Fiction:Valian Empire

"We do not follow. We do not fear. We do not fail."

- Valian Imperium

The Valian Empire, also called the Valian Imperium and often referred to simply as the Rose by its citizens, is a galactic government that rules over most of the Rohse Galaxy. Controlling most of its star clusters and its major systems, it has evolved over a course of over 120,000 years and gone through numerous stages of existence, but actual imperial history begins little over fifty thousand years ago, the almost-unanimous starting point of modern history for all of Rohse. Enjoying eras of peace and growth interspersed with fierce millenia-long wars, it has become one of the most populous governments in the galaxy as well as its strongest military power.

The Empire is governed by its first-class Volanti citizens, the heirs of a lost and fabled planet and now one of the most widespread species in the galaxy. Its capital lies on planet Volaris, east of the galaxy's deep core, as do most of its major worlds, notably Veruna.

Government
"Beg for no mercy, ask for no favours. You may see their lords and merchants haggle and reconsider, maybe even opt for change. The nobles may be lenient, the traders, greedy- they can both display emotion. The Crown is nothing if not final."

- Outsider on the Valian Crown

Imperial Crown
Under official law, the supreme ruler of all the Volanti, their dominions and by extension all of civilized Rohse, is the Emperor or Empress, and the household of the Emperor or Empress, in power. The Valian Empire has an extensive system of nobility and minor gentry, but in theory the imperial family dominates them all. In practice, the Empire is actually quite fractured when it comes to loyalties. The crown has a virtual chokehold on the central regions of the Empire, but as one leaves behind their hub their pull diminishes considerably.

Aside from the Emperor and his immediate relatives, there exists an enormous and sometimes confusing structure of noble houses, gentry and titles throughout the galaxy. The most important are usually linked to an ancient planet in the Central Cluster, ever the greatest stronghold of the upper classes. Some possess titles that are uniquely planetary, or given on an honorary basis; still others have no formal title, but govern some region of space due to their affluence of politicking. The Emperor, however, has always come from one of the major noble houses, who have a greater say in Volanti decision-making. Usually, once a certain house has somehow gained the imperial crown, the youngest descendants of its male (or, more rarely, female), chief succeed the ruling monarch upon his (or, more rarely, her) death.

It is a defining characteristic of Valian government to cycle through family dynasties that last from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years, with the transition from one ruling house to another typically being violent. These periods of stability and conflict have shaped the Empire profoundly; during the last altercation, the Stygian Schism, all of Rohse was devastated to the point of the empire being reformed, with a stronger imperial hold on power and its noble houses castigated.

The existence of an imperial ruler is one of the oldest parts of Volanti culture, with the system existing in one form or another for an unbroken 900,229 years- since the very founding of the Old Empire. Previous Volanti nations had been confederacies, kingdoms and other forms of government; the first empire took its name (and pride) from having conquered them all.

Regional Powers
Because of the immense expanse of colonized worlds in the Empire and its somewhat loose government structure, its localities are often radically different from one another; everything from the daily lifestyle in each to its local power structure can vary. The absolute power of the Emperor, for instance, is highly concentrated in the inner regions of the galaxy, and his influence fades gradually as one goes farther from the core. Likewise, the regional hegemony of the nobility’s home planets, including Veruna, Arcel, Velasco, Bellye, Tharys, Serina and the rest, gives way to rival interests a few parsecs from their turf. Some of them, like Kanto, have learned to perch precariously between the interests different groups.

Usually, affluence alone can pave the way for individual Volanti. Merchant worlds, sometimes growing into economic juggernauts that tower over their rivals, are some of the most important leaders in the galaxy and have enough pull to spar with the likes of Veruna and Tharys: their families and individual leaders, regardless of their birth or station, can occupy as prestigious a position as any duke or countess.

