The Empire

The Empire
Country
Continent:	Home
Capital:	Preffilo
National Language:	The Race
Government:	Absolute theocratic monarchy

The Empire is an interplanetary empire headed by the Emperor of the Race which governs Home, Halless 1, Rabotev 2, and part of Tosev 3 (also known as Earth.)

Some 50,000 Earth years ago, the Ssumaz dynasty successfully unified the entirety of the Race's planet Home under a single Emperor. The Ssumaz further oversaw the expansion the Race's empire to encompass four planets.

Government

The Race has been ruled by the Ssumaz dynasty for more than 50,000 years. While the Empire is an absolute monarchy individuals of the Race have a great degree of personal freedom, as do their subjects, as long as they do not conflict with the Empire's policies. Due to the distance between Home and its colonies, the Emperor's power and whims on the latter are executed by a Viceroy appointed by him. The parts of Earth captured by the Race were ruled by Fleetlord Atvar from the 1940s until the 1970s. The Race's long unified history meant that they had difficulty absorbing the concept of a government without empire, but they adopted the term "not-empire" to describe the polities they found on Earth. They lacked political sophistication when compared with the humans they encountered on Earth. Fleetlord Atvar's initial attempts to exploit the humans' internal divisions were mostly failures outside of Poland, but a generation later he was able to ally with Finland against the Soviet Union.

The Race believe in imposing their culture on planets they annex. While not actually racist in the traditional sense (of actually hating other races/species), the Race is capable of chauvinism. They apparently teach their subjects the superiority of the Race’s art and culture, and encourage their vanquished subjects to be "grateful" that the Race stopped wars and infighting (at least in the case of the Rabotev's). Also, the discovery of the biology of the two discovered species, the Rabotev and the Hallessi, to be so similar to that of the Race gave the Race reason to believe that its biology was universal, and so another justification of the conquest and annexation of other planets. However, with the discovery of Earth, the Race's ideology was proven wrong.

Military

The military system of the Race is strictly hierarchical, and the Race military is traditionally composed of the Race species only, mostly due to ensuring the security of the Race empire. The military is exclusive to males; the reason is to avoid having problems when females enter their mating season.

The Empire's approach to expansion was to first send a conquest fleet to subdue a planet in its entirety. A generation later, after the conquered planet was largely pacified, the colonization fleet would arrive. The fleetlord of a conquest fleet was the supreme military commander during the conquest process, overseeing all military theaters of operations. The fleetlord also governed the captive world for the Emperor and was the Emperor's representative on the ground until the colonization fleet arrived. The fleetlord of the colonization fleet was a civilian position whose duties included overseeing the awakening of colonists from cold sleep and their assignment to their new homes on the conquered planet.

However, despite having a technologically powerful military, the Race is not nearly as warlike as humanity, having fought only twice (their previous planetary conquests) in the millennia since Home was unified. Furthermore, much of their knowledge of military techniques and tactics in their military history was completely forgotten or never conceived of, such as the practice of brutal interrogation (being replaced by "truth" serums), hand-to-hand combat (such as martial arts) and especially chemical warfare (poison gas used on the battlefield).

The Race's lack of military experience leaves its military following planetary conquest procedures according to mere manual/guide books and unrealistic virtual training-simulators in which all proves nearly useless in the conquest of Earth. Because of their reliance on theory and lack of experience they are tactically inflexible, which causes their forces to take casualties after their human opponents learn and exploit their preferred methods of operation.

Without any preexisting threats, the Race never needed an active standing military and only needed it during a "Soldier's Time" declared by the Emperor; in which the military is formed and mainly prepared for planetary conquest. Following an end to a Soldier's Time, all soldiers are pensioned and are returned to civilian life. Once it became clear humans were capable of space travel, Home and the Race's other two colonies began to raise troops for defensive purposes, giving their society a standing military once more.

Known Fleetlords

• Pssufalu, fleetlord who oversaw the conquest of Rabotev 2.

• Hisstan, fleetlord who oversaw the conquest Halless 1.

