The Age of Elegance

4532-4753CE

Overview

The Age of Elegance was a period of surface decorum marred by occasional violence and a growing separation and suspicion between the Human Nobilis and Sapien elite, exacerbated by increasingly strident rhetoric and violent dissent by growing Ibrahimite fundamentalism.  This final period of Imperial history was dominated by two Imperial Chairs, Admiral Sir Hans Crassius and his protégé, Marshal Sir Hurik Adannan.  Both men distrusted the Nobility; Crassius, though of volatile temper, managed relations between the Great Houses, the Orders of Knighthood and the leaders of the Imperial legislatures quiet well, maintaining an uneasy government cohesion; the more restrained and secretive Adannan was less likely to trust the Nobilis and sympathized with those who would weaken Nobilis influence, a flaw that eventually unraveled the Empire.

Hans Crassius became Imperial Chair in 4558CE after Emperor Cleon IV yielded to Moralist and Sapien pressure and dismissed Duke Altamon Vega after allegations of immorality and complaints of arrogance.  Crassius immediately began to stack the upper levels of the Imperial Bureaucracy with loyal Sapiens. 

In 4588CE, responding to perceived intelligence failures, Cleon IV authorized the creation of the paramilitary Imperial Interior Intelligence Service (3I), responsible directly to the Imperial Chair.  Crassius appointed Marshal Adannan, adept at decades of intelligence analysis, to command the 3I.  In 4608CE Marshal Adannan formed the secret Shadow Corps within the 3I; their charge was surveillance of Imperial military officers, especially Nobilis, possibly disloyal to the Emperor.  The Corps soon expanded operations, secretly spying on the Nobilis Houses as well.

Cleon IV died in 4619CE when an unsolved disintegrator explosion destroyed the Imperial Sun off Aphrodite, killing the Emperor and three of his Ministers.  After considerable debate, the Imperial Congress and High Council confirmed Olav IV, "the Stutterer", as the last undisputed Emperor of Humanity.  A substantially following of Congressional representatives supported an unsolicited bid to instead enthrone Olav's son, the popular Prince Rogar, and a number of High Councilors pushed for the nomination of Cleon IV's cousin, King Roban Kamarov "the Elder" of House Farrar-Kamarov and King of North America and Asia.

After a tumultuous 4623CE tour of Camelot, where Marshal Adannan saved Olav IV from one of two assassination attempts, the Emperor retreated into growing isolation in his Imperial Apartments in Byzantium, eventually allowing audiences only with his son, Crown Prince Rogar, now both Prince of Mercury and King of Venus, and with Admiral Crassius and Marshal Adannan.

In 4643CE, the course of the Imperial succession began to falter after the Imperial heir suffered a massive stroke.  Though King Rogar gradually recovered, continuing strokes and infirmities sapped his strength and effectiveness and he eventually died in 4710CE, mostly supported by cybernetic organs in his latter years.

Imperial Chair Crassius disappears from his private quarters in 4644CE.  An extensive 3I investigation supervised by Adannan determined that Crassius fell victim to assassination by disintegration at the orders of the succeeding Imperial Chair, former Minister of Defense Sir Paul Carlsen.  In the subsequent two week war of assassination, Carlsen and his closest associates perished and Marshal Sir Hurik Adannan became the new Imperial Chair.

Renewed violence between the Nobilis and Ishmahili Ibrahimites erupted after the controversial killing of Ibrahimite Imam Thurgon Rallis by Lord Aspen Maxwell-Turner of Venus kills was ruled self defense.  The Ibrahimite Revolt of 4653-4656CE cost tens of millions on twenty worlds, mostly Venus and Thisbe, and forever soured relations between the increasingly militarized factions.

In reaction to these radicalizing forces, the Shadow Corps began Operation Sapphire in 4660CE, a covert action to identify and eliminate potentially disloyal Imperial officers, specifically Nobilis and Ibrahimite agitators.  Publicly, Adannan encouraged the Coalition for the Preservation of the Empire, a moderate secular anti-Nobilis political party.

Frustrated by Nobilis rule, Command Admiral Sir Istin Katannin, ostensibly pro-Preservationist, mutinied in 4682CE, rallying large portions of his Rimward Fleet and proclaiming himself President of the Betelgeuse Republic.  Katannin revoked all Nobilis privileges and titles and moved against the Calderan worlds.  Adannan's reluctant but eventual response with the Imperial Central Regional fleets, aided by squadrons of Nobilis auxiliaries under King Roban the Elder's command, led to Katannin's defeat and capture, ending the revolt by 4684CE.  In the recriminations, purges and trials that followed Katannin and his followers died in detention or suffered at Gehenna and the Preservationist Party disbanded in disarray.

