Please note that this is portrayed as being written by a person from my main faction, so some bias is implicit, and please don't be cluttering up the thread with small little details I missed. However, I'm mortal, and the forums are HUGE, so if I missed something really big, shoot me an @ mention and I'll see about adding it.
To tell the history of our galaxy is to speak of horrors beyond number, and of shattered worlds circling poisoned stars. I am old, and even now I fear that the battle being waged above my world will be my end. But before I die, I will leave this chronicle behind, that some wisdom might yet be gleamed from the blood-soaked pages of our past.
- Glortar Rakden, Imperial Historian
In the Beginning, there was Walt.
And Walt looked out and saw that He was bored. So, He made the Game, and with it, the Forum. And then did time begin, and the factions rise. His work done, Walt removed Himself from the galaxy to continue His work on improving the Game and to give his blessings to those holy ones who made Mods, that the Game might be made more entertaining and boredom further staved off.
The First Age
When Almighty Walt departed these forsaken stars, He left the precious gift of spacefaring technology scattered across the heavens for rising powers to find and claw their way into the holy void. Of the entities that ruled the stars in those long-ago days, few now remain, and the tales that have come down to us through the depths of time are warped and fragmented. The Kel’Shir, the Keepers of Light, and the Crescent Star Empire are but a few of the factions that existed then.
When the Blood Cult, devourers and corrupters of flesh came to the new-made galaxy, the Keepers and their allies attacked them preemptively, but over the course of several wars, were slowly driven back and then eventually exterminated altogether until nothing now exists to tell of them, but the records their allies left behind and their moldering, gutted wrecks.
Also formed during this fabled age was the grand alliance known as SPAPEC. Purporting to uphold peace and security across the stars, the members of SPAPEC instead did little but bicker and squabble amongst themselves for power and political standing. At least, until the arrival of the entity known as Cosmolord.
Fire and Ruin
Cosmolord was an embodiment of destruction such that had never been seen before, nor since. It wielded the awesome power of some long-forgotten sorcery known only as “plot armor”, and laid waste to entire sectors in its rampage. However, it was not until it devastated the interstellar trading empire of the Scavengers were the Elder Powers moved to action. Several divine beings (none as mighty as holy Walt, of course) challenged Cosmolord and after a long battle sealed him into an eternal prison of pain and anguish.
But Cosmolord was not the only ill to plague the galaxy in those far off days. Two powers, alike in temperament and perhaps in destiny arose, one in another dimension entirely, and one within the middling bands of the galaxy. One was Thrawn’s Infinite Empire, an invader from another realm with ambitions of territorial expansion. The other was the Vidachos Quorum, a smaller xenophobic power that announced its arrival on the galactic stage with a declaration of war against the Kel’Shir due to trade disputes and an aggressive foreign policy. The latter would later be the basis of a festering feud that would change the galaxy forever.
The World and the Shadow
This period of history (and for quite some time before this) more than any other is plagued by confusion and conflicting accounts of events. What little has been gleaned from the records that survived indicate that two major alliances dominated this interregnum, the Inter-World Organization and the Shadow Agreement. Neither seems to have truly had any goals beyond the opposition of the other, but tensions continued to rise over a considerable time before a sudden terrorist attack by a member of the IWO prompted retaliation from the Shadow Agreement. When the leader of the IWO suddenly seemed to go insane and attempted a full-scale genocide of the galaxy, most of her constituents rebelled, and she subsequently died in a starship crash. With their main opponent gone, the Shadow Agreement slowly dissolved, and both groups left a power vacuum behind them as chaos threatened to engulf the galaxy.
United We Stand
After the end of the IWO, historical records again become coherent and recognizable with the rise of the United Galaxies. Formed by a breakaway member of the IWO known as Jamoke Sanderson, the UG grew swiftly in power and size, swelling to include almost a full third of the galaxy at its height. That power and growth might’ve continued unabated, had a conspiracy from within not been revealed that eventually brought a drone fleet to the UG’s doorstep. The resulting battle laid waste to the capital and forced the UG to spend the next several centuries rebuilding as its attention largely turned inwards. This proved to be the perfect opportunity for Thrawn and his allies to push forward and flex their muscles.
That flexing came in the form of an attack on the faction styling itself as Offworld. The Secretary-General made the executive decision to intervene in the conflict but ultimately accomplished little beyond antagonizing the Infinite Empire and laying the ground for one of the most influential battles of galactic history: Parendam Beta.
Sky on Fire – The Battle of Parendam Beta and the Aeon War
There are as many opinions on what went wrong with the tactical decisions in the Parendam system over the course of those fateful weeks as there are stars, but all agree that no true victor emerged from that forsaken hellhole. Even now, almost a millennium and a half after the catastrophe, sentients of all races ward themselves against evil at the mere mention of it, and no trader or pirate ship will go within a hundred light-years of the system.
The chaos began when Imperial forces assaulted the UG border system of Parendam, a fairly insignificant system only notable for the double planet system at the edge of the Goldilocks zone and modest deposits of heavy metals scattered across the system. Picket forces were swiftly overwhelmed but managed to transmit enough warning to ground control that by the time stormtrooper legions began landing, resistance efforts were well underway. After several days of siege, UG reinforcements arrived in-system and engaged Imperial assets while evacuating any personnel on the ground. By this time, Thrawn’s ground forces had already rendered most of the planet uninhabitable with the use of multiple nuclear weapons provided by OMEGA Incorporated.
