History

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Peregrin
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History

Post by Peregrin »

SOME GENERAL BACKGROUND OF THE DESCENDANTS

Long ago, before the age of Descendant Confederacy, the Progenitor Homeworld was not the barren wasteland it is today, but a planet housing an immense amount of different ecosystems. The point of no return was a period today known as the First Dark Age of Industry, wherein the progenitors developed widespread electricity, mass production, motorized transportation and other technologies which would later reshape their cultures. The Progenitors also at a point entered their first Nuclear Age. (see also Classification of Ages)

However, this came to an end after a few centuries when the Postindustrial Age came, triggered by both resource scarcity, political tensions and ecological catastrophes. All of these had, to some an extent, been provoked by the Progenitors' industrialization. The remaining democracies and republics gave way to a cavalcade of warring theocracies and fascist states, which after great famines and several wars had been reduced to tribal societies ranging in structure from self-sufficient agricultural communities with a minimum of internal hierachy to roving bands of nomadic riders. The only ones whose lives were not touched by the advent of the Postindustrial Age were those who already had set up fully self-sufficient farming communities and had not been hit by the effects of nuclear weaponry. The Progenitor species itself had decreased in numbers to less than a twentieth of its original size, and it never became as plentiful as it was in the later half of the First Dark Age Of Industry.

The Progenitors, however, did not expect the sudden arrival of the ships of the Nerakk Empire. As the Progenitors thought their golden age had passed into the horizon, they were suddenly confronted with a vast interstellar civilization in the middle of its own golden age. As the Nerakk Empire operated with a policy of assimilation and collaboration rather than necessary extermination of all civilizations alien to them which they came across, their first priority was to make contact with the Progenitors and educate several interpreters. After sufficient numbers of Progenitors and the Imperial Nerakk learned the languages of each other, the Cradle System started to be integrated into the Nerakk Empire. The Progenitors themselves re-acquainted themselves with technology whose like they had not seen since the First Dark Age of Industry, and in some cases technology which even their ancestors had only speculated about.

Things such as neutron beam weaponry, wormhole generators, negamatter, Artos power were what most Progenitors used to consider the domain of First Dark Age Of Industry fiction, but when they finally saw what they considered the domain of things from past mythologies, they reacted how a 20th century human who met the god Vishnu with all his traditional attributes riding upon the eagle-god Garuda whose vast red wings blacking out the sun. An alternate analogy would be an angel with a flaming sword in one hand and a thunder-hammer in the other, but the Nerakk are not the non-Descendant civilization most deserving of that analogy.

After the end of the inevitable culture shock, they started to become acquainted at a surprising pace to these things and many Progenitors began to enter the service of the Nerakk Empire. Not only did adapted and interpreted Imperial Nerakk culture start to replace the cultures of the Progenitors themselves to the extent that the Progenitors wound up speaking a pidgin of Old Imperial Nerakk and their native languages, but the Homeworld's sister planet Dragim (its Nerakk name, its original name has been lost) was then terraformed as a residence for Progenitors in service of the Nerakk Empire. In fact, a great deal of the Progenitors entered service within the Empire in order to escape from a homeworld devastated by the pollution of the past and almost drained of resources.

The different environment on the terraformed Dragim prompted evolution into a new species now called by historians the Progenitor-Descendants. As Dragim became more and more densely populated, though never becoming as overcrowded as the Homeworld was in the latter part of the First Dark Age of Industry, two other terraformed planets in Nerakk zone of influence were put aside for the Progenitor-Descendants: Iziru and Kiir.

This increasing feeling of sovereignty, however, eventually led to beginning revolutions against the Nerakk Empire upon especially Iziru and Kiir. Incidentally, at the same time the Nerakk Empire was in the process of getting decimated by a two-front war, so to avoid both further distraction and to spare the Progenitor-Descendants the danger of facing the enemies of the Nerakk Empire, sovereignty was granted to not only Iziru and Kiir but also to Dragim and the Cradle System. The latter happened mostly because the Nerakk Empire had to withdraw their fleets and armies from the Cradle System to deploy in the two-front war which they eventually wound up losing.