The Triad
Just outside of the nobles’ hive, otherwise known as the very center of the galaxy, lies a very different (and informal) socio-political region. It is dominated not by court intrigue, titles or blue-bloods, but rather by the simple pursuit of wealth- and three of the planets most successful at it in the history of the Empire. This is the domain of the Triad, three celebrated planets sitting at the corners of the triangle formed by four of the Galaxy’s largest hyperroutes: the Kanto Trade Spine, the Valmar Corridor, the Stem and the Royal Road. Valmar, its unquestioned leader, is the only world in the galaxy to stand atop not two, but three of its largest trade routes; one of them is even named after the it. There is fierce competition between Valmar and its two rivals, Rian and Antos, but that hasn’t stopped them from pooling their influence into one of the most powerful groups in the galaxy when convencience (in this instance, credits) so ordains. All three are ruled by merchant families, whose galaxy-wide undertakings (along with the advantage of their geographic location), has steeped their homeworlds in obscene amounts of treasure.

Agri-World Barons
In the north, the possession of innumerable blossoming agri-worlds has given rise to a governing hierarchy of agrarian oligarchs, a landed gentry of sorts, who along with the core’s industrialists, political panderers and prominent nobles, either go themselves or send representatives (depending on their wealth) to occupy seats in the Great Chambers and lobby for their interests. And although the crown and the major houses in theory hold allegiance of all the empire and its moons, it is in fact the smaller houses of the gentry-and even individuals- who hold power in these regions of the universe, with planets so far apart from the capital farther from each other.

Astrography
The Empire is divided radially into eight regions, which are little more than markings on maps, as well as split (more solidly) into five Vasiya, a term which literally means petals in Valian but is usually translated as prefecture, or province. For the most part, these have no actual power- and unlike the radial divisions, are each dominated by a particular interest; such as

They are all the claim of least one family of nobles, but there are so many independent players that real power resides in the individual planets that dominate the area. The nobles in each prefecture have, as they would in a feudal government, a weak hold on power, controlling only their own world and those others with whom they are allied or have subjected to their control: noble titles only go so far in the galaxy.

Central Cluster
The Central Cluster denotes not the centre of the galaxy, but rather the centre of the Valian Empire. It was originally quite a small region, encompassing only Volaris, Tharys and the other founding planets of the empire and its predecessors. Over time it grew, engulfing the Venu Cluster and outlying almost every star until the edge of the Kari Void, an almost starless chasms of space between the galaxy's core regions and its eastern arms. Vitually every world in the Cluster is a Valian potentate, including such famed names as noble strongholds Bellye and Vesyos, financial giant Kanto, and the economic kingpin worlds of Antos, Valmar and Rian. In fact, every major hyperroute in the galaxy originates within or just outside of the Central Cluster, making it the most important of the Empire's regions.

The Venu Maze
The denizens of the empire know the physical center of the galaxy, and the bright, dense ball of planets that surrounds it, as the Venu Maze. The region is extremely hard to navigate, and very few dare venture into its laberynthine trails. Many of the Volanti nobility's most prestigious homeworlds lie on the edges of the Maze, with many more of their private enclaves hidden in the deep core. The Galactic core itself is too unstable a region to travel too, but that hasn't stopped the Volanti from settling quite close to it. The unquestioned chief of the Maze's political posse is Veruna, who has rivaled the capital in power and prestige for thousands of years.

Veruna
One of the oldest-settled worlds in the Empire, Veruna’s cities, like those on Volaris, are graced with grand tombs and temples of the Old Empire era. As the Stygian Schism raged through the Rohse Cluster in the early days of the empire, Veruna alone was spared from the carnage, defended by the tricks and treasures of the nobles of its court. It was not, however, to be spared of all consequences: in retaliation, once the Troubled Worlds had fallen and Volaris stood victorious, the capital turned an irate eye upon its rival and set out to break its back. It condemned its elite of sedition, whereupon every prince and countess of Verunian descent found themselves brought to the Motherworld, tried quickly for their crimes and executed for the public. The Volarisians’ wipe-out, never actually forgiven, soured the ties between the two, and Verunian noble houses have been ripe with seething intrigue ever since

Today the planet stands as one of the few potential rivals to Volaris’s splendor, with its ruling houses much recovered. It is one of the most beautiful worlds in the Empire, and has produced a long line of Valian poets and well-known politicians.

