preparation for occupation by the Taiidan government. Many of these protectorates were former Hiigaran colonies or allies, but some were former allies of the Taiidan. Almost all of the colonies, whether previously supportive of the Taiidan or not rejected the proposal and stated their rights by the terms of Bentusi protection.
This is where the Bentusi really had to make a choice, whether to stand by their protectionist policy and fight an impossible war against the powerful Imperium that they didn’t want anyway, or to let the Taiidan swallow up several of the governments surrounding the Imperium. In the end the Bentusi, still ashamed of their part in the War of Sajuuk gave in to the Taiidan and the protectorates were swallowed after light resistance.
After this show of power over the Bentusi few nations rejected the proposal to become protectorates of the Taiidan Imperium, except for one. This was the Frerrn Republic and they refused to bow down to the Taiidan who were little more than demons in their eyes. Riesstiu was outraged and it almost came to war before the Bentusi intervened and gave both sides a compromise. The Frerrn would keep their sovereignty and would not be bothered by the Imperium if they would give up a small portion of space on their outer limits. The area was not industrialized by the emerging Frerrn and could be much more useful to the Taiidan. Disappointed but encouraged by the Bentusi the Frerrn government signed the treaty and the Imperium expanded again.
Another term of the treaty was for the Imperium and Republic, along with all the other nations in the galaxy, to accept the use of a galactic language as a common dialect taught throughout the galaxy. Other members of the Galactic Council supported this with the exception of the Tiamat who considered that it would give one nation too much power.
When many of the Imperial Senate encouraged the language’s choice to be Taiidani many swayed to the Tiamat’s side, saying that even if the Imperium was the strongest power in the galaxy that it should not be given control over the tongue of the people. A compromise was then drawn surprisingly by Riesstiu and he said that as the Hiigarans were now a forgotten people and that they were as good as dead, there was no reason not to use their language as the new Galactic Common.
The Bentusi were surprised by what was later called Riesstiu’s Compromise but it was the beginning of a long series of reforms by Riesstiu, showing his benevolent side towards the public and his caring attitude where he had once been considered little more than an ambitious tyrant.
Riesstiu’s latter portion of his rule as he grew towards old age began to be focused more around stabilizing the Imperium rather than expanding it. He had more than enough power as it was and he decided to pass laws balancing the power between the commoner and the nobleman, the Taiidan and the native. Social legislation was passed through the Imperial Senate at a steady rate but when they vetoed the laws Riesstiu would make some critical changes to the Senate’s occupants, allowing for his legislation to be passed. During Riesstiu’s benevolent dictatorship the levels of unemployment jumped by more than half and poverty decreased significantly. The economic growth that he had already started easily sponsored these expensive reforms and allowed for the Imperium to prosper.

Later emperors of the Golden Age. When Riesstiu died at the age of eighty-six the people of the Imperium mourned him greatly and his birth date became a holiday throughout the Imperium, and in some nations outside of it. The only people to truly criticize Riesstiu were the Frerrn who said that he was a “despicable, lying through his teeth son of a bitch”. But otherwise Riesstiu was remembered as the greatest Emperor of the Taiidan Imperium and even the revolutionary Republicans honored him as whom they would have chosen as the first premier of the Republic were he still alive.
Riesstiu unfortunately had no heirs, much to the disappointment of his family. Riesstiu had given his wife three daughters and two sons. But both of his sons were killed in combat against the Hiigarans during the War of Sajuuk, giving the future Emperor’s wife such heavy depression that she killed herself, for which the Emperor was often haunted by later in life. He never had any more children, even after he had remarried for political reasons.
However, all was not at a loss. It was the law of the Imperium that the eldest born child of the emperor must become the successor, even if that child was a female. So Eloida, the only living child of Riesstiu, became the Empress of the Imperium. However, it was necessary for her, like with all of the royal family, to produce a royal heir if possible. Eloida already had many lovers at this point but she was forced to give them at the price of their execution if she did not. Any child of hers would be checked by DNA to assure that it was not a bastard and child of an illegitimate father. Laws for hereditary succession were intentionally harsh and Eloida was forced to obey.
The next decision came to be who should be her husband, the Emperor. After much thought on the situation the royal houses were ordered to present their best candidate to her for her approval. However, the House of Valois was not ready to give up the throne after Riesstiu’s death and to ensure the success of their house they chose the favorite nephew of Emperor Riesstiu and sent him to the Empress. However, that was not enough to ensure their marriage to her and there were many mysterious accidents that befell the other suitors.
In the end the Valois got their way and Empress Eloida was married to Emperor Absolon V. However, throughout her entire reign she would have lovers outside of her husband and would always use birth control with them to ensure their survival. She bore a total of eight children, despite her late age in giving them (her last child was borne to her at age forty-six) to her husband Absolon and nursed them in her pouch until they grew old enough to leave it.
In the end Eloida got to do whatever she wanted anyway. She kept complete control over the throne and shared none of her power with Absolon. She put down several rebellions that occurred shortly after the death of her father and kept the golden age he had established going. For the most part she was a ruler of stability, not heightening the Imperium’s power but keeping it in place, neither falling back nor surging forward.
When she died she was mourned, though not as greatly as her father. Her children were all full grown by this time and had married into many of the noble houses amongst the senate and each was ambitious, and some more aggressive than their long dead grandfather was. They themselves had children now and enough loyalty in the military to break out a civil war.
However the next Emperor came to the throne quietly. Though sociably timid and quiet, the youngest of Eloida’s sons, Emeris, was quiet sharp and aggressive when the decisive moment came. Before civil war could break out Emeris had captured his siblings and exiled them to far corners of the galaxy unless they swore utmost loyalty to him upon the Holy Scripture. Left with little choice six agreed and the remaining two were exiled to opposite ends of the galaxy, under heavy guard.
Emeris stopped the age of peace that had reigned during the last years of his grandfather as well as those years during the reign of his mother. He immediately ordered he surrender of strategically important land along the borders of the Frerrn Republic and when they refused he declared war, sending in the mostly unused fleets of the mighty Imperium and wiping out resistance quickly. The Frerrn Republic’s borders shrank to one third of their previous size, leaving little more than a handful of star systems in what became known as the Taiidan-Frerrn War (see, TAIIDAN-FRERRN WAR, THE). This brief conflict of two years gave the Imperium almost complete control over galactic politics, for the first time in history. Before they were no more immune to the effects of the Galactic Council then the Hiigarans were. Now however, that was different.
When Emeris died in 6255 was succeeded by his son, Absolon VI. Absolon VI however was already over sixty. He had no urge to die early in his career as his father had and so he began to urgently research advanced life support systems that had been used by the Hiigaran Emperors. Absolon VI was the first Emperor to live over one hundred and as time passed new methods using Bentusi technology would lead to the Emperors living up to and over the age of four hundred. This still did not really solve the problem of old heirs however and eventually it was decided that only the Emperor had access to the advanced life support systems and that the Emperor’s children would have to die and pass on the succession to their children.
After Absolon VI’s death his granddaughter, Elaana succeeded the throne after convincing the senate that she was the eldest of Absolon’s living descendants. Elaana did everything in her power to increase the strength of the Imperium against the will of the Galactic Council and in 6342 she passed a law that gave the Imperium complete diplomatic immunity on the pain of war. This law did not last for more than a millennium but it showed that the Galactic Council could do little to oppose the Imperium and its rulers. To increase the Imperium’s popularity with other nations outside of the Council Elaana visited several star systems and charitably gave food and credits to their leaders. She peacefully and diplomatically annexed several star systems, increasing the ever growing bulk of the Imperium.
She herself died at the very old age of two hundred and twenty-one, some one hundred and sixty-five years after ascending the throne in the year 6490. This would set the average life span for the Emperors until Iolon III began using Unbound techniques to extend the Imperial lifeline even farther. It had still been less than four hundred years since the fall of the Hiigarans and the image was ripe in the minds of historians but for the average person, the Hiigarans were forgotten in this age of peace.
Three more emperors reigned before things began to go wrong and the Frerrn Revolution came (see, FRERRN REVOLUTION, THE and FRERRN AGGREGATE, THE). The year was 6879 when the Frerrn government, bankrupted by the constant economic warfare with the Imperium, collapsed into a civil war when several different governors seceded from the federal government. Outraged military dispatches were sent to tame the rogue colonies but several rose up in support of the governors, seceding as well. Before they knew it the government was in turmoil, fighting a deep civil war that became a war for liberty.
The Emperor Emeris II saw an advantage before him and decided to use it. He believed that if he could fracture the Republic even further that he could snag pieces of it from right under the nose of the Frerrn government. Deciding to support a smaller fragment of one of the factions, the radical branch of the Social Democrat party, Emeris launched an invasion of the region they were stationed in and gave them complete control, preparing to launch the fleets into full dedication against the Frerrn government.
In twenty-two years the Revolution was at an end and the Social Democrats proclaimed the Frerrn Aggregate, meant to eliminate the class distinctions based on economic power. Instead they rather enforced the class divisions but exchanged economic divisions for military dictatorship.
Convinced that their job was done the emperor withdrew his forces from Frerrn space, thinking that complete control over the galaxy. However, the Aggregate unexpectedly declared that it was their duty to expand the revolution to other nations and they launched several invasions of small and independent nations less than fifty years later.
In the year 6949 the Emperor Emeris II ordered that fleets be dispatched to the borders of the Aggregate to mediate a settlement between the Taiidan and Frerrn, by force if necessary. However, the Tiamat, as bothersome as ever did not wait for the decision of the Imperial diplomats. They cloaked a small frigate by the Frerrn fleet and imitated Aggregate weaponry to open fire on the Imperial fleet. Emeris was outraged and demanded an explanation for the attack while the Frerrn claimed that they had done nothing and that the Taiidan were simply looking for an excuse to fight. It was not until two hundred years after the war that followed (see, GREAT WAR, THE) that the Bentusi provided information to both sides showing how the Tiamat had intervened. It was too late to stop the slaughter that followed however.
The war lasted a total of one hundred and fifty-six years and it cost both sides billions of credits in just the first few decades. The Imperium gathered its massive navy, not considering the need for allies and attacked. However, the Frerrn had made deals with the Tiamat and Sekmet, giving them Unbound ships to assist in hit and run raids. To push even farther they gathered members of the Vaygr crusades and Turanic clans into a mighty alliance that nearly cost the Imperium the war.
For forty years the Imperium held their ground and for another twenty they fell back. Then for thirty they pushed forward until victory seemed within their grasp, then Triistar was ravaged by a Tiamat attack and they fell back for another twenty-five years. The Cerebans broke their neutrality, leaving the Bentusi alone. When breaking neutrality they supported the Imperium and gave it hyperspace inhibitor technology, paralyzing the Unbound. Both sides fought for every square inch of space and it took years to make a breakthrough on the front line and both sides began to grow weary of war and Emeris’ successor, Empress Eloida II, was thinking of opening a peace treaty with the Free Alliance when the turning point came, not only ending the war but beginning the end of the golden age.
As a massive allied fleet passed through the Great Nebula to meet a small escort force of the Taiidan Imperium they found the fleet destroyed already, but by unknown weaponry. When they searched the area for possible survivors to tell what happened they were attacked by a sudden and massive force, sending back small transmissions. At first it was thought to be a Taiidan ambush but the recordings revealed that the enemy had functioned more like the Vaygr or Turanics, allies of the Frerrn. Investigation fleets sent into the Nebula were destroyed as well and soon all trading through there ceased and one of the most important trade spines ceased to exist.
This frightened the Alliance to a great degree and with the most important portion of their fleets destroyed in the attack while the Taiidan had lost a mere convoy they signed a treaty giving the Taiidan control over much of the galaxy, including the Turan Sector which at the time was the limit of Turanic expansion. Empress Eloida accepted the treaty without hesitation but passed laws that limited the trade rights of merchants and forced them to be escorted by large convoys in case of similar attacks. Soon the Great Nebula became a place of ghosts and vengeful spirits, forbidden to all.

The end of the Golden Age. With the end of the Great War and the passing of the Trade Protection Acts by Empress Eloida II came her assassination. She had never been quite popular, was considered weak and too easy on her enemies. Though the TPA was for the protection of Taiidan merchants they resented the restrictions it put on them and were glad to be rid of her. Eloida’s assassination was not the first political assassination, but it was the first in a long time and the first of a good deal many more. The shock that resulted left many stunned.
Emperor Khaldeesh IV succeeded her and declared martial law until the perpetrators of his great-grandmother’s death were found. They were in good time and he made sure they paid for what they had done. A small corporation operating on the Outer Rim had seen Eloida’s actions as an attempt to rob them of their sovereign rights and the beginning of a socialist takeover by Frerrn-sponsored revolutionaries. Khaldeesh took no pity on them and executed them by “spacing”, a new form of execution involving the criminal being thrown out of an airlock to explode from exposure to vacuum, a cheap and reliable form of capital punishment.
One of the things that hurt Khaldeesh’s reign very early on were the collapses of the market, partially due to the TPA but mostly due to the costly war, from which the Taiidan had hardly profited and mostly suffered. The efforts to control so many new worlds also overwhelmed the Imperium with its political and economic lack of stability. In 7204 the galactic stock market collapsed and several hundred million Taiidan and non-Taiidan were out on the streets with only a little hard cash to offer.
Khaldeesh reigned for another two hundred and three years, longer than any emperor before him. But he was not popular and neither were his son. Neither he nor his son ever removed the martial law and the freedoms granted to the Taiidan by Riesstiu the Great were now gone, taken by Khaldeesh the Tyrant. When his son, Khaldeesh V came to the throne in 7316 he was assassinated the moment the crown was set upon his head. A civil war engulfed the Imperium and one of the noble houses took power under Absolon VII, assassinated within sixty years of his reign, leaving the Imperium in a state of anarchy until two hundred years later when Riesstiu II seized the throne.

The reigns of Riesstiu II, Iolon I, and Riesstiu III. The final closing point before the decline and ultimately fall of the Imperium was that of the reigns of the three most important emperors after Riesstiu I and ultimately, Riesstiu IV the Second. Riesstiu II came to the throne much as his namesake had, through the needs of the people. Leading the army of the House of Corelon he was dispatched to defeat the remaining enemies of his master’s house when Sajuuk visited him in a dream according to legend and he saw his people suffering. Brandishing his heavy cruiser he turned straight around and destroyed the space station of his master’s house and took control, proclaiming himself the new lord over House Koshiir, named after the battle that he had won three years earlier, giving him fame.
Within a year he had reunited the Imperium and proclaimed himself Emperor Riesstiu II. Like his predecessor he reasserted control over worlds that had been lost to secession movements and enforced new social laws. He negotiated peace with the Frerrn and won their respect. In 7612 he formed the BTEP, making himself a nice alliance with the Bentusi, unusual for a species to manage.
His most notable action however was the solution to the Far War (see, FAR WAR, THE) where the Frerrn attempted to annex some of the Vaygr crusades who refused to cooperate with Aggregate policies. He negotiated that both crusades become tributaries of the Frerrn for a century while receiving aid from the Aggregate government. After the century was over the treaty would be up for revision. Riesstiu II, much like his namesake, was an excellent negotiator.
When Riesstiu II died he was the first Emperor in a millennium to be greatly mourned and his funeral was met with many visitors, even his political enemies respected him now for what he truly was, a great leader who had come to late in the Imperium’s history to change the course of history much. Even the Frerrn mourned him saying that he was the man who Riesstiu I should have been, though many would have disagreed.
Riesstiu’s great-grandson succeeded him as Emperor under the name of Khaldeesh VI but he faced troubles from the start. Even Riesstiu’s best friends admitted that Khaldeesh seemed a bit odd and it was discovered that Khaldeesh was completely mad and sang himself to sleep, writing poetry instead of stopping civil unrest. A conspiracy within the senate grew and Khaldeesh VI was overthrown by his own cousin, Iolon, who proclaimed himself Emperor despite his promise to the Imperial Senate to form a republic.
Iolon I was also a great leader but unfortunately he had many things working against him. He reigned as long as Riesstiu II and in fact longer, a total of two hundred and fifty-seven years thanks to technology he bought from the Unbound. But he could have lived longer and was assassinated in the end, like Khaldeesh VI. The only reason he lasted so long was his control of the military, the loyalty he later lost.
In 7897 he ordered the navy into neutral territory that had proven to be working under the authority of Frerrn agents. In order to keep the peace and stability against the Aggregate he ordered that the small republic be surrounded and blockaded by Taiidan forces until the Frerrn agreed to give up rights to the territory. When the Frerrn refused the Taiidan seized control of the republic and annexed its government and the Aggregate, with too small of a military to make a fight now simply let it go.
Iolon also tried to reduce the authority of his former supporters, the Imperial Senate and this caused some to think that he was going to take away the rights of the citizenry in general. However, most of his laws were directed against the Senate and nobility, not against the general populace. Even so, it was enough for his own great-grandnephew, Riesstiu to gain popular support large enough to convince the senate and army to ask Iolon to step down.
In a rage he refused and ordered the military to reprimand Riesstiu and arrest the senators. They refused, their loyalty now to their general Riesstiu rather than Iolon. In 8021 he fled the palace into exile amongst the Galactic Council. Riesstiu was crowned emperor but just as Iolon before him he cheated his supporters, this time more effectively.
Shortly after ascending the throne Riesstiu arrested the senators disloyal to him and ordered the other senators to pass a bill he had approved giving the royalty absolute power and abolishing what he called the outdated council of old men. They were outraged but could do little to stop him and signed the document. With the senate out of his way Riesstiu went to work of restoring the Imperium, the last successful effort to do so. For one hundred years from 8177 to his death in 8523 Riesstiu III expanded the borders of the Imperium all the way to the Outer Rim, established the Frerrn Aggregate as a vassal, and rebuilt the economy.
The most important aspect of his reign was probably the Sekmet-Taiidan War (see, SEKMET-TAIIDAN WAR, THE), the only successful war fought between one bound race and one Unbound. When the Sekmet refused to let go of restrictions they had put on the imperial weaponry build out tensions increased between the Taiidan and the one Unbound race. When the Sekmet opened fire on a Taiidan fleet in orbit of a Frerrn colony the Taiidan declared war, even when the Sekmet defended their actions saying that it was necessary to keep the Taiidan from forgetting their place.
What gave the Sekmet the initiative to do this was essentially the same thing that made the Tiamat think they controlled fate. Because they were more powerful than the bound races and were far older their arrogant belief of near godhood had never been challenged. When Riesstiu humiliatingly defeated them in a single one on one war that lasted only three years the Sekmet were forced to pay tribute to the Imperium as a vassal of the Emperor, giving Riesstiu support to his claim that the Emperor was more powerful than the Galactic Council and all its members combined.
When Riesstiu died however, his successor, Iolon II, was not strong enough to keep the empire united.

THE END OF THE IMPERIAL ERA

The decline before Riesstiu IV. When Riesstiu III died he was succeeded by Iolon II, a weak and crippled boy who had been badly hurt in a sabotage attempt by pro-senate factions within the Imperium, hoping to establish a republic. This was the first act of active rebellion against the emperor within the Taiidan people themselves and though it occurred before what is usually called the decline, it is in truth the beginning of the end for the Imperium.
Iolon II began his reign slowly, unsure of what to do. His most enjoyed hobby was writing his memoirs about his life amongst the royal family and it is an interesting fact that his book was later published after his death and widely distributed. It hid no details, something that the noble houses and his family did not like and it told of all the corruption that was generally spreading through the family. Even during Riesstiu III’s reign there was already, he pointed out, the dominance of large corporations and their attempts at bribery that left many Taiidan without shelter and homes while they became richer and more powerful, more powerful, as he scandalously was quoted by P’teer Elson years later “than the Emperor himself.” Though he was a proud supporter of imperial power Iolon’s books were later popular amongst the republicans.
Iolon was deep down a kind emperor, kinder than even the benevolent dictators like Riesstiu I and II. But the fact was that he had little power over the corporations and he was smart enough to realize that immediately. “The golden age,” he wrote so accurately in I, Iolon “is over.” He did do some good however and managed to give independence to the Turanics after they helped save his vessel from a Vaygr raid whilst making a trip to the Aggregate. It was during Iolon’s reign however that more than one eighth of the Imperium seceded from the government. The imperial businessmen still controlled them through economic investment but the government had no say in their rule.
Iolon’s largest mistake probably was letting the corporations skip their military service in the navy. Over time others took their example and the military of the Taiidan Imperium was soon depleted of both intellect and manpower. Technologically it was left uncared for as well. It is a well-known fact that the only reason that the Imperial Navy was so advanced in the Homeworld War was because that it was so far ahead centuries earlier. From Riesstiu IV’s reign to the end of the Imperium the Imperial Navy had changed very little.
Another such mistake was when he bowed down to the rich noble houses when they asked for him to reestablish the Imperial Senate. He considered it for a while and decided to limit the power of the Senate severely while reestablishing it, calling it the Assembly of Lords, doing so in 8823. However, this Assembly would soon wield more power than the emperor.
Iolon had many empresses as he doted them frequently and was charming even in his ancient years. He fell once deeply in love with a woman by the name of Flavia once and gave her everything she wanted, eventually marrying her. She bore him six children, including his favorite Emeris. He was near his three hundred and fiftieth birthday at the time. Flavia once said she did not love Iolon very much but that he was a kind man and she had so little to lose and so much to gain from marrying him.
But when Iolon died, no matter how kind he was, he was not mourned for many of the noble houses and corporations half-cursed him, half-blessed them, for making them so powerful while leaving the Imperium in shambles.

