On Azure Wings - An Apocalypse AAR

RossN · Apr 17, 2018

Grand Princess Reetril Koriik of the Baviir Stellar Principality.

'All life began when the Divine Three met together; He who is Rain, She who is Forest and They who are Wind. Together the Three shaped life into the swimming things of the oceans and the scurrying things under the leaves of the trees. Then the Three made the higher things, the feathered beasts of the skies. To some were granted speed, to some ferocity, to some strength and to some grace, and speech and thought. So we were formed and in those days we lived in the heavens and all was good...'

-An extract from the Heavenly Scrolls of the Southern Continent, based on oral sources and written down circa. 400 BC (Earth calendar.)

'...the same evolution that rendered our distant ancestors unable to achieve true flight shaped us in other ways. The development of tool use, advanced language and complex hierarchical groups all stem from adaptations to the pressures faced by our species with the disappearance of self powered flight. Nevertheless while no surviving solely aerial species of Skanaa is sapient it is clear from the fossil record that a 'flying stage' is crucial in the development of intelligence. No purely terrestrial or aquatic animal could possibly develop the necessary brain complexity. Their environments are simply too rudimentary compared to life on the wing...'

-An extract from On Evolutionary Adaptions by Y'Kree, 1827 AD (Earth calender.)

~~~~~~

Greetings all! This is my first Stellaris AAR, though I have read many of the fine examples in this forum. I will be playing the Baviir Stellar Principality, a civilisation of sapient avians as they take their first wingbeats into the wider galaxy.

As I've noted this is the first time I've tried writing Stellaris so it will be a bit of an introduction for me to. As with most of my AARs this will be history book style, but I want to make use of in-universe documents like letters, diaries and interviews. Hopefully I will be able to make it work!

Next: Who (or what) are the Baviir?

RossN · Apr 17, 2018

Skanaa

The Baviir (plural Baviiri, adjective Baviiran) are a sapient avian species native to the world of Skanaa, a giant moon close in size and atmospheric composition to Earth though slightly colder and wetter. Skanaa orbits a gas giant named C'Knoor which in turn orbits a yellow star called Skeru. The system is home to several other planets and C'Knoor even has another large moon, the icy Ganymede sized Y'Tari Vak, but Skanaa is the only planet or moon with an atmosphere capable of sustaining life.

The Baviiri themselves are both the only sapient and the largest land dwelling lifeforms though there were now extinct non-sapient avians who filled a similar ecological niche to the extinct giant pterosaurs of Earth's Cretaceous period. The largest animals of all on Skanaa are whale sized armoured aquatic predators similar to Earth fish.

Overwhelming complex life on Skaana falls into either the avian or piscine category, or rather life than via convergent evolution resembles those Earth forms of life. The planet is home to many invertebrates though few reach any great size and there are no equivalent to the highly complex Earth cephalopods. Mammal like creatures occupy the niche of small omnivores in the extensive forests that cover most of the planet's terrestrial surface excluding the marginal arctic and desert terrain, the latter the stronghold of Skanaa's comparatively few surviving reptilians.

Skanaa has three major continents and numerous rocky archipelagos.

Baviir Biology

The average Baviir stands at roughly the same height as a human woman (unlike humans Baviiri have little size dimorphism between the sexes.) They are noticeably lighter than most Earth animals of similar size, a fact attributable to their 'hollow' bones that originally allowed their ancestors and their still living non-sapient relatives to fly.

Baviiri come in two biological sexes and broadly similar attitudes and variety towards gender and mating as humans including such concepts as personal sexual identity and romantic love. Baviiri lay eggs, either singularly or less commonly in small clutches. A Baviir will recognise a 'nestmate' as a brother or sister.

Like the majority of Skanaan vertebrates Bavirri have six limbs; two legs, two human like arms and two wings. In the case of the Baviirri the wings are no longer naturally capable of providing actual flight but in the right conditions they are highly accomplished gliders and thermal riding is a popular sport among the nobles who tend to have the best quality wings (in contrast slaves or criminals invariably have their wings clipped.)

Bavirri, like all of Skanaas avian life are covered by a thick coat of feathers remarkably similar to the birds of Earth and serving a similar purpose. A Baviir's feathers are particularly ornate, though their colouring and condition depends on sex, caste, health, age and geographical origin - 'golden plumed' Bavirri originated on the Southern Continent while 'azure' Bavirri are originally from the Northern Continent.

Given their small head size to body size it should come as little surprise that the brain of an average Bavirr is considerably smaller than that of an average human. It is however in many if not most respects much more efficiently evolved. Bavirri actually have slightly superior intelligence than humans, an equivalent sense of hearing and greater visual acuity. On the negative side Bavirri have only a very rudimentary sense of smell; a human perfume would not be detectable to the average Bavirr and Bavirran incense, rarely such as used in certain religious and civic ceremonies would roast a human's nostrils.

Bavirran speech has a pleasant quality (one area where their curious resemblance to the Earth peacock is thankfully absent!) Bavirran voices tend to sound feminine to human ears - even the deepest individual would only be equivalent to a human tenor. Conversely Bavirri find deeper human voices hard to understand along with being audibly unsettling.

Baviiri are omnivores, feeding on a wide variety of invertebrates, small mammals and piscines, fruits, nuts and grains. Vegetarianism for personal or religious reasons is not unknown but is more difficult for Baviiri than for humans as so much of their diet is dependent on the high protein derived from invertebrates.

Baviir Psychology

Baviiri, in human terms, tend to be vain, proud and emotional. Personal appearance is immensely important to most Baviiri; traditional belief held that exterior beauty and grace reflected the inner purity of the soul and though modern society mostly no longer holds that belief there is still a deeply ingrained feeling that one's personal standing is stained by losing pride in one's appearance. It should be noted that the Bavirri are capable of distinguishing between misfortune such as losing a limb to accident or disease and deviancy such as consistently failing to groom one's feathers. The former is the target of sympathy, the latter the target of disdain.

The only socially acceptable period for an otherwise healthy Baviir not to look his or her best is during periods of personal mourning when even this cardinal rule may - temporarily - slide.

This obsession with beauty extends to objects and surroundings as well. Efficiency for efficiencies sake is quite contrary to their cultural ideal. A ship or a weapon must be good at it's job of course but the average Baviir would insist grace and style are part of that job.

Baviiri are territorial beings, quarrelsome at the best of times. In the more civilised era the constant drive for social standing is much less likely to involve bloodshed, but duels are still frequent between rival factions and individuals. A Baviir would enthusiastically recognise the society depicted in The Count of Monte Cristo.

Baviir Society

Baviiran society, as developed in the centuries before spaceflight, is aristocratic. The various noble families like to trace their lineages back to historic, indeed near mythical flocks of old though in truth there have always been rising and falling houses and in two centuries there has been a lot of churn. The current ruling dynasty has been in power for about five generations since Grand Prince Sorrel Koriik united the Hundred Princes to form a global government (though the union was in name more than fact for several decades until the last few holdouts were won over by diplomacy or war.)

The Hundred Princes (sometimes shortened to merely 'the Hundred') are the ruling body of the Baviiri and the reigning Grand Prince or Princess selects his ministers from among their number. It has not been unknown for those noble families bereft of talented individuals in a particular generation to 'adopt' a commoner from outside the ranks, bringing in new blood, though in these cases the adoptee generally has strong links to the noble family to begin with.

Beneath the Hundred Princes and their often vast extended families are the lesser Nobles, the Merchant caste (which in modern times also includes many scientists), the Farming caste, the Religious caste and finally the Slave caste. Slaves may be hatched into their station, the sons and daughters of disgraced and defeated families or be unfortunate individuals personally sentenced to slavery.

Religion plays a part in Baviiran society, though it would not be accurate to call them a theocratic people in modern times. About 30% of Baviiri are some variety of agnostic, secular 'humanist' or atheist. A slight overall majority (58%) are believers in the historically dominant faith of the Divine Three - the Rain God, the Forest Goddess and the Wind, a deity of no assigned gender. The remaining 12% of the populace hold to a variety of minor faiths including belief in an impersonal universal creator deity, 'ancient astronaut' theories involving alien life or a traditional form of ancestor worship (once the indigenous belief of the Southwestern Archipelago dwelling purple plumed Baviiri but now very much a minor belief system even there.) Most Bavirri believe in an afterlife where their ancestral powers of flight will be restored to them.

RossN · Apr 19, 2018

Her Radiant Highness the Grand Princess Reetril.

Chapter One: Grand Princess Reetril

*N.B: For clarity purposes this AAR uses the in-game dating system rather than the Baviir calender.

Grand Princess Reetril ascended the Azure Throne fairly late in life. At forty eight she was already in her middle years and would not have been expected to inherit at all had her brother and predecessor Grand Prince Kwiark (r. 2162 to 2199) left any offspring. Despite a wife and a truly heroic passion for courtesans the late Grand Prince failed to father a single known egg so it all passed to Reetril.

The public newsnets, working themselves into a fever as the coronation approached dwelt on the fact that Her Radiant Highness had inherited the 'regal' plumage of her great-great grandsire the first Grand Prince Sorrel. Indeed Reetril, elegant, tall and primarily shaded a dusty blue was considered an immediate improvement on Kwiark, whose dire physical decline in his later years had much to a sybarite existence than made even the most decadent princes of the Hundred shiver with disbelief (and envy.)

Though her title was new the monarch had known for years she was next in line and she had kept herself busy planning, preparing and scheming. Over the past century the Koriik dynasty, though never seriously challenged in ceremonial terms, had declined in power relative to the Hundred. Much of the dynastic wealth had been squandered by Reetril's brother who had compounded his flaws by playing favourites in the choice of ministers and governships. A host of weak and corrupt officials, distinguished only for sycophancy to the Azure Throne saw royal authority gurgle away. Reetril, the heiress presumptive had made a calculated decision to withdraw from court life in the later years of her brother's time in power, by which point court life, once the epicenter of political doubling dealing on Skanaa had decayed to an endless procession of banquets, masques and drunkeness. On three separate occasions Grand Prince Reetril had been too addled by the spiced violet wine of the Tilarue Mountains to personally attend state meetings of the Hundred.

Reetril was as fond of fine living as any Baviir but, beyond a private weakness for handsome electrum plumed males with long muscular necks and pliable wills, she was all business. Naturally good with finances, unlike almost every one of her dynasty, Reetril worked hard to establish alliances with wealthy families merely of the Noble class and even the Merchant class. When she came to the Azure Throne the Grand Princess struck hard and fast, stripping a half dozen families of their Princely class. Her victims were the irreparably dissolute and the talentless elevated by Kwiark to the royal nest. In there place she elevated her allies to the Hundred, giving her an immediately loyal and financially powerful bloc of supporters. The new Grand Princess was able to achieve this with little opposition from the older families represented in the Hundred in part due to her personal popularity with the public and in part because Kwiark's cronies had been so loathed Reetril was able to sell the measure to the Princes as a conservative measure, sweeping away the corrupt interlopers. To balance the blend of old and new Reetril appointed a scion of one of the oldest families to the post of Exalted Advisor (essentially prime minister [1].) Kwiark had made it a sinecure for his favourite mistress but the blue blooded Prince P'Konori was neither concubine or lickspittle and the appointment of so obvious a worthy did much to soothe ruffled feathers over the memories of Reetril's late, unlamented brother.

Having settled the political situation and won time for herself and her eldest hatchling the Crown Prince, Reetril turned to her true ambitions: the redevelopment of Skanaa and the move into interstellar space.

The industrial revolution on Skanaa had begun some four centuries before Reetril ascended the Azure Throne, before there even was an Azure Throne. In that age the world was divided into countless feuding (and sometimes outright warring) principalities. Dazzling advances in technology had changed every aspect of Baviir life but it had also left much of the world polluted, overcrowded or both. Grand Prince Kreethak (r. 2071 to 2127), the third monarch of Skanaa had been the first ruler to take the industrial damage and the plight of the poor seriously, but though his efforts had pushed back the worst of the abuses Skanaa was far from restored to pristine health. Reetril would over the early years of her reign devote a lot of resources to demolishing slums and replacing them with modern city, business and industries. The pollution wastelands would be turned into forests of the kind that sang to the soul of every Baviir from slave to sovereign.

Skanaa, her parent planet the gas giant C'Knoor and her 'little sister', the ice moon Y'Tari Vak.

Paying for all this would be Reetril's most audacious gamble, and one that if it failed could topple herself and her entire dynasty. The Baviir were to strike out beyond their own solar system.

For three generations the Baviir had made modest journeys into space, first to Y'Tari Vak 'Skanaa's white plumed little sister' as the poets of old called her. That expedition had proved a disappointment; fair as she was Y'Tari Vak was too cold and inhospitable to harbour life and lacked even minerals to tempt the greedy. The other planets and moons orbiting Skeru proved somewhat richer pickings in metals, energy and scientific research but the technology of Kreethak's era made conquering the solar system a costly and unglamorous endeavor and during his successor's rule the supply of credits and space pioneers all but dried up. Two centuries after the first Baviir had breached the atmosphere of Skanaa in a primitive, chemical powered rocket there were still bountiful deposits of minerals entirely untouched on Skeru's other children, to say nothing of the energy given by the star herself.

From an early age Reetril had become convinced that the Baviir should reignite their interest in space travel. The theory and technology had improved in the past century even if not properly employed and an exploratory journey through 'hyperspace' was fundamentally possible. In fact an expedition could be mounted within months of her taking the Azure Throne, admittedly at daunting cost in both credits and political capital.

In her coronation speech the Grand Princess announced space would be the great focus of her reign:

'We are all the hatchlings of Skanaa, guarded by C'Knoor's majesty, shaped and grown under these gentle skies, children of known winds. Our world shall always be our first home, our first love. Yet all of us must in time leave the nest and take wing on this journey of life. So it is for all Baviir from slave to sovereign; so it must be for our flock as a whole. I have already commanded that an expedition be made to explore the cosmos. With new technology and a fine crew this vessel shall explore the stars nearest to us... I know some of you look on such an expedition with fear of the unknown. I share those fears. We cannot know what is out there. Perhaps nothing. Perhaps dark and terrible things. And perhaps sister and brother hatchlings grown under stranger skies but beings of grace all the same. It is a risk... but how can we not? We are a people of grace and wisdom, courage and passion. We were not built to dwell in our nest evermore...'

Following this Reetril issued a proclamation renaming the state from the 'Grand Principality of Skanaa' to the 'Baviir Stellar Principality.'

Skeru and her neighbours in 2200. The galactic centre lies to the 'south west'.

It has to admitted that the 'conquest of the Heavens' was probably Reetril's least popular policy in the first years of her rule. At least it was not popular among the Hundred; the common populace seemed more taken with the romance of the idea. For the Princes and their families Reetril's drive to the stars was greatly at odds with what was otherwise seen as a properly conservative monarch. The idea of consolidating the minerals of the Skeru system was, by itself, appealing even if the members of the Hundred grew nervous at the thought of allowing mere Noble or Merchant families mining contracts (Reetril might have retorted - but for political reasons did not - that the Princely families had only themselves to blame if they had not invested in space mining during the period of official distant interest, while the lesser castes, locked out of society pressure had plied their credits elsewhere.)

What bothered the Hundred was the thought of sinking vast sums of treasure and resources into an unproven venture on scarcely understood technology on the possibility it might pay off. There had never in the entire history of the Baviir people been confirmed evidence of life beyond Skanaa. Alien beings were the domain of the fiction writer or the addled conspirator seeing shadows everywhere. Even discounting the likelihood of meeting unknowable creatures from the beyond the Grand Princess's dream depended on other star systems being as rich in minerals and energy as Skeru. If they were not and the only thing the explorers found was dead moons and gas giants so radioactive they'd fry any ship approaching them, the Grand Princess would be ruined utterly.

The Hundred Princes were not, for the most part scientists, though most of the old families had some in their pay. Instead they possessed all the hard headed skills of professional courtiers and dynasts: beauty, high (and low) cunning, self interest and caution. Kwiark had been so despised partly because he was so enamored with incompetent cronies and concubines and partly because he had been so weakminded that he had retreated from all forms of personal responsibility - anathema to the Hundred where intrigue was a richly admired virtue. The Hundred was always keen to wax it's own power against the ruling monarch but a strong minded Grand Prince or Princess was much more respected, and in some ways found less bullish opposition, than a feeble and pliable sovereign.

What if, far from being the return to strong rule Reetril had seemed she was just as flawed as brother but simply in a different way? He had been obviously, overtly foolish but Reetril's surface charm and politicking might have just have masked a romantic with a hollow cranium? Soon after her speech court and especially after the much mocked 'Stellar' renaming gossip reported that one (unnamed) Prince had been heard to mutter that 'Her Radiant Highness worries about the void between the stars. I worry about the one between her ears.'

Reetril was not entirely bereft of allies in her vision of stellar exploration. Those Princely families that owed their rise to her were supportive, sometimes out of feelings of debt but sometimes out of genuine faith in her borne of long familiarity. The Exalted Advisor also supported the plan, though his support was more complicated. Prince P'Konori was as clear eyed and self interested a cynic as any in the Hundred but he was in the happy position that a failed gamble would be as survivable as a successful one. If the Grand Princess fell in disgrace it would be unthinkable to give the Azure Throne to her son. At that point the Koriik dynasty would have seen two failed reigns in a row and the Hundred would turn to one of their own instead - very possibly P'Konori. Conversely if the gamble succeeded and Reetril won vast resources in the outer cosmos the Grand Princess would reward his loyalty.

P'Konori had not become the grandest grandee in the Hundred for nothing.

In the end the gamble did succeed, though not without disappointment and surprise along the way. In the first decade of Reetril's reign ten different star systems would be explored and half of them claimed. Perhaps not all systems were as wealthy as Skeru but there were more than enough riches out there to fill the royal treasury and silence the Grand Princess's critics. Most thrillingly life, both existing and extinct had been found and towards the end of that first decade the Baviir would discover they were not the sole sapients in the universe...

The Baviir Stellar Principality, 2210.

Footnotes:

[1] In game terms 'Governor of the Core Sector'. P'Konori is a Level One Governor with the 'Adaptable' trait.

RossN · Apr 22, 2018

The Baviir Stellar Principality, late 2212.

Chapter Two: Beasts, Ghosts and Scholars

R'Tanoka, later to be the greatest explorer in her people's history was originally a female Noble of the Third Rank, a distinction scarcely above that of a Merchant or Farmer. Hatched in the western city of Corviir four years after the future Grand Princess Reetril the young R'Tanoka did not seem destined for any great success. Though her intellect was keen from the start she lacked the instinctive ruthlessness needed to make her an attractive retainer to any of the Princely families, nor was her beauty such a route to greatness via innate charm likely. Her plumage was predominantly crimson, quite out of fashion in the modern age and though pleasingly slender she was shorter than the classical standards of the feminine form so beloved of the poets.

Fortunately for R'Tanoka and for all Baviiri she would find a field for her talents in science. Her family were one of the few still tangentially connected with the space program in the 2180s and she ended up studying on an orbital physics station. It was important work and valuable for making her name in certain academic circles but it bored R'Tanoka senseless. A natural scientist she might have been but there was a streak of wanderlust to the young female; she was built to roam the stars. After a chance meeting with P'Avo, Reetril's court secretary the scientist came to the attention of the heiress presumptive. Years later when Reetril came to the Azure Throne she did not forget the garrulous, impatient to the point of rudeness but brilliant female. R'Tanoka would be the first and only choice to command the experimental hyperspace capable RSS Nimble Hatchling on her five year mission of exploration.

Between 2200 and 2205 Nimble Hatchling's journey took her through the Balawar, Hadriccus, Ibanadar, Heka and Lastus systems and unearthed much mineral wealth to the relief of her royal patron. Much more tantalizing (at least for R'Tanoka) were the glimpses of alien life, both deceased and thriving, that the ship discovered. As part of her mission she kept a command log and scientific log, but it is her personal insights that give a better insight than the dry account of days and months passing and rocks analysed. While in space R'Tanoka wrote and transmitted these thoughts frequently, both to her wife back on Skanaa and to the Grand Princess herself. Below are printed certain excerpts from these transmissions:

'Your Radiant Highness,

I admit our first discovery of the relics of the "Vultaum Star Assembly" in the Balawar system sent a shiver down my tail feathers. Sapients that looked like giant invertebrates - and of the most primitive kind at that! The gods have a curious sense of humour... the first meal served in the ship's mess after we unearthed the first fossil was not the celebration one might have expected after the first discovery of alien life... and yet these creatures, unbeautiful as they were charted the stars before the first Baviir hatched. It is hard not to marvel at them, hard not to feel a twinge of respect. With your permission Ma'am I shall follow this trail more closely to try and unravel the mystery of these long vanished empire builders.'

Remarkably the Balawar system, the first visited by the Nimble Hatchling yielded the remains of a second starfaring race, seemingly unconnected to the Vultaum in any respect. A millenia old life pod with the remains of an obviously sapient lifeform was also discovered in the system:

'Your Radiant Highness,

As strange as this lost adventurer of the cosmos was they were closer in time and kind to our people. Arms, legs, a beak (bizarrely distorted but still)... it was easier to see the person he or she or they once was. Perhaps his folk still ply the stars somewhere... after our intensive study I ordered the remains to be returned to his pod and cast adrift once more. I am not overly religious but I had the ship's chaplain conduct a service before leaving the pod to the void.'

The following year the Nimble Hatchling explored the Hadriccus system. R'Tanoka's hopes were to find more evidence on either of the species found so far, be it the extinct Vultaums or the unnamed, unidentified perhaps still existing reptilians. Instead she finally discovered living lifeforms:

The bizarre but harmless 'Tinyanki' - the first non-Skanaan lifeforms ever observed.

'Your Radiant Highness,

I know these scans will shock many back on Skanaa. They shocked me. Living organisms three times the size of this ship! Almost everything about them is a mystery, they scarcely resemble any life from our own beautiful world. Still, there is a curious grace to these star creatures. I have seen the larger beasts nurture the smaller with all the gentleness one would give a hatchling. Despite their mass they have shown no aggression to us. I doubt they are sapient, not in the manner of Baviir but they are wondrous and as long as I shall live I will not forget the first glimpse of one, bathed in the faint light of a foreign star.'

Not all the Nimble Hatchling's discoveries proved quite so awe inspiring. Exploring the Lastus system in 2203 R'Tanoka was forced to correct an embarrassing astronomical error where a 'gas giant' was discovered to be an over large terrestrial planet. She did not enclose a personal transmission over this incident.

Fortunately Lastus turned out to have an inhabitable planet, the third world out from the star. Though lacking sapient life Lastus III abounded with native lifeforms, mostly slippery skinned amphibian creatures on land and fish like creatures in the seas. Lastus III was somewhat wetter than Skanaa though not uncomfortably so. The greatest dangers, excluding the volcanic activity dominating the equatorial regions, were large river dwelling predators. Growing up to six meters long in extreme cases these dark green three eyed beasts with powerful tooth filled jaws caused several casualties - and one fatality - to the Nimble Hatchling's crew before their breeding territories were fully mapped.

The creatures of Lastus III were fascinating and caused much debate back on Skanaa but R'Tanoka was still hoping to find another sapient civilisation out there. More artifacts of the enigmatic Vultaum had been found in the Hadriccus system, including a shattered orbital complex and when her first five year mission had ended R'Tanoka was re-assigned to investigate the structure. The scientist, deeply grateful to the Grand Princess - who had raised her to a Noble of the First Rank after her return to Skanaa in 2205 - felt unable to refuse privately chafed under such a project. R'Tanoka was interested in the Vultaum and felt study of them worthwhile, but her wanderlust ate at her during the months she was forced to stay in orbit around Hadriccus, minding a team of dedicated xenoarchaeologists. (She was however amused when the grand secret of the Vultaum satellite was eventually revealed to be a glorified artificial reality game. [1])

Finally in late 2205 R'Tanoka was able to resume command of the Nimble Hatchling on a second expedition, charting the star systems to the galactic 'south' of Skeru. In the Sinistra system a new inhabitable planet was discovered - and a strange monolith that when studied was revealed to be an alien memorial to a strange and savage battle. The shattered hulks had drifted towards the galactic core and though the Nimble Hatchling's computers were able to calculate a course to the battle site it would take years of traversing uncharted space to reach the wrecks [2]. The Grand Princess was of the opinion that the mystery could wait, at least until the Baviir had better knowledge of their immediate neighbours. R'Tanoka agreed:

'Your Radiant Highness,

I am beginning to wonder if we alone are all that remains of intelligent life in the galaxy. In eight years we have found signs of sapience from at least three, perhaps four species, but even the least ancient was already old when Preenak slew B'Iroka. I am ever your loyal servant Ma'am and am honoured to continue the search but I fear we may have left Skanaa too late. All that remains are beasts and ghosts.'

The mysterious alien station, late 2010.

As it happened the Baviir luck was about to change. In 2010 the Nimble Hatchling discovered a city sized alien space station in the Etan Stela system. Unlike the decaying Vultaum ruins orbiting Hadriccus II the space station orbiting Etan Stela was active, and actively transmitting. R'Tanoka responded with hails of her own; there was no reply but as the station made no overt hostile act the Baviir scientist concluded (correctly) that the sheer technological difference between the species was to blame

It took months for true two way communication to be established and for the Baviir to know who they were dealing with.

The legendary 'first contact' transmission that confirmed the Baviir were not the sole surviving sapients in the galaxy.

Contact with the Curator Order brought both joy and disappointment on Skanaa. Establishing relations with an advanced and friendly (if greedy) alien society was a source of wonder, but the fact that even this group was nothing but the remnant of a now lost starfaring civilisation - the Mishar - was unsettling.

R'Tanoka visited the Curator station herself and spoke with High Curator Ufu up Fol. She believed them to be biologically somewhat similar to the Baviir, though from the coldness of the temperature she estimated them to originally hail from a far colder planet or moon than the Baviir. Fortunately the High Curator had anticipated the biological needs of his guests and adjusted the temperature in the meeting chamber to something approximating a cool late Autumn night in Corviir, admitting he found it warm though not painfully so. R'Tanoka estimated their total population in the hundreds of thousands, perhaps has high as a million. Sufficient to keep a population steady but still smaller than any significant Baviir city. It was hard to tell how many Mishar there were, and the Curators were polite yet evasive on such matters, explaining they had for their own security to keep such secrets secret [3].

Back on Skanaa the Hundred met to consider appointing a permanent envoy to the Curator Order. A small minority wanted to annex the alien space station, but the Grand Princess, the Exalted Advisor and a majority of the Princes voted firmly against any hostile acts. Quite apart from the ethics - and as infuriating as the Curators could be when it came to sharing information they were clearly happy to establish diplomatic relations - aggressive action was quite beyond the Stellar Principality. The Baviir Navy would be hard pressed to defeat a maddened mother Tinyanki and the resources that had not already been spent on building space stations had gone into mineral and energy mining, research stations or the great project to colonise Lastus III.

Outside the gilded halls of power debate also raged yet in slightly different terms. The discoveries made in the decade since the first flight of the Nimble Hatchling had filtered through to everyday life. Most obviously the number of Baviir living permanently offplanet had soared into the thousands, taking into account the various stations and bases across the claimed systems.

