Difference between revisions of "The Ghost:Shards/A Galaxy of Shards"

Latest revision as of 19:59, 25 November 2014

A History of The Galaxy

It is the 50,000th year of the Elder Reckoning.

50K years ago Creation was destroyed by an invasion of the Fair Folk, but in their moment of triumph they suffered their greatest failure.

Even as the armies of the Parastian Crusade began to unmake the elemental pole of earth and bring an end to shape once and for all the Tyranian Working was enacted by a handful of surviving exalted, which shattered most of the exaltations but saved the cosmos from destruction.

Creation was broken, the elemental poles shattered and dispersed, but the truth of shaped existence survived.

Each tiny fragment of creation became it's own world, flat but expanding until they became spherical and no longer bounded on all sides by the Wyld. However the Tyranian working took the responsibility for saving them off the shoulders of the exalted, and made each of them self sustaining and self developing. Over time these shards expanded into planets the planets developed solar systems and the solar systems joined together to from the galactic core.

The price of the Tyranian working was higher than many: Yu-Shan found themselves connecting to planets which had not ties to one another for over 100 times 100 years, the solars, lunars, siderials, and abyssals ceased to exist as proper exaltations, Creation lost the Exalted, and mourned their loss.

However what they DID have were the half castes, the descendents of the various kinds of exalted, and these kinds now passed down their glory unto the next generation not unlike the dragonblooded, who also now still existed. Over time the truth of the way exaltation had once functioned was lost, and these pale shadows became known as the Exalted.

In roughly the year 10,000 of the Elder Reckoning the people of Autochthonia created the first of the world ships which could travel through the Wyld between the various star systems formed by the fragments of Creation and began the grand task of knitting them together, the process took over 20 millennium but at last the galactic core was united and all the scattered fragments of creation tied back together. Things were looking up for the cosmos, like there could perhaps be a true future for the peoples of the universe.

The War was devastating.

A single member of the Golden Children united under his banner fully a 3rd of the inhabited worlds of the galactic core and in a series of stunning military maneuvers conquered 90% of the rest. A few outlying systems remained unclaimed but each and every one of them knew that this was not due to the man who now styled himself the 'Golden Emperor' not having the power to take them but wishing to leave them as dumping grounds for dissidents and criminals. The Emperor ruled from his capitol at the Sol system for almost five thousand years, before the arrival of the Primordials.

At that time the very existence of the Yozi and their Infernal servants had been forgotten, but THEY had not forgotten US. Most of the infernals had long ago ascended to become Primordials or duplicates of the existing Yozi in their own right, but now the new Primordials came rushing back into the galactic core with armies of devas and demons demanding their due: a place at the games of divinity. For 200 years the war raged across the galaxy and whole worlds burned in the fires of the powers unleashed by the new Primordials, whilst and at the same time both sides expanded the galaxy thousands of light years in each cardinal direction as they formatted the wyld to create worlds to provide training grounds for their forces or factories and mines to provide them with armor and munitions. In the end the new Primordials were defeated by the limitless numbers and superior training of the defenders of the Imperium and were forced to withdraw, but unlike the Yozi they knew of the perfidy of the exalted and did not surrender. Even now the survivors lurk at the fringes of the galactic disk, expanding it in a vain attempt to build enough forces to launch a Third and more successful Primordial War.

The Second Primordial War had exposed the cracks in the Golden Emperor's regime and after the war's end the Imperium rose in revolt, condemning the Emperor as a dictator and tyrant, both of which were perfectly true. The so called 'Crimson Banner Succession' saw the Emperor dead and the galaxy broken up into about 300 successor states. Over the next 15000 years or so these slowly either balkanized or consolidated until today the galaxy is divided into roughly 13 major powers and thousands of minor fiefdoms sometimes controlling less than a single star system.

The Galactic Powers

Of the 13 major powers 9 will be covered here. The other 4, all of which occupy the ends of the galactic spiral arms are collectively know as the 'Unknown Reaches': and keep their borders closed to outsiders; existing in a perpetual state of both peace and isolation: or so everyone believes.

The Terrans

The First of the major powers we will deal with is the galactic core: also known as the United Terran Imperial Republic.