Meanwhile, the orbital battle had grown ever more confusing due to more fleets arriving by the hour and the lack of any coherent leadership on either side. Matters only proceeded to degrade even further when a fleet from the High Imperium arrived and deployed a never-before-seen technology: FTL Interdict generators. While Thrawn had made use of Interdict cruisers to lock down a battlefield and restrict enemy movement, HI generators were much smaller, cheaper, and could provide a larger interdiction zone. When an armistice was proposed after almost two weeks of fruitless fighting, Thrawn took the chance to withdraw…right before he fired a superweapon at the system primary, causing a supernova and reducing any ships still within the interdict sphere to plasma.
This was the kickoff point for the Aeon War, which proved to be two hundred years of hostile standoffs between the UG and TIE, culminating in a punitive expedition to Thrawn’s home galaxy that ultimately failed and signed a peace treaty to return home.
Some Assembly Required
The long tensions of the Aeon War and the events leading up to it had left several key factions of the UG dissatisfied with the leadership of the Secretary-General. Finally having had enough they officially seceded and formed their own organization, the Stellar Assembly. After gaining another member or two, they issued an ultimatum to UG that they disband or face annihilation. This also happened to coincide with an invasion of UG territory by something that called itself the “Fleryg”.
The Assembly made its first move with several skirmishes and gained the location of the UG base, whereupon it massed its collective fleets and attacked. Led by the High Imperium, an interdict sphere was deployed to limit reinforcements while Imperial commanders led the charge into the last defenses of what had once been the mightiest stronghold in the galaxy. The fighting is reported to have raged for almost a month before the true architects of the UG’s slow decay revealed themselves just as defeat seemed certain for the Assembly. They were the Origin powers, factions that had ruled a galaxy many times the size of the holy spiral that Almighty Walt had forged. Driven from their home by a plague of replicating machines, they had been seizing colonies for years now, unnoticed by most. Their massive warships shattered the UG defenders and laid waste to the planet below. Assembly forces then managed to capture the Secretary-General as he fled the devastation and he was brought before the Representatives to stand trial. So ended one titan of history and ascended the current coalition of our lords and masters.
Crisis of Faith
Exalting in its victory, the Assembly skyrocketed in numbers and power almost as fast as the UG before it, but with more members came more tensions and possibilities for strife. One of those chances came from outside at the time. Thrawn, having since been admitted to the SA, had at last been unable to restrain the bloodthirsty constituents that composed his dominions and declared war on the newly arrived Hegemony. This proved to be a fatal mistake as Hegemony warships invaded his home galaxy and smashed aside his weapons and ships, even assaulting hallowed Coruscant with cannon and laser. So ended one mighty power from the past.
But even as the Assembly adjusted to this turn of events, the Blood Cult was tearing itself apart in civil war. The final throes of that war left Cult-space irradiated and unpassable by FTL, but also left the treasures and technology of the Cult unguarded, something many factions raced to take advantage of, the High Imperium gleaning sophisticated shielding technology from the wrecks of K.o.L. cruisers. Those insights were later put to foul use when saber-rattlers in the Imperial Senate convinced their colleagues to declare war on the Kel’Shir Federation.
The actual attack was preceded by covert nano virus attacks on key Federation civilian targets with casualties in the billions. When the Imperium fleet exited FTL however, it was met with a defense composed of many ships from the Assembly, and a gauntlet was thrown down. No records remain of what passed between the two fleets, but after several hours the Imperials turned around and left in disgrace, marking the beginning of a long fall from grace that would only continue for the next few decades.
We Are Legion
As the Assembly fell into internal politicking, much like the UG before it, a greater threat loomed on the horizon. The Second Tau Empire, recently fallen to a coup and civil strife, was beset by a foe from the darkest past known as the Ever Legion. Desperate, the Tau called on their longtime allies, the Dominion Solar. Answering the call came the fleets of the Solaric and the Sunrise Empires, along with token forces from other factions.
The tides of battle swung back and forth repeatedly during those dark days before the allied line finally broke and the Sunrise Emperor was slain in battle. The Dominion fleets were forced to flee for their lives, but the Legion stopped short of destroying New Tau for some unknown reason. Also present at the battle was a new weapon from the High Imperium, a device capable of altering reality itself. The device was destroyed, unfortunately, but not before proving its worth and setting the stage for the conflict that even now lights the skies of my homeworld ablaze.
Imperium Asunder
In an attempt to regain face after the public relations disasters of the last thirty years, the noble houses of the High Imperium commissioned a massive megastructure known as the Star Forge. Shipyard and statement of power in one, the Forge was meant to be the Imperium’s way back into the limelight, but only served as the impetus for its descent into anarchy. On the very eve the Forge was to be revealed, House Vakorian attacked both the Forge and the Senate on Taros, driving the ruling house of Vos from the Core Worlds.
The leader of House Vos, Elandra, fled to the remote world of Holdhaven and had no sooner arrived than fighting erupted between the local planetary militia and Imperial garrison forces. What has reached my ears since then has been fractured and horrifying, tales of worlds glassed from orbit, xenos willing invited into our borders, and something truly vile with the Star Forge.
But no matter, for the rebel queen has come home at the head of an armada to reclaim what is hers, and Taros burns beneath her guns. Truly I do believe the stars themselves will go out before we see an end to this age-old madness called war….
The manuscript cuts off from here as if the author was called away suddenly and there were scorch marks in the area the document was found in as well. Whatever the ultimate fate of Historian Radken, one surmises that it was somewhat less than peaceful.