Balantha Sector
The Balantha Sector is first and foremost an agricultural region. A vast expanse of mostly deserted planets, it is one of the most sparsely populated provinces- and one of its most precious. It is the most fertile breadbasket of civilized Rohse, the hand that feeds the Empire's worlds. Paradoxically, its also quite unlike its other star factions: it is far away from the core, and quite backwards when it comes to technology or culture. Balantha, more often called the Star Fields, is governed in practice by a cabal of agriworld owners, who, possessing a virtual monopoly over a critical commodity in the galaxy, food, have used their plantations to further their own interests.

Veroku Province
The Empire’s industrial operations are widespread, with important manufacturing centers at Ortai, Arvanne, Val Reyna and Valmar. The vast majority of its industrial capacity, however, is located in the southern portion of the galaxy, with mining, pulse-harvesting and manufacturing operations running all across the great hyperroute nicknamed the Stem, which forms the backbone of the Veroku Province. Valian corporations hold de facto control here, mingling with those core-born nobles interested in pooling their interests.

Petal Rim Colonies
The Petal Rim Region is one of the Empire's (and by extension, the galaxy's) most important regions, containing critical economic, political and military targets for anyone who'd dare invade its borders. It stretches from trade mogul Torrend, at the starting point of the Lenu Tail, to the southern outpost of Jamico just north of the Kanto Trade Spine.

Discovered furing the great Valian Age of Exploration during the Old Empire Era a little over fifty thousand years ago, the Petalworlds, then at the groundbreaking edge of Volanti civilization, became a boomworld sector nearly overnight. The Riguran Dynasty made the colonization and exploitation of worlds in the area a priority, eventually leading to their demise in the Great War of Atrisia. For millenia before that, however, the wealth that flowed coreward from the Petal Rim gave a great boost to the Empire, and was a major instigator of further exploration by Volanti navigators who tried (and failed) to find another piece of the galaxy as valuable as this.

Two major galactic trade routes form the current backbone of the Petal colonies: the Valmar Trade Corridor, which runs along the length of the Petal, and the Vesyan Hyperroute, which ends at Vondace, near its middle. The Talicut Circuit, linking them with a loop around the region's major planets, is its main artery, while myriads of relatively smaller- yet, by other standards, huge- hyperlanes connect the many other planets in the Petal, among them the Ballarat Trail and the Anbel Run.

Culture
"We shall cull this weakness from the stars..."

- The Volanti

The destruction of Nol Aris and the death of all its species is an event that has always resonated in Valian history and culture, to the point of shaping the contemporary empire. Restoring its ancient ways and fauna is central to much of Volanti lore, spawning thousand-year quests to recover remains of the Old Home and, if possible, give new life to them in the present. DNA sequences, and specifically a set of alleles that Valians believe they shared with much of the life from Nol Aris, called the Strand, are the main way they achieve this, by modifying animals and plants that they find in the universe with the data they find in archeological discoveries, creating an entirely new set of organisms similar to those they knew in ancient times. The only species (beyond the Volanti) to have survived the Death intact were seeds of blood-tipped rose; and since Volanti philosophy prohibits meddling with the bodies of their own kind, it is from this plant that they gained the way to the Old Home's rebirth. The Valian Rose has since become a symbol of all of Valian civilization, featuring prominently in the Empire's flag and in the shields of many of its houses. And new species, borne out of original species and the old genes of its code, are used to fill Volanti worlds with a uniform flora and fauna. In changing many of the galaxy's races to more resemble their own superior, Valians believe they are doing it a service and making its living beings inherently better.

"These...Starmen, they’re different. They’re compulsive molecular meddlers… they like to turn everything into themselves."

