Steve Jackson Games - Site Navigation
Home General Info Follow Us Search Illuminator Store Forums What's New Other Games Ogre GURPS Munchkin Our Games: Home

Go Back   Steve Jackson Games Forums > Roleplaying > GURPS

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 06-15-2010, 02:57 PM   #11
Johnny1A.2
 
Join Date: Feb 2007
Default Re: The Eosians...

LATER.

By this point, with several life-bearing worlds known spread over many
star systems, all with the same kind of life, right down to common,
interfertile species in many cases, the Eosians were beginning to get
used to the idea, even though they still couldn't reconcile their
understanding of evolutionary biology with the empirical facts they
encounted in star exploration.

Those worlds they had found to carry life had all been either very
Eosia-like (more accurately, very Earth like, due to artificial
terraforming), or else special cases in which strains of Earth-derived
life lived in odd niches. The Eosia-like worlds all orbited F or G or
K stars in their 'life-zones', and if some of them seemed more clement
than their orbital positions would suggest, it wasn't enough to strain
the theoretical models unduly.

Naturally, the Eosians searched such stars for life-bearing worlds
more intensely than others, since their theoretical models said they
were better choices, and practical experience bore that out. But the
large majority of all stars are Class M 'red dwarfs', not the blazing
G and F suns like Eos and Sol. There are also many cool K stars.

An Eosian exploratory vessel, probing around a star on the M/K border,
discovered that it did indeed have a planetary system. With such a
cool star, the 'life zone' had to be quite close to the star. This,
in turn, meant that a world in the life-zone of that system should be
'tide-locked', it's rotation matching it's orbital time. In practice,
that meant that one side would always face the star, making for
difficult biospheric conditions.

But this star system proved to be anomalous. Orbiting close enough to
the star for warmth was a wet, Eosia-liked world, with a rotational
period of 23.93 hours, even though the year was less than three
months! To make matters odder, the next world out was a hard-frozen
rockball that was tidelocked.

The fast rotation alone was odd, since such an old star system should
have had plenty of time to tide-lock the innermost world (the
habitable one). But a closer examination revealed another oddity:
the habitable world was surrounded by rings of light, or so they
appeared.

Three rings, to be specific, three apparently perfectly circular, very
narrow rings of light, one around the planetary equator, the other two
90 degrees apart in surrounding the planet from pole to pole, all
three intersecting at the 'cardinal points', like a framework for the
planet. They were about 3000 miles above the planetary sea level, and
they emitted a constantly shifting spectrum of visible and invisible
EM wavelengths, with no apparent source of energy.

Attempts to get close to the 'rings' proved impossible, since they
emitted a repulsive force that increased exponentially as a material
object approached. Telesecopic observation merely showed that they
were 'tubes' of something unknown, about a mile in diameter each, and
they showed no deviation from perfect circularity. Radar waves were
simply absorbed. Mass detectors revealed nothing, as if the
mysterious objects had no mass at all.

There was no difficulty in approaching or landing on the world within
those rings, which proved to be a living world full of the same
Terra-derived life with which the Eosians had become familiar, though
in this case it had been a long time since any fresh species were
added, and evolution had produced some creatures quite unfamiliar to
the Eosians, even with the experience of several living worlds. The
plant life, for ex, had adapted to the red-orange spectrum of the
local star and the short seasons by producing modified pigments and
very peculiar leafy structures and very odd life cycles. But on the
cellular/biochemical level, it was still more of the same familiar
life.

The rings were a total puzzle to the Eosians, something they had to
way to analyze or comprehend, but it wasn't long before detailed
analysis showed that they were indeed exerting a slight force on the
planet itself, to keep it's rotation constant and prevent
'tide-locking', and further that they also acted as a protective
barrier against radiations and other dangers from the star so near to
the planet.

This was, to the Eosians, the final giveaway. Though there had been
speculation before of artificial intervention in the spread of
Eosia-style life over so many separate worlds, their version of
Occam's Razor had always left the hypothesis with little practical
support. The ring-frame discovery changed that, since it seemed
inconceivable to the Eosians that such a thing could occur
'naturally'.

MORE LATER.

Last edited by Johnny1A.2; 06-15-2010 at 03:01 PM.
Johnny1A.2 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-15-2010, 03:05 PM   #12
Johnny1A.2
 
Join Date: Feb 2007
Default Re: The Eosians...

LATER.

Naturally, there was endless speculation, scientific, religious,
philosophical, etc, about the nature of the beings responsible for the
'rings' that kept the above planet from 'tide-locking'. There was
also a great deal of largely fruitless scientitic investigation of the
'ring-frame' itself. Unfortunately for the Eosians, they didn't even
know the right questions to ask at that point.

New discoveries began to come it fairly quickly about this time. As
their starships ranged further and further from Eos, the number of
stars available for investigation rose enormously. Over the ten years
or so after the discovery fot the 'rings-world', they discovered
several more living worlds, including two more with the 'ring-frames'
around them, one orbiting a gas giant as a satellite, right in the
middle of a Jupiter-style radiation belt. In that case, the
'ring-frame' somehow kept the moon-planet from tide-locking to the
huge gas giant it orbited and also shielded a rich Terra-style
biosphere from the intense radiation (as intense as that around Io).
Radiation that would have been fatal to any member of Genus Homo in
minutes coursed around that planet. On the surface, inside the
ring-frame, the radiation background was actually lower than it was
on worlds like Eosia.

In yet another star system, they discovered still more strange things:
they found a system, with a hot class F primary, that had yet another
Eosia-like world, complete with Terra-derived biosphere, in the fourth
orbit. More stunning, though, was what they found in the seventh
orbit (the system had eight primary planets).

Here, they discovered a world quite unlike Eosia or any other living
world they had discovered. It was cold, average temperature range
running in the neighborhood of -455 degrees F. Only a few degrees
above absolute zero, this planet was nevertheless rocky-silicate, with
only a modest amount of 'ices'. It had an atmosphere of bizarre
composition, with many complex compounds, and oceans of liquid
helium
. A bit less massive than Earth, its diameter was about that
of Venus, and its surface gravity comparable to Venus as well.

The planet was an oddity, but it should have been no more than that.
What made it so bizarre was that the planet, which should have been so
devoid of free energy as to make life there inconceivable, had once
been inhabited! The fact of former habitation was unmistakable. The
continents of the planet were covered in the ruins of immense cities,
with enormous structures falling into decay, great unidentifiable
machines decaying away in the windy, thin atmosphere and the stunning,
all but incomprehensible cold of the planet.

