Fiction:Valian Empire/History

"To understand a people, you explore their cuts and scars. To understand a nation, you burrow in its history."

- The Volanti

This is a comprehensive account of the history of all modern and previous Volanti civilizations, starting with their mysterious origins some 130,000 thousand years ago and ending with the modern-day Valian Empire. For a more specific look at the key points and events of Volanti history, see the Valian Timeline.

The Ruin
The Valian people are native to a world that now lives on only in legend; a planet somewhere in Rohse's inner regions called the Mothermoon of Nol Aris; Valian for old home. Few records remain of the dark age that followed the collapse of its ruling empire; they only ascertain that it was a harsh but verdant homeworld, and that it spawned the Volanti species and its ancient glyphs and culture. Valian civilization then, now dubbed the Ancient Empire, was advanced enough to have ventured into space, but it had no colonies. It appears to have been a theocratic monarchy with absolute authority, its subjects never deviating from their rulers' spoken law. The Volanti of Nol Aris were a proud and devout people, but apart from the fact that they worshipped the stars not much else is known of their ancient ways.

What is strongly documented is their world’s abrupt destruction, an event it seems they had forseen, but calculated to be far in the future. An aging nearby star, flickering to death, seemed to be on the verge of death. But Valian observers simply nodded and set a date, and assumed that if all went right their entire race could flee in time before the event, assuming the star kept to schedule.

It did not. As it started to go out in white-hot flare storms and explosions, ages before any of them had predicted, the Mother Moon perished- much too soon. Its crust was torn to rubble and its lands sunk into the boiling waters, and the whole of its sphere was soon engulfed by the disaster. Only a fraction of the Volanti were able to escape, dispersing in primitive ships to wherever chance would take them. No other creature from their home was saved, but for a single flower that would become the symbol of their race's rebirth.

The Valian seed-ships that escaped the flash fled in all directions, outfitted with archaic technology. They were cut off from each other, without any hope of contact or of knowing where they'd land. The number and the fate of many was never to be known. The only thing we can be sure of is that a handful of them survived, finding a viable place to settle and get ready for a fresh start. And thus the Era of the Splintered States began.

Splintered Reigns Era
The Splintered Reigns Era is a period of Volanti history that took place from approximately 57,000 BF until 31,800 BF in the central regions of the Rohse Galaxy, as the mini-empires that arose from the destruction of Nol Aris ("the Splinters"), were born, developed and eventually discovered each other. It concluded with the victory of the Kingdom of Tharys over the other major state, the Pillar of Veroe, in the Primal Wars, and was followed by the Two Kingdoms Period. The era has no clear beginning, as no actual records exist of the year Nol Aris perished and the new age began, but most scholars concur on it being nearly sixty thousand years before the Founding.



The Pillar of Veroe
One of the ships that escaped the Ruin of the Mothermoon found its way to a deserted planet in the star system of Rakiva; its first settlers christened it Veroe, from the Volanti word for daughter. These same pioneers brought their technology and culture with them, along with a distant descendant of one of Nol Aris's old kings: one who would become Vesped the First. They established a small tribe-kingdom on the planet, and over hundreds of years grew to house a prestigious new order, an empire that, through the development of archaic pulsar-based technology and the settlement of the other planets in the system, was called the Pillar of Veroe. It was at this time that they encountered the first signs of alien life, fledgling states neighboring the newly-settled system. On a crusade to regain their power and pride, the Veroese accordingly crushed them. It soon proved to be not so small an issue: the unnamed wars that followed as they attempted to claim the region cost Veroe almost everything. The capital itself was almost ruined, laid waste to by the war. At its end, tired but victorious, the aging Vesped claimed dominion over the whole of Rukiva's star cluster, renaming the capital of his last opponent Velasco and relocating his court there. Dying of old age in 52,100 BF, he did not live long enough to see the fruits of his labour.

Left kingless and led by regents, the Pillar slowly kept growing. Veroe itself was eventually abandoned, made a backwater world in Veroese politics by the rise of new worlds and conquests. The king's son, Reza, remarkably young, ruled from Velasco over a prospering enclave, now with tens of dozens of planets under his control. His mother, the Widow-queen Rubian, was prohibited form interfering with his mandate (as custom dictated), leaving him to manage as best he could. He embraced the new wealth of Veroe and its gardenworlds with joy, being much too inexperienced to control or care for its government. The Veroese nobility grew larger and larger; the Pillar, loose and scattered. But the Young King, unexplicably, left life as quick as he'd gained it- under rumouredly suspicious circumstances.

In 49,803 BF, the dowager queen Rubian placed the Tassel-Crown on her head herself. Discarding Velasco as the nobility's plaything, she named yet another new capital: Veruna, a deserted, placid orb to be remade in her own glorious vision as she took the reins of the empire with a steel grip. She forced the nobles from their hidey-holes to court at Velasco, where they could be watched with a careful eye from the capital's rapidly-rising walls. Not long after this the Empire’s remaining gentry, outspoken enough to protest from their outposts on the empire’s outskirts, were dethroned, relieved of the treasures and titles they'd gained during the curtailed reign of her son, and carried in chains to Veruna, Sc'yon of Veroe. Unlike their disbelieving higher-placed counterparts, they were promptly called to the Imperial courts and denounced traitors in trial after trial, chaired by Empress Rubian herself. Then they were executed, swiftly, and silently- all for not keeping quiet. The Empress is notable for her use of terror in incapacitating the cabal of nobles that had made the Pillar of Veroe, at least according to her, so bumbling and inefficient- and replacing their quasi-democratic system with a new regime of her own. It was harsh; it was centralized; it was heavy-handed. And it was to cement order in the region for the next five millenia.

