Fiction:United Bidonite Empire

"Onward and outward!"

- Popular rallying cry

The United Bidonite Empire is, all things considered, one of the smallest empires of the Andromeda Galaxy. But size isn't everything when it comes to spacefaring nations, and the Bidonite Empire is making itself known through a combination of rapid expansion and sheer lack of manners.

History
The Bidonite Empire as it stands now is actually its second iteration, following the collapse of the original empire some four hundred years ago.

First Founding
The United Bidonite Empire has its roots in an age when the development of orbital weaponry was an awe-inspiring accomplishment and faster-than-light travel was an impossibility, in the last gasps of the second and final World War.

On the human calendar, the year would be 2202. The major powers of the world had finally subdued the Ilba Hegemony, which once spanned a third of the planet, but in doing so had exhausted themselves. Seeing an opening, the Grand Empire of Kukarot, which had only provided nominal support to the alliance against Ilba, finally marshaled its military--against its supposed allies. The alliance's armies were still on the other side of the planet, struggling against the bitterly entrenched Ilba remnants. Their arsenals were almost completely depleted. Their leaders were growing increasingly weary of the grinding war. They were totally unprepared for Kukarot's sudden assault. The Grand Empire demolished all the resistance its former allies could muster up. Even as they hurriedly withdrew their forces from the ruins of Ilba and repositioned their satellites, Kukarot conquered. The Dauvat Imperium was devastated. The Five Cities were forced to surrender. The stubborn Orbaz monarchy was destroyed outright and their queens executed for refusing to yield. The remnants of Ilba, delighted by the domino fall of their besiegers, allied with the Grand Empire willingly. When the smoke cleared, the flag of Kukarot flew over the entire planet. But Sovereign Aavak Bakaz Tor, having conquered the world, believed that Grand Empire could no longer describe the scope of her accomplishments. No longer did she rule Kukarot alone. Now she ruled the United Bidonite Empire.

The majority of the Bidonite race being naturally subservient to authority, most of the planet obeyed Tor freely. But certain elements tried to resist her rule, and the next fifteen years were spent quashing rebellions and consolidating her power, as well as ensuring her Bidonite Empire truly incorporated the whole of her race by "civilizing" the less advanced portions of the globe. In the meantime, the global economy righted itself again, devastated cities were rebuilt, and attempts were made to culturally unify the dozens of disparate Bidonite ethnic groups (which all failed).

Fifteen years later, in the year 2217, Sovereign Tor, now having crushed all major resistance, focused her efforts on expanding her Empire still further-- into the stars.

Into the Stars and the Collapse
Decades came and went as a global think tank of the world's brightest minds worked tirelessly to make interstellar travel practical. Cryosleep technology was refined and sublight drives were developed, and by 2257 the Bidonite race had set up colonies on every major celestial body in their solar system. 2277 saw the invention of the first FTL drive and the Empire spreading into three wholly new star systems. In 2287, the United Bidonite Empire was embroiled in its first interstellar conflict against an alien race. By 2302, a hundred years after the Empire's founding, it controlled three hundred star systems, had fought three major conflicts against alien empires, and was growing faster than ever. In 2377 the Empire held 2600 systems, had subjugated fourteen enemy interstellar empires, and was still growing. One hundred and ninety five years after founding, in 2397, the Empire held 3000 systems, and its questing expeditioner fleets were scouting out yet more habitable worlds to colonize. One such fleet, the Cobol 7th, was in the process of prospecting a promising moon when its geo-scanners returned something odd: an curiously regular mass of high-density metal buried just beneath the center of one of the moon's craters. This was not an entirely unusual finding; the Empire had excavated a few ancient relics before, the leavings of old and vanished civilizations. There were protocols in place for just such a contingency. The Cobol 7th carefully extracted the artifact from beneath the surface and brought it into their labs for study and catalog.

