- This article is about a past incarnation of the Mardor Empire. For the current incarnation, see Mandatory Mardor Empire.
The Mardor were an extremely evil race notable for their biologically hard-wired love of the suffering of others and the lengths to which they went in order to cause it. For the longest time, they terrorized Delcath and slowly expanded their empire.
In December of 2792, they were ordered by the Drakodominatus Tyranny to carry out an attack on the Aeoneonatrix Empire. They complied, but their offensive ended in dismal failure and they were forced to capitulate to the forces of the Katar Sector Alliance. The Mardor Empire was dismantled and replaced with two KSA mandates, the Mandatory Mardor Empire, and the Former Mardor Territories.
History[]
Tribal Stage[]
During the tribal stage, the Mardor shared their home-world with another race, the Mypho. The Mypho were small, grey, furry herbivores which were sapient, but also fun for the Mardor to torture and delicious for them to eat. Mardor were generally stronger and smarter, and could easily outsmart the Mypho and overpower them if they chose to. Because of this, the fate of nearby Mypho was generally dependent on the philosophies of nearby Mardor.
There were generally four philosophies which were common. Firstly, the tormentors, who acted toward Mypho as Mardor generally act toward them now, enslaving them and using them as chattel whom they felt free to torture. They believed that the Mypho, while intelligent, were fundamentally of the same type as the beasts they also hunted and tortured, and thus acceptable to enslave, or, given their inferiority, even obligatory.
The second were the slavists. They regarded the Mypho as being in a category between themselves and wild beasts. They believed that it was acceptable to make servants out of the Mypho, but that afterward Mypho generally had certain rights, among which was not to be tortured without consent, or eaten, though they generally thought it virtuous for a slave to provide such consent, due to the joy it would bring their masters.
The third were the harmonists. Harmonists believed that Mypho and Mardor were fundamentally equal, and that they should live in harmony. Though they did accept the idea of consensual torture, they believed that any kind of enslavement of Mypho by Mardor was unacceptable. They usually incorporated the Mypho as full citizens into their tribes and worked and fought along-side then.
The fourth were the segregationists. These believed that Mardor and Mypho should remain separate and not interfere with each other’s affairs. They did not allow Mypho to enter their territories and did not enter Mypho territories. This Non-interference policy was the result of the belief that the true ontology of the Mypho was unknowable, and that any conclusions about what should be done with them were baseless, hence, they avoided interference because they, in their minds, could not interact wrongly if they failed to interact at all.
It is worth noting that Mardor tended not to abide by their philosophies perfectly. Though they could live without torture, the urge to torture other sapient beings was strong enough that it usually happened even in the tribes that forbade it, especially slavist tribes where Mypho were highly socially disadvantaged, and thus, though complaints of torture sometimes did result in punishment and the transferring of the slave to another owner, they also often went ignored, especially since many of the tribe leaders often did the same things.
Domestication Revolution[]
Eventually, the Mardor began keeping animals in the same way slavists and tormentors were keeping Mypho. They did this for food and other animal products. This also necessitated that they begin growing crops to feed the animals. The result of this was more permanent settlements which required more labor to keep running. This made life much more convenient for slavist and tormentor tribes as they had a cheap source of easy labor to maintain their crops and cattle. As a result of their newfound convenience, slavist and tormentor philosophies became more common in this stage of Mardor history, and segregationist and harmonist philosophies became rarer, both by the tribes embracing them starving more often, being conquered due to their inability to compete, and, as will become the norm later, simply giving in to temptation due to the increase in quality of life they knew this would bring them.
It was not uncommon during this time to see declarations passed dictating that the Mypho who had once been free and respected citizens must now each select and submit to a master of their choice, or simply gather in a public place to be auctioned off by the government in exchange for the highest bid of resources, while at the same time seeing that more of their species were now being conquered. Sometimes this was due to the will of the people to torture as they pleased, and others, it was a decision made by the leadership who feared that their tribes, including the Mypho, would starve or be conquered if this change did not happen.