Riesstiu IV and Riesstiu IV the Second. When Iolon died in 8902 his will stated that his fourth son (his only living son by several centuries), Emeris, was to succeed to the throne. The Assembly of Lords allowed Emeris into the throne but were unhappy when he started using the Absolute Power doctrine to its full power. Emeris was more powerful than either of his parents and had the spirit of Riesstiu I one once said. It is too bad that he is born more than a millennia too late.
When Emeris V began to use his power to his advantage the Assembly protested and asked that one of the houses select a suitable puppet to take the place of Emeris in a coup. The House Corelon selected Khaldeesh Riesstiu, Emeris’ somewhat mad cousin-in-law, an idiot at politics but quite the charismatic fellow, perfect for the job. Within a year of Emeris’ ascension the Assembly broke down the doors of the Imperial Palace and marched in with the Imperial Guard, killing Emeris in the commotion, placing Khaldeesh Riesstiu on the throne.
He was an immediate success and the people loved him and his down to the people talk. With his smiling face and his bright attitude the civilian population close to forgot the troubles of the Imperium as they stood. He was proclaimed Emperor Riesstiu IV, forgetting his first name that reminded people of Khaldeesh the Tyrant, instead reminding them of Riesstiu I, II, and III, all great emperors. It was such an irony that Riesstiu IV and his “son” were so different.
However, the madness overtook Riesstiu as he neared his two hundredth year as emperor. He began to twitch and they had to drug his life support system to keep him calm. He dreamed of the Imperium returning to its glorious past and ordered the navy into Frerrn space, starting Riesstiu’s War (see, RIESSTIU’S WAR). The Assembly, realizing they could not stop the madness and swept along by Riesstiu’s charisma themselves asked for Turanic mercenary help for the first time in the history of the Imperium, a clear show for the decline. Though the Taiidan lost, their first loss to the Frerrn, and lost badly, the Turanics became an essential element of the Taiidan navy and over time the Taiidan never thought of a military campaign without thinking of the Turanic Raiders as they infamously became known as.
In 9104 he died of a sudden stroke, shortly after executing his remaining family and declaring the Clone Doctrine, saying that no man or woman could succeed him except himself. Of course, though the Assembly was unhappy about their loss of a perfectly good puppet they were glad that they now had to deal with only clones. Afterall, if they were genetically identical to Riesstiu there was nothing to worry about.
Unfortunately they were wrong and when Riesstiu IV the Second ascended to the throne, disfigured from ill designed cloning machines and even nuttier than his predecessor it became clear that he was neither as charismatic nor even as capable as Riesstiu IV. The new Riesstiu was not just mad, but unpredictable and his mood often swung unpredictably.
He became paranoid and began to execute members of the Assembly one by one, replacing them with men he knew he could trust. He invited young boys and girls alike into his chambers and made love to them. He made gruesome cuts on himself until finally the Assembly ordered him contained to a life support system in a small spherical ball. Even then he would not go away.
When word of the rebellion spread around 2498 he ordered the execution of more than two million unsuspecting and probably innocent Taiidan souls and sent their remains into nearby stars, not giving their family a chance to meet with nor see the body of the accused. Slowly he dwindled into total insanity until the Assembly began to take little notice of him, hoping he wouldn’t have another fit of his within the hour.
In 2510 disaster struck and a listening post in the Outer Rim picked up what the Assembly had been suspecting for some time, the construction of a mothership and a hyperdrive using the same design as that of the far jump core that had been supposedly destroyed millennia ago. In a panic Riesstiu, who had grown up listening to stories about the demon Hiigarans and their bombing of Ikira ordered that Kharak be destroyed and the Exiles as well, that no Kushan was to survive the attack.
An attack was launched and displayed over the vids immediately, displaying the victorious Imperial forces at the Battle of Kharak, destroying an entire civilization. It was too much for most of the oppressed and bitter people in the streets and revolts spread across the Empire en mass. Supposedly loyal generals and commanders revived the centuries’ old tradition of the restoration of the Senate, despite the fact that most of the former rebels were now the enemy, the government of the Imperium.
One of these was P’teer Elson, a minor prince of the large and powerful House Elson. When he turned against his emperor and service he fled to the service of the Kushan who turned out not to be dead afterall but alive and kicking and victoriously emerging from the forbidden Great Nebula. Now panic really started to spread. Not only were the Kushan still alive but also they had defeated the legendary ghosts of the Nebula who turned out to also be the Exiles. Others who had not joined the rebellion for moral reasons now joined it out of fear.
At this point Riesstiu completely cracked and ordered the execution of every male over the age of forty that belonged to a major house. The lords of the Assembly protested but for the first time Riesstiu used his authority completely and executed nearly one third of the Assembly before the rest escaped. He then boarded his flagship to meet the Exiles in battle himself, hoping to be a hero much like Riesstiu I. But this time it was the Taiidan who were hated, not the Kushan, and when the Exiles arrived they received heavy reinforcements, easily defeating and killing Riesstiu in the Second Battle of Hiigara.
The revolution followed and the Assembly returned, electing a new emperor to power but before he could be crowned the rebellion, who had just returned from destroying Riesstiu’s clones, attacked Hiigara with the help of the Kushan and destroyed the Imperial Palace, executing most of the remaining lords. Civil war followed but within one year the formally Immortal Taiidan Imperium was destroyed after about five thousand years of existence.

A side note that I added for the Imperium...

House Taiid:
Absolon I (4026-4090)
Valariin I (4090-4133)
Absolon II (4133-4162)
Absolon III (4162-63)
Liion I (4163-4215)
Valariin II (4215-4297)
Elaana I and Vaasan I (4297-4319)
Liion II (4319-4364)
Liion III (4364-4420)

House Corelon:
Marcel I and Sofiin (4420-4471)
Liion IV (4471-4505)
Elaana II and Renauld I (4505-4567)
Khaldeesh I (4567-4616)
Marcel II (4616-4687)
Marcel III (4687-4733)
Elaana III and Liion IV (4733-4825)
Liion V (4825-4858)
Renauld II (4858-4923)
Vassan II (4923-4967)
Marcel IV (4967-5026)
Liion VI (5026-5074)
Almariik I (5074-5156)
Elaana IV and Almariik II (5156-5203)
Renauld III (5203-5302)
Almariik III (5302-5356)
Civil War (5356-5438)

House Rita:
Absolon IV (5438-5525)
Khaldeesh II (5525-5567)
Valariin III (5567-5645)
Valariin IV (5645-5709)
Khaldeesh III (5709-5769)
Almariik IV (5769-5828)
Briija I and Valariin V (5828-5890)
Vasaan III (5890-5959)
Almariik IV (5959-6046)
Almariik V (6046-6122)
Absolon V (6122-6145)
War of Sajuuk (6145-6164)

House Valois:
Riesstiu I (6164-6190)
Eloida I (6190-6238)
Emeris I (6238-6275)
Absolon VI (6275-6335)
Elaana V and Valariin VI (6335-6590)
Emeris II (6590-6953)
Eloida II (6953-7105)
Khaldeesh IV (7105-7316)
Khaldeesh V (7316)
Absolon VII (7316-7368)
Years of Struggle (7368-7560)

House Koshiir:
Riesstiu II (7560-7772)
Khaldeesh VI (7772-7775)
Iolon I (7775-8021)

House Mervonian:
Riesstiu III (8021-8523)
Iolon II (8523-8902)
Emeris III (8902)

House Corelon:
Riesstiu IV (8902-9104)
Riesstiu IV the Second (9104-9510)

House Huen:
Iolon III* (9510)

*Never crowned

This is damned brilliant, Ishaar. Except you need to disable the smilies in that first bit.

Can you do the Frerrn Aggregate next?

Actually, what I am doing are these (already been asked to do them):

KUSHAN FEDERATION, THE (almost done)
VAYGR DOMINION, THE (unstarted)
TAIIDAN REPUBLIC, THE (for kenahk)

I would love to do the Frerrn Aggregate after the Republic though. Please do note though that my work on the first two was a result of doing nothing else but them :p. I am a bit busy right now with other things and while I shall update this site every so often I shall not have time to do so as often.

Thanks.

really really insanly cool.

if you ever have the time, i, personally, would love you see your take on one of the unbound :cough:T-mat:cough:

There is no tiamat... there is only the T-mat.

I thought encylopedias were supposed to be pedanitic...

Pedantic, hah! This is awesome, ishaar! Please continue!

Tel'Quessir are you reading this?

T-MAT, only T-MAT, and nothing but T-MAT.

there is no such thing as "Tiamat" :p :mean: :evil:

Most impressive. I am really fascinated with the superpowers like the Sekmet, the Tiamat,a nd the Bentusi. take your time, though

good show. I may indeed use these as references.

When writing scifi, its difficult to write something simple, thats bileiveable, when it has nothing to do with the plot. For example, `wtf is an astro pen?` or `why are they using pencils when they have hs technology?`

<heard story somewhere> WHen the US first went into space, they discovered that their pens did not work in the enviroment of space. THey spent thousands of dollars to develop a pen that would work in any orientation, under hundreds of pounds of pressure and in extreme condisions, including 0-pressure enviroment.

Russians just used a pencil. :bandit:

Umm...
 

T-Mat obviously stands for something :p. In my story, the Vagabond (first draft nearly finished), as well as in my work on this encyclopedia I use crobato's name Tiamat, which I write as coming from the Bentusi word tia mat or Dark Ones.

Just a little note. Also, sorry that I haven't worked on this encyclopedia recently but it has been really busy during spring break (whereas I anticipated I'd have a lot of free time).

Tiamat is a Babylonian mythical creature.

I know that, it is also, according to some theorists a small planetoid that passed by Earth causing violent rises and falls in temperature during the last million years (i.e., global warming and the ice ages).

But considering that the Kadeshi are named after a city (i.e. Kadesh before political correctness, Qadesh after) and the Kushan after an ancient civilization I figured there was no harm in naming the T-Mat tiamat.

rephrase: "There is no such thing as Tiamat in the Homeworld galaxy/universe"

It's official from Relic, it's T-MAT, the issue was settled years ago. We asked them, they responded. T-MAT stands for T-MAT, who says a totally alien race has to name themselves according to modern English vocabulary? It's not an abbreviation. I've emailed and asked Crobato several times to edit & correct his misspelling in his 2 major works, and he refused, bluntly, citing artistic license, and was not interested in following HW canon at all.

If you're writing something that aspires to be "official" and making use of correct HW canon, then use T-MAT.

Ah, I see, well I have already stated that it is the Bentusi name for them.

....*blink* you meant T-MAT?
Uh...you might want to fix that. Treat it like an acronym, not an abbreviation of a longer word like "Tiamat"

Kushan Federation, The
 

*pant* *cough* *gag* I'm done! I'm done! Freedom!

Nope, freedom's just an illusion, I have to do the Taiidan Republic now. Oh well. :bricks:

BTW, I am now on the Taiidan Republic team and this is some of my work for that specific modification. And go ahead and check out kenahk's story, Between Fires.


To see after the Homeworld War and the establishment of the New Daiamid see HIIGARAN FEDERATION, THE. To see before the Exile see HIIGARAN EMPIRE, THE.

Introduction. The Kushan people suffered many hardships during their Exile on Kharak. Among other things their culture completely changed to being focused on their life in the desert and those who studied Hiigaran history prior to the Exodus were surprised when the Kushan arrived and took back Hiigara, expecting a completely different culture. For this reason the life on Kharak cannot and should not be forgotten.

TOPOGRAPHY AND GEOGRAPHY

Relief. The Kushan Federation was centered on the planet Kharak and except for a few mining stations in the outer limits of the Kharak System, Kharak was the only place where the Kushan lived. For this reason the topography of the Federation is very much the geography of Kharak as well. By 1219 A.S. (After Saju’ka’s construction) the Kharakid government had claimed the entire system but in reality only one third of the asteroids and one planet outside of Kharak were colonized in the entire five-planet system.

Climate. Kharak itself was made up of about four different climates. Most of the planet is covered with deserts and is unpopulated. These areas are only settled by the extremely smart or the extremely stupid. There are oasis spread throughout the desert but they are too sparse to make good walking distance between one another. There are three major deserts of these. There is the Banded Desert in the south, the Wastelands along the northeast, and the Great Desert near the equator. In each of these deserts the temperature ranges from as high as 103º C or as low as -12º C. Rainfall never exceeds 376.174 127 millimeters per year and is generally close to 50.8. Close to the deserts are the savannahs, along rivers, lakes, or oceans. These savannahs are generally cool compared to the desert, about 21º C on average with a rainfall of 376.174 mm. It was still fairly dry compared to regular climates on other planets, such as Hiigara. The next ecosystem is the mountains where the temperature ranges almost as much as in the desert, from 45º C to –16º C. Precipitation usually is around 127 mm. The last ecosystem of Kharak is the two oceans of the Majiiran Ocean and the Northern Sea. Each of these areas were only briefly explored by the Kushan before the Kharak Genocide (see, HOMEWORLD WAR, THE). For more information see, KHARAK.

Human landscape. The Kushan Federation had a very low population density throughout all its history and it is probable that the asteroid colonies were more densely populated than their own planet, Kharak. This is because that due to the extreme temperatures of Kharak the Kushan population never exceeded that of some 300 million, which most would agree is an extremely low population density. Most of the cities were in the north and south, near the poles and those that weren’t were in the mountaintops or along the few rivers, oasis, and lakes of the planet. But it is true that with very few exceptions almost all of the cities inhabited were completely industrialized as to rise productivity and hence the survival rate amongst the population. Amongst the Kushan there were few ethnicities as they all lived in similar climates. However, the biggest difference is in Kiith Naabal (see, KIITH NAABAL) whose skin was lighter than that of their counterparts who lived in the desert. Kiith Somtaaw (see, KIITH SOMTAAW) also has the same difference as does Kiith Paktu (see, KIITH PAKTU). The kiithid that inhabited the deserts however, though not dark skinned, are light brown or tan at the least.

POPULATION

The only species within the Kushan Federation was that of the Kushan themselves, due to the fact that they had not developed hyperspace technology up until the very last year of their existence as a nation. For this reason our section on population will be based on the Kushan ethnicities rather then on actual species. All of these ethnicities except for a rare few are defined by the term kiith and are really extended families that have existed and lived in one place long enough to have developed semi-unique cultures and languages.

Historical Perspective. The polar kiithid. The polar kiithid share several characteristics such as fairer skin than that of the desert kiithid and that they were the most populous and therefore, the most powerful when settled in Kharak. There are several of these kiithid but the most notable is Kiith Naabal. This kiith was arguably the more powerful of the kiithid on Kharak and continued to be a powerful kiith throughout the first quarter of the first century AHL (After Hiigaran Landfall). It was thought for sometime after the discovery of the Khar-Toba (see, KHAR-TOBA EXPEDITION, THE) that the Naabal were actually descended from engineers on board the ship. Later documents found in the libraries at Hiigara proved this was true and that the Naabal once served the purpose that the LiirHra (see, KIITH LIIRHRA) now serve. Over time however the Naabal became the most powerful and technologically advanced kiith on the planet, ending the Heresy Wars (see, HERESY WARS, THE) in one swift strike. Another of the polar kiithid is the Kiith Paktu, which now has taken the place reserved for the Naabal amongst the Daiamid and is the most powerful of any of the kiithid. Originally a farming kiithid they became strong fighters and fought a successful war for their independence after colonizing the Majiiran Sea, named for their leader.
The desert kiithid. The desert kiithid are more numerous as an ethnicity but each kiith is much smaller than that of their northern and southern counterparts. In the desert life was harsh and it is thought that the desert kiithid are made up mostly of those kiithid that spread more slowly from the Khar-Toba after its eventual collapse. They all speak very similar dialects and hence a Manaani is more likely to understand the slang of a Siidim (see, KIITH SIIDIM) or Kaalel (see, KIITH KAALEL) than that of a Naabal. The desert kiithid were also locked in bitter warfare for several centuries during the religious warfare known as the Heresy Wars. The prime players in these wars were the fundamentalist and theocratic kingdoms of Kiith Gaalsien (see, KIITH GAALSIEN) and Kiith Siidim although many warrior kiithid were swept into the battles as well.
The Soban. The Soban (see, KIITH SOBAN) are a bit different from the other ethnicities because that no person is ever born into their ranks. Each Sobani is a self-imposed exile and/or refugee of his own kiith who choose to join the Grey instead of remain amongst his own blood. In the past this was usually out of lack of choice but over time it has become a great honor and tradition to join the Soban. In either case though, the Sobani are composed of almost every ethnic group and so all the languages and cultural customs of the kiithid are blended into the Grey Brotherhood. Interestingly enough, this is why the Sobani dialect was chosen as the basis for Kushan’la, the first official language of the Kushan since they left Hiigara and now in most kiithid the only Kushani dialect spoken.
The minorities. There are not many other ethnic groupings other than what have already been mentioned. However, there are some variations. For example, Kiith Somtaaw is technically a desert kiithid and culturally and linguistically they resemble the other desert kiithid. However, because they lived in the mountains they became fairer skinned and so are more likely to be mistaken for a Naabal or Paktu than a Manaani or Sjet. Also, the Manaani (see, KIITH MANAAN) themselves have several variations amongst their ethnicities and are believed to have not existed prior to the Exile. Most importantly their culture is much different than other kiithid and many of their customs were and sometimes still are alien to other kiithid aside from the Niirfa (see, KIITH NIIRFA), who were one of the vassal kiithid that originally made up Kiith Manaan.

Kushani dialects. As already specified the Kushan were the only species within the Federation and hence the culture and language were more similar than they are in the present day Hiigaran Federation (see, HIIGARAN FEDERATION, THE). However, they are still not completely similar. Though most of the kiith dialects can be understood by outsiders who know Kushan’la or even their own dialect there are some very minor differences, similar to the differences between Imperial Taiidani (the noble and upper class speech during the reign of the Imperium) and Republican Taiidani (derived from the Imperial Taiidani military slang that is in turn derived from street slang that mixed Galactic Common and Taiidani). They are not different languages, but more a sort of sub-language.
Kushan’la. Kushan’la is directly derived from the Grey Brotherhood’s own dialect from the ninth century AS and if it were not for Sobani’s constant evolution due to new arrivals to their numbers it would probably still be identical. Kushan’la’s main advantage is the fact that its ancestor, Middle Sobani, is a blend of all the different kiith dialects and hence is most similar to the other kiith dialects, making it easy to learn. Kushan’la uses the Sjet alphabet for its own literature and so is easily available to newcomers whereas the old Gaalsien heliographs (composed of over two hundred individual letters) takes several years to learn.
Naabal. The Naabal language was for many years during the Time of Reason the dialect of choice when trading or on diplomatic missions. Up until the Dust Wars (see, DUST WARS, THE) it was also the most common dialect amongst the Kushan outside of Kushan’la. The most interesting thing about the Naabal dialect is that it is rather informal compared to other dialects and has a lot of slang terms for unusual objects as well as for common ones. This is thought to be because of the secrecy the Naabal developed for some time.
Paktu. The Paktu dialect, now in common use in the military because of its simply word usage and sentence structure, is derived from the ancient farming slang used by Siidim farmer vassal kiithid up until the migration. It is based on Siidim and that is why many religious kiithid refused to use the Paktu dialect, despite the fact that the Paktu were sworn enemies of the Siidim. The few remaining Gaalsien curse the tongue and call the Paktu the children of Qwaar-Jet.
Gaalsien. Gaalsien is the most unchanged of any of the dialects and has barely changed from its ancient roots thousands of years ago. This means it is by far the most difficult of any language to learn as none of its words have simplified and neither have any of its letters. Though Kiith Gaalsien is now incredibly insignificant other religious kiithid such as the Ferril, Somtaaw, and even the Siidim use Gaalsien written religious texts as the basis of their religion and through tradition every priest and priestess must learn the language. The most curious thing about Gaalsien is that it has a large alphabet of over two hundred different letters, each meaning a different syllable, sound, and/or word.

Religion. With very, very few exceptions almost every Kushan during the Exile believed in Sajuuk, he Whose Hand Shapes What Is, as their ancestors had and their descendants still do. There were many different variations of the religion but all were essentially the same faith with minor differences in dogma and practice of worship, and certainly much more similar than the different religions throughout the galaxy. In the Kushan religion there are only three extinct heretical faiths that did not have the same pantheon as those of all the others. Overtime one prophet emerged around 114 AS that developed the basis for all modern religions of the Kushan. He was a prophet, named Paavo Siidim, that stated that each Kushan is an individual and given the power to shape his own destiny, for good or ill. Though Sajuuk and the gods can interfere as they wish they would usually reserve their judgment until you die and travel to their domain. He also said that there was good and that there was evil and that they were separated by one line, the line between chaos and order. It was said that Qwaar-Jet was the god of the underworld and that he commanded the forces of supernatural evil whilst Sajuuk commanded the forces of supernatural good. However, during times when natural evil threatened to destroy them both or chaos became too much for Qwaar-Jet to control, then the two would unite as one to defeat their enemies. This religion spread quickly and his laws as set down by the gods became the base for every legal code on Kharak. However, eventually the Siidim took a radical reform and revised their religious dogma, upsetting the powerful traders of Saju’ka, the Gaalsien, beginning the Heresy Wars. For more information see, KUSHAN RELIGION.

Demographic trends. The Kharakid life was characterized by several stages of death and birth. When the Kushan first came to Kharak their life support systems on the Khar-Toba or any other prison ship that survived the landing lost probably a good deal of people to the crashes. However, the interior of the wreckages allowed them to build magnificent cities until the overpopulation (from very high birth rates) overwhelmed them and settlements had to be made to as far away as five miles from the wreckages, making the Khar-Toba Major. Overtime the reactors collapsed from lack of nuclear material, even with extensive mining projects looking for potential materials. This forced the Kushan out of the wreckages and into the desert until the sands covered the cities completely. For a long time the death rates were most likely extremely high and nearly destroyed the Kushan people before they readapted to the life on the planet. For several years after that farming settlements created growth until again overpopulation forced people into the desert and the surplus was no longer able to make an endless growth. For this reason the Kushan population remained essentially stable until the Heresy Wars where the intense violence and genocide resulted in the desert kiithid destroying themselves until the Naabal interfered. Then during the Time of Reason the population began to grow quickly until once again, the desert provided a balance to the overpopulation.

ECONOMY

The fusion revolution. Considering that the Time of Reason was supposed to inspire scientific developments it is quite amazing that it took three hundred years for the development of fusion technology. The first century of the Time of Reason was mostly dominated by the coal and oil industry and desert outposts were constructed to extract oil from beneath the sands, oil that was several hundred million years old and dating back to before Kharak’s ecosystem had collapsed bringing about the desertification process (see, KHARAK). Coalmines were established along the mountains and natural gas reserves were found on the edges of the Kharakid deserts. After a time coal and oil was replaced by nuclear fission technology and this powered civilization from about the 10th century AS to the discovery of stable fusion in the mid-12th century. Reijo Naabal made this discovery when he was experimenting with high-energy hydrogen ions in a contained facility. To his amazement the ions seemed to under increased pressure contain themselves and generate more energy than it took to power them. Though it took immense amounts of energy to start the process to his amazement he found that it put out more than enough energy to keep itself going. Overtime this resulted in the use of fusion power plants across Kharak and they became commonplace, eventually replacing conventional drives on starships, including the Khar-Selim and Khar-Lan projects. By 1219 and the launch of the Mothership some fusion drives could run on extremely small amounts of fuel, leading frigates to require refueling only every year or so.

