Fiction:Valian Empire/History

"To understand an organism, you examine its cuts and scars. To understand a nation, you burrow in its history."

- The Agari'emnon

This is a comprehensive account of the history of all past and present Volanti civilizations, starting with their mysterious origins some 130,000 thousand years ago and ending with the modern-day Valian Empire. For a more general 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 lush swamp-covered world, and that it spawned the Volanti species along with its glyphs and traditions. Its ruling nation, caññed the Ancient Empire by modern xenohistorians, was advanced enough to have ventured into space, but had no off-world colonies. It appears to have been a theocratic monarchy, its subjects bound to obey their rulers' word. The Volanti of Nol Aris were a proud and devout people, but other from the fact that they worshiped the stars not much else is known of their ancient way of life.

What is strongly documented is their world’s abrupt destruction, an event they had seemingly foreseen, but calculated to be far in the future. An aging nearby star seemed to be on the verge of death, but Volanti astrologers simply nodded and set a date, assuming that if the star behaved according to their calculationss, their entire race would be allowed to flee in time. Unfortunately, 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. Its crust was torn to rubble and its lands sunk into the boiling waters, and the whole of its great sphere was soon swallowed by light. Only a fraction of the Volanti were able to escape, dispersing in primitive ships to wherever chance would take them. No other plant or animal 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 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 ready themselves for a fresh start. And thus the Era of the Splintered Reigns 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 (fittingly called "the Splinters") developed and eventually discovered each other. It came to its end with the victory of the Kingdom of Tharys over the other states in the first recorded Volanti conflict, 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 set the starting date at 60,000 years before The Founding.



The Pillar of Veröe
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 Veröe, 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 Veröe. 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 reassert 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 surrounding star systems would cost Veröe almost everything. The capital itself was almost ruined, thoroughly shaken 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 would not live long enough to see the fruits of his labour.

Left kingless and led by regents, the Pillar slowly kept growing. Veröe itself was eventually abandoned, made into a backwater world by the rise of new conquests. The king's son, Rezva, though remarkably young, ruled from Velasco over a prospering enclave, now with several dozen 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 Veröe 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, inexplicably, left life as quick as he'd gained it- under allegedly suspicious circumstances. In 49,803 BF, the Widow-queen placed the tasselcrown on her head herself. Discarding Velasco as the nobility's plaything, she named yet another new capital: Veruna, a deserted orb to be remade according to her own glorious vision as she took over the reins of the Pillar 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 swiftly-rising walls. Not long after this the Empire’s remaining gentry, outspoken enough to protest from their posts 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 Veröe. Unlike their disbelieving higher-placed counterparts, they were promptly called to 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, 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 200 years.

With her grasp on power assured and every city in the empire under strict curfew, Rubian began to recreate the state. The Veroese Navy was deployed en masse from the capital and seized control of every vulnerable trade route, moon and settlement from Veruna to the 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, unveiling 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 amid the darkness. She styled herself Empress of the Stars, and meant it. But her reign would not last long, nor would Veröe’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 world of Tharys, barely parsecs away, was enjoying its own success. Neither civilization had discovered the other; space travel was still to be perfected, and still was, if not outright life-threatening, quite dangerous. Stars, unless stumbled upon, could not be reached at all. This didn't stop either culture from seeking wealth and expansion, even if it had kept them separate until now. The shock of their first meeting would not be a soft one.

Tharys’ rulers were, just like Veröe’s, Nol Arisian survivors, descendants of the ancient colony ships that had fled the Ruin- culturally speaking, they could not have been more different. Rubian’s empire, in keeping with the strictest of Volanti traditions (and a taste of her own personal traits), was a xenophobic and warlike culture. The Kingdom of Tharys, named after a solitary planet with about half as many possessions as Veröe had to the west, was not a fan of war but of scrolls and orum, a disciplined cultural collector with many more alien races in its ranks than the militaristic Pillar. Favorably surrounded by timid alien peoples, its founders had crushed some into tributaries and traded with the rest. It was by now surrounded by client states, and with around 40 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 grasp beyond their reach, lived comfortably along with the rest of their race, the ruling class of the Tharysian state. Altogether, the kingdom looked like a fruit just ripe for the picking.

And a meal is what Rubian saw when Veroese scouts collided with a Tharysian fleet by accident and brought word of their findings back to Veruna: they revealed that Veröe was not the lone surviving heir of Volaris’s ancients, but that 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 achievement. And after having tasted the spoils of war by defeating minor neighbors, her attention turned to Tharys.