• Atvar, first fleetlord of the conquest fleet that partially subdued Tosev 3.

• Kirel, succeeded Atvar as the fleetlord of the Tosev 3 conquest fleet.

• Reffet, fleetlord of the Tosev 3 colonization fleet.

Religion

The Emperor is elevated to a god-like status in Race society. Members of The Race are taught at birth to lower their eyes in reverence at any evocation of the Emperor in conversation. The Emperor's birthday (known to The Race as "Hatching Day") is celebrated once every 6 months (a year for The Race). The Race afterlife consists of eternal servitude to past Emperors. Worship of the Race's Emperors is so deeply ingrained into Race culture that the concept of "impericide" is virtually unthinkable, though there were a few instances of such in the Race's history. Dead past Emperors are perceived as watching over members of the Race, and wishing an enemy "an Emperorless afterlife" is a particularly strong curse.

The Race on Earth view and dismisses human religions as "superstitions" based entirely on blind faith, in which many of the dogmatic humans (including Christians, Muslims, and Jews) were hastily offended by their behavior, such as in the Race's perception of God as a "giant Big Ugly" as absolutely ridiculous, and especially when the Race started taxing "superstitions" in Race-held territories. Their derisiveness toward human religions result in riots and unrest in Race-territories, particularly in the Middle East.

Known Emperors

• Rekrap-The 29th Emperor Rekrap's (d. 15th century BC) reign was concurrent with the Bronze Age of Tosev 3. During the first Tosevite visit to Home, Jonathan Yeager and Frank Coffey were impressed by the age a building in Sitneff, dated to Rekrap's reign; conversely, the Race regarded the building as new.

• Fatuz-The 63rd Emperor Fatuz declared a Soldier's Time, c. 1419. In 1944, soldier Chook related this to Mutt Daniels and Herman Muldoon to help explain the concept of Soldier's Time. After his death, Fatuz was considered one of the Spirits of Emperors Past.

• Fessoj-There had been at least 29 Emperors Fessoj by 1922.

• Hetto-There had been at least 127 Emperors Hetto as of the Conquest Fleet's departure from the Tau Ceti system on course for Tosev 3, in 1922 (all dates using the Tosevite Gregorian Calendar). The bannership of the Conquest Fleet was named in the honor of 127th Emperor Hetto.

• Jevon-There had been at least 29 Emperors Jevon by 1922.

• Jossano-There had been at least 56 Emperors Jossano by 1922.

• Makkakap-There had been at least 13 Emperors Makkakap by 1922.

• Osjess-There had been at least 16 Emperors Osjess by 1922.

• Poropss-There had been at least 13 Emperors Poropss by 1922.

• Rekrap-There had been 27 Emperors Rekrap by the 15th Century BC

• Risson-The 37th Emperor Risson reigned in 2031. He became the first Emperor in 100,000 of the Race's years to have to conduct a foreign policy beyond conquering aliens too low-tech to resist effectively.

• Sohrheb-There had been at least 67 Emperors Sohrheb by 1922.

• Yower-There had been at least 206 Emperors Yower by 1922.

Culture

In Race culture and society, the Race are entirely ethnocentric. The Race hold their own language in high esteem and usually think little of human languages. They see change (including minor innovations, such as new kinds of entertainment) as something inherently bad, believing that change would inevitably destabilize Race society, and are thus extremely conservative. They are technologically advanced but embrace technological progress only at a glacial pace. Technological advances are not implemented without extensive research to determine the effects they may have on imperial society.

Race hierarchy is shown through body paint, which takes a role similar to that of badges and clothing in human society. The more complex one's body painting, the higher one is in the imperial hierarchy.

Due to their biology, the Race has certain slang terms that, while similar to human ones, are also uniquely Race; for instance, someone in serious trouble is going to "regret the day he was hatched"; when threatening somebody with endless imprisonment, police would say "We will lock you up and eat the key". (See terminology below).