The transmitted report of their findings indicated that the object was both artificial in origin and technologically advanced far beyond the Empire's manufacturing capability. It was quite a large object: irregularly shaped, roughly eight feet long and six feet wide at its largest point. Parts of it appeared to be tightly interlinked nanomachines. Others were solid plates constructed of an alloy unknown to Bidonite science. Scans suggested the object was hollow inside, though mostly packed with unfamiliar machinery. The report concluded that the Cobol 7th's research group would shortly attempt to open the object and transmit a followup report regarding its interior.

No followup report was ever submitted. In its place, the Cobol 7th transmitted a distress signal. The garbled contents described an attack from within the fleet. The ship housing the object suddenly going dark, then a tide of cybernetic monsters - "biomachines" - flooding from its every hangar and airlock to attack its neighbors. Whole ships going rogue and firing on their compatriots. A deadly plague that infected living beings and computer systems alike, passed on by every means imaginable. The Cobol 7th's distress signal carried the plague. Every Bidonite fleet, planet, and colony within two hundred light years received it. Every Bidonite fleet, planet, and colony within two hundred light years was soon overwhelmed by the virus, and their distress calls spread the plague yet further. The plague itself served as a transmitter, a faster-than-light beacon, a huge and glowing crosshairs. And wherever the plague surfaced, the Biomachine horde was close behind.

By 2402, the Empire held twelve systems divided across eight isolated enclaves with almost no communication among them--quarantined. Their homeworld of Bidonis had been lost, purged of civilization. The scattered remains of the Imperial Armada went dark to avoid infection. All other Imperial assets had been annihilated. The Empire had collapsed.

Reunification and Second Founding
The last remaining fragments of the Bidonite Empire rallied around their strongest leaders-- eight sovereign queens ruling a single world at least, barely a handful at most. Eight empires in miniature. Isolated, with the constant threat of annihilation looming over them, each petty empire did their best to survive

The first of the petty empires to venture outward again was led by Sovereign Aavak Marat Tul. The Sovereign had the greatest claim to leadership of the Empire by far. First, she led three worlds, making hers the largest of the petty empires. Second, she also possessed the largest percentage of the remaining Imperial Legions. Third, she was a member of the Aavak lineage, and could assert direct descent from the Empire's first ruler, Sovereign Aavak Bakaz Tor. With the last High Sovereign dead and all her closest descendants with her, this gave Tul a distinct claim to rulership.

As the years passed without infection by the plague or detection by the Biomachine scourge, Sovereign Tul sent her fleets out on exploratory missions. Traveling in groups of two or three, the Bidonite armada took to the stars once more, cautiously probing for any sign of their destroyers. They found nothing. Nothing but hundreds upon hundreds of devastated Bidonite worlds. The year was 2407.

Unbeknownst to Tul, the plague had suddenly ceased to be transmissible and the pseudo-organic Biomachine fleet had just as suddenly departed, called away. Their destination: a point somewhere outside the galaxy.

The Sovereign grew more confident. Following the old Imperial star charts, her ships surveyed world after world, finding nothing but destruction. But one day, after yet another fruitless expedition, one of her fleets detected a signal around a nearby star-- a fellow Bidonite fleet!

The discovery of another fleet led to first contact with another petty empire, led by Sovereign Metumet Mar Byrot. She had evidently had the same idea as Tul, and had dispatched ships to search for surviving traces of the Bidonite Empire. Byrot had only one world to her name, but she had a significant quantity of spacecraft, and after submitting herself under Tul's authority their combined fleet began to comb the stars with greater intensity than before.

Over the course of twelve years, Sovereign Tul had rediscovered and established communications with all eight petty empires, and by this point had also begun recolonization efforts to reclaim the ruined Bidonite worlds. Not all of the petty empires were willing to bend their knees to Tul, however.

Sovereign Kobat Bel Ranot disputed her legitimacy as ruler; the Aavak line had not held the throne in over a century, so Tul's descent was irrelevant. Sovereign Bielas Tan ut-Suras refused to abandon his position of power. So did Sovereign Muner Tai.