Minor Empires and Satrapies
Aside from the Veroese and Tharysian states, there several other Volanti mini-empires arose during the age of the Splinters; the largest among them, however, were but fractions of Veröe and Tharys' size. Most of these ancient states disappeared without a 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 coming conflict. 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 that was 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 developing rapidly in the prewar years, but was blockaded by Veroese flotillas during their initial attack on Tharys' territories. Thanks in part to their good relationship with the latter, it was later liberated by the Tharysians as they marched west to Veruna. It changed hands repeatedly, 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 Venuese 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 inner region for her own, marched first. She mobilized the entire Pillar of Veröe, 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 the infamous Ancient 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 died 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 roundly conquered. Veröe itself seemed to shudder.

The presence of Talathos' ships only parsecs from her homeworld made the Empress incapable of any organized thought. Her conquests were widespread, but tenuous; she still possessed the larger 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, with years of uneasy silence as ships traveled to and fro between targets; 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 ambushed her fleets in mid-travel, destroying a third of her forces and soundly beating the rest above the Vesyan skies in the Vesyan Assault. Tharyisian reinforcements kept replacing the lost, arriving from the untouched deeps of the inner kingdom.

After decades of almost continuous 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 holding fast, she finally had no choice but to order a retreat in an attempt to fortify her position. The Veroese, however, didn't leave without a parting gift. As what was left of their forces fled north to attempt to circle back to Veruna, they bombarded the unprotected enemy capital, ravaging its surface as they fled the system.

The Road to Veruna
Here the tide turned as the Veroese fell back, forced to relinquish their former prizes one by one; eventually, not a single one of their fleets remained outside the Pillar. Talathos' next move was to plan his 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 gravitational currents, but one he deemed necessary: he would not rest until he had Veruna in the palm of his hand. Though he died during the initial preparations, over the next 5,000 years his descendants would carry out this new campaign. The Empress of the Stars, on the other hand, was now on the losing side, with her bungled attempt to conquer an 'unworthy toady state' in ruins and her own domains mow under attack; her own daughter, Rumis, and granddaughter, Resis, would take up the Pillar's leadersip in her name. Tharys's forces slowly liberated any occupied planets, 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 Empress Resis into action. She resigned to leave glorious Veruna behind, fleeing to the depths of the Empire with half the Veroese court in tow. Determined not to stand by as the Pillar fell, she hastily renamed planet Verdun the capital, well away from Tharys' current advance. To reach it, the invaders would have to cross half the empire, not to mention navigate the treacherous deep core. Slowly but surely, they did.

Sure enough, King Talathos' great-grandson Taitos arrived at Veruna before the turn of the century. It capitulated without a single shot fired, as 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 centuries. But still, one by one they fell- even Veröe 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 core, and there awaited an invasion that never came. She transformed the planet into a veritable 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 following the Era of the Splintered Reigns and concluding with the Stygian Schism. Starting officially in 31,800 BF, nearly 6,000 years after the final skirmish of the Primal Wars, the period follows the creation of a long-lived Volanti diarchy, 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 single Volanti Empire, in the year 1 AF.



The Twin Crowns
The defeat of the Star Empress' descendants and the invasion of their homeland brought an end to the Veroese search for glory. Veruna would never again rule a state of its own (though not for lack of trying). With Empress Resis hidden away and by then mad with old age, King Taitos of Tharys made Resis' steward hand him her crown personally, and her people were humiliated. The king, however, did not attempt to turn the ravaged Pillar into a satellite or client state, opting instead for a more moderate solution. Being of the same species, the idea of enslaving his fallen foes, as Tharyisians regularly did with alien enemies, 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, which would replace the war-damaged Tharys temporarily (in time, this appointment would become permanent, though Tharys would retain its status as the cultural hub and representative of the former kingdom).

After decades of haggling, the defeated nobles reluctantly accepted. Taitos aimed to create a stronger Volanti state by uniting its people under a single banner. Unfortunately, his plan would never work effectively. While the new government formed in his old age, amicably titled the Kingdom of the Twins, did not fall victim to conflict, the two crowned capitals started drifting apart from the moment they were joined together. By the time of Taitos' death 300 years after the Primal Wars, the division was acknowledged as 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. Over the millennia a rivalry developed, and fierce competition followed. Tharys pursued victory 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 exclusively loyal to their regional capital.

The Great Age of Exploration
The crowns of Volaris and Veruna both experienced growth in the middle 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 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, which separated the Paragon Cluster from the rest of Rohse. Volarisi merchants, eagerly searching for trading partners to line their coffers with orum, bankrolled many of the outgoing vessels, most of which did not return. Volanti astronomers had long been able to see the brightly-lit regions on the outer galaxy, but had found no way to reach them.

