Start point (LONG VERSION ~1.4k words):
It is the 146th year of the 10th Stellar Era, or 10,146 to the layman. The 46 years since the turn of the Century have been eventful, if rocky, for Humanity.
Ending in 10,101, the Great Slave Revolt was finally crushed in a methodical, bloody and brutal campaign that involved quarantining systems one by one and scouring every planet, asteroid and moon for rebel forces. The war, lasting 16 long years, drastically reduced the Reptilian race from around 30% of their pre-conquest population to around 15-20%: at least one third of the entire race that existed before the revolt perished. Questions were asked during and after the war about how an impoverished slave race gained such ready access to weapons, ships and resources: many Slave Lords accused hawkish Merchant Lords of secretly funding the revolt, as the Merchant Lords had long agitated against slavery, on the surface for humanitarian reasons, but the belief held by many stated that they were jealous of the free labour the Slave Systems had in abundance. It took the Slave Lords until 10,140 to recover and completely pacify the slave population.
In 10,120 the Emperor Alexander XVI passed away peacefully in his bed, resulting in the Imperial Council convening to elect a new Emperor. At the same time, and in a move that challenged the long-standing assumption that the Insectoid Empire was a non-sentient hive mind race, a Swarm several times larger than anything previously seen erupted forth from Insect space, engulfing the usually secure Marcher system of Ervan, the local defences finding themselves hopelessly outnumbered. Garbled transmissions and video feeds from Ervan resulted in all the Marcher Lords mobilising for war, gathering hastily in the Marten system, one jump from Ervan, and sending a call to arms to the rest of the Empire. As the Insects could not perform Jumps, taking nearly a year to move between Systems, the Marchers hoped they would be substantially reinforced.
The Imperial Council, deep in deliberations regarding a new Emperor and controlled by the Old Lords, disdainful of the Marcher Lords as they were, disregarded the call to arms as the Marcher Lords trying to appear relevant at a time of important Imperial Elections. No order was given for the Empire to mobilise, and the newly crowned Emperor Maximilian XXVI was not even reminded of the request when he was crowned after 6 months of debate, deliberation, negotiation and accusations of bribery.
The Battle of Marten was devastating, for the system and for the Marcher Lords, with two thirds of the fleet lost to the swarm. The picket screen of Destroyers and Light Cruisers fought a heroic battle against the billions-strong clouds of wasp-like creatures that comprised the Insect’s own light ‘ships’, if they could be called ships, while the Battleship line aimed to tear the Insect Motherships apart, but it quickly began to shift in favour of the Insects. The fleet was able to withdraw only when the captain of the rapidly collapsing Battleship ISS Dragon piloted his warship directly into the Swarm’s heart and intentionally detonated his Jump Drive, vaporising both his own vessel and a huge chunk of the Swarm, sending it into temporary disarray. The fleet withdrew to the Hurken System, the last heavily defended System in the Swarm’s path.
Again a desperate call to arms went out, highlighting that two Systems had already been lost and the Marcher Fleet was all but destroyed. Maximilian ordered a mobilisation, too little too late.
The Marcher Lords drew their line at Hurken, determined to at least take as many Insects with them as possible. The two inhabitable planets in Hurken were turned into fortresses of bunkers, castles (the best way to fight Insects on the ground was from high, fortified positions where their advantages in speed and melee ability were hampered) and surface-to-space cannons, preparing themselves for the ‘Insect Rain’, as the clouds of pods fired by the Motherships crashed into the planet and burst forth with ground-based creatures.
The Insects finally arrived, with the Marcher Fleet once again waiting in their lines, and once again the battle devolved into the human fleet being engulfed in clouds of swarming insects, great bursts of light visible within the cloud as battleships fired salvoes at Motherships, totally invisible to the ships themselves, the shots guided purely by sensors, with a constant light display from the light ships as they fired every laser, cannon, flak turret, torpedo and gatling gun in any direction they pleased: it wasn’t like they could miss.
As all seemed lost, with a third of the Battleships overcome and the picket line fragmented into pockets of desperate resistance, the fleet of the Technocrat Lords jumped into the system. Materialising directly atop the cloud, they appeared with all guns blazing and carved a path to the beleaguered Marcher ships, while transports made landfall on the embattled planets to unload the newest Technocrat advance: Shock Legionnaires. A terrifying combination of infantry and armour, every soldier was almost a walking tank, armed with a personal mech suit that enabled the users to wield weaponry that usually sat in fixed emplacements, these troops were ideally suited to standing their ground and devastating charging Insect hordes. Video footage of these troops walking steadily forwards in line formations – reminiscent of warfare on ancient earth – shredding oncoming Insect forces as they moved, captured the imagination of Imperial Citizens everywhere, but deeply worried the Lordly classes.
The Battle of Hurken was won that day, as the Marcher forces rallied alongside their newly arrived allies and wiped out the Insect fleet with withering fire. Two Systems had been irrecoverably lost, consumed by the Insect swarm, but the greatest threat humankind had ever faced from an alien foe had been turned back.
Before the dust had even settled, internal strife began. The Old Lords, Slave Lords and Merchant Lords wanted the Shock Legions either disbanded forever or shared amongst the entire Empire. The Zealot Lords wanted the technology for themselves. Nothing came of it, as the four groups could never come to an agreement about who should have custodianship of the technology and how many of their own Legions would be equipped with it. The Marcher Lords angrily denounced the Imperial Council for their incompetent response and directly blamed them for the loss of two Systems, a failure the Council blamed on the Marcher Lords, citing their sworn duty to man the frontier against any threat.
Throughout the decades of 10,120 and 10,130, the Emperor Maximilian XXVI proved himself to be a shrewd diplomat among the factions: he had opened talks with the Zealot Lords about potential religious freedom, he had lowered taxes for all to please the Merchant Lords, he had toured the Slave Systems to show support to the Slave Lords, made available funds to rebuild the Marcher fleets and made sure to be regularly seen with some new gadget or utility coming from the Technocrat worlds. His popularity was huge among almost everyone: his major enemies being the conservatives among the Old Lords, some conservative Slave Lords, the more hawkish Zealot Lords and some bitter Marcher Lords.
In 10,145 he died of a heart attack. Many suspected foul play, as the man was healthy and at the respectable age of 85: too young to die of something like a heart attack. In his place was swiftly elected the Emperor Louis VII, an old man of 115 years who was cut from the oldest of Old Lord cloth. Weak willed and easily controlled, the Old Lords held him in an iron grip. As was tradition, with the death of an Emperor all the appointments made are voided, allowing the Emperor to safely name his own Government without having to be seen to remove anyone. He appointed a conservative Old Lord First Minister (without consulting the Imperial Council for candidates, as was traditional) whose advice he sought about every major issue before making any commitments, and filled the various appointments of the Imperial Government with Old Lords or their yes-men: the position of Marshal of the Marches went to a second son of an Old Lord, who was given the desolate and totally de-populated Marten system to make him a Marcher Lord, outraging the Marcher Lords, and the position of Lord Treasurer went to a Slave Lord, upsetting the Merchant Lords. Taxes went back up and aid stopped to the Marchers, citing a need to balance the Imperial Treasury after two decades of ‘reckless spending’ under Emperor Maximilian, talks on religious freedom never resumed, and the new Emperor was rarely seen in public life.
So begins the year 10,146. The Old Emperor has died only a year past, the New Emperor is an Old Lord puppet, and almost every faction in the Empire has deep grievances with multiple others. The last Emperor, a good and popular man, died suspiciously while the new Emperor is old, weak, and probably won’t have a long reign.
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Starting Narrative