The Race appear to expand to gain space for themselves. Historically, the Race has sought to conquer relatively close and populated worlds. The Race's technological conservatism means that after they developed their versions of the Theory of Relativity, they did not consider the possibility that there might be ways around it. In the 2030s, for example, they were shocked to learn that humanity had discovered a way to travel faster than light, and they were forced to begin a crash program to catch up. Assuming the Race could not steal the technology, they estimated it would take at least 70 years to catch up with the humans. This will likely force seismic shifts in their culture as the Race fights to survive against the more advanced humans.

The Race is indifferent to sexual intercourse outside of mating season. They deemed the concept of monogamy a perversion. Because there is no biological impetus to care for one's hatchlings, and because sexual encounters are undertaken so casually when they occur and are ignored for the rest of the year, the Race does not have a concept of family structure. The only exception is the Emperor, who is guaranteed to be a son of his predecessor, because emperors keep a personal harem whose members mate exclusively with him. However, the Race colonists that arrived and lived on Earth, after being exposed to ginger which affected their sexual biology, slowly accepted the custom of marriage or "exclusive mating arrangements"; this became the basis of rudimentary family units.

Despite their lack of family sentiment (which is one reason why tensions tend to run high between generations) adult members of the Race are not antisocial. Indeed, friendship is the most important relationship that the Race culture recognizes.

Technology

Despite interstellar travel, cryogenics, and various other technological advances beyond Earth's most advanced powers, much of their technology was only a few decades ahead of Earth's most advanced powers in 1942. Their conservative nature insured that their technology did not change, even while on Earth. By the 1960s, human military technology was nearing parity on the ground, and beginning to make an impact in space. By the 2030s, the Race was outmatched and searching for a way to escape the disaster they found themselves in.

The Race's military technology had frozen a hundred thousand years before, when Home was politically unified and warfare ended. Subsequently the Race chose to reuse its old war machines only for conquest of other planets, and since these presented no military challenge, the Race's war technology stopped advancing. Under their unified government, the Race progressed extremely slowly, both technologically and socially. Upon invading Earth, they were amazed by humanity's rapid progress over a few hundred years. As a result, they were unprepared for the tenacity and skill that humans used in defending their respective territories,and the quick victory they expected did not come to pass. Although the Race was able to conquer most of the Southern Hemisphere of Earth in the initial invasion, the United States, the Soviet Union, and Germany remained Earth's greatest free powers once they developed and deployed atomic weapons, as did a number of countries under their hegemony. Britain and Japan also retained their independence, although the Race did not have full diplomatic relations with them.

The Race had previously conquered two other species, the Rabotevs and the Hallessi. These were extremely similar to the Race biologically, though ginger was not narcotic to them. The social differences between the three species were also very slight, although the two cultures in question were much more primitive than the Race when their planets were conquered.

As of the 2030s, the Race's technology had fallen behind that of humans, and with the human discovery of FTL, the Race was being forced to catch up.

Various theories have been advanced as to why the Race progresses more slowly than humanity. One is that the lack of large bodies of water on the Race's homeworld meant that all empires (before the unification of Home) were land-based, and so lacked the rapid expansion that sea-empires could create. Another theory is based on the fact that the Race does not have sexual selection, as they breed only in periodic orgies where the patriarchial line cannot be known (except for the Emperor). The Race are therefore not motivated by their sex drive, at least not in the same way humans are, and perhaps this lack of sex drive is related to their lack of innovation.

Territorial extent

As well as their own home world, the Race has two subject planets in the Epsilon Eridani and Epsilon Indi systems, known to the Race as Rabotev 2 and Halless 1. Both planets' indigenous dominant lifeforms, the Rabotevs and the Hallessi, are similar to the Race in biology as well as evolutionary pace. Little is revealed of their history before their subjugation to the Empire, other than that the Hallessi had an identical form of government, while the Rabotevs were divided among competing mini-empires. At least one of these races practiced slavery, though it is unspecified which.

The Rabotevs and Hallessi species are equal in law to members of the Race, but are nonetheless restricted from certain roles in the Race empire. Most notably, conquered subjects are not allowed in the Race military for reasons of tradition. In virtually all other ways they have assimilated more-or-less totally into the culture of the Empire.