At last, with her grasp on power consolidated and every city in the empire under strict curfew, Rubian began to recreate the state. The massive Veroese Navy was deployed en masse from the capital and seized control of every vulnerable trade route, moon and settlement from Veruna to the borders of the Unexplored Stars, reaching almost as far as the planets of Arcel and Kanto in the east. She commenced some of the most ambitious expansion plans ever seen, unveiled titanic construction projects that would leave Veruna covered in marble colonnades and monuments; and ordered the blazing of wide and well-guarded routes spanning thousands of light-years between every world in her empire, connecting her vassals to the seat of her power and dispatching hundreds of scouts to find new worlds amidst the darkness. She styled herself Empress of the Stars, and meant it. But her reign, though strong, would not last long, nor would Veroe’s over the bright reaches of the core.

Kingdom of Tharys
By the time of Veruna’s golden age and the summit of Empress Rubian’s power, the thriving Volanti merchant world of Tharys, barely parsecs away, had become a major power. Neither civilization, however, had discovered the other. Space travel was still to be perfected, and it still was, if not outright life-threatening, inexact and dangerous: stars, unless stumbled upon, could not be reached at all. But this didn’t stop either culture from seeking wealth and expansion, even if it had kept them separate. And the shock of their first meeting would not be a soft one.

Tharys’s rulers were, like Veroe’s, Volanti survivors, a spawn of the ancient colony ships that left the decaying Nol Aris. Culturally speaking, they could not have been more different. Rubian’s empire, in keeping with the strictest Valian traditions (and a taste of her own personal tastes), was a xenophobic and warlike culture. The Kingdom of Tharys, named after a solitary planet with about half as many possessions as Veroe to the west, was not a creature of war but of scrolls and orum, a disciplined but veritable cultural collector with many more alien races in its ranks than the militaristic Pillar. Favorably surrounded by timid alien peoples, it had crushed some into tribute-givers and traded with the rest. It was by now surrounded with client states, and with around forty worlds and moons under its banners and its coffers fit to burst, it was a power to be reckoned with. Tharysian kings, careful not to extend their arms beyond their reach, lived in splendor, along with the rest of their race, the ruling class of Tharys’ holdings. Altogether, the kingdom looked like a prize fruit ripe for the picking.

And a prize is what Rubian saw when Veroese scouts, purely by accident, collided with a Tharysian fleet and relayed their discovery back to Veruna. It revealed that Tharys was not the only neighboring culture, nor was Veroe the lone surviving heir of Volaris’s ancients: in fact, it may have been only one of many. The discovery of these prosperous stars was an undeniable bait for Rubian, the end of her century-old search for a crowning conquest. And after tasting the spoils of wars with defeated minor neighbors, her attention turned to Tharys.

Minor Empires and Satrapies
Aside from the Pillar and the Tharysian state, there were a handful of Volanti mini-empires discovered during the age of the Splintered Reigns; the largest among them, however, were only mere fractions of Vero and Tharys' holdings. Most of these ancient states disappeared shortly, without trace, or were absorbed by others as the Primal Wars raged in Rohse's interior. However, three of these powers are worthy of note, if only as minor characters in the play of the time period. These are:


 * The Arcelican Empire: a small constellation of worlds on the western edge of the Tharysian Kingdom, with Arcel, another landing site of Volanti seed-ships, at its helm. The Arcelicans were a small but sturdy state, cordial but distant from their neighbor. They were nevertheless beaten, at least temporarily, by Veroese ships, who established a tenuous occupation of Arcel itself broken later in the war.


 * The Serrum Consortium: the Consortium consisted of an alliance of five planets, two of them survivor settlements, that had pooled their resources as they explored the star systems around their own. Rich with intrigue and only loosely linked, they were the first independent satrapy to be conquered during the Primal Wars, and the only one that was never entirely freed. Quite close to the Pillar's borders, they were easily overrun by Rubian's troops early in the conflict and remained a Veroese possession until the time of the Two Kingdoms.


 * The Berru Authority: the smallest of the Volanti mini-empires, the state of Berru constisted only of the Volanti settlement on the world of Berru, its six moons, and the Berrusi-owned planet of Tes. The Authority was growing rapidly in the pre-war years, but was blockaded by Veroese flotillas during their initial attack on Tharys' territories. Thanks in part to their good relationships with the latter, it was later liberated by the Tharysians as they marched west to Veruna. It changed hands again shortly, however, annexed by the Pillar until it in turn was defeated by Tharys' prevailing forces.

The Primal Wars
The giant brawl that followed as Tharys and Veruna dueled for control of the core is officially known as the Venu Unification Wars. It is now known more widely as the Primal Wars, because they led to the primeval birth of the first unified Volanti state.

Empress Rubian, by now determined to claim not only Tharys but all of the galaxy's core region for her own, marched first. She mobilized the entire Pillar of Veroe, heading east with a massive force behind her. She was rash but fast, easily toppling the Volanti mini-empires that had popped up throughout the region with surprise attacks and ambushes. Military victories at Kristos, Serrum and Kanto spurred her deeper into enemy lines, but by the time of her infamous Siege of Cobalt, barely parsecs from Tharys itself, her opponent set its foot down. Kingdom warships, leaving Sulat, smashed imperial flotillas at Nol Galle and the independent satrapy of Berru, creating a northern front by circling Rubian's forces and liberating planets in the small empire of Arcel. Her efforts to establish new bases in the south were put out with the exhausting Battle of Gara.

Bypassing her fleets entirely, the Tharysian king Talathos instead delved deep into the galactic core and took Velasco by surprise. Without ships or troops left behind, Rubian got a very nasty surprise: Velasco and neighboring Gavon, even closer to her own capital, were caught defenseless and rotundly conquered. Veroe itself seemed to shudder.

The presence of Talathos' ships only light-miles from her homeworld made the Empress incapable of any organized thought. Her conquests were widespread, but tenuous; she still possessed tremendous force, but her enemy had time on his side. Still she persisted. Relying on the maze of stars between Velasco and herself to prevent any further Tharysian progress, she ordered her forces to pummel the planets surrounding the royal capital. The king pulled out all the stops to beat her onslaught, leaving Tharys lightly guarded to use the bulk of its troops. The fighting was brutal. Copia, Igoro and Cyson were deadlocked in battle; Cobalt, still besieged, refused to yield. Epic feats of carnage followed the two factions' ships wherever they went; Rubian, despite her numbers, lost this particular stalemate. Her attempt to escape the fighting and advance to Vesyos, directly north of Tharys, went bad when Talathos forestalled her fleets in mid-travel, decimating a third of her forces and soundly beating the rest above the Vesyan skies in the Vesyan Assault. And Tharyisian reinforcements kept replacing the lost, arriving from the untouched deeps of the inner kingdom.