Unwilling to waste her scarce resources on a civil war, Tul did the next best thing: offered all three of them joint leadership. It took two more years, dozens of pieces of hasty legislation, and even more hasty promises, but in the end, all three accepted.

The petty empires thus united, in the year 2423 all four Sovereigns met on their ruined but rebuilding homeworld and proclaimed the founding of a new United Bidonite Empire.

Expansion
The newly christened High Sovereigns immediately began work strengthening the Empire. Resources were traded, personnel exchanged, eggs gifted and received. Colony ships were churned out in force. New armies were trained. The Imperial Legions were reinforced. Ruins of old colonies were cleaned up; what could be saved was repaired, what could not was recycled. Six hundred years later after its founding, in the year 2802, the Bidonite Empire holds 2,400 systems, is in the process of reclaiming two hundred more, and is colonizing worlds never before touched by the Empire. The Imperial Legions have grown comparable to its size before the Collapse. New innovations and technology have brought whole new weapons and tactics to the table. The United Bidonite Empire is rising once more.

Philosophy
"Practicality is the most important virtue."

- Bidonite proverb

Since its inception roughly six hundred years ago, the Empire has always been deeply focused on military might. Individual strength is of no consequence in the Empire. To it, what matters is the strength of one's armies. It prides itself on its rigidly organized armed forces and the deeply ingrained obedience and discipline of its individual soldiers, both of which are reinforced by the caste system inherent to the Bidonite race. The same attitude applies to the Empire's spacecraft and other vehicles -- as they function only as the sum of their crews, it is the vehicle that earns honor rather than any one person aboard it.



Despite this, the Empire's philosophy is not one of rampant conquest. It is expansionist, yes, but only to reclaim the territory it lost to the Biomachine hordes. And while the Empire is certainly eager for war, it will not waste its armies on pointless battles and frivolous conflicts. It will only mobilize if there is sufficient cause for it; historically, theft of government property, firing on Bidonite craft, and attempted extortion of the Empire have all been reasons to go to war.

While the Empire shows uncommon restraint in a warrior culture in times of peace, in times of war that restraint is abandoned. The Empire is a firm believer in the concepts of total war and no quarter; in the eyes of the Empire, a war is not won unless all opposition is totally eradicated. To this end, the Bidonite Empire will deploy all manner of chemical and biological weapons against its enemies as well as target civilians and other noncombatants without discrimination. Other races might see this as an atrocity. But to the Empire, openly warring with another nation (with all the loss of life that implies) yet declaring certain people and weapons off-limits is the height of hypocrisy.

Still, there is one line the Empire is not willing to cross. Destroying a planet is all well and good for shock value, but that's a serious waste of untapped resources.

Representatives of the Bidonite Empire are frequently described as "cheerfully belligerent"-- aggressive in the manner of friends competing against each other, often inappropriately so. Indeed, cheerfulness seems to be part and parcel of the Imperial Legions. The Empire is essentially impossible to demoralize. Every victory is met with celebration no matter the cost, every defeat is met with the attitude of "oh well, we'll get it right next time", no matter how shocking or severe. This applies all the way down to individual soldiers; dying horribly is a normal part of war so there's no need to get upset about it. The "old lie" is no lie at all: it is indeed sweet and glorious to die for one's country. This racially optimistic outlook means that the Empire is remarkably free of censorship for such a militarized police state.

As a result of the Collapse, when automated systems were hijacked and turned against the Empire by the biomachine virus, the Bidonite Empire generally distrusts artificial intelligences and other synthetic minds. Those robots it does use are kept on a tight leash. The Empire takes a variety of precautions against rebellion. Often, many robots are slaved to a single central computer, so that destruction of the computer results in its subordinate bodies falling inert.

Government
"It is the nature of life to desire an absolute leader."

- Precepts of Markaz

Administration of an interstellar empire is no easy task, so the Empire's bureaucracy is necessarily gigantic.