Agriculture. Agriculture was more a point of survival than a method of economic growth. Kharak’s few fertile lands are gathered around rivers, lakes, oceans, mountains, and on rare occasions, oasis. The first farms on Kharak were made by the Khar-Toba settlers inside and later a little outside the wreckage. It is thought, due to the lifespan of the Khar-Toba civilization, that the wreckage originally was near a small lake that has long since dried up since the gradual heating of the planet’s surface sped up several thousand years ago. This jump is still continuing today and lessens farmable land quickly and so it is essential that irrigation is immediately established on those lands. The once prominent oasis that could have been mistaken as a lake centuries ago at Faal-Toba is one of these tragedies. Now it is only a large pond and irrigation pipes must carry water from the mountains to the Niirfa capital. The same thing was happening to Saju’ka before it was flooded by the Gaalsien and it is estimated that if it still stood that its water supplies would be ninety percent imported and that the weight of the water would be over several million tons a year.

Mining. The mining industry was first important during the Heresy Wars when iron reserves began to run low in the originally iron rich valleys of the Gaalsien kingdom. For this reason several expeditions were sponsored by both the Gaalsien and Siidim to find new mineral rich areas for exploitation. However, the Somtaaw were the first to find a major iron vein and exploited it properly, using it to gain a bargain with Kiith Soban for protection. However, they were not left in peace and there were several raids into their territory, all repelled overtime. The largest of these raids was an ill-fated invasion by the Gaalsien near the end of the Heresy Wars in an attempt to regain power after the highly successful Niirfa Crusade. But due to the high success of the Soban the Somtaaw remained in control of these reserves and were eventually hired to do the same in space as asteroid miners. Most of the materials for nuclear material and construction material for the Mothership came from asteroid colonies in the outer limits of the Kharak System mined by the Somtaaw.

Industry. Industrial development of Kharak was slow until the development of desert rovers during the late 10th century and early 11th century. These rovers allowed for the deep exploration of Kharak’s surface and helped in the eventual excavation of the Khar-Toba. They also allowed for mining facilities and factories to be constructed in the desert and for cities to expand farther. The worst threat to industrial development besides the sandstorms, high temperature, and lack of water was that of the sand serpents however who were able to sneak into developing facilities and drain the blood of their victims. The serpents were extremely hard to hunt as they only emerged at night and could dig easily through the sand.

Transportation. Terrestrial transport. Hovercrafts were developed in the late-11th century by Sjet scientists who had discovered a way to use hot helium air to lift the ground slightly above the ground. Overtime this technology advanced further and developed into the common hovercraft and eventually, using Taiidan technology, the hovercraft of today. However, one of the most popular methods of travel across the desert remained the sandsail (see, SANDSAIL). Horses and mules were still used for caravans between small towns but for the most part, desert rovers replaced them.
Aerial transport. Airplanes are an important asset to the Kharakid lifestyle and economy. Planes can cross as many and more borders than the desert rovers and are quicker too. The only disadvantage they have is the lack of flat ground to construct airfields, limiting the use of airplanes as a common place transport and raising their prices significantly.

GOVERNMENT

The establishment of Fleet Intelligence. After the discovery of the Guidestone the Gaalsien and other conservative kiithid denied its authentic nature and stated that it was a fraud or that if it was real that it was not meant to be found according to Sajuuk’s word and it was because of the continuing sins of the Khar-Toba survivors that the city collapsed. However, eventually the Daiamid voted to begin the Mothership Project. One of the problems with this project however, besides the funding and the time needed to construct the ship was the need for a reliable military personnel that could handle control of the fleet and offer tactical advice to the commander of the fleet, Fleet Command (see, KARAN SJET). The result was the merging of the air force and the Daiamid government into one entity called Fleet Intelligence. Some kiithid, such as the Sjet, opposed the establishment of Fleet Intelligence as giving the military undue power in the Mothership Project. However, after Gaalsien terror attacks began on the construction there were few who objected to military intervention. Fleet Intelligence was divided into officers and conscripts. Conscripts would serve as crewmen to the ships in the fleet or pilots for the fighters whereas the officers would all serve as captains or the Fleet Intelligence Command onboard the Mothership. One of the most important figures in Fleet Intelligence history was Ex-Colonel and Flt. Admiral Pateer Paktu’sa (see, PATEER PAKTU’SA, FLT. ADMIRAL), leader during the Exodus. Beginning his record as a war hero he was an obvious choice for the leader of Fleet Intelligence and worked hard to assure the Kushan people’s safety. At least, that’s what was thought. Later he was found guilty of heinous crimes against the Kushan both on Kharak and on the Exodus and was tried for treason and conspiracy against the government (see, HIIGARAN FEDERATION, THE history). Today Fleet Intelligence still exists within the Hiigaran Federation government as the body that commands our fleets and most kiithid have their own Fleet Intelligence and have adopted the name Fleet Command for their commanders. In response to this, any Fleet Command of the Hiigaran Defense Fleet is technically Fleet Command of that same fleet.

Legislative. The Federation worked much as its descendants on Hiigara now do and it had one major political body. However, there was no Supreme Court on Kharak and this was a later establishment adopted shortly after the trial of Pateer began as a separate body that would keep the Daiamid from interfering. On Kharak the Daiamid had full authority and instead of two houses had only one, that of the kiith’sa. This was so that no kiith would have no more power than another (the second house of the New Daiamid is based on population but has less authority). This of course created several problems and allowed the Daiamid to do as it wished without balance. However, because that the Daiamid was made up of only one representative from each kiithid this meant that there was no way for any one kiith do hold more offices than another. Therefore, the Daiamid almost balanced itself out and it was only due to radical reforms by elder kiith’sa that never were passed that the young kiith’sa that succeeded them after the Exodus decided to adopt the idea and use it to raise their power rather than lower it. Thankfully this dominance by one kiith ended after the Dust Wars. But since all cases were brought before the Daiamid whether it was for a new law to be passed, a war to be declared, or a law to be vetoed, the Kharakid government had very little civil wars except for ones when one single kiith refused (as was the case with the Gaalsien) to accept the judgment of others for any reason.

CULTURE

Cultural milieu. The cultural milieu of the Kushan before the Exodus was a lot more diverse than it was before the Exile and after the Exodus. This is due to the fact that the Kushan were already beginning a gradual cultural unification that came as close as it was going to get around ten years ago and that the most religious of the kiithid (and the most diverse) were mostly destroyed in the Kharak Genocide while the indifferent or downright atheists mostly survived. However, even the Patku, Naabal, Sjet, and Manaan all have several differences as do the other kiithid that survived. During the stay on Kharak though the planet was divided between the patriotic and reformist polar kiithid (namely the Paktu and Naabal), the religious desert kiithid (the Somtaaw, Ferril, Gaalsien, and Siidim, as well as somewhat the Niirfa), the desert warrior kiithid (the Manaani, Niirfa, Soban, and Gaalsien somewhat), and the desert discoverer kiithid (the Sjet and Kaalel). Each of these kiithid had their own unique cultures.
Naabal would parade through their streets in great patriotic holidays, make magnificent mechanical wonders, and make the most excellent businessmen you ever met. The Paktu were liberal and radical in both their culture and politics and stood up for everyone while ensuring they got their way. The Somtaaw and Ferril were magnificently religious and artistic kiithid but where the Somtaaw mined the Ferril built. The Gaalsien were traders and bureaucrats while also being zealots for their cause and the Siidim were the religious reformers who brought a light to the world in the form of a world religion (though it later split). The Manaani and Niirfa both were great warriors whose home was the desert but the Manaani were raiders and the Niirfa were warrior monks. The Sobani would be the fiercest of any group but they were the fewest of the warriors for they could have no children. The Sjet were astrologers, astronomers, and alchemists all at once and discovered nearly everything there was to find but the Kaalel were their scribes who knew more than the Sjet knew and became the most reliable source for libraries. All together the magnificent world of the Kharakid culture weaved a brilliant picture never seen on Hiigara or Triistara or any other major world.

Daily life. The Kharakid Kushani’s life was that of a laborer in most cases thanks to the low supply of them in industrial works. However, a Kushani was a hard worker and would wake up early around 7 A.M. to work and would travel to the desert to work in a factory, mine, or other industrial site. Then they would have launch at 1 P.M. and as in the ancient tradition would share water and food with his comrades. At 3 or 4 P.M. he would return. The businessman, the second most common job, would wake at about 7:30 to 8 A.M. and would leave for work in the commercial part of the city and would continue the rest of the day as the laborer might though he would sit in a cubicle or talk to people instead of carrying large pieces of construction equipment. The child would normally wake at 8 and one of the parents would send them off to school where they would be taught until 3 P.M. when they would return home or go to an afterschool project, teens would often enjoy sandsailing or popular sports while younger children would go to the beach (being so dry almost any community would be very close to a water source, hence a beach would also be nearby). None of the cuisines in the desert differed much but seafood from either sea was considered a great delicacy and early on many Kushan nearly drove the marine life to extinction.

HISTORY

AFTER KHARAKID LANDFALL

The Khar-Toba civilization. Many people remember the Hiigaran Landfall due to its great mark in galactic history as well as Kushan history, the return of the Exiles. However, it should be remembered that the Kharakid Landfall is a very important part of Kushan history, even if it had no affect on a galactic scale (which in fact it did for without the Kharakid Landfall the Homeworld War wouldn’t have occurred). It was then that the Kushan found a surrogate home and set the course for their return.
It is not known exactly how the Kushan landed but it can be assumed that they crashed due to the extensive wreckage stretched for a five-mile trail from the Khar-Toba and if there were other prison ships that were not found prior to the Homeworld War than it is probable that they crashed as well. It is possible however that this wreckage is material for housing but this is unlikely as archaeologists only uncovered a one to two mile radius settlement area outside of the Khar-Toba’s wreckage.
The story behind the Khar-Toba civilization, as far as archaeologists could peace together, most likely follows this course. Several thousand years ago, when the Khar-Toba landed (probably using minimal-capacity jump drives at the demand of the Taiidan) the Kushan survivors of the crash were left inside the wreckage of the ship and began to make a shelter out of it, eventually burrowing underneath the sands to avoid the tense temperatures (the Khar-Toba was found in the Great Desert near the equator where in some places the temperatures before the Exodus were near boiling). However, it is also likely there was a now dry lake near the Khar-Toba and that here the Kushan made their home and drank from its waters.
The culture of the Hiigaran Empire most likely was left intact and undisturbed by the Exile at first and the old religion (believed to be somewhat similar to modern Kushan beliefs) would have been the unquestionable faith of the Kushan and the only way to keep their sanity by making them believe that they were the Sajuuk-khar and that Sajuuk and the gods would not abandon them. Their technology would mostly be intact and they could establish mines to fuel the demanding reactor core. The Naabal are believed now to have been put in charge of this affair while the Sjet might have been, much to some people’s surprise and shock, the major religious kiith of the time and there is evidence to support this with Sjeti insignia across religious documents on board the Khar-Toba.
Overtime however, not only did the temperatures worsen but it became clear that they also had to expand. So by building underground tunnels they built small openings to the sun and made arable farms while living underground during the day and farming during the night. They probably still had some weapons to repel predators but for the most part it is likely that their population began to dwindle as they expanded.
The civilization eventually began to lose its technological wonder as the technology collapsed and materials for the machines ran out. Soon it is quite possible that the reactor core was the only machine left aside from basic utensils such as lamps and electricity. This most likely led to major migrations from the Khar-Toba in search of raw materials or simply looking for water as the lake began to dry up quickly. It is most likely that about two thousand and three hundred years ago (according to carbon dating of materials in the wreckage) that the Khar-Toba’s reactor collapsed and those few that remained in the wreckage were forced to leave as well.
Historians have been interested in the Khar-Toba for many reasons and it is now a common goal of many Sjet to lead an expedition back to Kharak to look for the Khar-Toba’s wreckage and possibly other similar materials. Though Kharak is now mostly inhospitable it had cooled down a great deal and a well-funded expedition could make some extraordinary finds. Artifacts such as the Star Metal Scrolls are also high prizes of these archaeologists as many think they are related (and with good reason) to the Khar-Toba civilization.

The rebirth of civilization. We can guess what happened to those that left the Khar-Toba though we are not sure. Most likely they wandered from their home and towards the edges of the desert in all directions. They likely knew that most would not survive and would find no haven for them. But there was hope, and they were the Sajuuk-khar, even if that belief was beginning to weaken.
Those that did find shelter must have found it in the Khuntala Mountains that the Somtaaw later inhabited, hence the reason that the mountains were inhabited by so many mysterious artifacts and ruins that the Somtaaw claimed to be constructed by the first Kushan that Sajuuk placed upon the world, not far from the truth in reality. Therefore it is possible that the Somtaaw were the first to successfully find haven and hence became more convinced that Sajuuk truly was on their side (perhaps the Sjet left last and only barely survived and this is why they later turned from their faith, at least partially).
The new Somtaaw civilization must have built dozens of farms and temples to thank Sajuuk for his kindness. However, the workforce was limited and the Somtaaw must have been unable to keep up the build up and their civilization fell apart quickly. For several hundred years civilization did not grow and perished and the survivors of the Khar-Toba’s collapse must have resorted to primitive forms of farming along riverbanks and mountainsides.
Around 1600 BS however there seems to have been a change. One of the kiithid along the Tears of Sajuuk, the largest river outside of the Polar Regions, began to uncover ancient tools along the banks of the river, including tablets and plows. Using these tools the elders of the kiith revealed other treasures that they had kept secrets. Writing and agriculture, now rediscovered became the greatest arts of this kiith and they began to build the first Kushan cities in centuries.
This kiith was known as the Gaalsien and it began to expand along the river and later outside, subduing the more primitive of the kiithid and bringing with them their interpretation of the ancient religion of the Kushan as well as mighty swords, forged in iron. They developed a religion that believed that Sajuuk had shaped the iron precisely for the Gaalsien to use, hence the later name, Sajuuk, Whose Hand Shapes What Is.
The Gaalsien, with little to stop their progress, had advanced from he Neolithic Era to the Iron Age in barely over half a millennium. By 800 BS they controlled the entire river as well as that of several desert oasis.

ARCHAIC HISTORY

The rise of the Gaalsien Empire and surrounding kingdoms. The Gaalsien, still not completely religious but very imperialistic and wealthy, saw an opportunity to spread from their small kingdom further out into the desert. After contacting some of the early kiithid that would in a few centuries to form Kiith Manaan, the Gaalsien learned that the river was not the only in the desert and they reasoned that though they were certainly the spark of civilization that the other kiithid must have arisen as a result of Gaalsien triumph and that they must determine whether the foreigners were equal to the Gaalsien or not.
These other kiithid that had begun to advance past the Neolithic Age included Kiith Ferril, Kiith Somtaaw, and Kiith Sjet. Ironically enough the first two would later become great religious kiithid as the Gaalsien had but Kiith Sjet, being the last to leave the Khar-Lan (several hundred years after the first), they had fallen the least and their civilization had not yet lost writing and with the expansionism of the Gaalsien, trade had spread to them and they had begun to recover from the collapse of civilization. Even so, they were mostly unaware of their roots and had mostly forgotten any part of their past, merely trying to survive.
The Gaalsien scouts arrived around 600 BS and determined that the other kiithid were unworthy of Sajuuk and that they had fallen, calling the Sjet the worst of the lot, an arrogant and heretical kiith that had not merely forgotten Sajuuk, but had renounced Him and His family. The Gaalsien kiith’sa was outraged and ordered an immediate incursion into the Sjet. This turned out to be a mistake and the Gaalsien, not yet ready to cross the desert in large waves lost most of their forces to the desert’s unpredictable weather. When they arrived they were immediately destroyed by the panicking Sjet who went to their weapons as fast as they could and shut off the Gaalsien from food and water until they starved or died of thirst. When the Gaalsien received no word from their expeditionary force they determined that the desert was a barrier put down by the gods to keep the Gaalsien from harming the Sjet and determined that these barbarians must have a purpose.
The next force that was sent to the Sjet was guarded more carefully and arrived peacefully, signing a trade agreement with the Sjet that would benefit both kingdoms. The Sjet’sa thought for a while and after sometime decided that it was in his kiith’s best interests to befriend the Gaalsien. However, trade was still a difficulty and the agreement did not take full affect until the domestication of the horse.
The other two kiithid were just as fortunate, if not more for they received little contact from the Gaalsien after the attack on the Sjet. The Somtaaw, the furthest of the kiithid from the Gaalsien, had begun to revive their civilization and build magnificent temples to Sajuuk. The Gaalsien diplomats reviewed the reports by the scouts and determined that the Somtaaw were worthy of Sajuuk and could be established as allies. However, little interest was put into the Somtaaw and they were mostly ignored by the Gaalsien until the Heresy Wars.
The Ferril on the other hand adopted the Gaalsien religion immediately after receiving word of the Gaalsien expansionism. This automatically protected them from the Gaalsien wrath and gave them exclusive rights towards the Gaalsien market which still produced the most agricultural surplus of any nation.
For two hundred years there was peace with the Gaalsien seeing no new reasons to expand. They were ambitious and greedy but they had more than enough to fulfill these traits and they laid back in their own gold. Overtime however the Sjet and Ferril grew as powerful as the Gaalsien themselves and they had to take action to ensure Gaalsien dominance over the trade routes.
In 121 BS according to Gaalsien records the kiith’sa ordered that a large force be sent to the south and north to subdue the kiithid surrounding the Sjet and Ferril, forming a buffer zone against them. In the process of this the Gaalsien religious caste proclaimed that any and every infidel would either join the religion, pay a high tax, or be stripped of three strips of skin on his back and exiled to the Great Desert.
The Sjet were outraged and mobilized their own army to stop the advance of the Gaalsien. The Ferril, however, much to Kiith Sjet’s dismay, surrendered to the Gaalsien authority and allowed the Gaalsien to form the buffer zone. In 119 BS the Sjet, angry at both Gaalsien and Ferril, launched a preemptive strike on a Gaalsien outpost and destroyed it utterly, proclaiming that if the Gaalsien wanted to destroy the rights of the other kiithid they would have to go through the Sjet first.
This was exactly the opportunity the Gaalsien were looking for. By now the trade routes had become safe enough that an army could travel along them without much worry about the desert’s harsh conditions. The Gaalsien moved quickly and without caution and marched without stop aside from a six hour sleep and a half hour meal and reached the Sjet borders before they could react.
Within in a few months the Sjet were fleeing their own fortifications as the Gaalsien won again and again, convincing the people of Kharak further that Sajuuk had blessed the Gaalsien. But as the Gaalsien neared the capital of Kiith Sjet they began to slow and their soldiers, despite numerous victories, began to grow demoralized and weary from lack of sleep and food. At this time, one of Sjet’s few allies decided to take a stand.
A minor warrior kiithid on the edge of the Sjet borders and living in one of the least hospitable parts of the savannahs the Siidim were able to rally a few soldiers and make a quick raid into the rebellious vassal kiithid of the Gaalsien, managing to rouse enough of a rabble to force an entry towards Ka’jaan.
The Gaalsien panicked and hired assassins to try and take out the Siidim’s leader, Iika Siidim’sa. Iika proved to be a very effective warrior and through guerilla warfare surrounded Ka’jaan and began a siege without siege weapons, forcing merchants and soldiers to turn back from Ka’jaan. Even so, the Siidim nearly failed when the Gaalsien launched an offensive force to draw the Siidim away from Saju’ka. But when their plans were intercepted by a rebel the Siidim sent word to the rebels to intercept the Gaalsien convoy.
By 117 BS the Gaalsien had surrendered to the Siidim but refused to give in to the Sjet and fighting continued at the center of Kiith Sjet. Finally the Siidim and Gaalsien came to an agreement to what was to happen to the Sjet, without actually notifying the Sjet’sa. Gaalsien would take one third of the Sjet territory if they recognized the Sjet as free of interference by any kiithid for the rest of time. The Siidim ordered that the Gaalsien swear this upon Sajuuk’s name. Reluctantly, the Gaalsien agreed and quickly occupied the Sjet territory.
When the Sjet found out about this they were outraged. But with Gaalsien and Siidim forces surrounding them they had little choice but to bow down to their agreement, unable to fight both Gaalsien and Siidim and unwilling to face even harsher terms.

