"Even in the darkest times, we are sworn to protect Gaian and it's people from harm, in the name of the All-knowing One"
- - Oath of the Ray'jin Royal guard
Gaian, also known as Hypusauri to the enigmatic Legate and later Rhy, is the paradise planet located in the Adarni spiral arm, orbiting yellow star known as Fias. It's the homeworld of the Ray'jin race and serves as the capital planet of Ray'jin Empire. As the cultural, economic and logistic heart of the region, it's of high importance for many races. Planet is mostly known for it's beautiful, flat landscape, deep and lush equatorial jungles, vast rolling plains, clear blue oceans and tall, sparkling spires of it's cosmopolitan cities. The capital city, Laudantur, hosts the Imperial palace, where current emperess Atreya resides, along with her husband Augustulus and daughter Aladna.
History[]
Origins[]
The Gaian was created from dust cloud of it's newly born parent star approximately 5,5 billion years ago. The very beginings of the planet existence were turbulent, as many comets and asteroids bombarded it's barren, volcanic landscape. Formely the first planet in the system, one of those impacts was so huge, that it pushed planet far away from the star, which resulted in cooling of surface. Shortly afterwards, the first primitive life forms begun their great journey, as first waterlogged areas quickly spread around the planet.
After first plants started to grow on surface around 2.9 billion years of planet existence, first land based animals appeared. Due to the abundance of plants, the animal population boomed and the food chain quickly grew - the carnivore reptiles were dominating life form for long ages. Along with them there existed extensive amount of bird based omnivore life forms, with Rayan bird as a dominating species.
Reptiloid species, however, had no natural enemy. This together with growing overpopulation inflicted great damage to the planet ecosystem, as the 30% unique species became extinct. The climatic changes were the last nail into the coffin of the reptiles, which were overwhelmed by the Rayan birds. The Rayans soon spread all around the surface, and entered the tribal stage.
Road to the Empire[]
Fully developed Rayans started to call themselves "Ray'jin" which literally means "sea-green bird", and created few indepentent tribe nations, which traded with each other in relative peaceful conditions. The technological and social advancements were accompanied by various religious concepts, which created the main strife between developing Ray'jin civilisation. While many militant churches were anhillated in the bloody conflicts, the cults of Divine Pantheon and the All-knowing One rosed to prominence. Both religiously tolerant in nature, they finally found a common ground, and the Gaian was unified under one semi-democratic government.
Federation period[]
For approximately two thousand years, the unified Ray'jin nation flourished, uncovered many technological secrets, mainly in propulsion and energy flow control. With these advancements, first Ray'jin spaceships were build. The first Ray'jin spacecraft were mostly small fighter-like scout ships, used for reconnaissance missions around their own star system, but later, when the first hyperspace jumpdrive was invented, first trade and colony ships were pushed into production.
With the foundation of the first colonies (Notably Pattianka, Kall, Ramarium and Dryum) many citizens sought new life on these distant worlds, and alomst 80% of Gaian population left the planet. This severely crippled the industry and the prominent position of the world for ages. Much of the once overpopulated areas were now almost uninhabited, cities abandoned, leaving space for wildlife to take over. With the dwindled political and economic power, planet was unable to halt the federalization attempt of the dominant planets (Lilkar, Kall).
Shortly afterwards, Gaian lost the title of the capital planet of the Ray'jin federation. For next few centuries, the world was merely a regional capital, serving more as the military outpost than the center of culture, economy and politics.
First civil war[]
Few decades after the rapid federation expanzion, Ray'jin first met an alien civilization. The Robstrokians, as they called themselves, were almost militantly capitalistic, bird-like creatures. With only a few differencies (Robstrokians have shorter lifespan, better popuplation growth and hatching capabilities, but they are mostly similar with Rayans in other ways), they swiftly forged a strong and long lasting aliance, which lasted for millenia.
However, next aliens encountered by Rayans were not so friendly and similar as the Robstokians. Noghrils, the narrow-minded carnivore creatures with superior military strenght and technological advancements sought to expand their territory. Their disinterest in the Ray'jin economic pacts and offers led to the rapid mutual relationship cooling.
After a dispute over spice trade on the orbit of planet Fria, Noghril empire declared war on Ray'jin federation. The first days and weeks of war shown, that the federation was unprepared for such conflict, and few border worlds were obliterated by the Noghrilian invasion armies. The governments' inability to take action and stop pillaging of the border worlds, royalists overthrown the central government on planet Lilkar, dissolved the parliment and declared dictatorial monarchy. Tho'N Dari (born on Gaian) was promoted as the High King of the Ray'jin kingdom. The new governing body - Royal council - inflicted state terror on the populace, forcing most of the inhabitants into a state controled slavery.
These dark deeds were successful, however, the military might of the kingdom quickly surpassed that of the Noghril empire, and with aid of the Robstrokian confederacy, Nogrilians were pushed back to their capital of Farrista, where they were landlocked, and enslaved by the victorious Ray'jin, until they do not pay all the damage that they have inflicted (thing that did not happened in past 4 thousand years).
