Fiction:Orman Vang Expanse

The Orman Vang Expense is a region of the along the Scutum-Centaurus Arm, towards the outer rim of the galaxy and along the Draconid Concordat Route. The region was formerly under the control of the dictatorial Yuukossak Concordium, before a brutal war brought it under the control of the. The war left the region severely depopulated, and after the the region was used to resettle refugee populations that had joined the DSB.

Ancient History
The Orman Vang Expanse was formed by the collapse of a giant molecular cloud which fueled the creation of several million stars. The Expanse was settled by a large colonial sector of Ataiens, and was the site of a devastating battle against a warband of. The Sts-Kehat managed to force the Ataiens to withdraw, but the Ataiens retaliated with a propaganda campaign that managed to convince the Sts-Kehat that the region did not exist and that their conquest of it never happened. No precursors resettled the region, although many relics from this period remain.

The Yuukossak Settlement
The region developed life over several hundred worlds, though none managed to grow sapient lifeforms. Instead, the Expanse was settled by hundreds of colonial worldships belonging to the Yuukossak Concordium. The worldships were large enough and numerous enough to completely fill the Expanse with Yuukossak populations. The leader of the nomadic fleet that had chosen to permanently settle there was a man named Orman Vang, after whom the Expanse was named.

After a century of living in worldships, the Concordium was naturally a totalitarian state. The government was an elite class of citizens that did no meaningful work sealed away in their own private star system. Their domestic needs were taken care of by a robotic work-force, and their will was enforced by a vast system of bureaucratic servants. Surveillance and robotic assassins maintained the elite’s rule over the bureaucracy.

War and Genocide
The Concordium Elite was eventually overtaken by a radical youth that was not content to merely rule over the Yuukossak. They left the Government Sector to become military warlords that they believed would conquer the galaxy. The Concordium’s military was quickly built up from an edgy overbearing police force to a proper fighting force, and the new warlords prepared to lead their armies against the Milky Way. Their chosen target was the, which they reasoned would be weakened after their war with the.

The Concordium warlords severely underestimated the DSB’s ability to heal, and faced a fully armed galactic fighting force that was not suffering war exhaustion despite their recent conflict with the Iron Bloc. The Yuukossak invasion met the DSB in several dramatic battles along the border, but were pushed off.

The DSB retaliated with a devastating leaflet campaign describing the benefits of and means to implement a socialist society. The Yuukossak citizenry were initially sceptical and waited to see how the conflict played out, but the government’s overreaction to the leaflets (declaring all citizens that came into contact “infected”) served as a catalyst triggering a proletariat revolution. The revolution officially requested DSB assistance, and the DSB fleet flooded into the Orman Vang Expanse to end the reign of the Yuukossak Concordium. The Concordium’s military was, despite the recent build-up, still nothing more than glorified riot cops, and were unable to stand up to the DSB intervention.

As the Revolutionaries and the DSB closed in on the Government Sector, the Elite (now the original older elite; all the young radicals having died) chose to use their automated control over the Concordium to full advantage. Housing forcibly dismantled, biosphere maintenance shut down, life support shut down, terraforming equipment began devastating antiforming, farms immediately burned their own crops, robotic assassins went on killing sprees, and so on. This was, in effect, the Elite preforming mutual assured destruction against the revolutionaries. The DSB immediately declared a humanitarian crisis, attempted to repair the catastrophic destruction of infrastructure, but the sheer scale of the crisis meant they failed to prevent the deaths of billions. The Yuukosaak population was left as a mere sliver of itself due to this genocide. The DSB was able to rally the survivors and rebuild them a smaller civilisation around the former Government Sector, and this state became a DSB member.

Refugee Influx
The Yuukosaak Socialist Republic claimed all the former territory of the Concordium, despite having only inhabiting the central area. This made them the least densely populated DSB member state. This was not an issue of concern for the DSB until destroyed Universe 66500 and the surrounding universes, while the Milky Way itself survived. The DSB, formerly having member states In suddenly found an influx of refugees from those territories, alongside many other refugees unaffiliated with the DSB that sought the Bloc for refuge instead of more nebulous powers such as the.