There were four continents, and three of them were nearly or totally
covered in the wreckage of cities and other artificial environments,
the fourth and largest continent appeared, from what the
paleoarcheologists could determine, to have once been used for
something approximating agriculture, though they could not immediately
see how that had been possible with so little incident light and heat.

Naturally, it was clear from the start that this world could never
have harbored the familiar, water-and-carbon life that every
previously discovered living world was blessed with. Nothing derived
from Earth (not that they knew anything about Earth yet) could ever
have lived on this world without constant protection of a very high
technological order.

The planet was lifeless. After extensive searches, it began to become
clear that the planet had been dead for a very, very long time. In
fact, various forms of dating indicated that the cities had been
decaying away for around half a billion years. Only the extreme
cold and low-intensity nature of erosive processes on this deep-frozen
world, plus the sheer scale of the ruins, had preserved them long
enough for H. eostellaristo discover them.

Naturally, the dead but once-inhabited world drew scientific and other
interest like a magnet draws iron filings. At first, it was thought
that this world must have been the source of the beings who had
created the great 'ring-frames', but that soon appeared unlikely.
These entities had been much more technologically advanced than the
Eosians were, but not that advanced. However, many other things
were learned about them.

These beings had been totally alien. They had used liquid helium as
their analogue of water, though just how that had been possible was
not clear to the Eosians. They had apparently thrived in temperatures
so cold that even the dimly daylit side of their world would have felt
uncomfortably warm to them.

Meanwhile, the living world in the fourth orbit of the system was
largely ignored at first, but with the increase in interest in the
seventh planet, the living, warm, Eosia-like world became a very
convenient source of food and other consumables, as well as a place to
rotate personnel to. A small outpost-colony was establish on this
world.

Remarkably, it took several years to discover that the fourth world
had its own stunning shock for the Eosians, but when they did, the
news was electrifying: the fourth planet was inhabited by a race of
the same Genus as the Eosians!

MORE LATER.

Last edited by Johnny1A.2; 06-15-2010 at 03:10 PM.
Johnny1A.2 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-15-2010, 03:17 PM   #13
Johnny1A.2
 
Join Date: Feb 2007
Default Re: The Eosians...

LATER.

The Eosian settlement had existed on the fourth planet, known as
Baladai, for some years before they discovered that they were not
alone (sapience-wise) on the planet. The Eosian settlement (intended
mainly as a rest and resupply base for the research on the seventh
world) was located on an island, itself uninhabited by the locals, and
the two local Human species were both at TL0, with a combined
planetary population of only a few million.

The two species were _Homo polaris_, occupying the northernmost
continent, adapted for extreme (for habitable worlds) cold conditions
and arctic and subarctic environs, and _Homo sapiens_, occupying
the smaller equatorial continent. A tiny, scattered population of TL0
humans is easy to loose amid the background of a world rich with
Terra-derived CHON life.

It was the presence of H. sapiens that was discovered first on
Baladai. Exploring teams from the Eosian outpost encountered them,
and which group was the more surprised would be difficult to say.
The Eosians had grown used to the inexplicable presence of familiar life
forms on many different worlds, even the same interfertile species,
but until now, they had never encountered anything so close to
themselves. The closest living kin to themselves that they had
encountered had been various apes and monkeys.

Some Eosian scientists, in the view of what they had already discovered,
had speculated that Man might also exist on other worlds, but few outside
of the Eosian equivalent of SF circles and academic environs took the
idea entirely seriously, even after the other discoveries that had shaken up
Eosian biosciences. After the discovery of H. sapiens on Baladai,
yet another shock to the Eosian collective worldview began to spread.

It was complicated by the fact, rapidly made apparent by closer
examination, that H. sapiens was both full sapient, and a close
relative of the Eosians, yet a distinct species. H. sapiens and H.
eostellaris
were sibling species, but not identical twins. The
species were not interfertile, and the differences were both subtle,
and sometimes disturbing.

One of the most disturbing things the Eosians discovered about their
newfound cousins was that they were, by eostellarian standards,
fantastically fecund. An H. sapiens female had several chances a
year to become pregnant, an H. eostellaris female got one, at best.
Further, H. sapiens were more fertile per mating, with a higher chance
of successful pregnancy. When the Eosians calculated the potential
breeding rate of H. sapiens under good conditions, they were
distinctly unnerved.

Though the locals were TL0, studies indicated no signs that they were
in any way less intelligent than the Eosians.

The question of what to do about the discovery rapidly became a major
issue in the ruling circles of the Eosian government. There was
little to stop them from doing whatever they chose, since the Eosians
were a TL 8/9 society by this time, while the local H. sapiens were
TL0. As far as they were concerned, the Eosians might just as well have
been gods.

The discovery of human life on Baladai brought a tremendous amount of
additional scrutiny from the Eosians, and it wasn't long, (ten years
or so) before explorers discovered H. polaris on Baladai as well. To
their relief, H. polaris proved to be far less fertile than H.
sapiens
, more along the familiar lines of H. eostellaris. But
otherwise, they presented similar dilemmas.

Two new fully human, sentient species presented the Eosians with
moral, legal, and practical dilemmas they had scarcely dared consider
up unil this time.

MORE LATER.

Last edited by Johnny1A.2; 06-15-2010 at 03:22 PM.
Johnny1A.2 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-15-2010, 03:26 PM   #14
Johnny1A.2
 
Join Date: Feb 2007
Default Re: The Eosians...

LATER.

Unfortunately, the dilemmas would prove to be badly handled. The
Eosians, having encountered many worlds with Earth-derived CHON life
by this point, were all too familiar with the possibility of
cross-contamination of disease pathogens. It had caused problems
already, but even so, they had never before encountered other
hominids, and perhaps didn't quite appreciate how much that escalated
the potential risk.

Eosians went among the H. sapiens, usually in disguises of various
sorts, but not always, for purposes of scientific study, or personal
curiousity, or less admirable motives at times.

Within a year of contact with the population of H. sapiens on
Baladai, cross-contamination had occurred, ironically from the locals
to the high-tech Eosians. For the first time in their recorded history,
the Eosians were exposed to multiple strains of what Terrans would later
call 'influenza'.

None of them were the specific strains known to modern Terra, of
course. But they were close enough cousins to be very dangerous.
With no natural defenses against them, and no past experience to base
immunity treatments on, the Eosians were remarkably vulnerable. To
make matters worse, a ship carrying personnel infected with a
particularly nasty strain left the Balasia System before the full
extent of the danger was appreciated.