The prophet. Widely recognized by all sects of the Kushan religion, Paavo Siidim, the prophet, is not only the bringer of a temporarily universal religion on Kharak, but also the cause of a turning point in Kushan history upon Kharak.
By this point the Siidim and Gaalsien were well at peace and though border conflicts between one another’s vassal kiithid occurred, neither kiith ever fought the other. The Sjet had grown used to their position and became the people we know them as today, the scientists and philosophers, diplomatically immune to any situation.
The Siidim had become more and more like the Gaalsien, keeping their warrior spirit but delving further into Gaalsien culture, adopting Gaalsien fashion, experimenting in Gaalsien rituals, and ultimately, adopting the Gaalsien religion to an extent. The Somtaaw remained the only of the kiithid to openly reject Gaalsien dogma but because of their minor importance they were ignored for the most part.
In the year 92 BS, a boy was born to a miller family in Kitiila, a minor Siidim town near the more arable parts of Siidim territory. Since the Sjet-Gaalsien War the Siidim had expanded until they were about half the size of the Gaalsien and Kitiila was one of the towns that had been conquered by the Siidim. Oddly enough, it was that day that was the twenty fifth anniversary of peace between the Siidim and Gaalsien and the boy was welcomed by settlers as a symbol of peace.
The boy, named Paavo, was anything but peaceful during his childhood and was one of those boys that would chase little girls with sticks to scare them, though never intending to hurt them physically. Later in life, working on the mill, he had become strong and muscular and got into fights with other boys in the village. Finally, when he killed one in self-defense he was exiled from the town in shame, as the boy had been the son of the mayor of the town.
Angry, Paavo sought shelter but none would give any to an exile of his own kiith. At this time the Soban, who would have gladly taken him thanks to his skills as a fighter, did not exist and Paavo was forced to move on and on through the desert until he collapsed as the stories tell, from lack of water, food, and rest.
When Paavo awoke he had been rescued by a Manaani trader though he did not know it at the time, for the Manaan were very secretive at this point regarding themselves and were a minor collection of small kiithid who had abandoned the farms for the free life of the desert. Paavo spent a few months with them and came to believe that Kharak was not hell, but that it was Sajuuk’s image of himself and that the sands were an ocean that reflected Sajuuk’s mind. From the Manaan he learned how to live in the desert and how to survive without water for days.
In total he spent a year and a half with the Manaan but left them when their band was attacked. He was separated from his companions in the battle and wandered again throughout the desert, fortunately close to the Khuntala Mountains, the home of the benevolent Somtaaw.
When the Somtaaw first received him he was thought to be a heretic, a man who worshipped the desert and followed the religion of the Gaalsien. However, Paavo convinced the Somtaaw through hard work and two years of service that he was worthy of their attention. They thought about it, and welcomed him as an apprentice to the Priesthood of Jakuula, one of the Somtaaw’s most revered gods and second only to Sajuuk.
Working in small shrines Paavo came to respect the Somtaaw artistic touch, something that only the Somtaaw and Ferril shared. Unlike the Gaalsien and his own kiith, the Siidim, Paavo saw that the Somtaaw did not build their shrines or temples as merely a government building, cold and covered in stone. When Paavo lived with the Somtaaw he came to respect their culture and their beautification of the temples and according to many historians, became a convert of the Somtaaw religion.
It was with this mission that Paavo left the Somtaaw, not as a Siidim, though he would have to reclaim that title, but as one of them and with his name changed to Taavet, to which he is still known as to the Somtaaw today. He had read the Star Metal Scrolls himself though he had sworn to the Somtaaw leaders that he would not reveal their secrets to those who did not believe in Jakuul, and set out to convert others.
At first he was ignored and signed off as a Somtaaw priest who had decided to break the silent barrier between the Somtaaw and Gaalsien. However, people began to listen to him, to what he said were the morals of the gods, and how life under the Gaalsien were oppressive and that only by following Jakuul, the God of the Sun and Healing, could you unlock your true potential. Some felt that this was a challenge to Sajuuk but Taavet convinced them that Sajuuk was still supreme, but that Jakuul was the healer, the one who protected mankind from the evil manifested in Qwaar-Jet.
As his followers grew, so did the fear of him amongst the Gaalsien government, who were his prime targets for conversion. They began to order watches to ensure that any man preaching “dangerous sedition and heresy” would be caught red handed and reported to the Gaalsien for execution. Taavet himself was caught nearly a dozen times and arrested every time he was caught and in fact, allowed them to catch him, believing that drawing attention to himself would bring more to Jakuul.
It worked and the more they punished him, the more others followed him. His followers would rescue him from prison right before his execution every time and Tahvo Gaalsien’sa became paranoid, sure that the enemy was all around him. However, it became imperative for Taavet to flee the Gaalsien before they sent the army to kill him once and for all.
When he fled from Gaalsien territory he came into the desert for the third and final time and believed he heard Sajuuk speak to him. Sajuuk, according to the legend, told him that he was right to spread the word of Jakuul but that he must also return to his homeland as Paavo again and tell them that Sajuuk would come in the future and that he would protect the Kushan against the great evil that was to come, the essence of Qwaar-Jet, that Jakuul could protect the Kushan until this time, but when the great evil arrived, only Sajuuk would save them.
Immediately, Taavet abandoned his old name and proclaimed himself Paavo again, though only in secret. Traveling to his home in the Siidim he revealed himself after joining in a duel with the mayor’s son, saying that he was Paavo and Taavet at the same time and that he was the prophet who was to spread the word of Sajuuk and that of Jakuul.
The Siidim immediately fell down on him but after he and his followers had fought off three complete regiments, holding off in his hometown of Kiitila, the Siidim proclaimed that they would relieve him of his crimes if he spoke out against the Gaalsien as the enemy and the beginning of the End Time for the Siidim leaders had amassed and army and were ready to attack the Gaalsien at any time in a war.
But Paavo refused to be used and said that if they wanted him to give up the fight they would have to admit their sins and bow down to Sajuuk for forgiveness and allow Jakuul’s light to heal them. They refused and the battle continued until Paavo himself was killed in the battle, horrifying his companions.
But his mark was set and the Siidim quickly regretted their decision. The rioters throughout the street nearly destroyed the Siidim who barely were able to put down the rebellion. Finally, the Book of the Sands, the holy book written by Paavo’s apprentices (for Paavo himself was illiterate, despite his Somtaaw training) was brought to the palace where the Siidim’sa sat and the book was dictated to the leaders of Kiith Siidim until one of the Siidim generals usurped the throne and disposed his master, taking over and issuing peace by formally adopting the laws set down by the Book of Sands as the law in Kiith Siidim.
Many kiithid, including the Gaalsien and Sjet mocked the Siidim for bowing down to public unrest and not putting it down. However, Kiith Somtaaw hailed them and welcomed them into their midst and declared the day of Paavo’s birth a holiday, only ten years after his death in the year 48 BS.
The Gaalsien soon forgot their mocking as the Prophet’s followers began to stop emigrating from the Gaalsien lands and stayed there, protesting the strict laws the Gaalsien had set up to stop the spread of what was now called the Taaveti movement. Hard as the Gaalsien tried they soon became the central breeding ground for the Taavetists and watched helplessly as their own government offices became filled up with secret members of the movement.
But unlike as it was with the Gaalsien, the conversion to Paavo’s prophecies was a peaceful one and when the Gaalsien kiith’sa was left without an heir in 8 BS because of a plague that had just swept through the Gaalsien he proclaimed that his closest relative, whoever that might be, would become the new kiith’sa.

The construction of Saju’ka. It turned out that Antero’s closest relative was to many people’s surprise, Paavo’s own grandson-in-law, Kaarl. Kaarl was a peaceful man and was not the image of his stunning grandfather-in-law, the strong and muscular Taavet of many praises. He was quiet and tried to disconnect himself from his connection to Taavet, allowing him to have married the late kiith’sa’s niece. When he discovered he was the last remaining heir to the Gaalsien he took on the name Gaalsien himself and divorced his old wife, marrying a new one that brought him an heir.
He also established that not only was the Taaveti religion legal but that temples would now be constructed across the Gaalsien kingdom to establish the religion’s presence. Those that objected lost their jobs, and sometimes, in more drastic circumstances, their heads.
Kaarl also changed his name to a more fitting Gaalsien name, trying to make the Gaalsien people comfortable with a foreigner on the throne and called himself Maiin, a popular Gaalsien name though few kiith’sid have ever been named Maiin. He issued another order, giving him complete control over the Gaalsien economy and regulated it to favor the Siidim, a move that while it increased peace between the two empires, lessened the balance of power between them.
In 6 BS, only two years into his rule, Maiin issued that a great city be built, in the honor of Sajuuk and to erase all the tyranny of the old Gaalsien rulers. He proclaimed that such a city would be name Saju’ka, literally “of Sajuuk” and gathered the best engineers from Kiith Gaalsien and the vassal Kiith Ferril to build a magnificent city that he hoped all would envy.
The construction did not begin however, until 0 AS when the funds for the necessary construction became readily available. Until that time Maiin spent his time buildings small temples to Jakuul and Sajuuk across the Gaalsien kingdom and betrothed his son to a Siidim princess to soften relationships between the two great kiithid. He disarmed the forces along the Gaalsien-Siidim border and the Siidim followed suite. He sent diplomats to the Sjet to offer them land in Kiith Gaalsien if they formed a special deal with him. All in all, he was a good ruler and was able to maintain peace during his rule.
When the construction of Saju’ka began however, there was some opposition. There were still many orthodox merchants against the new religion and they used every opportunity they had to destroy the construction of Saju’ka. They hired several mercenaries along the border of the desert to destroy Saju’ka and sabotage cost the Gaalsien several valuable lives, including the Great Architect Vilhelm Gaalsien’sa, a cousin of Maiin.
Maiin’s reactions to these attacks were violent and he ordered that anybody found speaking sedition was to be reported to the Gaalsien kiith’sa’da immediately or the one who had discovered the plot would be just as guilty as the conductor. He initiated a night watch program were officers of the Gaalsien would patrol the streets, looking for enemies of the new order and arrest them.
The construction of Saju’ka was not even complete however upon Maiin’s death, the central city was not even halfway completed and the exterior suburbs had not been started. It was a project that cost the Gaalsien vast amounts of money and many critics began to question Maiin’s expensive projects. However, Maiin’s son, Moreus, continued the project for several years until his own death in 46.
Moreus’ own son, Moreus III finally finished the construction but only a year and a half before his own death, seeing the entire city completed in the year 92. It was a great sense of triumph for the Gaalsien and Moreus III was the first to sleep in the Great Palace of Saju’ka, beginning a tradition that would continue until Saju’ka’s destruction in the year 717.

The Golden Age. The Golden Age of Kharak is best described to have occurred during the period between 75 (the completion of the Great Temple of Sajuuk) and 250 (the assassination of the Gaalsien kiith’sa). Ironically enough the Golden Age, while it is a time of peace, economic prosperity, and general tolerance by all the kiithid, is characterized by ecological disasters, furious sandstorms, and the harshest period of Kharakid life in the desert recorded.
The reason it is this golden age is that when the first storms began to hit around 52 there were few resources to spare at the time for food and shelter and the economic hardships hit all of the kiithid aside from the isolationist Somtaaw and nomadic desert wanderers (already accustomed to such conditions) dramatically. The construction of Saju’ka and the maintenance of trade links between the Gaalsien and other kiithid were too important at the time to spare anything for those starving on the edge of civilization.
But when the completion of the Great Temple came the Gaalsien suddenly found that the majority of their resources could be spared to consolidate and hold back for harder times. The construction of Saju’ka could have been completed within two years but it dragged on until 92 because that the Gaalsien suddenly had a higher priority, the welfare of their people.
Moreus III, renown for being the only Gaalsien kiith’sa before the Time of Reason to live over eighty, was soon finding that even his food supplies were being rationed and at this time decided something was going drastically wrong and ordered that a new commission be set up, a commission to oversee food supplies and found that the Gaalsien crops along the Tears of Sajuuk were failing horribly and that he had to stop the ascending drought.
Because that rainfall was decreasing at a rapid pace and the desert was consuming the savannah he ordered the construction of the Great Canal. It was a large complex of aqueducts and reservoirs that extended along the desert for hundreds of miles, from the Khuntala Mountains to the city of Saju’ka. Up until the Burning of Kharak (aka the Kharak Genocide) this Great Canal continued to flow water from lakes and oasis to areas along Kharak and eventually became the greatest architectural piece and Kharakid history, spanning the entire length of Kharak from Tiir in the north to Majiir-Toba in the south. Visible from space with just the naked eye it was the pride of engineers and architects of over eleven centuries.
Another of the many acts to relieve the Kushan people by Moreus III was the Farmers’ Rights Act, which gave farmers rights over their buyers and allowed farmers to form unions that increased cooperation and hence growth of their crops. Crop rotation became necessary and a regulated and healthy diet was formed based on the three seasons of growing and climate on Kharak, Cool (plant roots and beans, grow grain, harvest fruits), Dry (plant fruits, grow roots and beans, harvest grain), and Wet (plant grain, grow fruits, harvest roots and beans).
The best thing that happened to the farmers however was the general decline and extinction of several plant-eating pests that had lived in the outer savannahs where the largest farms were. By 250 and the end of the Golden Age only a handful of crop pests were left, most destroyed by the desertification of their habitats.
During this time of growth, which reached its peak circa 140, the Gaalsien became the most powerful of the kiithid once again and began to monopolize their hold over trading and agriculture, having the greatest supply of resources. Whereas the Gaalsien had been the first to fall prey to the ecological disasters, they were the first and best to react to the changes while the Sjet and Siidim mostly ignored them until they were already dependent on Gaalsien sources.
Because of the dependence on Gaalsien products the other kiithid began to decline in wealth and power and became vassals of Kiith Gaalsien while the Gaalsien simply became more and more powerful, gathering the wealth of all the other kiithid under their domain, becoming the only kiithid in known history to completely control the affairs of the other kiithid and within short time there was no way for any kiithid to object to a Gaalsien decision, even the Sjet became helpless and their diplomatic immunity was useless compared to their helplessness in the search for survival.
But despite what may seem like Gaalsien tyranny and imperialism, the Golden Age was a great time for the Kushan people. It was during the Golden Age that the Manaan formed on the edges of the deserts and were forgotten for a hundred years before their reappearance. It was during the Golden Age that the Somtaaw opened their doors to visitors and the emigration of artists from the Gaalsien Empire and other kiithid began, starting the Shimmering Path, renown for holding the most beautiful and magnificent temples throughout all of Kharak. It was during the Golden Age that the roots for the Heresy Wars began with the split between Gaalsien and Siidim dogma a few years before the end of the Golden Age, resulting in chaos between the rulers of the Gaalsien, and their kin.
In 238 the Gaalsien priest caste, which had remained the most powerful of the castes outside of the royalty for generations, discovered a certain tablet in the Book of the Sands referring to Kharak as the supreme creation of Sajuuk, the image of Sajuuk himself. The priest who discovered this, High Priest Niiko Gaalsien realized with some horror that this could be taken to be in direct contradiction with the story of creation earlier in the book, which told that Sajuuk had created heaven and had exiled from the Kushan from it because they were not willing to give up their sinful ways. Niiko debated this with himself for quite awhile before reporting what he had found to his companions.
They looked over what he had discovered and found that he was right, much to their surprise. They looked again and again but found that Paavo had either contradicted himself, lied, or been copied down wrong by his scribes. They tried to keep the blasphemy to themselves but over time it leaked out and the whole world erupted in debate and riots spread to the temples, some even claiming that the End Time was upon them.
Realizing that the violence was getting out of hand Paavo II called a meeting between the religious leaders of Kharak to Saju’ka in the year 246 and told the representatives of the Ferril, Somtaaw, Siidim, and Gaalsien priesthood to work this out once and for all. The Somtaaw flatly refused to come to the meeting, calling all the other representatives heretics and students whom had misinterpreted the Prophet’s message, whom they still knew as Tevaat.
The Ferril, Siidim, and Gaalsien messengers did show up however at the meeting and began to debate profoundly on what the issue was at hand. It was clear that the Gods’ own messenger could not be in error and so he had clearly not contradicted himself. This left only the option that he had lied or that he had been misinterpreted as the Somtaaw had claimed. If he had lied, he must have done so to protect the Kushan from themselves and so there was no way to tell if he had. So after many weeks of debate the priesthood of each kiith determined that he had been misinterpreted.
Then came the real question, did he mean that Kharak was the perfected version of Sajuuk and created in his own image, the unknowing heaven, or had the Kushan been exiled from paradise because of their arrogance? The Gaalsien were the first to decide and stated that while the creation story of the Kushan was only mentioned once, that Paavo had clearly stated again and again that Kharak was the perfected image of Sajuuk and hence this was the right answer, that Kharak had and always would be the home of the Kushan.
The Ferril, eager to please their Gaalsien lords also approved this answer and it seemed as though the debate was over. But the Siidim, who controlled one fifth of the religious priesthood, enough to turn the tables on the Gaalsien and Ferril decision as the Somtaaw had left their vote null, stated that because that the Kushan people were imperfect and not free of sin that the logical answer was that the Kushan had been exiled.
The Gaalsien were outraged and found that the necessary three quarters vote to determine a clear answer was unavailable. They demanded at once that the Siidim reverse their decision and atone for their blasphemy. In anger the Siidim countered that Paavo was of their kiith and therefore that they were better suited to interpret his message. The Gaalsien representatives apparently sneered in return and taunted the Siidim by saying that it was not the family that mattered as the Siidim had renounced Paavo themselves and that it was only the message. “After all,” Niiko reportedly laughed. “If the Siidim are the chosen people of Sajuuk then why is it that the Gaalsien rule the world?”
This was too much for the Siidim and they formally broke relations with the Gaalsien and Ferril and isolated themselves from those they called heinous and unforgivable heretics, the servants of Qwaar-Jet. However, Paavo II was not pleased with what he had heard about the diplomatic break off and scolded the priesthood indiscriminately for ruining a hearty relationship between the Siidim and Gaalsien and exiled several of the “heretics”, bringing the Siidim-Gaalsien relationship to a temporary cool in 149.
But no matter who was the more powerful, the people stood by the religious caste and denounced their kiith’sa as a branded heretic and blasphemer and rioted in the streets. Paavo came out one day to quiet the crowd with his troops but he was stabbed in the back by his own wife, who had an affair with one of the men Paavo had executed and had just received her vengeance. She later bore a child to the late priest and named him after his father, Antero, beginning the so-called holy rule of Kiith Gaalsien that continued until the line’s extinction in the Kharak Genocide.

THE HERESY WARS

The buildup. The buildup of Gaalsien and Siidim forces prior to the Heresy Wars began almost immediately after the split within the Tevaati religion. Both Gaalsien and Siidim continued to argue while the Somtaaw continued their isolationist policy and ignored both, continuing their faith in Jakuul, leaving Sajuuk the position as head god and eventual savior, but unimportant until the End Time.
The Gaalsien and Siidim both took advantage of iron rich portions of their kingdoms and exploited them fully, virtually enslaving the peasants that had once lived under their benevolent rule. To make matters worse both the Gaalsien and Siidim pronounced that a good majority of their peasantry were heretics and horrible trials were played out and the vile corruption cost thousands of lives. Eventually it became necessary for a peasant to imitate the Gaalsien and Siidim in every way or else risk being accused of heresy, a far worse crime than treason, rape, or murder.
During the Gaalsien and Siidim attempt to find better weapons siege weaponry was perfected and gunpowder was first experimented with, mostly unsuccessfully. Horse breeding became more profitable than any other business as the demand for cavalry grew intensely.
Furthermore, the buildup was not merely a military one but an economic and religious one as well. To prepare for war the Gaalsien and Siidim also built up religious resentment amongst their vassal kiithid and made minor changes to dogma to further upset their enemies. The Siidim passed the infamous Clean Water Act and the Gaalsien themselves passed a just as discriminating act, the Prayer Before Death Act that stated that for every man that did not pray as according to the Gaalsien tradition and did not attend mass, two would be killed in his family.
The economic buildup was quieter but just as strong. The Gaalsien began to monopolize what little control they still had over the market of Kharak and began to push their farming vassals further, taxing them heavily to pay for the massive war machine but also opening the market to foreign merchants to bring in new products. It was a boom and the Gaalsien market rose steadily. But it wasn’t big enough.
The Siidim were just as quick to monopolize what they had. They had significantly less arable land than the Gaalsien did but held the second largest iron reserve on Kharak, below only the isolationist Somtaaw who still did not know what treasure lay beneath them, worshipping Jakuul peacefully if a little controversially. Using what iron reserves they had they took their surplus and sold at it at extremely high prices and because of the sudden arms race many became dependent on Siidim sources, despite the high price and the Siidim market rose much more quickly than the Gaalsien one did.
Most importantly, during this buildup and the numerous conflicts that sprouted throughout it some important events happened. The Manaan first revealed themselves to the farming kiithid and became a kiith in their own right. The Niirfa broke off from the Manaani and formed the legendary assassin order of the Shaa-Tal. Soban the Red abandoned his kiith and formed the Sobani, who would become important during the wars to follow. Most importantly of all, the two future rulers of Kharak, the Paktu and Naabal left the desert for the Polar Regions and grew in population quickly from the rich and fertile land along the sea.

The Paktu War. The Paktu War is the obvious prelude to the Heresy Wars and was a result of the Great Migration and following smaller migrations. By the time it started, the year 698 the Siidim and Gaalsien had already fought several minor conflicts but despite their differences in dogma they considered the one thing that was a great threat to them than each other was rebellion and it was easy to believe that the Paktu and their companions in self-exile, were rebels.
No expedition was quite successful though until 698 when thousands of Gaalsien troops poured on to the Albegiido plain and broke through the Paktu lines. Kim Paktu’sa, leader of the Paktu at the time, managed to rally his troops and barely hold back the angry and well-trained and armed armies of the largest of any kiithid.
Though traditionally the story goes that Kim Paktu successfully repelled the Gaalsien and Siidim by himself, a fanciful story that is often told, the truth is, according to most documents by other kiithid, that the Paktu called for the help of one of their allies when they heard the Siidim and Gaalsien had arrived, he sent a message by his fastest sandsails to the Niirfa, a kiith that had assisted in the First Migration. The ruler at the time, Gaaltar, saw this as a great opportunity and rallied his army and crossed the desert, hitting the Siidim and Gaalsien in the flank repeatedly before they finally met the Paktu troops in battle.
The war lasted barely six months and the two kiithid retreated almost immediately from heavy casualties and most of those who fled did not return home, killed by the Niirfa who had no love for deserters, enemy or not.
The result from the Paktu War was the fact that it not only assured Paktu independence but also showed other kiithid that the Gaalsien and Siidim were not invincible and could be defeated. It was a victory not just for Kiith Paktu, but for all kiithid.
Most importantly of all, the Paktu realized they could not remain isolated and together with the Niirfa came into the open to directly interfere with the outer world, bringing about a great rise to power and leaving the Naabal alone in isolation.