Home

• Preffilo - capital.
• Rizzaffi
• Rosspan
• Sitneff

Tosev-3

After the Race-German War of 1965, the Race became the predominant power in France and Finland.

• Cairo - capital of the Conquest Fleet.
• Alice Springs - proposed as the capital of the Colonization Fleet (unclear if it was ever made the capital)
• Beijing
• Nanjing
• Shanghai
• Hong Kong
• Dehli
• Karachi
• Tehran
• Baghdad
• Basra
• Damascus
• Aleppo
• Mexico City
• Rio de Janiero
• São Paulo
• Buenos Aires
• Istanbul
• Lisbon
• Madrid
• Casablanca
• Lagos
• Cape Town

History

Pre-Invasion of Tosev 3

Little is known of the Race's history before the establishment of the Empire. It is known that 75,000 years ago (Earth years, EY), Home was circumnavigated by a male of the Race named Sherran, who would later become a folk hero. The Race learned how to harness nuclear energy at roughly the same period. Slavery had been abolished long before the founding of the Empire, though the exact time when is unknown.

At the time when the Race was divided into competing nations, that maintained a system of diplomatic relations with each other. (When needing to establish diplomatic relations with human nations, the Race would locate in old records the long-obsolete pattern of body paint proper for an Ambassador and bring it back into use.)

50,000 EY ago, the various Race nations were unified into a single government headed by the Emperor. The Rabotevs were conquered 14,000 EY ago by Fleetlord Pssafalu, and the Hallessi 9,000 EY later by Fleetlord Hisstan. Due to their superior technology, the Race suffered few losses in their wars of conquest. Memorials on their conquered worlds show that Race casualties numbered in a few dozen on Halless 1, while on Rabotev 2, it was a few hundred.

Race Invasion of Tosev 3

The Empire on Tosev 3 at the end of Worldwar. The 1944 Peace of Cairo borders would remain largely unchanged in 2031.

In 1141 CE, The Empire sent probes to Tosev 3 (Earth). After determining it was inhabited and technologically underdeveloped, the Race spent 800 years preparing for its conquest. The Conquest Fleet under Fleetlord Atvar arrived in Tosev 3’s solar system on December 1941, after a 20-year (in human years) journey spent in cold sleep. Upon receiving radio emissions emanating from the planet, the Race was shocked that humans had rapidly developed into an industrial society, far more advanced than what the probes had shown. The Race commenced with military operations in May 1942, detonating several atom bombs above the Earth's atmosphere in an attempt to disrupt human communications. On the night of May 30, only hours after detonating the atomics, the Race's forces attacked human aircraft and ground vehicles in and around designated landing zones. Once the sites were secured, troop ships began landing and unloading ground forces. The Race simultaneously established bases on every continent except Antarctica. South America and Africa were overrun almost immediately. Landing bases in Florida, Illinois, Idaho, and New York caused widespread panic and chaos in the United States. The Race also established bases in Poland, cutting Nazi Germany off from the bulk of its forces in the Soviet Union, forcing a massive German retreat westward. Britain's air force was battered from bases in Spain and France. On the night the invasion was launched, killercraft intercepted a thousand bomber RAF raid over Germany. The Soviet Union had to deal with enemy strongholds in the Ukrainian SSR, Outer Mongolia, and Siberia. In the early days of the fighting, only Germany was able to battle the aliens with any measure of success because its economy had been specifically geared toward war. The Race discovered that their orbital atomic detonations had little if any effect on the human militaries because they did not yet possess integrated circuits or the sophisticated electronics derived therefrom.

The free powers of Earth gained more momentum after German railway gun Dora destroyed two of the Race's ships, one of which carried the bulk of the Conquest Fleet's atomic stockpile. Samples of plutonium were appropriated by German, Soviet and Jewish rebel forces. In an attempt to reduce human resistance, Atvar ordered the use of atomic weapons on Berlin and Washington, DC, compelling both nations to fight harder and to hasten production of their own atomic weapons.

