Beyond the Gates

Beyond the Gates

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Some general information about the Galaxy in our Subreality:

[Aug. 20th, 2008|11:18 am]

underlankers

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mood

thoughtful

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We have a Universe with literally infinite dimensions in our Subreality. There are about 200 estimated starfaring societies, with ours, the Bizjarran Empire, equivalent in terms of sophistication and power-projection to Achaemenid Iran, and the rest of the galaxy to the Achaemenid-era Earth. To put it more bluntly, we outweigh the rest of the galaxy so bad that they cannot conquer us at our best, all united together.

Bizjarran civilization spans 40,000 light years wide and 2,000 light years deep, and is organized as a loosely-grouped monarchy based around the figure of the Anlan Lan and his female counterpart, the Azla Lazae. The society has a great deal of diversity, as would be expected from a starfaring empire of the sort that the Bizjarrans have, which retains sovereignty and suzerainty over a gigantic chunk of the galaxy. The empire is authoritarian, perhaps even totalitarian in theory, but in practice it retains a lot of individual leadership among various species. Each species has various factions and governments, and sometimes internecine wars. Really, the only unifying factor at all is the Bizjarran Emperor and Empress, as even the species that have produced the Imperial Houses are often badly divided and prone to disputes over issues. Imperial society currently is in its Golden Age, at the peak of its power, even after the collapse of one Dynasty and the rise of another.

Various satellite regimes exist, mostly small-scale federations of various species that are extremely prone to rebellion against Bizjarran interference, which usually prompts a quick smackdown every so often. Further out in space, a pair of unified and yet divided regimes exist that remind me first of the Aztecs in terms of power, and the second in terms of pre-Shi Huang China. These two have just as much tension between Starfarers and Planet-bounds as every other Galactopolitical regime does. The various races are often attempting to leave the former, especially, which prompts brutal retaliation which lacks the effectiveness of Bizjarran retaliation, and so the leaders of the Zhurvan League have to launch another attack. The Khroelvar Union, which is on some level resembling Warring-States era China, is very different, the planets are often only loosely affiliated, and seldom are actually unified, chiefly owing obedience to the Leader of the Union, a virtually powerless figure. These two have been battering each other in warfare for at least 22 years.

There are other galactic federations that have retained a general aura of isolation, against the wishes of some of their populations, but as they usually retain an iron wall, little can be said of them. This is the Milky Way in our Subreality, we know little of Andromeda or Triangulum, owing to their sheer distance.

As for lil' ol' Earth in this reality, it's called Tam'ir, and is in a region of the galaxy the starfarers felt was mostly uninhabitable, along with everything out well beyond the next 400 light years. The discovery of two societies, one about the level of the 19th Century, (Earth) and the other at the level of the Paleolithic (Proxima Centauri) was a shock. The beings on Proxima yielded fairly quickly and assimilated rather fast into the general Galactic society, having lost most of whatever unique ideas that they had. Earth, with its 4 brawling Hominins, has so far precariously retained a lot of its traditions, having rebelled repeatedly against the empire in the usual planet-bound fashion of wanting to protect its traditions against far more numerous and powerful starfarers.

Relations between planet-bounds and starfarers are usually punctuated with a time of peace, when everything is sedate and both co-exist, followed by some starfarer doing something really stupid, and then a general uprising occurs. The most recent such uprising was 800 light years away from the Grszhari, a planet-bound race that as a whole tends to three main cultural divisions, and the three have become much closer after the Bizjarrans forcibly conquered their planet about 1,000 years ago. An insult to one is an insult to all... and that's the typical pattern of relations between starfaring powers and planet-bound colonized species.

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