The Unification Wars of the Great Eastern Wars were a group of wars and skirmishes in the Artrus Territories between the invading Empire of the Core and the Territories' native races.
The war resulted in the fall of the Artrus Territories to the Empire, which destroyed its star systems and reshaped its galaxies to bring about its current state. It saw the degradaton of its former ruling empires to the status of working species, mostly relocated to the Fieldrings. The White Galaxies supercluster was born months after the War, and the Illyan Imperial Crown gained control of the multiverse shortly thereafter.
Prelude[]
After years of stagnation following the revelation of the CorFed to the wider First Gigaquadrant, scouts of the Federation's sent back secret reports of a land whose size was unprecedented, whose population was negligible, and whose stars were of an age near death; it was, in short, the perfect place for a future settlement. The new land was dubbed the New World and the reports simply shoved under other matters, however, and the scouts recalled as the Federation entered its first international war during the Delpha Civil War. The matter was left unpersued until the destruction of the Federation in 0 AF, when the question arose as to where the new Empire was to be founded. Ravenkind chose Artrus. Thus the Exilium began.
Course of the War[]
The Unification Wars are commonly depicted as a series of random outbursts of violence and conflict-they weren't. The invasion of Artrus, the taking of its 21 inhabited universes and hundreds of lifeless galaxies, was well-planned war strategy. It began with the first Ravenrii corewards push, amassing Raven forces after crossing the Great Rift that separates the Territories' multiverse from the Gigaquadrants'. The Ravenrii then set out to conquer vast swaths of uninhaited space; by the time they reached civilized territory, the native races were surrounded. Twelve inhabited universes fell without resistance-only nine now stood between multiversal control. And those nine were already falling.
The Trail of Revolutions[]
“Creating paradise cost them a million million lives, a kingdom, a republic and an empire. It’s only rational they’d never want to leave again.”
- - Tarion Rasden, Professor of Xenohistory at the University of Erdin
The settlement of the central territories, which were to become the White Galaxies, cost the Ravenrii much indeed; it was the only section of Artrus that was heavily inhabited, some 9 universes in size. The entire region had to be reshaped from the stars of the Grey Cluster and the galaxies of Gataerad and Gedd. Before the Ravens' mysterious disappearance into the darkness of the Artrus, odd events reshaped it on their own during the life of the Core Federation. Two uprisings in the region would leave the Ravenrii in control without much effort by the time they arrived years later, assuring the future of the new Imperium.
Ralian Revolutions[]
The Ralian Revolutions were a series of revolutions in the Grey Galaxies that overthrew the reigning Ralian monarch and destroyed the race’s autocracy. The Revolutions led to the vast expansion of the Imperium of Illum into the Galaxies after two uprisings: the first deposed the Emperor and the old order, replacing it with a sham democracy made up of the “independent nations” of the cluster. The second overthrew the new republic to hand over control to the arriving Ravenrii regime. The conflict was a successful bid for Ravenrii domination of the cluster, expelling its native species without Raven forces having to lift a finger. The power and prestige that the Ralians had maintained in the cluster for millennia was never recovered.
The first of the conflicts, the Gilded Revolution, deposed the Ralian autocracy that had reigned supreme over the four Grey Galaxies for eons. The conflict surged out of nothing as massive calls for independence arose from the Ralian’s satellite states, now known to have been supposedly Gilded by the Ravenrii at the time. Coups within the Ralian royalty became commonplace as its families were splintered by the warring states, and eventually instability coupled with the rebellion made the Empire collapse. The Revolutions saw the destruction of the Ralian imperial regime as rebels seized the Empire’s space, closing the cluster off from the rest of the area. By the end of the war, the rebels had installed an interim government formed by officials from every independent state in the cluster, named the Grey Republic.
The second conflict, known as the Grey Revolt, put a quick end to the Republic. Allegedly under Gilded control once again, the new nation’s civilians and military clashed to overthrow the sham government that was the Congresses of the Republic. It left the country’s armies in a state of mutiny, its infrastructure all but destroyed and the government inexistent as the Gilded nation finally handed itself-and its universes- over to the Ravenrii on a silver platter.
Fifteenth Lyan Conflict[]
The Fifteenth Lyan Conflict, meanwhile, was an armed rebellion in the nearby galaxy of Gataerad and its satellite, Gedd. It occurred roughly at the same time as the Ralian Revolutions, barely parsecs away. It is unknown whether the Ravenrii had any actual involvement, though along with the Revolutions, the Conflict was one of the two uprisings that resulted in the Empire’s taking control of the Artrus Territories.
The Fifteenth Conflict was the last of fifteen similarly-called wars, collectively called the Conflicts of Gataerad. It began as an insurrection among the single stable civilization of the region, the Monarchy of Maan. For unknown reasons, the monarchy fragmented into cracked governments and kingdoms. Anarchy reigned as dozens of the monarchy’s Maan inhabitants declared themselves kings and rebels. The split of the Maan came at a disastrous moment, as the galaxy had been ravaged by fourteen other galactic civil wars and was now split amongst countless crime lords and satrapies.
Rival warlords now fought for regional control, battling the splintered Maan that sought to restore an order and control of their own. The Conflict brought down the last vestige of order the galaxy would have-the Maan empires eventually fell by their own hand, the warlord insurgencies engulfed what was left and eventually set up an unstable government of their own. Dozens of civilizations perished, and in the end, the grieving Maan themselves were destroyed. Curiously, much like the Ralian uprising in the near Grey Galaxies, Gataerad's wars flared in two simultaenous waves.
Aftermath[]
The war cost a devastating hundreds of billions of lives and consumed the meager resources left in the central Territories, barely lasting an estimated six years. By the time the Ravenrii split the galaxies apart to reshape their stars, they had become barren wastelands ideal for planting life anew. Within weeks, the Territories had been torn apart and reformed into new galaxies, new planets and nebulas. Within months, The Empire solidified its rule over the entire multiverse. Within a year, the Unification Wars were nothing more than a testament to the Ravenrii's power.