The City Stage[]
As these settlements evolved into cities the Mardor began altering the area around them more and more. As technology advanced and these cities turned into classical and then medieval kingdoms, this change came to make segregationist ideals impossible to apply in practice and therefore disappear on the leadership level.
However, advancing technology made it easier to avoid using slave labor and therefore actually helped harmonist ideals to thrive more and more. The resulting return to a certain default sentiment of equality also began to render slavist nations more common than tormentor ones, until eventually, tormentors were in the minority.
Adding to this trend were the religions which were springing up. Most of them were coming to preach against harming the Mypho and for a harmonist view of them. As these religions spread, the moral values of equality and respect for sapient life that they promoted began to become standard in the cultures they influenced, even among those who did not accept the religions. As this happened, these communities adapted to better do without slave labor which in turn made the need for it less intense as they began selling the tools needed for this to slavists and tormentors. This hurt the reasoning behind embracing slavery due to necessity and created a self-propagating cycle which was on track to destroy slavery.
Enlightenment[]
Eventually, though, a philosophical shift took place. As the Mardor became more committed to the natural sciences, they began to reject supernaturalism and as a result they thought less and less of the religious beliefs which had become the norm during the classical and middle ages. They began to think of their religions as being primitive and backward. In addition, some used the new-found science of evolution to argue that the Mardor were “more fit” than the Mypho, and that the more fit had the right to do as they pleased with the unfit. As this happened, eventually, governments run by Mardor were forced to bend to the social desire for legalizations of slavery and torture.
Civilization Stage[]
By the time the Mardor entered the civilization stage most nations had reverted torturer ideals and the few remaining to slavist ones.
The public perception grew to be that the only reason to reject torture was religious. Because of this, ideals like separation of church and state and skepticism of the supernatural, which the enlightenment had made common, became arguments against harmonist ideals. As time went on, people began to see prohibition of torture as oppressive. This change was helped greatly by the fact that the urge to torture in Mardor is very strong and the pleasure gained from it was very large, to the extent that those who preferred to reject this part of their ideology were seen as rejecting who they were.
This led to a perception of harmonism as a form of repression of the Mardor as a species. This in turn led to harmonism being increasingly rejected by the culture until the idea that torture was wrong became extremely offensive to the broader culture. The situation was hastened by the fact that the harmonists were not always of strong enough will to fully carry out their ideals and their failures to do so were further thought of as proof that they were truly denying their nature.
Over time, this social pressure, combined with the fact that harmonists themselves enjoyed torture and sometimes fell prey to their own temptation to rationalize, resulted in practical the death of harmonism, and eventually, slavism and rendered the torturer philosophy became the winner in the battle of ideas.
Space Stage[]
By the time they entered into space, torturer ideals were virtually universal across the Mardor species. They thought of slavery and torture as fundamental to their identities and, now that they could capture and torment other species, it was only natural to do so. As such, their empire expanded as they took more planets and slaves from the non-spacefaring species around them, and eventually, smaller empires.
The Protectors[]
The Aeoneonatrix[]
Conquest by KSA[]
Eventually, the Mardor Empire sided with the Drakodominatus Tyranny during the Great Tyranny War, hoping for a permanent alliance with them after they achieved victory. The Tyranny tasked them with destroying the Aeoneonatrix once and for all. Desiring to please the Tyranny and gain an alliance, the Mardor sent almost all of their ships to carry out one definitive assault on Ku-Rokti.
Though they seemed at first to have won, the Mardor eventually lost due to the intervention of the USF, which came into the battle with several highly advanced ships which the Mardor could not hope to match in battle. As a result, the Mardor suffered a humiliating defeat and over half of their forces were destroyed.
After being offered surrender, the Mardor accepted. The conditions entailed that their government now be replaced and that they be made a mandate of the KSA. Since then, they have remained under the alliance’s occupation, and been forced to obey the KSA’s laws, including their anti-slavery legislation. The Mardor species are now an occupied people with no say in how they are governed, though they have still been spared the hellish existence that they inflicted on their slaves.