For scientists and religious leaders the findings in space proved confounding in many ways. The theory of the 'Flying Stage', considered vital to development of intelligent life was largely abandoned by mainstream Baviir science in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, though a few stubborn academics contended that the Vultaum were the larval stage of a winged adult form and that the Mishar and the ancient reptilian had lost their vestigial wings over the course of tens thousands of years. The religions also had to contend with the challenging nature of alien life but rebounded surprisingly strongly; the faith in the Divine Three had always tended towards liberalism and eclecticism and many were able to appreciate the strange beauty in the Tinyanki or the graceful symmetry in the cranial ridges of the Mishar. Ironically the faiths that suffered the most were precisely those who had believed the Baviir had been seeded by people from the stars. The known sapient races were so unlike the Baviir it was hard to accept they had meddled in the creation of the Avian race.

In late 2212 with tentative talks ongoing with the Curator Order, R'Tanoka and the Nimble Hatchling exploring the Jasmak system and the establishment of a colony on Lastus III imminent the Baviir station in the Menchib system in the galactic 'south' of known space reported a strange contact. A starship of unknown configuration had dropped out of hyperspace and begun scanning the nearest planets.

After the ghosts of the Vultaum and the relics of the Curators the Baviir had finally found another starfaring people. Or rather been found by them.

The mystery vessel sighted in the Menchib system, late 2012.

Footnotes:

[1] I have unearthed a few more Vultaum ruins since including a colony and a trading post.

[2] The 'Drifting Battlesite' is approximately a third of the way across the galaxy. Desirable to investigate but certainly a long term project!

[3] For the record the Mishar are Artic Preference, Thrifty, Quick Learners, Communal, Deviants and Fleeting.

RossN · Apr 24, 2018

The Till'Lynesian Stellar Hierarchy and the northern border of the Baviir Stellar Principality, 2218.

Chapter Three: The Great Powers

In late 2219 as part of the upcoming ceremonies celebrating the twentieth anniversary of Grand Princess Reetril taking the Azure Throne, the Baviir Resplendent Advisor [Foreign Minister] Princess Kreena commissioned a grand official history of interstellar relations for public consumption. The newsnets on Skanaa and the colony world D'Vraadir would air the history early in the following year. Though necessarily simplified to explain delicate matters of galactic diplomacy and current events to a population less familiar with either than the elites (and those merchants and scientists who went on extended sojourns in foreign space) the programming provided an accurate and broadly unbiased record of first contacts and current relations with the other starfaring states. The focus was very much on the Great Powers, an admittedly fuzzy definition but generally concluded those nations that could and did enact major interstellar diplomacy.

The embassies of all the other Great Powers in the known galaxy provided technical assistance and interviews with consulate staff. The exception to this show of interstellar good feeling were the marauding clans of the Triech Freeholders in the far galactic south who recognised no foreign government and seemed content to remain in their own private squalor and brigandage. Though their isolationism and disunity made them arguably even less of a Great Power than the Order of Curators (who at least recognised embassies) the might of the Houses was conceded by all. Therefore they possessed honourary Great Power status.

Over the first week of the new year newsnet viewers across Baviir space were 'reintroduced' to their neighbours in the order in which they had first made contact with the Stellar Principality.

Unfortunately the original first contact transmission with the Vrinn has been lost. This communique, delivered shortly after, led to the Vrinn-Baviir Non-Agression Pact [1].

The Regime of Vrinnus was the first major interstellar power to contact the Baviir, at least if one did not count the space station bound Order of Curators as an interstellar power (though it would soon be discovered the possessed more than one such city in space.) Originating on Vrinn a dry and sandy world orbiting the star Vrinnus in the galactic south the Vrinn people were vaguely reminiscent of the Mishar in body structure, with four limbs, an average height slightly under two metres and cranial ridging. The Vrinn were a fleeting people, with average lifespans two decades less than the Baviir, another in this case unfortunate similarity to the Mishar. However their distinctly different skull shape, chin fronds - an aid to the Vrinn sense of smell - and numerous other details led the Baviir to conclude the resemblance was only due to convergent evolution rather than common ancestry [2].

The Vrinn qualities included an instinctively nomadic temperament, though the militaristic dictatorship that ran the government restricted civilian movement. Growing up in such a harsh climate had left the Vrinn resilient and inclined to conservationism. When the first Vrinn ambassador to Skanaa arrived in 2213 he had been scandalised by the extravagant luxury the Grand Princess had thrown in his honour. The Baviir were not exceptionally wasteful as a society but their home moon was simply far richer in life and other resources than Vrinn and the culture shock took a long time to get used to.

At the time of first contact the Vrinn were approaching the end of long population boom that had seen their population soar to almost thirty billion spread across three worlds (the Baviir total at the time was twelve billion and an additional billion robotic lifeforms spread across two worlds.) Oddly this teeming empire was quite compact in terms of star systems; the government having long experienced a precarious balance of life on their homeworld made colonisation a priority above that of mineral wealth or scientific exploration.

The Vrinn government was a military autocracy led a dictator titled the 'Grand Marshal'. Ratu tal Sep, who held this post at the time of first contact proved a fascinating riddle for the Baviir diplomatic corps. Obviously warlike - he had distingushed himself crushing an early outbreak of the star piracy that would plague the great powers in later years - Ratu tal Sep combined this with a genuine, if paternalistic, regard for his citizens and a remarkable eye for raising talented individuals to high rank. In their frequent private transmissions Grand Princess Reetril grew personally quite fond of the Vrinn leader and the mutual respect between the two led to a surprisingly strong bond of trust between both powers.

The original first contact transmission from the Ekwynnians in 2216. The Baviir response is highlighted in blue.

Three years after first contact with the Vrinn the Baviir and the Ekwynian Bloc became aware of each other. The Ekwynians came from Snotalitvish, a planet with a kinder climate than Vrinn if still far too dry for Baviir tastes. Rather than deserts or forests the Ekwynian home was covered in vast savannas of long, tough grass. The Ekwynians were the tallest known sapient species at just under two and half metres, seemingly descended from even larger pre-sapient quadruped herbivores who used their great size and strength to intimidate predators. The modern Ekwynians shared this strength and resiliency, though like the Vrinn (and Mishar) their lives were comparatively short.

Though spread out across the galactic map the Ekwynian Bloc was not as populous or rich as the size of their territory might have indicated. Ekwynian space was, at the time of first contact largely empty, with fewer systems than either of the other great powers. Eleven billion Ekwynians crowded onto their lone inhabited planet (though they would soon colonise another.) The Baviir were inclined to describe this discrepancy between the individual strength of the average Ekwynian and the weakness of society and government. Both the Baviir and the Vrinn used caste systems with indentured servants on the lowest rank but the Ekwynians were far more dependent on a vast system of helots to support their warrior caste. The actual Ekwynian government was also confusing to the Baviir; though oligarchy was a known form of government (just ask the Hundred) the specifically military junta variant was unfamiliar. Archon Galdrig den Sukar could be replaced by another officer quite easily! How did one conduct diplomacy with such a leader?

Relations between the Baviir and the Ekwynians were polite but distant. The two powers were, at the time, separated by the Vrinn and save for a few enterprising merchants on both sides contact was limited.

The original first contact transmission from the Till'Lynesians in 2216. The Baviir response is highlighted in blue.

Later that very same year the Nimble Hatchling, exploring the Impal Tov system to the northwest of Skeru, abruptly discovered a third interstellar empire on the Baviir doorstep. As ironic as it was that the closest empire had been found so late what truly excited, astonished and alarmed the Baviiri was the nature of the Till'Lynesians.

They were avians.

Beaked, feathered and with a evolutionary legacy involving a flying stage the Till'Lynesians resembled the Baviiri more closely than either people resembled anyone else. Taller than the Baviiri, Vrinn or Mishar though not to the extent of the gigantic Ekwynians they shared the great strength of the latter, apparently due to the musculature needed to survive the often stormy seas of their home. The Till'Lynesians hailed from a wet world like the Baviiri, though Tilla was even more damp than Skanaa, dominated by vast oceans and rocky island chains. The Till'Lynesians had lost the ability to fly far earlier than the Baviiri, adapting to a semi-aquatic lifestyle in the the planet's polar waters. Till'Lynesi society was sedentary by nature and it was something of a minor miracle that they managed to make it to the stars at all thanks to the work of talented and radical pioneers.

Till'Lynesi society was based around a theoretically benign autocracy in which the Primarch exercised vast state control over the populace in the name of efficiency. At the time of first contact the reigning Primarch was Nekare Wakesu. In many ways an atypical Till'Lynesi, Nekare Wakesu had the spirit of an intrepid explorer mixed with the crafty eye of a space miner and without her drive, cunning and occasional ruthlessness the Till'Lynesians would have remained in their home system still. Grand Princess Reetril did not have the same personal fondness for Wakesu as she had for the Grand Marshal of the Vrinn but she respected and trusted the Primarch.

The Till'Lynesians were as fascinated by the coincidence of evolution (if such it was) as the Baviiri. The notion of 'ancient astronauts', moribund on both planets suddenly sprang back into life as scientists and philosophers on Tilla and Skanaa pondered the possibility of a shared origin in the remote past. Till'Lynesi society was fiercely materialistic and they found the prominent internal theological debates of the Baviiri bewildering but on Skanna at least the church of the Divine Three pondered the strangeness of two sapient avians arising so close to each other independently.

On a personal level the Till'Lynesians perhaps found more to admire about their possible cousins than vice versa. The Till'Lynesians found the slender, fragile, multihued and golden voiced Baviiri remarkably beautiful creatures and the Baviiri intellect and wit won immediate admiration. Less flattering traits were the soon to be famous Baviiri temper and competitiveness - the quarrelsome nature of the Hundred and the fierce feuds and status climbing of life on Skanaa dismayed and confused the inhabitants of Tilla. Till'Lynesians saw their sister avians as dazzling, exciting and charismatic, but shallow, vain and ruled by their passions.

For the Baviiri the reaction was, sadly, less favourable. The efficiency and great strength of the Till'Lynesians won respect (and a shade of envy) but their repugnant appearance, manners and above all their voices did not. The unfortunate Prince of the Second Rank sent as ambassador to Tilla described Till'Lynesi conversation as sounding akin to listening to 'an interminable rumbling drone interrupted by seemingly random gurgles. I hope Her Radiant Highness never invites a muscian of Tilla to perform before the Azure Throne - there would be instant war.' Not all Baviiri had so negative a reaction but many did find the Till'Lynesians as dull in word and imagination as they were in plumage.

Despite all the difficulties relations between the two governments remained good and even the strongest critic of the Till'Lynesians would concede they were good neighbours. As with the Vrinn the Baviiri signed non-aggression pacts and research treaties and the two powers cooperated (in a manner of speaking) during the Pirate Wars.

The original first contact transmission from the Triech Freeholders in 2217. They did not acknowledge the Baviiri response.

To the southwest of the Ekwynian Bloc the Triech Freeholders had claimed several star systems. These ferociously independent clans were known to the great powers primarily as fringe mercenaries and privateers prepared to sell their formidable services to the highest bidder. In typical fashion the first official contact between the Baviiri and the Triechi was a blunt warning late in 2217 to stay out of Freeholder space. Suffice to say no permanent diplomatic relations would prove possible.

What was known about the Triechi was gained from disparate sources of various reliability, including free traders and former pirates who had had dealings with the Houses on the fringes of civilised space. The Triechi resembled the Vrinn and Mishar in physiology, though they were longer lived and - worryingly - faster breeders and extremely adaptable. To no one's astonishment they were nomadic. Their great virtue from the point of view of the civilised powers was that they seemed to enjoy feuding with each other far more than raiding foreigners.

The Regime of Vrinnus, Ekwynian Bloc and Triech Freeholders, 2218.

Baviir foreign policy in this period was a delicate internal and external balance. The Grand Princess was jealous of her prerogative to speak directly to alien leaders while the Hundred pushed back to stress the authority of individual ambassadors - inevitably Princes or Princesses of the Second Rank [3]. Most of the time Reetril was able to exploit the internal cracks in the Hundred to get her way on who went were but she was still constitutionally required to accept the will of the Hundred if they voted down her personal choice.

Another factor the monarch had to contend with was Prince P'Konori. Though his domestic duties kept the Exalted Advisor very busy he could still make his voice heard in the Hundred. The politicking at the highest levels was behind closed doors but the consensus of the court gossips was that P'Konori wished to draw closer to the Till'Lynesians while Reetril favoured the Vrinn. With the Great Powers at peace there was no danger in balancing the two but at some point the Baviiri might have to choose.

Then there were the 'wild factors' - the pirates and the enclaves...

Footnotes:

[1] For some reason I never recieved a first contact transmission from the Vrinn, so I contacted them.

[2] The Vrinn (and the Triechi) are humanoids in game terms but obviously the Baviiri have no conception of humans. Instead they would compare any humanoid species with the Mishar as the first known 'type'. Likewise future mammalian sapients (if any) will be seen in context of the Ekwynians.

[3] A Prince(ss) of the First Rank is a direct, voting member of the Hundred. A Prince(ss) of the Second Rank is an immediate family member without a seat in the Hundred. As honoured as an embassy post is no member of the Hundred would abandon his or her perch at the heart of government and society.

RossN · Apr 28, 2018

The galactic 'west' of the Baviir Stellar Principality, 2240. Note the systems of Avalam, Menchib and Sinistra.

Chapter Four: Star Raiders

Some sections of space fell outside the normal rules of domestic or foreign law. Rapid expansion to the stars had brought great wealth from mining and freetrading but like a migrating flock of Gildenwings they had drawn predators.

Technically criminals had operated in Baviir space since the middle of the 21st Century. In the early days of the exploration of the Skeru system kidnappings, smuggling and the outright the hijacking of ore shipments had been a frightening problem. The Skeru Patrol had been founded to combat exactly such threats. Unfortunately the problem was that in many cases these early 'pirates' were in fact paid agents of some of the Princely families conducting their feuds against their rivals by other means. The tangled politics involved made it difficult to hunt and imprison those criminals with potent friends, which turned out to be a distressing number of them.

This first primitive age of off-planet crime came to an end, ironically, with the arrival of the weakest and most corrupt of Grand Princes. The simple fact was that in the 22nd Century it cost a fortune for anyone to get past the atmosphere of Skanaa. The great families of the Hundred and their clients had rarely made much profit in space and attention quickly turned to the political circus surrounding Kwiark's court were the pickings were more promising. With the passing of their interest the credit flow for the privateers dried up and most faded away completely. The Skeru Patrol survived (on a thin budget) to watch over the remaining mining facilities and small science stations but the dangers and opportunities of the void seemed to have gone for good.

Though rumours abounded of earlier attacks the first serious revival of space piracy is generally dated to 2213 when the Iron Talons began operating out of the Sinistra system beyond the borders of the Stellar Principality. As this coincided with first contact with the Vrinn there were initial fears that the two were related. In truth as the Baviir swiftly discovered their neighbours faced the same plague. The so called 'Golden Age' of piracy had arrived.

By the second decade of the 22nd Century all the significant starfaring states had mining and scientific colonies beyond their home systems. Most were in the process of colonising a second or even a third inhabitable world. The amount of spacefaring traffic grew exponentially. The arrival of new technology and opportunities meant that, for the first time, civilian starships were financially viable. Most such ships belonged to various guilds, consortiums and other major business interests but the romantic image of the independent freetrader in his or her own ship had some basis in reality. At least in Baviir space these 'freetraders' were rather more likely to be the adventurous scions of Princely or Noble families than true down and outs - it was now possible to turn a profit in space but it still cost more money to get there than anyone below a certain wealth level could afford. Still, these individuals existed and during the dizzying, thrilling, dangerous years leading up to 2220 it seemed like every month might bring the discovery of another civilisation and another market.

The Royal Bavviran Navy attacks the Iron Talon station in the Sinistra system, 2217.

Naturally not all independents in space remained content to ply their trade honestly. The Iron Talons were a motley collection of freetraders that had turned first to smuggling then to outright piracy. Unlike the privateers of old they were not in the service of any sept on Skanaa, at least not directly. Instead their leader, an ambitious and greedy Noble of the Second Rank by the name of D'Sarik, preyed on everyone. D'Sarik herself was a colourful character, an ex-officer of the Royal Baviiran Navy who, frustrated by the lack advancement opportunities in the small fleet of the early 23rd Century had turned to civilian life before turning further. The first 'Pirate Princess' lacked true strategic or tactical brilliance but she was resilient and had a working knowledge of starship combat capabilities no pure civilian could rival. Certainly it was beyond the Skeru Patrol, which from this point on left pirates to the actual warships of the Navy.

The Iron Talon base was in the Sinistra to the south west of the Baviir border. Charted by R'Tanoka in 2207 it contained two planets with breathable atmosphere. Sinistra III, though vast for a terrestrial world was too arid to support Baviiri comfortably but the other was far more hospitable, three green continents set in wide oceans with wide expanses of the temperate forests so beloved by the Baviiri. Sinistra II was slightly smaller than than Skanaa or D'Vraadir but the gravity was almost as high. With such a bountiful home base D'Sarik effectively became the ruler of an independent state - for a brief time. (When Sinistra II was formally colonised in 2224 and renamed S'Vrak after the wife of the first Grand Prince all traces of the pirate camp were vigorously removed for the sake of the the dignity of the real colonists.)

D'Sarik's fleet was composed of refitted and armoured freighters, optimistically labeled the 'Reaver-class'. Truthfully they were surprisingly impressive ships; perhaps slower than the D'Panock Ro-class corvettes used by the Navy but certainly resilient beasts. At two hundred metres from bow to stern they were nearly fifty metres longer than their government opponents and favoured coil guns, an easier armament to maintain than the lasers preferred by the Navy.

The D'Panock Ro-class corvettes made up the bulk of the Royal Baviiran Navy at this time and indeed for decades to come. Their sleek design shape was based on an aquatic predator native to Skanaa [1]. Exact weaponry was constantly being improved, from red lasers to, to blue to predominately ultra violet lasers with secondary coilgun support as were, more slowly, the other systems of the ships but the hull remained fundamentally the same for many years, a tribute to the overall excellence in design.

D'Sarik's brief but bloody reign came to an end in April 2214 when she led her fleet on an attack on the Menchib system. It proved a disastrous error as instead of concentrating on the civilian traffic the overconfident pirates struck at the outpost station itself, perhaps expecting the mere threat of violence to make the opposition crumble. Unfortunately for the Pirate Princess a Baviir outpost was well armed and armoured and the Reaver-class coil guns proved grossly insufficient. The battle ended with four wrecked pirate ships drifting powerless around Menchib II and a wingfull of survivors crammed into lifepods. The Navy arrived too late to the firefight to do more than haul the new prisoners but a few weeks later they levelled the pirate station in the Sinistra system. The Iron Talons were gone for good.

Baviir corvettes vs pirate raiders at the Battle of Skeru, 2219. Note the pirate vessel Criminally Insane exploding after multiple direct laser hits.

For the next decade the pattern would be repeated by other buccaneers whose greed outweighed their survival instincts. Cautious attacks on lone civilian ships led to an inflated sense of ego which led to an outright attack on a claimed or settled system which led to death via having one's component atoms blasted apart in a flicker of laser fire or capture, trial and execution - the Baviiri (and all their neighbours) considered piracy a capital crime. A few realised that notoriety coincided with a rapid decrease in lifespan. Even fewer managed to build up their fortunes in a series of isolated attacks then retired before justice caught up with them.

The most spectacular pirate attack of all came in September 2218 when the Scarlet Feathers, based in the Nihal system between Baviir and Till'Lynesi space raided the Skeru system itself. Or did they? Certainly the Pirate Prince B'Nookar led his ships into the Baviir home system, but given the pirate's famed trickster qualities it widely believed this was a scheme that went terribly awry rather than a suicidally overconfident planned attack. B'Nookar had likely planned to take advantage of the particularly busy in system traffic drawn by the migrating Tinyanki, which in the 2210s had begun passing directly through the Skeru space to feed on the gas giant C'Knoor to the delight of scientist and tourist alike. Unfortunately for B'Nookar an alert Skeru Patrol official saw through the fake transponders the Scarlet Feathers were using. He sent his concerns to Naval command and merry hell erupted within mere hours flight from Skanaa.

The Battle of Skeru shocked the Navy as much as the pirates. The Stellar Principality had done a good job of keeping the ships modern but was downright parsimonious about building them in serious numbers. With only five corvettes combat ready (and another hurriedly pushed into commission) the Navy had to rely on support from the system space station to carry the day. It was a closer run thing than it had any right to be and the corvette RSS Boisterous Hatchling was so badly damaged only luck and the skill of her crew allowed her to limp away to seek refuge, but in the end the Baviiri destroyed two pirate raiders and chased the rest back into the void. The following year the Baviiri sent an expedition against the base in the Nihal system - destroying the pirates just before a Till'Lynesi squadron arrived with a similar objective.

The pirate menace never seriously threatened the Great Powers, though it plagued them all. Ironically the existence of such an irritant may have helped keep the interstellar peace. Though individual pirates mostly kept to the frontiers of their race's own space they were recognised as a collective threat. The Baviiri shared information on suspected raider bases with the Vrinn and Till'Lynesi. Though the initial Golden Age was largely over by the late 2220's the legacy was, strangely, positive in some ways.

The Triechi demand of 2240 with the Baviiri reply marked in blue.

Unfortunately the weakness of these home grown threats would give the civilised states a misleading impression of their strength when another group of raiders emerged onto the scene. At the start of 2240, the Triech Freeholders, long ignored and partially forgotten launched a massive raid aimed at Baviiri space.

Afterwards much blame would fall upon everyone from the Grand Princess to the Navy to Prince P'Konori to the Hundred as a collective for rejecting the marauder demand of tribute out of hand but it is important to recall no one at the time knew the extent of Triechi strength. The Navy had grown during the previous two decades to ten corvettes and a K'Mirom-class Destroyer with a second destroyer and two more corvettes in production. Still a modest fleet but more than enough to challenge any homegrown pirates. Sadly the Triechi were quite literally a different breed of threat.

Having coerced the Ekwynians into allowing them the use of their hyperspace lanes the Triechi horde reached Baviir space at the southern system of Avalam in November 2240. The horrified observers aboard the Avalam outpost station transmitted what their sensors told them, and at first Naval command simply could not believe what they were reading. The Triechi, dismissed as brawling barbarians had sent a great and terrible fleet almost four times the strength of the entire Baviir Navy [2]!

The might of the Triechi fleet.

Naturally Avalam fell swiftly. The outpost station was crippled and stripped and the energy mines that made the system so attractive in the first place were obliterated by cannon and laser fire. Over three thousand Baviiri were either slaughtered or taken as slaves. The marauders scarcely paused before making the hyperspace jump to Grokkan, home to a mineral mining station, a science station and another woefully outgunned outpost station.

Admiral T'Maku, the same male who defeated the pirates at Skeru and Nihal had no doubts whatsoever when Reetril asked his opinion. Grokkan would suffer the same fate as Avalam and after that Zulei Cro or Kastaba by which point the enemy would slicing deep into the Stellar Principality. Throwing the Navy into battle would hurt the Triechi... at the cost of every warship under her Radiant Highness's command. It was better to ask for terms now than prolong the agony for the same result. The Grand Princess agreed and sent a personal transmission to the commander of the marauder fleet.

Given their overwhelming power the Triechi demands were almost lenient, merely twice the tribute they had originally demanded [3]. In the first month of 2241 they took their bounty and the slaves they had already taken and turned for home. The Baviiri economy was left reeling, but it's underlying strength remained and in time would recover. The real costs were more abstract than loot. Aside from the tragedy of the lost Baviiri at Avalam the Triechi raid brought an abrupt end to four decades of confident growth for the Stellar Principality and for her neighbours. There had been individual setbacks and losses and their had always been rivalries beneath the placid surface of galactic politics, but fundamental threats like war or invasion had seemed very far off to humble citizens and rulers alike. The other states might jostle for trading rights and hungrily eye unihabited, unclaimed systems but always there had been a consensus between the civilised starfaring powers. The homegrown pirates had been crushed.

Suddenly that easy confidence was gone.

Footnotes:

[1] By eerie coincidence the Till'Lynesians built a similar design from similar inspirations, further fueling the theories of those who believed the two avian species sprang from common stock.

[2] The actual technology gap was not vast, but the Triechi both had more ships and more powerful ships (cruisers.) In game terms my fleet strength was about 1.4K.

[3] 1,000 Energy Credits or almost my entire treasury.

RossN · May 1, 2018

The Baviir Stellar Principality, 2241.

Chapter Five: Foreign Affairs

After the great rush of discovery in the 2210s there would be few further alien contacts for almost two decades. The Baviiri, expanding rapidly into the largely uninhabited galactic 'west' believed either that there were no more starfaring civilisations beyond those known or, more plausibly and ultimately proven correct, that they lay too far from Skeru for rapid contact. This period of grace, stretching roughly into the mid-2230s allowed the Stellar Principality to find her feet among her existing neighbours and deal with certain uncertainties.

The Order of Curators were the first alien organisation ever known to the Baviiri and the Mishar the first sapient aliens known from anything other than fossils or mummified remains. Relations with the Curators were excellent, everyone ageed. Unfortunately the exact nature of the relationship was less certain. Initially the assumption had been that the station in the Etan Stela system was all there was; grandiose, beautiful, bustling, a city in space but ultimately home to - at absolute most - a few million Mishar. However this easy assumption had been overturned by the discovery of a second and then a third Curator station, all very close to the Baviir frontier. The new assumptions of the Mishar population were, as ever, wildly varied but at this point even the most conservative view had them as well over a million with most pushing that figure closer to ten million. Small by the standards of fourteen billion Baviiri but a genuine stable galactic civilisation.

Yet the Curators were not a normal galactic civilisation. Outside their three space stations they claimed no territory and had no recognised or recognisable borders. They had no military force. They did participate in the galactic economy, charging for the knowledge they possessed (and purchasing luxury items in small quantities as a wingful of enterprising freetraders discovered.) All three 'Curator systems' contained valuable resource be they lucrative solar energy (the yellow star Etan Stela), scientific research (Rixikar's Maw - the colourful name taken from Baviiri legend given to a stable black hole in the Umar Patch that was the easternmost charted point in the galaxy) or both (the pulsar Bijh which also had mineral rich orbiting asteroids.) Needless to say the hyperspace lanes than ran through these systems were themselves valuable, in some respects essential to Baviiri expansion.

By mutual agreement the Curator Order became an autonomous statelet within the Baviir Stellar Principality. From 2222 on the Baviiri claimed first Etan Stela, then Bijh and finally the eerie Rixikar's Maw. The Curators retained total control over their own stations and the right to sell research to foreign groups, with the caveat that anyone barred from Baviir space would not be able to avail of the Curators if only because their ships would never get within a light year of the stations. The Stellar Principality would negotiate individual research agreements and would, eventually construct a 'think tank' in their Etan Stela space station to better liaise with the Mishar.

The level of autonomy granted the Curators produced some dissent in the Hundred, less than delighted at a deal that seemed to so heavily favour the aliens. However the Grand Princess was firmly behind the agreement.

'Even should we so disgrace our great name to abandon all sense of ethics and fair play - and I must remind you the Curator Order has ever been friendly to us - what could be gained by shrieking war songs and showing sharpened talons? The Order does not hoard precious stones or metals or bar us from the cosmos.... they trade in science and knowledge, neither of which will be won from ruined stations.'

First contact with the Artisan Troupe, 2224.

In 2224 the Baviiri would be faced with a very similar situation when they encountered another independent space station on the fringes of known space [1]. Muudstram, a yellow-white dwarf star immediately 'west' of Sinistra was home to an enclave of artists from at least a dozen different species, many completely unknown to Baviir science like the desert dwelling, lavender hued fungoid Obbha, the race to which Headmaster Qaarugm belonged.