After painstaking decades of almost continous fighting, the planets around Tharys finally gave way- a short-lived victory, because many of Rubian's early conquests were starting to fall apart. With her army cut off from the core and the Tharysians unmoveable, she finally had no choice but to order a retreat. The Veroese, however, didn't leave without a last incursion. As what was left of their forces fled north to attempt to circle back to Veruna, they bombarded the unprotected capital, ravaging its surface as they fled the system.



The Road to Veruna
From then on it was an outright rout as the Veroese fell back, forced to relinquish their former prizes; eventually, not a single one of their ships remained outside the Pillar. Talathos' next move was to plan their own attack- into the Pillar itself. It proved to be a daunting task, what with it being so near the perilous galactic core and its labyrinthine passageways, but one he deemed necessary: he would not rest until he had Veruna in the palm of his hand. The Empress of the Stars, with her attempt to conquer an 'unworthy toadie state' in ruins and her own domains under attack, panicked. Tharys's forces made quick work of any occupied planets, easily retaking Copia, Kanto, Kristos and Serrum and raising the sieges of Cobalt and Sygilos. Velasco and Gavon, original Veroese worlds and early casualties of the war, remained under occupation, and as their stationed troops joined the main Tharysian spearhead, they continued their advance westward toward the core. The fall of Unan was the last straw; the closest Tharysian gain to the capital yet, it forced the Empress herself into action. She resigned to leave her glorious Veruna behind, fleeing to the depths of the Empire with half the court in tow. Determined not to allow the fall of the Pillar, she hastily renamed planet Verdun the capital, a target well away from Tharys' current advances. To reach it, the invaders would have to cross half the empire, not to mention navigate the treacherous deep core. That they did.

Sure enough, King Talathos and his legions arrived at Veruna within days. It capitulated without a single shot fired- most of its inhabitants had been evacuated off-world. The rest of the road would not be so easy: loyalists put up a brave fight at Vyros, the old capital's close neighbor, and managed to stave off the Tharysians who laid siege to Serina and Vuloto for years. But still, one by one they fell- even Veroe itself could not resist. As the army, with the king himself in the lead, drew inexorably close to Verdun, the Empress fled yet again- this time headed to the small hideout world of Lein, one of the closest to the galactic centre- and there awaited an invasion that never came. She transformed it into a fortress, but her deepening paranoia and erratic fears almost brought the world to ruin. Verdun fell shortly after, completely, and decisively, ensuring that the Pillar would never rise again.

Two Kingdoms Period
The Two Kingdoms period, also known as the Era of the Twin Crowns, was the period of Volanti history immediately following the Era of the Splintered States and concluding with the Stygian Schism. Starting officially in 31,800 BF, nearly 6 thousand years after the chaos of the Primal Wars, the period follows the creation of a long-lived Volanti dyarchy, with Veruna and Volaris as co-capitals, and its eventual near-defeat in the Great Atrisian War near the turn of the era. The period ends with the fusing of the two kingdoms into a centralized Empire, in the year 1 AF.



The Twin Crowns
The defeat of the Star Empress and the invasion of her homeland brought an end to the Verunian search for glory. The planet would never again rule a state of its own (though not for lack of trying). King Taitos of Tharys made Rubian hand him her crown personally, her people were humiliated. The king, however, did not simply turn the ravaged pilalr into a satellite or client state, opting instead for a more popular solution. Being of the same species as them, the idea of enslaving his fallen foes was distasteful to put it mildly. He proposed a diarchy instead, in which Veruna would rule alongside the Tharysian crown, soon to be relocated to a new capital, Volaris, replacing war-damaged Tharys. The defeated party bemusedly accepted. Taitos' idea was to create a stronger Volanti state, and unite its people under a single banner. It didn't, lamentably, work. While the new government, amicably titled the Kingdom of the Twins, did not fall victim to conflict, the two crowned capitals started drifting apart. Upon Taitos' death 9 decades after the Primal Wars, the division was aknowledged and permanent; Tharys had always been an open-minded world of progress and trade, but Veruna, ever the suspicious (and resentful) conservative, responded with icy distance to its approaches. A rivalry developed, and competition followed. Tharys pursued it by sending explorers rimward to search of colonies and treasure; it came to rule over an informal area called Thrace. Veruna, for its part, did the opposite, dedicating itself to fawning over its worlds near the galaxy's core. The worlds of Vuloto, Vantaal, Nol Illia, Verdun, Quesay and Nol Homma, along with countless others, were vapidly and exlcusively loyal to their capital.



The Great Age of Exploration
The crowns of Volaris and Veruna both experienced exponential growth in the midst of the era, albeit to different degrees. Veruna and its vassals continued colonization of the core, establishing new outposts like Ansold and Brienne and spilling unto the southwest portion of the galaxy. Thrace, on the other hand, was much more adventurous. New ships, imperial and private alike, spewed into the upper left quadrant of the galaxy, searching for new stars to settle across the void that marked the edge of known space, separating the Paragon cluster from the rest of Rohse. Volarisi merchants, eagerly searching for new trading partners to line their coffers, bankrolled many of the outgoing vessels, most of which did not return. Volanti astronomers could see the bright regions on the other side of the chasm- they just had no way to reach them.