Many refugees were able to easily fit into DSB society, but the Bloc had to deal with entire civilisations looking for a new home, and finding such homes was a difficult task. They were apprehensive of expanding DSB borders significantly, and there wasn’t many terraformed worlds available anyway. The Orman Vang Expanse however, was filled with worlds re-terraformed since the war, and was mostly uninhabited. The Yuukosaak SR was consulted for possibly secession of its territory to the fleeing civilisation, to which the Yuukosaak agreed. The refugee nations were allowed to settle in allocated areas, and the Orman Vang Expanse has been a fully populated cultural hub ever since.

Species
As no species are native to the Orman Vang Expanse, the listed homeworlds actually refer to their initial settling points and cultural centres within the Expanse.

Pre-refugee Resettling
Yuukosaak= The Yuukosaak originally referred to an unknown people that existed on the worldships up to two millennia ago, before going extinct due to an ultimate deficiency in the worldships’ capacity to hold them for such an extended period to time. As this species died out, they elected to choose a new species that would be indoctrinated into their culture and mutated into a form resembling theirs. The chosen species was one of humanity’s offshoots, a species that would eventually become part of the. The last of the original Yuukosaak spent their final years training a kidnapped breeding population of humans into becoming the new Yuukosaak. The last of the originals died out, and the humans took control of the Yuukosaak society, and began slowly being transformed into a new species.
 * Homeworld: Orman Prime

The mutations took several generations to take effect, but ultimately turned the Yuukosaak into a new species, recognisably near-human, but with pallid skin and the presence of tendrils that the old Yuukosaak once had. They spent two thousand years aboard the worldships, and towards the end were experiencing the same population die off that had effected their predecessors. They made an executive decision to abandon the worldships and settle down, doing so in the Orman Vang Expanse. Their history there is the entire recent history of the Expanse. Toth= The Toth are a species created through Concordium biotechnology. Resembling featureless, skinless near-humans (though they do have skin, it just has texture like musculature), the Toth were used as a servant species in those jobs that the Concordium government did not trust the Yuukosaak. The Toth are fully intellectually capable, but had remote controlled parts of their brain that could be used to dull this wit according to their master’s desires. Many Toth populations rebelled against Concordium, setting up what were referred to as “feral hives”. When the Yuukosaak working class rose up against Concordium, the rogue hives joined the revolution and encouraged freeing enslaved Toth populations. Radio kill-signals were deployed to try and exterminate the Toth, but enough survived to continue the species and their culture. Since the revolution, they have existed freely alongside the Yuukosaak, with their controllably minds genetically removed from newer generations.
 * Homeworld: Orman Prime

Sombreroan Refugees
The people of the Sombrero Galaxy have been refugees long before the Annihilation, due to the thousand year Darkspore crisis forcing them to live in either inhospitable enclaves or in hastily built refuge-ships hiding in the dark depths of space. They were allowed to resettle their worlds after the Crogenitor Insurgency was able to wipe out the Darkspore presence on the major worlds and killed their leadership. This relief was short lived, as the Annihilation occurred only a generation afterwards. The Sombrero Galaxy was offered no divine ultraterrestrial aid, so the inhabitants had to flee in the arks. Five species and their civilisations sought out the DSB and were resettled into the Orman Vang Expanse. Many other Sombreroan species have since joined them to recreate their old lives in small enclaves, but this page only lists the main species that were the original settlers and majority populations.

Ferrine= The Ferrine are a species originally native to Infinity. There they maintained one of the finest Infini civilisations, having influential representation in the capital of Infinity Prime and working alongside the Crogenitors themselves in resource harvesting and Cybergenetic research. As Infini industry began to take its toll on Infinity’s biosphere, it was the Ferrine that spearheaded efforts to create preserves for the native life. Pollution still overran the planet, and resources became scarce. The Ferrine surrendered themselves to transformation by Cybergenesis, becoming a race of cyborgs requiring minimum resources to survive. They built a space elevator leading up to a solar array that provided them with the energy they required to survive. During the fracturing the Infini society, the Ferrine only waged a defensive war against jealous factions using the laser weapons built into their space elevator.
 * Homeworld: New Infinity

When the Darkspore invaded Infinity, the solar array was destroyed, and the elevator socket city hit by Deep Space Mutation Mines. As Mutation Agents began pouring into the streets, the Ferrine militia held off the Darkspore as their population was organised into a panicked exodus into Infinity Prime. As the Crogentiors fled the planet with their preferred Infini, the Ferrine took charge of the situation and turned the capital city into a citadel, shielded against the Darkspore infestation. They gave refuge to the only remaining Crogenitor on the planet, Suzu, who aided their resistance. Utilising energy shield and artillery drones, the city was able to hold out against the Darkspore for a century. The Ferrine and other Infini lived difficult lives within Infinity Prime, relying on heavily rationed food and resources to survive.