The Artisan Troupe in some respects actually fit better with established Baviir norms than the Curators. Having a troupe of talented artists, poets, performers and singers in one's pay had been a practice among the Princely and Noble families for centuries. Grand Princess Reetril simply became the patron on a grand scale of the Muudstram artists, a relationship that delighted both. Many individual Baviir, drawn by their love of beauty joined the enclave (another aspect that made dealing with the artists easier - unlike the Curator Order which was identical with the Mishar people the Artists had no one dominant race and thus no defacto status as an independent civilisation.)

After contact with the Artisan Troupe there would be no significant additions to interstellar diplomacy for a decade and when that changed many regretted it. In 2235 Till'Lynesian explorers pushing deeper into the galactic 'west' stumbled across a second group of marauders. These Otaga Star Tribes were fungoid (seemingly unrelated to the Obbha) but their disposition, culture and strength were frighteningly reminiscent of the Triechi. Naturally neither the Till'Lynesians had any sort of diplomatic relations with these brutal beings [2].

First contact with the Knatza Covenant, 2235. The Baviiri response to the transmission is highlighted in blue.

Later that same year the Till'Lysensians travelled beyond the the Otagans into the far west of the galaxy and made contact with a star faring civilisation as the other powers understood it. Through their sister Avians the Baviiri learned of the Knatza Covenant.

The Knatzans were large reptilians rivaling the Ekwynians for sheer size if not quite resilience. On their cold homeworld they had evolved a keen agrarian instinct, though a culture wide degree of wastefulness that would have appalled a Vrinn and even given Baviir pause negated much of this.

It is fair to say that the immediate reaction between the Knatzans and what can now be called the 'Eastern Powers' (Till'Lysensians, Baviiri, Vrinn and the Ekwynians) was a mixture of surprise, confusion and disdain. Slavery, abhorrent to the Knatzans, was universally practiced by the Eastern Powers, though in practice in ranged from the mere indentured servitude of the Baviiri to the chattel slavery of the Ekwynians. The Knatzans were a republic. All of the Eastern Powers had autocratic systems of government. The Knatzans were profoundly religious. The Eastern Powers were either outright materialists or at least viewed faith as a private matter rather than a key component for the state. Fortunately the Knatzans professed a strong horror of violence which combined with their sheer distance made war unlikely, no matter how much incomprehension existed on both sides.

First contact with the Imperium of Koros, 2237. The Baviiri response to the transmission is highlighted in blue.

Two years later in 2237 the Baviiri would learn of another distant empire, which the RSS Peculiar Hatchling encountered during her long expedition into the galactic 'south' to locate the Ancient Alliance Armada [3]. These aliens came from the Imperium of Koros.

The Korosians, horned tundra dwellers similar in body shape to the Mishar, Vrinn and Triechi at once struck a chord with the first Baviiri to encounter them. They were a hereditary monarchy (the first such the Baviir had discovered) at the time ruled by an empress, they took a similar view of the universe and they had a certain hard to clarify charisma and manner. That the states did not come to an alliance was due to the simple tyranny of distance, which made even trading difficult -it took a Baviir ship three years to reach Korosian space and doing so involved either a lonely trek through uninhabited, unclaimed space or a journey through the Ekwynian Bloc, at a time of poor relations between the Baviiri and the Ekwynians [4].

First contact with the Pouz-Jok Sacred Council, 2239. The Baviiri response to the transmission is highlighted in blue.

In early 2239 the Baviiri established contact with a second spiritualist empire. The Pouz-Jok Sacred Council lay to the west of Baviir space, far closer than the Knatzans and neighbouring the Otagan Star Tribes.

The existence of a starfaring empire in this area had been suspected by the Baviiri for some time through rumours of unidentified merchant shipping and the reports of Till'Lysensi scouts. That actual contact took so long and took place after contact with the more distant Knatzans was curious, but during this period the Baviiri generally relied on the Till'Lysensi to explore the galactic west. A series of near-disasters with a region that seemed to swarm with ancient mining drones and the shocking loss of the RSS Nimble Hatchling with all souls aboard in 2233 at the weapons of a bizarre and unidentifiable alien 'star fortress' in the Hyrma system had dampened the enthusiasm for exploration in that direction.

The Pouz-Joks in some ways resembled the Knatzans. Physically they were powerful, horned creatures from a frigid planet, standing at two and half metres tall - a worthy counterpart to the Ekwynians. Unlike the scaled Knatzans the Pouz-Joks were mammalians, and their faith was closer to a strong form of ancestor worship than the vast and to outsiders confusing (to foreigners) pantheon observed by the Knatzans. The Pouz-Jok leader, the Chief Precentor was the first among equals of a priestly elite.

The Grand Princess, when picking an envoy to send to the newest of her foreign headaches sought her representative from the ranks of the Princely families most known for their devotion to the Divine Three. Though practicing a different religion it seemed wiser to send one who understood and had faith to a theocracy.

The emergence of factionalism in the Stellar Principality, circa 2237.

Meanwhile the Stellar Principality had to deal with her familiar neighbours. The divide between the Grand Princess and the Exalted Advisor over whether to favour the Till'Lysensi or the Vrinn rumbled on out of public view during this entire period.

Grand Princess Reetril and Prince P'Konori were not far apart in age and both could very well recall the louche regime Her Radiant Highness had succeeded. The Exhalted Advisor respected the monarch's cunning, her charm and her energy which the passing years did little to dim. Reetril admired P'Konori's stability, glacial calmness, powerful intellect and ability to work with the vanities of the Hundred. Still they were at heart very different people with their own goals many of which did not quite align. From the beginning there had been a mutual... mistrust is too strong a term but certainly uncertainty. The Grand Princess had begun her reign with a gamble that P'Konori would never have taken had he worn the robes and diadem of state and perched on the Azure Throne [5].

By the late 2230s two factions had formed in the Hundred: the Obedience, Loyalty and Duty Vanguard and the Xeno Liberty Watch. Very broadly conservatives and isolationists flocked to P'Konori, including a majority of Princely families. Liberals and xenophiles tended to support the Grand Princess. While she could not be called an egalitarian in any real sense Reetril was seen to have a soft spot for outsiders and her championing of the Enclaves had been a great victory earlier in her reign.

With the Till'Lysensians and the Vrinn the factions almost reversed positions; the normally xenophile Reetril's personal distaste for the Till'Lysensians ran into the coolblooded pragmatism of her Exalted Advisor. The Grand Princess found dealing with the Baviir sister avians a trying business. Her brand of personal diplomacy was ill suited to the dull feathered and dull toned Till'Lysensians. She certainly had no interest in war but saw no difficulty with claiming the mineral and energy rich 'north east' frontier that lay between the two empires. Should the Primarch not like it, well that was unfortunate but survivable.

Prince P'Konori was not a gambler and he was not vivacious. Some, unkindly, felt the introverted P'Konori was near enough to a Till'Lysensi himself. Be that as it may he knew in a way the Grand Princess did not that the Till'Lysensians would be easier to win and keep as friends than the Vrinn. He realised that no matter how distasteful the Till'Lysensians could be in person familiarity could breed tolerance and he suspected that for many Baviiri the possible evolutionary and cultural link between the two avian species mattered. More to the point the Vrinn were involved with a rivalry with the Ekwynians and P'Konori wanted no part of any future war there. In contrast the most important diplomatic relationship the Till'Lysensians had would always be with the Baviiri. Their borders ran alongside no other state. The Exalted Advisor could count on the support of most of the Hundred save the royal dynasty ultraloyalists. Most of the Princes were anxious to gain control over foreign affairs and even many in the Xeno Liberty Watch found the monarch's views on this fault line unhelpful.

The events of the 2230s seemed to favour P'Konori's view. The Vrinn, suffering the impact of overpopulation and limited resources were forced to sign trade deals with the Baviiri more than once simply to stave off famine. The Till'Lysensians practically fell over themselves to agree to research treaties including passing on sensor information (the source of the Baviiri information on and ultimately contact with the Western Powers.) Very reluctantly the Grand Princess was persuaded to leave the north east to the sister avian state (though they proved slow to claim it.) Reetril, gambler though she was, had no desire to force an open break with P'Konori. She was growing old and her son and heir the Crown Prince Kreemak, himself well past sixty, would likely take the Azure Throne soon. She had no intention of leaving it to him in the middle of a constitutional crisis. Of course P'Konori was old too...

The spectacular intervention of the Triechi shook the Stellar Principality to its foundations. The Grand Princess took much of the public blame but P'Konori and the Hundred (who had backed the defiant stance against barbarian pirate scum) were unable to capitalise on it. In the disarray of 2241 there were no winners.

The only thing everyone could agree to was that the Navy needed to be drastically strengthened.

The known galaxy, 2241.

Footnotes:

[1] In actual fact I encountered three but both XuraCorp (in the Capella system) and the Muutagan Merchant Guild (in the very distant Leesak system) have no real part to play yet and are not in my territory as of 2241.

[2] No first contact transmissions from the Otagans and I have no reason to contact them.

[3] Of which much more soon.

[4] The Ekwynians have the the second lowest relations with me (a +7) due a combination of policy differences and border friction. The Knatzans are the only 'normal' civilisation (ie. not Marauders) with an outright negative view of the Baviiri.

[5] The Baviiri do not need clothes in the same way humans do; their feathers provide insulation and preserve personal modesty. However they are very aware of appearance and extremely status concious and, aside from both sexes strongly favouring jewelry, loose, diaphronous exquisitely expensive garments are often worn about the person for those of rank. (Naturally certain occupations require protective outfits in which case the Baviiri, not being stupid, don such attire.)

RossN · May 5, 2018

Known space in 2235 when the first expedition to find the Lost Fleet was launched. The location of the Enuis system is marked by the blue box.

Chapter Six: Legends of a Lost Fleet

The first stories of an ancient lost fleet dated from the earliest years of exploration. In late 2206 R'Tanoka had uncovered an alien monolith on Sinistra II (later the pirate colony of the Iron Talons, later still the legitimate Baviir colony of S'Vrak.) The deciphered pictographs had told a strange and dark tale of treachery and defeat and a vast battle in space between once allied starships. The monolith left a faint trail across the cosmos in the faint transmissions between the monolith beacon and the drifting wrecks of the ancient starships. The Baviiri were intrigued, but not much more. The battlefield was many light years away, beyond the technology of the time and the government was understandably more interested in local space than exploring derelicts in a distant corner of the galaxy.

However the story of the 'Ancient Alliance Armada' or the 'Lost Fleet' as it was also known never quite died away altogether. There was something darkly romantic about the story that seized the imagination. Baviir visual and literary fiction of the 2220s, when it wasn't focused on star piracy, lovingly depicted chance discoveries of alien ship graveyards. A number even combined the two with the repentant fray feathered ex-pirate whispering myths of ghost ships in seedy drinking dens swiftly becoming a stock figure.

The first actual attempt to track down the Ancient Armada did not come until the 2230s. At the time the Stellar Principality was beginning to run up against barriers to her westward expansion. A seemingly endless reach of systems overflowing with minerals, energy and scientific importance revealed itself to be often full of strange and vicious monsters or mindless robotic automatons carrying out the orders of dead and forgotten empires. The worst incident was in 2233 when the RSS Nimble Hatchling ventured into the Hixam system. At the time this was the westernmost space known to the Baviiri, far beyond the then frontier.

R'Tanoka was no longer the brash young fledgling who had led the first expedition to the cosmos, but even in her seventh decade she was still driven by insatiable wanderlust. From the 2220s on she had done more than anyone to push the boundaries of known space in the galactic west, making first contact with the Artisans Troupe and discovering the ruined 'Dyson Sphere' around Darep among many other adventures. In 2233 the Nimble Hatchling had very few veterans left of her early voyages, most having long since moved on. The ship herself had been refitted internally and externally twice over her thirty year lifespan. R'Tanoka was the one constant.

Hyrma turned out to be guarding a dark and dreadful secret; an immense and dark fortress in space grander by far than the orbiting city stations of the Mishar. In a blast of hideous weapon fire R'Tanoka and her gallant crew were sent to join the heavenly flocks of the Divine Three.

On Skanaa the Grand Princess, who had known R'Tanoka for almost forty years broke down weeping at the news and it was left to Crown Prince Kreemak to make the empire wide announcement. There was a wave of grief at the death of the greatest explorer the Baviiri had ever produced. The entire Stellar Principality entered a week of public mourning and Reetril promoted R'Tanoka's widow to the Hundred, an unheard of honour for a mere member of the the Merchant caste with no connections to an existing Princely family. Prince P'Konori, despite his growing distance from the monarch supported the move wholeheartedly.

There were a few tentative suggestions of a revenge expedition to Hyrma but Admiral T'Maku bluntly informed the government that such a strike would be tantamount to suicide and the Curators reacted with equal horror at the notion when asked [1]. No Baviir ship or ships would enter the Hixam system for many decades to come.

Even before the Hixam tragedy the Stellar Principality had begun to look for a successor for the aging R'Tanoka. B'Kurra was a thirty four year old gray-blue plumed male from Surune, one of the northernmost cities on Skanaa. Hatched a Noble of the Second Class from a family traditionally clients to the Kronak Princely clan the young B'Kurra was not anyone's idea of an explorer. Though he was intelligent and bold he was far more interested in a naval career and only lost out on the captaincy of a corvette as a casualty of the delicate feuds the Princely families played with each other; B'Kurra had been 'asked' to step aside for the favoured daughter of one of the Hundred. As a consolation prize he had been made first officer on the Nimble Hatchling before accepting a command of his own, mere weeks before his old captain met her fate at Hixam [2].

B'Kurra was not popular. Everyone considered him a first class mind and he captained the RSS Peculiar Hatchling with skill and grace but the bitterness and aloofness that had haunted him since he was 'cheated' of a naval command never left him. Later in his career he developed an addiction to Tilarue spiced violet wine, though this did not become common knowledge within his lifetime [3]. In any case after the death of R'Tanoka the Grand Princess and the Hundred grew nervous about the idea of all their hopes residing in one explorer. Before the end of the year the Peculiar Hatchling would have a sister ship in the Animated Hatchling and B'Kurra a colleague and rival in L'Kiri.

L'Kiri was older than B'Kurra - he was forty two in 2233 - but in every respect seemed the younger of the two. A golden feathered member of the Merchant class he had been hatched and reared on Skanaa but had moved as little more than a fledgling to the newly founded colony of D'Vraadir. Though not a colonial in the sense of having grown up on an alien world (that generation was still too young to come to prominence) L'Kiri embodied many of the attributes of those Baviiri that settled the frontier; adventurous, imaginative and less beholden to the old certainties of the caste system. L'Kiri was proud of his Merchant roots and that he had learned to fly with the Freetraders but he was far more carefree about these humble origins than B'Kurra or even R'Tanoka. He would ultimately be the one who discovered the Lost Fleet.

After Hyrma there was a sudden drive to recover the missing ships. The Baviiri had recently begun designing destroyers and there had been a swing towards the Navy in political circles. This was still years before the Marauders made their weight known but Admiral T'Maku persuasively argued that given the dangers explorers faced the Stellar Principality needed a stronger Navy. Perhaps the fabled wrecks traced so long ago could hold some valuable secrets?

Though aborted by necessity the Animated Hatchling's first scans of the battlefield yielded remarkable results.

The challenges faced by the Animated Hatchling were staggering. The theoretical location of the battlefield was the Enuis system, three years distant from Baviir space even with the more advanced hyperdrives of the 2230s. To reach that system L'Kiri would have to travel through the Ekwynian Bloc, skirting the western frontier of Triechi space and then on through the cosmic void of uncharted space, all in the hopes of reaching ships that might have decayed into floating specks of rust over the centuries or already been seized by some as yet unknown empire. Remarkably he and his crew managed without a single casualty and found the battlefield. Unfortunately they found something else.

The bizarre creatures termed 'space amoebae' had been sighted by Baviir ships before 2237 and L'Kiri was able to escape to hyperspace before the beast attacked the Animated Hatchling. It was simply terrible luck a nest of the monsters were orbiting Enuis. Still L'Kiri had not earned his captaincy lightly and before his retreat his scans told him enough. The starship graveyard floating around Enuis was the fleet he had been looking for and it might be possible to salvage some of the ships, provided the crews were available. A military expedition could manage it and would be able to brush past the space amoebae should it remain in the area.

Unfortunately it would prove many years before such a mission could be mounted. In 2240, the same year L'Kiri returned to Baviir space, the Triechi launched their raid. The immediate aftermath saw confusion, disagreement and despair and any thought of a major military expedition a third of the way across the galaxy was abandoned. The death of Prince P'Konori in early 2243 and the difficulty in finding a successor delayed matters still further, as did the pollen crisis on the tropical colony world of K'Mhakreer [4]. It would not be until 2245, almost a decade after the original voyage of the Animated Hatchling began that ten corvettes under the personal command of T'Maku began the trek to the Enuis system. The expeditionary fleet was named the 'Y'Ysonni Star Flock' in honour of first Baviir to circumnavigate Skanaa.

Finally at the very beginning of 2248 T'Maku's ships arrived at their destination, to the immense relief of the corvette captains coping with swollen crews of engineers, xenobiologists, marines and hundreds of other 'passengers' crammed into their hulls. Their job was to see what could be salvaged and then bring it all the way back to Skeru. The next five months were ones of feather plucking tension as the experts worked with machinery that was not only centuries if not millennia old but made by totally unknown beings.

Against all odds they succeeded.

From the wreckage floating around the Enuis system the Baviiri managed to resurrect six warships. And what ships!

The Lost Fleet (and Baviir corvettes) in action at Jangal. L. to r: Valiant Hatchling, Pertinacious Hatchling, Splentic Hatchling, Ferocious Hatchling, Ominous Hatchling & Supercilious Hatchling.

The smallest vessel recovered was tentatively labelled a corvette in size and power though the ship, shaped like some bizarre cross between an egg and a soft bodied sea invertebrate bore scant resemblance to Baviir designs. The RSS Pertinacious Hatchling (nicknamed the 'Ocean Egg' by her new crew) had been a Seeker-class corvette according to the best translations of her computer records. Her original crew came from an otherwise unknown ocean dwelling arthropod species. While not overwhelmingly more potent than Baviir designs she was remarkably fast, though her prize crew took a long time to get used to the interiors, built for scuttling, water loving creatures.

If the Pertinacious Hatchling was the smallest salvaged vessel the largest in every way was the immense RSS Ferocious Hatchling, a thousand metre long, two hundred metre wide behemoth belonging, judging by computer records, to a race akin to the Mishar or perhaps the ancient Mishar themselves. The Ferocious Hatchling was the largest starship the Baviiri had ever encountered, yet her bulk was deceptive. The 'Crystal Giant' as she was nicknamed was powerful and her autocannons unknown to the Stellar Principality but she was curiously inefficiently designed, lacking shields entirely and scarcely better in engine capacity than the new (much smaller) Baviir destroyers. After careful thought T'Maku classified her as a destroyer despite her size and suggested in his report that she was possibly a converted civilian freighter with weapons and armour hastily added.

Still, despite her shortcomings the Ferocious Hatchling won the affection of her Baviir restorers. Her size was a weapon of intimidation of all of itself and internally she was both easier to crew and more comfortable to live in than the 'Ocean Egg'.

The dagger shaped RSS Splentic Hatchling was also rated as a destroyer. Faster and more conventionally armed than the Ferocious Hatchling she lacked the sheer mass of armour employed by her giant counterpart, though her shields made much of the difference. The 'Golden Dagger'once crewed by people visually somewhat similar to the Triechi, though hairless and possessing antennae, was not entirely divorced in shape and size from Baviiran destroyer designs, albeit more advanced. She made an effective and striking looking addition to the fleet.

Far less conventional looking were the 'Twins': the RSS Ominous Hatchling and the RSS Supercilious Hatchling, belonging to an unidentified mammalian race. The only case of one design - a Voidstalker-class cruiser according to translations - being represented by more than one vessel the 'Twins' were more powerful than anything the Baviiri had and retroactively were termed the first true cruisers used by the Navy. Their conventional hulls were a mere two hundred metres long, not all that much bigger than a corvette and only two thirds the scale of a Baviir destroyer. However appearances proved deceptive; the main hulls were almost entirely dedicated to living space, sensors and weaponry with the power plants, shields and engines in the vast 'starboard' circular 'sun shields'. This made them far less cramped than any native Baviir warship. The'Twins' immediately captured the Baviir affection and interest - they were unusual looking without being ugly or strange (unlike the 'Ocean Egg'), they were comfortable and they were powerful warships. Together with the 'Crystal Giant' the 'Twins' would prove the most popular ships with the public once the fleet finally returned home in 2250.

The most popular but not the most powerful. That honour went to the RSS Valiant Hatchling or the 'Black Sword'. Her size, at a little over three hundred metres was not that impressive but her shields, her energy weapons and her speed outshone all competitors - T'Maku, a cool headed officer if ever one existed thought her more deadly than all his corvettes put together or even the 'Twins' working in tandem. Who built the alien cruiser was a total mystery. Unlike the other ships her computer core records had been completely wiped clean and no trace of her former occupants could be found in her gleaming corridors, though they appeared to have had compatible life systems as the Baviiri. Combined with the sleek otherness of her exterior the 'Black Sword' at once became an eerie and uncomfortable design. Her crew could not deny her potency, but there was a vague sense of unease many felt aboard her as if ghosts lingered just at the edge of sight and sound.

T'Maku began the long journey back home in mid-2248. He would be slightly delayed in his return by his decision to hunt the space amoebae currently at large in the Jangal system (technically on the route back to Baviir space but still a detour from the absolute direct route.) Strictly speaking he was following procedure; the giant hostile creatures were seen as a threat to interstellar shipping and this particular one was almost certainly the same as the beast that had chased away the Animated Hatchling in the Enuis system all those years ago. The real reason was that he wanted to test his new/old ships in battle and they and their crews did not disappoint.

In December 2250 the Y'Ysonni Star Flock emerged from hyperspace at Avalam, the first port of call on the Baviir/Ekwynian border and newly rebuilt since the Marauder raid. Grand Prince Kreemak himself and many of the Hundred had flocked to the obscure station to witness the homecoming; billions more Baviiri on Skanaa or the three colony worlds watched through newsvid. All felt the surge of awe and pride as the alien vessels dropped into realspace and their Baviir crew started transmitting.

The Lost Fleet was lost no longer.

Admiral T'Maku returns to Baviir space, 2250.

Footnotes:

[1] I did ask and the Curators told me my current fleet had no chance. Based on my helplessness against the Marauders I am inclined to trust them both in-universe and out.

[2] Noticing how old R'Tanoka was growing I did recruit a second explorer and a second science ship shortly before I lost the Nimble Hatchling. It was still a shock the way she died however.

[3] B'Kurra's background was as a Military Theory Specialist and he acquired the 'substance abuser' trait in the 2250s.

[4] P'Konori died at a time when my finances were still recovering from the Marauder raid and I wasn't able to afford a replacement Governor for two years. The pollen crisis happened and eventually resolved itself on my (then) newest colony, a tropical world in the Gomesia system to the immediate south east of Heka.

RossN · May 9, 2018

Chapter Seven: Grand Prince Kreemak I

Prince Kreemak (as he was at hatching) was the eldest of four children that Reetril produced. Physically he always resembled his father more than his mother. His plumage was blue gray, not without its charms but less classically resplendent than his mother. His finest features were his much admired wing feathers, uncommonly long and strong; most of the Baviiri could glide short distances unless grossly overweight but Kreemak belonged to those lucky few who could with grace and skill remain aloft for more than a few moments.

When Kreemak was twenty four Reetril took the Azure Throne and he became Crown Prince, a title he would hold for almost two thirds of his life. As heir his official duties were few, outside any bouts of extended illness for the monarch and Reettril was robustly healthy. The position of the Crown Prince (or Crown Princess) was a lacuna in Baviir political life, at once honoured and constrained. He was not a Prince of the Hundred with all the authority both official and unofficial that accompanied that post. In practice many heirs to the Azure Throne had whiled away lives in pleasure. Reetril herself had never been Crown Princess; as mere sibling of the monarch and thus technically a lowly Princess of the Second Rank she had enjoyed more freedom than her own son ever did and had been able to build her own powerbase.

The Baviir elite tended to be personally loving parents, and provide fine educations to their offspring but were famously reluctant to cede any authority to their children. The head of family, male or female, enjoyed immense power. The same iron hard pressure for personal status meant any responsibility traded away, even to a loyal and trusted fledgling diminished the individual in some respects and the higher in society one rose the more true this became. Grand Princess Reetril had more status to lose than anyone and so was reluctant to grant her offspring any true power. Kreemak held many ceremonial titles during his more than four decades waiting for the throne but the closest to an actual job he held was as the personal representative of the Grand Princess to the Artisans Enclave from 2227 to 2235. This wasn't quite a sinecure - beauty, grace and cultural refinement carried enormous cachet in Baviir life and the Grand Princess took her role as patron of the arts with utter sincerity - but nor was it was a full ambassadorship to a foreign court.

Many previous heirs had devolved into mindless sybarites in similar circumstances but Kreemak was made of sterner stuff. The Crown Prince made an effort to keep abreast of foreign affairs and internal matters and he could be remarkably keen sighted; he was one of the first to see the roots of what would eventually become the Great Slave Crisis of the 2250s. His time on the Artisans Enclave gave him the opportunity to interact with a dozen different species and he gained a life long interest in and appreciation for alien life. The true turning point in Kreemak's life came with the discovery of the wisdom of Telisa the Teller of Tales on the uninhabited world of Norgon V on the south western frontier of the Stellar Principality.

The discovery of the Telisan Tales in 2244.

The true identity of Telisa was an enigma. The most that could be gleamed from her surviving texts was that she was female and came from a culture not entirely unlike the modern Baviir one. Some devout (and optimistic) Baviir Telisans portrayed her as an Avian, citing both the existence of the modern Baviiri and Till'Lysensians and the enigmatic and ancient Juvan civilisation, a fragment of which still lingered in the galactic north. Other theories held her to be a Reshethi, a Mishar or from some unknown and now vanished race [1]. Regardless the documents in her name inspired many Baviiri, including the Crown Prince. Though there was certainly a quasi-religious strand to Telisan philosophy it was not in itself incompatible with worship of the Divine Three. For Kreemak and others it offered a way out of the cutthroat world of squabbling Princes, an ideal of unity and spirituality to strive towards.

Telisanism did not sweep across the Stellar Principality en masse; though it certainly grew in popularity it remained a minority philosophy and faith (there was an - at this stage amicable - debate between those Telisans who saw Telisa as a wise but mortal philosopher to be honoured as those who saw her a quasi-divine figure to be worshiped.) The Teller of Tales was most popular among those Baviir with extremely extensive contact with alien life. The Crown Prince was one such example but she also gained favour with freetraders and those Baviiri who had enrolled in the Artisans Enclave. She was less popular among the older Princely families who disdained a foreign philosopher and potential threat to their power.

The Telisan Edict of 2246, one of Kreemak's first acts as Grand Prince. Though it was far from establishing a state religion it did outline the monarch's personal beliefs.

Kreemak's philosophical shift came at a time when the Stellar Principality badly needed new leadership. Prince P'Konori was dead and his successor, the youthful Prince L'Matreek was a talented farmer and an amiable support but a political lightweight. The Grand Princess herself was beginning to show signs of wear; her leadership had never quite recovered from the shock of the Triechi raid and sheer old age prevented her from mounting a determined public relations offensive. Nevertheless she clung on stubbornly. As late the start of 2246 there were plans for her to conduct a personal tour of the colonies, but ill intervened.