The answer to their prayers took the form of a single planet- a stepping stone to the East. Ships, powered by weaker forms of the current pulsar star drive, didn't have the firepower to make the jump across- until now. A daring crew of Volaris-native explorers, among them the celebrated captain Securo Alesu, made the jump to the barren world, set up a small outpost and then jumped again- this time to the other side of the Void. Their discovery, one of the richest and largest new areas in the galaxy, is one of the most significant events in galactic history. In honor of the leader of the expedition, the jumping-off point was christened Alesos, and the great void between the Paragon cluster and the new lands, the Alesian Gulf.

News of Alesu's discovery of a new cluster with green planets ripe for the picking spread quickly throughout the Volanti world. Upon him and his crew's triumphal return to Volaris, hordes of spacers volunteered to go back. Alesu himself made eight return trips, so that some mere 50 years after his intial finding, the region was well on its way to becoming a bourgeoning imperial addition. Verunian expeditions were almost inexistent, deprived of the new treasure trove by their late arrival. The new cluster proved to be not only valuable new space for settling, but a mineral and natural treasure. Val Kosul, or New Kosul, named after an aging Thracian planet from whence many of the adventurers came, was the first large colony on the new territory, christened the Ai'mar Cluster but known to all as the Petal Rim. The worlds of Nedec, Val Mynne and Shune followed, until the flow of new arrivals was almost unstoppable. Thousands of Volanti from both kingdoms began to move into the Petal, one of the largest migrations in history. Mining planets thick with valuable ores seemed unending; as did worlds green with resources, new spices, new materials and commodities. Boomworlds sprouted like weeds, which provoked more immigration which provoked more exploration which led to more boomworlds, etc. It seemed to be the perfect vicious circle.



The Troubles
Until The Troubles came. The overeager expansion of Thrace was not without its strains. Royal power was greatly diluted by the distance between the Centre and the Petal Rim. Colonists and traders, often brutal in their search for fame and wealth, could exploit planets and natives without restraint. Attempts to install some sort of leash were met created resistance and corruption, and fights, though hushed-up, were common when Verunian settlers tried to grab a share of the prize.

What was much more serious, however, was the discovery of the new species found in the cluster. The Rim was by no means an empty place; races big and small inhabitted many of its worlds, some sentient and some not. Aliens trying to fit into the Empire, or whose worlds were devastated by its colonization efforts, were a great grievance to the somewhat-xenophobic general population. As the empire delved deeper into the cluster, claiming more and more worlds, news of ugly attacks on natives and even riots against Volanti patrons and royal representatives reached the ears of the court all the way in Volaris. They were put down, eventually, with ever-bigger numbers of royal fleets and forces sent to patrol the region- but what they foreshadowed was not.

Great War of Atrisia
The building tension in the Rim peaked, as most tensions do, with a war. One that would engulf the whole star cluster for over ten thousand years. Its magnitude has made it one of the most important and destructive conflicts in the history of Rohse, which is why it is sometimes called the Great War of the Rose. The Volanti call it the Great War of Atrisia.

Thracian and Verunian settlement of the brand-new stars to the east had been a source of boiling trouble for thousands of years, ever since their discovery in the mid-Two Kingdoms Period. Historians consider that the Great Age of Exploration came to its end with the Atrisian War, after various riots and small conflicts had already pockmarked the region. The Empire went from and age of abundance and stability to a period of near-total war, fighting for its life for control over the new cluster as well as supremacy over the galaxy. Their opponent was the Sayarin Ascendancy, self-styled "supreme leader of the galaxy of Anur'iuu", as they called the rose. What made them unique was their size and power- almost identical to that of the Twin Crowns. It was the first time they'd met any galactic people who could meet their might, and thus a meeting doomed to spark a fire.

The war started explosively, though not without preamble. Both of the crowns had communicated on several times with the Sayarenes; always with unpleasant results due to their numerous differences. Volanti incursions into the Rim had begun to encroach upon Sayarene holdings, and attacks on Ascendancy allies, which the Kingdoms considered baseline barbarians, had provoked an intense dislike between the two. More importantly, Volaris and Veruna felt threatened by the alien empire, just as it felt unease towards "the heartless starmen of the core". Tensions ran high. Sayarene raids on Volanti settlers drove them further apart, until whole galaxy stood on its toes to wait for the coming storm.

In 16,800 BF,

Battle of Sinái
Massive pitched battle above Sinái, strongworld of the Ascendancy and protector of Atrisia: war ends in fireworks.

War's End
Atrisia itself, following Volanti custom, was humiliated in the worst way considered possible- made into a backwater nothing. It became a lowly loyal world, renamed Sono, which means "small", its old buildings razed and replaced with fields. It did not even appear on standard maps, until its resurgence in the last millenium as a refueling station in the Talicut Circuit. Tourists rarely stop to see the charred remains of its former glory: there isn't much left to see.

The Founding
Victory over the Sayins brought unprecedented power to the Verunasi kingdom's blue-bloods, who didn't hesitate to use it on their stymied rival kingdom. Baron Arugos Byleth of Arcel, long in the shadow of Volaris's royals, soon married Laigan Serinth, Countess of the house of Verunian founder-world Serina: their child, the first ever with blood from both realms, would carry undeniable sway.

Verono Of Serinth-Byleth he was called; a name that in itself exuded power, derived from the Volanti viero: "regal". He would not remain so for long. Upon his coronation, he declared the permanent union of the Two Kingdoms: a move no-one at the time expected, and one which no-one could refuse. To rule this new order, he said, there must be unity, there must be strength. There must be reform. And according to his vision, reform wasn't optional, for any faction. Crowning himself Emperor Verono of the newly-founded House Rigura, ruler of the Volanti, inheritor of the stars, he brought about abrupt change to a system that had endured for over 30 thousand years- beginning with its foundations. Verono fused the two royal crowns of Veruna and Volaris to turn them into a single, universal domain only briefly known as the One Empire. The birth of this state was one of the most decisive moments in galactic history: it is year 1 in the Valian Calendar, as the first-ever moment that the Volanti people were united in name and country. It was not to be, alas, a happy union.