The United Bidonite Empire is ruled by an oligarchy, with four High Sovereigns (known collectively as the Tetrarchy) holding effectively unlimited power over the rest of the Empire. Theoretically, each High Sovereign controls a fourth of the entire Empire, and is prevented from misusing their power by the threat of retribution from the other three. Any decision that may affect the Empire as a whole must be ratified by 3/4 of the Tetrarchy.

The title of High Sovereign is usually kept for life, and is passed down by Imperial edict to a suitable candidate after the death of the original (usually the closest relative). However, there have been a number of cases where a High Sovereign abdicated the throne thanks to political pressure or personal issues, and in one memorable instance, a full blown military coup.

The Tetrarchy is served by a circle of advisers known as the Grand Council. Each is a respected expert in their field, ranging from economics to land development to military. Their job is to decide what information is important enough to relay to the Tetrarchy and present possible courses of action regarding it.

Beneath the Grand Council is the House of Sovereigns, with currently some 2,400 Sovereigns holding office. Each Sovereign governs a single star system in the Empire. The House itself is divided into approximately 200 blocs, each with a Grand Sovereign elected by the Sovereigns of each bloc, who represents and administrates multiple star systems at once. In general, the House is responsible for the day-to-day governance of the Empire and carrying out the will of the High Sovereigns. Barring direct orders from the Four, all policies, laws, and political decisions are made here. Members of the Grand Council are elected by the House.

When the Empire was still confined to Bidonis, it was ruled by a single Sovereign. With the establishment of single planets being ruled by a single Sovereign, the Empire's expansion to other worlds required the position of High Sovereign to be instated.

The Sovereign is the ultimate authority of an individual star system, but even that can be difficult work. They are assisted by a Greater Council of bureaucratic agencies that works to ensure all system-level traffic and communication runs smoothly.

Should a colonized star system hold more than one inhabited planet, each one will be governed by a Planetary Governor who answers directly to the Sovereign. Should there only be one inhabited planet, the system's Sovereign will double as Governor for that world. While Sovereigns deal with the system from a multiple-system level (handling intrastellar trade, for instance), every Governor deals with planet-level issues.

Governors are assisted in their duties by a Lesser Council, encompassing many of the same duties as the Greater Council, simply on a smaller scale.

Each planet, in turn, is divided into multiple provinces, each presided over by a Minister. Each province itself consists of multiple hives and their surrounding lands, each governed by a Mayor.

While the capital of the Empire is Bidonis, it's rare for more than one of the High Sovereigns to be there at any given time. Even the individual members of the House of Sovereigns only convenes there on scheduled council dates-- if it were possible, they would only meet through holograms. Decentralization is the unofficial motto of the Imperial government. Even if Bidonis itself were occupied by enemy forces, it wouldn't do too much harm to the Empire.

Imperial Legions
"I ask, how can a nation enforce decrees if it has no legions to do so? Without a legion, it is a knife without a blade."

- General Jarikov Minet Dynal

The Imperial Legions are the armed forces of the Bidonite Empire. In many ways, the Empire exists specifically to support the Legions.

The Legions are divided into four branches: the Imperial Army, the Imperial Navy, the Imperial Aviation, and the Imperial Armada. These deal with ground, sea, sky, and space respectively. Of them, the most prominent are the Imperial Army and the Imperial Armada-- the Army because the Empire has a penchant for land assault and fortification, the Armada because the Empire spans several thousand planets and it needs to be able to travel to and defend all of them. For such a relatively small nation, the Bidonite Empire's armed forces are disproportionately huge. Nearly one out of every four Bidonites serves in the military in some fashion. Military service is not mandatory, but a large percentage of young males will join out of sheer patriotism, and a great deal of those volunteers wind up staying for life. As a result, the Bidonite military has almost as many members as there are Bidonites populating the Empire's worlds.