The Grand Princess passed away in her sleep on 2 December 2246 at the age of ninety four. The end, when it came was peaceful, almost inappropriate a fate for one who had been a fighter and a gambler her entire life. At the time Kreemak and his consort had been attending a concert of Glide Dancers performing their delicate and ancient art in the Tilarue Mountains. Upon being told of his mother's passing the new monarch wept openly and departed for the palace. He requested his own daughter Yeedik (now Crown Princess) remain at the concert to honour the artistry of the Glide Dancers. The Koriik took nothing more seriously than their responsibility towards the arts.

At first there was simple public disbelief that Reetril was gone, despite her great age and known waning health. She had been there so long and presided over such an unimaginable shift in Baviir life. When she took the Azure Throne there had been eight billion Baviiri crammed onto one moon. When she died that had become thirty eight billion Baviiri (and six billion 'High Robots') on four inhabited worlds. The Stellar Principality controlled a total of thirty seven solar systems and her merchant marine had a presence in every starport save the Marauders and the Juvan Shard. Though there had been failures there had been greatness and it was the latter that would be remembered. As Kreemak said in his first speech from the Azure Throne:

'My mother was a great leader. We have had great males and females before but her greatness was new. She was explorer... the people were her love but the stars her dream and though she has joined the Ancestral Flock the dream lives still...'

The Baviir Stellar Principality at the time of the death of Grand Princess Reetril (December 2246.)

Even as Grand Princess Reetril was cremated with all due ceremony and her ashes cast into the embrace of the Wind as her forebears had been before her a host of problems and issues clamoured around Kreemak. The business of state ground on and with Prince L'Matreek a relatively weak Exalted Advisor (though he would grow into his role in time) the new Grand Prince would have to deal with everything himself. Fortunately for Kreemak the leader of the Obedience, Loyalty and Duty Vanguard ('His Radiant Highness's Loyal Opposition') was absent. Admiral T'Maku was on his long term expedition to recover the Lost Fleet. With P'Konori dead and T'Maku the reactionary wing of the Hundred was - temporarily - leaderless.

Kreemak was, as his mother before him, patron of the Xeno Liberty Watch and if anything more liberal and xenophile than she had been. Unlike Reetril he had no specific objections to the Till'Lysensians though he stopped short of signing an outright defence pact [2]. During the early 2240s the dying P'Konori had persuaded the reluctant Grand Princess to sign a migration treaty with the other Avians. Both had been somewhat cynical in their motives - the Till'Lysensians hailed from an ocean dominated world and found Baviiri planets dry making mass immigration unlikely - but Kreemak was sincerely enthusiastic. Though it would not be until very late in his reign that the Baviiri began colonising an ocean world (Mira III) and though significant changes would not be seen for two decades it was under Grand Prince Kreemak that the Stellar Principality began to shift to a true multi-species state.

In the mid-2240s the Stellar Principality directly bordered three other powers: the Regime of Vrinnus and the Ekwynian Bloc to the south and the Till'Lysensi Hierarchy to the north. That left three possible avenues of expansion for the Baviiri. The north west, running through the Capella system (officially unclaimed but home to a powerful merchant enclave) risked opening up a rivalry with the Till'Lysensians. The south west was also largely unclaimed and explorations during this decade revealed it to be a rich source of minerals and energy but it did mean drawing close to the dreaded Triechi. Then there was the west proper, a mixed frontier of opportunity and danger. It would be from this direction that the first serious problem came to the new monarch.

The known galaxy, 2246. The Resheti Ancients are the teal coloured state in the northwest while their sister stagnant ascendancy the Juvan Shard are the grey-green state in the north.

The Reshethi Ancients had been discovered in 2243, though many Baviiri strongly suspected the reptilian sapients had long had knowledge of all their neighbours. The Reshethi were an intensely old civilisation, once more widespread in the galaxy but still formidable and their technology was far in advance of anything the Baviiri or any of their sister states had ever encountered (the Juvans, contacted at almost the same time were suspected of being equal age and power but their paranoid isolation prevented any meaningful contact.) Their space lay in the far west of the galaxy, beyond the Pouz-Jok Sacred Council.

Like the Vrinn the Reshethi were situated in a geographically small but densely populated area - in 2246 the best estimates put the Reshethi populace at some seventy billion. The Reshethi were not Avians but they resembled the Baviiri in some ways; they tended towards natural intelligence and talent and their preferred atmosphere (the type described as 'continental' by Skanaan scientists) was closer to the Baviiri than even the Till'Lysensians.

From the beginning the Baviiri had been uncertain how to approach the Reshethi. Of course the Stellar Principality had long established links with the Order of Curators, a body of similar age but a society of millions based across three large space stations could not reasonably compare with a vast stellar empire. Freetraders who approached Reshethi space - a small number of optimists who were willing to make a long trek across much uncharted space - were turned away but their reception was not hostile. The Reshethi had taken a benign interest in the younger races and in May 2248 they officially approached the Stellar Principality via newsvid transmission.

The Reshethi request of 2248. The Baviir response is highlighted in blue.

Grand Prince Kreemak's refusal of the Reshethi request would in retrospect be called the defining moment of his reign, beyond even his support for Telisanism, the discovery of the Lost Fleet, the colonisation of Mira III or the Slave Crisis of the 2250s. It baffled many observers of the time. Why had this xenophile monarch, the memories of the Triechi raid still fresh in his mind refuse a request from a friendly and powerful empire?

The Grand Prince's sole public comment on the issue was that the Baviiri 'belong in the Baviir Stellar Principality' - a statement generally taken to mean the state could not afford to see so many of her best and brightest depart. It went down well with the public and the Hundred and the monarch enjoyed a surge in popular support, even if some of his conventional supporters in the Xeno Liberty Watch felt surprise and dismay. However it was perhaps not the only reason.

The almost four years between the death of Grand Princess Reetril and Admiral T'Maku's return to Baviir space saw Kreemak at the height of his personal power, with no real alternate locus of power in the Stellar Principality. The Grand Prince was not a megalomaniac and his age even then had burnt away much of the drive of youth but he was aware of how unusual this state of affairs was. By personally making a strong an immediate response the Grand Prince was able to make the Hundred the follower rather than the leader, a lesson that would leave memories even when T'Maku returned and some power inevitably drifted back to the Princely Houses. These political instincts were not limited to the Hundred. Kreemak probably did not forsee the Slave Crisis in the form it ended up but he likely had a shrewd guess that social upheaval was coming and had no desire to worsen it by sending indentured Baviiri to a foreign power.

Another aspect, less commented on, was the truly unfortunate timing of the Reshethi request. The Stellar Principality had recently begun studying plans for an Alien Zoo (ultimately built to great fanfare on D'Vraadir in 2255) and had begun a decade long search for specimens for the Skanaa Museum of Exobiology. In such circumstances the Reshethi request, even if not intended as such, came across as a humiliating equivalence of the Baviir with the likes of the non-sapient Tarblacs or Zulcor. Reetril herself might have had difficulty saying no in such a climate.

Whatever the full reasoning the Reshethi were left unhappy and closed their borders to the Baviir for over a decade.

The Vrinn offer of 2258 increased cultural links between the states and gave the Baviiri a further tantalising glimpse of their predecessors.

It would be unjust to say the second half of Kreemak's reign was uneventful but much of the great events that took place either had earlier roots (such as the recovery of the Lost Fleet) or would remain unresolved until the next reign (such as the Slave Crisis.) Kreemak's thirteen years in power consolidated the empire his mother had left him, gently pushing the frontier outwards. The state regained much of the wealth lost to the Triechi and backed by the ships delivered by T'Maku the Baviiri felt safe, or at least as safe as one could be in the same galaxy as the Triechi. The Grand Prince never had the singular charm of his mother and he was by instinct and experience more cautious but that same mild and unthreatening personality enabled him to juggle foreign relations with skill. A cultured individual and an increasingly devout follower of Telisa the Teller of Tales Kreemak was fascinated by the secrets of the cosmos. It was under his leadership that the Vrinn were persuaded to sell some of their priceless Vultaum artifacts.

Kreemak died of natural causes in November 2260 a few weeks short of his eighty fifth birthday. He was popular and there was much mourning across the Stellar Principality and his funeral was attended by dignitaries from friendly foreign powers. Few thought of him as great compared to his vivid mother and it was widely felt he had come to the Azure Throne too late in life. His supporters however would argue that the dignity and stability of a caretaker monarch had done the state good and that history would be kind.

Fittingly Kreemak's funeral mingled elements of traditional Baviiran faith and Telisan philosophy: prayers were whispered to the Divine Three for his soul and he was cremated but his ashes were not cast to the Wind. Instead they were taken by starship beyond the orbit of Skanaa or even Skeru and released to drift in the Cosmos.

Footnotes:

[1] The Juvan Shard and the Reshethi Ancients are Stagnant Empires to the north west and west of the Stellar Principality, both discovered in the early 2240s. The Juvans, a savanna living Avian race of Militant Isolationists have only contacted the Stellar Principality to announce the closure of their borders.

[2] I admit I was also unwilling to sacrifice the Influence at this point.

RossN · May 25, 2018

Grand Princess Yeedik in 2260.

Chapter Eight: Yeedik takes the throne

Slavery in one form or another had a long history among the Baviiri. Chattel slavery was no longer practiced by the middle of the Twentieth Century but in its place indentured servitude - serfdom essentially - and debt slavery continued into the era of interstellar travel.

The Baviiri caste system was complex and in certain specialised areas had always been more flexible than might first appear as adoption allowed a degree of social mobility. From the Fourteenth Century onward the Merchant Caste (originally above only actual slaves) had in practice risen up the ranks due to their rising wealth an influence. During the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century as technological advances and social disruption brought about during the Unification Wars the traditional system broke all but down and many Noble families - the backbone of the military at the time and later - were ruined. At this point the hard distinction between the Nobles and Merchants blurred; Merchants looking to advance socially and Nobles looking to save themselves financially had interbred and intermixed.

With the triumph of the Koriik Dynasty the system had stabilised into a modified caste system. At the very top were the royal family and the Princes of the Hundred, wielding political power. A Princely Family was itself composed of direct family members - generally a single serving Prince or Princess of the First Rank and up to a dozen Princes(ses) of the Second Rank - and 'clients' interlinked with the family either through history, more distant blood connection or both. This was where the Nobles and Merchants came in. Nobles were those who were not directly part of a Princely family but could claim descent at some point from such a family. They enjoyed several social privileges and tended to possess family wealth but their political power was highly limited, except to the extent that they composed an unofficial 'interested bloc' inside the wider Princely family. Most adoptions in Princely families tended to come from the Noble ranks.

Merchants could not claim a direct blood link with a Princely family but in practice many were not terribly different from their Noble counterparts, including forming unofficial pressure groups in the families. Unaffilated Merchant families (including the increasingly famous freetraders) were a heterogeneous section of the population composed of everything from the very newly wealthy to those unlucky enough to have been affiliated with fallen Princely families. In the dizzying economic conditions of the Twenty Third Century the Merchants were at once the most at risk and the most gain from rapid expansion into the cosmos.

Finally there were the Farmers and the Slaves (or serfs). Traditionally mining, a filthy and dangerous profession (especially for the Baviiri who by biology and mentality were poorly suited to such work) was done in great part by debtor slaves. However the introduction of first powered exoskeletons and then and more importantly advanced robots in the early years of Reetril's reign had changed all that. Between about 2212 and 2230 all the toil in mines of Skanaa and her colonies came to be done by robots [1]. Though not free to run the advantages of machinery were obvious. The result was a rapid decline in the proportion of Baviiri in bondage. Though robots were not (yet) capable of taking over duties in the agricultural sector the expectation was that it was only a matter of time.

On paper indentured servitude worked well with the rapid colonisation of alien planets; the poor were offered a ticket off bustling increasingly overpopulated Skanaa for the excitement and opportunity of the frontier filtered through a period of work in the service of the Princely family that had provided shipping costs for them. In practice it ran into a lot of problems. The population of the Stellar Principality grew enormously but there was, at least in the Twenty Third Century a glut of land to settle on. With land so cheap there was scant profit for a Princely family in investing on vast farmlands and though certain highly specialised crops could earn a good yield it was work ill suited to indentured labour, which almost by definition rested on those without specialised skills and knowledge. Matters reached breaking point in the Great Slave Crisis of 2255.

By the era of Grand Prince Kreemak there were three colony worlds: S'Vrak, D'Vraadir and K'Mhakreer. Before 2255 the worst trouble had come from K'Mhakreer, a hot and wet world of lush tropical forests in the Gomesia system which turned out to be home to a flower whose hallucinogenic pollen caused a pleasant affect on the minds of the imbibers and a lot of headaches for the government [2]. However in April 2255 the first anti-slave rallies erupted on the hitherto conventional world of S'Vrak when the 'Tail Burners' began their campains of public discontent and discord.

The 'Tail Burners' as they were known were indentured servants on S'Vrak. Their name came from the old practice of burning off the tail feathers of those sentenced to slavery, considered an immense mark of shame in Baviir society. So gruesome in fact that it had fallen out of favour in the current century. That made the actions of the 'Tail Burners' all the more shocking; they voluntarily burned their feathers as a symbol of anger at their plight. When the movement spread to D'Vraadir in 2257 it was clear that the whole caste system was buckling.

The crisis on S'Vrak provoked a surprisingly liberal response from the government.

Matters reached a boiling point near the end of 2260 when outright hunger strikes began on S'Vrak. Grand Princess Yeedik, new to the throne was faced with the appalling prospect of Baviiri starving themselves to death in pursuit of a cause, an unheard of event in her species history. The young Grand Princess - she was thirty six in 2260 - had always been more focused on foreign policy; she had a love of exploration like her grand mother and was determined to strengthen the navy. During the last few years of her father's reign Yeedik had slowly begun to realise the internal turmoil on S'Vrak and D'Vraadir could not be ignored altogether. There was a certain compassion in her reaction, but it was not the warm heartedness of her father. Rather the Grand Princess was determined to reinforce Baviir strength. She was quite open about the fact that with the number of unclaimed star systems falling every year a war between starfaring races was almost inevitable before the end of her reign and she had every ambition of winning such a war. Slave revolts on two crucial planets were irritants that could not be afforded.

The obvious response was the iron fist. Grand Princess Reetril had been prepared to send in the soldiers to crack heads together when a pollen addled populace had caused problems on K'Mhakreer and her fawn and auburn feathered grand daughter was at least as ruthless. However the obvious response was the wrong step. For the first time the old royal party enjoyed a majority in the Hundred and very few of them had interested in keeping alive indentured labour. Even many of the most conservative Princely families thought the current system an economic drain and potential future source of weakness. So in early 2261 she moved to abolish all forms of slavery across the Stellar Principality.

The ending of slavery was less radical than it seemed on the surface and less important than it would have been two generations earlier before the institution had entered its long decline. Nevertheless it had been a decisive move by the Grand Princess and in Baviiri statecraft appearance had a power of its own.

The South-Western Frontier, 2263. Note the Pouz-Jok Sacred Council colony at Rayima.

Though she payed beakservice to both the Divine Three and the followers of Telisa the Teller of Tales the Grand Princess was not a spiritual individual, certainly not the way her father had been. Yeedik's focus was materialist and outward focused. During the 2260s the state pushed into both the galactic west and the southwest.

The South-Western Frontier [3], a huge expanse running along the galactic core had been extensively explored throughout the 2250s and 2260s. The insights of Telisa were discovered during one of these expeditions and another would uncover Vultaum artifacts that would (in the 2270s) finally allow the Baviiri to trace the homeworld of that enigmatic extinct race. To considerable disappointment there were no habitable worlds. However the systems charted did reveal vast mineral and energy wealth. They also confirmed that through a cosmic coincidence (or divine joke) the Ekwynians, nominally the Baviiri's 'neighbours' in the region had very limited access corewards. The distribution of hyperlanes ran strongly against them. This meant that the Baviiri effectively had the South-West Frontier to themselves... assuming one discounted the Triechi. Though the Grand Princess and the Hundred pushed strongly for claiming everything down to Firam (inclusive) some Princes and military leaders voiced unease at drawing so close to the marauders.

To such caution Yeedik retorted that the Baviiri had been very distant from the pirates in her grandmother's day and all those light years had not prevented an attack.

Baviiri corvettes and destroyers clash with ancient mining drones at Keid, 2265.

In contrast to all this the Western Frontier was far more 'lively'. The sinister and ancient alien starfortress in the Hyrma system was still far too strong a threat to risk battling but as long as the Baviiri left it alone it did not seem overtly hostile. Less formidable but equally hostile machines abounded in this region.

During the expansion the Royal Baviir Navy found itself called upon more than once to battle ancient mining drones guarding mineral rich systems. Both the Baviiri native produced corvettes and destroyers and the recovered and converted alien warships proved themselves over and over again, even if it must be conceded the strange and powerful Lost Fleet caught the popular imagination more (to the chagrin of many officers on the 'home built' vessels.)

A deeper concern was the Pouz-Jok Sacred Council. The Pouz-Joks, though not hostile to the Baviiri were clearly a rising power fueled by their rapidly expanding population, an area that had seen them easily outnumber the Baviiri. No one on Skanaa was looking to make the theocratic mammalians into enemies but it was difficult not to see them as a geopolitical and economic rivals. The spread of their borders was watched with deep concern in Skanaa (that the Baviir had also grown very quickly was neither here nor there.

The one resource the Western Frontier promised that the South-Western Frontier did not was a habitable world. For a certain definition of habitable. One of the planets in the Mira system contained a breathable atmosphere, rich and diverse pre-sapient lifeforms and many desirable resources. Unfortunately it was far from the Baviir ideal in many ways. S'Kerin Vak (as the colony would eventually be named) was a world of vast and tempestuous oceans whose scattered rocky archipelagos saw little in the way of the temperate and semi-tropical forests so beloved of the peacock people. Worse, the brine, though offering many prized edible marine life and algae in a kaleidoscope of colours was dominated by predatory sea reptilians. The ocean dwelling lizards, roughly akin to the prehistoric Tylosaurs of Earth but with the cunning to hunt in packs proved a constant danger to the first explorers and would prove the same to any colonists.

Still the brutal fact was that the 'continental' worlds favoured by the Baviiri seemed all too rare in the galaxy [4]. S'Kerin Vak was an unappetizing broth but it was the only food on the menu. The planet saw the earliest colonists arrive in 2262 and by 2270 the colony would become a modest success, home to a growing population of Baviiri, robots... and Till'Lynesians

S'Kerin Vak, though a backwater and an inhospitable colony became the first Baviir would with a substantial alien majority.

The Till'Lynesians were at least as edible to the great seamonsters as their sister Avians. However otherwise they were far more at home on the ocean planet. Much stronger than the fragile Baviiri they excelled at the hardy life of mining, though they were equally capable of growing food, scientific research and making money.

Those millions of Till'Lynesians who emigrated to Baviiri space were different from their brethren back in the Hierarchy. For obvious reasons they tended towards an even greater degree of Baviirophilia than was conventional, prizing the culture, grace and sheer liveliness of the Baviiri. Some even converted to worship of the Divine Three or Telisa the Teller of Tales.

The newcomers provoked mixed emotions in the Baviiri (to put it mildly) but the Grand Princess publically welcomed them, and hoped to attract more. Aside from all their other qualities the potential skill of the Till'Lynesians as soldiers had not passed her by...

Footnotes:

[1] Mining Robots (now the slightly more advanced 'High Robot's') are not the only robots used by the Baviiri of course, with many used in other areas and as 'pets' among the wealthy (though the popularity of this waned after the founding of the 'Alien Zoo' on D'Vraadir in 2255 and the mass domestication of the affectionate, cat sized arboreal Voxin.) However with true sapience still a distant dream they are not a major factor in most Baviir lives.

[2] This is the alien pollen chain of events that happened in the 2240s.

[3] Points of the compass are calculated from the point of view of observers on Skanaa; the 'South-Western Frontier' is south-west of Baviir space even if it is technically on the north-eastern fringe of the galactic core.

[4] Unfortunately tropical or ocean worlds seem just as rare, which also limits any potential immigration no matter how good my relations - of known races only the Till'Lynesians and Resheti seem compatible.

RossN · Jun 3, 2018

Archon Durim den Piriam of the Ekwynian Bloc & Grand Marshal Trod up Yal of the Regime of Vrinnus.

Chapter Nine: The First Interstellar War

For three quarters of a century the 'Galactic Eastern Powers' - the Baviir Stellar Principality, the Till'Lynesi Hierarchy, the Regime of Vrinnus and the Ekwynian Bloc enjoyed a mostly peaceful existence. True, there were always pirates somewhere and the fear of the Triechi launching a great raid as they had in 2240 was never absent from the popular mind. Still for many decades the the four neighbouring states grew outward without serious conflict, with trade and individuals passing through borders with ease. Biological differences meant cosmopolitan worlds remained rare but space stations, especially those with off world trading facilities or orbiting near Artisan or Curator enclaves often grew very diverse. Enterprising free traders of any race brought part of home into every starport and in their wake came tourists, students, academics, Telissan missonaries, a steady stream of starfarers. There was an unending appetite for alien cuisine, fashions, art and entertainment. In 2276 the Baviir tri-vid actor C'rownak enjoyed a successful tour of five different planets, all but one beyond the borders of the Stellar Principality.

Inevitably there were incidents. Even the Bavirii, the most open of the Eastern Powers [1] suffered a short, sharp shock of anti-alien sentiment in 2277 when members of an Artisan Troupe celebrating the Festival of Worlds staged a spectacular robbery of the Consort's Palace on Skanaa stealing (among much else!) a platinum Lunula belonging to the Grand Princess's distant ancestors. Yeedik, scandalised and personality humiliated (she had showered patronage on the Artisans) rescinded relations with the Enclave for many years [2].

Embarrassing as that incident was, it also revealed the extent of interstellar diversity; the thieves came from no less than six different worlds and to the government's chagrin included two Baviiri and a Till'Lynesi raised on S'Kerin Vak.

Vrinn, Ekwynian and Baviir space, 2289.

Of the Eastern Powers the two most impacted by this period of peaceful expansion were the Vrinns and the Ekwynians - and they were impacted in very different ways.

In the early years of the Twenty Third Century the Regime of Vrinnus was the most powerful of what would later be called the Eastern Powers. With four inhabitable worlds in close proximity the Vrinn saw a population boom that - briefly - saw them soar above their neighbours. Unfortunately for the Vrinn that good fortune came with a hidden trap. Their local space though abundant with biospheres was low on mineral rich systems and the layout of known hyperspace lanes left the Vrinn few opportunities for expansion. Even these opportunities vanished altogether in the 2230s when the Ekwynians (expanding north) and Baviiri (expanding south) 'met' completely shutting the Vrinn out of the core. After that point the Vrinn could only explore the galactic rim.

Truthfully the government on Vrinn Prime was the Vrinns own worst enemy. The Grand Marshals varied in competence and vision but few lacked the true instinct for diplomacy that might have allowed the Vrinn to forge alliances. Unfortunately they were unable or unwilling to run against a natural tendency to xenophobia and isolationism in the Vrinn state. In an era when all the other powers sought defensive pacts and trading links with their neighbours Vrinn Prime remained aloof, deigning only to deal with foreigners when the state was suffering a severe famine and the then Grand Marshal was forced to pay the Baviiri to import food.

Meanwhile the Ekwynian Bloc thrived. Much like the Vrinn sheer geographic factors played their part, though in this case to the benefit of the Ekwynians who swiftly established themselves as the only safe North-South route to traverse the galaxy in the East. The presence of the Triechi meant that Baviir and Till'Lynesi shipping found it far safer to travel through domains patrolled by the Bloc fleet, even with the tolls than risk the dangers of unclaimed space.

The Ekwynians themselves proved bolder in their explorations than the Vrinn and reaped the benefits. Though Ekwynian space was, perhaps, not quite as rich as that of the Baviiri it still provided sufficient raw materials to build an empire. Though more populous - there were 90 billion Ekwynians in 2289 against 55 billion Vrinn (and 62 billion Baviiri [3]) - the Ekwynians avoided the famines that devastated their isolationist neighbour.

During the reign of Grand Princess Reetril the Baviir leader's personal closeness to her Vrinn counterparts and the confusion over the unfamiliar Ekwynian form of government disguised the fact that the Bloc was ultimately more important an economic rival (or partner) than the Regime. Her son and grandaughter, more familiar with the strange ways of the military junta that ran the Bloc and the sullen stance of the Vrinns had long since grown closer to the towering mammalians.

Everyone knew relations between Vrinn Prime and Snotalitvish (the Ekwynian capital) were poor but the Ekwynian declaration of war on 27 April 2289 caught the other governments completely offguard. The Baviir embassy on Snotalitvish was temporarily empty, the previous ambassadress having been forced to retire after the dry savanna weather had exacerbated a fragile constitution and there was much squabbling in the Hundred over who to send in place to such a coveted post. Conversely the embassy on Vrinn Prime was fully operational and Prince L'Kree, a elegant and cynical male from an august family would ultimately influence much of the Baviir view on the conflict.

Despite his presence on Vrinn Prime L'Kree was intially no partisan for the locals. As he informed his older sister (who held the family seat in the Hundred):

'The Vrinns individually are not without their many small charms... but their leaders are as barren of imagination as their homeworld. Not wicked men and women but beleaguered by small intellects... while there were likely many internal reasons why the Ekwynians chose to attack now the real reason the Junta struck was because the Regime of Vrinnus is friendless - by her own choice.'

The eruption of war saw a much heated debate in the Stellar Principality, though it soon became apparent that the great majority of the public were unwilling to intervene. L'Kree's observation was apt; individual Vrinns were often welcome in Baviir space or known from the visits of Baviiri to the Regime. In some ways they were better liked than the gigantic Ekwynians whose unashamed taste for slavery made many on Skanaa uneasy. However the xenophobic nature of the Vrinn government soured relations on a state level [4]. On Skanaa and Tilla there was little appetite for upsetting the strong trade relations with the Bloc. The Grand Princess herself cited this as a reason for the Baviir neutrality.

Most Baviir and Till'Lynesi observers expected a Ekwynian victory given the greater resources of the Bloc. The question was how difficult would that victory prove and what price would the Ekwynians demand? For Baviir military officers there was much to be gained from observing an interstellar war at close hand.

The Battle of Ulym, March 2290. Note the presence of the giant cruiser VRE Salvage in the Vrinn fleet.

The first great clash, probably the battle that decided the entire war was in the Ulym system in March 2290. Ulym was a blue-white star and the westernmost system in Vrinn space, home to several energy and mineral mining facilities. The Ekwynian task force deliberately sought out their opponents in the hopes of fighting a decisive battle.

Both sides relied on unique factors beyond mere numbers. The Ekwynian fleet of nine destroyers and nineteen corvettes was led by a Triechi! Admiral Yndan was one of the pointed eared, graceful and deadly race of pirates who had attacked the Baviir a half century before. The presence of this barbarian mercenary with all the cunning and ruthlessness of his kind shocked the Baviiri (and would lead to some uncomfortable questions when Princess Leenak was appointed the new ambassadress to the Bloc.)

