Together to the Stars!

Archaeology of Interstellar Humanity before Galactic Unification

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Understanding Humanity Pre-Unification

Firstly, this blog counts years using the 'Atomic Age' which was the year-numbering system calendar era used by all of the Three Empires from at least the -103rd century. Because the First Empire rose around that time, this means that speaking of early Humanity uses some fantastically large negative numbers to count dates if using Galactic Unification as the beginning of our calendar era. Conveniently, year 1 of the Atomic Age is 12,000 years before the beginning of the Galactic Age, so at least it is not excessively difficult to figure out when Atomic Age events occurred in comparison to our current years.

Secondly, we have a significant drop off in first-hand accounts of life and history in the first centuries of the Atomic Age, which we now know was caused by a series of failures of digital information systems on Albashri, then in the midst of the Anthropocene Extinction, which cascaded to the then only six other colonized planets in the 'Human Universe,' all of which took place pre-first contact. Qalip records dating back to first contact note that humans rescued from the Parsin Infestation were extremely precious about maintaining their collections of relatively primitive data storage devices. Later Imperial institutions were quite diligent about maintaining a diversity of record types, still using paper and vinyl-magnetic tape in order to record information, allowing us to access records ranging from literature to newspapers, diaries to census data.

Lastly and most importantly, the concept of 'Empire' had a very different connotation among the first spacefarers. While today the concept is usually invoked as a foundational cosmopolitan concept, invoking an ancient and legendary heritage to many modern institutions, during the First and Second Empires especially, it had an explicitly anthrochauvist, authoritarian, and expansionist connotation. As the Abegellian Revival cultural movement increasingly glorifies the idea of Empire, it is worth sparing a thought to the often violent history of the word's connotation, however embarrassing it is for humans to speak on. After all, it wasn't until the so-called 'Fourth Empire' (formally the Galactic Federation) that a reformation movement was lead by non-humans.

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do you have a favorite emperor? if not, then a least favorite?

I don't know if I have a favorite Emperor, although Omar I, who founded the Second Empire was a madlad. A terrible person, but really entertaining to read about.

There's really only one correct answer for least favorite Emperor, and it's Clovys. He's far from the worst emperor, either personally, politically, or in terms of aptitude, but the fact that his death caused the Empire to collapse rapidly because of problems which he may not have entirely caused but likely could have avoided pretty much crystallizes him in the Bashri memory as the de facto worst emperor. None of this is helped by the fact that every personal record of him save one makes him out to be an absolutely odious person.

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Another weird quirk of the nomenclature of Humanitology studies is what to even call the various phases of the Empire. Historically, except for in the late Second and even much of the Third Empire, It was known pretty much exclusively as the Bashri Star Empire by its inhabitants. This means that for a significant period of time, the various phases got referred to as the Old, Middle, and New Empire.

There's a number of problems with this, namely that the Empire didn't actually have just three phases. There's a relatively clear (if messy) continuity between the Empire of the 8th century and the Galactic Federation, at least in an idealistic sense.

Then there's the interregnums and phases when the Empire is drastically reorganized. The biggest reason is that the Second Empire never actually fell. The Federation collapsed after a series of internal crises, but one of the major splinter states was, for all intents and purposes, the Bashri Star Empire, and readopted the name when it became clear that the Federation was done. While it was, at that point, a representative democracy, members of the Tarazed (19th Dynasty) served as members of parliament and as ministers of state until the line went formally extinct. When the Third Bashri Star Empire was formed, it claimed the name before the rump state of the Second Empire joined.

That actually is where we get the numbering system. There is at least historical precedent for its use in academic circles in the Third Empire, so despite never being in colloquial use, has become the standard for referring to the procession of Imperial history.

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The Imperial Invasion of Gadar of 2503 was easily the single largest military mishap of the early Empire. A significant expeditionary force attempted to land on Gadar, believing that the then pre-industrial Gadaru clans would capitulate quickly to the overwhelming firepower of the Empire.

This obviously did not happen, as impressive as the technology they fielded was, since Gadar is a moon covered in towering, inhabited mountains separated by dense tropical valleys, where water collects and turns the ground into a swamp in the best of conditions. Now, in case anyone has never met a Gadaru, the women are on average 8 feet tall with razor sharp talons, and reasonably capable of flight in low-gravity worlds like Gadar. While far more fragile than the Bashri owing to their thinner bones, their familiarity with the terrain and greater capacity to fight in three dimensions on a mountainside became a serious problem for the expedtionary forces, who were embarrassingly forced to call for reinforcement. They may still have salvaged the campaign if it weren't for the figure who eventually come to be known as Supreme Lord Yntuc (So----Re*!) who united the clans and repelled the invaders, especially after commandeering an Imperial corvette and making contact with a nearby spacefaring civilization known as the Douln, who together with the Gadaru maintained their independence and that of their neighbors for centuries. The failed expedition is frequently cited as a reason for the 8th dynasty decline, ending the unlimited expansion and upward trajectory of the Second Empire since the Warring Stars Period

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I should make it clear I don't think there's anything wrong with Empress Abegeyll I. Likely without her, there would be no Federation, Galactic or Bashri. My concern with the aesthetic of Abageyllian revival actually has to do with the Empire she inherited, which was about as colonialist as it was in any time period. That's not her fault though, the Empire changed faster during her lifetime than at any other period in history, both due to her reforms and the disintegration almost the entire reactionary bloc around the time she took power. Most importantly, her reforms stuck! Once the Imperial Senate was instituted and universal suffrage extended across species, there wasn't much a chance of that changing.

Still, there's something to be said for the fact that the aesthetics of Abegeyll's Empire today has a a lot of violent baggage, and even her policies would be considered wildly conservative today. I sometimes worry that the cult of personality that has come to surround 'The Great Reformer' doesn't mean as much today as it did during her lifetime thousands of years ago, and that even holding her up as a figure of progressive reform can be a smokescreen for anthrochauvinist sentiments.

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For some reason, the longest enduring controversy in Humanitology is the actual founding date of the First Empire, which itself dates back to 1452 AA. The controversy was ignited by the movement of the 700th anniversary celebrations ahead several decades by Emperor Clovys, who wished to celebrate it within his lifetime. This established the founding date as 752 AA instead of the previously ubiquitous 814, considering the beginning of the Empire to be the destruction of the Tliquatl rather than the declaration of the first emperor. This also meant that retroactively, Chustjnyen and his nephew were considered to be the first Emperors, which was not historically the case during their lifetimes.

Regardless, Clovys died days before the festivities were supposed to begin, and with questions surrounding the succession, inaugurated the end of the First Empire and the begin of the First Interregnum, known to the Second and Third Empires as the Warring Stars Period.