Despite Verono's initial popularity, vigor and celebrations, his alterations to teh system brought him troubles from the older houses. His closest Verunian family members, previously of House Serinth, were elevated to the status of imperial household as tribute to his lineage. But their court, as demanded his highness' unyielding compromise, would be at Volaris- and so would Veruna's overlord, which ired the Verunian Paizos. Arcel's position in the empire, hardly improved at all, also turned the Byleths sullen. As part of his edicts to reorganize the crown and the Volanti peoples, the Emperor established a new system of divisions intended to make the handling of his star systems easier. The new colonies in the West absorbed Verono's attention, which he encouraged to grow and settlers to migrate. Most worlds in the empire grouped into new sectors; these were to be managed, sometimes in groups of many dozens, by especially-designated planets called Hol Worlds. Naturally, these soon became power brokers, their say worth many times more what ordinary planets' did- which in turn became a wellspring of discord.

The Riguran Emperors
For centuries upon centuries, the empire continued under the first of what were to be called the Riguran Emperors. Veruna, still stung from the loss of its autonomy despite the empire having a Verunian imperial family, became ever more reclusive and strictly anti-emperor; and Volaris's former Renasta royals, furious at being overstepped by a Verunian upstart in their own home, were hostile. Emperor Verono, turning more stubborn as he aged and aging but never dying, remained staunchly in support of inter-House unions, which didn't help relations with the upper political classes. Upon his death nearly 6 thousand years after the Founding, one of the oldest-lived Volanti ever, he was succeeded by his youngest son Cnaelos. A great military mind, he pursued the continued expansion of the Petal Rim colonies with enormous success. Treasure and tribute found their way to the capital, and suddenly the center of the Rose seemed bathed in riches. The crown's fortunes, however, would be its own undoing.

Cnaelos
Emperor Cnaelos Rigura became a Volanti hero, in the early years of his reign appearing to be the antidote to his father's aged austereness and obstinacy- nonetheless loved because of the success of his ventures in the West. However, the age of the second Ruguran emperor was also the beginning of the empire's infamous era of decadence. The good fortunes of the Volanti seemed never-ending, the gold and silver overflowing. And keeping in tune with the public nonchalance of the time, Cnaelon was as free with his body as he was with his gifts. Lavish banquets and celebrations were the stuff of daily routine in the empire, and parades and costly fleets freed from cost or limits. The nobility and the imperial family took in as many wives and trinkets as they wanted, sometimes with the same regard. The monarch himself was a known dallier, building harem-palaces on the moons of Serina to accomodate his strings of lovers.

Cnaelos died after a relatively short reign, ruling for a scarce 9 hundred years against his father's 5910. He was succeeded by his youngest male descendant, his son Cloelun, the wife of his father's own sister. Incest had been a cardinal vice in Volanti society for most of living memory- and would be the new norm during the Empire's existence.

Cloelun
Cloelun was one of the youngest emperors ever, and continued his father's ways with singular alacrity. His reign saw the beginning of one of the largest building sprees in Volanti history, with intricate moonsteel, orum and marble palaces, monuments and temples blanketing every Volanti possession from Veruna to the new outpost of Vondace. These massive, ornate constructs would become a staple of the Old Empire era- and a testament to its excesseds. Building and entertaining, Emperor Cloelun was however neither a great statesman nor a military leader. His blunt and unpredictable (some say unstable) behavior alienated the noble classes and made the public ridicule as well as avoid him. He took not one but all of his five sisters as consorts, and to general horror, was rumoured to kill any but their female children, terrified of the idea of having his son usurp him. His perversions, the stuff of dark mutterings and whispered conversations, were enough to gain the imperial family hoardes of enemies. Cloelun died one night on Serina, in one of the villas he'd built in the middle of the planet's oceans to watch the meteor showers. The cause of his death was not rumoured to be natural.

Decimon
Cloelun's only son, Decimon, was the offspring of his father's eighth wife and oldest sister, Taimare. History suggests he lived with his father during his young years, and was present for the acts of depravity that characterized his private life. These, scholars have argued, were the roots of his own evils. For as young Decimon took the throne, House Rigura's now-universal infamy went from bad to worse. The fourth (and true last) Riguran sovereign is ofttimes thought of as the worst of them all. From the beginning he made no pretense of pleasing any of his subordinates or their vanity, dedicating his every second to the new Volanti ideals of pleasure and bloody entertainment. Even grander feats of architecture- and incomparable spending- were the tokens of his reign, as greater and grander palaces were torn down and rebuilt, demolished and rebuilt again in new shows of opulence in the capital- among them the House of the Thousand Thrones and the current Imperial Palace in Volaris. What was much worse, the new Emperor took a great pleasure in inflicting terror and pain upon any one of his subjects at random. He humiliated visiting nobles, desecrated their families and homes, and staged bloody, deadly battles in great stadiums built on entire continents. When throngs of Volanti protested their misfortune, his rage was the end of them all- resulting in the massacres known as the Purge of Varidan and the Massacre on Quesay. Disorder in the northern agriworlds, the hand that fed the Empire, led to planetary famines across the Central Cluster. The Emperor himself was, disgruntled gossip said, himself so corpulent from feasts that he couldn't leave his throne. It was also rumoured that he enjoyed himself not only with his sisters, cousins and servants, but with members of other species, something considered a disgusting taboo for the Volanti. His reign included several attempt son his life, and more than one attempt at overthrowing his House entirely. Those that perpetrated the failed plots faced horrifying retorts.

Cloelun's purported infertility- a sure sign of divine disfavor- and his attempt to adopt a son as heir, his great-great-nephew Neiru, was the final straw. He died in 14,054 AF, killed by disgruntled House Renasta nobles that the Rigurans had displaced from the throne some 15,000 years before.