The Vrinn lacked anyone like Yndan and their fleet was far smaller with a lone destroyer and seventeen corvettes. However they did have the single most powerful warship in the entire conflict. The Regime flagship the VRE Salvage - her name resonates more in the original Vrinn - was a cruiser, a scale of ship the Ekwynians lacked entirely. Much like the Lost Fleet commandeered by the Baviiri the Salvage was of ancient origin, a near complete yet long abandoned alien warship recovered and recommissioned by the the Vrinn. She had fallen into Vrinn hands as early as the 2220s when she was first used against pirates. Even now she outgunned any vessel from the Bloc and compared well with the Baviir 'Twins' (RSS Ominous Hatchling and the RSS Supercilious Hatchling). The Vrinn hoped that that the heavy beam weapons of the Salvage would even the odds.

Ulym was a hard fought brutal affair with casualties running into the thousands and deaths reaching the hundreds. Salvage proved formidable and near indestructible (she would in fact survive the whole war), but she was still just one ship. Though she disabled two Ekwynian destroyers (including Yndan's flagship) the Vrinn were forced to retreat having lost three corvettes and with every other warship badly damaged. Yndan's vessels had been more bruised than the loss rate showed on paper. Had the Ekwynians been forced to quit the field many merely wounded corvettes and destroyers would have been unable to make the jump to hyperspace. Still he had won and the station fell with little resistance. There would be other desperate naval combats over the following three years but the rapidly weakening Vrinn would never be in a position to stop or even slow the Ekwynian march.

After the Battle of Ulym, Yndan turned his eyes towards Vrinn Prime. On 11 December 2290 the Ekwynian fleet dropped out of hyperspace in the Vrinnus system. Grand Marshal Trod up Yal and his government had evacuated mere hours before the siege of Vrinn Prime began. L'Kree's personal star yacht was granted transit rights through the blockade and the Baviir aristocratic was a witness to the opening stage of the bombardment.

'If Vrinn Prime was not a desert to begin with the missiles and lasers of the Ekywinans would have made it so...'

For three months Vrinn Prime, a world of 19 billion inhabitants suffered under intensive orbital bombardment before finally falling to a land invasion in late March 2291. Over the next four years the planets of Sadoluren and Terasokh suffered the same fate. Even the gallant last stand of the Vrinn fleet at the latter achieved nothing.

The Harmonious Axis (in tan.)

The rest of the galaxy might not have fought the war but they were watching. Partially as a result of the turmoil in the Eastern Powers the Knatza Covenant and the Pouz-Jok Sacred Council, the mighty two theocratic empires of the West signed an accord and formed a federation. The 'Harmonious Axis', as it was called was the first true binding interstellar alignment and sent shivers down the spines of the Baviiri and Till'Lynesians. The theocracies were not aggressive, but even individually they loomed large as economic and cultural rivals. Together they at once became a potent force in the cosmos.

The Baviiri had managed to remain neutral but that did not mean indifference. The Stellar Principality commissioned two new cruisers to add to the three recovered from the Lost Fleet. This was as much for popular reassurance as military necessity; the Baviiri already had the strongest navy of any power, excluding the marauder hordes or the ancient Juvan and Reshethi empires. Further reassurance came with a defensive pact with the Till'Lynesi Hierarchy 2293, at least as much signed against the Axis as against the Bloc.

After the bombardment of Vrinn Prime there was a definite swing in Baviiri public opinion. Both warring governments had attempted to woo the Baviiri via propaganda though the surrender of the Vrinn homeworld saw the swift collapse of the Vrinn tri-vid network. Surprisingly this may have aided their sympathisers on Skanaa with the scattered information smuggled off Vrinn Prime proving far more harrowing than the stilted government pronouncements. The Ekwynians, not blind to the fact they were waging a war solely to grab territory and slaves focused their propaganda away from the war itself. Instead they stressed the strength of Baviir-Ekwynian trade and the need to keep up a solid front against the 'true enemy' - the Triechi. Unfortunately for the Ekwynians the revelation that their greatest naval commander was himself at Triechi destroyed that argument.

By the second half of 2293 Baviiri-Ekwynian relations had reached their lowest level since the days of Reetril. Baviir society was not particularly pacifist and the concept of conquest was well known but the sheer scale of destruction caused by the war gave many on Skanaa pause. Some critics of the Ekwynians were moved by compassion as it was now clear that Vrinns were facing utter ruin. This pang of sympathy was especially common to followers of the Divine Three or Telissa the Teller of Tales and those with existing interests in the Regime. Others were alarmed at how powerful the Bloc would become after the war. The Crown Prince was one of these and his pointed snubbing of the Ekwynian ambassador at court functions provoked complaints from Archon Durim den Piriam - and subsequently the Grand Princess sending her vocal offspring on an extended royal visit to the Till'Lynesi Hierarchy. Personal feeling could not get in the way of a pragmatic understanding with the Bloc once the war reached its inevitable conclusion.

On 26 August 2294 the Regime of Vrinnus surrendered. The Ekwynian demands were devastating. The Vrinns were forced to hand over nine star systems, three of them containing inhabited worlds. Vrinn Prime herself was one of the lost planets and all that was left of an independent Vrinn state was a silver of space centred on the backwater colony of Khnumme in the Hixaros system. Prince L'Kree, badly shaken by the war (he would ultimately seek early retirement) was forced to rent space from the Korosian consuate while a new embassy was hastily being built.

Of a prewar population of 55 billion Vrinns 4 billion had died during the war, 11 billion lived in the surviving Regime rump state and 28 billion remained on their conquered worlds under Ekwynian rule. 12 billion Vrinns were scattered across the galaxy as refugees [5].

Post-war borders, 2295.

Footnotes:

[1] The Baviiri are Charismatic and have a Xenophile government. Obviously the exploits of individual freetraders and the like are beyond the scope of this game but it seems reasonable to assume many members of the Merchant caste can be found in small enclaves across the Galactic East. Baviir space is also home to Curator Order and the Artisans Enclave, both of which doubtless draw many foreigners.

[2] I was aware an event like this was possible but it was an unpleasant surprise. It took years before the Artisans Enclave became contactable once more.

[3] The Baviiri figure does not include High Robots (8 billion) or Till'Lynesians (5 billion.)

[4] In game terms the Vrinns have Desert Preference, Nomadic, Resilient, Conservationist and Fleeting while the Ekwynians have Savanna Preference, Very Strong, Conservationist, Fleeting and Decadent. Their governments are Xenophobic and Militarist (Vrinn) and Authoritarian and Militarist (Ekwynian.) I have non-agression pacts with both states.

[5] According to the ledger. I'm not sure which states the Vrinn refugees fled too. Owing to strong climate preference differences Baviir space was not one of the destinations.

RossN · Jun 6, 2018

The known galaxy in 2300.

Chapter Ten: The Known Galaxy in 2300.

The end of the Twenty Third Century saw the gradual close of the era of exploration. There was still some uncharted territory and certainly more unclaimed territory but most of the map had been filled in at least in vague detail. Those habitable planets that had not been colonised were too distant or too inhospitable to seize easily and with genetic modification and terraforming still in their infancy, if practiced at all, there was no more low hanging fruit.

Broadly speaking the recognised states in galactic society are grouped into five subgroups by the Baviiri and others: the Eastern Powers, the Western Empires, the Southern Expanse, the Ancient States and the Enclaves. Sometimes a sixth group (the Minor Races) are added. The Otaga Star Tribes and the Triechi Freeholders (collectively known as the Marauders) are outside galactic society and are not further studied here.

The Eastern Powers need little further introduction, having been the key focus of this narrative thus far. After the Peace of Vrinn Prime the Baviiri and Till'Lynesians have largely reverted to pre-war status with the Ekwynians. Trade has recovered for the most part and the borders are functionally open. By no means does this mean the crushing of the Vrinn has been forgotten.

Both avian empires have drawn closer together and further away from the Ekwynians. There has even been some talk both on Skanaa and Tilla of forming a federation akin to the Harmonious Axis in the west. However the different military stances of the powers make an agreement extremely difficult; the Till'Lynesi Hierarchy officially follows a pacifist line (against other states; pirates are recoginsed as the universal enemy.) The Baviir Stellar Principality has refused to rule out offensive wars. Ironically some of the Baviiri most stridently in favour of a strong foreign policy are the 'Xeno Liberty Watch' faction, generally counted as being the more liberal of the Baviir political factions. A substantial popular movement has grown up across the Stellar Principality calling for a war with the Ekwynian Bloc to liberate the Vrinn. The Grand Princess and the Hundred have no intention of declaring such a war, but for obvious reasons they are unwilling to rule out some similar action - even for the sake of a federation with the Till'Lynesians [1].

The Vrinn state, such as it is, conducts some minor level of trade with the Baviiri but its long term existence remains in limbo, thanks to events in the south.

The Western Empires in 2300.

The galactic west is home to the enigmatic and condescending Reshethi, the marauding fungoid Otagans and the spiritual reptilian Xu'Lokako, a people new to star travel and under the protection of the Knatzans. To most across the galaxy in however the 'West' is synonymous with the Harmonious Axis.

Between them the two theocratic component states of the Harmonious Axis have 285 billion citizens, over a quarter of the estimated total galactic population. The Knatzans and the Pouz-Joks were respectively the most numerous and third most numerous people in the galaxy. Though their religious traditions are somewhat different with the Knatzans following a complex pantheon (the 'Celestial Circle') and the Pouz-Joks honouring an array of ancestral spirits (the 'Children of Vaki') the two states have found their spirituality to have much in common and there has been a growing syncretic movement. In fact followers of most known galactic religions have some presence in the Harmonious Axis including philosopher-worshipers of Telissa the Teller of Tales and even a handful of followers of the Divine Three - the Knatzans in particular tend to equate 'foreign' deities with members of their own pantheon under different names and in different forms.

The strength of the Harmonious Axis has given it a lot of soft power and nearly all of its neighbours (save the patronising and aloof Reshethi and the barborous Otagans) have some form of association with the federation, including the Baviiri in a fine example of the pragmatism of the Grand Princess. Should the Harmonious Axis actually be moved to war their might would be a terrible thing to behold but, fortunately for the rest of the galaxy, the Pouz-Jok Sacred Council remains firmly pacifist. As it is the sheer size, economic clout and stability of the federation is regarded with admiration, awe, jealousy and fear.

The Southern Expanse in 2300.

For the past half century the Ekwynian Bloc has provided the main artery of trade with the wealthy and exotic (to the Baviiri) Southern Expanse. The pro-Ekwynian faction in the Hundred used the threat of losing these valuable contacts to stop the government adopting a more anti-Bloc tone. The threat, for moment, has worked.

The four empires of the galactic south are an odd mixture of the familiar and the baffling. The greatest of them is the Imperium of Koros, home to the bewitching horned humanoids known as the Korinths. The Imperium is a hereditary monarchy similar in many respects to the Baviir state - indeed relations between the states would perhaps be warmer if not for the tyranny of distance. The Korinth homeworld is dominated by tundra, vast plains of permafrost ringed by tough dark green forests. To a Baviir such a habitat would be truly uncomfortable but it has not prevented the Korinths from thriving and becoming the second most populous people in the galaxy - though as shall be seen far from all of them live in the Imperium.

Though less populous than her neighbour the Great Hythean Imperium covers more territory on the galactic map. The Hytheans are, despite much competition for the title, among the strangest sapients in the galaxy. To begin with they are a compound symbiotic species. The 'body' is a molluscoid standing a shade under two metres tall and following the general humanoid pattern in shape. Attached to the brains each and every one of these humanoid bodies is a slug or worm like invertebrate of a meter or so - it is these 'brain slugs' that are the seat of sapience and identity in the Hytheans.

When the Baviiri first encountered the Hytheans (in the middle of the Twenty Third Century via the Korinths) the natural assumption was that the 'brain slugs' were a parasitical race controlling these unfortunate molluscoid sapients. Ever since the Hytheans have attempted to quash this misinterpretation. It is true (the Hytheans admit) that a quarter of a million years previously the primitive semi-sentient molluscoids were invaded by the extraterrestrial brain slugs but in the long history since the two had combined to point of being one species where the host body had only a vestigial nervous system. Certainly once the Baviiri freetraders got over the initial fright they found the Hytheans friendly (outright xenophile in fact) and as individualistic as any other sapients - they even possess a hereditary monarchy and are the most pro-Baviir of all the southern states [2].

One thing the Hytheans are not is common, at least by galactic standards. The Hythean homeworld is a rich and nourishing one - a veritable paradise [3]. Unfortunately the Hytheans have much difficulty thriving anywhere else to the extent that in their own empire they are actually outnumbered by Korinth immigrants who make up 36 billion of the 61 billion Hythean subjects to 24 billion 'native' Hytheans and a billion Vrinn refugees.

To the west of Hythea lies the Yibrak Star Realm. The arthropoid, desert dwelling Yibraki almost seem to mix the common traits of the west and south: they are intensely spiritualistic monarchists with a military bent. Sadly, Baviir knowledge of these distant honourbound warriors is scant.

The eastern most of the southern states is the unfortunate Empire of Rihi, the domain of the gnome-like humanoid Rihi'Nar. The alpine dwelling diminutive Rihi'Nar are as religious as the citizens of the Harmonious Axis but far more aggressive proselytizers. Their faith is dualistic, with a creative 'Red Goddess' and a destructive 'White Goddess' (the Knaztans have tentatively identified these deities with members of the Celestial Circle but the Rihi'Nar scorn such thinking, insisting that other divine beings - should they exist at all - occupy a lower level of being than the overgoddesses.)

Unfortunately for the Empire of Rihi they are at war with the more powerful Imperium of Koros. Even more unfortunately the Korinths are allied to the Ekwynians, forcing the Rihi'Nar to fight on two fronts. To add insult to injury the Korinth are not just pagans but nonbelievers following a materialistic view of the cosmos [4].

(L to R.) High Queen Ib-Na I of the Yibrak Star Realm, Emperor Riddug I of the Great Hythean Imperium, Emperor Rethan I of the Imperium of Koros and Emperor Fon II of the Empire of Rihi.

The Ancient States - the term generally applied to just the Reshethi and the Juvans though arguably the Mishar have an equal claim to such a label - are technically part of galactic society but only in the most limited way. The avian Juvans are the worse in this regard, a sullen military state content to sulk behind heavily patrolled borders. That said the reptilian Reshethi, though friendlier are almost as detached, scanning the galaxy with a patrician arrogance that even the Baviiri (no strangers to vanity) found maddening. They do allow non-military ships through their space, unlike the Juvans but there is a strong suspicion among the 'Young Races' (one of a dozen similar Reshethi phrases) that this was as much to display the grandeur of the antique empire as anything else.

The 'Enclaves' include such varied groups as the Curator Order, the Artisan Troupe, the Muutagan Merchant Guild, the Riggan Commerce Exchange and XuraCorp. Some of these are effectively civilisations in their own right - the three huge city-sized space stations of the Curator Order composed the Mishar 'state'. Others are more difficult to categorise like the Artisan Troupe which is dominated by the fungoid Obbah (a rare people from a now lost desert home world) but has sapients from nearly every race in their ranks. The three 'trader enclaves' are essentially home ports for far flung merchant-races. Collectively all the inhabitants of the enclaves, including the wandering merchant ships of the Xuri or the touring Obbah singers number far less than 30 million but their influence greatly exceeds their numbers.

It is a disservice to the many 'minor races' of the galaxy - those without independent access to star travel - to lump them together. The Ospranians, the Figyar and the Maggar all have rich and unique cultures but the fact remains that they play little part in galactic society, save as isolated, primitive worlds in greater, more advanced empires, often officially uncontacted. Only the previously mentioned Xu'Lokako had a serious galactic footprint. These 11 billion citizens of the Confederacy of Piuh-Pah live a quasi-independent existence as a protectorate of the Knatzans and are, on occasion, encountered in the broader galaxy.

The so-called 'Minor Races'. Only the Xu'Lokako have much of a presence in space. The Inari, Urzo & Netraxi are so obscure even their homeworlds are unknown.

Footnotes:

[1] The approach to wars of aggression is the big stumbling block here. In a way it makes sense: the Till'Lynesians are bordered only by the friendly Baviiri while the Stellar Principality has four different borders to look to.

[2] Besides the Till'Lynesians the Hytheans have the most favourable towards me (our mutual xenophilia one supposes!) But for distance they would be my first choice for a federation partner.

[3] They have a Gaia world preference.

[4] The main fighting is between the Korinths (the aggressors) and the Rihi'Nar but I'm anxious about the Ekwynians being drawn, especially as the Vrinn are nominally in the war too thanks to a pre-existing pact with the Empire of Rihi!

RossN · Jun 10, 2018

First official contact transmission with the Otagans, 2303.

Chapter Eleven: Towards War?

The war between the Imperium of Koros and the Empire of Rihi lasted over a decade, only finally drawing to a close in February 2311 with the surrender of the Rihi'Nar. From the beginning a Rhi'Nar defeat had seemed inevitable but the stubborn star gnomes had surprised all other observers on the galactic stage with how long they remained in the fight, battling with ferocity against the more numerous Korinths and whatever forces the Ekwynians could spare. The Bloc, though allied with the Imperium, had been unable to bring her full might to bear against the Empire of Rihi partially because she was still absorbing her own conquests from the war against the Vrinns and partially because she had to deal with a great and unexpected threat in her own space: the Vrinns had bought the services of an Otagan privateer and his powerful fleet.

Biologically the Otaga Star Tribes bore scant resemblance to the Triech Freeholders. The Otagans were fungoid creatures possibly (very) distantly related to the Obbha. Their speech patterns, at least when translated into Baviir proved bewildering, excitable to the point of being crazed and quite unlike the elegant sneering of the Triechi. However in terms of their interaction with the galaxy at large and with each other the similarities were uncanny; a second race of barbarian star marauders. As the Triechi had proven themselves for hire their Otagan 'cousins' followed suit. The fleet bought with Vrinn credits could not change the course of the war but it did give the Ekwynians a terrific fright and normalise the hiring of barbarian mercenaries in war.

The Triechi themselves were not entirely silent during all this. In June 2305 they had made a demand for tribute from the Baviiri. As before the reigning Grand Princess refused their demands. Unlike 2239 the Triechi, after first swearing punishment backed down almost at once. The Baviir had formidable fortifications at both Firam and Avalam - the two 'entry points' into Baviir space from the viewpoint of the Triechi. Both stations had a portion of the Royal Navy quartered at them. Neither defence would have proved so overwhelming that the Triechi would definitely be beaten - the Baviiri were not that strong - but they were potent enough that a small Triechi raid would be turned back, and even one twice the size of the marauders of 2239 to 2240 would have taken a terrible mauling breaking through. Even for the battle hardened Triechi the risk far outweighed the reward [1].

The raid 2305, abandoned before it even reached Baviir space.

The fortification of Firam and Avalam with upgraded missiles and beam weapons on the stations themselves surrounded by rings of defence platforms had been one part of an overall strategy to put a little bite into the Baviiri bark. An emergency program to increase the scope of the Royal Navy had begun as far back as the early 2290s during the Ekwynian-Vrinn War. The Hundred authorised the creation of the so called 'home built' cruisers, based on homegrown technology innovations, study of the 'Twins' and RSS Valiant Hatchling and battle reports from the Vrinn VRE Salvage (the only known star cruiser to have been observed in combat in modern times.) Between 2293 and 2310 five cruisers in total would be built, along with numerous destroyers and corvettes.

This military buildup was never entirely without controversy internally or externally. It cost a fortune in men and material. While defence platforms made sense against the Triechi (as the aborted raid of 2305 proved) the expanded Navy seemed like a far more aggressive gesture. Discounting the now helpless Vrinn two of the Baviir neighbours were pacifist regimes. The Pouz-Joks regarded war with mortal horror as the worst of sins and the Till'Lynesians feared it for the disruption to their highly ordered state. It seemed unlikely that either power posed an immediate threat to the Stellar Principality. That left one obvious threat: the Ekwynian Bloc.

Borders after the Rihi'Nar surrender in 2311. Note the expansion of Ekwynian space and the explosion of 'conventional' piracy caused by the collapse of the Empire of Rihi.

In the early Twenty Fourth Century the outright militarist faction on Skanaa was small and sidelined. 'Operation Battle Cry' (a loose translation of a Baviir term that has no direct counterpart in English) counted at absolute most 7 billion supporters in 2314 at a time when the organic population of the Stellar Principality was 82 billion [2]. Much more important were the 'Institute of Advanced Sciences', the 'Obedience, Loyalty and Duty Vanguard' and, the largest of all the 'Xeno Liberty Watch'. This last group, which could very loosely be considered the liberal faction in Baviiri politics and culture was by tradition the monarchist faction, loyal to the Koriik dynasty. However Grand Princess Yeedik was not someone who felt enslaved by tradition. The Baviir monarch was canny and ruthlessly pragmatic and as she grew older she grew increasingly reluctant to commit herself to public stances. When she had succeeded her father she had been sanguine about foreign wars. Seeing two of them explode before her eyes had cured of her that view.

Crown Prince Skraak was always a more passionate, less composed individual than his mother. This was not due to him being a youthful hot head; by the start of the Twenty Fourth Century the Crown Prince was already nearly sixty (he had been hatched when his mother was only seventeen.) Skraak was as intelligent and cultured as the next Baviir, famed for his often barbed wit but he was more sensitive than the Grand Princess. The suffering of the Vrinns and later the Rihi'Nar distressed him profoundly; many of his closest friends were aliens and Skraak was appalled that the state seemed to be doing nothing in the face of such cruelty. His unrestrained language against the Ekwynians over their bombardment of Vrinn Prime had nearly provoked a constitutional crisis however accurately it reflected the mood of many of his future subjects and Yeedik had promptly 'kicked him upstairs' as an envoy to the Till'Lynesians.

For most Baviiri the mental image of the 'average' Till'Lynesi was naturally most influenced by those billions of Till'Lynesians that lived in the Stellar Principality. Most were from the ocean dominated world of S'Kerin Vak where they made up a slight majority of the organic population but there were also 3 billion on tropical K'Mhakreer and millions more scattered across the other three inhabited worlds. 'Baviir-Till'Lynesians' (Till'Lynesians born in the Stellar Principality) had positive stereotypes as law abiding, sensible, hard working and low key individuals... and more negative stereotypes regarding voices that sounded grating to Baviiri ears, pungent aromas, distasteful eating habits and dull and tactless personalities. Of course there were many exceptions to the stereotype and numerous Till'Lynesians had broken out of the box in everything from the arts to crime to military service to philosophy. Cross-species relationships were not unknown.

Skraak discovered, as every Baviir diplomat and freetrader had before him, that there was a wide difference between the Till'Lynesians he knew and those that had never left the Hierarchy. Tilla proved a grey, depressing world, not tyrannical as the Ekwynians were on their conquered planets, but suffocated under a bland and ever present technocratic dictatorship. The Till'Lynesians were not xenophobic. Indeed the Crown Prince was greeted with massed cheering crowds during his tour. Skraak - who was tall, slender, elegant and dusky blue in his primary plumage - received many proposals of marriage from his admirers, including one from the Primarch's own son who was sufficiently handsome that alarmed officials from both governments preemptively arranged schedules to keep the two from meeting lest a diplomatic incident occur [3].

What made the Till'Lynesians in the Hierarchy the way they were was their rigid and sedentary ways. The average citizen was content that every day be fundamentally the same and every week and so on. Few moved far from the places of origin unless the government, exercising its vast powers, thought they would be more useful elsewhere. That was what made the Till'Lynesians in the Stellar Principality essentially different from their cousins. They, or their parents had departed from the consensus that might as well have been engraved in granite and traveled to the heavily individualistic Baviir realm with its beautiful, crazy, imaginative, impulsive people. Though it would be too much to say Skraak had a good time during his lengthy visit to Tilla it did make him all the more appreciative of his future Till'Lynesian subjects.

The Crown Prince returned from his royal tour without any great accomplishments but without having embarrassed himself either once the Ekwynian-Vrinn War was over. The long Korinth-Rihi conflict required no golden exile (he had learnt his lesson well) and the Crown Prince busied himself with the arts, following the family legacy of attending the Artisans Enclave for several years. With the more emotional Skraak out of the way his mother had turned attention to the 'Vrinn Problem'

Grand Princess Yeedik's proposal to Grand Marshal Ym tal Par, February 2311.

The rump state that was all that was left of the Regime of Vrinnus had managed to survive the latest war intact, despite being on the losing side. Truthfully given their situation the Vrinns had done a remarkable job. Unfortunately they would almost certainly not be able to afford a rented fleet next time the Ekwynians grew hungry. Hiring the Otagans had been a bold strategy but the sums they had charged would have strained the Regime at her height. Once their contract ended the Vrinns would be alone and vulnerable. Yeedik was prepared to protect the Vrinn... for a price.

The Grand Princess's offer was ruthless, displaying her patience and pragmatism. Still it was a far better deal than the Vrinn would get from the Bloc and even the most vocal Vrinn supporters in the Hundred urged the Vrinns to accept. With deep reluctance Grand Marshal Yim tal Par accepted the Baviir 'request' and on 10 March 2311 the Regime of Vrinnus formerly became a protectorate of the Baviir Stellar Principality. It was a move that proved very popular across Baviir space. The conservatives applauded a show of strength on the galactic stage, the liberal xenophiles spoke of defending the Vrinns from their neighbours and even the pro-Ekwynian (still active, though much diminished) hoped it signaled a step away from the threat of war - reasoning that the Bloc would never attack the Vrinns now.

Crown Prince Skraak scoffed at this sort of logic. As he wrote in a message to a friend serving in the Royal Navy:

'The truth is we have positioned ourselves publicly as the champions of the Vrinn. Some believe... or pretend to believe, that means the free Vrinns alone. They don't know how shrewd the woman on the Azure Throne is... we have our casus belli but only when the Grand Princess wishes to use it. By the Three she's good!'

The Crown Prince was wrong - not about the casus belli or even her future plans but he was wrong that Yeedik one be the one to use it. Shortly after establishing the protectorate over the Vrinn, the Grand Princess's health began to falter and she was forced to withdraw still further from public life. From time to time she rallied and a long convalesce on S'Vrak, the least crowded and perhaps most beautiful Baviir world raised hopes she might recover fully. It was not to be however and on 2 September 2314 she died peacefully in her sleep at the age of ninety.

Grand Princess Yeedik is a riddle. The most cynical of the Baviir monarchs she bore little resemblance to her late father and predecessor; he had been deeply religious and philosophical. Yeedik was a pragmatic atheist whose only use for the priests of the Divine Three and the Telissans was as proxies in negotiations with the Harmonious Axis. Yet this shrewd and tough cynic, frequently considered heartless was the same woman who abolished slavery and oversaw the creation of a multispecies state. She had prepared for war far more than any before her, yet kept her people at peace for fifty three years. Yeedik was not close to her son or any of her daughters and in her decades in power it is hard to say she had been loved by anyone; some blamed her for not intervening in the Ekwynian-Vrinn War, conveniently forgetting popular opinion almost universally considered neutrality the only option. Others expressed disappointment that she had failed to set up a rival federation to the Harmonious Axis, again ignoring that no Baviir head of state could survive surrendering the ability to declare war.

Skraak, who was in most respects a far more conventional Baviir and who knew it, was also aware that he would be judged in her shadow. Age alone determined it; the new Grand Prince was already seventy three years old when he took the throne.

Baviir space in 2314.

Footnotes:

[1] To the best of my knowledge the Triechi never entered into combat at all during this raid, they simply calculated the cost of going through the 'gates' into Baviir space and simply backed down. The overall feeling on Skanaa would be relief tinged with disappointment at not having a chance to hurt the Marauders but it does show they are not simply mindless barbarians and can calculate odds.