The answer to their prayers took the form of a single rogue planet cluster: a stepping stone to the East. Exploration-era ships, powered by weaker forms of the modern pulsar star drive, didn't have the firepower to make the jump across until now. A daring crew of Volarisi 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 his crew's triumphal return to Volaris, hordes of spacers volunteered to go back. Alesu himself made eight return trips, so that some mere 1,200 years after his initial finding, the region was well on its way to becoming a burgeoning imperial addition. Verunian expeditions were almost nonexistent, deprived of the new treasure trove by their late arrival. The new, massive star cluster proved to be not only valuable new space for settling, but a mineral wonderland. 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 recorded history. Planets flowing 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. 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 newly-christened Centre and the Rim: colonists and traders, often brutal in their search for fame and fortune, often exploited planets and natives without restraint. Attempts to install some sort of leash created only resistance and corruption, and battles, though hushed up, were common whenever Verunian settlers tried to grab a share of the prize.

Much more serious, however, was the discovery of the new sentient species found in the cluster. The Rim was by no means empty; races big and small inhabited many of its worlds. The influx of "alien" refugees whose worlds had been devastated by colonization efforts, was a great irritant to the increasingly xenophobic immigrant population. As the Empire dug deeper into the cluster, news of ugly attacks on natives and riots against Volanti citizens and their representatives reached the ears of the court back in Volaris. These were all put down, with ever-increasing numbers of fleets and troops- but what they foreshadowed was not.

Great War of Atrisia
The building tension in the Rim peaked, as most tensions do, with war: a war that would engulf the cluster and then the rest of Rohse for nearly 13,000 years. Its magnitude has made it one of the most important and destructive conflicts in galactic history, which is why it is sometimes called the War of the Rose. The Volanti call it the Great War of Atrizha, after their enemy’s former homeworld.

Thracian and Verunian settlement of the new stars to the east had been a source of trouble for thousands of years, ever since the region was discovered in the early Two Kingdoms Period. Historians consider that the Great Volanti Age of Exploration ended with the Atrizhan War: the Empire went from an age of abundance and stability to one of total war, fighting for its life as it struggled to gain supremacy over the galaxy. Their opponent was the Sayar Ascendancy, self-styled "supreme leader of the galaxy of Tehepaz, as they called Rohse. By all accounts (most of them, it should be noted, Volanti in origin), the Sayarese were as ruthless as overlords get. What made them unique was their size and power, which equaled that of the Twin Crowns. They had forged a massive empire out of the eastern galaxy many millennia before the union of Tharys and Veruna, which had been in its prime long ago; now it was in a slow decline, with its former borders eaten away by alien races. Differences to the Volanti were abundant: in the last centuries it had gone from being faintly religious to an all-out theocracy. And unlike the Volanti, they did not take slaves- what was worse, they bred with other species. Imperial public opinion was one of disgust; the Sayarese, for their part, thought them an emotionless abomination.

First Offensive
The war started explosively, though not without warning. Both of the Volanti crowns had communicated several times with the Sayarese, always with unpleasant results. Imperial incursions into the Rim had begun to encroach on Ascendancy holdings, and raids had generated intense dislike between the two. More importantly, both Volaris and Veruna felt threatened by the alien empire, just as the Sayarese felt unease towards the "heartless star-men of the core". Tensions ran high. In 16,800 BF, the storm broke.

After establishing their new colonies in the outer galaxy, King Uresu I, the Volarisi diarch, had begun granting members of his nobility posts far away from the capital to reign in rowdy settlers, granting them planets, troops and titles in exchange. Those closer to the perilous border with the Ascendancy were given much larger forces. It was one of these new sciritans, the Baron of Sono, who began the actual war: upon receiving an ultimatum by the Sayarese local warlord, Chief Hazet-su demanding the Volanti’s complete withdrawal from Sono’s sector, he refused. The Ascendancy began a full-scale attack on the Volanti border settlements, eradicating several completely. Baron Sono and King Uresu were furious. The Twins, however, were unready for war. The local sciritans managed to hold onto a handful of key colonies until reinforcements arrived from the core, beating back the invaders at the bloody Battle of Sono and seemingly turning the tide. Uresu reached out to his Verunian counterpart, King Ise of Veruna, who pledged only limited aid, leaving Thrace to fight on its own. The lack of experienced generals was a major concern: Uresu appointed 1,300-year old Vemeru Tainith as Grand Commander when no other suitable candidates surfaced. The Volanti’s meager forces prepared for an offensive and raided planets Hili’ul and Hathet, taking the Sayarese by surprise, who were crushed in the Battle of Hili’ul despite facing a much smaller force. The rest of the First Offensive resulted in the war moving into Ascendancy territory, with the Volanti establishing a line of semi-conquered planets that moved back and forth for centuries and many worlds under permanent siege, including the overpopulated Bathalut, Rihut’tu and Libu’tu. New princes were officiated to rule over the besieged planets by the King, now on his way to the Rim after hearing news of the victories at Hili’ul and the Battle of Sirihya. By now the Ascendancy had mustered its forces and began to focus its entire resources on the war effort, but the northern front had become a stalemate. Things would remain the same as old Uresu died and was succeeded by King Sermen, who was succeeded Jariev and he in turn by Jariev II.