The effect of the war on the psyche of the Conquest fleet soldiers was steep. Although they rapidly conquered and held about half of Earth, they regarded the invasion as a dismal failure because the whole of Earth did not fall in days. Indeed, although the Race usually had the upper hand, they took staggering (to them) losses due to attrition. Furthermore, the Race's hierarchical society was strained by their mounting losses and inability to conquer Earth. This gradually led to splits within the ranks of the Fleet officers; disgruntled frontline soldiers in Siberia unofficially led by Ussmak mutinied against their officers (an unthinkable act in their culture), demanding new army leadership that would stop the high attrition they were suffering.

The effects of the Conquest could not have been foreseen by either party. In addition to humans developing atomic weapons, German and British fighter jets were re-designed with jet engines and swept wings for faster flight, in an attempt to at least partially close the gap with supersonic Race killercraft. By the 1960s and the arrival of the Colonization Fleet, more and more cars in the world ran on hydrogen. Personal computers were used by an increasing number of workers, thanks to advances in electronics from scavenged Race technology. A primitive form of the Internet was growing. Several trips had been taken aboard reusable space shuttles to space and to the Moon and Mars.

Colonization

The Empire on Tosev 3 in 1966 at the end of Colonization.

In the 1962, shortly after the Race's Colonization Fleet arrived in Earth's orbit, it was attacked with nuclear weapons by an unknown nation. Twelve starships and countless colonists were destroyed. The matter was immediately investigated by the Race. The Race colonists (who included the first females of the Race to live on the planet), expecting a conquered medieval planet, were surprised and bewildered by their situation in a world inhabited by a technologically-advanced alien race technically at war with the Race. The colonists had extreme difficultly in adapting to these circumstances, which included military threats and economic competition from sovereign "Tosevite not-empires"; frequent revolts by humans living within the Race's territory; and the many social disruptions associated with ginger, the use of which quickly became widespread among the colonists.

The social relationships between the Race of the Conquest Fleet that fought on Earth and the colonists were mildly dissatisfying. The colonists found the Race of the Conquest Fleet to be "addled," irrevocably damaged by their exposure to the "degenerate" culture of "Tosev 3", and were also widely blamed for the Race's failure to conquer the entire planet. Furthermore, the Fleetlord of the Colonization Fleet, Reffet, bickered and feuded with Atvar, blaming him for his failure to conquer the planet.

The most damaging effect for Earth from the colonists was the introduction of the Race's flora and fauna to the planet, including animals such as Azwaca and Zisuili. The environmental damages caused by the alien flora and fauna included massive famines in India.

Eventually hostilities reignited between Germany and the Race, culminating in the Race-German War of 1965. This conflict caused massive destruction on both sides. The Race proved victorious, and Europe was devastated by nuclear explosions and fallout. The war also suggested the possibility that global conquest for the Race would be impossible to accomplish. So when the Race learned that it had been the United States who attacked the Colonization fleet, Atvar, in the face of war with both the U.S. and the Soviet Union, accepted President Earl Warren's proposal that the Race would destroy Indianapolis while the U.S. would maintain its status as a space-power.

Interstellar Age

At the end of the Twentieth Century, the United States sent a diplomat delegation aboard the starship Admiral Peary to the Race's homeworld to demonstrate the nation's sovereignty. The Race hierarchy were alarmed by the humans' advance in interstellar technology and acknowledging the history that the Conquest and Colonization fleet had endured, they debated on whether to annihilate Earth with nuclear weapons for the sake of the survival of their species. As the delegation negotiated with the Race in an attempt to prevent nuclear annihilation, another U.S. starship, the Commodore Perry, arrive and entered Home orbit. The Commodore Perry was powered by faster-than-light technology, making the trip between Earth and Home in five and a half weeks. America's FTL technology was even more alarming to the Race, and forced the Race to scrap its plans to destroy Earth.

By the mid-21st century, the Race were technologically overshadowed by humans. A resurgent Germany was posing potential problems and developing its own space program once again, while a large area of the galaxy had been opened up for human colonization by their ability to travel faster than light.