Within a few Terran months, an often lethally virulent strain of
influenza had spread among the Eosians, faster than quarantine
measures could be put into place. While Eosian medical technology
proved capable of devising vacinations and cures for the strain, it
flashed across known space at the speed of the starships carrying it.
The ships were the fastest means of interstellar communication
available to the Eosians.

(FTL signals were known, but at that time none of their systems had
enough range to reach from star to star.)

Influenza can be deadly, and the Eosians had not experienced it in
long ages, not since their ancestors' days on Earth. The Eosians of this
time had utterly forgotten those days, and all they knew was that a
nasty plague was loose among them. The death rate in some places ran
as high as 15% overall, much higher among the elderly and the very
young. News of the spreading pandemic often arrived no faster than
the very starships carrying it, until the Eosian governments finally
thought to use their fastest, most expensive military courier ships to
outrun the infected vessels, thus sometimes enabling protection of
civil populations.

It took nearly four years for the pandemic to spread across the
explored worlds, though they managed to protect Eosia itself, and Eos
V, from infection, by dint of extreme efforts. The consequences of
the plague would echo down for many centuries in the policies and
actions of the Eosians.

In the meantime, contagion had gone the other ways as well. In the
immediate panic, precautions had been allowed to slip, and diseases
common to the Eosians but unknown and deadly to the Baladian Sapients
infected them. The death toll among the TL0 Sapients was, ironically,
no higher by percentage than among the TL9 starfarers, if only because
the local culture was one of far-spread tiny communities and remote
tribes, making infection harder and less probable. Still, the
population was initially low, making the loses hard to make up.

In the aftermath, public anger was aroused, and accusations flew, a
situation made the worse by the cold realization that it should
never have happened, given the resources of a TL9 interstellar
society, it could easily have been prevented by simple precautions.
But the damage was done.

Exploration did not stop during the pandemic. Indeed, some starships,
on long deep-exploratory voyages, only learned of the existence of the
plague years afterward when they returned to home port. As the ships
ranged further and further out from Eos System, the number of worlds
they encountered rose, and even as the last of the plague was burning
itself out, starships from Eosia and Eos V were discovering still more
worlds with various species of Genus Homo living on them, including
three inhabited yet again by H. sapiens. Separated by light-decades
or more, these worlds added yet more fuel to a very puzzling fire.

MORE LATER.

Last edited by Johnny1A.2; 06-15-2010 at 03:33 PM.
Johnny1A.2 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-15-2010, 03:46 PM   #15
Johnny1A.2
 
Join Date: Feb 2007
Default Re: The Eosians...

LATER.

In the meantime, advancing technology was enabling Eosian starships to
cover larger distances, steadily increasing the number of worlds
accessible. They discovered more worlds surrounded by the peculiar
rings of 'light', the handiwork of the original beings who had spread
their type of life all over known space. While not all life-bearing
worlds were marked by those rings of 'light', those in situations
which would ordinarily have made them uninhabited often did.

Worlds orbiting too close to their stars, or in situations where they
should have been tide-locked, tended to have them. Worlds which would
otherwise have been bathed in radiation from 'nearby' supernovae often
had them. How they worked the Eosians had no idea, they could not
approach them closely and they could only observe their effects.

Meanwhile, they began to discover more worlds like Balusia VII, worlds
which had once been inhabited by those ultra-cold liquid-helium
entities. Like Balusia VII, these worlds were uniformly empty of sapient life
(but not of subsapient forms, there were many thriving Heliugen biospheres)
by the time the Eosians reached them, but they almost all were marked
by planetological oddities similar to the first one they found:
mostly-silicate worlds in the outer reaches of star systems, almost
inconceivably cold, with liquid helium in open lakes and seas, or
having once had such.

With half a billion years of intervening time and the harsh
conditions, paleoarcheologists had a hard time learning much at first,
but gradually they began to piece together some idea of the puzzle.
The uber-cold life forms, they realized, had been 'of a type', but not
all just the same. Much like the various kinds of humanoids the
Eosians were encountering as they explored their region of the Milky
Way. They already had realized that these cold beings had NOT been
the mystery entities who had spread Humanity all over the stars, they
had been gone from the stage for hundreds of megayears too long for
that, and there was no sign that they had had such powers. Their tech
had been ahead of that of the Eosians, but not that far ahead.

The clincher for this theory (that the liquid-helium entities had been
spread by the same beings who later spread CHON life around) came when
the Eosian explorers found one of their worlds, surrounded by the
familiar mystery-rings. This world had the familiar liquid-helium
'seas', and its surface temp was appropriate to that. The giveaway
was that it orbited a Class G star at a distance comparable to that of
Mars from Sol. Somehow, the mysterious rings of 'light' kept the
temperature hundreds of degrees colder than it should naturally have
been, and screened out most of the brilliant light as well. The
mechanism by which this worked was an utter mystery to the Eosians.

In the meantime, Eosian science was beginning, a little, to understand
the mysterious substance that had enabled them to make spaceflight
economical, and faster-than-light travel possible. Along with this
understanding came the beginnings of a scientific understanding of the
physics of psionics. Though the Eosians at this time were nowhere
close to the level of psionic Power the Atlanteans of Earth would
later master, they did begin to master some of the rudiments on a
large societal scale.

By this point, the Eosian planetary government had grown in power to
the point that it utterly dominated its breakaway colony on Eos V, and
the colonies that had sprung up on suitable worlds all owed allegiance
to Eosia. During this period, the Eosian planetary government began
to expand into a truly interstellar authority, dominated by a few
clans and empowered by the monopoly of the precious orichalcum, of
which Eos I was still the only known source.

It was just about then that Eosian explorers discovered, in a star
system at the very edge of their range of travel, a second source of
the mysterious substance.

Orbiting a dim Class M dwarf star, they found yet another world that
had once been host to the Helians, the liquid-helium entities. Like
the others, it had been uninhabited for half a billion years. Since
Class M stars are small and cold (at least compared to Sol), and very
common, the Eosians had often skipped by them while visiting brighter,
hotter suns. But these small, cool stars now proved often to have
planets formerly inhabited by the Helians.

In this case, the planet was orbited by a moonlet, no more than 100
miles wide, and it proved to be home to a veritable fleet of Helian
starships, complete with dimensionator drives chock full of
orichalcum, purified and ready to use.

It was the most explosive economic and political discovery imaginable.

MORE LATER.