The Niirfa Pauu’ra. The interesting thing about the Paktu War is that until recently it was considered a minor battle in many during the mid first millennia AS. However, most historians now agree that it was not the Siidim-Gaalsien War in 510, which was followed by nearly a century of peace afterwards but the Niirfa Pauu’ra which started a series of religious wars that would continue until the Time of Reason that is actually the start of the Heresy Wars. This start came in 740 with the launching of a massive crusade against the Gaalsien.
The events leading up the Niirfa Pauu’ra are simple enough. Gaaltar, having successfully expanded the Niirfa from their secluded home in Faal-Toba began to take control of the sandsail routes between Paktu and the other kiithid, bringing the Niirfa not only riches but a formidable sandsail navy. Also, the alliance with the Paktu had given the Niirfa farming land along the Majiiran Sea, something they were happy to have.
When Gaaltar resigned from his position as kiith’sa at the age of sixty-three in 736 he gave control of his kiith to his own son, Tehiir, an ambitious kiith’sa that though he did not have Shaa-Tal training like his father he was an excellent leader and had a brilliant tactical mind thanks to going on expeditions with his father.
In 740, after the Gaalsien began sanctions on kiithid that did not acknowledge Gaalsien supremacy and the Gaalsien dogma, Tehiir, despite ruling a minor kiith, sent ambassadors to the Gaalsien to demand a former apology and the withdrawal of these trade sanctions. When the Gaalsien refused Tehiir formed his own blockade of the Banded Desert and let no one pass without breaking relations with the Gaalsien. Of course, since the Gaalsien were immensely unpopular this was fairly successful and the Niirfa made quite a market.
Yet the Gaalsien continued their sanctions and sent a raiding force to pick off forces along the Niirfa border. Seeing an opportunity the Siidim allied with the Niirfa and monopolized their iron industry to allies of the Niirfa for low prices. The Somtaaw prices skyrocketed as a result and only the Soban were left dependent on Somtaaw iron though eventually the Siidim ploy would backfire when iron ran low.
Then Tehiir, along with several of his generals including his lover (unrevealed until the birth of their daughter) Ninssa Niirfa planned for a military venture into Gaalsien territory with the Siidim, Paktu, Manaan, and even the Soban, the first time they had ever gone to war on their own behalf, and perhaps the last before the Beast War (see, BEAST WAR, THE). They planned to take the farming land along the two largest rivers, Klaazkal River and the Tears of Sajuuk, both within the Gaalsien Empire.
The Battle of Klaazkal opened the first major battle of the war when the combined Siidim and Niirfa warriors gathered along the Gaalsien river and completely defeated the Gaalsien army by power of numbers and zeal. Food was seized from the farms and irrigation ditches destroyed, starting a drought across a good portion of the Gaalsien land. It looked good for the Niirfa.
As time went on the Niirfa continued to near closer and closer towards the Gaalsien capital of Saju’ka, stating that once the banners of the warrior kiithid rose about it there would be freedom on Kharak. But just when they thought they were on the verge of victory the resources of the campaign stopped short and they had to halt their march across the desert, giving the Gaalsien just enough time to mount a counter attack, forming a temporary alliance with the Somtaaw and launching a counter attack into Siidim territory alongside the Ferril and actually seizing the capital, throwing the kiith’sa out into the desert.
Paralyzed by the shock of the counter attack Siidim support stopped fast and the Gaalsien managed to barely pay off the Soban, leaving only the Manaan, Niirfa, and Paktu in alliance against the most powerful of the kiithid. Despite their power they fell back against the renewed morale of the Gaalsien and the sheer numbers of their cities. Eventually, the frontline changed and they began to retreat back into their own territory.
Tehiir, desperately seeking victory hired a Sobani to mount a new campaign, paying him with a good portion of the spoils recovered from the early success of the Pauu’ra. The Sobani engineered an excellent plan and sent the armies into nine squadrons and attacked the Gaalsien from every side but refusing to attack his allies in the Somtaaw. However, the Somtaaw had taken what they wanted and withdrew much to the Gaalsien’s horror.
Using each squadron efficiently the Sobani general then began a campaign to capture Saju’ka by using gunpowder to blow holes in the walls of other cities and flooding them with sand, taking what remained after the flood. The Gaalsien were terrified of this new “thunder shock” weapon, obviously provided by Qwaar-Jet and his minions and despite its tendency to backfire, gunpowder grenades helped win the day for the Niirfa, allowing them and the other warrior kiithid a small gain in Gaalsien territory.

The Heresy Wars and the Naabal intervention. But the wars were not over, though many thought they were. Almost immediately after the Pauu’ra the Gaalsien gathered their remaining armies and marched on to meet the Somtaaw traitors and heretics in battle and bring them back to Sajuuk. What they did not anticipate was the fact that the Somtaaw still had Sobani warriors guarding the mountains.
The Somtaaw Conquest went badly for the Gaalsien and their entire expeditionary force was destroyed before they touched the rock of the Khuntala Mountains, slaughtered by Sobani who had seen them approaching the battlefield. Ambushed from below, above, and on all sides the Gaalsien panicked and did as much damage to themselves as the Soban did.
Yet even now it was not over. More vengeance vendettas were carried out and the Siidim completely destroyed the Ferril capital destroying great pieces of art in an act of absolute fury and insanity. In turn the Ferril fled to their Somtaaw allies who bombarded the Siidim until they surrendered and became a Gaalsien vassal. The Niirfa responded by attempting to use the same strategy as before but unsuccessfully, only succeeding in losing a good portion of their army.
The Manaani, still enraged about the destruction of the Dancing Grounds and with a new cause of hatred for the Gaalsien attack on Manaani merchant whom had not paid a toll for trading throughout Gaalsien routes made a reign of terror on both the Gaalsien and Ferril and the Somtaaw, seeing no further profit in the wars, wisely withdrew.
The wars were bloody and both sides resorted to psychological warfare and mass murder to accomplish their goals, flattening whole cities without a second thought and marching on towards their goal. The Niirfa Pauu’ra, though intended to bring liberty to the kiithid and free them from Gaalsien dominance only made the kiithid more dependent on warfare.
It was at this time that Iifrit Naabal’sa, an aging kiith’sa with little to lose and much to gain from entering the war proposed to others among the kiith’sa’da of the Naabal that intervention was necessary to end the war. It is now thought that the war might have ended otherwise and it is a little naïve to say that the Naabal were dedicated pacifists (survivalists is a better word) but considering the Naabal technological superiority the war was over quickly.
Iifrit launched his first venture into the Heresy Wars by attacking the Siidim fortress of Viiborg and besieged it using heavy siege cannons. Though the Siidim and others had seen gunpowder before and used it, mostly as a psychological force, never had they seen it successfully employed as a weapon and were astonished to watch their mighty walls fall to the Naabal immediately and those that still resisted were shot down with prototype repeater rifles.
The next time they assaulted a city the “Northern Demons” as many called them flew over the city and dropped explosives into the city, demonstrating the usage of their first balloons and some of the planes even landed in the streets as soldiers disembarked and attacked the city from within. Each time the Naabal used their technology to their advantage, bulldozing houses with tanks, bombarding cities from miles away, and each time the expectations of the fighting kiithid changed and they began to wonder what was more important… fighting each other or destroying these invaders?
Some realized where their advantage was and sent diplomats to the forces of the Naabal, asking for an alliance. The Naabal refused unless those asking for help would guarantee the rights of all standing independent kiithid and allow for the Naabal to organize a new committee that would promise peace. Some, such as the Gaalsien and Siidim, refused.
But others such as the Manaan, the Paktu, the Soban, the Somtaaw, the Kaalel, the Sjet, and the Niirfa, they all accepted and the mighty and unstoppable army by any force outside of the gods marched into the streets of Saju’ka and occupied it, tearing down the Gaalsien banner and raising those of all the other kiithid and demanding that the Gaalsien bow down to each of the “heretics” that led the “infidel kiithid”. This was perhaps not a smart move and the Gaalsien would never forgive the Naabal for what they had done to them.

TIME OF REASON

Formation of the Daiamid. The formation of one council to rule of Kharak was not an easy decision and it took several decades to get a constitution straight (see, HIIGARAN CONSTITUTION) and the whole process started in 810 when the kiithid decided that Tiir was to be the capital of the planet after some argument.
Tiir, though it was the Naabal capital and so gave them what seemed to be unfair power, was a logical choice because of its size, integrity, isolation from the past wars, and most importantly, its climate. One of the kiith’sa that now joined in this new government, Aapo Sagald’sa, said “I am now, for the first time that I can remember, a true heretic and cursed in the eyes of the gods. For if Kharak is the manifestation of Sajuuk’s flesh and mind and all else is hell, then I do prefer hell over heaven.”
Once the kiith’sa were established in Tiir the old palace of the Naabal was moved and the former center of Kiith Naabal was turned into the Daiamid, or Great Council, Chamber. The first gathering of the kiith’sa in the Daiamid Chamber came in the year 811 AS on the first anniversary of the end of war on Kharak.
At that meeting however, more than celebration was at hand. It was time to draw a constitution and the Naabal offered to base it on the Naabal one which was the most modern of any code in the kiithid. But many refused and said they wanted this Daiamid to not be a puppet of Kiith Naabal, but rather something that all the kiithid had put effort into. Iifrit accepted and called for suggestions to draw a new constitution.
The first proposed draft was that of a constitution that stated every man was equal before the law and that representatives of each kiithid should be elected to power and sent to office in the Daiamid, leaving the kiith’sa as governors of their own domains but having no power in the federal government. Those that proposed it said that it was the most acceptable of any proposals as it would eliminate the possibility of one kiith becoming more powerful than the others.
However, some of the smaller kiithid were the first to object and the kiith’sa of Somtaaw explained the opinions of many very well by saying that such a law would mean that the kiithid were not independent and sovereign, something that the Naabal had promised to honor when they agreed to alliance between so many of the kiithid during the last years of the Heresy Wars.
For that reason they went back to debate and seven more drafts would be made before the final and ninth draft would be drawn out and proposed, giving each kiith equal power by sending their individual leader to the Daiamid that would act as the single political body in the government and the sole leader of the people. The kiith’sa, tired of arguing and eager for an agreement approved the new constitution and the Daiamid was solidified in 824 AS and a new flag for the Kushan people was drawn and flown above those of all the other kiith, waving over the Daiamid Chamber.

Life in the Time of Reason. Despite what many think the Time of Reason, though certainly the golden age of all life on Kharak and a time of prosperity and peace, had remarkably few advances and monetary aid to scientists was fairly low, making scientific advances crawl forward at an exceedingly slow pace, especially compared to the advances made by the Naabal. This idea can be summed up by Martiin Paktu’sa in his speech to the rest of the Daiamid in the year 827 on a new bill to give aid to the struggling scientific community.
“I think I speak for all when I say that scientific and technological advancement in our time has…become no longer a necessity in Kharakid life. We have seen war and bloodshed for centuries and have been drawn close to extinction and despite the fact that technology may have saved us it almost very nearly destroyed us. No, I do not believe this bill is wise my companions and brothers here. I think, that for a millennia, we have seen enough of science. Let us slow for now, and wait for the storm to pass.”
This is an easy explanation to why despite the fierce advances by the Naabal it took three centuries to develop one and a half centuries of scientific research and invention. But all in all life in the Time of Reason was good, perhaps better than any other period for the Kushan people. Their numbers were low, true and their death rates were high, though not high enough to lower their population. But people were content and their deaths were quiet, not the result of murder or war, but because of old age, illness, or animal attacks.
There were three classes at this time in life. There was the Nobility, the Warriors and the Craftsmen. All three helped in farming and mining valuable minerals as they were not quite in demand yet. There main differences were in prestige and wealth. The nobility lived their life out in luxury except for when they traveled the desert or helped out on the plantations that provided not only food now, but textiles as well. They were rich, charismatic, and though a little arrogant, the goal for every marriage. Warriors had all the qualities of the nobility except they were travelers and not wealthy land owners. Also, they were less arrogant and charismatic but stronger and they made the ideal hero of every tale, even at a time of peace. The last class, the craftsmen, though they were not lady’s men or heroes, was most honored of all and were most likely to be priests. They were sacred to the Hiigarans and now craftsmen lived very hard.
During the Time of Reason the most honored job of all was to be a business owner. Despite the people’s reluctance to move forward they were content to stay where the Naabal had brought them and as the Industrial Revolution had come factories were quickly constructed across the deserts of Kharak and mass production was pushed harder and harder. Slavery had been abolished but because of the need for new items and the booming economy, a necessary work force was needed.

The Gaalsien Ultimatum. Interestingly enough, it was found in the Gaalsien population. The Gaalsien refused to touch other careers such as construction work, law, writing, racing, or other jobs. So they were left unemployed until the revolution had grown large enough that a cheap work force was needed. The Gaalsien, without anything else to do and reluctantly agreeing that machines had not yet replaced the hand, joined in the workforce and became sturdy laborers for the mighty industrial machine that was the Kushan Federation, the new government on Kharak.
As a result of this unusual turn of events a fourth class emerged in Kushan life, the laborer. But this laborer was much different than the other three classes and was based on bitterness, religious enthusiasm, and most of all, radical socialism. The Gaalsien, though few know it, for a time were the most violent reformers and when they came into the Daiamid they were given full attention for if you didn’t give it to them, they would bite your head off.
Eventually the Gaalsien, sick of the life they had been given in this new world, revolted and declared the Gaalsien Socialist Republic and for a time overthrew their kiith’sa, who fled to the others, demanding that help be given. The rest of the Daiamid agreed, seeing that this was an active state of rebellion against the Federation and sent a large force in. Though the Gaalsien laborers fought hard they fell and died at the hands of a new experimental weapon, the tank.
Sadly, as a result of this revolt labor laws became exceedingly difficult to pass and the Gaalsien, even the nobility who had fled from their own subjects, were shamed by the other kiithid and denounced as rebels. As can be expected, the kiith’sa’da of the Gaalsien soon became as bitter and hateful as the Gaalsien commoners did and the seeds of a true rebellion were sown.
In 917 AS the Gaalsien kiith’sa, Miirpat, declared that Sajuuk was coming and that the End Time was near, that the sins of the Kushan people were too much to bear anymore. A grandson of the leader in the Gaalsien rebellion a quarter century earlier, Miirpat had both the religious zeal of his father and the socialist rage of his mother. He called a meeting with some of his youngest warrior and told them that now capitalism would end, slavery to gold would end, that heresy would end, and that Qwaar-Jet would be defeated in one swift blow. Following his orders they carried out an act that has forever been cursed with infamy.
Saju’ka, the city constructed to honor Sajuuk and the rest of the gods was suddenly, in the middle of the night, destroyed in a torrent of sands when the warriors of Miirpat buried gunpowder beneath the wind baffles and canals that held back the sands of Sajuuk. For two days the sands flooded the city and Miirpat watched as his own people, the people he had deemed unworthy of life and servants of Qwaar-Jet, died.
The Daiamid was outraged and brought Miirpat and his men before them and deemed them guilty of genocide, conspiracy, and sabotage. The sentence, that the Gaalsien were to be declared an outlaw kiith and Miirpat executed, were to be carried out immediately but Miirpat managed to miraculously escape and was sprung from jail before he had even set foot in his cell.
Once he had escaped, it is rumored that Miirpat declared his Gaalsien Ultimatum, that not only were all kiithid cursed, but that the Gaalsien would only return to the cities when Sajuuk had come and declared the End Time. Until then, they would hide, and wait for the chance to redeem the Kushan people. Few followed him into the desert, only one fourth of his kiith that had survived his acts of terrorism did and he lost both radicals and conservatives to his cause. Those that were ashamed of him turned to others and most joined Kiith Soban, swelling its numbers.
But enough followed him and they helped him commit more atrocities from the darkness. It became a curse to call someone a “dirty Gaalsien” and children were warned that if they were unkind and did not do as they were told, that the vengeful Gaalsien would come and slit their throat in the night. If the Gaalsien had known every individual that sinned, they may well have done it too. Many even wondered whether it would be possible for the Gaalsien to survive alone in the desert without the help of Sajuuk as they claimed. But the Niirfa and Manaani knew better and made it a sport to find and kill Gaalsien raiding parties before they struck.

The XenoGenesis Theory. In the early 11th century, just as DNA was being first photographed and documented by Kushan scientists the young geneticist named Marjaana Sjet found a remarkable discovery.
Already hailed as the discoverer of DNA’s double helix shape and the winner of the Iifrit Prize for Genetics she now set out to prove something about animal DNA. But what she found frightened her and surprised her. When analyzing the DNA of a horse and comparing it with that of herself she found that not only was it different as was to be expected, but shaped differently. She looked closely and found that the DNA was simpler and did not form a double helix like hers did.
Unsure of what she had just discovered she checked over and over again with other specimens as well but could find no similarities. She immediately brought this information forth to her superiors at the Sjet capital and gave them a speech on how she had discovered something remarkable, that life, she believed (though she was wrong), had arisen twice on Kharak and that the Kushan were a result of an older evolution than those of the new life which had arisen, as she told them, independently.
The kiith’sa’da at first considered this and were about to forward it to the Global Scientific Committee in Tiir when it was pointed out to them by one of the more timid of the kiith’sa’da that the discovery could be misused by other factions within the scientific community, a pseudoscientific following that theorized that life had not arisen on Kharak but was, as the Siidim had once said, from outside and they tried to prove this by pointing out the sudden emergence of culture on Kharak around two thousand BS and stated that this was far too quick for civilization to immediately and unsuspectingly arise. They also pointed out that other myths in Kushan religion had scientific proof now and that this was yet another one that had been so far unproven. This group, unpopular and small, called themselves the XenoGenesis Society.
Marjaana argued that her papers would explain her views and that the group could not and would not be associated with Kiith Sjet. She said that any attempt to do so would be copyright infringement and hence no one could take them seriously, let alone say that Kiith Sjet had given the information to them. But the kiith’sa had now been convinced and said that the research would not be released until further evidence was found.
It was another eight years before one Sjet employee found the information while cleaning up Marjaana’s lab and looked at it, copying it and publishing it in his cousin’s popular magazine, The Scroll and got himself a piece of fame. Soon reporters from other journals, newspapers, and magazines were all over him and asked him for his name, address, and telephone number repeatedly before getting on to the actual questions. Marjaana was horrified that someone had stolen her research and the kiith’sa was horrified as well, for different reasons.
Marjaana came out later that year and publicly announced that the man was a fraud and that it was her research until someone pointed out to her, a spokesman for the young janitor, that he had stated specifically that this was not his research but materials from Kiith Sjet that had been unreleased for some reason or another. When she apologized she was immediately swarmed by members of the XGS who asked her whether she believed this was hard evidence for the XenoGenesis Theory or not. She stated no privately but was pressured to say yes, gaining more followers for the XGS.
But no one is too large for satire and the XGS still took up less than one third of the scientific community and was often the target of every joke in comedy shows where people remarked that the XGS wanted the public to believe they were really descendents of bug-eyed aliens with green antennae. Nobody laughed anymore though when in 1054 a large piece of metal screamed down from orbit and landed in a small village outside of Tiir known as Inarii, almost completely leveling it.
When geologists got there we were surprised to find that it was not in their department and called over some engineers instead. The engineers quickly identified it as some sort of metal device and radio broadcasts, despite government attempts to keep the discovery secret, screamed that alien invaders were coming to attack Kharak and destroy it, sending the public into panic.
People calmed down though, but not entirely, when they found out that the wreckage was nearly three thousand years old.

The Discovery of the Khar-Toba. The Inarii Incident, as it was called, along with the new production of space traveling vehicles, fueled a new desire to seek out other such objects in the Kharak System. It wasn’t long before they were. The first expedition into the void, Jakuul I, discovered numerous wreckages in high orbit of Kharak just within sight and later missions determined that the Inarii wreckage was in fact one of these objects.
Suddenly the XGS was a very, very popular group and a good portion of the scientific community suddenly gave up their work to help look for the Kushan people’s origins. The next missions into space became primarily archaeological expeditions, looking for more artifacts proving what the XGS had been saying all this time.
Kiith Siidim, already over its religious fervor, became one of the chief benefactors for these missions and many of the first astronauts were Siidim looking for evidence of their own religious beliefs, far older than the XenoGenesis Theory. More artifacts were found and when they were towed in to low Kharakid orbit and early scientific stations were set up it was discovered that there was no possibility they had been constructed within the Kharak System, as their metal was completely foreign to Kharak and neighboring planets.
More expeditions were launched and they soon ventured outside of Kharak, despite the inefficient technology. Many ships were destroyed by hazards that the scientists had not considered, such as solar radiation and high-speed microscopic dust. But the push went on and the taboo on new technology was lifted, speeding space travel technology faster and faster.
With the advance of space telescopes and radar technology several satellites were launched into orbit to do reconnaissance for expeditions, looking for more of this precious and alien metal. Some still disbelieved the XGS but there was no denying that everyone in power was curious, curious to what was the origin of these wreckages that had just started to appear.
One satellite, a prototype of a new long range and extremely powerful radar dish system, malfunctioned and turned to Kharak and the computers back at mission control began to get blank readouts and they quickly realized what had happened and broke into a torrent of anger until one object suddenly appeared on the screens and then went away. Since everything was recorded they looked back to make sure that they hadn’t been mistaken. When they found out that they had seen it they waited for the satellite to come back to that location and it appeared again.
Now more curious than ever to find out what was buried beneath the sand, perhaps another wreckage, the mission control sent a desert expedition into the Great Desert to find what may or may not have been an alien artifact. When they got there they began to excavate and much to their surprise, found not just a wreckage, but an immense wreckage, at least as large as Saju’ka. After nearly two millennia they had discovered the Khar-Toba. The year was 1106.
Archaeology suddenly became a hot job and thousands gave up home and safety for the harsh desert, just to get a look at this new discovery, even if they had no intention to dig. As each layer was unearthed they found more and more discoveries. Complex tunnels, half caved-in now after so long, filled with buildings and homes. But the greatest discovery of all was the hyperspace core complex, now turned into a large observatory temple.
At first they saw nothing unusual about it, until, after close examination, they realized they were not standing within a mere temple, but a huge machine and that the spherical shape around them was a hyperspace core shell. Amazed they immediately broke up the object into small pieces and shipped it out of the Khar-Toba, to analyze it closely and hopefully, to reverse engineer it.
And yet more discoveries were found, the most important of them after it was thought the Khar-Toba had told all that it could. But one woman, Mevath Sagald, would not give up the search and continued excavations, hoping to find the center of the Observatory Temple, still buried under the sands. Eventually, only a few weeks before she finally uncovered it, only herself and her husband were left excavating and it was then they found the Guidestone.
Etched into rock, that like the metal encasing the city it was within was foreign to Kharak the Guidestone showed a galactic map and on that map was a single line from one point on the edge of the galaxy, to another near the core. The planet on the edge, probably Kharak, was unnamed. But near the center, that dot was named Hiigara, or home.