When the Crogenitor Insurgency arrived on Infinity and started cutting through the Darkspore hordes, the Ferrine received the specifications of stabilised eDNA, rendering themselves and their machines immune to infection. After the Insurgency killed Arcturus, the Ferrine began deploying their robotic armies to liberate the rest of the planet from the struggling Darkspore. After the Darkspore fled into the unexplored wastes of space, the Ferrine were given a short respite to rebuild their world with their fellow Infini. This was short lived, as inhabitants from other galaxies soon began to tell of an impending Annihilation. The Ferrine and the rest of the Infini lifeforms were taken by the Vi’Navitum aboard their arks.

After the Annihilation, the Ferrine sought refuge with the Defensive Systems Bloc, which relocated their populations to the Orman Vang Expanse. The Ferrine, with DSB aid, terraformed a new world into an idealised vision of what Infinity should have been. They settled down on this planet and spread out to many more under the care and technological aid of the Bloc. Ignika= The Ignika are a species originally native to Cryos. They existed prior to the ice age in the Cryosi rainforests on the equator. As the planet cooled down and species adapted for the heat began to die out, the Ignika themselves faced extinction. As the Crogenitors opened up the white hole in the core, the Ignika came across the solution of using the unstable plasma energy to melt the ice and provide themselves with warmed homes; this is what the Crogenitors supposedly intended with the planet, but failed to accomplish. As the heat and the cold failed to balance each other out on the planet, the Crogenitors began using the world for their plasmagenesis experiments. Since they had found themselves such a niche, the Ignika were not given genetic enhancements. Jealous, the Ignika leadership ordered their entire civilisation to relocate across the Hyro plasma storm to one of the precarious floating islands. Life there became even harder, and forced the sympathy of the overseeing Crogenitor, Ptyron, who transformed the species into plasmagenetic beings with rocky-exoskeleton and a plasma-based metabolism. Having received what they wanted, the Ignika leadership upheaved their species again and returned to their homeland.
 * Homeworld: New Cryos

When the Darkspore attacked, the Ignika assumed their new plasma powers would protect them. They sent many of their number to aid the Crogenitors in the war against the invading Darkspore. The Ignika were unremarkable fighters, and when the Darkspore revealed the Destructors, the Ignika were massacred like all warriors on that battlefield. As the infestations encroached, the Ignika leadership once again departed on their airships to seek refuge on the floating island in the Hyro ocean. This refuge was short lived, as a Deep Space Mutation Mine struck the island with such force that it’s delicate magnetic balanced was ruined, causing it to sink into the plasma storm. The Ignika once again had to flee. The Ignika leaders acted without any plan in mind, and their special airship was shot down by its own escorts that had grown tired of their incompetence. The Ignika people then chose to flee to the colder, high altitude regions that even the Darkspore was having difficulty coping with. Using their plasma powers, they burrowed deep into the ice, and discovered lost Crogenitor technology. They sealed themselves away and lived inside the facility, only having to face occasional breaches by the Darkspore.

When the Crogenitor Insurgency arrived to destroy the Darkspore on Cryos, the hidden Ignika were alerted to the fact when the Crogenitor computers they lived amongst received the coding for stable eDNA. Immunising themselves from Darkspore infection and arming themselves with Crogenitor weaponry, the Ignika prepared for war. After the Insurgency slew Merak, the Ignika launched an attack on the scattering Darkspore hordes, seizing control of Cryos’ former population centres. The Ignika sought out refuges of their fellow Cryosi, and welcomed back those that had fled the world with Crogenitor Ptyron. The repair efforts of their world were short lived, as news of the impending Annhilation forced the Cryosi to flee the galaxy on the Vi’Navitum arks.