[2] 70 billion Baviiri and 12 billion Till'Lynesians with additional populations of Mishar, Obbha and Xuri (all three enclave species native to Baviir space) that in game terms are not numerous enough even together to warrant a pop. Additionally there are 11 billion robots in the Stellar Principality.

[3] As I've said before Till'Lynesians tend to find Baviiri startlingly beautiful in a (literally) otherworldly way. Those who actually live alongside the Baviiri have obviously adjusted but to those in the Hierarchy who might see these multihued, impossibly slender and regal, golden voiced beings only on tri-vid the affect is powerful... especially if the Baviir in question is literally royalty.

RossN · Jun 18, 2018

The Baviir-Ekwynian border at the close of 2328, following the end of the war.

Chapter Twelve: Disaster

The First Baviir-Ekwynian War of 2325 to 2328 saw millions of lives lost, immense resources poured into the war effort, some of the most glorious victories in the Baviir story... only to be almost instantly consigned to dustbin of history by events hundreds of light years from the front lines (if such a term can have meaning in the cosmos.) It was events on Skanaa that turned triumph into treachery and defeat.

Grand Prince Skraak was childless. Though he had taken an official female consort out of a sense of familial duty it was understood his passions lay elsewhere. That was not itself a problem in Baviir society (so long as it was between consenting adults as it certainly was in the case of the Grand Prince) but whether by inclination or misfortune no eggs ever materialised from the consort. As Skraak no longer had living siblings and was already eighty three when the Stellar Principality declared war on the Bloc the question of the succession to the Azure Throne became urgent.

The obvious choice was Prince Sorrel, Skraak's nephew by his deceased twin sister. Sorrel, a tall, impatient male with dusky blue feathers and a permanent air of impatient energy was intelligent, ambitious and warlike all qualities which endeared him to his uncle. During the war he served in the Royal Navy reaching the rank of captain of the cruiser RSS Ominious Hatchling, one of the 'Twins' recovered from the Lost Fleet. The Ominious Hatchling (and her sister RSS Supercilious Hatchling) were no longer among the most powerful vessels around but remained potent vessels, their unique 'shield-ship' design famous throughout Baviir space. Unfortunately Ominious Hatchling would be lost with all hands at the Second Battle of Japris in October 2326, a brutal and bloody engagement that saw the Baviiri defeat an Otagan mercenary fleet in Ekwynian service [1].

RSS Ominous Hatchling, moments before her destruction at the Second Battle of Japris.

Sorrel's sudden death left four close legitimate blood heirs of the Koriik family living. One, Prince K'Miir, a cousin of Skraak's was a celibate Telissan monk in his seventies who for reasons of age and character was not a serious candidate for the Azure Throne. That left K'Miir's nephew Prince L'Konii, his niece Princess Lagraak and her son Prince Reetril [2]. L'Konii and Lagreek hated each other so much they refused to be present in the same room but one of them would have to take the throne. Skraak, in mourning for the lost Sorrel and not fond of either character delayed making a judgement on the succession throughout the war.

On 10 October 2328 as the Baviiri fleet orbited Vrinn Prime and bombarded the Ekwynian defences the Hundred was in full session in Skanaa. The Ekwynians, outgunned from the start had been driven steadily back and as soon as Vrinn Prime fell to land invasion the entirety of old Vrinn space would be occupied. The Baviiri war goals were simple; the cession of those territories formerly ruled by the Vrinns. If the Bloc proved recalcitrant the Baviiri warships and armies would push on towards the Ekwynian coreworlds.

A little after noon local time a pre-planted device went off in the Palace of the Hundred. The four hundred year old building was structurally intact, its jade and lacquer exterior concealing strong walls. Inside however all was chaos; the bomb was not a powerful explosive in itself but it did unleash a potent neurotoxin directly into the Chamber of the Princes. Dozens of the Baviir elite died quickly and dreadfully, grasping weakly at their necks in a futile attempt to get air. A very few incredibly lucky Princes, seated on the extreme western corner of the Chamber were shielded from the worst of the poisoned gas by the alignment of water features and columns - by accident or design the bomb had been placed slightly off centre - and eight of them managed to break through a window and escape out into the open air, though one subsequently died from the damage already done to her lungs. Ironically Grand Prince Skraak's extreme age and faltering health worked to his advantage. The monarch had just finished speaking on the attack on Vrinn Prime and returning to his throne was so out of breath he had been forced to rely on his personal respirator to recover. Rescuers discovered the Grand Prince still barely alive (surrounded by dead bodyguards and advisors). He would live another two weeks and, perhaps mercifully, never regained consciousness during that period [2].

In total six hundred and three Bavirri, Till'Lynesians and Vrinns died in the attack or immediately after, including seventy four Princes of the First Rank and another forty one Princes of the Second Rank, present as aides to their family leaders. In less than an hour the ruling caste of the Stellar Principality had been all but obliterated. For obvious reasons immediate suspicion fell on the Ekwynians, but however great a motive to them they could not have achieved such an audacious gambit unaided and quickly thoughts turned to the three prominent people who were not present in the Palace of the Hundred: Prince L'Konii, Princess Lagraak and the Exhalted Advisor T'Maku, respectively overseeing the Skeru shipyards, recruiting soldiers on D'Vraadir and recovering from a stress related illness.

Any suspicion on the part of T'Maku can be dismissed at once; he was an intelligent but colourless (figuratively speaking) bureaucrat who had never displayed the slightest signs of political feeling unless one counts his Telissanism. Furthermore his position was entirely dependent on his connection to Grand Prince Skraak. An assassination attempt was not only wildly out of character it was overwhelmingly against his interests.

That left the two royal cousins. The succession was not yet decided and there had been rumours that Skraak would take the opportunity to announce his heir during the session announcing the invasion of Vrinn Prime. For the loser, whoever he or she was, the best that could happen would political damnation once their rival took power. The worst that could happen was disgrace, exile or death. It is not hard to see either turning to the time honoured way of assassination to prevent such an outcome - though it must be stated again that never had such ruthlessness been displayed in even Baviir conventional politics. One theory that would be proposed in later years was that the assassins unintentionally made the attack far more deadly than intended simply by miscalculating the quantities of neurotoxin required - the non-central positioning of the bomb in the Chamber would support this if the goal had been 'merely' been to eliminate the Grand Prince and a few other problem Princes. Significantly both Prince L'Konii and Princess Lagraak lost allies among the fatalities in the Hundred, that would have made their respective bids for power run much more smoothly had they lived.

A few theories sought other suspects, though none with anything than could be convincingly called certainty. Unfortunately with the death of almost all potential witnesses (and many of the culprits for those who favoured a political ploy gone terribly awry) and the political chaos that immediately overwhelmed the Stellar Principality, it is highly unlikely that the true villain or villains will ever be confirmed.

The almost total collapse of the Baviir government left Skanaa in confusion and panic for the best part of a day until Prince L'Konii made planetfall in his personal yacht. L'Konii, upon being informed that the Grand Prince was in a coma and not expected to survive immediately declared himself Regent. This was technically illegal - L'Konii was eligible for the Regency but the office had to be voted on by the Hundred. Undettered L'Konii took up residence in the Radiant Palace and summoned T'Maku from his sickbed before sending tri-vid transmissions to those Princes who had been off Skanaa at the time ordering them to return to the capital [3]. His next two orders were far more controversial; he ordered the arrest and detention of Princess Lagraak and her son and a half dozen other known minor members of the Koriik dynasty. Finally he transmitted a personal order to Admiral Reebik to recall the main fleet (the 'Revered Star Flock') from Vrinn Prime and return to Baviir space to help maintain order.

At almost the same time Princess Lagraak had declared a counter-government on the colony of D'Vraadir, announcing she held the Regency (once again illegally.) Lagraak sent an alternate order to Reebik directing her to D'Vraadir and directives to surviving Princes to travel to the 'legitimate government' (ie. hers.)

In the end the Prince won the survivors of the Hundred with the seven survivors already on Skanaa joined by another ten across the in pledging their loyalty to L'Konii. Five declared for Lagraak and the final four kept silent, jittery neutrals. L'Konii naturally pressured his tame aristocrats to confirm his title. Legally this was nonsense: seventeen Princes (several still in critical condition) did not constitute a quorum. Still in the wreckage of the government it provided him a certain legitimacy, as did his physical presence on Skanaa. It was at this point he made his fatal mistake. On the morning of 12 October he offered an unconditional truce to the Ekwynians, which they immediately grasped.

Admiral Reebik achieved immortal fame for her victory at the Battle of Vrinnus (the opening of which is pictured here.)

With the benefit of hindsight L'Konii could not have made a worse move, but at the time there was some rationale for ending the war as swiftly as possible, even on unfavourable terms. L'Konii had to worry about Lagraak but he also, potentially, had to worry about Admiral Reebik. Reebik was the most powerful figure in Baviir life, the cunning naval officer who had broken the back of the Ekwynians and their Otagan cronies. Had she chosen to claim the throne herself - and she did in fact have a very distant bloodlink to the Korriks - she could have turned her vessels on Skanaa. By ending the war in one swoop the self proclaimed Regent stripped Reebik of much of her power, turning her back into merely a mortal officer. Ultimately the confusion and shock at the truce in the Baviir ranks was second only to the news of the destruction of the Hundred. Reebik, grimly keeping to her orders despite her own outrage turned her ships back towards the Stellar Principality.

Unfortunately for L'Konii everything began to crumble away the moment he agreed to a peace on Ekwynian terms; starting with the fact that the Bloc with a generous interpretation of the terms occupied several systems that had been Baviir before the war, including the former Vrinn Protectorate [4]. Furious Baviir officers could only watch from their starships as the enemy, reeling and routed mere days before, now arrogantly swooped in to commandeer space stations and small mining colonies, rightly confident the Royal Navy would not try to stop them. When news and (tri-vid footage) reached Skanaa the reaction was an outpouring of public outrage. Rioting swiftly commenced planetwide. By the start of 14 October L'Konii's Regency had lost control of most of the capital. The Prince desperately sent transmissions to Reebik ordering her and the fleet home as soon as possible to cut off a revolution at the pass.

The following day a false rumour was transmitted across the Stellar Principality that Grand Prince Skraak had passed away (he would not actually do so until 6 November.) On D'Vraadir Princess Lagraak and her tame court, now including several quasi-legal heirs to fallen princedoms [5] immediately proclaimed her Grand Princess. 'Grand Princess' Lagraak ordered Reebik to continue towards Skanaa and subdue the 'treacherous' L'Konii.

Reebik docked her fleet at the great starbase at Etan Stela, famous both for its shipyards and for its proximity to a Curator station-city. The Baviir admiral informed both Skanaa and D'Vraadir that her ships desperately needed to be refueled and resupplied after their sudden ordered retreat from Ekwynian space. There was truth to this, but it also allowed Reebik a chance to stall. Her own fleet was riven with sympathisers of the two sides and several of her own captains had suddenly found themselves the heirs to seats in the Hundred. She had a lot to lose from declaring herself for a candidate. Fortunately she did not have long to wait; after hearing that Reebik would not now be coming L'Konii fell into deep despair. With the streets of Skanaa awash with rioters burning him in effigy the self proclaimed Regent burnt off his own wing feathers, climbed to the top of the highest tower of the Radiant Palace and flung himself from a window.

L'Konii's suicide simplified the picture; there was no longer a viable alternate heir facing Lagraak. As she would soon discover this was not the same thing as being unopposed. As soon as she heard that L'Konii was dead she raced for Skanaa with only a wingful of bodyguards and aides, ignoring her supporters who urged caution. She should have heeded them as mere hours after landing on the homeworld she would be dead, assassinated by the terrified Princes who had supported (voluntarily or otherwise) L'Konii.

In less than a month since the attack in the Palace of the Hundred the Koriik dynasty had collapsed completely. Skraak, L'Konii and Lagraak were dead. K'Miir lived still but no one believed the monk had the talent, will or skill to rule. Of the legitimate bloodline that left Prince Reetril - who fled Baviir space the moment his mother fell to laserfire. The young princeling might have had the greatest right to the Azure Throne but the desperate males and females who killed Lagraak would hardly let her son take power - their lives would be forefit for sure. Dyeing his dusky blue feathers a tawny gold and disguised as a freetrader Reetril and a few loyalists fled D'Vraadir for Hythea, the furthest spot one could get from Skanaa.

The Baviiri would have to find new leaders.

Grand Princess Lagraak, briefly monarch and last of the Koriik dynasty.

Footnotes:

[1] The Otagans were in some respects more brutal fighters than their employers; in the same battle the Baviiri lost the huge RSS Ferocious Hatchling - the much loved 'Crystal Giant' also of Lost Fleet vintage. In total the war would see one Baviiri cruiser, eight Destroyers and fourteen Corvettes lost to enemy action.

[2] The Baviiri did have procedures in place for the continuation of government but the unprecedented chaos surrounding the deaths of most of the Hundred, the mutual hostility between the heirs and the uncertain condition of Skraak left much in limbo.

[3] Several Princes of the First Rank were offworld as previously stated. Most of the slain Princes had heirs in waiting but a non-trivial number were also killed by the neurotoxin or were serving officers in the fleet temporarily unable to take up political leadership roles. Others faced messy challenges from their rivals inside their familes over suddenly vacant seats.

[4] In the years immediately prior to the outbreak of the war the Baviiri had assumed considerable control over the Vrinn remnant and Grand Prince Skraak had spoken in terms of consoldiating the Vrinn homelands inside the Stellar Principality. The effective abandonment of the Vrinns due to the truce was as great a source of shame as the retreat itself.

[5] As noted above the situation was extremely chaotic but most of Lagraak's 'new princes' had come by their rank without following due legal channels and even those whose inheritance was uncontested needed to be formally confirmed.

RossN · Jun 29, 2018

Skanaa, C'Knoor, Skeru and the Y'Ysonni Star Flock.

Chapter Thirteen: The Oligarchs

The Koriik dynasty founded by Sorrel the Magnificent had ruled the Baviiri for three centuries. Before him there had been no one planetary government, simply scores of rival grand flocks. The leaders of those flocks had become the Princes of the Hundred but even in the years when the power of the Koriiks grew lean there had always been a gap between the royal clan and the mere aristocrats.

At the start of 2329 there were twenty six legal Princes of the First Rank still living. They were not a happy collective, including those who had supported Grand Princess Lagraak in her brief reign and those who had taken her life. At the best of times Baviir grand politics were cutthroat, and family grudges were savoured like vintage wine. Given the circumstances it was a minor miracle that the living Princes were able to meet at all without fatalities. Yet meet they did in the Consort's Palace in Skanaa (for reasons that should be apparent the Palace of the Hundred and the Radiant Palace were, for the moment, inappropriate places for a conclave.) The factor that overshadowed every rivalry and enmity was the fear of what would happen if they failed to come to a concord; a military dictatorship, a popular revolution, a collapse of the entire state. A Prince of the First Rank was wealthy and powerful but no individual still living was able to enforce his or her will on their peers, let alone the whole Stellar Principality.

The Exalted Advisor, Prince T'Maku was caretaker head of state during this interregnum, a position he visibly detested. Still youngish he had begun to molt from the stress of his post even during the war and now he presented a shocking sight indeed to the other aristocrats. Still he was, currently, the closest thing to a head of state the Stellar Principality possessed and his sheer colourlessness in personality if not plumage served him well at this crisis; he had few if any enemies. T'Maku would become the chairbeing of the anxious political debate that took place over the whole of 2329, ever exercising a calming and moderate influence. For the moment he was granted the title of 'Acting Regent', though this post would not become official until a quorum of Princes were reestablished.

A cross section of Baviir government, scientific and military leaders during the interregnum (2329 to 2331.)

The first crisis was to restore the Hundred to full strength, a task easier said than done. Over a third of the Princely families were contested successions and due to the circumstances of war and assassination six unfortunates clans had no living legitimate members of adult age at all. In normal times such headless families would have been granted a grace period to get their affairs in order and find a solution but T'Maku and the rump Hundred dissolved them in favour of promoting six erstwhile Noble families (carefully rationed out to preserve the existing balance of power.) To fill the contested Princedoms the rump Hundred pursued a policy of appointing on merit; favouring those Princes and Princesses of the Second Rank with excellent war records over those who might have had a more traditionally strong claim. Here the motive was at once patriotic and pragmatic; 'war heroes' were popular with the general public and would head off any attempt by Admiral Reebik at a military coup (there is no evidence the admiral planned such a move but in the circumstances a little paranoia was healthy.)

By May 2329 the Hundred had been restored to quorum strength and the great question of government could no longer be evaded: who would take the Azure Throne?

In theory the Grand Prince should have been either Reetril or K'Miir. A few extremely romantic (or religious) Princes pushed for the monk without his encouragement, perhaps without his knowledge, but the feeling ran strong that an an elderly aesthetic who had spent decades away from public life would make a difficult monarch in the best of times, and the current situation was certainly not that. There was much sympathy for Reetril but in some ways his position was even more problematic. As part of the torturous negotiations between the anti- and pro-Lagraak princes there had a general declaration of amnesty. Inviting the assassinated monarch's son to take power would make life very interesting for the regicides. That Reetril be left in the cold had been the cornerstone of the truce, though equally the regicide faction had been required to promise no action be taken against the exiled princeling unless he became an 'active threat to the state'. Both threats and entreaties remained abstract as throughout this period Reetril remained elusive. It was believed he remained in Hythean space but beyond that the trail ran cold. Frankly his low profile suited the Hundred.

T'Maku, as Acting Regent, unearthed a few fossilised laws dating to founding of the state in order to disinherit K'Miir and Reetril. The monk was ineligible under an obscure law that he had accepted a 'foreign title' (ie. he was an abbot of the Telissan faith.) In common sense terms this was nonsense. Of the six billion known followers of Telissa the Teller of Tales at least five billion were Baviiri and many of the rest were Till'Lynesians living in the Stelllar Principality. Several members of the Hundred and the Koriik dynasty were devotees and the philosophy was at least tolerated by almost everyone, largely because it was seen as compatible with other religious beliefs. Nevertheless, as the long dead Telissa was not herself a citizen of the Stellar Principality and her philosophy did not enjoy any official state recognition a certain reading of the law allowed the Hundred to officially declare K'Miir's (hypotethical) candidature void.

Reetril was a different matter. No convenient religious tricks there. However his physical absence and low profile did allow the possibility of his being declared dead in absentia. That this was a legal fiction and Reetril was very much alive (somewhere) was everywhere understood, but it allowed the Hundred to slip out of any constitutional obligations to the 'true heir.'

Neither 'candidate' had direct heirs. K'Miir was celibate and Reetril lacked biological children, though in his case that was for medical reasons - the exiled prince had been hatched biologically female but had had transitioned to a male identity in his youth [1]. There were minor, distantly related Koriiks alive and available but none of the Princely rank and they could thus be ignored [2].

It might seem based on how hard the Hundred worked to deny the legitimate claimants that the Baviiri Princes were foaming at the beak to get rid of the royal dynasty. The truth is far more complex. The Koriiks certainly had rival aristocrats who welcomed their downfall, but as many if not more were personally indebted to and in many cases loyal to the dynasty. The difficulties with K'Miir genuinely made him a poor prospective ruler but Reetril might have expected to find many friends in the Hundred and arguably he did. It was the fear of complete collapse that made the pro-Reetril Princes vote with their heads rather than their hearts; Reetril taking the Azure Throne would mean an immediate civil war and though the Legitimists would probably win that was a nightmare no one could stomach. Instead the friends of the Koriiks focused on heading off any purge of the remaining family members at the hands of jittery regicides. The result was a compromise... and perhaps one that could be revisited in the future should Reetril 'reappear' alive and well and the political situation be different.

Not every strata of Baviiri life was quite so sanguine. The Koriiks had been - broadly speaking - popular with the public. The Grand Princes and Princesses had thousands of clients in their personal patronage, some of them Princes of the Hundred but many more in the Noble and Merchant castes. The appeal was not simply emotional (though there was much of that and there were vast public rallies in support of Reetril on all five inhabited worlds.) These males and females, could, with justification worry about their influence in any shift in regime. In the first few months of 2329 while the Hundred was still slowly rebuilding key clients of the Koriik dynasty met on S'Vrak to consider their options. These 'lower class' Legitimists [3] took a harder line than their nominal leaders in the Hundred and collectively they held vast resources. Once it became clear that Reetril would not take the throne immediately they grew angry and afraid. They also had - perhaps - one truly mighty friend.

The Revered Star Flock [4] in 2332.

Admiral Reebik, a tawny feathered female from S'Vrok was already seventy in 2329 and her venerability may have played a role in her seeming disinterest in personal power. Still, she was not an emotionless robot and hidden currents flowed in the depths of her golden eyes. The war hero was ensconced at the great naval base of Etan Stela on what was now the Baviir-Ekwynian border and spent most of her time aboard her flagship the battleship RSS Gruff Hatchling. Very properly she refrained from openly playing politics. And yet...

One prerogative belonging to Baviiri fleet commanders was in choice of celebrating public holidays. Traditionally the Royal Navy had celebrated the date of the Battle of Skeru (5 September 2218) as the date from which the modern navy had been born in her baptism of fire against the Scarlet Feather pirates. On Skeru Day 2329 Reebik staged the traditional war games at Etan Stela, but, more unusually, staged a full reenactment of the medal services after at which the Baviiri monarch of the day had proclaimed the captains of the fleet heroes. That monarch had of course been Grand Princess Reetril. The entire ceremony transmitted live across the five worlds via tri-vid.

Reebik's re-enactment could not be accused of manipulating the facts; the Admiral had been utterly scrupulous in historical accuracy. It was simply accurate that one of the greatest rulers in Baviiri history was named Reetril and if that same monarch had a direct descendant of the same name who through not fault of his own was honoured less than he should have been... well that was a simple coincidence. For the Hundred the message was clear; the senior military figure in the state would not start a war without being pushed, but she had her sympathies.

The Hundred made no official pronouncement on the Admiral's re-enactment ceremony, but did announce that on New Years Day 2330 they would elected one of their number as head of state, allowing T'Maku to retire to the safe and reliably dull world of bureaucracy. That much had been expected. What not been foreseen was that the Hundred would forego elected a new Grand Prince or Grand Princess. Instead the position of 'Grand Regent' would be created - a caretaker head of state with a fixed maximum term of twenty chairs, restricted to a sitting Prince or Princess and with greatly reduced powers. The Grand Regent would be, not so much monarch as first among equals of an oligarchic state and he or she would be elected by the Princes of the Hundred.

If any proof was needed about how pragmatic and un-ideological the Baviiri elite could be this was it. The title of 'Grand Prince' had tradition, constitutional impeccability and certainty behind it. The new title had none of these things, a strange amalgamation of older ad hoc offices. Its deliberate weakness was its strength. The establishment of a new dynasty, or even simply an elected monarch for life would have probably resulted in immediate civil war. The impermanence of the Grand Regent managed to offer hope both to those who dreaded a Koriik restoration and those who longed for it.

The first of these Grand Regents was a thirty eight year old, golden feathered Princess of the First Rank named T'Chel. T'Chel was a classical beauty - tall, slender, impossibly elegant - and gracefulness still counted for much even in these strained times, but more importantly though from a family (the Miriiks) who were traditionally pro-Koriik she was not closely related to the royal dynasty, making her another comprise between the various factions who might also be popular with the public. She had a fine mind particularly for credits, though not so fine as to make her peers nervous. In the new crowned republic it would not do for an individual to fly too high.

T'Chel had only recently succeeded her brother who had been killed during the Palace Bombing and her relative youth was not uncommon in the post-2329 Hundred where experience was at a rarity. Unbeknownst to the vast majority of her peers T'Chel had a secret.

She was not the real T'Chel.

The first 'Grand Regent' of the Baviiri, 2333.

Footnotes:

[1] As noted before Baviir sexuality and gender are very similar to that of humans; transgender identity is not particularly common (relative to the population) but it is accepted. [OOC Note: 'Reetril' was the randomly generated name for Lagraak's male heir but having already established that name as female I decided to run with this idea.]

[2] These 'minor' Koriiks would be descendants of early Grand Princes many steps removed from the most recent royals.

[3] As previously noted Baviir Princely Families are the pyramid points of a large following of Nobles and Merchants. It hardly needs stating but the Royal dynasty was far larger in this regard than the humble Princes of the Hundred!

[4] The Revered Star Flock is the main Baviir fleet. The smaller Y'Ysonni Star Flock (named in honour of a naval hero) primarily contains older vessels, including the Lost Fleet survivors.

RossN · Jul 3, 2018

The Revered Star Flock in 2339. The Kraanak-class battleships visible at the rear are the RSS Gruff Hatchling & the RSS Confident Hatchling.

Chapter Fourteen: Ships & Soldiers

The bitter end of the First Baviir-Ekwynian War was down to the turmoil at home; the Army and Navy had nothing to apologise for, a fact officers would often repeat to each other across gaming tables and over alcohol in the years after the peace. There was not even a whisper of mutiny after Lagraak died but there was an almost universal sense of frustration and disappointment. The general feeling was that another year - at most - of fighting and the Baviir banner would fly over Snotalitvish.

The Royal Baviir Navy had won its spurs against pirates and those desperate dashing days of small, underarmed warships far from aid had left its mark. Boldness, speed and élan were the prized qualities in a star captain. The officers particularly excelled at smaller ship warfare whether the corvette or the destroyer. In fact the Baviiri by and large favoured the destroyer over all other warships. It was large enough to operate alone in deep space (impractical for the corvettes) yet also small and fast enough to avoid many enemy attacks and to operate in squadrons, though in practice they tended to be grouped with the main fleet. Corvettes were still used of course and they outnumbered all other classes of warship but they had lost a little of their early glamour.

Cruisers had come to the Baviiri long before they were capable of building them, courtesy of the Lost Fleet. The recovery of strange and powerful ancient alien starships had been an absolutely pivotal moment in the shift in the Navy from little more than a better armed version of the Stellar Patrol [1] to one of the strongest forces in the Galaxy. However it had not been quite the advantage as might be supposed; most of the scavenged vessels represented very different technologies and design features that mapped poorly onto the home-built Baviir vessels. During the Twenty Third Century the tendency had been to use the Lost Fleet as a unit, bolstered by Baviir corvettes and destroyers. The great difficulty was that no one could quite agree what cruisers were best suited for. They were not quite fast enough to work as raiders in the manner of destroyer squadrons. Clearly they were powerful ships and for half a century before the introduction of battleships they reigned unchallenged as the most potent vessels in space [2]. Some navalists saw them as 'control ships' to lead and coordinate fleets built of destroyers and corvettes. Others contended that the cruisers themselves should be the focus with the corvettes and destroyers as support ships. The Baviiri, divided over where to fit these ships built surprisingly few of them in the early Twenty Fourth Century. It didn't help the cruiser case that these same years saw the arrival of the battleship.

Huge, ponderous and tough the star battleship zigged wherever traditional Baviiri thought and physiology zagged. However unlike the neither-one-thing-nor the other cruisers the use of the battlsehip was obvious. Her massive guns could pound away at even the most proudly defended space station or conduct heavy orbital bombardment on hostile planets (though the Baviiri unlike the Ekwynians tried to restrict such tactics to military targets.) A battleship immediately brought a grandeur no other warship quite delivered; six hundred metres long or more and armed with long range weaponry she was as much a mobile siege engine as a warship.