Last edited by Johnny1A.2; 06-15-2010 at 03:54 PM.
Johnny1A.2 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-15-2010, 04:24 PM   #16
Johnny1A.2
 
Join Date: Feb 2007
Default Re: The Eosians...

LATER.

This was, of course, one of the collections of starships assembled in
the dying days of the Helian Empire of half a billion years earlier.
The ships were far from perfectly preserved. Though they were in a
vacuum, and sheltered underground from cosmic radiation and
temperature shifts, the ships had been there for a long, long, long
time. But they were better preserved in their shallow caverns than
they could possibly have been on the surface of any living world.

When the news of the discovery broke, the technological,
xenoarcheological, and historical importance of it galvanized the
scientific community of the Eosian worlds. Helian technology had been
considerably more advanced that that available to the Eosians, and
these (relatively) well-preserved ships offered a treasure-trove of
access to that technology. Those reasons alone would have made the
prize almost dangerously valuable.

But there were thousands of tons of orichalcum in the engines and
other key systems in those ancient vessels. The total monetary value
of that fleet's orichalcum content was almost incomprehensible. A
gram of orichalcum could purchase, for ex, ten square miles of
good-quality land on Eosia or a similar world, or anything of
comparable value. It was absolutely indispensable to the interstellar
technology of the Eosians, and had other uses as well.

To make the new discovery the more precious and dangerous, the only
other available source of orichalcum, the mines on Eos I, were showing
signs of playing out. Each year, the total yield of orichalcum from
those mines in the Great Copper Mass on Eos I dropped by a few grams,
and became that much harder to retrieve as the mines went deeper and
deeper.

Under the laws that governed the growing interstellar community that
was spreading out from the Eos System, all orichalcum was the property
of the government of the Eosia itself. The only exception was that
which was traded to the government of Eos V (the only independent
world of H. eostellaris), and since the only source of orichalcum
was controlled by the Eosian government, that independence was
limited.

While starships and other orichalcum-using technology were often the
property of individuals or clans, the orichalcum in their workings was
considered to be 'rented' from the governmental reserves. This was
the foundation, in practical terms, of the government's authority.

When the realization that such a huge reservoir of orichalcum had been
found, the government on Eosia reacted rapidly, dispatching armed
starships and tens of thousands of soldiers and combat machines to the
tiny asteroid. Even so, by the time they arrived, raiders and thieves
had already struck, making off with modest (but fantastically
valuable) amounts of orichalcum, and doing incalculable damage to the
historical value of the site in the process. Even once the planetoid
was garrisoned, it proved almost impossible to staunch the trickle of
smuggled orichalcum out, since the incentives to do so were so
enormous. One individual could carry a king's ransom of orichalcum in
a hollow boot heel, or in tiny specks in clothing, or any of a dozen
other clever ways.

Even as the government tried to assert control over the reservoir of
orichalcum on the planetoid, the realization spread that all that
orichalcum had to have come from somewhere. The ancient, alien
Helians had had access to a source of the miracle-material that
enabled them to assemble kilotons of it, and if that source still
existed, it would be mind-numbingly valuable. Treasure hunters,
criminals, and clan and governmental agents of various stripes
descended on the archeological sites where Helian records and
artifacts might be found, in search of any clue, any hint of the
source and its location.

The government of Eosia had been in control since the aftermath of the
nuclear wars. It was not a particularly harsh or brutal state, but it
was strict, and many were chafing under it. It had been a necessary
strictness during the years of the recovery, and the restoration of
the ecological damage, but by now Eosia was almost fully recovered,
and colonies were spreading out over dozens of worlds. The resources
and attention of the homeworld's authorities were strained to keep
control, driven by all the usual good and bad intentions.

The authorities on Eosia knew perfectly well that without the
orichalcum monopoly, their chances of retaining central control were
nearly nil. Those who were chafing to loosen or eliminate that
central control knew it also, and this added to the drive to find the
source of the Helians' orichalcum, and it made the temptation of that
fleet of starships the greater, since there was more orichalcum in
those ruined ships than had been mined in all the history of the mines
on Eos I. If a would-be independent clan or world could seize control
of that archeological site, or find a similar one, they could easily
bid defiance to the orichalcum monopoly of the homeworld.

It was really only a matter of time until matters escalated.

MORE LATER.

Last edited by Johnny1A.2; 06-15-2010 at 04:38 PM.
Johnny1A.2 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-15-2010, 04:53 PM   #17
Johnny1A.2
 
Join Date: Feb 2007
Default Re: The Eosians...

LATER.

There were dozens of established, stable extrastellar colonies in
existence by this point, and some additional dozens of new, growing
colonies that were still somewhat dependent on outside economic and/or
political support. All were tied to the home government on Eosia by
the orichalcum monopoly.

The government on Eosia had emerged out of the chaos and horror in the
aftermath of the Brief War, a nuclear exchange, on the homeworld, and
by this point it had governed the homeworld and most of the colony
planets for just over four Terran centuries. Originally established
by the victors of the atomic exchange with the specific goal of
restoring peace on Eosia and overseeing the reconstruction of the
society and the restoration of the ecosphere, it was by its original
nature something of a strict state. It was not a dictatorship, nor
particularly brutal, but the laws were strict, punishments for
violation were harsh, and the government claimed a large share of
everyone's income and resources for collective projects, going back to
the restoration of the homeworld's ecosphere.

On the other hand, the government had strict internal checks and
balances, and if it was harsh, it was also generally regarded as being
fair. This enabled it to hang onto power some time after its original
chartered purposes (the homeworld reconstruction and ecological
repair) were more or less completed. But now it was straining past
its abilities to control the diverging interests of homeworld and
colony.

Now, a coalition had formed of separatist colonies, worlds with
sufficient population and technical/industrial base to contemplate
independence. The Helian fleet depot was an opportunity such as they
were never likely to see again, offering both great risk and great
potential rewards.

History sometimes turns on impersonal trends and great economic and
political forces, or phenomena of nature that are beyond anyone's
planning or alteration. But it also sometimes turns on the luck of
the draw, on the random chance of one person being in a certain place
instead of another.

It so happened that at this moment of political tension, the political
and social leaders of the separtist worlds chanced to include several
fire-eater or risk-taking personalities. They were pre-inclined to
the high-stakes gamble. More cautious or responsible leaders might
have been hesitant to take such a chance, these were not. So it was
that a small but carefully prepared and well-trained assault force
launched a surprise attack againt the fleet garrison on the Helian
Moonlet, in a straightforward attempt to seize control of the
facility.

