Fiction:Lyra's Empire

Lyra's Empire is an empire within the Lapida Galaxy. It is named for its narcissistic ruler, Lyra Diamond, who has existed for longer than the empire itself. The empire is almost entirely populated by LE Gems, which are similar to Gems from Steven Universe but have creature-like appearances, childhoods, the ability to reproduce on their own, and the need to eat for survival.

This page is a work in progress.

Government and Society
Lyra's Empire is ruled by Lyra Diamond. She has absolute power, and can order anything to be done and it will happen. She likes to make this fact known while hiding away inside her palace.

LE Gems within Lyra's Empire have different jobs and social status depending on their mineral make-up. It is very similar to the caste system seen in the Gempire from Steven Universe, but with broader job options for every class to account for the fact that killing even the most horribly deformed individuals for being "wrong" is illegal.

History
Lyra's Empire was originally a faction within an ancient group that may have also given rise to the Gempire from Steven Universe. It split off eons ago, and only Lyra Diamond, ruler of the empire, remembers why--though it has been speculated that it may have been due to a disagreement about eugenics and unnatural alteration of one's own species, which has been illegal with oddly specific wording in Lyra's empire since it was founded. Apparently, Lyra and her supporters left their original homeworld by starship and settled in their own system very far away.

(to be written: everything that happened between the above and below paragraphs)

Until relatively recently, Lyra's Empire was restricted to a single solar system, named Lyre after Lyra herself--by Lyra herself. Every rocky planet and moon in the system is barren of organic life, instead being populated by mineral-based life descended from what was brought over from the past homeworld.

What eventually prompted Lyra's Empire to spread outward was an attack from the far larger and more powerful force of the Passan nomads, which invaded, colonized, and devoured anything that moved which could fit in their mouths--including young LE Gems--in an intentional effort to starve and destroy them. The fact that LE Gems were edible to Passans also implied that the reverse was true, however, and they were driven out fairly quickly once Lyra realized this and ordered that Passans be killed and eaten on sight. In order to prevent such an invasion from happening again, Lyra ordered that the three nearest systems be colonized and an interstellar presence be established to watch for incoming attack. Today, those three systems are populated and terraformation is underway, and interstellar ships regularly patrol the area.

Technology
Work in progress.

What they do have:
 * Faster-than-light travel with mystys-based propulsion--a super-heated mystys-attracting crystal within a specially designed compartment causes mystys to get sucked through special pipes, pulling the ship forward

What they do not have:
 * Any technology that would allow for any form of artificial reproduction - LE Gems cannot replicate their DNA in full and only have one complete copy, so the only way to get the material to create a clone kills the donor--which defeats the whole purpose of cloning them. Further, LE Gems' bodies reject their equivalents to embryos if they were not created within their bodies in the first place, making surrogates impossible for the early stages of development where they are required. Due to natural processes in LE Gems to protect against self-pollination, artificial insemination is also very difficult. For this reason, there is not enough public interest in cloning or other forms of artificial reproduction for workarounds to be developed.