The 48th century saw attempts at reconciliation, as Ibrahim renewed his support for Imperial institutions and Adannan worked to create a new moderate Sapien coalition.  But divisions and distrust continued and the disintegrating Imperial family did little to help.  After Rogar's death in 4710CE, his sister Elizabeth, Queen of Mars and now Princess of Mercury, became Imperial heir and Rogar's brother, Orlan the Imbecile, became King of Venus.  In 4750CE, Elizabeth killed herself after acknowledging that both she and Orlan were sterile, victims of generational fatigue.  King Orlan Kamarov, barely a meter and a quarter tall and mentally a six year-old, became heir to the Imperial throne.

The final unraveling began in 4752CE, when a House Farrar-Kamarov operative penetrated and exposed Operation Sapphire.  Adannan fled the Nobilis outrage and Emperor Olav IV, still convinced of Adannan's loyalty, reluctantly appointed Minister of State Sir Percival Nassim as interim Imperial Chair, pending Adannan's surrender and prosecution for murder and treason.  Nearly a year had passed, with Adannan still at large and unrest growing, when the President of the Imperial High Council, Atlantian Prince Tomas Turki, used the opportunity of a rare audience to assassinate Emperor Olav IV and wound Crown Prince Orlan.

Unwilling to confirm Orlan as Emperor, the High Council and nearly every Nobilis Great House rallied behind King Roban the Elder.  Chair Nassim and the Bureaucracy, joined vocally by Ibrahim and prominent Congressional Sapiens, rallied behind Orlan.  Before the end of November 4753CE, the conflict had erupted in open warfare and the War of Disintegration had begun.

At its end, the Empire of Humanity encompassed over settled 20,000 worlds within a radius six hundred light-years.  Nearly a trillion Humans and over half a trillion other races lived within the Imperial borders.

Political

Underneath the glittering surface, the Age of Elegance was a period of growing struggle between the Imperial Chairs and the Nobilis Great Houses, with increasing Ibrahimite unrest fueling the fires.  While relations with the Empire's increasingly minority non-Human races and foreign powers remained solid, Human society spiraled into growing factionalism and hatred.

The Great Houses eventually rallied behind the growing influence of House Farrar-Kamarov, led by Roban the Elder, King of North America and Asia.  Roban inherited the Kingdom of North America from his Farrar mother in 4404CE, and after his father's death in 4550CE, he ruled Asia as well, increasingly helped by his able son, Roban the Younger, who governed from Beijing between stints as ambassador to the major Known Space powers.  After the Emperor's sister Princess Hanna died in 4639CE, Olav IV passed the Principality of Bengal to Roban the Elder to placate Nobilis unrest over their waning influence in the Cabinet.  Roban the Younger turned Bengal into a base of support for his father's House and into a rallying point for conservative Rimward Nobilis and their Calderan allies.

Independent Nobilis power had increased in the aftermath of the Camelot incident of 4593CE, where a slow or malicious Imperial response led to the slaughter of the hundreds of local Nobilis.  In Camelot's wake, Emperor Cleon IV allowed Nobilis households to maintain heavy military equipment and armed spacecraft, the beginning of private armies and squadrons.  By the time Nobilis auxiliaries fought against Katannin, a large Great House could field more ships than some Sector fleets.

In 4725CE Prince Tomas Turki of Atlantis became President of the Imperial High Council and solidified an alliance between House Farrar-Kamarov and House Turki.  Prince Tomas tilted the Imperial High Council toward a pro-Nobilis line with his legislative agenda and commission appointments.  After Elizabeth's suicide, Nobilis pressure influenced Olav IV to name Roban the Younger as the new King of Mars, but this appeasement only further emboldened the Nobilis to seek an alternative heir to Orlan the Imbecile.

Sapien reaction to Nobilis power was both secular and religious.  Adannan actively supported moderate Sapien efforts to curb the Nobility and privately quoted from Mikal Hender's inflammatory Tyranny of the Few when frustrated with Great House obstinacy.  After the collapse of the Preservationist movement, Adannan encouraged the Imperial Unity party to promote secular Sapien goals.  Himself a Low Cyborg, Adannan's relationship with the Ibrahimites remained poor.