The 'Terrans' as they are known to the galaxy at large are perhaps the largest of the 13 powers, occupying the galactic core surrounding the Dowager Gulf, the great mass of swirling hot gasses and plasma storms that envelopes the Well of Undr, the super massive black hole around which the galaxy spins. They consider themselves the true successors of the original Imperium, restored to democracy and honor by the revolution which followed the Second Primordial War. They are led by a council of elected politicians and appointed judges while their head of state goes by the title “Supreme Arch Chancellor”. They are among the most diverse of the various successor states, having both many dozens of races and all of the different kinds of exalted. Their planets are also the most diverse of all the successors, as they occupy the area that was once the whole of Creation's shards.

The Terrans do not engage in military adventurism, but have a policy that any force which attacks them they will conquer and claim at least a significant segment of that realms Territory, and thus they slowly expand out of the galactic core.

The Terrans are currently thrown into chaos by the appearance of a man who claims to be the reincarnation of the Golden Emperor. He has command of vast resources in terms of the hidden but still thriving Cult Imperialis and numerous automaton troops who answer to his coded command signals. Though no one has ever seen his face his knowledge of the Emperor's secret override codes and the like has convinced most people that he is genuine. Civil unrest now wracks the republic over weather to find and kill him, ignore him unless he actively attacks, or embrace him as the long awaited messiah who will restore the glory of the Imperium.

The Severn Dominate

The next of the 13 powers that we will deal with comes from the galactic east, the only one of the 9 we will cover which does so.

The Severn Dominate, like the Terrans, consider themselves the true spiritual successors of the Galactic Empire. The only major power to occupy the lawless eastern arm of the galaxy they are expanding slowly into the rest of the galaxies eastern areas, claiming star systems by hook or by crook from the many hundreds of petty fiefdoms that dominate the galactic east. The Dominate was until only about 200 years ago one of those petty fiefs, but it's line of 'Emperors' could trace direct patralinial decent from the Golden Emperor himself, and when they were attacked by two of their neighbors the Emperor, Angelous Rex Severn, led a brilliant campaign of conquest and dominance which over 30 years made the Dominate a power of galactic influence.

The next two Emperors continued this tradition and have made the Dominate the rising star of the galaxy, considered a long term threat by most of the galactic powers, but they can do very little about it, it being difficult to exert their influence effectively in the shifting and unstable politics of the galactic east.

The Dominate is an absolute monarchy, like the Imperium it seeks to emulate. The Emperor holds all authority, and delegates that to his various legates as he sees fit. His power is their power, and he may recall them at any time. Below the Emperor are the Sector Governors and below them The System Governors and so forth down to the commissioners individual districts, be they swaths of rural landscape or small segments of cities. Nepotism and favor mongering are rampant and the phrase 'an honest politician' is both the punchline of jokes and if you describe someone as a 'Political Leader' it is a deadly insult as that means that they are a liar, cheat, and scam artist of the first order.

In spite of this the Dominate is doing better than most eastern powers, largely due to their policy of in-gathering sidereal, lunar, solar, and dragonblooded exalts from across the east, who's charms and skills allow them to excel in leadership postilions despite the rampant corruption. Their armies are on the march on a dozen fronts as they prosecute wars of conquest against their neighbors and their wyld crafters are creating whole new star systems above the galactic plane expanding the dominate via war with the Fair Folk.

The Grand Union of Polaris

Descended from the remnants of the Henelanti League in lost creation the Grand Union of Polaris occupies a swath of space that was mostly cold and barren worlds before they got a hold of them, and still is in some sectors. The Polarions are widely acknowledged as the best people in the galaxy at terraforming planets for human habitation, and their skills are sought out by lesser powers across the galaxy.

Like their forebears the Polarions are a patriarchal society who have a decentralized command structure and an obsession with both dreams and technology. Their government consists of the All Thing, a council of the oldest person from each planet who shows no signs of senility, and which decides all maters of national policy by democratic vote.

Their military is organized only on the local level, planet wide at most. When action is called for as a nation the All Thing elects a 'Lord Commander' for the combine army who then selects a general staff and sets the policy of the war. They make it a point to chose people as 'Lord Commander' that are competent but don't actually WANT the job.