Neiru
The ascension of Emperor Neiru a year later and his coronation on Veruna was the start of the end for House Rigura. The Empire was in utter chaos, with the Petal Rim increasingly distant and riots and skirmishes undermining any attempts at control. The nobility was bitter at the Rigurans and their excesses- and the thought of enduring yet another of Verono's descendants seemed unthinkable; their fear of retribution for the killing of Neiru's adoptive father made them nervous. To his credit, he was an efficient strongman, spending his days putting down the uprisings that opped up like leaks throughout Rohse. He was also brutal and overeager, and like his father, showed promise of horrors to come. The distraction unrest provided was what spurred the major scirits into seizing their chance, and they openly rebelled. By 14,800, the middle of his reign, all but House Verberen were in disobedience to the crown. Neiru spent more time dodging assassination attempts than governing, rage turning into a campaign of total war.

In 15,302, sixteen thousand years after the Founding, Emperor Neiru Rigura was killed in battle, ambushed by troops of unknown loyalty as his unwinnable war was coming to an end. With his death, the Verunian line of House Rigura and the Old Empire of Volaris came to an end.

The Stygian Schism
The failure of Neiru or any of his relatives to provide an heir to the Paragon Throne brought an end to the Verunian line of descent. The fractured Empire was left leaderless. Volaris' nobles argued that their own Houses were next in line; but many disagreed. The compromise of the First Emperor had stated that in return for Veruna and its followers' fealty, they would never be ruled by a Volarisi household. But now there was no viable solution. Meeting on what was still the Empire's capital, the scirits fought ardently. House Renasta and Illeosa, Volaris' scirits, added to the chaos by wrestling between themselves over who was to be the next to sit the throne. Their attempt to impose a new line of Emperors, however, made the others panick; hundreds stormed out without a second glance. One the fifth day of ongoing debate, the talking abruptly ended. An explosion in the Inner Rotunda of the Rose Palace on Volaris killed many a Lord and Countess, sparking a firestorm.

Anarchy took the cluster. Each House accused the other of foul play; as the Renastas and Illeosans (both spared completely), devolved into serious infighting, rebellion spread. The surviving sciritans fled back to their home planets, and braced themselves. Five worlds declared their autonomy over the Paragon Throne, then ten, then twenty. Volaris called them the Riffle Worlds, convinced that they were making a tantrum. The noble houses of Tharys, Kanto, Serrum, Bellye, Serina, Verdun, Velasco, Arianthe...they all revolted. The uprising became a multi-sided civil war; the riffle, a major turbulence. At first there were only two factions, loyalists and rebels- until the Imperial legions, a combination of the remaining loyal Houses' troops, mutinied, leaving Volaris all but on its own and desperate to reimpose order. Planets attempted to establish their own alliances and fiefdoms, often in control of several loyal star systems at a time. Those who fought or their won cause and to settle their grievances were termed the Troubled Worlds.

There was no clear strategy: every faction made brutal attacks wherever they went, orbitally bombing planets at random and resulting in confusing crowds of warships targeting anything that moved. Mounds of casualties arose, dozens of millions, in a region that had never seen a war so up close. There was no distinction between Verunians and Thracians anymore: everyone shot at everyone else. Nobles killed nobles; nobles killed commons, and commons killed nobles, each convinced that the other ought to be destroyed. The downfall of many a scirit and even more of the minor houses was brought about by the Schism, where fortunes changed drastically from day to day. Curiously, Veruna itself never claimed separatist feelings, staying out of the fray for the course of the war.

The chaos of the Schism lasted well over three millennia. During its early stages, as every rebel declared itself, prince Nalan of Illeosa rose to the throne of Volaris, in 16,300 AF. Because of the disorder in the cluster, of course, the new Emperor was not really an emperor- just a planetary king. Few Houses had remained loyal to Volaris during the conflict, but controlling the former capital of the fractured Empire gave Narik authenticity. The Volaris-native House Illeosa, never before imperial rulers, was reasonably strong, rising from the infighting with House Renasta, the pre-Riguran kings, victorious. Several more Illeosan emperors, however, would follow Nalan the Restful as unrecognized leaders of the Volanti people. His son Rego I succeeded him; then came Rego II and Ki'al. They all had relatively short reigns, all during the ongoing Schism. It was Ki'al's son who would finally make an impression, and stop the warring once and for all: Emperor Garen of Illeosa.

Unlike his fathers before him, Garen wasn't killed in the fighting. He ascended to the throne in 18,808 AF, successfully mustering what forces he could gather to wrest control of the cluster from the claws of insurrection. 200 years after his crowning, the rebellion was no more. The Troubled Worlds all fell, exhausted by the violence that had drained their treasuries and resources and left many Houses vastly smaller. In 19,050 AF the Stygian Schism ended, and the time for Garen's revenge had come. He set out to ensure it with singular delight.

The Valian Empire
Valian Empire: rocky early start (Harrel’s uprising); switch from ruling House Illeosa to House Arabasti. 56,000 years of uninterrupted peace. Possible deterioration; Tissiriske Uprisings, 2,000 years of uneasy distance.

Beil'Eche Period
The infamous Beil'Eche period, from the Volanti for beautiful dessert, was how the New Empire started out. The carnage of the brief but lethal Schism had been the first major conflict to hit all imperial worlds- and the first-ever conflict for most of them. The ill-fated hopes of House Rigura and its line of sickly rulers at an end, it was still a shock for Volaris- and every noble of its court- to find that so many worlds had dared break their loyalties at the first sign of discontent. It was an aggravating notion, and one that should have no lenient consequences.

The damage the Troubled Worlds had suffered, the Emperor reasoned, was nowhere near enough. "Feed fire to the traitors, ashes for the rest", he is said to have declared. Whatever fallen leaders he captured were executed in arenas. Their families were not spared, until every scirit in the cluster had had "its branches trimmed". Rivals in cribs, Garen reasoned, were no rivals at all. Then his attention turned to those that hadn't suffered yet. As the Schism had raged through the inner galaxy, Veruna alone was spared from the carnage, defended by the tricks and treasures of its court. It was not, however, to be spared in the end: in retaliation, once Volaris stood victorious and its supremacy restored, it turned an irate eye upon its long-time rival and set out to break its back. Its elite were convicted of sedition, whereupon every prince and countess of Verunian descent found themselves on the Motherworld, tried for their crimes and executed in the streets.