In the post-Annihilation resettling, the Ignika sought membership of the Defensive Systems Bloc, which set aside territory for them in the Orman Vang Expanse. DSB and Apalos planetary engineers slowly injected a selected ice-planet’s core and mantle with aneumetrite, dispersing a powerful source of free energy. This resulted in very similar but more controlled conditions to the original Cryos, including great plasma oceans and heavy volcanic activity. The Ignika made their home on this planet, and spread out to many others. Mortixx= The Mortixx are a species originally native to Nocturna. Their homeland was a peninsula on one of the smaller continents. The Mortixx built great harbours and were a great sea-faring civilisation, creating colonies on the shores they encountered. Since the tearing of the membrane of the biotic and necrotic worlds, many Mortixx became exposed to the necrotic energies being unleashed, resulting in larvae being born mutated with strange powers. The Mortixx saw this not as a curse but as a blessing, and began a program to increase the occurrence of these beneficial mutations. Empowered individuals were seen as desirable reproductive partners, and pregnant women would often expose themselves to the necrotic forces in hopes of birthing empowered offspring. Crogenitor Ingto saw the Mortixx as a great success in his necrogenesis experiments, and unleashed plagues and natural disasters to weed out weaker Mortixx to speed up their eugenics program. Eventually, the vast bulk of the Mortixx were able to phase into ghostly forms, and use the life energy of their opponents to fuel blasts of necrotic energy.
 * Homeworld: New Nocturna

The Mortixx, like all other civilisations, eventually came into conflict with the Nocturni Legion. The Mortixx’s powers allowed them to resist the Legion’s assault for years, until eventually the Legion deployed its champions to conquer all the Mortixx’s colonies. However, the difficulties the Legion had with the Legion on the ground were only a taste of the Mortixx’s might. Even without their Necrotic powers, the Mortixx navy was the finest on all of Nocturna, and the Legion could not land a single warband onto Mortixx shores. The Legion managed to much of the rest of the continent and tried to take the Mortixx by land, but their homeworld was naturally fortified by a treacherous series of mountains and valleys. The Nocturni Legion employed its most cunning strategy to take the Mortixx: they offered the Mortixx a place as a member, not a slave, of the Legion, with representation in the Nocturni Eternals. The offer caused a split in Mortixx society, resulting in a civil war between those who wished to join and those who wished to remain independent. The Independents lost, and took the entire navy with them.

The Legion never had the chance to claim the Mortixx as their latest prize, as Nocturna was immediately bombarded with Deep Space Mutation Mines. The Legion scrambled to try and resist the invaders, but were overwhelmed. Quickly rebuilding their lost fleet, the Mortixx were launched back into a defensive war for their very survival. They were lucky to escape being hit by a Mutation Mine, but the Darkspore made it far closer to incurring Mortixx territory than the Legion did. Many attempted to flee into the Mortixx lands, but they only opened their borders to the disgraced Crogenitor Ingto, whom they tortured into supplying them with Crogenitor technology, enhancing their defences.

When the Crogenitor Insurgency came to the planet and killed Nashira, the Mortixx received the details of stabilised eDNA and became immune to Darkspore infection. They extended their armies beyond their borders and took back great swaths of territory, when the Mortixx government met a sudden end. The long banished Mortixx that had lost the civil war, having spent a thousand years as furtive sea-faring pirates, quickly launched a devastating assault on the Mortixx capital, and seized control. The former dictators were deposed and a democratic government (developed during their seabound life) brought to the Mortixx people. Mortixx warriors destroyed the scattering Darkspore hordes and spearheaded reconstruction efforts on the world. Unfortunately, they would seen be forced to flee Nocturna aboard Vi’Navitum arks to escape the unforeseen Annihilation.

After being released from the arks, the Mortixx became members of the Defensive Systems Bloc. They selected a planet orbiting a brown dwarf to serve as a new homeworld, and using aneumetrite seeding and various essence manipulations, were able to effectively recreate their old world, with all the necrotic horror that went with it. With higher technology under DSB membership, they also extended offworld to various new, less horrifying habitats. Telekdi= The Telekdi are a species that descended from species that lived on Nakto. Their ancestors narrowly survived the planet’s splintering, and were able to survive on the scattered floating islands in the shield ring that made up Zelem’s Nexus. They, like all species native to the Nexus, slowly gainest sapience and learned how to access the teleporters and energy bridges that connected the floating islands together. As civilisation integrated on the Nexus, the Telekdi home island of Tazat became a teleportation hub. One fateful day, a rogue island that had eluded gravatic engineers collided with the Tazat teleportation grid. The reactor went into meltdown, exposing the bulk of the Telekdi to strong quantum energies. The entire species unwittingly became a quantumgenesis test subject. They gained the ability to naturally teleport at will without technological aid.
 * Homeworld: New Nakto