The assault force achieved surprise, but the officers and personnel
garrisoning the Helian Depot were among the best the homeworld
military had to offer. The surprise attack turned into a bloody
affair, with the attackers having the advantage of surprise and superb
intelligence, but being badly outnumbered and outarmed. When it was
over, the attackers had won, losing well over half their force in the
process. The defending garrison was dead to the last man, in part
through the agency of several traitors among the civilian personnel of
the Depot, 'sleeper' agents pre-planted by the separatist leadership.

The separatist leadership had been counting on the garrison to
surrender, when they realized that their flank had been turned from
within, and that the attackers had seized control of communications
and the other key facilities. The intense resistance had caught the
separtist political leadership quite off guard. To make matters
worse, the defenders had managed to dispatch a courier ship which had
fought free, and could be counted on to take word of the attack to the
home government, weeks before the planners had intended.[1]

It had been a long time (centuries) since the Eosians had engaged in
major warfare, they were long on theory and short on experience. The
separatists had simply not counted on the possibility that their
enemies might not do what the plan called for them to do. The
defenders, though disciplined and well trained, had never taken the
possibility of a surprise military attack as being a real
possibility, that sort of thing happened in history books, not
reality.

But the die was now cast. The separtists knew they could not turn
back, after having raised up arms againt the home government, and
killed several hundred officers and men of the home military in the
process.

When word reached Eosia of what had happened, outrage spread through
the public, even as panic spread through much of the elite. All that
orichalcum simply could not be left in rebel hands, given time it
could make them effectively unbeatable. A race against time began, as
the home government strove to gather and prepare a sufficient force to
suppress the secession, and the now-terrified and exhilarated (for a
fire-eater, both can emotions can go together) leaders of the
separtist movement prepared for the assault they knew was coming, and
struggled to convert the orichalcum supply they had captured into a
real asset.

What followed was every bit as bloody as one might have expected.

The home fleet, consisting of several thousand starships, some of them
actual military vessels, many more hastily-converted civilian
starships, set out for the worlds that formed the center of the
secessionist alliance. Those worlds were building warships as fast
their shipyards could tear orichalcum from the ancient Helian
machines. Four subfleets now bore down on those worlds.

The public mood on the separtist worlds varied from world to world,
and region to region, and person to person. There were many homeworld
loyalists, others who were passionate secessionists, and a majority of
pragmatic types who wanted to live their lives and survive the coming
maelstrom. The governments of the major secessionist worlds ranged
from effective autocracies to something like democracies, but all were
now equally targeted.

The homeworld industrial and technical advantage proved to be
sufficient, in the event, to get the punative expeditions to their
target worlds before the defenders had sufficient time to build their
defenses. But sufficient preparations had been completed to force
hard-fought battles in space around each world, with heavy casualties
and the outcome in doubt in each case.

In the end, of the five major worlds that led the secession effort,
the homeworld fleets won the battles around four of them, establishing
space superiority. Three of them surrendered at that point, the
fourth had to be invaded, and the major cities seized and the
leadership captured or killed at considerable cost in lives and
treasure.

The fifth world, which the Eosians called Char'ryn, was the most
heavily defended. The homeworld ships sent there could not establish
full space control, though they soon managed to force the
secessionists onto the defensive, and the planet was heavily
fortified, every city a fortress and the key facilities carefully
defended and/or hidden. As might be expected wit such extensive
preparations, this planet was the one in which the native population
was both the largest (over 100 million) and most solidly in favor of
secession.

In a decision that would remain controversial among Eosians for
thousands of years, the admiral in command of the fleet investing the
planet concluded that it was going to take too long to destroy the
entire defending fleet, and that until she could do that, she dared
not try to land a ground assault force to seize anything on the
surface. Further, she dared not retreat or permit them any time to
recoup their losses, since they knew large amounts of the stolen
orichalcum had been transferred to this rebel world, and would rapidly
form the nucleus of even stronger defenses, given time.

MORE LATER.

[1] Though the Eosians did have FTL signal technology, it was very
range limited, and for the most part messages travelled as fast as the
ships. The separatists had hoped to keep the home government in the
dark long enough to convert their captured orichalcum into an
unbeatable strategic advantage.

Last edited by Johnny1A.2; 06-15-2010 at 04:59 PM.
Johnny1A.2 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-15-2010, 05:10 PM   #18
Johnny1A.2
 
Join Date: Feb 2007
Default Re: The Eosians...

LATER.

Facing those choices, the admiral decided that the only practical
option was the most dire. She ordered the planetary population
centers, both military and civilian, to be subjected to full nuclear
bombardment. The option had been considered from the start, and each
investing fleet carried several dozen large ships modified to be
basically enormous missile-platforms, capable of launching hundreds of
large missiles each with MIRVed payloads.

These weapons were intended to be a last-ditch measure, and possibly a
threat, most of the planners had not seriously contemplated their
actual use. To enhance their use as a threat, they were equipped with
enormous warheads, fifty to a missile, each capable of homing in on a
separate target, each warhead capable of producing a 200 megaton
detonation, each designed to be as radioactively 'dirty' as their
builders could manage on short notice.

Several crews actually attempted to mutiny when the admiral's order
went out, but she held most of the fleet personnel and all the
security officers in line. She contacted the leader of the defending
fleet, and the head of state of the local government, and gave them 15
minutes to signal surrender, informing them that the alternative was
full nuclear bombardment.

This colony was the most secession-minded, its leadership (duely
chosen by the Eosian version of a popular vote) included some of the
biggest natural risk-takers of the entire alliance. A general horror
of nuclear weaponry had permeated Eosian culture even since the Brief
War 400 years earlier, and the concensus was that the homeworld
admiral was bluffing. They made no response, and were still debating
what she would actually choose to do when the first reports of nuclear
explosions started arriving in the command centers.

Admiral Tsheln had not been bluffing. [2]

When the remaining defense forces realized that the homeworld force
really was launching a full nuclear assault, they themselves made a
last, desperate attempt to stop the attack. But forces sufficient to
make an invasion unworkable were far from enough to break throug to
the missile-platform ships, and dozens of defending spacecraft hurled
themsleves to their destruction in an effort that accomplished
nothing.

Defending ships too far away to make even such a futile effort, and
the personnel in the deep shelters below, watched in horror as city
after city, town after town, orbital habitat after habitat, were
blasted to radioactive rubble. Some of the missiles were shot down by
ground defenses or orbital weapons, but there were too many, far too
many, to stop them all.

The assault fleet launched a bit over 1000 missiles, which in turn
erupted into 50,000 warheads. The defenders, working miracles of
desperation in striving to protect their homes, families, and society,
managed to stop a near-miraculous 25% of the total.