Now free from the political influence of the Nerakk, the Iziruan and the Kiir started research into Progenitor cultures from before the arrival of the Nerakk and set down to remake their own cultures in the image of the glorious past. Unfortunately, due to the immense influence of the Nerakk-Progenitor "hybrid culture" in what had survived, in addition to very sketchy details about past languages, they did not succeed in their goal fully, though cultural revolutions of different natures happened upon both Iziru, Kiir and even Dragim.

On Dragim, however, things had progressed much differently. The inhabitants of Dragim, who had now evolved biologically and culturally to a people calling themselves the Hruka, had upon hearing of the two-front war threatening the Nerakk and causing their actual allies to abandon them out of necessity rather than callousness, transformed their society into the Hrukan Oligarchy, a militant isolationist state vaguely resembling some obscure derivatives of mid-20th century Fascism. Their industry's prime function was now to build and maintain an immense defense fleet and army to protect against potential attackers. This tradition continues to this day where the Cradle System is disproportionally well-guarded amongst all the systems of the Descendant Confederacy, except perhaps when compared to some Veglyr Cosmic Fleet systems.

The "reconstructed past language" on Dragim, High Hrukan, only became widespread amongst the upper class which quickly became strikingly similar to a feudal nobility.

By the time the Hrukan Oligarchy was instated, though, the actual fall of the Nerakk Empire would happen in 120 years.

The people of Iziru, upon finding out that the star Iziru orbited was once called "Vega" and was when viewed from the Homeworld in a constellation called "Lyra", they named themselves after their sun - the Veglyr.

The people of Kiir had now come to call themselves "Haenoki" after discovering a fragment about a Progenitor culture having a myth telling of a similarly-named man who ascended to become an angel. However, they would not stay on Kiir for that long after their renaming of themselves. After an attack on their homeworld by a force upon whose identity which the modern Haenoki clans disagree (Clans Tagdlaklak and Kauvi insist it was the Nerakk, Clans Salindrion and Rolkyyrakt blame the Mala'akim, Clan Khurabazhr use the siege of Kiir to justify their distrust of the Faeries and Clan Aesvurn name the now-extinct Ncha as the perpetrators), a mass exodus of refugees in various directions took place. While some opted for a nomadic existence aboard what are now known as the Clanfleets, two refugee fleets landed on the only planets they could find which had natural nitrogen/oxygen atmospheres. They both brought terraforming equipment with them in case they would need it.

These two fleets wound up in each their system. One found themselves upon a great planet with high gravity, one which they would later call Avarnam. The other found itself upon a planet slightly bigger than Dragim but still smaller than the Homeworld, one which they would later call Xhatrr. After the necessary terraforming, both Xhatrr and Avarnam went into technological stagnation which eventually turned to advancement, in Xhatrr's case at a faster pace.

All of these new civilizations, as their inhabitants adapted biologically and culturally to their new environment, quickly isolated politically and economically from the outside systems in order to first start to prosper and settle the planets within their new home systems. The exceptions were the Veglyr and the Haenoki Clanships. The Haenoki Clanships became nomads, migrating from star system to star system using their portable wormhole generators. The Veglyr started constructing their own wormhole generators and settled solar systems adjacent to Vega. The Xril, as the evolved inhabitants of Xhatrr had come to call themselves, did so too but, due to their insistence upon settling a planet similar to Xhatrr, wound up invading the system of Vorou which housed Avarnam and the rest of the people now known as the Jardra.

Since Txaxil, the officer in charge of the invasion, had long been planning a coup against the current ruler of the Xril, he used the first truce as an opportunity to actually join forces with the Jardra and return to Xhatrr where he initiated a short but bloody civil war wherein the ruler in question, Zxavor was overthrown. This is why the Xril currently say that they are living in "the post-Zxavorian era".
"You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you." - Heraclitus
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Peregrin
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Re: History

Post by Peregrin »

THE ZXAVORIAN ERA - A BRIEF OVERVIEW

The political history of the Xril is obscured by the fog of war's bloody mists as Supreme Potentate upon Supreme Potentate has overthrown the previous in a bloody civil war to crown himself/herself ultimate ruler of all Xrilkind and delete all of the previous ruler's records, until the last Supreme Potentate, Txaxil, broke the circle recently by abdicating in favour of a council.