Telekdi warriors rallied with Crogenitor Zelem during the Darkspore invasion, and were among the victims of the Nexus massacre. With the loss of their finest soldiers, the Telekdi destroyed all bridges and teleporters accessing Tazat. This strategy was employed by most civilisations along the Nexus, but it was limited in its efficiency. The Darkspore merely deployed their flying units and troops carriers to besiege the island. The Telekdi used their powers to maximum advantage, seizing as many troop carriers as they could to carry their population. Since learning of Crogenitor Zelem, they also learned of his personal Crogenitor spacecraft. Zelem had been killed by the Darkspore, leaving his ship for anybody’s taking. Having specialists that had worked alongside Zelem, the Telekdi were able to get the vessel working. They fled the Nexus through the hole in the shield torn by Crogenitor Merak decades ago, and disappeared into the emptyness of space. Zelem’s ship was vast and able to hold their entire civilisation, within a population limit, and supplied them with all the resources they needed to survive.

The ship was pursued by the Darkspore for a century, but the Telekdi always managed to survive. The Telekdi built lifesuits to grant them limited protection from eDNA infection, and would often raid Darkspore ships, cleaning them out and settling Telekdi populations there. Over a thousand years, the Telekdi had painstakingly developed an entire fleet of ships; one of the greatest success stories of the Mutation Wars. When the Crogenitor Insurgency began broadcasting the stablised eDNA code, the Telekdi immunised themselves to infection and returned to Zelem’s Nexus. Polaris had been killed by the Insurgency, so the Telekdi set about exterminating the remainder of the Darkspore and rescuing hiding populations. They also participated in the continuing war against other Darkspore infestations.

When news arrived from outside the galaxy of the Annihilation, the Telekdi took their fleet and left for a protected galaxy; not bothering with the Vi’Navitum arks. They met the Defensive Systems Bloc, and after a few months of negotiations became a member. Eventually, many Telekdi grew tired of their existence on the ships, and elected to create a permanent settlement. They terraformed a planet into a duplicate of Nakto prior to its destruction, and settled down, while the shipbound populations remained aboard their vessels in nearby space. Vitoran= The Vitoran are a plant species originally native to the overgrown and psychically interlinked world of Verdanth. The Vitoran isolated themselves from the rest of the Verdanthi, only interacting for such events as the election of the Ikuyu. They were a naturally poisonous species and used this ability for hunting. The Crogenitors on Verdanth took an interest in the Vitoran for their biogenesis experimentation. The Vitoran were given enhanced metabolisms that could regenerate lost flesh within minutes. This made the Vitoran formidable fighters, especially with their natural poison abilities. Their civilisation turned quickly into a warrior culture.
 * Homeworld: New Verdanth

When the Darkspore invaded, the Vitoran met them magnificently. With their regenerative powers and high pain tolerance, an infected Vitoran could physically rip out the infected wound and spare themselves infection. Their death rates were well below those warriors of other races. Regardless, the Darkspore invasion was unstoppable as more and more mutants began pouring out from the jungle depths. The Vitoran turned on the fleeing Crogenitors and demanded passage off Verdanth. Crogenitor Astra was busy saving clonable DNA samples of the genetic diversity of Verdanth rather than rescuing the existing populations, but the riot of the Vitoran regenerative warriors forced his hand. The Vitoran were taken in Astra’s ship and deposited on an environmental simulation arcology ship. There their civilisation were totally sheltered from the Darkspore, and were able to live in peace.

Verdanth, Astra, and the Darkspore all became a distant and mythic memory to the Vitoran over the century. The arcology ship was their entire world, and the depths of space held nothing but folkloric value to them, until they received transmissions from another vessel. The Crogenitor Insurgency gave them the code for stablised eDNA, and continued giving regular updates on their war with the Darkspore. With Orcus dead, the Darkspore scattering, and other Verdanthi resettling their homeword, the Vitoran chose to investigate. Their efforts were cut short by extragalactic word of the coming Annihilation, forcing them to abandon their home galaxy in favour of those protected by divine forces.

The Vitoran made their way to the Milky Way. They wandered in their arcology ship for several years, searching for a place to settle; no longer content to stay in their ship. The DSB welcomed the Vitoran, and set aside territory in the Orman Vang expanse for them, terraforming a selected world into a New Verdanth. The Vitoran settled on this world and were allowed the freedom of an entire world, along with many others with their new spacefaring technology.

Trivia

 * The Orman Vang Expanse is represented on the Milky Way map, on was in fact there before the Expanse was fleshed out. The Expanse was written to explain what that region was.