The remaining warheads were more than sufficient to do the job.

Altogether, roughly 7 teratons of explosive power fell on the
rebellious colony that day. Over the course of some 30 Terran hours,
a thriving, 250 year old colony world was reduced to a ruin, every
city with a population greater than 1000 destroyed, every orbital and
moons-based facility destroyed, the population reduced from over 100
million to less than 5 million, lost in a world in which all services
were gone, all organization gone, and the air, soil, and water infused
with sufficient 'hot' fallout that it would take decades to dissipate.

Not only the cities and bases were hit, but the agricultural areas
were exposed to multiple sucessive detonations. Only the polar
regions were spared direct assault, because there were few people and
nothing valuable there to attack.

The handful of defending spacecraft that still survived could do
nothing but watch in impotent, raging helplessness as their world
died. Since the attacking forces were now doing nothing more than
defending the missile platforms, they could not even engage them in
any useful way. Some of the defending ships died in futile suicide
attacks. Others landed, driven by whatever irrational impulse to do
so, whether seeking survivors, or merely driven mad.

A few defending ships, with better equipment than the patchwork that
had been hastily prepared for the defense, made for open space,
seeking escape. Most got away, the attacking forces spared them
little attention.[1]

When the last of the immense explosions had passed, when there was no
trace of resistance, and indeed no sign of remaining intelligent life
on the rebel world able to do so much as raise a radio signal, the
attackers were left with little to do but look down at their
handiwork. Great firestorms were still burning all over Charr'yn, and
much of the planet was shrouded in cloud and smoke. The full extent
of the damage was beyond any easy assessment.

Admiral Tsheln ordered her fleet back to Eosia, and retired to her
chambers, and she issued no further communication to her personnel
throughout the return journey. Upon their arrival in the Eos System,
when word spread of what had been done, to say that it was
controversial is to fail of description.

Arguments broke out, within the government and within the general
population. Some considered it to have been the lesser evil, compared
to what would otherwise have been an ongoing war. Others called for
Tsheln's head on a platter, preferably removed without anesthesia.
Even the military command elite was divided about the wisdom and
morality of her actions.

Even as Charr'yn had been dying, another fleet had managed to seize
the Helian Depot, thus regaining the orichalcum supply that had set
the entire horror into motion. The battle there had been bloody, but
fought between professional soldiers and spacers on both sides. The
news from Charr'yn turned victory celebrations on Eosia and the
loyalist worlds into...something else.

As it would happen, Tsheln would make the intense, world-wide debate
about her fate moot. Shortly after their return to Eosia, she was
found dead in her personal chambers, deceased from a self-induced
poisoning. Even her death was controversial, some thought her
motivated by unbearable guilt, others thought she intended to spare
her homeworld the divisive debate over her fate. Others called her a
coward unable to face the consequences of her actions. Her defenders
thought she had been unfairly hounded and cursed, her detractors often
publically expressed regret that her death had been so painless.

Whatever the case, as word spread across space of what had happened at
Charr'yn, controversy erupted everywhere. However, the rebellion
did end. The level of ruthlessness displayed sent a shiver through
both loyalist and secessionist, and with the home government in
control of that immense orichalcum supply again, there was no hope of
constructing any defense that could not be overwhelmed, if the
homeworld was prepared to use such extreme measures.[3]

The secession war had lasted, all told, about 2 Terran years. It had
ended in a victory for the homeworld that tasted of ashes and
recrimination, in a defeat for four of the primary would-be separtists
that would leave them under occupation for a generation, and in the
death of millions of innocents on Charr'yn. It was a victory that
would haunt winner and loser alike.

Life went on, of course. But about that...

MORE LATER


[1] Take note of those escaping ships, we may hear from them again ere
the full tale is told.

[2] The Charr'yn leadership had some reason to think she might have
been bluffing, it should be noted. Admiral Tsheln had been known as a
voice of conciliation in the past. Her attitude had always been
that force should be a last resort, and she was also known for various
humanitarian activities on her own. She was a well known figure in
the homeworld government, and a member of the most prestigious of the
dominat clans of Eosia, and was generally considered to be a
moderate voice.

In this case, they misread her disastrously.

[3] The importance of the orichalcum that set the war in motion can be understood by the fact that if the people of Charr'yn had been given a
couple of Terran years to work with that huge supply of the substance,
they could fairly easily have defended themselves even against
Tsheln's nuclear saturation attack.

Last edited by Johnny1A.2; 06-15-2010 at 05:38 PM.
Johnny1A.2 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-17-2010, 10:19 PM   #19
Johnny1A.2
 
Join Date: Feb 2007
Default Re: The Eosians...

LATER.

The aftermath of the secession war was confused, and anxious. The
former separatist worlds were under occupation by homeworld forces,
other planets who had been quietly sympathetic to the separatist
movement but stayed on the sidelines (much to their relief after news
of what happened to Charr'yn spread) were nervous, still torn between
the desire for independence and the realization that the home
government was apparently playing for keeps.

The 'victorious' homeworld was exhausted. Given the rarity of
orichalcum, and its value for countless processes, the unity
government on Eosia had never actually maintained a spatial war fleet,
per se. Such a thing would have been an extravagant use of
orichalcum that could be more profitably and practically used
elsewhere. Instead they had maintained a small force of warships,
plus a reserve force of merchant ships and other vessels 'under
contract' in case of emergency. This was how the central government
had managed to assemble its warfleet with such apparently swiftness,
by invoking its 'emergency clauses' with the owners of the various
ships for which the government provided orichalcum. But in doing so,
the government had necessarily brought interstellar and interplanetary
trade and commerce to a near halt. Due to the range and cost
limitations of their FTL signalling technology, even interstellar
communications had effectively halted, except for emergency
high-priority messages, mostly military, during the war period.

The economy, inevitably, had been hurt. Interstellar shipping and
communication were a modest-sized but vitally important element of the
economy of the Eosian worlds, and the government calculated that the
economy had shrunk, overall, by about 10% during the war period. Tax
revenues had fallen with it, and the central government now found
itself saddled with an enormous war debt.

Many starships had been destroyed or damaged beyond repair during the
fighting. Since most of those ships had been private or semi-private
vessels called up using the emergency clauses, the government owed
some recompense to the owners. The shortage of shipping was acute,
with the result that even after the state of war ended, cargoes and
messages sat idle, waiting for an available ship to carry them. Many
shipyards had been damaged or destroyed, and much of the precious
orichalcum had been scattered into space as clouds of vapor, beyond
recovery.