Persecution of all those he deemed traitors continued under Illeosan rule- as did growing xenophobia, with anti-alien citizen riots becoming commonplace. Executions continued in the Riffle Worlds while Garen steadied his hold on the throne. The Empire became more centralized than ever before as he ordered the restoration of dozens of devastated planets, issued hundreds of new edicts, forbid scirits from having major forces, and reduced the Imperial Diet, formed sometime in the Old Empire, from 900 members to 40. He replaced it with a new executive body, the Archon Council. Old rules and charters, special provisions and priviliges were all thrown out, replaced with the a Codex of Valian Law (more often known as the Illeosan Codes), a stripped-bare constitution to allow for basic functioning of the state (it later served as the base for the modern book of Valian law). For the most part, the Emperor's word was the law, and the law was to be followed absolutely. By the time of Garen's death in 22,000 AF (one of the longest reigns in Volanti history), House Illeosa was hated and feared. But the Valian Empire, its all-inclusive and concrete New Order, was as steady as could be.

Background
The middle years of the Valian Order were fairly uneventful, as the Illeosan royals tightened their hold on the Paragon Throne. Volaris's punishment was profound and relentless under their rule. Their absolutist tendencies continued, oft to great gains. The Empire's standing army, the Fifty Legions of the Tide, numbered in the tens of millions, larger than ever before. Military academies and schools of thought, though rigidly structured, were built across the Empire, not just the Centre and the Maze. Expansion south and westward continued at an alarming rate, which would've been impossible without a firm hand to guide it. Lecor I, Rego III, Rego IV, Ra'in, and Lecor II all wore the thorny crown. Their rule was absolute, efficient and severe. However, it was this continued dragged-out punishment that strained their hold on the outer Empire- particularly the free-willed thinkers of the Petal Rim.

The many colonies on the Petal viewed the carnage of the Centre with alarmity and distaste- and none of their business. Far removed from the central regions of Rohse, they continued to experience peace and abundance, beginning to create their own colonies wherever they explored. The disappearance of any central authority meant that they were free to do as they pleased- almost. They even began to harbor separatist tendencies, thinking that the squirming beasts fighting in the core could not possibly lead anyone. This all ended when House Illeosa took hold. They reined in the Maze, and the Centre, and eventually all of the Empire once again was at peace. Petal Rimmers called it a prisoner's peace. House Illeosa grew more and more unpopular by day, imperious, proud and rigid, allowing for no opinion but its own. It claimed all of the Petal's wealth for its own, angering the merchants that so often presided over the colonies, and what was worse, shoved a new system of royal officials to monitor them down their throats. Their mood grew foul.

Harrel's Campaign
One amongst those disatisfied was a certain Harrel Cir'co, of the Petal Rim world of Visienne. Having served in the legions in his youth, by middle age he was a charismatic, eloquent and wealthy shipping magnate wildly popular in the Rim. Swept into the Diet, he fought the crown over absolute rights at every turn. His increasingly troublesome rhetoric, however, got him thrown out, and a disgusted Harrel fled back home with his supporters in tow. There, he did the unthinkable. He plotted a rebellion. Wealth got him far in the way of forces. Imperial troops were dispersed throughout the Empire, forced to patrol every planet for signs of trouble, particularly in the new expansion zone southwest of the Maze. The legion's ships, large and small, were all manufactured in one place: the Petal Rim. It was simple enough, with the unanimous support of the irate Rimworlders behind him, to seize control of the shipyards and factory worlds that supplied the crown with materials and firepower. Within a day, they did. What made Harrel's miraculous campaign possible was the speed with which he did it: a natural strategist, he didn't try blindly to expel the Emperor's legions from the Petal- he moved without them noticing.

Commandeering thousands of ships, he struck with lightning-fast attacks and took, to everyone's astonishment, the worlds of Rymigos and Inerit; imperial hubs on the edge of the Centre. Behind him, the entire Petal rioted at once, leaving Illeosa and the rest of the scirits utterly disoriented.

Days afterward he struck again, outmaneuvering imperial forces left and right; for the Volanti, who live hundreds to thousands of years, a month is akin to a second. Siguros and Ageis, deeper in the cluster, fell within the week, with the crown still befuddled. As he gained ground, he gained troops, and the support of those planets he "liberated" (their inhabitants had no cause to love their royal rulers), combined with the element of suprise allowed him to confiscate ships from stunned imperial armadas as he ambushed them at each landfall. By now the crown understood. It moved to reorganize its forces, to put a stop to the sudden onslaught. By the time they arrived at his rumoured location they'd missed again, and in the first actual battle of the jarring war, the impossible happened: Harrel's forces routed the hastily-assembled Legions and blasted a hole through the Emperor's Fifth Navy. The Battle of Acklay, as it was known, was an imperial embarrassment.

Here, Volaris panicked. Lecor III Arabasti was thoroughly outmatched, unprepared for an enemy that seemed to be everywhere at once after 10,000 years of quiet peace. Confusing reports of attacks all around the galaxy, rumours of spies in the capital itself, were too much. High morale, on the other hand, bolstered Harrel's troops, who faced a blind flotilla above Liaris, dangerously near the Triad, and were again victorious in the Battle of Viscay thanks to their superior military strategy. Harrel then went south, chasing back the Valian fleets, while chaos on Rian, Valmar and Antos as millions evacuated their surface paralized their defenses. Again the unthinkable: the Upstart took the unprotected Triad, capturing a vital economic target and the Emperor's link to the outer colonies. Lightning flashes in every nearby system followed, disorienting the Emperor's generals further. When they finally decided on a strategy and marched orderly to the triangle, intending to squash the rebels with a massive force, Harrel was gone. No sign of him remained; he had destroyed the three planets' communications arrays and commandeered every ship available, disappearing in space.