Second Offensive
The Second Offensive began to feature attacks by the Ascendancy; of its three warlord-generals, Kutoh, Fasib-tu and Khenesu, two advocated to attack the Twins directly. Sayarese fleets split off from the main force and headed east through secret southern routes, hammering the unprotected Verunian worlds of Khenat, Aton and Serafin back in the Venu cluster with full-on strikes. A hit so close to home alarmed the Verunian diarch, who suddenly found himself in a desperate battle for his own ancestral home.

The Volarisi forces on the northern front, meanwhile, could make no headway. When Sayarese troops advanced to reclaim conquered worlds, the newly-created Prince of Sirih and the Prince of Lebu fled. The crown ordered them to come back and lead their forces, but they along with other unruly nobles refused. After the war, all would be charged as traitors and executed. Meanwhile, a groundbreaking victory at Leykon allowed the Volanti access further south: General Tainith ordered his First Fleet to circumnavigate the northern siege area and advance to Ruhmye. There they suffered a defeat, but retreated after suffering heavy casualties intending to take the outpost of Beni’tu and re-join the Second Fleet, which had split off at Lubi’tu to take Monuket, Uerida and Agorro. However, the plan backfired, with their string of victories in the east ending suddenly upon reaching Ashard: Sayarese forces put up a brave fight, decimating the Second and killing King Jariev II. He was succeeded by his youngest son Kievo, who was crowned on the battlefield and rose to power without the customary 10-year Mourning.

Here the war fell into another centuries-long stalemate. Reinforcements from the southern Ascendancy kept arriving, along with resources and supplies; the Volarisi were running low, with their stores much depleted. A new surge in Sayarese attacks almost broke their hold on their few captured planets to the north, and a large force sneaked by to strike at Biloma, Velican and Antos and invade the western half of the Twins, which sunk into panic. The old General Tainith was replaced by Generals Lon, Besivir and Hin’aron, who were more brutal in their efforts. The war dragged on; Volanti desperation led to the Massacre of Agorro and the Obscenity at Brohey, where hundreds of millions of Sayarese were brutally executed. Maintaining the western front became ever more difficult as hordes of Sayarenes overwhelmed the new Verunian Monarch, Queen Vasile, and tried to ram their way to Veruna, capturing Rheamat, Cigose, Serafin and Brienne, beginning the Third Siege of Vantaal and laying siege to Val Calo, dangerously close to the capital.

Third Offensive
By the war’s third and final stage, the conflict had reached a frantic pace. Both superpowers were running out of supplies and firepower, having suffered heavy casualties and with a constant drain on their resources from fighting simultaneous campaigns on two fronts. Demonstrating an unprecedented talent for military strategy, Queen Vasile was able to keep the invading Ascendancy fleets at bay, and in a desperate move sent all of her remaining troops east to meet with the newly-crowned King Merenus of Volaris, at Beni’tu. The move may have cost Atrizha the war: with renewed vigor, the Volanti navy moved on south to Ciamih and Ulhima, both victories, and after an arduous battle over the skies of Balbin, surrounded the Sayarese capital with a ring of conquests. The Ascendancy’s monarch, Chief Lord Teset-su established redoubts at Tasyr and Hittu to prevent them from advancing. As their movement was halted, General Lon split the unified Volanti fleet in two and launched a pincer attack on Sygon, one of the four ankhur, the legendary fortress worlds that surrounded the capital: the nearby systems of Askir and Hess’tut surrendered. The fall of Sygon was a devastating blow for the Sayar government; upon seeing the enemy so close to the capital the Sayarese court fell into disarray. The Chief Lord sent out desperate orders for the western army, now occupying the Venu Cluster, to return to his aid, but they were all intercepted. By 16,540 BF, Atrizha was effectively isolated.

In a last bid for victory, the strongworlds of Askhin, Rincon and Sinái all dispatched troops to protect the capital, forming a new fleet that massed above Sinái for a final battle.

Battle of Sinái
The Battle of Sinái, the strongest of the four ankhur and Protector of Atrizha, is the most famous in the war, a final massive engagement that would decide which of the two powers would finally triumph over the other. Despite the Volanti’s deep incursions into Sayarese territory, they had had to abandon their rear, leaving many of their frontier worlds, and even some of the ancient Venu worlds, defenseless, to be pillaged and desecrated by the Sayarese. There could be no retreat. King Merenus and Queen Vasile (who had left a regent to defend Veruna in her place, to unfortunate results) both went into battle, marking the first time the Verunian and Volarisi monarchs would fight together in over 30,000 years, and the last time a Volanti monarch would lead his troops into battle.