Construction of the Mothership. It took Mevath and her followers decades from the discovery of the Guidestone in 1135 to the year the Mothership Project was announced in 1159 to convince the planet that this was the evidence needed to not only prove the XenoGenesis Theory (which she was a dedicated follower of) but also to return the Kushan to their home.
Mevath was ordered by her kiith’sa to return whatever artifacts she recovered to Kiith Sagald, a logical decision as she was the last one digging when all others had abandoned the project. But she kept the Guidestone secret from them and when she brought it before the Daiamid her kiith’sa was enraged to find out that she had kept this secret and did everything he could to convince others that Mevath was a fraud.
Mevath did not just receive opposition from her own kiith. The Somtaaw, though they generally accepted the idea that the Kushan had come from the heavens and not from the earth, they believed there was a mystical explanation for their religion, not a historical one and denounced Mevath as a pretender. The Gaalsien were much more extreme. When they heard about Mevath’s discovery they mounted an assassination attempt which was thankfully stopped.
Finally though, the Daiamid agreed that a team of experts must analyze the Guidestone for authencity. When they did they discovered that she was telling the truth and that the object was approximately three thousand years old, just like all the other artifacts found recently. The Somtaaw stepped down but the Gaalsien, once proven wrong, had to take a new ultimatum.
A Gaalsien preacher, one of the few allowed in civilization, told the world that though the Gaalsien had been wrong for all this time, that all should remember what the Siidim had said, that they had been exiled because of arrogance and blindness. They said that the Kushan were not ready to return to heaven. Still ignored, he committed suicide by bombing a government building.
Despite this heavy opposition from the Gaalsien who were, for the first time since the destruction of Saju’ka, coming out in the open to try and “atone” for the sins of the world, the Daiamid passed a bill proposing a “Mothership Project” which would provide the means to return to Hiigara.
The project started off peacefully enough as the Gaalsien had not yet mobilized enough to make their presence well-known. Three research stations in orbit were combined to construct a scaffold and the first quarter of the long project was spent linking them together and forming further additions to the station and it was dubbed “the Scaffold”. It was here that the first Gaalsien saboteur attacked and blew out an entire deck, killing dozens of people and himself.
As a result of this and other attacks on the construction of the Mothership and Scaffold the Daiamid issued a new ultimatum, that every man and woman was subject to searches and seizures if they came within five miles of the launch site and huge military installations were established around the “Mevath Space Center”.
In addition to this, when the Mothership’s own construction began in 1162 the Daiamid issued a new army, the Kharakid Ground Force and it had the authority to stop revolts, riots, and terrorist attacks by any means necessary, including lethal force. A reign of terror began along the desert near the equatorial launch site to prevent any force from stopping construction.
The Kharakid Ground Force’s baptism of fire came in 1184 when Gaalsien forces mounted a large attack on the Mevath Space Center and badly damaged the launch pad and defense forces before escaping into the desert. The KGF pursued them but was mostly unable to catch them. However, the Kharakid Ground Force captured a colony of vampire serpents and another colony of dune stranglers, and unleashed them near where the Gaalsien had been spotted. The animals found their prey quickly and the Ground Force, which had pinned tracking devices on to the animals, quickly found the Gaalsien and brutally destroyed the raiding party.
For the next thirty years, all the way up until the destruction of life on Kharak in 1219 during the Homeworld War the battle for supremacy continued. The worst of the battles between the Gaalsien and KGF came in 1211 when Colonel Pateer Paktu led his forces into a recently discovered Gaalsien colony and destroyed it utterly, slaughtering the natives. No quarter was given and Paktu was hailed as a hero until the more gruesome details of his exploits, such as rape and cold-blooded murder, were discovered in his trial after Hiigaran Landfall.
The most important person outside of Mevath Sagald during the construction of the Mothership was most likely Karan Sjet. The daughter of the Sjet kiith’sa and a beautiful young woman who had always been the center of attention back home, both by her teachers and her peers, she had chosen a career of neuroscience over that of more conventional sciences, such as genetics or physics, now in heavy demand at the scaffold.
In 1213, much to her surprise she was summoned by the Daiamid to address a problem on the Mothership. She was unsure of why they wanted a neuroscientist but doing her duty she reported and asked what they needed. The Daiamid told her that a recent problem had been discovered aboard the Mothership and that was that no computer could yet handle all the functions of the Mothership without taking an unacceptable portion of space on the Mothership… approximately five decks. They asked that she, being an expert on the human computer, work with computer mechanics on how to construct a better and more efficient computer within six years and the launch date of the Mothership.
After a year and a half, she came back to them and told them that it was impossible and that she had gone over what current technology the Kushan possessed and determined that developing an artificial computer for controlling the Mothership was not possible at this time. The Daiamid sadly dismissed her but just a few months later she realized her mistake and returned, telling them there was a way.
She said that the human brain, if properly prepared, could serve as a portable and easy to fuel computer that could devote just the brain stem to the Mothership and provide enough control to pilot and manage the ship’s systems. The Daiamid was at first appalled but seeing no other option aside from waiting another century for more advanced computer technology, accepted her proposal and allowed her to tell them what to do.
After she was done, it was, much to their surprise, that she suggested they use her to form this computer matrix. They laughed, thinking she was simply a child trying to be heroic but when she insisted and they realized they could find no other volunteers they reluctantly agreed, angering her father who demanded that this decision not pass. But it did and she was soon hooked up to the Mothership and first installed at the end of 1218, the year before launch.
Another technology developed for the Mothership Project was the cryogenic freezing. It didn’t take long for the engineers working on the Mothership design to determine that the Mothership did not have the resources nor the space to hold a colony and so new methods of transporting individuals needed to be found. Long popular in the science fiction world, cryogenics seemed like the most obvious solution and testing on animals began immediately, and when a successful test capsule was dispatched and it returned, it heralded a new era of space travel almost as important as the hyperdrive.

The Homeworld War. Nobody, not Pateer Paktu’sa (now commander of Fleet Intelligence), not Karan Sjet, not the heroic Jasor Kaalel, knew what would happen when the Mothership was launched and with standard tests completed engaged its hyperspace drive. When the Mothership made its first jump, relatively short and at extremely low speeds, even for a short jump drive (the equivalent of a hovercraft traveling at approximately at seven and a half miles per hour).
When the Mothership arrived at the Khar-Selim rendezvous point two things were wrong. First of all, they were nowhere near the Khar-Selim and second of all the Khar-Selim or its sister ship the Khar-Lan were nowhere in sight. Jasor Kaalel suggested a probe be sent to a small beacon they had picked up on sensors. He, along with the rest of Fleet Intelligence, was the first to see the Turanic Raiders (see, TURANIC RAIDERS, THE) as they flew by the wreckage of what was obviously the Khar-Selim.
After defeating the alien forces Pateer ordered Karan to return the Mothership to Kharak for two purposes. To warn the Kharak Defense System of the approaching danger and also to update the Mothership’s weapon systems to accommodate for the alien vessels. When they got there they found that the planet had already been attacked and the surface turned into glass. In a fit of rage, Pateer brutally interrogated a Taiidan (see, TAIIDAN IMPERIUM, THE) that they had recovered from a frigate, mutilating him and torturing him until he gave the information they wanted and he soon discovered the location of a nearby Turanic outpost and prepared to destroy it and the Taiidan fleet.
When the Mothership emerged from hyperspace within the Great Wastelands they briefly encountered the Bentusi (see, BENTUSI TRADERS, THE), who were astonished to learn they had just encountered the Kushan they had exiled. At first the Bentusi hid their knowledge but later they would reveal what they knew to the Kushan.
However, even despite their non interference policy the Bentusi, still guilty from their military action millennia ago gave the Kushan ion beam technology and this allowed the Kushan to put up a good fight against their enemies to come and not only was an attack carrier destroyed but the outpost the Turanics had nearby was completely and ultimately destroyed, shortly before the Kushan fleet jumped on top of the Taiidan.
The Battle of the Outer Wastelands is the first and perhaps the most important battle in the Homeworld War and revealed to the Taiidan that the Kushan could and would do significant damage. A great witness to this battle was the pilot Tiish Soban who once said “When those Imperialist bastards saw our strike craft moving in, they realized they weren’t just dealing with some petty pre-jump species. They were dealing with warriors who knew more about fighting then their granddaddy or his granddaddy or any of them back to before the War of Sajuuk (see, WAR OF SAJUUK, THE). We had been fighting for centuries, but these Taiidan, they were on easy lane.”
However, the Kushan were cautious and knew that they couldn’t fight through even one fourth of the entire Imperial fleet. They had to bypass most of it somehow, surprise the Taiidan somehow. Unfortunately, they didn’t know they possessed something the Taiidan didn’t, the far jump technology (see, HYPERPSACE TECHNOLOGY) that was already making them move three times as fast and twice as far as the Imperial ships were. So, instead, they hid in a comet’s tail and made it to the Bentusi, who informed them that their idea to go through the Great Nebula was anything but wise. According to Jasor Kaalel’s memoirs, “Fleet Intelligence Logs”, the Bentusi said this:
“You would do well not to pass through the Great Nebula. Even the Taiidan fear the nebula. No one returns.” But despite the Bentusi warning Karan Sjet pushed Pateer to go through the nebula saying, if the Taiidan would not follow them, all the better.
When they got there they encountered the phantoms of the nebula that had scared away merchants generations ago during the Great War (see, GREAT WAR, THE) and had actually ended it by destroying a good portion of the Frerrn fleet, giving the Taiidan ultimate supremacy. They discovered their brethren, the Kadeshi (see, GARDEN OF KADESH).
The Kadeshi ambassador, as Jasor and Tiish both name the swarmer fighter designated to meet them, gave them a speech in heavily accented Galactic Common, a language they had learned from Taiidan and even some Turanic prisoners. He told them that they would die or join and the Kushan fleet, unwilling to stop now, chose to fight. They were unprepared for what came and almost all of their strike craft were destroyed as well as some of their prized frigates and the Kushan barely escaped their first encounter at the First Battle of Kadesh alive (see, BATTLE OF KADESH, THE). But the second battle came very soon and the Kushan once again were thrust into a battle for survival. But this time, another one of the fighter pilots, Malan, had figured out a weakness of the Kadeshi.
He and his squadron quickly knocked down and destroyed the fuel pods, thought to be untouchable by the Kadeshi according to captured prisoners as they were inhabited by high priests of the religious caste, supposedly protecting them from harm. This is a reasonable explanation for why the fuel pods were unarmed and so lightly armored, presenting easy targets for Malan’s fighters. As soon as the fuel pods were gone the swarmers were immobilized and easy targets. Pateer then ordered that all of the Kadeshi “needleships” be hunted down and destroyed, at the end, it was believed to have been the complete genocide of the Kadeshi people and the safety of passing through the nebulas but there are rumors of seeing them now and then by merchant ships. Also, Jasor’s memoirs state that he saw one last blip before he and the fleet jumped out of the nebula.
The Kadeshi battle revealed a lot to the Kushan. The vulnerability of strike craft, which until then had been invaluable, the strength of capital ships, the importance of a carrier, and most of all, the limits that jump technology had and that even relatively small gravity wells could disrupt hyperspace jumps. After dealing with a derelict after emerging from hyperspace the Mothership acquired similar technology from the Bentusi, though on a much smaller scale.
Pateer and Karan, both realizing that no place was truly safe for them in this unfamiliar and unforgiving universe, set out to strike one of the weaker stations to break through and go as quickly as they could to Hiigara. Hiding in dust clouds from both radiation and sensors the research station they attacked did not realize it was under attack until the frigates were right behind it and tearing its armor apart under the force of several ion beams.
But Fleet Intelligence underestimated the effectiveness of Taiidan communications and their flight to the Galactic Core was interrupted twice. First, when the Taiidan fleet received warning of Bentusi assistance to the Exiles (as the Kushan were known by others), now believed to have been given by the T-MAT (see, T-MAT, THE) and the Bentusi requested assistance from the Kushan. When this help was received they revealed everything they knew about the Kushan except for one fact, that the Kushan had actually been the aggressors during the War of Sajuuk as the Bentusi, still filled with guilt for their part, did not want to reveal either the Bentusi or Kushan part in the destruction of the Hiigaran Empire (see, HIIGARAN EMPIRE, THE).
The second time was when the Taiidan ambushed the Kushan fleet, accidentally in fact as the blockade there was intended to stop the escape of Taiidan rebel leader P’teer Elson (see, P’TEER ELSON). But the gravwell generators were strong enough to pull even a far jump out of sync and the Mothership landed in a trap. The Taiidan quickly realized what had happened and took full advantage of the situation and opened fire on Kushan ships immediately. However, they did not expect the Kushan to have acquired new technologies as well as captured ships such as the Kadeshi and Turanic vessels. The carrier groups laying about the trap were swiftly destroyed.
Then P’teer Elson, on schedule, arrived and asked for assistance from the Kushan fleet, trying to convince them that he had defected. Pateer Paktu was a vivid hater of the Taiidan and he was unwilling to trust him but Jasor, who was open minded and perhaps a little naïve, overruled Pateer on this, which got him into trouble later. Captain Elson and his ship the Kapella were boarded by Sobani marines but he appeared to be telling the truth and with the defector safe within their grasp, the Kushan escaped.
In his gratitude Elson thanked them and asked if they could send a transmission for him to the rebellion. However, he did not anticipate that the Kushan had not redeveloped hyperspace communication technology and was embarrassed when he found out that not only was his antenna damaged, but that they couldn’t help him. So Elson told them that he had heard a rumor regarding a communications relay that would do the trick in the Karos Graveyard (see, KAROS GRAVEYARD, THE), a graveyard that housed several wrecks from a period of over a million years, dating all the way back before the Bentusi and other Unbound (see, UNBOUND RACES, THE) could remember.
When they reached the Karos Graveyard, the Kushan encountered more dangers, including a mysterious frigate sized salvager that could make tactical hyperspace jumps at the drop of a dime. Tiish and his boys were the first to lead a reconnaissance group behind the autogun defense systems and to the relay, giving the message Elson needed, that he was safe and that he had made contact with the Kushan fleet. After that, he jumped out and the Kushan prepared to make a move towards their next large target, a defense system just outside the Hiigara System.
This defense system, codenamed the Bridge of Sighs (see, BRIDGE OF SIGHS, THE BATTLE OF) was an immense grid of hyperspace gates, twelve resourcing stations equipped with hyperspace inhibitors, and more than a hundred ion cannon frigates guarding each station. When the Mothership arrived it was very careful not to alarm the frigates and it was actually the brilliant idea of Tiish and Malan who, when working together, agreed that if they awoke a few more Sobani from the cyro trays, that they could capture a good number of the ion cannon frigates. The plot worked and an invincible capital ship fleet emerged just outside the station and blew it to bits, opening a whole in the defense system and allowing the Mothership to slip through.
But Riesstiu IV the Second was not finished. He had already prepared two last attempts to keep the Mothership from reaching the capitol world of Hiigara. First, he used hyperspace inhibitors just a little ways within the defense system to pull the Mothership out of hyperspace. Then he sent an asteroid straight towards the Mothership, heavily guarded. But the capital ship fleet and strike craft were more than enough to destroy the asteroid and its attached inhibitors and escaped, jumping right on top of the Emperor’s fleet.
But as they were approaching, Pateer Paktu, already on the verge of insanity from all that he had seen, and convinced that Karan and Jasor had both overruled his authority too many times, was easily seduced by the Emperor (whose Unbound nature allowed him to reach across space into Pateer’s mind) in a dream where he was told that he must kill Karan Sjet to succeed. His attempt was in vain but he managed to pretend that she had been damaged in a hyperspace core surge and it was not until she awoke that Pateer’s involvement in her “accident” was revealed.
But as the battle went, Pateer actually did a fairly good job commanding the fleet and the Kushan warships were able to hold off three individual attacks by the Taiidan, each with a large compliment of destroyers, missile destroyers, and heavy cruisers. But just as their own forces were running low, the majority of the rebel fleet emerged nearby and turned itself over to Pateer’s grasp. It didn’t take long in the Battle of Hiigara (see, BATTLE OF HIIGARA, THE) to destroy the Emperor’s flagship and the Imperium it stood for. And now, they were home.

and that, as they say, is that. Good job, that was good reading. It stayed true to it's origins.

This is frickin' excellent, man. If you can, contact Sierra and see if you can get this published. There may be a copywrite issue, but this thing deserves publication.

Note: I am going to edit the Kushan and Hiigaran history as I don't have enough ideas to make twenty-eight kiithid (although I will make twenty-four).

Kiithid Recognized by the Kushan and Hiigaran Federations:

Recognized at the Time of Reason's Declaration:
Naabal
Paktu
Manaan
Soban
Sjet
Gaalsien
Somtaaw
Ferril
Siidim
Niirfa
Tambuur
Kaalel
Sagald
Liira
Hraal
Iopia
Riif
Sectau
Nolaar
Tiihar
Selva
Renaa
Jedan
Korel
Vasa

Recognized at the Mothership's Launch:
Naabal
Paktu
Manaan
Soban
Sjet
LiirHra
Somtaaw
Ferril
Siidim
Niirfa
Tambuur
Kaalel
Sagald
Hraal
Iopia
Riif
Sectau
Nolaar
Tiihar
Selva
Renaa
Jedan
Korel
Vasa

Recognized at the Hiigaran Landfall:
Naabal
Paktu
Manaan
Soban
Sjet
LiirHra
Somtaaw
Ferril
Siidim
Niirfa
Kaalel
Sagald
Iopia
Riif
Sectau
Nolaar
Tiihar
Selva
Renaa
Jedan
Korel
Vasa

Recognized at the beginning of Hiigaran entry into the Dust Wars:
Naabal
Paktu
Manaan
Soban
Sjet
LiirHra
Ferril
Siidim
Niirfa
Kaalel
Sagald
Iopia
Riif
Sectau
Nolaar
Tiihar
Selva
Renaa
Jedan
Korel
Vasa

Recognized at the time of Encyclopedia's writing:
Naabal
Paktu
Manaan
Soban
Sjet
Somtaaw
LiirHra
Ferril
Siidim
Niirfa
Kaalel
Sagald
Tambuur
Iopia
Riif
Sectau
Nolaar
Tiihar
Selva
Renaa
Jedan
Korel
Vasa

out of curiosity, did that list change at all in all those recognition periods?

Yeah, I removed the Gaalsien during the second list and added them back on during the last list, removed the Somtaaw during the second to last, added them back in afterward, removed the Tambuur and Hraal in the third list and added the Tambuur back in the last list, removed the Liira in the second list.

However, I did notice I forgot to remove some of the clans I was going to... I'll work on that in a while and post an edited version.

Oh, and see my complete first draft for The Vagabond.

BTW: I just noticed I have a second badge I didn't use to have. Does it mean anything in particular or is it just there?

This is the lowest attention I have gotten for a long time...

Anyhow, now that I am working on the Taiidan Republic mod I've been thinking about making a list of Taiidan names for the Imperialist ships in Homeworld and Homeworld Cataclysm. They might not sound as cool but considering that DK never finished his work on the Hiigaran language and nobody did the Taiidani one they are bound to sound somewhat plain.

Taiidan Ship Names, as Designated by Imperial Fleet Intelligence:
Fiirka-class Scout= Vanguard-class Light Interceptor
Triikor-class Interceptor= Venturer-class Interceptor
Kaark-class Attack Bomber= Baton-class Heavy Assault Fighter
Seejur-class Defender= Escort-class Mobile Defender
Koshiir-Ra-class Defense Fighter= Custodian-class Defense Fighter

Raachok-class Light Corvette= Ranger-class Corvette
Miirpat-class Heavy Corvette= Scorpion-class Assault Corvette
Diirvaas-class Multigun Corvette= Huskarl-class Heavy Assault Corvette
Wodaan-class Minelayer Corvette= Labyrinth-class Defense Corvette
Jakuul-Lan-class Repair Corvette= Surveyor-class Repair Corvette
Tiirshak-class Salvage Corvette= Corsair-class Transport Corvette

Kudaark-class Assault Frigate= Absolon-class Frigate
Sajuuk-Cor-class Ion Cannon Frigate= Victor-class Ion Beam Frigate
Heeshk-class Support Frigate= Deliverer-class Carrier Frigate
Tiifal-class Defense Field Frigate= Aegis-class Defense Frigate

Skaal-Tel-class Destroyer= Riesstiu-class Destroyer
Skaal-Fel-class Missile Destroyer= Lance-class Strike Destroyer
Saarkin-Cho-class Carrier=Commandant-class Carrier
Qwaar-Jet-class Heavy Cruiser= Executor-class Cruiser

Kuura-class Resource Collector= Outlander-class Fusion Torch Mining Vessel
Siim-Salla-class Resource Controller= Overseer-class Mobile Refinery
Variis-class Proximity Sensor= Beacon-class Proximity Sensor
Raakel-class Sensors Array= Prescience-class Sensors Array
Fushai-class Cloak Generator= Deception-class Cloak Generator
Koraal-class Gravity Generator= Lurker-class Gravity Generator

Hey this is awsome stuff Ishaar. I can't wait for you to finish it up

I am stunned, again. Don't forget the Beast War!

Eh... Sorry I haven't updated things for a while but I shall in due time. I've been a bit busy with several things, the mod, The Vagabond, as well as the article on the Taiidan Republic. I'll have it finished preferrably by tomorrow and I have started on the Beast War history of the Republic, but all things are due to change.

Take your time, if it's at this standard, it'll be worth the wait.

indeed it will. this is comparable to the idiots guide in quality. we wait long periods of notihngness for new chapters, but they are well worth waiting for.

Taiidan Republic, The
 

To see prior to 1 AHL see TAIIDAN IMPERIUM, THE. To see the data on the Taiidan Imperialists see IMPERIALIST FACTION, TAIIDAN. To see Taiidan history after 97 AHL see VAYGR DOMINION, THE or TAIIDAN RESISTANCE, THE.

Introduction. Throughout the short life of the Taiidan Republic liberal thought and economic prosperity were the highlights of galactic culture. Though less powerful than the Frerrn Aggregate (see, FRERRN AGGREGATE, THE) the Taiidan Republic was the center of galactic commerce until the Dust Wars (see, DUST WARS, THE), resulting in their total and absolutely humiliating defeat at the hands of the Vaygr (see, VAYGR DOMINION, THE). Even today, in many a Taiidan’s heart, the Revolution (see, TAIIDAN REVOLUTION, THE) lives on.


Relief. The revolution that occurred before, during, and after the Homeworld War resulted in the Taiidan losing more than two thirds of their space and the Taiidan Republic is a dwarf compared to its predecessor during the Kushan’s exile. The Republic consists of approximately sixty thousand star systems, both inhabited and uninhabited. This is compared to the Taiidan Imperium (see, TAIIDAN IMPERIUM, THE) which controlled at its height several million and the Frerrn Aggregate, controlling about two to three hundred thousand systems prior to the war. After, the Republic was in a constant struggle to recover more star systems that had seceded while trying to keep others from doing the same. During the Dust Wars the Republic made formidable gains but fell into annexation by the Vaygr Dominion shortly after.