Many citizens of Eosia and the loyalist worlds had friends and
relatives among the separatists. Charr'yn itself had been a popular
colonial destination, and the dead of that world had many living kin
on the loyalist worlds. Even among the 'winners' of the secession
war, there was much bitter recrimination and great confusion.

For the scientific and historical communities of the Eosian
civilization, the war had brought additional tragedy. The Helian
fleet depot that had served to trigger the disaster had been a
treasure of knowledge. It was the best, most perfectly preserved
example of Helian technology, records, and even what had passed for
aesthetics among the helium-beings. Each of the ancient starships had
been a precious, irreplaceable gem of potential knowledge.

Naturally, the depot had not fared well during the war. The initial
assault through which the separatists had seized control had done
considerable damage, but that was nothing compared to what followed.
The entire point of the seizure was to gain access to the kilotons of
orichalcum in the engines and systems of the ancient starships, which
meant tearing apart the ships. Since the separatists were in a
desperate hurry, they had not taken any time to preserve anything else
as they tore out the miracle-substance, not even making any systematic
record of what was being torn apart.

When the central government recaptured the depot, they too had used
extensive force, and in the ensuing combat even further damage had
been done to the site. By the time the war was over, there was little
left of the former archeological treasure than rubble. Just as
desperate for orichalcum to rebuild their resources as the separatists
had been for orichalcum to defend themselves, the central authorities
had little choice but to mine out even more of the material.

To their credit, they did try to preserve what they could as they
mined out the rubble, but it was too late, and they could spare little
time, since the demands were insatiable.

Given their realization that all that knowledge had been crushed and
destroyed, on top of the horror the discovery of the site had brought
to the Eosian worlds, many in the academic community of the culture
might be forgiven a supersitious suspicion that the entire site was
cursed.

For the highest authorities of the homeworld government, however, the
entire situation had another desperate edge: the realization that the
peace was unstable. Many of the would-be separatist worlds still had
substantial movements that (very quietly) continued to advocate and
work for just that. The very act of extreme force that had ended the
secession movement in the short term had sown the seeds for a greater
one later, and some of the politicians on the loyalist planets were
wise enough to perceive that.

There were various factions within the unity government that advocated
various approaches to the problem. Hard-liners and conciliators,
imperialists and isolationists, and a dozen other combinations argued
back and forth during the years immediately after the secession war
and the destruction of Charr'yn. But now, again, history was to turn
based on the luck of who happened to be where.

Just as the fact that a group of fire-eaters happened to be in control
on the richest and most fractious colony-worlds had led to utter
disaster, the luck of the draw that t so happened that the leadership
of the central government on Eosia at that time was made up of a more
restrained set of personalities would change the course of events.

One politician in particular would prove critical to this process.
His name would be Anglicized as Rsehlsar, and he had just recently
taken up a seat in the highest legislative body of the central
government. He was of middle years by the standards of his species
and his culture and tech level, an experienced and respected but not
visibly unusual politician and aristocrat. He had risen to his rank
by a combination of hereditary position, political horse-trading, and
electoral success, allowing him to cast himself as the compromise
choice in a divisive election.[1]

Under the surface, Rsehlsar was looking past the short-term
implications of the victory in the war and the needs of
reconstruction, and reaching unpleasant conclusions about the chances
of the central government retaining power beyond the next few years.

Rsehlsar understood, better than most of his fellow legislators, that
the authority of the central government rested primarily on two
pillars: the habit of obedience and the acknowledgement of its
legitimacy among its subjects, and the all-important orichalcum
monopoly. Rsehlsar also knew that neither pillar was made of stone.

Rsehlsar recognized that as new colonies were founded, farther and
farther from Eos System, the intangible bonds of legitimacy would
eventually weaken and snap, especially as mature colonies themselves
became centers of further colonization. Distance would erode the sense
of unity, and new loyalties would inevitably form in their place.
Self-interests would diverge, memories would fade.

Rsehlsar also recognized the orichalcum monopoly was inherently
unsustainable, since it was almost certainly only a matter of time
before more such supplies of orichalcum as the fleet depot were found.
The few records of the Helians that Eosians had been able to
comprehend hinted of many such depots and 'garages' spread across
the galaxy, and all that orichalcum had to have a source. Already,
the thoughts of many people were turning to the hope of finding that
source, and the desire could only grow with time.

To make matters worse, the orichalcum mines on Eos I were showing the
first clear signs of playing out. At the height of their operations,
only a few metric tons per year of orichalcum had been produced, and the
fleet depot had contained more of the material than had been mined in
the entire history of the mines on Eos I. Now, each year the yield of
orichalcum fell by a few grams. It was getting more and more
difficult and expensive to mine out ore bodies that were of lower and
lower quality. Rsehlsar knew that discreet analyses by the mine
authorities indicated that the yield was likely to start falling
sharply within another 20-40 Terran years.

Though some others were aware of these facts, Rsehlsar was giving them
more thought than most, and more creative thought. The plan he formed
for dealing with the problems he saw on the horizon would change
Eosian history.

MORE LATER.


[1] Eosian society was dominated by clans at every level of society,
but there were also democratic, monarchical, and oligarchical elements
to their central state. Successful politicians needed both the right
ancestry and the ability to appeal to the larger public.

Last edited by Johnny1A.2; 06-17-2010 at 10:33 PM.
Johnny1A.2 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-17-2010, 10:49 PM   #20
Johnny1A.2
 
Join Date: Feb 2007
Default Re: The Eosians...

LATER.

The plan he came up with was tricky to implement, and in fact he had
to put it into effect over the course of several years, with a
considerable element of misdirection and stealth. It cut across the
short-term self-interest of quite a few powerful individuals and
groups, and it in some ways ran counter to the natural tendency of
human nature. But Rsehlsar was patient, capable, and ready to take a
long view. He had to move carefully, defending his own political
position as he did, but in the end, over course of thirty Terran
years, he succeeded in gradually implementing his idea.

To condense decades of political activity into a short description, he
convinced the government of Eosia to agree to the establishment of a
sort of interstellar trade association, or so he sold it. That alone
took over 5 years of effort, and then, working behind the scenes, he
built on that, gradually transforming the trade association into
something more powerful, able to serve as an arbitrating authority.
In the meantime, he worked quietly with the political groups that
favored separatism on the colonies, sometimes aiding them, sometimes
opposing them, as the need dictated.