The battle was everything a good storyteller would hope for, and more. Acting as co-commanders, Merenus and Vasile sent out elite troops to reduce whatever resistance was left in the area before amassing their forces before the planet itself; The Sayarese had occupied its surface and the bulk of their ships remained in low orbit. The unified Volanti force was split once again into five small Fleets, a much smaller force than the Sayarese’s 10-million-ship forces. Their attempts to destroy Sinái’s deep surface fortresses, into which the Sayarese would hide after venturing out for lightning raids, didn't leave a scratch. With their fleets nearing exhaustion and desperate to keep the battle from becoming a mini war of attrition, the Volanti monarchs were forced into a different line of attack: all-out destruction. They left the fortress alone to bombard surrounding planets on a massive scale, leveling entire continents and killing over a tenth of the Ascendancy’s population in a single step. The strategy reportedly caused the Chief Lord to wail with rage, but more importantly, it drew his forces outward.

The resulting battle above the skies of the fort-world would last a month. There was no complex strategy involved now: only a head-on offensive, with both armies fanning out into a frightening cloud of soot-black ships.

There is a resounding consensus among xenohistorians (at least not Volanti ones) that, had simple numbers decided the battle’s outcome, there would be no Valian Empire today. The Sayarese, an insectoid race capable of breeding entire batches of mindless warriors without stopping, outnumbered the Volanti five-to-one. It was here, however, that the so-called Starmen would reveal a new and deadly weapon: a primitive version of the biological agents known today as the Serums: toxins that can spread amongst any particular species, given the correct tuning, and decimate a population in a matter of seconds. The Volanti present at the battle, including the Queen and King (the latter of whom was slaughtered near the battle’s end), were rendered sterile by the release of the first serum, the Az pathogen. It was considered a grave sacrifice, but one that would grant them victory: in the midst of laser assaults and light-speed bullets that ricocheted of the millions of ships present, the virus would kill swaths of Sayarese: their attempts to replicate or reproduce were met with deformed creatures that died within hours.

After a month of savage fighting, the Volanti fleet had been nearly destroyed; half its leadership, including King MerenuS, had marched to their death. But the last Sayarese force, and its strongest of strongholds, had finally fallen. The war ended in fireworks as the remaining Sayarese warships were set ablaze, and burst into colors that could be seen all the way from the ground in Atrizha. The Twins had won.

Atrizha itself, according to Volanti custom, was humiliated in the worst way possible- made into a remote centre of nothing. It became a lowly backwater world, renamed Nianye, which means "small"; its buttressed towers leveled to their very foundations and the rubble left to be covered by weeds. It did not even appear on maps until its resurgence in the last millennium as a refueling station in the Talicut Circuit. Tourists rarely stop to see the charred remains of its former glory, for there isn't much left to see.

The Founding
Victory over the Sayarese, along with King Merenu's death in the war, brought unprecedented power to the Volarisi nobility, which didn't hesitate to use it on their royal rivals. To supplant the late King's family as heir to the Crown of Volaris, 1,000 years after the war's end Baron Arugos Byleth of Arcel married Laigan Serinth, Countess of the house of Verunian founder-world Serina: their child, the first sciritan ever with blood from both realms, would carry undeniable sway.

Verono of Serinth-Byleth he was called; a name that exuded power, derived from the Volanti word viero: "regal". Upon his coronation, he declared the permanent union of the Two Kingdoms: a move no-one proved able to refuse. Aside from a short-lived uprising from dissenting nobles, the Iniger rebellion, he faced no great obstacle- even from the Verunians, whose own ruler, Vasile, died on her way home to the Venu cluster. To rule this new, imperial, order, he said, there must be unity and 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, Emperor of the stars and Caretaker of the Rose, he began to alter a system that had endured for over 30,000 years, beginning with its very 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, the first-ever moment that the Volanti people were united in name and country since the destruction of their lost homeworld. It was not to be, however, a happy union.

Despite Verono's initial popularity and vigor, his alterations to the 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 from now on, which angered the Verunian Paizo family. Arcel's position in the empire, hardly improved at all, also turned his Byleth relatives 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' former Renastan royals, furious at being bested by a Verunian upstart in their own home, were equally 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 6,000 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 the center of the Rose seemed suddenly 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 austerity and obstinacy- nonetheless loved because of the success of his ventures in the West. However, the age of the second Riguran 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 accommodate his strings of lovers.