Txaxil remembers vividly the previous Supreme Potentate, Zxavor. In the Pre-Zxavorian Era, that is before Zxavor rose, the Xril species was divided into three genetically engineered castes - the Immortals (ruling caste engineered to extraordinarily long life, hence the name), the Guardians (military and law enforcement caste) and the Servitors (lower-ranking bureaucrats and the proletariat). At some point, a young Immortal called Zxavor saw an opportunity to overthrow the current Supreme Potentate by uniting the oppressed Guardians and Servitors against the remaining Immortals. He promised an abolishment of the caste system when he would become Supreme Potentate, and early on struck an alliance with a listening Guardian Caste general called Txaxil.

Somehow, Zxavor and Txaxil managed to amass a fleet and sufficient amounts of ground troops and after a bloody civil war now known as The Zxavorian Revolution (during Zxavor's reign it was called "The Great Uprising"). After many years of fighting, wherein Txaxil pulled off some victories against many odds that he by some still today is considered one of the most brilliant strategists amongst the Descendants, Xhatrr was seized, the previous Supreme Potentate killed along with his entire court and the throne now belonged to Zxavor, who brought a storm of change with him.

The Zxavorian Era had begun.

Using genetic engineering and cyborgization, the Zxavorian era upgraded the entire Xril species to the level of the old Immortal Caste, for whom such things as the Neuro-Telepathic Network was a privilege in the Pre-Zxavorian Era. Through an eugenics program the remnants Guardian Caste had their offspring assimilated into the rest of the Xril species, and the Guardians themselves now became the Xvarrol, a quasi-independent special force within the newly-formed Xhatrr Dominion Army.

Nonetheless, perhaps for this reason, as the Zxavorian era progressed with its eventual streamlining of Xrillish culture along the lines of Zxavor's own wishes, thei loyalty of the Xvarrol leaned more and more towards Txaxil, who too was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with Zxavor and how his system of governance had become more and more dominated by personal impulses rather than by the completely objective logic which Txaxil had been so devoted to that he had at a point in the past his computer-enhanced brain neurologically programmed towards an affinity for his favourite systems of logic.

Others, while not as nihilistic as Txaxil, had also acquired their fair amount of dissatisfaction with Zxavor - in fact, in the more corrupt later part of his reign, the planet of Thzax at the outer rim of the Xholnra System managed to secede.

It was near the end of the Zxavorian era that the Xhatrr Dominion built its first Wormhole Generator for the purpose of expanding the Xhatrr Dominion into other solar system. At the same time Zxavor had also apparently caught news about Txaxil's thoughts about him, it appears from Txaxil's own accounts.

Zxavor made a personal mistake here in insisting on scouting space for a planet which was as similar to Xhatrr as possible. This brought the Xhatrr Dominion to invade the Vorou system, which gave them an unfortunately bloody first contact with another Descendant species - the Jardra.

Nonetheless, after besieging Avarnam and soon finding the Shaikarsite Union and the other Jardra planetary nations arrayed against him shortly after the ground forces on Avarnam came across a cyborg Jardra scientist who through some strange coincidence had acquired the ability to speak the language of the Xril, decided to realize a dream he had long had - to literally beat Zxavor at his own game by staging a revolution himself.

As such, it came to a truce at first and after Txaxil explained that he had led the invasion force against his own will he managed to ally with the Shaikarsite Union, the Taurashans and the Protector Houses of the United Moons of Sarkai to return to the Xholnra system and launch a counter-invasion. With their numerical advantage, this unlikely alliance managed to depose Zxavor and coronate Txaxil, whose first vow was not to make the same mistakes as his predecessors as Supreme Potentate.
"You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you." - Heraclitus
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