Twenty three years after the nuclear destruction of the population of
Charr'yn, several additional colonies had grown in population and
economic status to the point that they were chafing under rule from
Eosia. Furthermore, the remaining older colonies were now older yet,
and memory of what had happened on Charr'yn had begun to fade a
little, with the arrival at adulthood of a generation born after the
event.

The authority of the homeworld government over the colonies was tricky
to maintain. They were too far away and too lightly populated
(compared to the teeming billions on Eosia) for any sort of democratic
representation to work, the clans were too intertwined for
aristocratic connection, and the practical economic and political
power disparity meant that no matter how things were arranged, the
government of the colonies and Eosia under one homeworld government
meant that the colonies were effectively imperial possessions.

When the secession movements began to agitate seriously again,
Rsehlsar was ready. At a carefully chosen moment, he presented what
seemed like a sudden stroke of genius as a compromise, but was in fact
the result of years of careful preparation and 'seeding the ground'.
Rather than try again to force all the fractious colonies into
submission (a trickier effort this time around, since there were more
of them), the homeworld government preempted the secessionists by
offering the more 'mature' colonies independence voluntarily.

Along with that, Rsehlsar arranged for the colonies to be offered
membership in an interstellar league of sorts, which he fashioned
around the seed-crystal of his trade association. It was a much
harder thing to accomplish than it sounds, and it was the culmination
of his life's work to make it happen, but Rsehlsar pulled it off, by
dint of hard work, personal ability, a dose of luck, and more than a
little underhanded maneuvering.

The design of the new interstellar organization was a stroke of genius
on the part of Rsehlsar. The government of Eosia itself, still far,
far more powerful and wealthy than any four or five of the colonies
together, retained control of the planet Eosia and the Eos System
(except for Eos V). They 'graciously' deeded control of the
orichalcum mines on Eos I to the new association, which would
distribute the miracle-material to the member-governments in
proportion to the population, seniority, and other factors of a world,
according to a formula agreed to beforehand.

This made membership in the association irresistible for the colony
governments, since it guaranteed their access to the indispensable
orichalcum. The government monopoly on the substance that had been
held by the homeworld government was transferred to the association,
as was an agreement that any future supplies of the substance would be
likewise distributed thus.

It was the triumph of Rsehlsar's career to establish this new order,
and having done so, and having peacefully arranged the transformation
of the Eosian colonial empire into a loose but peaceful commonwealth,
he then retired to his estates, content to leave the future to others,
his work completed. :)

Well...not quite. Though it made a good PR line.

In fact, though Rsehlsar did officially retire from public life, the
top officials of the homeworld government and the new interstellar
government were proteges of his, he had 'holds' on still others, and
for practical purposes he retained the behind-the-scenes political
power for many years. Rsehlsar would be the unofficial guiding hand
over the new body for over 40 years, until his natural death.

The new interstellar association was called by a name that would
translate into English as something like 'the Eosian Arbitration', or
perhaps the 'Eosian Moderation', neither of which makes much sense.
For convenience, we shall call it the Eosian Hegemony. The highest
official, though, we can comfortably call the Grand Arbitrator.

It was, in fact, only just barely a government. The plan Rsehlsar had
devised gave the planetary (and sometimes subplanetary) governments
nearly total sovereignty over their internal affairs. This was one of
its selling points. The Hegemony basically arbitrated disputes
between member-worlds, and distributed orichalcum from the dwindling
source of supply. Another selling point of the plan was that no world
could be refused its share of the substance for any reason. No
matter what form of government, form of society, or whatever else
occurred on a planet, in theory as long as it remained a member of the
Hegemony, its supply of orichalcum was guaranteed.

Rsehlsar knew that this last was critical to the long-term stability
of the Hegemony. If control of the orichalcum supply was ever used as
a source of political leverage, the system was likely strain apart
before long. He also knew that the Hegemony could make itself useful
in other ways, and under his unofficial leadership (the first three
Grand Arbitrators were so much under his sway that they might as well
have been animatrons), the Hegemony did just that.

By maintaining an exploration service, the Hegemony could keep track
of new worlds and new discoveries, and of course search for new
sources of orichalcum in the process. This gave planetary governments
another reason to support the Hegemony, since they were guaranteed
access to any orichalcum found, and it spared them the expense of
paying for their own survey services.

By acting as a banking authority, and establishing a few standards of
trade, the Hegemony reinforced its light but solid authority.
Rsehlsar also managed to establish the precedent that any colony that
reached a certain minimum level of population, organization, etc,
would be considered an indpendent world, making it unlikely any one
government could dominate enough worlds to control the Hegemony.

The final triumph Rsehlsar managed was that he was able to integrate
other Homosentient species into the Hegemony. Inevitably, on the
worlds where Eosians found other human species, those Homosentients
eventually began to learn the technologies, techniques, etc of Eosia.
The first non-eostellaris government to be admitted to the Hegemony
came just a few years before the death of Rsehlsar, and the peaceful
precedent it set was his last great triumph.

By the time Rsehlsar died, and his unofficial but firm hand was
removed from the helm, the Hegemony had grown to include 40 planets,
including Eosia. One hundred Terran years later, it had grown to 100
worlds. As Rsehlsar had foreseen, other caches of Helian starships
were found, the first some 20 years after his death, and so were other
reserves of purified orichalcum left behind by the helium-based
creatures. The careful planning Rsehlsar had put into the Hegemony
paid off, enabling the material to be distributed with only political
and social and economic arguments, not violence.

Two hundred years after Rsehlsar died, the Hegemony had grown to
include 300 planets, and 393 governments, since not all worlds were
unified. Three hundred years after the death of its founder, the
Hegemony contained 500 worlds, by 500 years after his death, it had
grown to 10,000.

Most of those worlds were Eosia-like, and settled by colonists from
Eosia or one of the other colonies. There were many, many Eosia-like
(actually Earth-like) worlds, since the Familiar Eldren had
terraformed well over a billion of them, and the vast majority held no
native sapient life. Even so, the Hegemony discovered dozens of
worlds with Homosentients on them.

Most of these Homosentients were technically primitive, TL0 or TL1,
and out of the two dozen or so species the Hegemony encountered, the
most numerous was H. sapiens. But so well had Rsehlsar planned that
the Hegemony was able to absorb the various Homosentient species into
its structure with only a minimum of trouble. The very lightness and
looseness of the Hegemony made it very enduring, and able to adjust
itself easily to changing conditions.

MORE LATER.
Johnny1A.2 is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Tags
orichalcum universe

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Fnords are Off
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 06:25 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.