Cnaelos died after a relatively short reign, ruling for a scarce 900 hundred years against his father's 5910. Though by the time of his death he (or rather, his advisers) had begun to lay the groundwork for the Empire's true bureaucratic and administrative transformations, he contributed little progress to his people, other than the forced relocation and extermination of most of the remaining Sayarese. He was succeeded by his his son Cloelun, the youngest son of his father's youngest sister. Incest had been a cardinal vice in Volanti society for most of living memory, but it would become 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 history, with intricate moonsteel, orum and marble palaces, monuments and temples blanketing every Volanti possession from Veruna to the new outpost of Vondace (earning him the epithet Cloelun the Builder). These massive ornate edifices would become a staple of the Old Empire Era, and a testament to its excesses. An adept at building, spending and entertaining, Emperor Cloelun was, however, neither a great statesman nor a military genius. 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 twelve sisters as consorts, and, to general horror, was rumoured to kill any but their female children, terrified of the idea of having one of his sons usurp him. The alleged perversions that characterized him later in life, the stuff of dark mutterings and whispered conversations, were enough to gain the imperial family hordes of enemies. Cloelun died one night on Serina's moon, Lainye, in one of the villas his father had built atop the planet's largest lake to watch the meteor showers for which the system is so famous. The cause of his death was shrouded in conspiracy.

Decimon
Cloelun's only son, Decimon, was the offspring of his father's eighth wife and oldest sister, Taimare. History suggests the young heir lived with his father during his childhood, and was present for the acts of depravity that characterized his private life. These, scholars have argued, were the roots of his own evil. For once 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 pride, dedicating his every second to the new Volanti ideals of pleasure and bloody entertainment. Even grander feats of architecture, bordering on the ridiculously large and incomprehensibly expensive, 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 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 rumored 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 beginning 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 popped 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, his rage turning into a campaign of total war.

In 15,302 AF, nearly 16,000 years after the Founding, Emperor Neiru Rigura was killed in battle, ambushed by troops of unknown loyalty as his lost war was coming to an end. With his death, the Verunian line of House Rigura died out at last, and the Old Empire of Volaris met its 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 sons 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 panic; hundreds stormed out without a second glance. In the sixth month 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 claim to 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 multisided 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 for 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, bombarding 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 Nalan 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 I. 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 Garem of Illeosa.

Unlike his father and grandfather before him, Garem wasn't killed in the fighting. He ascended to the throne in 18,808 AF, mustering what forces he could 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 of the Houses vastly smaller. By 19,050 AF the Stygian Schism ended definitively, and the time for Garem's revenge had come. He set out to ensure it with singular delight.

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 appalling behavior, and it would not go unpunished.

The damage the Troubled Worlds had suffered, the Emperor reasoned, was nowhere near enough; "feed fire to the traitors and their ashes to the rest", he is said to have declared. Whatever fallen leaders he captured were executed in arenas as a public spectacle. Their families too were persecuted, until every scirit in the cluster had had "its older branches trimmed". Rivals in cribs, Garem stated, were not rivals at all. His attention then turned to those that hadn't suffered yet; as the Schism had raged through the inner galaxy, Veruna alone had been spared from the carnage, kept safe by the tricks and treasures of its court. It was not, however, to be spared in the end: 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 alleged crimes and summarily executed.

Persecution of all those he deemed traitors continued under Garem's extended rule- as did growing xenophobia, with anti-alien riots becoming commonplace. Executions would continue in the Riffle Worlds while the Emperor steadied his hold on the throne; the Empire became more centralized than ever before as he issued hundreds of new edicts, organizing the restoration of dozens of devastated planets, forbidding scirits from having their own defensive forces and reducing the Imperial Diet, formed in the days of the Old Empire, from 900 members to a mere 33. He replaced it with a new executive body, the Archon Council. Old rules, charters and privileges were thrown out, replaced with the a Unified Codex of Valian Law (more often known as the Illeosan Codes), a spartan constitution to allow for basic functioning of the state (it later served as foundation 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 Garem's death in 22,012 AF (one of the longest reigns in Volanti history), House Illeosa was both hated and feared. But the Valian Empire, its inclusive and concrete New Order, was as steady as could be.

Background
The middle years of the Valian Era were fairly uneventful, as the Illeosan royals tightened their hold on the Paragon Throne. Volaris' 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, a larger figure than ever before. Military academies and schools, 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. Geilon I, Lecor I, Rego III, Rego IV, Ra'in, and Lecor II all wore the thorny crown; their reigns were absolute, efficient and severe. However, it was this continued dragged-out punishment that strained their hold on the outer Empire- particularly the more free-willed thinkers of the Petal Rim.