When it came to weaponry the Baviiri strongly favoured energy weapons, particularly the ubiquitous green X-Ray Lasers, though plasma weaponry and disruptors also saw use and the huge Kraanak-class battleships deployed proton launchers. Research on kinetic weaponry had lagged behind this curve and was a definite weak spot in Baviir naval theory. Missiles and torpedoes were a different matter; the 'fire and forget' method of fighting was distasteful to a culture that prized skill and cunning but it was hard not to dismiss their ability and many corvettes functioned as torpedo boats. One area were the Baviiri had shown little interest in was in strike craft. It would not be until the 2340s that the technology for such craft existed and even then it would take far longer for the Baviiri to consider carriers.

It might seem bewildering that an Avian race who mourned their evolutionary loss of flight and still prized gliding was so slow to adopt one or two person fighter craft. The truth was the same Avian ancestry made the Baviiri ill-suited to fit in a streamlined cockpit. The average Baviir was not especially tall (they were similar in height to human women, with little or no gender dimorphism [3]) and they inclined towards the slender. However their six limbs complicated matters. Baviir wings could be kept folded close to the body. In a normal situation this was more than enough but the cramped confines of a fighter craft put space at a premium. To a lesser extent the great tail trains that the Baviir habitually wore were problematic. Baviiri in the Navy learned to deal with the fact that they had to clip their beloved tails for combat purposes - but fighter pilots would have to all but pluck theirs. It did not make for a happy Avian at the controls.

The issues surrounding tails also caused some troubles with Baviiri in the Army (and the Marines) but a far more serious problem lay beneath the feathers. The Baviiri had hollow bones. Physical actions that other species could handle without difficulty could be hard going on the fragile star peafowl, even with the widespread use of robotic exo-suits. In contrast the Till'Lynesians, though also descended from flying ancestors (possibly the same ancestors as the Baviiri) were much more robust creatures, derived from millions of years of evolutionary pressure diving and swimming on an ocean world. The Till'Lynesians were much over-represented in the Army in the first half of the Twenty Fourth Century, at least compared to their numbers as a whole and it was widely admitted they made excellent soldiers. One, Thraupi Umkoa, had even reached the rank of general during the First Baviir-Ekwynian War and Grand Prince Skraak had made her a Noble of the First Rank. The military was an attractive career for Till'Lynesians; though they tended to lack the cunning ruthlessness prized by Baviiri warrior culture they tended to work with orders better and provided a calmer, more methodical approach to combat.

However, good as they were there were only so many Till'Lynesians and even making up 30% of the Army (compared with 12% of the overall population) that left many brigades that had to be filled with fragile Baviiri. The answer to this problem would prove deeply controversial.

The controversial genetic modification project on S'Kerin Vak, 2336.

Genetic 'tailoring' had been known about for decades by the 2330s. The Baviiri had used in the development of plantlife and livestock but sapient life was another matter. Many in the Hundred were uneasy with the idea of tampering with Baviir (or indeed Till'Lynesian) genes. Grand Princess Yeedik, the most coolly pragmatic and scientific of monarchs had at least considered the applications but ultimately decided against embracing genetic modification. She was not moved by any reasons of spirituality or secular ethics by a sternly rational reading of the costs against the benefits.

The Baviiri were fully familiar with cosmetic surgery. During the late Twenty Second Century there had been a brief but startling fad for fanciful appearances far beyond the ubiquitous dyeing of feathers. The era of artificial plumage that changed colour on an individuals emotional spectrum was long past but it proved the Baviiri were not entirely adverse to altering aspects of themselves via the miracle of science. The arrival of cloning during the era of Grand Prince Kreemak had led to availability of cloned vital organs to solve various health problems. The cloning of sapient beings remained illegal however and for much the same reason there was opposition towards genetic tinkering on the populace at large; the fear of creating a permanent slave caste.

In the mid-2330s the Princess Regent began strongly pushing the idea of genetic tailoring with a breathtaking proposal - all Baviiri would be modified, utilising newly developed techniques that would greatly strengthen Baviir bones without rendering them brittle and inflexible or greatly adding to their weight. In short T'Chel wanted to banish the old story of Baviir fragility to the mists of history [4].

The young Princess Regent made an unlikely radical. Since her accession she had tended to side more with the artisocratic-conservative Obedience, Loyalty and Duty Vanguard faction in the Hundred, much to the surprise and disappointment of some old royalists who backed the liberal Xeno Liberty Watch. However T'Chel argued persuasively that there was nothing radical in correcting what was universally seen as a flaw in the Baviir makeup:

'...Consider our wings my brothers and sisters. Once we flew among the treetops as easily as the glitterwings or the frosttails. No longer... we lost that ability, even as our wings still remain, and with them the lightness of our bodies. The fragility of our bodies. We are simply taking back what was ours to begin with.

Who is to say we will not fly again someday?'

The Princess Regent argued that the grueling campaigns during the First Baviir-Ekwynian War showed that speed and élan alone made poor bedfellows without the body strength to back them up, that to stave off any possibility of a dreaded 'slave caste' forming the genetic alteration should be available to all and that finally the mind should not be touched. It was the last point that had unnerved many; if a Baviiri's brain was altered even to remove 'undesirable' qualities was he or she still the same individual? T'Chel stressed that there would be no genetic tampering with any mental abilities.

In the end the Hundred was persuaded to at least try, starting with the Baviiri of S'Kerin Vak. S'Kerin Vak, a cold ocean world was best known as the most diverse world in the Stellar Principality, home to slightly more Till'Lynesians than Baviiri. Unfortunately it was also known for the great predatory marine reptiles that lived there. The Hundred believed, correctly, that the Baviiri of S'Kerin Vak, tough and independent minded as they were, would welcome anything that evened the odds on their home planet. The project began in 2336 and over the next two and half years would see more or less all Baviiri on S'Kerin Vak become 'Meta-Baviiri'.

The Meta-Baviiri project was not the only way that the Princess Regent was preparing for a future war - and that there would be another war with the Ekwynians was a universal belief and desire. T'Chel conversed frequently through tr-vid with the High Curator of the Order of Curators. The Baviiri patronage of the Mishar dated back to the days of Grand Princess Retril but T'Chel had an especially close rapport with the ancient alien academics, frequently consulting with them for advice. As she reminded the Hundred, one of the Currator city-stations was in the Bijh system which was now occupied by the Ekwynians. The Baviiri had solemn obligations as the patrons and protectors of the Mishar to recover them from this awful fate, perhaps even more than their responsibilities to the Vrinn.

One item that continually arose in the talks between the Princess Regent and High Currator Yulk den Mede was the bizarre Enigmatic Fortress in the Hixam system. The Stellar Principality had been forced to expand around the deadly and mysterious structure, ever mindful of the tragic experience of R'Tanoka a century before. Still, the prospect of the technological secrets locked inside those eerie walls was enticing. Yulk den Mede cautioned the Princess Regent that even with the growing strength of the Royal Navy they would be unlikely to prevail in battle, at least not without murderous losses. So T'Chel decided to risk someone else instead.

Transmission between Princess Regent T'Chel & the Otaga Star Tribes, 2333.

The Otagans had proved intermittent nuisances, but like their Triechi counterparts they no longer sought open battle with the strong Baviiri fleet [5]. They made perfect mercenaries however and T'Chel hired a strong battle squadron under the leadership of one 'Admiral' Seedkugh. The Unhinged Sreamer Flotilla - four cruisers, six frigates and a dozen raiders - would enter the Hixam system and test the strength of the Fortress, under strict orders to retreat if it proved too much.

The average Otaga loved nothing more than battle and Seekugh was no exception. He cheerfully led his squadron into the Hixam system in the middle of 2335. The result was a slaughter, unparalleled in Baviir naval history, and perhaps Otaga history with it. Even before the privateers entered weapons range the superior guns off the Fortress and her guardians had found their mark. The lightly armed and armoured raiders and frigates suffered dreadfully and Seekugh found his flagship torn apart by the enemy. The Otagans, whether out a sense of bravado or martial honour kept up the fight and scored numerous hits, but their own arms could not penetrate the heavy shielding of the Fortress, let alone the armour beyond. By the time Seekugh, having transferred his flag, called for a retreat only one damaged raider survived to limp into the stabase in the Mira system a month later. Seekugh himself seemed to have suffered some sort of breakdown from the battle, his every word and movement now marked by visible nervousness. Mercifully he and the sorry remains of his flotilla would not be called upon to fight again before the end of their mercenary contract in 2338.

The Battle of Hixam had been an expensive (and ruthless!) test. Naturally the Princess Regent and the Hundred would have preferred it if Seekugh had broken through the Fortress defences but the data recovered was still valuable and to be brutally frank few tears would be shed over the deaths of Marauders, however temporarily useful they proved. The Currators had been proven right about the Fortress. Her secrets would have to wait, at the very least until after the Second Baviir-Ekwynian War...

The Battle of Hixam, 2335.

Footnotes:

[1] The Stellar Patrol is the non-military police service in the Stellar Principality and deals with smuggling, 'minor' piracy, ore hijacking and so on. Along with plentiful smaller craft they also operate a few 'civilian' star corvettes, of similar dimensions to their Navy equivalent (that is to say approximately one hundred and fifty metres long) but with inferior weapons and shielding.

[2] The 'reign of the cruisers' is generally felt to have ended in the second decade of the Twenty Fourth Century. Ironically more cruisers were actually built by the various powers after this point.

[3] The different sexes of the Baviiri, though blindingly obvious to the Baviiri themselves and recognisable to sister Avians like the Till'Lynesians are often very difficult to discern to other species without being told. A hypothetical human might assume any given Baviir is female because their body movements - graceful and elegant - and expressions - in so much as a human could read them - and their vocal range matches what humans consider stereotypical feminine. The Baviiri are alternately amused, bemused and frustrated the various molluscoids, humanoids, reptilians and mammalians seem unable to pick up on the subtle patterning of colouring on one's primary feathers or the other dozens of differences that mark males and females apart.

[4] The specific genetic modification to create the so-called 'Meta-Baviiri' was restricted to strengthening the skeletal frame and the muscle and ligaments attached to it. 'Meta-Baviiri' were not visibly distinct from their unmodified cousins and nor where they any kind of supewrbeings, simply somewhat stronger and far less fragile to the various fractures and bone diseases that had traditionally haunted the race. [OOC Note: In game terms they lose the 'Weak' trait.]

[5] I have had immediately abandoned raids by bought Maurader groups. Regarding the Marauders the Baviiri see the Otagans as near brainless brawling barbarians and the Triechi as cruel and crafty corsairs. Even with the beauty and grace of the Triechi the Baviiri are happier (or less unhappy) to deal with the Otagans.

RossN · Jul 7, 2018

The Baviir-Ekwynian Border Region, 2338.

Chapter Fifteen: The Second Baviir-Ekwynian War

The truce - it could not honestly be called a 'peace' - between the Baviiri and the Ekwynians smouldered on for a decade with neither side acting in good faith. The Bloc, which might have been expected to look to build fences with the Baviiri and consolidate their amazing stroke of luck in 2328 seemed determined to aggravate the Stellar Principality, publicly claiming new systems. They were also almost certainly behind attempts to hire Otagan and Triechi privateers, though that stunt withered on the vine in the face of Baviir naval strength.

For their part the Avians stationed their key war fleet at Etan Stela. A great naval base to be sure, but there were other ports and Etan Stela was directly on the post-2328 border. Not that such subtly mattered when talk of invading the the Bloc was a constant on tri-vid and the Grand Chamber of the Palace of the Hundred alike. Always the talk was of a desire to liberate the Vrinn, to which had been joined a vocal desire to liberate the Mishar of Bijh [1]. It would be unfair to deny the sincerity of that sympathy; the Baviiri were a xenophile culture and a tempestuous one were emotions could run high. The desperate conditions of the Vrinn provoked anger and shock. However an even greater reason was a desire to reverse the result of the first war when in Admiral Reebik's words 'we tripped over our feet strolling to victory.'

The long truce was as much for foreigner consumption as for the home populace. The governments on both Skanaa and Snotalitvish knew that many important galactic powers had a horror of aggressive warfare. The Ekwynians suffered the most for this, effectively a galactic pariah whose only continuing relations were with the similarly warlike (but more diplomatic) Imperium of Koros. In contrast the Baviiri actually enjoyed a positive reputation on the galactic stage... but their insistence on a strong war policy was still the great obstacle to forming a federation with the Till'Lynesi Hierarchy. The other Avian species was not friendly towards the Bloc but they were pacifist.

Finally on 18 December 2338 the Baviir envoy to Snotalitvish delivered an ultimatum from his government, stating that since the truce had officially ended the Stellar Principality demanded an immediate evacuation of former Baviiri territory. Naturally the Archon did not dignify this with an answer and with formality dispensed with the Second Baviir-Ekwynian War began, news greeted with mass celebration on the floor of the Palace of the Hundred.

For the Baviiri the truce had seen the consolidation of the Navy into three unequal groups: the Revered Star Flock under Admiral Reebik, the Y'Ysonni Star Flock under Vice Admiral Atrata Mayatl [2], S'Ithanis Star Flock under Vice Admiral L'Kiri. A grand battle fleet, a smaller reserve fleet with older vessels (including the Lost Fleet survivours) and finally a fast scouting group of smaller ships to support the others and take lightly defended systems. On the eve of war in November 2338 the Stellar Principality fielded a grand total of two battleships, six cruisers, twenty four destroyers and fifty eight corvettes.

The first strike was against Witris, a small blue-white star that once belonged to the Baviiri and was the hyperspace 'gateway' to the great naval base at Etan Stela and the whole of Baviiri space beyond. Reebik led the main fleet here. The other key target in the opening wave was Bijh, perhaps the most important system surrendered to the foe in the cataclysm of 2328. Bijh was home to a Currator city-space station and was the gateway to both the Hixaros system (home to both the Vrinn world of Khnumme and the very recent Ekwynian colony of Paragima [3]) and the mineral and symbolism rich Vultaumar system (the original homestar of the extinct Vultaum Star Assembly.) Bijh would see a joint operation from Atrata Mayatl and L'Kiri.

The cornerstone of Baviir strategy, especially in this early stage of the war was to keep all the fighting on the Ekwynian side of the border. She who controlled the hyperlanes controlled the course of the war. Strategy was not the sole reason however; those Baviiri and Till'Lynesians with more seasoned plumage could recall what Ekwynian orbital bombardment had done to the Vrinn. The enemy was already in possession of Baviir star systems, there was a determination not to cede anything else even temporarily. Initially the Baviiri faced mostly outpost, station and defence platforms equipped with missiles, coilguns and energy weapons. Some of the starports were potent in their own right though the sheer power of the Baviir fleets broke through even the fiercest system defences.

The Battle of Bijh, 2340.

True battle of warship vs warship came in the Bijh system in January 2340. Mayatl and L'Kiri found themselves facing the main Ekwynian fleet ('Task Force Yodora') under Admiral Kunrig den Vakor. One the Baviir side three cruisers, twelve destroyers and thirty two corvettes. On the Ekwynian side ten cruisers, four destroyers (two arriving late) and fourteen corvettes. The Ekwynians were looking to retake the system after it had fallen to the Baviiri with little fight the year before.

The Battle of Bijh might have more details known and recorded than any other great clash in the history of space warfare. Besides the combatants the Mishar were keenly observing from their city-station. In a very real sense it was fought for their benefit. The clash proved a brutal business, the great warcruisers of the Bloc proving themselves near indestructible no matter what lurid coloured streams of death the Baviiri sent their way. The smaller ships of the Stellar Principality were perhaps a shade more advanced but two of Mayatl's three cruisers were relics from the lost fleet, advanced in some ways, archaic in others. After hours of combat the Ekwynians broke, leaving two of their cruisers as floating hulks with the battered survivors fleeing into hyperspace. The Baviiri had suffered too, losing two destroyers and three corvettes [4] but they had broken the foe and a lost cruiser was far less easily replaced.

With Bijh secured the Baviiri could begin their invasion of Khnumme at the end of 2340. The desert world, previously the capital of the Vrinn rump state and then, briefly, a Baviir protectorate had been occupied by the Ekwynians for over a decade and was defended by five armies. The Baviiri bombarded the enemy's positions from orbit but the destruction was not all it could be for fear of inflicting casualties on Vrinn civilians. It would have to be taken by direct assault and a long running bitter battle across the richly daubed ochres and pinks of Khumme's mesa-lands. Neither the Baviiri nor the Till'Lynesians flourished in the dry heat and in this the first land campaign of the war mental and physical exhaustion was as dangerous as the Ekwynians.

General R'Tanik, commander of the 1st Spaceborne Mechanised Infantry was a decorated officer who had fought in the previous war and few doubted his astuteness, but he would later be greatly criticised as an armchair general for remaining in orbit during the entire campaign. His disinterest in getting involved in the ground would been cast in an even worse light by the heroism of General Titru Copassar of the 9th Spaceborne. Copassar, a male Till'Lynesi was a natural leader (some would say a glory hound) whose legend only grew after his death at the age of forty six during the invasion of Vrinn.

Khnumme eventually fell in 2341, followed the same year by the icy world of Terasokh in the Gemma system. Terasokh was a strange world. The Vrinn who settled her originally were desert dwellers and the Ekwynians loved savannas but Terasokh was a planet of glaciers and frozen seas. The puzzled Baviiri knew that the original climate had been far warmer but some great disaster - whether natural or an accident caused by the Vrinn during colonisation was unclear - seemed have locked Terasokh in permanent winter.

Terasokh itself fell quickly but the Gemma system would be the most contested of the whole war. A 'Ekwynian' counter-offensive, actually led by Otagan mercenaries retook the system, forcing the Baviiri to storm it all over again 2344.

The First Battle of Japris, 2341.

Bijh had badly weakened the Ekwynian fleet but the arrival of the Otagans [5] saw the Bloc recover and their counter-offensive of late 2341 saw heavy Baviiri losses. A combination of bad luck, overconfidence and (it must be admitted) Ekwynian cunning saw much of the Baviiri transport fleet mauled at in a surprise attack at the First Battle of Japris, a disaster that probably extended the war by at least a year and a half and could easily have been worse.

Japris was a shock, but to win the war the Bloc needed to control space. Perhaps their best chance came at the Second and Third Battles of Gemma that saw the Baviiri grimly whittle away at the Unhinged Screamers. The result were Baviir victories but another two destroyers and a corvette lost. Finally at Second Japris in January 2342 Reebik nearly wiped out much of the surviving Ekwynian fleet. A Bloc cruiser and no less than seven destroyers disintegrated under Reebik's guns for no losses on her side.

Much more closely contested was Taramda in July of that same year. The Ekwynians threw nearly everything at the Baviiri in an effort to retake the key system and Mayatl, his ships already damaged from previous battles suffered very heavily. A destroyer and five corvettes were lost to only two destroyers on the Ekwynuian side - but it was still the Ekwynians who retreated. It was their last naval offensive of the war.

After Second Japris and Taramda L'Kiri was sent west to capture former Vrinn (and Baviir!) outposts while Reebik and Mayatl (after his ships were finally repaired) supported the armies, an agonisingly long period that required the armies to be reorganised and rebuilt after First Japris, followed by siege warfare and bombardment. Terasokh was retaken, then the dusty planet of Sadoluron in the Landeen system in the first half of 2344.

The invasion of Vrinn, 2344 to 2345.

Terasokh and Sadoluron were originally Vrinn colonies but by the time of the war their civilian populations had been deported in favour of Ekwynian settlers. Therefore the Baviiri had been willing to use a heavier hand than at Khnumme. The Vrinn homeworld (sometimes called 'Vrinn Prime' to distingush it from the species) was very different. Like Skanaa the world of Vrinn was a giant, habitable moon orbiting a gas giant. Though hot and arid by Baviir standards Vrinn boasted a flourishing ecosystem in her vast deserts, mountain ranges and oasis. Under Ekwynian rule the moon had suffered greatly but she was still home to billions of Vrinn civilians and other than military personal there were few Ekwnian on-world.

It was a dilemma for the Baviiri. On the one hand Vrinn was a tough nut to crack. Besides regular Ekwynian military the Bloc had vast regiments of Vrinn slave soldiers at their command. On the other hand public opinion in the Stellar Principality would have shrunk from horror at the thought of bombarding Vrinn's cities from space. So, after as much debate and as strong an orbital bombardment as the Baviiri could stomach the invasion began.

The Battle for Vrinn would take eight terrible months and cost the lives of millions on both sides, including as noted above a Till'Lynesi general. A few of the Vrinn courageously aided the Baviiri forces, whether by supplying information or by actively sabotaging the Ekwynian forces. More would be pressed into service by the Ekwynians as bitterly reluctant conscripts and 'human' shields. Most desperately tried to keep their heads down during the fighting.

General Thraupi Umkoa, overall commander of the ground invasion and probably the best army officer in the Stellar Principality struck a worthy compromise between R'Tanik commanding from orbit and Copassar, throwing himself into danger in pursuit of glory. She was eager to defeat the Ekwynians but she tempered that with wisdom grown from experience. She consulted regularly with her counterpart in the Navy, Admiral Reebik and - via transmissions - with the Princess Regent and the Hundred back home. In the end it would be her leadership - combined with the determination and skill of the Baviir and Till'Lynesi troops that won the battle.

On 19 February 2345 the last Bloc resistance on Vrinn surrendered. Three days later the Archon agreed to the Baviiri terms; all former Baviir and Vrinn systems, moons and planets and a return to the pre-2289 border.

The war was over.

Extent of the Stellar Principality-controlled territory at the cessation of hostilities, February 2345.

Footnotes:

[1] There was also some talk of the Rihi'Nar, but the unfortunate gnome-like humanoids simply lived too far away for a liberation war to be feasible.

[2] A thirty seven year old Till'Lynesian male, hatched on S'Kerin Vak making him both the first Till'Lynesi to reach high rank in the Navy and the first high ranking Till'Lynesian to have emerged from his shell inside the borders of the Stellar Principality (General Thraupi Umkoa, his older female counterpart in the Army had been hatched in the Hierarchy and emigrated to the Principality as a young woman.)

[3] Paragima, a savanna world, was literally in mid-colonisation when the war began. The moment it became a real albeit scarcely populated colony it fell under Baviir control.

[4] Among the Baviir casualties was the RSS Pertinacious Hatchling - the famed 'Ocean Egg' of the Lost Fleet. Though never the most popular of the salvaged vessels she had performed good service for over ninety years and her loss was mourned. By the end of the war just two of the ancient alien vessels from would remain.

[5] In fact the very same Unhinged Screamer Flotilla once employed by the Baviiri, though under new command and reinforced.

RossN · Jul 10, 2018

Interlude - Curator Enclave, the Bjuh system, 2329

Crown Prince Reetril had slept for hours, the faint hum of the nearby hyerdrive caressing his ears like the lullabies he'd last heard as a nestling on Skanaa. He did not dream which was most unlike him; he was simply to exhausted to do so, frazzled brain seeking out blessed oblivion.

It had been an awful few weeks. The threat of civil war. The assassination of his mother. The confused, terrified flight from Baviir space in disguise. Hythea... He had to be so cautious awake that the few moments he felt safe to sleep Reetril truly slept. Now it was only the repeated tapping on the door that eventually, reluctantly aroused him. Groggily the heir to the Baviir throne opened one amber eye, then the other and clambered into wakefullness. He got to his feet and instinctively reached for his diaphanous robes. They weren't there of course. Like so much else they had been abandoned in that long retreat. The small sleeping cubicle he was in was a small and plain as the ship that surrounded it, fit simply for a freetrader - and not a good one. So it was clad only with still unfamiliar tawny feathers that he answered the door.

'Radiant Highness we have arrived,' One-Eye said. The grey feathered female stood there in the doorway, almost as plain as a Till'Lynesi concubine and at least as tough. She had a scar running from her ruined left eye across her beak that Reetril knew to be a legacy of an hand to hand fight with an Ekwynian. The exact details of what had happened had been shared over a bottle of red spiced wine in celebration of leaving Hythea unobserved and had left the Crown Prince with a murderous hangover, a queasy stomach and a healthy respect for his bodyguard. He'd miss her.

Well if things went right he wouldn't, but that didn't make this parting any sweeter.

'Thank you for everything,' Reetril said. He took the bodyguard's hands in his own and looked her in the eye. 'Without you I'm sure I'd be radioactive vapour floating in the cosmos.'

'Don't say that Sir,' One-Eye replied. She clacked her beak in amusement. That had probably been the last sight that poor Ekwynian had ever seen.

'No, it's true.'

'No, I just meant they'd want to take you alive and kill you carefully,' One-Eye explained, voice jovial. 'Just to make sure. Explosions can be so sloppy.'

Despite his exhaustion Reetril whistled a laugh. It was good to know he could still manage it.

There was a only a few more moments before Reetril send his last farewells and stepped through the airlock out of the small merchant freetrader. As he felt himself surround by the cool if clean air of the Curator station Reetril turned and saluted the older Baviir. Strange, he never had discovered the old soldier's real name. Probably he never would. One-Eye was how she'd introduced herself so One-Eye it was.

***

'... so you understand?' the Mishar woman said. She leaned forward in her chair and looked across the oval metallic bronze table, the slightly off lighting in the room making her cranial ridge starker, the ocean green eyes more imposing. Besides being colder than Skanaa the long lost Mishar homeworld had been dimmer too.

'I'll still be me, even with these surface memories and persona?' Reetril did not consider himself a fool but the medical, psychological and philosophical issues had been hard to comprehend - and easy to worry over.

The Mishar nodded. 'Yes. Your new surface persona will have different memories but her inner emotions, her intellect, instincts and behaviours will all spring from you. When you become T'Chel she won't conciously remember being you, but she still will be you. When needed that inner core can be retrieved and your full memory will be restored.'

'Ah... a little like a dream where you are someone else?'

It was always hard to read mammalian facial expressions but the Mishar looked surprised and perhaps a shade disdainful. 'That seems an unnecessary frivolous way of putting it but I suppose there is a certain aptness.'

Reetril bit back a sardonic comment on frivolity given the Curators had insisted on fifty-one separate perfectly inscribed miniature jewel-sculptures from Skanaa as payment for their services. Getting them in the first place had been difficult, even with the aid of loyalist sympathizers. Transporting them here had been both difficult and distressing as Reetril had been forced to smuggle them in his gizzard past Ekwynian customs vessels. Producing them from said gizzard had been... well, best not to dwell on that now.

'I'll still be me.' Reetril repeated softly. He tried to feel reassured. He looked down at the soft tawny feathers running down his arms (by the Divine Three did he hate being blonde.) He flexed his fingers. How much was he identical with his body? How much would remain without it?

He leaned back against the wall took a breath of the frigid air and thought about the real T'Chel. He'd met her once or twice and though they'd never been close exactly she'd seemed a reasonable sort. He'd been sad to hear of her presumed death but understandably had bigger problems on his mind. Then the Mishar had made their proposal. T'Chel might be presumed dead but with her body vapourised in a shuttle accident during the chaotic evacuation of Bjuh there was no proof. And by good fortune she was of very similar biological type to Reetril...

'It is time Crown Prince Reetril,' the Mishar said.

He took a long breath and followed the woman to the room where T'Chel's cloned body floated in a lurid neon nutrient liquid. Alive, yet completely mindless. Empty.

Waiting.

***

Skanaa, the Skeru system, 2345

Princess Regent T'Chel had had not been able to sleep for hours. She probably wouldn't for days. The Ekwynian surrender on Vrinn, the Archon acceptance of terms... the war was over and the sharp rush of emotion wouldn't end soon. The celebratory grand masque thrown at the palace had not helped matters and T'Chel knew the hangover in the morning would be momentous. Which added to the reluctance to sleep.