Human landscape. Though the Taiidan did get the largest portion of the Imperium the Frerrn and separatists managed to take a unbalanced number of the industrial worlds, the ones that had been conquered rather than colonized. For this reason the Taiidan Republic was not only spread out across the galaxy in bits and pieces, but it also had a hard start at industrialization, having an unreasonable proportion of energy producing worlds to energy consuming ones. Because that a fair number of the separatists did not get their way and remained part of the Republic, the Taiidan did still control a fair number of species but the Taiidan were a very large majority as a result of emigration. Triistara (see, TRIISTARA), by far the most populated planet in the Taiidan Republic holds an estimated 12% of the Republic population and except for some reserved parks and the oceans, is completely covered in city and relies heavily upon artificial oxygen production.



While the Imperium’s population was rarely far above 50% Taiidan the Republic’s population, due to the breakup of the Imperium and emigration of non-Taiidan to other nations, was over 75% Taiidan and the Republic stayed that way until its collapse. One of the more interesting facts is that the Taiidan, who still had xenophobic philosophy pumped into them, often abused aliens and hate crimes were high. Though the government took great measures to stop these attacks they continued until near 52 AHL when the Republican military forcibly put down an anti-alien riot.

Historical Perspective. The Taiidan. The Taiidan, who had dominated the galaxy since the War of Sajuuk (see, WAR OF SAJUUK, THE) three millennia ago, were a power to be reckoned with, even after the collapse of the Imperium. Strong, resilient, honor bound, and stubborn compared to other races such as the Hiigarans and Vaygr, the Taiidan made up a large majority of the Republican population.
The Regvali. The Regvali, though they had mostly fled from the Taiidan Imperium by now and the rest who had stayed on their homeworld had found it conquered by the Frerrn, the Regvali made up the largest proportion of the Taiidan Republic outside of the Taiidan themselves. Though the relationship between the Regvali and Taiidan did not start of particularly well the Taiidan Republic managed to prove itself to these people by passing protection laws and helping Regvali rise to positions within the government and economy.
The minorities. Even though most of the alien worlds the Taiidan had once owned had seceded or joined the Aggregate, a number of non-Taiidan species remained under the reign of the Republic. All of these minorities were generally content under the Republic’s rule but some wanted to break away from what they saw as the lesser of two evils, regarding the Taiidan, whether Republican or Imperialist with a discriminating eye. Most of these worlds were placed under special leadership, usually appointed by the Republican government to try and stabilize the worlds still on the edge of revolt. Overtime it worked, but for a while it only caused more resentment.

Languages. The most interesting thing about the Republic’s people is the way that language usage changed. During the Imperium Galactic Common was the crude language, the necessary language, the one that the civilians learned and were taught. The Taiidan themselves barely used their own language aside from the nobility. But after the Revolution, one of the first thing that the Republicans did was to changed the noble language into the language of the commoner, reducing Galactic Common’s status to little more than a diplomatic and trade language. This was partially to take pride in Taiidan history, but mostly to spite the Imperialists who had only used Taiidani in polite conversation. Today, even non-Taiidan speak this way primarily.
Galactic Common. The formerly accepted language based on Old Hiigaran was at one time actually common. However, in all three of the major powers, the rich Hiigaran Federation (see, HIIGARAN FEDERATION, THE), the Frerrn Aggregate, and the Taiidan Republic, the Galactic Common is fairly unused except for on military vessels, by diplomats, or in trade deals. For the most part, species that once spoke the language chosen by the galaxy to be everyone’s now ignore it and speak their own tongues. This fall is most evident in the Republic where it was early on the only language anyone spoke. Now, Taiidani has replaced it as the language of the people.
Taiidani. This language, the second official one in the Republic, was originally a language of the nobility or street slang. People borrowed from it or spoke it in formal occasions, but the Taiidan people and their subjects were used to speaking Galactic Common by this point. However, during the Revolution when P’teer (see, P’TEER ELSON) and his comrades seized power, they opened up Taiidani to the world. Now it is the most commonly heard tongue not only in former Taiidan space, but also a respected language still taught in Hiigaran schools.
Kushan’la. Despite the fact that very few Kushan lived in the Republic, it was a popular language amongst the politicians. The Federation during the Republic’s golden days had little territory but was very influential for many reasons. First, the Kushan had returned to their homeworld Hiigara, fulfilling many prophecies. Second, the Somtaaw had defeated the Beast and had saved the Taiidan a great deal of trouble and perhaps their very lives. Third, the Hiigaran government owned a large portion of neutral territory asteroid fields and were very rich. So often channels were displayed not just in Galactic Common and Taiidani, but also in Kushan’la.

Religion. The Taiidan religion during the Republic changed little or not at all from its status during the Imperium. The Sajuuk worshipping groups on Ikira seized power several centuries before the Taiidan Kingdom’s seizure of the planet but after the creation of the Imperium it did not take long for the Sajuuk religion to take prominence in Taiidan culture. However, its complete dominance over all religions in the Taiidan species was not achieved until it was discovered other races worshipped Sajuuk as well, even if their religions were completely different. Hence most Taiidan were convinced that Sajuuk was a true and universal god. The most interesting, though it is minor, change in the religion of the Republic is that the return of the Kushan brought about a change in the way the Taiidan viewed their faith. Some people turned towards new cults combining the old Kushani religion with the Taiidani monotheist dogma.

Demographic trends. Throughout the history of the Taiidan Republic the birth rates have steadily risen while the death rates plummeted, with one exception. During the Beast War (see, BEAST WAR, THE) the Taiidan suffered very high casualties, crippling them for another quarter century until they were able to recover. In total the Taiidan casualties of both the Imperialists and the Republicans was over twelve million. Thankfully, thanks to the high population of the Taiidan they were able to recover overtime, though in no way close to the Kushan were ever able to. While a Kushani female’s pregnancy lasts a longer time they are fertile for a far longer time and much more frequently. In total, a Taiidani female can only get pregnant once every two years on average, from birth to the weaning of the child.


Taiidan trade. Though the Bentusi (see, BENTUSI TRADERS, THE) did not reopen their former treaty with the Imperium they did welcome the Republic into the trade community. And because of the Taiidan capitol world, Triistara, was on a valuable trade route they were able to recover fairly quickly from the general economic collapse of the Imperium. Other worlds, such as Ainahar (seem AINAHAR), are also along important trade spines that branch out from the Road of Riesstiu, the strongest and most enduring trade spine founded, dating back to only two years after the War of Sajuuk and branching from the Eastern Outer Limb Trade Spine to the Western Limb and branching off on to most of the other trade spines.

Agriculture. Because of the great amount of rural planets that came under Taiidan control it became an obvious solution to build farms all over them, even those only partially terraformed. The Taiidan Republic, though it does not have enough surplus to make a large profit, it does enough food to provide its own people with sufficient resources, something the Imperium did not, especially with the nobles holding most of what there was. This has been a great help in the recovery of the Taiidan people.

Mining. The Taiidan Republic fortunately held a large group of mostly uncolonized worlds and so had a large surplus of asteroids, dust clouds, and crystals available for mining. However, the Republic’s fleet was small after the Revolution and even more so after the Beast War. But, because that the profit was large from the mining they were able to hire out miners such as the Somtaaw for relatively good deals, giving as much as 30 or 40% sometimes to their employees but still gaining a nice profit.

Industry. The industrial development of Taiidan worlds was remarkably small, despite their high population. But this is mainly due to the fact that this high population had been deprived for a millennia and needed to be cared for, demanding most of the new Republic’s energy. Just as the Republic was beginning to settle down as well the Beast came in and disrupted the Republic once again, costing them another quarter century of recovery. By 40 AHL the Republic had mostly recovered and again had a new issue to look into, beginning the long process of refitting the Republican fleet, replacing the old and far-outdated Imperialist fleet in service to the Taiidan Republic. True industrialization did not start until only a decade before the Dust Wars and the subsequent defeat of the Taiidan Republic. Triistara is one of the few exceptions to this and was fully industrialized and urbanized by the time of the Republic’s ascension, a process that took close to four millennia after Taiidan conquest.

Transportation. Terrestrial transport. Hovercrafts remain popular on rich worlds such as Triistara but in the more rural communities, the weak economy has raised the price of advanced hovercraft to unreasonable heights, leaving the majority of the Republic returning to old hovercrafts designed for simple travel over the ground that avoids obstacles but is far slower and inefficient. Once the leader of the hovercraft industry that title has been taken by the Hiigarans, among other things.
Aerial transport. The Republican airline service, like most in the galaxy, has begun to become merged with orbital stellar travel and the return of space planes is abounding, able to travel in both atmospheric conditions and in a near vacuum. Aerial transport is somewhat simpler on more rural worlds and is little more than a small strike wing of rickety planes, powered using chemical fuel instead of far more efficient cold fusion engines.
Interstellar transport. Already popular during the Imperium, hyperspace gates have become nearly unavoidable as the main source of interstellar travel. However, as the Republic tries to recover some hyperspace gates have fallen into disorder, been destroyed (a monstrous act considered an act of tyranny against the galaxy), or even subjected by the Beast (see, BEAST, THE). Hence slipgates have again become a large market after several millennia and corporations amongst the Taiidan seek to gain control of these slipgates at nearly all cost. Eventually hyperspace gates were replaced and when the Republican economy recovered interstellar travel became available once again.


The political parties of the Republic. After the establishment of the Republic in 1 AHL (2511 GSY) the Taiidan began to immediately divide into political parties. Most were based on parties that had already existed during the reign of the Imperium centuries ago before the abolishment of the Imperial Senate. These political parties included the Liberal Party, the Centralist Party, and the Consignist Party. The most powerful of these was the Consignist Party which managed to improve commercial conditions and benefited intergalactic trade for the Republic. However, P’teer Elson’s Liberal Party and the later Socialist Party he founded later were powerful enemies to the Consignists. The Centralists also managed to gain great control in the Congress from time to time but rarely did they become dominant, leaving the Consignists and Liberals to battle and finally the Socialists.

The Executive Branch. Something that is fairly unique to the Republic is the fact that they hold an executive office that has immense power and yet is still not absolute. This is an old system that was abandoned for complete control by the legislative and judicial bodies but was brought back into the Republic for its heightened balance of powers. The leader of the executive office is the premier, elected once every six years by the Republican electors across the various worlds, in turn elected by the residents of that region. The executive power is the commander-in-chief of military forces and the controller of what laws are passed by the Legislative branch, the Taiidani Congress. The first premier, P’teer Elson was placed into power by his supporters across the Republic. Though he was reluctant at first, Elson, seeing no opposition or challenge to his rule, took control of the reins. The office of the premier rarely asserted full control except in times of danger, such as during the Beast War when P’teer Elson, now into the beginning of his third term prepared the military for a hard defensive war when any ship could become one of the enemy’s. Also, during the Dust Wars, the premier fled Triistara and ruled from the planet of Ainahar until his assassination at which point the viceroy seized complete power and declared Martial Law until the conflict’s closure. Ainahar remains one of the few worlds unconquered by the Dominion and is constantly under siege.

The Legislative Branch. The Legislative Branch was formed even before the Republic was established and goes back to the Imperial Senate. However, the vast majority of nobles in the Assembly of Lords when the Revolution came to its climax at the Second Battle of Hiigara (see, HIIGARA, BATTLE OF) refused to give in and surrender to the Taiidani Elite Forces, most of them killed in the siege of the planet or in the subsequent occupation. Those that did surrender for the most part did not become part of the Republican Congress and were not trusted, put under heavy guard for the rest of their lives. There are three exceptions however. P’teer Elson, though his house was for the most part broken up when his father’s disloyalties were discovered, was not completely disowned from the Assembly and he himself became the premier and later in retirement influenced the Congress significantly. A good friend of his, the Duke Martek, another underground rebellion leader along with P’teer’s father., became a powerful senator during the years to come, the senator for the remote but strategically placed world of Etlenaa. Finally, the third, the Duchess Aribartha’s daughter, the future wife of P’teer joined in the senate as well, the senator of the planet Triistara itself. Each of these senators helped design the Congress, based on two houses, one of single representatives known as senators with more power and another based on population known simply as representatives.

The Judicial Branch. The Judicial Branch was based on the Imperial Court’s system of appointed justices, each with absolute power over judgment and serving until retirement or death. However, the Judicial Branch has little power outside of the Court of the Republic where they have absolute authority. If they try to interfere with the Executive Branch they can be removed and the Legislative Branch gets to choose the new replacements. If the Legislative and Executive cannot agree however the Executive must give in to the Judicial rulings. Also, to make sure they are not ignored by the Executive power the Judicial has ultimate authority on war crimes trials and the army and premier are hence subject to their rulings.



Cultural milieu. Though the freedom of speech was one of the first acts passed by the Republic the majority still ruled the media and hence the Taiidan ruled the culture. This isn’t helped by the fact that almost all of the non-Taiidan races have retreated from Republican space in to illusions of freedom amongst the Aggregate. There were some forms of diversity however and Turanic (see, TURANIC RAIDERS, THE) culture was still very popular, with fighter racing replacing the old sport of pod racing, giving an extra dimension to the speed and thrills. Also, Hiigaran culture became more popular than ever before, despite the fact it is little like the culture that Taiidan historians remember and sand sailing had begun to spread on to rural worlds in the Republic.

Daily life. The daily life of the average Taiidani has changed seriously from that of the Imperium, unless you are a merchant and hence you still lived in riches and pleasure. The commoner class was forgotten and destroyed, replaced by the street urchin and lower class. Street urchins are almost nonexistent on colonial worlds but were a serious problem on worlds such as Triistara where the urban world dominated the planet. The lower class, with a home but with no luxuries to call their own were common on all worlds although they are overshadowed by the middle class. The lower class usually worked from 7 AM to 4 PM in factories, mines, or farms of all the various worlds and their children went to public schools, which improved overtime to outshine any other schools across the galaxy. The middle class generally served in small businesses and worked from as early as 6 AM or as late as 9 AM to anything from 3 PM to 7 PM. The middle class usually sends their children to the same schools as the lower class does, which lasts from 8 AM to 3 PM, blurring the old class divisions that plagued the Imperium. The upper class usually owns private yachts although some middle class merchants manage to buy some and they travel from planet to planet, staying in various palaces, making deals and teaching their children privately. Those with yachts but not outrageously rich generally work as freelance merchants, mercenaries, bounty hunters, or miners, anything that pays their way. Political figures generally go to work whenever they are called to it and their children go to private schools where they are given the highest education possible.



The seeds for rebellion. Though revolution itself did not start until shortly before the Homeworld War, the seeds were there from the start of the Imperium, all the way back to the conquest of Ikira by the House of Taiid. However, the revolutionaries were small, unsupported and had no motivation for the citizens of the Imperium. These revolutionaries were simply discontent rulers who looked back to their days of sovereignty, when their nations hadn’t been ruled by one nation. Their spirit died out and no one was left to carry on their cause, for rule under the Taiidan emperors was better than life had been during the reign of terror that ensued before.

The revolutionary spirit returned with the War of Sajuuk. Nearly all the galaxy was held at the feet of the Taiidan and the Imperial Senate began to feel that such power should not be held by one man alone and began to work against the power of the Emperor, finding every excuse to demean him and override him if it was within their power. During the reigns of weak emperors they passed laws limiting the power of the royalty and during the reigns of the strong ones they tried to slow them down.

However, such was unproductive and the Taiidan were not ready to be torn away from their emperors. It was only through the efforts of the powerful and mighty emperors and empresses that the Taiidan succeeded in the wars that followed and the Imperial Senate began to become corrupt and decadent while the emperors pushed on, stronger than ever with their newfound purpose, to expand and protect the Imperium from the Frerrn. But the senators were not content.

Assassinations followed, particularly of unpopular ones such as the Empress Eloida II and the Imperium fell into chaos for centuries before order was restored under the Emperor Riesstiu III, who was intelligent enough to gain support from the neutral senators by promising to hand over power to the Imperial Senate. However, Riesstiu broke his promise and not only kept power when he took it, but abolished the Imperial Senate, declaring the Absolute Rule. Though a wise move at the time, the act fueled the doom of the Imperium, setting the course for the rise of Riesstiu IV and the destruction of the Imperium.

Revolutionaries now had a new purpose, to completely destroy the Imperium from within. It was no longer enough to relieve the Taiidan of the rule of one man; there could not longer be an Imperium. The plots continued and became more complex and the houses began to divide, between those supporting the emperors, and those that opposed the very notion. Overtime, the houses gained enough power to make their move and seized back power over the Imperium and killed the emperor once again, placing Riesstiu IV on the throne as a temporary puppet, to try and begin the gradual revolution that would sweep the planet. The Assembly of Lords was established, the first step to returning to Republican government.

But over time, their grandchildren who lived under the same rule as their grandfathers had established, found no reason to relieve the Imperium of the puppet emperor. He was popular and charismatic, just what the Assembly needed. So they grew fat and forgot their revolutionary spirit and only a few were left. However, there were enough.

When Riesstiu IV the Second ascended the throne after Riesstiu IV’s sudden death, the Assembly was surprised to see the imperfect clone begin a lockdown on the Imperium, having recently heard a plot for his overthrow. He began to crack down on all the lords and soon mass executions were carried out. Though the witch-hunts ended and the Assembly returned to power during times of peace, Riesstiu had struck fear into them and people began to hate the Imperium. No longer was it just the ambitious senators, who lusted for vengeance against the royalty, it was the common people as well.

Come the Revolution. The revolution began in 2506 with the outbreak of violence in the streets of Triistara, the most rebellious of the major worlds in the Imperium. The Triistarans had just been put under the harsh taxes now proposed by the Assembly and because the planet was the focus of trade in the galaxy, this brought up government funds significantly. However, the Triistaran merchants were not pleased and took whatever arms they had and attacked government officers throughout the streets. One merchant, holding a large yacht in orbit, opened fire from above the planet and began plowing through military defenses.

The government’s reaction was split. Some secretly saw this as an opportunity and began supplying the merchants through smuggling connections. Others saw it as a complete threat to the Imperium and ordered that the riots be put down immediately by severe force. Riesstiu didn’t wait and sent three entire battle fleets out to destroy the resistance and the fire of several Executor-class heavy cruisers could be heard from orbit as ion cannons focused on the civilian areas of the planet and opened fire. Riesstiu, who hadn’t considered the consequences of such a drastic act as opposed to simply law enforcement, did not expect the following reactions throughout the galaxy.

The Triistara Massacre inspired nobles of houses that hadn’t even supported the idea of a revolution into full rage against the emperor and denounced him publicly. Riesstiu returned to his witch-hunts and many more were killed, replaced by “stable” senators. However, the Assembly of Lords had broken into two completely and irreversibly and those that were smart enough to remain secret built up loyal forces, waiting for the time to strike.

Though the rebellions continued pretty much endlessly for the next few years, the Revolution did not come to full power until the Kharak Genocide. As galactic news networks displayed the recordings transmitted to Riesstiu during the terrible act the people of the Imperium reacted more violently than ever and everywhere across the Imperium there was not a single planet free from riots. The military became far spread and thin and the revolutionaries seized their chance.

Lord Elson opened fire on the Imperial fleet from his asteroid colony and won several battles against his enemies, pushing them back with the help of others. However, there was little he could do when the Elite Forces of the Imperium arrived along with the Imperial Guard and decimated his fleet completely at the Battle of Vorshan’s Rift (see, VORSHAN’S RIFT, THE BATTLE OF), pushing him back to his asteroid colony and eventually suffocating him. The mistake the Imperials made at that moment was the same mistake they had been making all this time, they displayed the execution publicly, trying to make an example out of him. Though many were frightened into submission and the revolution began to die again, Captain P’teer Elson, loyal captain of the Imperium, was no longer content.

He, along with other tactical geniuses were more liberal than their superiors and having seen this good man killed cruelly and slowly for his act of rebellion made him a martyr, not a criminal. This was especially true for Captain Elson, who was Lord Elson’s son. Though P’teer did not act immediately he bid his time and as he saw more and more taken away from him, his belongings taken and confiscated, his love married to the emperor, he had little left for him in life. So he took his chance.

As he reached news of the Kushan attack on a research station a few lightyears from a supernova, P’teer defected and took the Kapella, one of the new Riesstiu-class destroyers commissioned by the Imperial Fleet Intelligence. The Imperials pursued him vigorously and set up a trap near the Galactic Core to try and trap him. Instead, they captured the enormous Exile fleet, more than a match for the Imperial forces at the trap site. Elson was taken under the Kushan wing and jumped towards the Karos Graveyard so he could contact his new allies in the rebellion.

After the Kushan had contacted the rebels, Elson jumped out and rendezvoused with the main fleet and began a series of missions against the Core Worlds, starting a guerilla war against the Imperium by jumping out near jump gates and attacking Taiidan escort fleets, then jumping out before inhibitors could be activated or the largest of the fleets could arrive. P’teer became a war hero and the Kapella a symbol of victory and freedom. Even today, the Resistance (see, TAIIDAN RESISTANCE, THE) respects it and has named a mysterious new project of theirs “Kapella”.

But the revolution was not complete, not even close. They had freed about three small worlds on the Inner Rim but the battle was far from completion. Elson insisted that the rebellion remain near Hiigara, even questioning his friend and ally Karls Martek, who had suggested the rebellion focus its efforts on the Mid Rim worlds which were under lighter guard than the borders of the Imperium or the Core Worlds. But Elson, who had won the loyalty of his soldiers, won the argument, though Karls did in the end take out a small force to raid the Mid Rim.

It wasn’t long before Elson received his news that the Kushan had broken into the Bridge of Sighs Defense Matrix. Trying to make sure that the rebellion arrived on schedule, Elson immediately charged the jump drives and hopped towards Hiigara. He arrived during the middle of the Second Battle of Hiigara, just in time to wipe out a large Imperial strike force that may well have destroyed a good portion of the Kushan fleet. Elson moved in quickly, closing in on the Emperor’s flagship and when the time was right, he opened fire and according to legend, dealt the final blow, ultimately defeating the Imperium in one swift blow.

The final blows. Though the Imperium was not quite dead yet and never would completely die (among others Makaan’s official title is Emperor of the Taiidan) the rebellion had already succeeded and the Revolution was almost over. With the defeat of the largest of the Taiidan navies and the defection of others, Elson and Martek turned their attention towards Triistara. Hiigara’s conquest was mostly taken care of by the Exiles who managed to destroy most defenses from low orbit and the rest from the air.

Triistara, the site for the beginning of the Taiidan Revolution and the location of the Triistara Massacre was an easy catch. Though a large defense force stood there it was not as large as that at Hiigara and the people were far more rebellious. The planet fell with little resistance and the Governor’s Palace was turned into that of the Capitol Building. The Taiidan Republic was declared and Elson began the final campaign against the Imperials still resisting.