The many colonies on the Petal viewed the carnage of the Centre with alarm and distaste- and thought it 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. 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. Petalrimmers 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 reconstruction efforts, angering the prominent merchants of the Rim, and what was worse, shoved a new system of royal officials down their throats. Their mood grew foul.

Harrel's Campaign
One among those dissatisfied was a certain Harrel Ci'rico Hannelor, a Petalworlder from 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 radical 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. Most of the Legions' 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 its firepower. Within a month, 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 simply 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.

Only weeks afterward he struck again, outmaneuvering imperial forces left and right; for the Volanti, who live anywhere from hundreds to thousands of years, a month is akin to a second. Siguros and Ageis, deeper in the cluster, fell within another month, 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 surprise 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 and put a stop to the sudden onslaught. By the time they arrived at his rumored 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 VIII Illeosa 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, rumors 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 paralyzed 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 surprises. 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 the 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 Empire
What few royalists remained 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 maintained 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 Hannelor, 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 Petalrimmers (as well as the common 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 half of a century, deciding just how to take back the Throne. Harrel's new domain, the Hannelorian 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 had 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 (rather disheveled) Imperial banner. Amongst the remaining loyal regions 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.

They finally came back in 34,580, having at last mustered their forces and forgotten the divisions between scirits to take back what they'd lost. With all of them organized and having pledged to participate, deposing the usurper was no hard matter. In a swiftly brutal campaign much like his own, the combined forces of the remaining loyalists ran from out of Balantha, splashed over the north of the Central Cluster and recaptured Volaris within two years. The rule of Harrel and the brand-new House Teirm was put to an end, with himself exiled to the dark remoteness of the northern galaxy and his two sons, the possible heirs, disposed of. The Valian monarchy was restored, and Prince Eneren of House Arabasti, formed form the descendants of the Illeosans, hastily crowned. The Day-Long Empire, as Hannelor's order came to be called, was scrapped from history books, and his popular reforms reversed. It did, however, leave an enduring mark. His fearfully quick and successful campaign sparked construction of the Castell Ring to defend the Centre from outer invaders (as well as, cynics point out, internal dissidents).

Arabun Period
With the Day-long Emperor and his son and heir both imprisoned in faraway Zhiagekim, the short-lived rule of House Hannelor came to an end. The Hannelorian Empire vanished in a heartbeat, and Rohse returned to a state of uncertain peace. House Arabasti, descendants of the extinct Volarisi line of House Renasta, assumed the throne of the Third Valian Imperium, forever changing the future of Rohse, the Empire and the Valian people. In the following years, under the first Arabasti ruler, Eneren I, a new age dawned: the Arabun Era, meaning Arabasti bounty.



Early Period
Much of the Empire’s centralization was lost after Harrel’s uprising, when the monarchy seemed cowed by a mere trader. When the exiled sciritans and imperial leaders returned once more to their posts, they found themselves in a much weaker position relative to the days of the Beil’Eche Period, the pinnacle of imperial prestige.

Harrel’s ill-fated (but briefly victorious) campaign marked and end to Volanti absolutism. The authority of a single central figure over all of Valian society was never fully restored, crippled beyond complete repair. With the Usurper beaten and his stillborn mandate washed away, the new monarch of Volaris, hastily crowned Eneren the Steadfast, was surprised to learn that reining in the rowdy galaxy would not be easy. Much of the Arabasti dynasty’s first millennia in power would be spent trying to mend the broken Empire, their efforts hindered by the Cyric War in southern Rohse. Eneren I, Rego VIII, Rego IX and Lieso V’s spent their reigns vying for re-centralization, always to limited effect. Construction of the Castell Worlds, finished by 45,000 AF, boosted the Throne's prestige but took a toll on its resources. Unwittingly, became as much of a wall for the monarch as it did for his imagined attackers, becoming a symbolic barrier that marked the limits of his grip.

Despite the Arabasti’s lengthy efforts, the Valian Empire was permanently changed, much more fractured and diverse than it was before. Loopholes in administrative and legal matters, among them taxation and geographical privileges, allowed pushy new nobles, as well as newly-powerful commoners and trade guilds, to accumulate influence like they never had before; the ambitions of prosperous traders, agriworld owners and corporations suddenly became just as powerful as the crown's. The power of individual planets, power-brokers and regional administrators, which the crown increasingly relied on for funds and support, further weakened Imperial clout, as did reforms including 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.