And reappearing over the skies of Tharys. The Emperor was dumbfounded- rings of patrol fleets were circling the heart of the Empire, to prevent any more suprises. Somehow they had failed, and there was no time for a reaction. Harrel had split his forces into tiny groups of ships, unseen as they wormed their way toward the capital. And now they were here. Fear struck the hearts of the Throne and its loyalists, most of whom fled in disarray from the core and the rapidly-assembling Conqueror's Army. The imperial family was not able to run. Striking with military precision and successfully capturing various worlds in the core, Harrel's fleet was able to overrun the very heart of the Empire before its arms had a chance to defend it. Blockading Volaris, the Empire had no choice but to capitulate, or risk teh death of its leadership. The capital surrendered.

Euphoric in victory, the adventurous Petalworlder chose not to chase the fast-fleeing sciritans, but received a glorious welcome form his supporters in the outer galaxy, attesting to the attractive power of his personality and image. The deposed Lecor's key commanders, their forces dissipated, had previously laughed at the "rebel scum", but now hurried to join in on the celebrations. Harrel himself entered the capital to the acclaim of crowds, and rapidly set himself on the throne. It was one of the shortest-ever military campaigns in Volanti history, spanning only a year from Harrel's seizing of the Petal Rim worlds to his conquest of Volaris.

The Day-long Emperor
The remaining royalists were of no concern; they mounted small defenses on Vuloto, Arianthe and Bellye, but melted away once the victor's forces moved in. In effect, almost the entire nobility had been expelled from the Centre, and without their ancient seats of power they had no hold on Rohse and no way to take back the Usurper's gains. However, Harrel did arrest those that remained, including the old Emperor, imprisoning them all to avoid trouble. He mantained that he was not a tyrant, but a republican, and his rule, though as Emperor, would be much freer and friendly to the commonship than House Illeosa's had been. He founded an entirely new imperial household, House Teirm, intending to replace the old ways with radical innovations including a constitution and a general assembly.

However, this was not to be. Though he still held the prizes he'd gained and enjoyed the support of the Petal's inhabitants (as well as the general populace), his days were counted. It would be only 50 years- the blink of an eye for most Volanti- before the Usurper's reign came to an end. An alliance of exiled nobles and what was left of the royal family, having fled to the Star Fields in search of sanctuary, was plotting its restoration.

The exiled government stayed in hiding for the better part of five centuries, planning how to take back the Throne. Harrel's new domain, theHarricean Empire was composed of a huge slice of the Valian domain- just over half its territories and two thirds of its planets. His strength came from the Rim, which bankrolled his campaigns, and the Commonship, those never-before important subjects that the crown had lorded over. The rest of the galaxy, however, was still under the Imperial banner. Amongst the remaining territories were the entire southwest quadrant of the galaxy and the stars north of the Centre, which offered a safe resting spot for the deposed to catch their breath.

Harrel of Visienne invades from the Petal Rim, establishing a victorious but short-lived new order (nicknamed the Day-long Empire) by conquering half the Empire. His term as Emperor under the banner of the newly-founded House of Teirm is the shortest in history; 20 years, before an alliance of exiled nobles in the Star Fields and the northern tail retook Volaris and put an end to his line. His fearfully quick and successful campaign sparked construction of the Castell Ring to defend the Centre Cluster from outer invaders (as well as, cynics point out, internal dissidents).

After the Conquest (Beil'Eche Period), the Volarisi-native House Arabasti, descendants of House Illeosa, take the Paragon Throne after beating Harrel.

Arabun Period
Pax Arabastii, Arabastii Bounty.

Early Period
Much of the Empire’s centralization was lost after Harrel’s uprising, when the monarchy seemed cowed by a mere common trader- and a Volanti, at that. When the exiled title-holders and imperial leaders returned once more to their posts, they were in a much weaker position as opposed to the days of the Beil’Eche Period. It was in that era, the rule of House Illeosa, that the absolute power of the Emperor was at its height, with imperial forces on every scirit hub world and the punishment of dissidents in full force. The Volanti standing army was at its largest ever, with conscription numbers bloating and the crown on solid footing.

That all changed with Harrel’s ill-fated (but briefly victorious) campaign. The authority of a single central figure over all of Valian society was never fully restored, damaged beyond complete repair. When the usurper was beaten and his Day-Long Empire washed away, the new Emperor on Volaris, hastily crowned Eneren the Steadfast, found to his suprise that reining in the galaxy would not be easy. Much of the Arabasti dynasty’s first millennia in power were spent trying to reorganize the Empire, their efforts hindered by the Cyric War in southern Rohse. Eneren I, Rego V, Rego VI and Lieso VIII’s reigns were all spent vying for administrative re-centralization, all of them to limited effect. Construction of the Castell fortress worlds, finished in 45,000 AF, boosted the Throne's prestige but greatly depleted its resources. Unwittingly, it also became as much a wall for the monarch as for his imagined attackers, becoming a symbolic barrier that denoted the limits of his reach.

Despite the Arabasti’s lengthy efforts, the Valian Empire was permanently changed, much more fractured and disarrayed than it was before. Systemic irregularities in administrative and legal matters, among them taxation and geographical privileges, allowed the pushy new nobles, as well as newly-powerful commoners and trade guilds, to accumulate influence like they never could before. The ambitions of prosperous craftsmen, agriworld owners, merchants and corporations suddenly became just as powerful as the crown's. The power of independent economic centres and regional administrators, which the crown increasingly relied on for funds and support, further dispersed the Imperial clout, as did reforms like the enlargement of the Diet. Eventually, however, this became the new norm, and both the crown and the commonship resigned themselves to this new way of life. Peace and order, though not exactly as the Emperors of old would have liked it, had arrived.

Middle Period
56,000 years of peace; Aarabasti dynasty on solid footing.

Tissiriske Uprisings
Small portions of the empire in secluded clusters attempt to break free; inconclusive conflict results in an uneasy, unaknowledged peace. Continued existence of the rebellious pockets deemed imperial weakness.

Pansori Massacres
Violent takeover of southern Pansori galaxy: wipeout of four native races in search of colonies and control.