It took time but the increasing numbers of the Republican navy eventually beat the Imperials down, along with the help of the Kushan fleet, still powerful. Though the Mothership had been retired the Kushan still controlled a large fleet of warships and began to independently launch them into combat, destroying Imperial convoys across the galaxy. Near the end of 1 AHL or 2511 GSY the Taiidan Imperial government, or what was left of it, surrendered. Only a couple of generals and leaders from old noble houses remained and they fled to the Turan Sector, trying to form a deal with their old allies.


The newborn nation. At the end of the Revolution, Congress elected Elson as leader, much to his surprise. At the insistence of others he took the title of premier and began the construction of a new Palace of the Republic on Triistara, mostly out of the rubble that had emerged from the Triistara Massacre years ago. As some of his first acts he began reconstruction programs to rebuild the Republic from the Homeworld War and the Revolution and begin preparing for the inevitable conflicts with the Imperialists.

However, only a year into his rule a crisis emerged as worlds began to secede from the Republic, claiming it favored talk over action and was no better than the Imperium. The Hiigaran government began to look hopefully at the ruins of the Imperium, hoping to make their own acquisitions. Elson was left with a galactic crisis and one of the few able to solve it. He immediately called out the Galactic Council (see, GALACTIC COUNCIL, THE) and told them that unless the Republic was left intact and united that the galaxy would fall only further into chaos and the goals set by the Revolution would never be achieved.

The Bentusi then intervened and put their ships between the Frerrn, Imperialist, Separatist, Republican, and Kushan vessels, declaring that if anybody was going to fight over the territory of the former Taiidan Imperium that they would have to go through the Unbound first (see, UNBOUND RACES, THE). All ships stood down and a temporary peace was found, even with the Imperialist Faction who feared the power of a Bentusi fleet as well. The Taiidan Republic, for their help in the compromise, were given most of the trade worlds of the Imperium but little else besides a few colonies. The majority of separatists were allowed to leave, but only if they promised not to open fire on Republican ships and to have no affiliation with later attemptions at secession. These worlds mostly became independent of one another but in time a Galactic Defense Union (see, GALACTIC DEFENSE UNION, THE) was formed, to protect against foreign powers.

Because of his efforts P’teer Elson also gained immense jumps in popularity and his poll ratings soared as he began to make new laws that regulated commerce throughout the Republic, giving jobs to those that had had none and hence increasing the galactic economy. The Taiidan Republic began to increase in prosperity during Elson’s first term, because though the Republic was ravaged from war with the Imperialists, the new laws benefiting the majority brought prosperity to the Republic and rose industrial efforts as Elson prepared a new Republican Navy.

The Republican Navy eventually became limited to patrols along the borders to stop the Imperialists from moving deep into the Republic. Now with the Turanic alliance cemented the Imperialists were able to make bolder and bolder raids. To ensure that the Imperialists did not pose too much of a threat, Elson began funding research programs on new technologies and began playing warlords on one another. He also made an alliance with one Vaygr crusade in the Vaygr Reaches, the Ascalon Crusade, and used them to invade Turanic space now and then, disrupting the war industry of the Imperialists.

The Republican Navy proved its power during the Fourth Battle of Hiigara, the second Imperialist attempt at reclaiming the planet. In this battle the Republic first showed the use of energy cannons, a new technology recently developed. Though the weapon system was slower than standard mass drivers it was far more powerful and as the Hiigaran government began to make modifications to the technology, burst fire energy cannons would later emerge, becoming the standard form of mass driver in the future.

However, the Republic was rarely around to help the Hiigaran Federation and had to deal with its own problems frequently. Often the Imperialists would seize worlds on the borders of the Republic or small worlds would try to secede as others had done. However, the Republican Navy cracked down on these efforts and peace began to return as the galaxy calmed down. Elson won his reelection campaign quite successfully and his next as well, all was going well for the young Republic. Nothing was wrong.

The Beast War. The Beast War (see, BEAST WAR, THE), the most disastrous war for the Republic, perhaps even more disastrous than the Dust Wars, costing millions of lives and taking several more. It was a fight with a foe that no living species could remember and a foe that acted like none that they could.

The Beast, a viral organism, was originally discovered by the Somtaaw “Explorer”-class mining ship Kuun-Lan (see, KUUN-LAN). The Kuun-Lan uncovered a small beacon pod and took it aboard and were ordered by their kiith’sa to study it without the help of the other kiithid. When the beacon pod took over the lower half of the ship the Kuun-Lan ejected it and then sent a science team over to investigate, becoming part of the plague themselves. The Kuun-Lan barely escaped after a Turanic-Imperialist fleet was deceived and captured by the Beast and made a short jump out of the area without taking the time to charge their hyperspace drive all the way. The lower half of the Kuun-Lan later became the first Beast Mothership and began the plague against the galaxy.

The Kuun-Lan fought the Beast several times over the next few months and ships disappeared along Frerrn or Republican space with little explanation. Even a handful of Vaygr or Turanic ships disappeared, even though they were famed for great escapes. The Beast is thought to have considered the outdated Vaygr ships useless and hence the reason while numerous of their ships were not encountered. Frerrn ships were captured, but only in small numbers and generally, the Frerrn were quick to realize the threat and self-destructed before a majority of their ships disappeared.

The Republican fleets however, had no reason to react any differently than when they saw Imperialist ships and the Beast was intelligent enough to use Imperialist designs rather than Somtaaw ones against the Republic and the fleets put up a fight rather than retreating or scuttling their infected warships. Few escaped the attacks and their messages were delirious and confused. Republican agents were unable to decipher what was happening, especially because that the Kuun-Lan had yet failed to contact the Faal-Corum or their kiith’sa about the new threat, meaning that only the Kuun-Lan, Bentusi, and Caal-Shto knew about the knew threat.

After rescuing the Caal-Shto from Imperialists and Beast alike the Kuun-Lan emerged within Republican space after a far jump. They emerged near a center of slipgates, still an important mode of transportation for the Taiidan Republic, as mentioned earlier in the article. A series of jump-incapable transports began to emerge and released a distress call after picking up the Somtaaw hyperspace signature. These transports came from the Fornax system, a system that was due to blow any minute. Every system within one hundred lightyears of the area was being evacuated over a period of one hundred years (supernova radiation travels a far difference, and it travels at the speed of light), though that evacuation process was interrupted by the Dust Wars. At this time it was the Fornax system that was being evacuated and they were now under attack by what seemed to them to be Imperialist Nuclear Warheads.

The Kuun-Lan immediately interfered and managed to save half of the transports, destroying the other fifty percent. The captain of one of the colony ships informed the Kuun-Lan of the situation. According to a Republican spy who had been dispatched into Imperialist space the Imperialists were using, unknown to their Turanic allies, Beast samples to create a bio-weapon. In fact, the Taiidan government had known about the Beast almost as long as the Kuun-Lan had but had kept it secret, thinking it was simply a prototype of some Imperialist weapon. When the colony ships informed them otherwise Premier Elson issued an emergency situation and began mobilizing the Republican Fleet for its first genuinely cataclysmic threat.

The Republican Fleet fought its first battles with the Beast shortly after the incident with the Kuun-Lan and the Fornax Evacuation Team. When the Kuun-Lan launched its strike against an Imperialists bio lab it was the Republicans who provided most of the covert work on the ground. When the Beast threat was found to be spread throughout most of the galaxy, a threat to the entire galaxy, it was the Republic that designed a new weapon to fight the Beast, the Repulsor Field, prototyped in the Nomad Moon Project.

With systems falling to the Beast quickly and rapidly, Elson personally oversaw a number of projects to create a super weapon, deadly enough to destroy the Beast Fleet in one single tactical strike. Several designs were proposed but finally, it was the Nomad Moon Project that caught his attention. Seeing the potential in this project, Elson financed it straight from his own salary and began to build up the defensive station around a remote planet on the border of Turanic and Republican space.

However, the station was seized more quickly than anticipated and just as the Republicans had infiltrated the Imperialists with their intelligence, so had the Republicans been infiltrated. These spies betrayed the Republic to the Beast, who seized the station as quickly as possible and had it not been for the timely arrival of the Somtaaw, and much later, the Bentusi, the Beast may well have won against the galaxy.

After the climatic Battle of Nomad Moon, the Beast began to lose the war and the great majority of their motherships were destroyed until only a few were left. But the price was heavy for the Republic, even late in the war. The Republic and the Aggregate were the largest of the allied nations against the Beast and it was the Republic, because of its proximity to Imperialist space and their early mistakes in the war, lost over four million lives, military and civilian both. The only reason this price was not higher however, was because that the Beast had been unable to make contact with all but a few colony worlds and had been limited to striking fleets and convoys. Almost every Republican ship that went into combat against the Beast was never heard from again. In the end, half of the Republican fleet was gone and the Republic began to falter while the Aggregate and Somtaaw grew stronger.
Tensions with the Frerrn. Though the Imperium was long gone, tensions still existed between the Frerrn and Taiidan people. Just as the replacement of the old Frerrn Republic with the Frerrn Aggregate had not eased these tensions, neither did the replacement of the Imperium by the Republic. In fact, later on, after the official split between Imperialist and Turanic forces shortly before the Kor Incident, the Imperialists began to ally with the Frerrn Aggregate.

Elson himself did not pursue a fourth term after the year 17 AHL but as a last testament to his efforts to build the Republic up to a successful height, he visited the Imperialist factions and began to make reprimands with them, trying to heal the wound between the Imperialists and the Republicans, and hence strengthen themselves against a possible war with the Frerrn.

The next premier of the Taiidan Republic, Absolon Matel, was steadfastly opposed to Elson’s decisions later in his term and accused Elson of being senile and weak and having brought the Republic into the Beast War hastily and without necessary thought. Elson’s supporters pointed out that the Beast had proved to be a threat but Matel, a steadfast Consignist, would not bow to pressure from the Congress and began to work against Elson’s reforms of Imperial law and hoped to bring back successful trade policies used by the Imperium.

It is true however, that Matel did manage to create a healthy economy for the impoverished Republic and he was able to win his second term easily and became popular amongst the people, despite the healthy beginnings to a Socialist Party formed by the previously popular Elson. But despite the many hard-core fans of the old premier, the Socialist Party lost to Matel by a full 10% of the popular vote and a total of 230 electorals. Matel was no longer just a politician, he was a superstar.

But that was the true problem. Because Matel was so immensely popular for his efforts, he came to believe that he must be able to do anything. After all, he had beat three time running Elson in a fourth bid for control of the Republic in 23 AHL. It seemed as though he was destined to bring the Republic to greatness. So, he was not covert enough to hide his unbridled hatred and resentment of the Aggregate.

“It is the great obstacle in our future,” Matel said during his inauguration ceremony in 24 AHL, “this Frerrn Aggregate. It has done nothing in our path to be worthy of respect and has oppressed its people to the most horrible and despicable form of government that communism is. Having been successfully reelected as the premier of this great and glorious Taiidan Republic, I believe it is my responsibility to reinforce our walls against the Aggregate, so that if war comes, we shall be ready for it.”

Within three months of his reelection, Matel began to openly criticize the Frerrn government during diplomatic conferences around the galaxy. He began to build up the fleet along the borders of the Aggregate and at the same time, demand the lowering of Frerrn defenses. During the Matel-Ma’met Crisis he demanded that High Chancellor Ma’met of the Aggregate immediately stand down and surrender the territory along the border of the Republic and Aggregate that covered a good portion of the former Regvali Sector of Imperial space. Ma’met did not stand down and it almost came to war before the Hiigarans and Council jointly intervened and set up ships along the border of both nations, annexing the territory as Hiigaran space. Neither the Aggregate or Republic wanted to go to war with the Council-protected Federation and so stood down, for the time being.

However, when Matel was forced to stand down his poll ratings dropped remarkably low and the paranoia that had been Matel’s creation turned against him and people began to suspect Matel of weakness. Boldly, and stupidly, Matel sought to disprove this weakness and sent a fleet of warships into neutral Imperialist space to take over a resource-rich portion of the former Imperium. The Imperialists were outraged and made terrorist attacks against the Republic fringe worlds, ending Elson’s hope of reunification. Lord Konstan of the House of Corellon, the current standing leader of the Imperialist factions, had this to say about the incident.

“Over my years as an admiral and leader of my people, I had come to respect and admire Elson and though I had no wish to rejoin with the insurgent Republic, I did find myself appealed by his hopes for peace between our people and his. But thanks to this idiot’s decision to invade our space, without provocation I may add, I have declared that any cooperation between our governments is now nil.”

This attitude led to more and more attacks until finally Matel was impeached by the Congress for having misused his powers and the poll ratings dropped dramatically. Soon after he resigned the Socialist Party was elected into office and Elson’s former vice-premier, Riesstiu Verrun came to power. Verrun sought out, as Matel had, to reverse his forbearer’s reforms although he was more subtle about it and kept some of Matel’s beneficial reforms.

However, Verrun, in no way the diplomat that Elson had been, was unable to aimed the breech of relations with the Aggregate and Imperialists and tried in vain to stop the reestablishment of an alliance between both powers, and alliance aimed at defeating the Republic, through war or peace. This new alliance was known as the Coalition and over time it would grow to encompass other worlds, including eventually, the Vaygr Crusade of Juuda (see, CRUSADE OF JUUDA, THE).

Verrun and the others that followed him continued to strengthen the Republic, but it never quite recovered from the Beast War and was not ready for what came next in its history.

The Dust Wars and the fall of the Republic. In 78 AHL a new alliance was formed to counter the power of the Triple Coalition (see, TRIPLE COALITION, THE) and it was named the Alliance of Independent Nations (see, ALLIANCE OF INDEPENDENT NATIONS, THE). This new alliance was formed of most of the old worlds belonging to the Imperium, including the Republic and strangely enough, a great majority of the Turanic clans.

This alliance was mostly formed because of the events during the Somtaaw-Baiiju War (see, SOMTAAW-BAIIJU WAR, THE), a small sixteen-day conflict between the Turanic clan of Baiiju and Kiith Somtaaw. The war, though short, had almost destroyed one of the most powerful clans in Turanic space and tore the Turan Sector to pieces, making Kiith Somtaaw one of the great powers in the galaxy, no longer just one of the many kiithid in the Hiigaran Federation, almost independent and sovereign on its own.

The Daiamid, because that the Somtaaw were of course a member of the Federation, voted to remain neutral in the conflict though the Somtaaw were pushing for entry in the Coalition. This was because that though the Somtaaw were powerful, there were a good many other kiithid that were afraid of the Somtaaw power or sympathized with the Republic. This included the powerful Kiith Paktu, formerly an ally of the Somtaaw.

“In light of the events of recent, I would like to remind the Daiamid,” Kyostii Paktu’sa began the day that the Daiamid voted on the decision, “that though Somtaaw was once a great and honorable kiith, one of many brothers to my own Kiith Paktu, that they have recently proven aggressive and quick to anger and slow to thought. Must I remind you that our true friend is the Republic, not the Aggregate? Where was the Aggregate when we needed them during the Homeworld War? They were nowhere to be seen. No, it was Captain Elson who came to our aid and I myself, kiith’sa of the Paktu refuse to change the truth based on Somtaaw’s personal alliances!”

The vote for the neutrality however, worried the Republic government and the current premier did not bother running again though his party did later win under Zan Martek, a popular senator descended from Elson’s friend the Duke Martek. Martek began a campaign to restore calm within the Republic and ensured that war would not break out unless there was no other option, and that if it did, he would do everything in his power to gain the Hiigaran Federation’s support. The greatest disaster yet however, came in 89 AHL, only two years after his election, when the Galactic Council broke apart completely.

The disaster shook the Republic and weakened Martek’s position significantly. However, Martek, hoping to regain his former popularity amongst the people managed to establish the Bentusi-Republic Pact, meant to ensure the survival of the Republic in a time of war. However, Martek did fail to sway the Hiigarans during his attempt to turn the Daiamid back towards Taiidan favor. The vote came closer than before, but the Hiigarans remained neutral, greatly endangering both Martek and his Republic.

In 91, one year prior to his reelection bid, Martek gathered support by refurnishing the Republican Navy, a long time goal of his party, and brought prototype designs into standard service, replacing almost every one of the old and outdated Imperial spacecraft. In 92, however, after his successful reelection, the Frerrn Aggregate annexed Ramsii, a small independent world and member of the Alliance. The Republic was outraged and demanded the withdrawal of Frerrn forces or war. The Aggregate officially apologized and prepared to withdraw but as they withdrew, the Aggregate opened fire on the Ramsii civilians and bombarded the cities from orbit, turning Ramsii into a wasteland.

The outrage was one that none of the nations could ignore. The Bentusi, more angry than they had been for millennia, joined the Alliance and the whole of the united worlds declared war on the Frerrn and anyone who would jump to their aid. Shortly after the entire Triple Coalition declared war on the entire Alliance and the galaxy was embroiled in a few second with the most extensive war ever since the Great War (see, GREAT WAR, THE).

The main focus of the war on both sides was the control of resource rich worlds between the Republic and the Aggregate and for this reason it earned its name from Hiigaran journalists, the Dust Wars. For several years both sides fought but despite the Bentusi support, the Alliance was often beaten back by the Coalition, most often by the intelligent Imperialist and Vaygr generals, the most impressive by far of any military commanders in the war prior to Kyostii Paktu’sa and the Federation’s entry into the war.

The Bentusi, despite their power, were no match for the numbers they faced for during the Beast War many of their ships had been scuttled to avoid capture and those that left the galaxy were destroyed instantly by the collapse of the slipgate they had been using. Other Bentusi vessels, weakened by the war with the Beast, became easy prey for concentrated attacks by the Turanic Raiders. Now, with only a dozen ships remaining the Bentusi were left to hit-and-run strikes against the Frerrn, Imperialists, and Vaygr.

As the war grew desperate, Martek began to take to the front himself and being a very, very effective general was able to push back higher numbered forces with much ease and his popularity back home soared enormously. And even his critics began to rally behind him. But even Martek could not hold off anything.

Fortunately, one event caused the whole war to turn back for the Alliance. When a Manaani convoy was slipping through war territory, a combined Somtaaw (who had been aiding the Coalition covertly for a while now) and Frerrn task force destroyed the convoy and took information and resources that it had been bringing to the Bentusi, more closely aligned with the Federation than the Republic was.

When the Daiamid found out about Somtaaw interference they were outraged and banished the Somtaaw from the Daiamid, who became independent for a time and civil war broke out on Hiigara. The Somtaaw were driven off Hiigara easily however and the Daiamid turned its attention towards the Somtaaw’s allies, the Frerrn, and joined the Alliance.

Kyostii Paktu’sa immediately took command of the Paktu fleet and led a task force deep into Frerrn space and began to beat the enemy back with the help of Martek and together the two managed to carve a wound that was deepening quickly, heading straight for the Frerrn capital world. Panicking, the Aggregate asked for more aggressive help from the Vaygr Crusade of Juuda.

Macabii agreed and launched several daring and brave attacks against the Taiidan home front and began to break through, seizing several of the Republican outposts. Martek had to leave the Frerrn front to fight off the Imperialists and Vaygr very soon and Kyostii came to a stalemate. But Kyostii was not finished. He sent one of his favorite captains, Aleksii Niirfa, deep into Vaygr space using an experimental cloak module and got him past the defenses into the Crusade of Ascalon.

There Aleksii and his ambassador allies managed to convince the young Crusade of Ascalon, named Daved, to accept Hiigaran help in overthrowing his overlord, Macabii, who had enslaved the Crusade of Ascalon to him. Daved agreed and the Hiigarans began to covertly help a sudden revolt against Macabii within his own territory. Within a year, Daved had become the master of Vaygr space and became the leader of all the crusades, beginning a war into Frerrn space.

However, despite the good news this meant for the Republic, something happened to change the war once again. As Daved came closer to the Frerrn homeworld, he discovered something on Bethlim, one of the many Frerrn colonies. Beneath its surface he encountered a magnificent hyperspace core, a far jump core. Within weeks he had equipped his entire fleet with far jump drives. Believing him to be the legendary Sajuuk-khar, the Vaygr people proclaimed Daved “Makaan” or “the Prophet”.

Shortly after the capture of the Frerrn homeworld the Imperialists surrendered to him and he was crowned Emperor of the Taiidan and turned his attention to winning back the ancient Taiidan Imperium. For this purpose, he first turned to the Turanics and destroyed them utterly, his once proud allies. Those that weren’t killed, joined in an instant and his armada swelled enormously and he turned his attentions towards the outer worlds of the Alliance and the Bentusi began to criticize him, reminding him who had put him in power.

Not wanting his religious significance challenged, he declared war on the Bentusi and began to destroy their ships one by one. Only later did he discover that he must find the First Core, one of the keys to the legendary End Time. Before he discovered this however, he turned to his last opponent, the Taiidan Republic. Swarming them all at once the strategic genius of Makaan was too much even for Martek to hold back and he was assassinated by his own men shortly after the invasion began.

The new premier called out for help from the Hiigarans but the Hiigaran government had already signed a non-aggression pact with the Vaygr Dominion (see, VAYGR DOMINION, THE), sealing the Republic’s fate. Soon after the treaty was signed, the Vaygr swarmed on to Triistara and captured it, though the new premier, Iolon Duuval, managed to escape to the world of Ainahar. With the capture of Triistara, the Republic came to an end.

Yay, he's back in action!

Good God! Oh son of Gibon.

98 bloody pages.

Wow! :buddies:

Very nice. There is a typo; Daved/Makaan found the Third Core in the Hethlim Ice Fields, not Bethlim. Otherwise, there is certainly potential for hundreds of HW2 mods here.

another typo: it's the Bentus, not the Ben Tus.

Hmm... My source at HWS said Bethlim but oh well, I'll change it.

Also, in HW2 as well as at the HWS website it is clearly "Ben Tus". I would not have written it otherwise.

nice are u gonna post another page?

Patience, young Padawan, it will come soon, no doubt.

Yeah, if you want it to be good, you gotta wait.

took me 2 days of playing then after winning / losing a bajillion x reading this and other email. heck this looks and sounds like the complete edition of encyclopedia brittanica i read..... faster than reading on the inter net but took me couple of days hours each book..... well now that i have one of the fastest comp i play games that are more time consuming but more fun and versitale

siggy online... tell them plz

i've gotta say that this is some really great work. i was just today thinking "why hasn't someone done any kind of compilation?"

you're very thorough. again, some great work.