- Capricornian explorer Mayna Yulesu

Volanti believe in a unitary model of life: all that is derived from Nol Aris, is better. Their wish to assimilate the galaxy not only in spirit but also in body was granted with the discovery that a single other original species had survived the destruction of their homeworld: an invasive flower known as the Valian Rose. Volanti theology forbade them from so much as touching their own bodies with a scalpel or a genetic extractor, but here was the chance to cultivate their genes from something other than themselves. All Nol Arisian species, whether plant or animal and including the Volanti, shared a single basic series of genes: the Valian Rose’s was easily isolated, and with it the ability to morph other forms of life into a Volanti-like version. It’s base series, known now as the Codex Strand, was by coincidence perfect for the job. It is easy to farm and a vicious invader in its hosts, and with it the Volanti have given birth to a whole new set of species and creatures that populate their Empire's worlds.

Technology
Technology throughout all of the Rohse cluster is based on pulsar-based energies. Everything from personal hovercraft engines to planetary energy grids and ship navigation systems run on it,

The Empire’s industrial are widespread, with important manufacturing centers at Ortai, Arvanne, Val Reyna, and Valmar and mining and harvesting operations running all across the Stem. Valian corporations hold de facto control over these regions of the galaxy, intermingling with those nobles that might support their interests.

Economy
The Valian economy is an intergalactic titan. Everything from Hyrii sugarcane seeds to alien slaves saturate its markets, the boistering lifeblood of an expanding major power that can never seem to have enough- of anything. Historically speaking, it was the Volanti royalty and nobility that reigned over any treasures found by their subjects, lavishly spending them in their own ancestral homeworlds. With the founding of Twin Crowns circa 30,000 BF, the lowly common merchants got their first chance at wealth and glory, funding expeditions to the dark regions of the galaxy. This window closed once again during the year of the Founding, and the Riguran Dynasty of emperors took control of the empire's finances- soon to be bolstered unimaginably as they colonized the Petal Rim. The Great Atrisian War drained much of the economy, and the following millenia were spent rebuilding, to great success. The Stygian Schism, though devastating for the planets of the Empire's interior, fueled yet another wave of expansion and colonization, freeing Valian merchants from restrictions by the crown.

Today the Valian economy stretches from Rohse to its satellites galaxies of Lenu and Ranabad. Common-born traders are the heroes of the imperial economic machine, bringing goods everywhere from the satellites to the Maze. Dozens of major intergalactic corporations and conglomerates dominate the economic landscape, just as their headquarters crown the skylines of prestigious worlds in the Centre Cluster. The planets of the Petal Rim produce super-freighters' worth of raw materials, processed products and just about everything else; down throughout the Stem, a string of massive foundry worlds and planetwide factories give life to the Empire's industry. Worlds at strategic positions, prominent among them Valmar and the Triad, oversee major shipping lanes and have interests as powerful- or almost as powerful- as the imperial crown itself's. Vantaal has chokehold on any goods heading coreward; Kanto and Coruvan, on those going south. In the northern side of the galaxy, Torrend and Cerserenth are the local kingpins. These and other worlds, sitting at the intersections of the largest trade routes in the galaxy, are the wealthiest in Rohse, constantly pumping trillions of Kerdits into the economy in the form of spice, starships, foodstuffs, medicines, raw materials, precious metals, minerals, technology and slaves being traded from world to world and galaxy to galaxy. Hefty tariffs on extra-galactic goods and taxation throughout the major trade routes ensure that the nobles and royals get their share of the treasure, keeping the Empire's treasury dipped in liquid and solid assets.

Trade Routes and Hyperways

 * Valmar Trade Corridor (Valmar)
 * Kanto Trade Spine (Kanto)
 * Royal Trail (Verunian Road) (Veruna)
 * The Stem (Tharysian Run) (Tharys)
 * Vesyian Trade Route (Vesyos)
 * Arcelican Trade Route (Arcel)