Currently the people of the Grand Union are at war, with...

The Undying Court

Lying between the true galactic north and the core is the area which on paper calls itself the United Kingdoms of the Galactic Underworld, but which everyone calls The Undying Court.

The courtiers are the largest collection of abyssal exalts in the galaxy, admitting no other kind of exalted into their dominion. The Undying court use many unsavory practices to hold on to their power, from necromancy to mass human sacrifice. Most of the worlds under their control are shadowlands, and those that are not they are hard at work making shadowlands.

Rumors persist that the undying court serve the dead Primordials known as the Neverborn, though the court denies it vociferously. Most of the galaxy would unite against them if it were proved true, and while some evidence of this has been put forward no PROOF has ever come to light and those suspected of such allegiance mysteriously disappear before formal charges can be brought.

Ghosts and undead enjoy the status of full citizens in the lands of the Undying Court, and are often contributing members of society. The percentage of the living population who are ghost blooded is over 30% and these individuals serve their Abyssal leaders well as spies, assassins, adjutants, and agents of their various bureaus and departments.

The Undying Court's ruler is the ancient and mummified Abyssal The Empress Magnificent Clad in the Raiment of Blood who claims a direct mandate from the former Golden Emperor of the Galaxy to rule over her region. The title of the 'undying court' which is applied to the entire group comes from her personal court of powerful ghosts, each of them thousands of years old, which act as her legates and direct subordinates. Positions in her court have not changed significantly in over a thousand years and thus comes the appellation from her mortal subjects.

The Seas of Shadow

Turning now to the galactic west we come upon another realm which is much embroiled with the underworld: The Seas of Shadow. Traditionally it had been thought that ocean worlds were largely immune to the corruption of shadow lands, the constant flux and interplay of life within them making the lifespan of any shadowlands which did form in them measured in hours, but that was deliberately and violently proven wrong just after the Primordial War by the legendary Abyssal Violence of the Oceans. In a one man crusade he formatted millions of Waypoints into 50 star systems of shadowland water worlds. In the wake of the Imperium's collapse these systems and their Abyssal and Ghostly denizens formed a theocratic autocracy modeled on the myths of the Skullstone Archipelago from long lost creation.

Today the Seas of Shadow are still a death focused Theocracy, though the sacred bloodline of Violence of the Oceans is long believed extinguished. In their stead rules a council of 50 'High Celebrants' modeled after the examples of the autochthoinian nations of the age before the fall of the Imperium and the isolation of Autochthoinia and the First Primordial's retreat into the depths of the Wyld. Each of them represents one of the original 50 star systems and also a number of the 'lesser systems' which the Seas of Shadow have conquered since.

The Current State of the Galaxy

The galaxy is all a flutter right now over one simple event: the return of the Exalted. For centuries uncountable the only true exalted have been the Dragonblooded and the Alcheimcials, all other types of exalts were in truth half castes who passed their power down from one generation to the next, reaching essence 2 before having children in order to ensure that those of their children who had the necessary spark of heroism to become half castes could do so, and sometimes rising to even higher essences and having children with correspondingly higher degrees of inheritance: though inheritance 5 has been unheard of for tens of thousands of years, and inheritance 4 is considered legendary.

Now however something has happened, a few dozen times that are documented, but growing more frequent with each passing year, there have been exalted who were Chosen, not born. Legends speak of such things having occurred in lost creation, but no one paid them any heed as much of the lore of the days of 'Creation' is treated as mythology, largely viewed as fictional and/or apocryphal. However it cannot be denied that there have been several dozen individuals across the known galaxy who were not members of the Elect but now have started to display the powers of such, long after it should have become obvious if they had been Scions of one of the many hundreds of houses of champions. They come from all stripes of Exalt, (Save Alchemicals who do not have children.) and it has been noted that unlike most exalts they begin their existences in most cases with essence 2, and their children appear to show the signs of being Champions, brand new bloodlines of the Elect. How this is possible no one is sure, but there are also documented cases of sudden surges of power among the Elect in all their forms, and these seem to follow the same patterns as these new 'Chosen'. The questions on everyone's mind is this: "Why now?", and "What does this mean for the future of the Galaxy?"