The Age of Heroes
The middle of the Arabun Period is one of the longest and most stable eras in all of Volanti history. The Arabasti Dynasty ruled uninterrupted for over 56,000 years of near-total peace: the Pax Arabastii. Under the rule of Emperor Naro XV the Empire underwent significant restructuring in 49,000 AF, culminating in its present political divisions: its over 10,000 star systems were neatly grouped into Sectors, and these into the modern Provinces (Vasiyi), each overseen by its respective Prefect. In 62,000 AF the Empire took over much of the southwest portion of the galaxy, completely engulfing the miniature Empire of Kabura and the Shenosi of Nyn in a new wave of conquest that would spark the era's first large-scale conflict: the Cyric Wars. Overall, however, the overriding galactic climate was one of peace. House Arabasti, desisting from its initial desire to act like its predecessors (and having learned much from their overthrow), led the Valian nation in a much more subtle yet secure way, establishing a great time of order and progress despite having much less direct control over their domain than had previous dynasties. Peaceful expansion continued, imperial borders slowly growing further and further out.

During the Middle Arabun the royal family and the empire’s scirits grew considerably, with the lineages of Arcel, Tharys, Arianthe, Serina, Verdun and Sulat achieving supremacy over the rest. Emperor Hisero’s fathering of triplets, an unprecedented event, was the beginning of the Arabasti expansion. Brothers, sisters and cousins to the crown princes flourished, resulting in a so-called “golden age” among the youth of the empire’s ruling class, sometimes dubbed the Age of Heroes. The “Princelings”, prominent young sciritans, became the idols of the empire when the Heuron decided that, notwithstanding tradition, his most accomplished descendant would become heir rather than one of his identical sons. The competition between the youngsters inspired legendary tales of romance and tragedy as well as epic feats of heroism. They became known as dashing princes and princesses; many were daring explorers and commanded their own fleets, or were the stars in stories of forbidden love between feuding noble houses. A fierce sense of love and loyalty for the crown was borne from this era, not just among the Volanti but among many of the Empire’s alien citizens as well.

Cyric Wars
The Cyric Wars (from the Volanti word cyr, “south”), also called the Expansionist Wars, were a series of brief wars in southwest Rohse, in which the Third Imperium defeated the remaining alien nations of Rohse, deposed their leaders and replaced them with puppets. They are a major milestone in Rohsii history, as the majority of the galaxy’s inhabited systems were finally absorbed by the Empire (which ballooned to almost twice its size), and the galaxy’s surviving independent states disappeared. Unlike the previous galaxy-spanning wars that had consumed the Rose in the past, the Cyric Wars happened in small and controlled outbursts as the era's Princelings, rather than the Imperial crown, took charge of the Valian Legions and set out to bring wealth and glory to their sworn Houses. Three closely-dated campaigns, all much speedier than any known to date due largely to improved technology, can be identified as the war's backbone. The first, the Eastern Campaign, comprised a swift advance directly west of the colonized Stem, led by House Boresco patriarch Anund of Velasco. An accomplished genral, Anund set out to explore the region, gaining great fame after his discovery of two small civilizations hidden away within the depths of the star cluster known as Kasta. Anund's sudden death on one of his expeditions brought forth a wave of younger sciritans, who took over House Boresco's efforts and began their own adventures. In a bid to gain the Heuron's favour, his nephew, Prince Jamyco, led a campaign to invade and assimilate the Kasta's native peoples, culminating, after an exhausting attempt known as Jamyco's Crusades, in the defeat of the Shenosi of Nyn and the subjugation of the Nyn'Tehsi and Koburan species. In the wake of his great victory, other, minor players such as Duchess Cadel discovered legendary wonders in the area, and established their own virtual fiefdoms such as Cadel's Necklace. Jamyco's brother Fande would later march further south, adding his ships to the group of Princelings who overthrew the now-decaying Empire of Rai-Gon in the galaxy's lower end.

Further west

In 62,000 AF the Empire took over much of the southern and western portions of the galaxy in the Cyric Wars, completely engulfing the Empire of Kabura, the Republic of Reu Massar and the Plunii Alignment, as well as several, much smaller alien nations, which were transformed into satellite states within the Empire and swelled the number of Provinces to eleven. The Kingdom of Rai-gon in the tail end of Rohse was also toppled, transformed into one of the Empire's cluster enclaves.

(late middle arabun period, absorption of masaari nation by volanti prince acting alone with his fleet, hero, romance idol; masaari were in the middle of civil war with a revolting dictator, defeated by prince)

Overall, however, the overriding galactic climate was one of peace. House Arabasti, desisting from its initial desire to act like its predecessors (and having learned much from their overthrow), led the Valian nation in a much more subtle yet secure way, establishing a great time of order and progress despite having much less direct control over their domain than had previous dynasties. Peaceful expansion continued, imperial borders slowly growing further and further out.

Tissiriske Uprisings
Small portions of the empire in secluded clusters attempt to break free; inconclusive conflict results in an uneasy, unacknowledged 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.