Such a massive war machine requires equally massive amounts of resources: food, fuel, guns, tanks, ships, and more-- materiel of all shapes and sizes. Whole planets are mined hollow or given over to agriculture to feed the Imperial Legions' hunger. Rationing is a constant on all but the most prosperous of the Empire's planets. All but the necessities must be given over to the war effort, and there is always a war going on. Whether beating back a Balzer incursion or clashing against the scientist Necrox and their bioengineered warrior-slaves, the Imperial Legions are forever in motion, in battle. The Empire has no shortage of enemies, and the Empire has no shortage of soldiers to throw at them. In the glorious, shining future of the 2nd millennium, there is always war.

Some cynical commentators have noted that the constant threat of war is a fantastic way to keep the United Empire united.

Language
One of the few successes the Empire has had in culturally unifying its disparate parts is in promoting a common language. This language, Naszic, was the original language spoken by Kukarot, and was already in the process of becoming a global standard by the time the Empire was founded.

Naszic is an analytic language, relying on separate words and word order to convey relationships, rather than inflections. For example, rather than saying "the dog's bone", Naszic would render it as "bone belonging to dog". This applies to plural cases, as well: "five dogs" becomes rendered simply as "five [animal] dog". In addition, it is highly context-sensitive and has many homophones with totally different meanings.

Words in Naszic are composed of syllables. "Bidonite", for example, is constructed from the syllables "Bih-Doh-Ny-T". Each syllable is in turn usually composed of one consonant and one vowel; however, as in the previous example, some syllables can be one consonant or vowel alone.

Like Chinese, each individual syllable represents a different concept. The Naszic alphabet is full of vowels and consonants that sound identical but are written differently. Many non-Bidonites find it complicated and difficult to learn.

Naszic script is similar to English in that it is read left to right, top to bottom-- the written syllables are the only inconsistency, being written vertically, with the consonant above the vowel. If it is a single consonant syllable, that consonant is written in its "uppercase" form, taking up both spaces. If it is a single vowel syllable, that vowel is simply repeated on the top and the bottom.

Naszic has few honorifics but they are typically mandatory in all social occasions, similar to Japanese. Unlike Japanese, they are placed in front of names, as with German honorifics. The three most common honorifics are dol, sit, and bas. These refer to one's position in the Imperial hierarchy relative to the speaker: dol is used for one's inferiors, sit for one's equals, and bas for one's superiors. A quirk of translation renders these honorifics as servant, comrade, and sir. As the original honorifics are gender-neutral, Bidonites call all authorities "sir", regardless of gender.

Aside from trained diplomats (such as the savant Ambassador Morat, who learns languages with remarkable speed), Bidonites have been noted to have unusual speech patterns when speaking other languages.

Naming
In traditional Naszic, names are given three parts: the line name, the queen name, and the personal name, in that order. The line name is the equivalent of a last name in English: it's the name of the family line that particular Bidonite is part of. The queen name is the personal name of the queen that Bidonite was born from. The personal name is self explanatory: that's the name of the actual Bidonite.

Under these rules, Aavak Bakaz Tor divides neatly into three parts: the Empire's founder is named Tor, was born from the queen named Bakaz, and is part of the Aavak lineage.

Line names are passed down matrilineally.

Society
As to be expected from a race of eusocial insect aliens, Bidonite society is highly socialized, with a strong emphasis on the collective; specifically, that by ensuring a high quality of living for every individual, society as a whole benefits.

Allies
"You can count on our support, comrade."

Friends
"We like you. We're friends now."

Neutral
"We're keeping an eye on you."

Dislike
"You're a threat to Imperial interests."

Enemies
"We are at war. Prepare for extreme violence."

Trivia

 * The Soviet March from Red Alert 3 is thematically appropriate.
 * The Empire draws from popular conceptions of Soviet Russia and British imperturbability, with a slight dash of the Imperium of Man from Warhammer 40,000. The Ten-Rank System and fondness for rationing comes from depictions of Earth in Isaac Asimov's The Caves of Steel.
 * The Empire counts in base 12. However, they measure time in base 16.