Technological

For most of the last few centuries of the Empire, technological innovation waned.  The Ministry of Science was a shell of its former self, and the IAK had assumed nearly complete responsibility for exploration.  By the 48th century, the tentative stirrings of a scientific renaissance had begun, but the end of the Empire cut short any real progress.

In the 46th century, continuing economic ties with the Grand Federation led to the introduction of Tze't-based bio-link technology and by the end of the century, the MZS joint venture was selling millions of bio-linked Constructs across the Empire.  Tze't and Zhantlian-based biological products competed with traditional mechanical items in markets including cybernetic modification and fashion. 

Khald'aron attempts to perfect macro autonomous self-replicators failed dramatically when experimental units ran amok, devastating the Science Six station and spreading to Ret'tabbulka, forcing the Khald'aron Republic to reluctantly request Imperial assistance in destroying the world and causing three million casualties.  The resulting Treaty of Kumar banned non-Zhretran self-replicants across Known Space in 4582CE.

The continued environmental problems on Venus and the failures of Plan V were eventually overcome by Aleria Kundova's 4635CE Plan VI, a five hundred year plan for achieving full ecological and tectonic stability on the heavily populated terraformed world.

Most technological innovation during the period focused on artistic design.  The stylish starships of the Durin Design Works and the great works of Concordian architecture benefited from highly technical applications of Worm/Stasis science.

The slow renaissance in technology began secretly, with the 4700CE Imperial Navy development of a Class F prototype worm drive, a 14% improvement in performance.  Though the discovery remained confined to classified Imperial couriers and fast frigates, it demonstrated that progress was still possible, even under Imperial auspices. 

In 4715CE the Jovian governments unveiled the new Jove Web teleportation network, allowing continuous operations between Europa, Ganymede and Callisto and teleportation between Io and Europa through most of the inner moon's orbit.  Improved Jovian teleporters spread to the Dorian and Ertan systems and improved service between Terra and Luna.

From their base at Hortense, the IAK continued exploration of the Trailing regions, including the fabled lost Terminus Expedition, which departed in 4745CE on a planned ten year voyage to the far outer reaches of the Orion Arm.

Cultural

Architecture, style and decorum dominated the last two centuries of the Empire, even as tensions simmered into occasional violence.  As the remnants of the Decadent movement migrated to the Kuiper Principality or stayed below the surface on dissolute worlds like Libertas and Khronos, a formal culture emphasizing intricacy in construction, fashion and behavior gained prominence over much of Imperial society.

The Concordia style, with an obsessively detailed blending of Stasis, living metal and force field construction, became immensely popular in the 46th century, inspiring the building of countless palaces, towers and arcologies across the Empire.  Concordia inspired a renewal of formal attire, and the malls and salons of Elegant Era society were bejeweled by throngs in glittering suits and gowns.

Concordia spawned the Quantum and Fractal movements, one a technologically advanced austere reaction to ornate detail, the other a mathematical extension of Concordian techniques to near infinite intricacy.  By the 48th century the neoJenan movement began to dominate both architecture and fashion, and society begin to become even more obsessed with deference and decorum.

Ibrahimism grew to encompass a hundred and fifty billion adherents by 4750CE.  Increasingly, the religion was dividing into two major sects, held in place only by the personality of the religion's founder, Ibrahim Mustafa, who worked to lessen overt tensions with Imperial authorities. 

Ibrahim's older grandson, Hammed Mustafa, the "Old Nephew", continued to develop his Hammedian Sect based on peaceful coexistence with the Nobilis and other Human religions, sects and Variants.  Based on the Declaration of Tolerance, Hammed's philosophies were better received in the Frontier regions and earned him respect from the Imperial leadership and even some Nobilis houses.

Ibrahim's youngest son, Ishmahil Mustafa, the "Young Uncle", headed the increasingly strident Ishmahili Ibrahimite sect, which explicitly opposed Nobilis rule and all drastic forms of Human genetic and mechanical transformation.  In 4598CE, Ishmahil established the scarlet-robed paramilitary Order of Purity, which survived the Ibrahimite Revolt of 4653-4656CE to gain adherents and access to more advanced armaments, including armed starships.  In 4729CE, Ishmahil broke with established scientific circles to create the grey-robed Order of Enlightenment, which pursued science and philosophy based on Ibrahimite principles.  Two years later, Ishmahil published his Model for a Moral Society, effectively a call for an anti-Nobilis revolution.

Chronology Table

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