Government[]
The Mardor are ruled by a single leader, who serves from his being appointed to this death. Each ruler appoints their successor shortly before their expected death. The ruler has near absolute power, but traditionally does not exercise it in a tyrannical manner because more suffering is caused by free Mardor than enslaved or dominated Mardor.
Culture[]
Mardor generally do not consider themselves to be fundamentally separate from the animal Kingdom, as other species are inclined to. This goes beyond acknowledgement of the relevant facts of taxonomy, extending to the point that Mardor do not at all attempt to overcome their primal urges to cause pain and suffering. They regard their conscience as a mere tool for social cooperation and train themselves to disregard it when it is not useful.
As a result Mardor act primarily on instinct and can be seen to view their higher reasoning abilities and social cooperation as mere means to those ends. They seek to mate, be entertained, eat good food, and cause suffering, and that is all that they usually seek. Nobility, honor and courage are concepts they are largely unconcerned with. They often display cowardly behavior in battle and will always try to avoid pain, including by surrendering.
Mardor do not consider the races they enslave to be inferior beings in the same sense most other slaving empires do. Rather, they think it acceptable for anyone to do as they please to anyone else. They are almost universally moral nihilists, believing, as do the moral relists in the Aeoneonatrix Empire, that moral statements express propositions, but, instead of affirming some as to be true, think all of them false.
In that way, Mardor moral philosophy could be regarded as a form of objectivism, in that moral obligations are said to objectively not exist in any form. Those who think otherwise are regarded as arrogant for believing that their own instincts are somehow special when it is self-evident to the Mardor that the laws of morality are merely patterns of behavior which certain species find beneficial and not actual facts.
It is important to note that this culture is not in any fashion inherent to the Mardor and, in fact, developed despite their natural tendency to hold to a standard of morality similar to that of the Aeoneonatrix. This tendency to be moral was overcome by their biologically hardwired desire to torture, resulting in Mardorian philosophy as it exists now, which is not favored for rational reasons but rather because it functions as a good rationalization for their behavior.
Most Mardorian art, music, and entertainment now revolve around their love of the suffering of others. Their paintings in particular, an art which they value to the highest degree, depict scenes of horrific agony and torment. The painter is likely to have used an actual torture device on an actual slave and then painted the resulting scene as the slave waited hours in a state of suffering, waiting as the painting was being done.
Technology[]
The Mardor are slightly more advanced than the Aeoneonatrix. They put a special emphasis on military technology, technology designed to enhance torture, and healing technology to prolong torture and allow themselves to cause more pain to a slave without having to replace them.
Military[]
The Mardor military puts special emphasis on offense and capturing rather than killing enemies, especially the victims of invasion.
Relations[]
Allies[]
“You have found a way to make yourselves more useful to us as an ally than as a source of joy, we must admit, it’s surprising that you managed that.”
Friends[]
“We’re cool, for now”
Neutral[]
“We have more important matters to attend to, however we’ll get to you soon enough to make you regret your birth”
Disliked[]
"You will soon see the blade of our disfavor"
Enemies[]
“The only thing better than seeing a person in pain, is seeing an enemy in pain”
At War With[]
“We will show you a new meaning of Agony”
- The Aeoneonatrix Empire - "They're so pathetic, and they have the GALL to try and stop us from claiming those as weak as them? Let them be burnt and slashed until they cry out for death!"
- Katar Sector Alliance
Quotes[]
“Your pain is absolutely fabulous. That look on your face, when you suffer, it’s simply glorious. Your agony is my ecstasy”
- - The Great high King Razorscare
Quotes from Others (Add Here)[]
“Angry over your defeat huh? Well, me and my friends in High Command have some weapons that can help deal with that...”
- - Gridlock of the Zarbania Powers
“Hah! How does it feel like, to be subjugated by another race? Angry over your defeat? Enraged? Mad? Feeling bitter and hungry? Want to be free again? Perhaps we can help change that...In secret, of course. Oh, and please don't believe Gridlock. He was just taunting you. But we...”
- - Imperator Caligustus of the Imperium of War
Trivia[]
- “Mardor” is almost “Murder”
- Here's an Anthem: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUVW5O7Cj0A