After kicking a delightful but exhausting guest out of personal bedchambers T'Chel found herself in a resting pose looking at the grand mirror in front of her. Sleek golden feathers covered her body, as perfect as ever but sometimes, especially after a lot of spiced wine, she found herself wondering what she'd look like if she had hatched as a blue. An odd thought. Plenty of Meta-Baviiri coloured their feathers but T'Chel never seemed to find herself thinking 'what would I look like if I changed my feathers' only 'what would I look like if I always wore different feathers.'

She couldn't remember ever being blue and yet, there it was.

The Princess Regent blinked tiredly. She had a lot of engagements to get to in the near future, including personal talks with the Head Curator. Her aides were puzzled by that and wondered why she had picked that meeting first. The Mishar and the reintegration of the enclave in the Bjuh system were important but surely the Vrinn and Ekwynians were more so? Even T'Chel couldn't quite explain it. Something deep in the back of her mind seemed to be directing her to those talks.

She didn't know why but it felt personally important.

RossN · Jul 13, 2018

The Baviiri-Ekwynian border, 2345.

Chapter Sixteen: The Post-War Principality

In a very real way the war was the last hurrah of the old Baviir Stellar Principality. What came after was quite different.

For one thing it was not really a 'Baviir' state anymore. Even during the war unmodified Baviiri had ceased to be majority of the population for the first time in history as more and more turned to genetic modification. The earliest Meta-Baviiri had shone in their war whether has troopers or officers. Meta-Baviiri, despite fighting in the most desperate circumstances were not only better soldiers they were surviving wounds that crippled or killed their unmodified brethren. The Grand Regent could not have asked for a better advertisement for the process and billions of ordinary Baviiri embraced the procedure. Over the course of eight years the Meta-Baviiri would become first a plurality, then an outright majority of the population. With no health downside, the extraordinary glamour of the war heroes and the encouragement of society few chose to remain 'mundane' [1].

Besides the Meta-Baviiri the state was already home to twelve billion Till'Lynesians. As with their sister Avians the Till'Lynesians of the Stellar Principality had changed over the decades, though in their case the change was cultural rather than genetic. In the Till'Lynesi Hierarchy the culture was strikingly uniform. The Till'Lynesians of the Stellar Principality were often considered dry and dull by their fellow citizens but they were noticeably more individualistic and personally ambitious than their cousins in the Hierarchy. Nowhere was this difference sharper than the popularity of the military life. The Hierarchy maintained defence forces but pacifism ran deep there, the legacy of distant planetary conflicts. In the Stellar Principality, surrounded by the more warlike Baviiri (and later Meta-Baviiri) the Army and Navy were far more palatable to immigrants, especially due to the social prestige and the many physiological advantages the Till'Lynesians enjoyed as soldiers.

Though by the 2340s the vast majority of Till'Lynesians in the Stellar Principality had been hatched there a thin stream of migrants disenchanted with the conformity of Tilla still arrived every year.

The demographics of the immediate post-war Stellar Principality, 2345 (note the ongoing shift from unmodified Baviiri to Meta-Baviiri.)

The Peace of Snotalitvish in 2345 saw the Stellar Principality gain forty four billion new subjects at the stroke of a pen. Of these a few million were the Mishar of the Bijh system Curator Enclave. The Curators were pleased to have escaped from Ekwynian rule though they remained enigmatic and superior as always. The Grand Regent travelled to the enclave in late 2345 to personally renew a treaty with the Head Curator and confirm the continuing ties between the Mishar and the Stellar Principality (somewhat to the surprise of the Hundred.)

More important than the Mishar, in the eyes of most, were the long suffering Vrinn. Sadly, though the old territory of the Regime of Vrinnus had been liberated from Ekwynnian territory the damage had been done. A mere eighteen billion Vrinns remained in what had been Vrinn space, the overwhelming majority on Vrinn proper with three billion on Khnumme. During the long occupation the Ekwynians had progressively seized Vrinn land for colonisation. The unfortunate Vrinns cast aside had three options: death, domestic slavery in the heart of the Ekwynian Bloc or deportation from Bloc territory altogether. Billions 'chose' this last course, seeking refuge in other states and over half a century the worlds of Terasokh and Sadoluron were stripped of their native populace in favour of Ekwynian settlers (the same process had also being happening on Khnumme but as it was under the Bloc for a far shorter period of time it was incomplete at liberation.)

The great exception to this policy was Vrinn itself. Vrinn was far more heavily populated and urbanised than the other worlds and though it possessed extensive agriculture and mining it was first and foremost an economic, scientific and cultural centre. That made it unsuitable for Ekwynian landholders and Vrinn remained 'free' in that sense but there were other ways to squeeze the moon until the pips squeaked. The Ekwynians shamelessly looted Vrinn of anything of the slightest artistic value from music to monuments. Some locals managed to hide treasures like the famed 'Lesser Dictates of Ratu up Sep' which was smuggled offworld in 2302 by sympathetic Baviiri freetraders but countless priceless works were seized or worse destroyed. The original (and incomplete) 'Greater Dictates of Ratu up Sep' had suffered this fate during the initial orbital bombardment of Vrinn in 2294.

Though the battle for Vrinn of 2344-5 had brought still more suffering to the beleaguered moon the Stellar Principality at once stepped in to try and repair some of the damage. In a sharp reversal of Ekwynian settlement laws billions of the poorest and most desperate Vrinns would be relocated to Sadoluron and Khnumme in the hopes both of relieving the overcrowding on Vrinn and reviving those colonies (for reasons that will soon become clear Terasokh was a special case.)

However the Vrinns were not the largest group of new citizens in the Stellar Principality. That honour went to the Ekwynians.

The beleaguered moon of Vrinn, 2345.

Beginning in 2295 and lasting up until the dawn of the Second Baviir-Ekwynian War billions of Ekwynians were transported to the newly claimed planets, as famers, miners and administrators. The military junta on Snotalitvish favoured parcelling out confiscated land to retired soldiers. Unfortunately for the Ekwynians the Vrinn planets were not particularly appetising for Ekwynian life, particularly Terasokh which was mineral rich and strategically important but all a blizzard haunted iceball. Only those unfortunates who could not afford to live elsewhere, or had managed to get on the bad side of someone important were stationed at Terasokh.

Sadoluron and Khnumme saw heavy settlement but the true Ekwynian ambition had been Paragima, a small planet orbiting the same star as Khnumme. Paragima was a world of shallow seas and vast hot grasslands free of sapient life and dominated by harmless grazing quadrupeds. Had they not been conquered the Vrinns might have set up a colony there themselves, but it was perfect for Ekwynian tastes. Paragima had been turned over to the Stellar Principality in 2345, the only transfer of territory in the entire peace that had never been under either Vrinn or Baviir control.

In 2345 twenty six billion Ekwynians suddenly found themselves on the wrong side of the new border. The Grand Regent and the Hundred had not been blind to the fact not everyone would welcome 'liberation' but they had not expected the sheer scale of the hostile population they would now have to absorb. Repatriation to the Ekwynian Bloc was not politically possible and except among the most reactionary elements in the Hundred there was not stomach for the wholesale deportation of the species (as the Ekywnians themselves had done to the Vrinns.) After a lot of debate the Hundred decided on a two-step process. The first step would prove mildly controversial. The second nearly tore the Stellar Principality.

In May 2345 the Hundred ruled that the planets of Terasokh and Paragima would be designated as habitation for all Ekwynians in the Stellar Principality. In the case of Paragima there was a strong case for it becoming a new home for the Ekwynians; other than lower gravity it strongly resembled the mammalians homeworld. Terasokh was far less inviting, but there were simply too many Ekwynians to settle all on Paragima. The Hundred authorised an ambitious plan to terraform Terasokh into a dry, warm world of savannas a process that would take years to complete. In the meantime the Vrinns were encouraged to report on those who had behaved especially badly or especially kindly during the occupation. Those Ekwynians who had the worst reputations 'earned' settlement on Terasokh while their more pleasant cousins went to Paragima. With those who were neither sinner nor saint it was down to the luck of the draw.

Resettlement was not done to punish Ekwynians (save for those deliberately sent to shiver on Terasokh.) Rather its purpose was both to confine the people most likely to rebel to two planets and to keep them away from the rest of the citizens of the Stellar Principality. Few Meta-Baviiri or Till'Lynesians felt any sympathy for the old foe and most Vrinns nursed a well-earned hatred towards their former oppressors. Probably - hopefully - such feelings would pass but in the 2340s emotions still ran far too raw to allow a policy of freedom of movement. In compensation for 'losing' Terasokh, which undesirable as it was had still been a Vrinn planet, the Hundred decided to set up a Vrinn colony on Sinistra III, tentatively named Jyylkir after a lost desert city of ancient Baviir myth [2].

The second step was to genetically modify the Ekwyinians living in the Stellar Principality by removing their instinctive desire, even need to enslave others [3].

The Meta-Baviir distaste towards mental alteration has already been covered. For a race full of quarrelsome individualists the concept of having one's brain tinkered with in order to fit in with society was the definition of horror. Yet now certain voices in the Hundred were willing to consider just such a step. The Ekwynians (the argument ran) were already slaves to their appetites, the same drives and instincts that left them only truly comfortable wielding the whiphand over inferiors. Was it any wonder (the argument continued) that the entire of Ekwynian society was based around enslavement and that the Vrinns and the Rihi'Nar had been conquered to feed the insatiable hunger for helots?

It was a profoundly uncomfortable argument. It was undeniable that the Ekwynian Bloc were the most brutal and decadent slavers in the known galaxy and that if they were to fit into the Stellar Principality something radical would have to change.

The person who proposed genetic alteration was Princess Sikirooka, the Esteemed Adviser (essentially a combination of the Minister of the Interior and Health in the Stellar Principality) [4]. Sikirooka was not a political animal herself, despite her high rank. An auburn feathered female Meta-Baviir she was, ironically, shy and silent in social situations and more at home in the lab than in the palace. However few could talk to her for more than a few moments without being struck by the spark of genius in her. As she said in her report to the Grand Regent in 2346:

'We are not creating a slave caste... we are removing the demand for a slave caste...'

It was the Grand Regent who pointed out to the Hundred that they had been used to thinking of the Ekwynians as a bloc as well as a Bloc but in fact there were billions of Ekwynians now living in the Stellar Principality who had themselves been helots. That vast group, having experienced slavery personally would be far more likely to welcome alteration than their former masters especially given the social benefits. Those benefits were key: the Ekwynians would be offered a choice. Stay unaltered and rot as pariahs with only the most basic of rights or become 'Neo Ekwynians' and enjoy all the rights and opportunities that the Stellar Principality offered. T'Chel was confident that most would chose the second and she would, eventually be proved right.

The Princess Regent had been able to sway even the most disapproving voices in the Hundred by pointing how popular it would be with the Vrinns. There was an implied warning here. The Vrinns (and as noted even some of the Ekwynian helots) were genuinely grateful to be freed from the Bloc but in time, as the initial enthusiasm faded away they would begin to look for further rights and powers. Even T'Chel did foresee quite how numerous and potent the Vrinns would become in the coming decade but she was shrewd enough to see some reform would be needed to maintain what was turning into a multi-species empire.

'Neo Ekwynians', genetically modified Ekwynians began appearing in 2348. Over the next four years the majority of Ekwynians would volunteer for alteration out of ambition - or desperation.

The Hundred had agreed to hold elections (among themselves) every two decades to vote in a new head of state and it was deep alarm that the Princes realised 2349 was nearly upon them. Despite their many differences in policy the one factor that united the Hundred was fear of losing power. In the immediate aftermath of the war their had been private suspicions that Admiral Reebik, having now won her war might take power - or worse be swept to power on a wave of popular enthusiasm. Her death at the age of eighty four in 2347 ended that concern but she had not been the only military leader of note and Vice Admiral L'Kiri quickly won much of Reebik's old support.

L'Kiri, a classically beautiful azure Meta-Baviir from S'Vrak was a popular war hero, who had gained a great degree of fame for her unyielding persistence during the war. Like her late mentor Reebik L'Kiri was a supporter of the Xeno Liberty Watch faction and pushed hard for the rapid integration of Ekwynians. She spoke often of political reforms, much to the alarm of some of those who admitted the need for reform but saw in L'Kiri a populist would-be dictator. L'Kiri was also an outsider to politics, hailing from the Merchant caste though she had been hastily adopted into an heirless Princely family who saw her as a rising star.

Fortunately for those who feared L'Kiri her own enthusiastic xenophilia was her undoing. Ironically the objection to her Ekwynian policy came less from her fellow Meta-Baviiri and more from the groups that the most to fear from the Ekwynians - the Till'Lynesians and the Vrinns. The dark feathered Avians feared a rapid decline in their fortunes once the more numerous mammalians gained full rights while the Vrinns - as T'Chel had so often pointed out - still hated and feared their former masters. A new faction the 'Closed Border Council' formed on Vrinn in early 2348 demanding the restrictions on the Ekwynians remain in place, along with a general platform of closed borders and isolationism. The leader of this hardline faction was Vice Atrata Mayatl, L'Kiri's old friend from the war.

The Hundred turned to the only person they could to stave off the populists, the staunch defender of Hundred privilege who had still managed a healthy popularity with the populace. In 2349 the Princes re-elected T'Chell as Grand Regent.

Princess T'Chel is re-elected Grand Regent, May 2349.

Footnotes:

[1] 'Few' in the context of more than seventy billion is a relative term. There were course still hundreds of millions of unenhanced Baviiri living across the Stellar Principality even by the end of the 2340s when meta-Baviiri made up the vast bulk of the Avian population. Whether for personal, spiritual or medical reasons this invisible minority chose not to undergo genetic alteration. However given the numerical disparity it is still appropriate to say the Meta-Baviiri were the 'default' Baviiri by this point - numerically and culturally.

[2] The longstanding Meta-Baviiri colony of S'Vrak also orbited Sinistra meaning the Vrinn colony, though 'new'would actually be in the heart of civilised space. Incidentally a, largely unstated motive for proving the Vrinns with four planets was the hope that they would quickly surpass the Ekwynians in population - which ended up happening as early as the 2350s.

[3] Though some believed this to be cultural the great weight of medical and scientific opinion in the Stellar Principality believed it to be instinctive behaviour [OOC: The Ekwynians have the 'Decadent' trait.]

[4] The Esteemed Adviser is generally in charge of research into society development. He/She or she is not always a particularly gifted scientist (in the past Grand Princes have used it as a sinecure) but over the past century and a half it has been one more often than not.

RossN · Jul 16, 2018

The Stellar Principality at the end of 2349. Note the presence of the mysterious and hostile 'Guardians of Zanaam' on the galactic rim.

Chapter Seventeen: The Post-War Boom

The Second Baviiri-Ekwynian War had a fearful cost in lives and materiel even for the victors. The Stellar Principality lost five destroyers and nine corvettes to enemy fire, not including the many warships severely damaged in the fighting. Deaths in the Navy, Marines and the Army ran into the hundreds of thousands and overall casualties into the millions. The worlds of Vrinn, Khnumme, Paragima, Terasokh and Sadoluron had all suffered at least some orbital bombardment and land combat with the unfortunate Terasokh exchanged hands on three different occasions. These worlds would now have to be rebuilt, refugees rehoused and order re-established amidst the rubble.

It might reasonably be supposed that after such a herculean effort the Stellar Principality would be economically exhausted. In fact the very opposite was the case. From the mid-2340s on the Stellar Principality entered one of if not the dizziest periods of economic growth in her history that would last until the Great Otaga Raid of 2362 to 2363.

Even before the war the Baviiri had begun a naval expansion program that created many new jobs, often in what had been hitherto marginal sectors. The Royal Navy was strong in any case but the build up was needed to ensure victory. One of the happy unintended consequences of this was that the Meta-Baviiri would become a major exporter of civilian shipping after the war as the vast shipyards at Skanaa and elsewhere switched production. Similar growth, initially military later turned civilian would be seen in other industries.

While the pre-war rearmament got the economic engine running the results of the war were more important. It is hard to overstate how unpopular the Ekwynian Bloc had become on the galactic stage. By 2338 the Ekwynians had closed borders and mutual trade embargoes with all her neighbours. Four of the five worlds that ended up transferred in the peace treaty had been locked out of foreign trade for literally decades and as soon as that changed there was a rush of interest from the Till'Lynesi Hierarchy and the Harmonious Axis. Though it would take time for the liberated planets to recover to the point trade was possible the market potential was present from the start. The non-inhabited mining systems also recovered by the Meta-Baviiri also became an asset over time, and unlike the inhabited planets most of them had been captured with their facilities relatively intact.

Most important of all however, and something that had serious domestic consequences for the Stellar Principality was the Vrinn diaspora.

After the Regime of Vrinnus surrendered to the Bloc in 2294 a vast exodus had begun. Many Vrinns had stayed on their homeworld, some had travelled to the remnant state centred around Khnumme (before that too fell to the Ekwynians in 2338) but billions had sought refuge abroad, in the Harmonious Axis, the Till'Lynesi Hierarchy and the Great Hythean Imperium [1]. Within two decades far more Vrinns lived outside what had been 'Vrinn space' than remained within it. Many fled with nothing more than the clothes on their backs but some, seeing the inevitable collapse of the Regime had moved what they could to sympathetic foreign ports. Over the next half century, two generations to the relatively short lived Vrinns, many communities had prospered as mercenaries, entertainers, administrators, engineers, any of a thousand professions all citizens of their new homes. Vrinn society had not been particularly merchant friendly before the wars, but out of necessity many had taken up the lives of freetraders, relying on the close knit yet scattered galactic community of Vrinns. Smuggling and piracy of course was always a dangerous if potentially lucrative option.

The Sinistra system in 2351; already home to a longstanding Meta-Baviir colony (S'Vrak) the sandy deserts of Sinistra III became the Vrinn colony of Jyylkir.

The Meta-Baviiri invasion of the Bloc had been watched with a mix of pessimism and hope by the Vrinn diaspora. Victory over the hated Ekwynians was a desirable goal in itself but the Hundred was explicitly fighting to save the Vrinns from tyranny. That provoked much debate in the diaspora; obviously Baviiri rule would be immensely better than Ekwynian but a non-negligible faction clung to the idea of an independent Vrinn state. Grand Marshal Yim tal Par, the last ruler of the Regime of Vrinnus had established a government-in-exile in the Pouz-Jok Sacred Council. The exiled Vrinn would be split between those who backed the Baviiri and those who supported Grand Marshal tal Par and his successors (the 'Realists' vs the 'Idealists'.) Once the Stellar Principality actually liberated Vrinn the 'Realists' were in the ascendance. First money and then migrants would come flooding into the Stellar Principality, especially once the new colony world of Jyylkir, the former Sinistra III became available [2].

Sinistra III had been granted to the Vrinn as compensation for 'losing' Terasokh (which was one of the two worlds set aside for the Neo-Ekwynians.) Initially it had been presumed the descendants of those Vrinns who had fled Terasokh in the 2290s would be the settlers on Jyylkir, but it proved impossible to trace records and the new colony swiftly gained an identity of its own. Nestled in the heart of Meta-Baviiri space Jyylkir attracted Vrinns who were less seized by the desire to rebuild the homeworlds and more interested in being part of a wealthy and cosmopolitan pan-species society.

Terasokh itself was home to fourteen billion Ekywinians and Neo-Ekywinians. The icy world was the site of the most ambitious terraforming effort in the history of the Stellar Principality. Over the course of nearly a decade carefully position solar mirrors thawed the glaciers while teams of scientists, engineers and AI worked over the ground. As the planet slowly warmed flora and fauna was introduced from Paragima, slightly 'tweaked' to survive in Terasokh's heavier gravity. Paragima was a particularly promising source of crops and beasts, both domesticated and wild as it had only just been colonised by the Ekwynians before the war and such majestic creatures as the Three Banded Roark and the sleek Horned Plains-Cat became a feature of Terasokh's growing savanna. Meanwhile, Terasokh's few native lifeforms were transported to the poles.

The terraforming of Terasokh was not particularly comfortable for the Neo-Ekwynians who lived there while the process was ongoing (and probably would not even had been suggested had the planet been inhabited by another species) but it spoke eloquently of the wealth and power of the Stellar Principality. It is unfair to say to say the great undertaking was a stroke of vanity; the terraformed Terasokh really was an economic asset to the state and much more easily habitable to the Neo-Ekwynians in the long term. However it stroked the pride of the Hundred to know that changing the very nature of a planet was well within their power.

The fully terraformed Terasokh, pictured with her moon Rychonis in 2356.

As the economy soared the government on Skanaa turned its attention to the galactic rim. In the previous century scientific voyages had explored the systems south-east of Baviiri space before Vrinn and then Ekwynian expansion cut off that route. A minor spiral arm jutted out away to the north-east, and of the stars in that arm three were promising. The systems of Weou and Sallax were energy rich and in the latter case at least scientifically important but the true prize was the Izar system.

Izar was the furthest tip of the spiral arm, the last stop on the hyperspace line before the endless gulf beyond the galactic border. Baviiri explorers had reached this spot in the Twenty Third Century and had turned back immediately, warned away by the mysterious 'Guardians of Zanaam'. It would not be until 2351 that the Meta-Baviiri returned to the Izar system, in the form of of a powerful fleet of warships under the leadership of Admiral Y'Heetak.

Almost everything about the Guardians was then and remained long after a mystery. The Guardians of the Twenty Third and Twenty Fourth Century were apparently automated defences; their destroyer-sized 'ships' somewhat resembled the mining drones that the Baviiri had encountered in the west. However the Guardians were far more advanced than the mindless drones guarding mineral rich systems. Their computer systems, weapons and engines were so much more impressive that Admiral Y'Heetak doubted they came from the same origin and that their resemblance was a co-incidence.

Regardless of their origin the Guardians put up a ferocious fight. The Izar system was home to twenty four ancient warships that might share the scale of a Meta-Baviir destroyer but surpassed it in power. Y'Heetak's fleet was powerful - most of his vessels and men had fought in the war - but it had not been upgraded and there was later a strong feeling the Hundred might have waited before ordering him in almost as soon as the outpost station was built at Sallax. Y'Heetak, a highly decorated naval officer would always refute such feelings, thinking it better the men use older weapons they knew how to use than shiny new gizmos they had never fired in anger. Anyway the Battle of Izar waged in December 2351 was every bit as brutal as any the Royal Navy had faced with the Ekwynian ranks. Three corvettes, five destroyers and the cruiser RSS Undomesticated Hatchling were lost to enemy action [3].

RSS Undomesticated Hatchling, a K'Mirom-class cruiser explodes at the Battle of Izar with the loss of all hands. A 'Guardian of Zanaam' destroyer is visible in the extreme foreground.

The reason the Guardians (and the Meta-Baviiri!) had fought so hard was the second planet in the Izar system, Zanaam herself. Zanaam was a large terrestrial world but even those hastily taken scans in the Twenty Third Century had suggested it was far more than that. Zanaam was a 'Gaia world' - 'an ideal, temperate world with a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere and a resilient ecosystem. Optimal conditions for all known higher forms of life at different latitudes' as the explorers succinctly put it. The number of such worlds in existence was thought to be incredibly small, and had it not been for the existence of Hythea in the galactic south west the entire Gaia myth might have been written off as hopeful fables whispered over spiced wine by freetraders.

Immediately after her re-election in 2349 the Grand Regent had made investigating and claiming Zanaam a priority. T'Chel knew the defenses orbiting the world would prove formidable, so formidable that she did not give the order for the expedition before she knew she maintained power, lest some in the Hundred lose their nerve. If Zanaam was a twin of the known Hythea it might be the single tantalising prize in known space. It was not simply the wealth either, but the curiosity. The Guardians had to be protecting something truly remarkable. She would not be disappointed.

Zanaam as revealed in the survey report of 2352.

Zanaam proved to be a lush and inviting world, divided into a series of archipelagos and small continents lapped by shallow seas. While there was strong volcanic activity, particularly in the southern oceans it was not a problem for Meta-Baviiri technology. The boundless wildlife, all non-sapient were dominated by a variety of brightly coloured winged reptiles on land and their greater marine cousins beneath the waves. Though some of the sea creatures were potentially dangerous predators the small and inoffensive aerial nectarivores proved delightfully affectionate, curious and intelligent (for animals.) L'Krami, the captain of the RSS Whimsical Hatchling and the scientist who charted the planet in 2352 noted in his report:

'The Zanaamdactyls will either prove the greatest nuisance to colonists... or the most beloved and fashionable pets in the Principality. Their chirping song and habit of nuzzling one's leg in affectionate greeting suggests they will be one or the other, nothing inbetween.

Two mysteries marked Zanaam, one obvious, the other only uncovered during actual colonisation.

On the south western continent, near the equator an ancient alien obelisk stood. It was four hundred feet tall, made of an unknown green-black stone like substance (not found elsewhere on the planet) and covered top to bottom in the glyphs of some unidentified language. Prolonged study could only determine that the obelisk was not harmful, even if it did give off a strange power signal and give anyone in contact with it a headache. Having been found mostly harmless it would be left to the xenoarcheologists to pour over it.

The second mystery was not discovered for several years. In November 2352 the Hundred declared an expedition to colonise Zanaam, renaming the world 'K'Karaal' after the palace of the Rain God in Skanaan mythology. Despite the isolation of K'Karaal in galactic terms word of it's beauty and riches had spread and no colony in the Stellar Principality ever attracted quite such enthusiasm. By 2358 a thriving colony had been set up, at which point one group of recent settlers made a discovery:

The discovery of the 'Seafallen Cruiser' of K'Karaal (Zanaam).

The discovery of a sunken alien battlecruiser thrilled the entire Stellar Principality and naturally many assumed it was linked to the Guardians and the Obelisk Builders (if they were the same, something by no means proven.) It was left to L'Krami to pour cold water on some of the fevered speculation:

'The Izar system is full of wreckage of unfortunate vessels than stumbled across this planet and were destroyed by the Guardians. I think it far more likely this foundered ship belonged to a more recent explorer who crashed on K'Karaal than from a naturally evolved Zanaamian civilisation - espectially if we are able to understand and fly her!'

The battlecruiser was recovered in 2360 and seemed to agree with L'Krami's view. It bore no resemblance to the Guardians or to the Obelisk. To everyone's surprise it did bear a resemblance to a ship the Meta-Baviiri knew very well: the RSS Valiant Hatchling or the 'Black Sword', one of the alien vessels that had been recovered as part of the Lost Fleet over a century before! With the silt and seaweed cleaned away and the out of the water the Mystery Ship could have been Valiant Hatchling's twin sister!

Naturally the 'Seafallen Cruiser' - her name was undecided yet - was a welcome addition to the Royal Navy and many of the Valiant Hatchling's crew could be quickly reassigned to get her in working order. Still, welcome surprise as she was the enigmatic battlecruiser was just one more mystery to a place that was both the most enticing and the strangest in the Stellar Principality.

An overhead view of the as yet unnamed alien battlecruiser.

Footnotes:

[1] Surprisingly very few sought refuge in the Baviir Stellar Principality, either because it was too close to the Bloc or because the temperate, forested worlds favoured by the Avians were too inclement to the desert dwelling Vrinns.

[2] Delicate negotiations about the future of Vrinn government were extremely important during the late 2340s and throughout the 2350s. The Hundred and the Grand Regent were firmly against outright independence, but short of that there was a willingness to consider almost any political solution. An actual solution would finally be reached in the 2360s.

[3] Though the loss of a cruiser captured the public imagination the shocking loss rate among the destroyers was of much greater concern to the Royal Navy, and would lead to a serious rethink of Naval policy in the next two decades.

On Azure Wings - An Apocalypse AAR

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