The Disintegration Wars

4754-4874CE

Overview

The Empire of Humanity permanently dissolved during the 4753-4773CE War of Disintegration and completely collapsed in the chaos that followed in the wake of the spread of the Mech Plague.  Imperial cohesion shattered and one interstellar state became over a dozen, with thousands of individual worlds descending into anarchy and isolation.  In the hundred years that followed the war, the seeds of new governments emerged in some regions, but continued warfare wasted much of the remaining Worm/Stasis infrastructure.  By 4874CE, most worlds had lost all contact with other systems and continuing interstellar communications and trade was confined to barely more than a thousand of the Empire's twenty thousand systems.  Exhausted by war, disruption, and unprecedented death and starvation, the surviving worlds settled into an increasingly isolated dark age. 

The War of Disintegration started as a two-sided struggle between the Imperial Loyalists led by the interim Chair, Sir Percival Nassim, and the Nobilis Protectorate rebels led by King Roban the Elder of the House Farrar-Kamarov.  The severe response of Loyalist forces at Champa, sterilizing the rebellious world to destroy its Nobilis leadership, caused many otherwise pro-Imperial worlds and nearly every non-Human race to withdraw to the sidelines, hoping to support the war's eventual winner.  In 4755CE, the fugitive former Chair Marshal Adannan returned to the Central Region, capturing Heaven and beginning his Republican crusade.  The three-way conflict saw increasing radicalization in the Central Region, where most of the fleets flocked to support their factions in struggles for control over the centers of Imperial government and culture.  Adannan died at the Battle of Kalmar in 4759CE, and his movement quickly disintegrated, with surviving squadrons retreating to the frontiers.  In 4760CE Protectorate forces led by King Roban the Elder gained control of the Solar system and, in the bloody occupation and bombardment of Terra, Chair Nassim, Emperor Orlan and Ibrahimite prophet Ibrahim Mustafa died, along with over five billion Solar system residents.

After 4760CE the War of Disintegration entered a different phase.  Ishmahil Mustafa gradually gained control of the former Loyalists, now renamed the Council of Salvation, and in 4762CE the massed Councilar fleets attacked Sol, eventually forcing the Protectorate to withdraw from the Solar system and retreat to their stronghold at Bengal.  For more than a decade, the bitter war continued, back-dropped by increasing non-Human defections from the Empire and a complete lack of centralized authority anywhere in Human Space.  The Mech Plague became the dominate force in all of Known Space after 4760CE, devastating most worlds and causing a complete breakdown in interstellar society before 4770CE.  The War of Disintegration finally ended at the Battle of Hermes in 4773CE with the death of Roban the Elder and the ascension of Roban the Younger to become Emperor of the Bengali Dominions, as he renounced claims to lead all of Human Space.  By then, the damage was done.  The War destroyed Imperial cohesiveness and the Mech Plague destroyed Imperial civilization, driving a near universal Worm/Stasis culture back into at best threadbare Materialist economies running on fusion and remnant technology and at worst barbarism, starvation and extinction.

In the years immeidately following the war, Ishmahil Mustafa declared himself Khalif of the Terran Khalifate and began to push his strict Ishmahili brand of Ibrahimism onto his subjects.  Though Ishmahil held just seven systems outside Sol at the dawn of his Khalifate, he focused on purifying his realm and spreading his doctrines.  In 4776CE, Libertas, Kalmar and several Constructionist (neutral moderate worlds) including Hercules, Prometheus and Nova, formed the Second Kalmar Pact, an association of Central worlds dedicated to stabilizing their corner of civilization.  Led by Queen Janis of Kalmar and King John of Libertas, this association soon became a direct rival to the Khalifate, leading to the Pact-Khalifate War of 4784-4801CE, an increasingly sporadic conflict that weakened both combatants.  While the Khalifate and Pact fought, Emperor Roban expanded his Bengali Dominions through large portions of Sectors 8, 4 and 47 and along the old Taurus-Orion Trail to maintain contact with the Nobilis resort at Glorious and his philosophical Nobilis brethren in the Calderan worlds.  The Paradise War of 4805-4808CE between the Khalifate and the Dominions gave Ishmahil control of Paradise, but ended finally general warfare in the Central Region for decades.

Outside the Central Region, civilization unraveled.

The Northern and Southern Regions eventually collapsed into complete isolation and anarchy.  In the South, the Nobilis-dominated Dawn League barely survived past the end of the War, and thousands of Southern systems, cut off from remaining trade routes, essentially drifted into total isolation.  In the North, the Crux Protectorate led by Count Adrian Mendoza lasted until his death in 4849CE, but spent the first half of the 49th century in increasing isolation.  The far extremes of Northern and Southern space remain uncontacted; those systems that have seen visitors are often primitive, xenophobic or extinct.

Much of the Coreward Region maintained a degree of interstellar civilization, with the former Grand Federation Races of the B'dr'rak, Kith'turi and Salvaatiki forming the Federation Races Protective League (FRPL) in 4761CE in association with seven other former Grand Federation Races, maintaining trade and relief relations throughout much of the Coreward expanse.  Human Coreward states, including the Antaran Military District (AMD) based at Nachen and its offshoot Trans Antaran Free Republic (TAFR), based at Bastian, as well as the fundamentalist Ibrahimite Khanate of Heguz, grew up in the aftermath of the war, but faded as they struggled with continuing decline and with their neighbors.  By 4840CE the AMD and TAFR had collapsed after a pointless war, and the Khanate of Heguz did not survive much past Khan Baktalin's death in 4864CE.  The Federation Humans of Zhantlas formed the Zhantlas Union with local Imperial worlds and the systems of the Kraz and Iceworms; the Union held onto civilization by maintaining close ties to the Grand Federation, only opening trade relations with the remaining Human Space states after 4850CE.

The Spinward Region was rocked by Dragon incursions beginning in 4775CE and continuing until the unexpected nova of Draco's sun in 4837CE.  Even after the Dragons collapsed into post-nova balkanized nations, they continued to hold over six hundred Human Spinward worlds in effective slavery.  The only effective Spinward government was the Mendam Codominium, a republic of Khruzi and Human worlds, headquartered at Mendam and dedicated to upholding civilization and fighting the Dragons.  After Draco's destruction the Codominium was unfortunately too weakened to retake more than a handful of conquered worlds, and a war with the Khanate of Heguz in 4845-4847CE, effectively curtailed to Codominium's offensive capabilities.  The rimward areas of the Spinward region suffered nearly complete neglect and remain mostly uncontacted.

The remaining civilized worlds in the Trailing Region were centered on the eight Sectors of what became known as the Star Kingdoms.  These Sapien-led states, adopting King Adam DeJulius-Brening of Markham's brand of semi-elected government, maintained an interstellar economy and culture.  Led by growing powers such as Lanander, Orpheus and Irmingham, they used their IAK ties and remaining resources to consolidate their grasp on over one hundred Trailing systems.  By 4842CE, the Star Kings had consolidated their holdings, and after some conflict, established borders and protocols for maintaining order in their corner of Human Space.  Further from the center, the Rootjalik race came to dominate Sector 430 and surrounding areas as the remaining starships of the Rootjalik Consulate occupied the Serlian worlds and began to conquer Human systems.

The Rimward Region suffered neglect, especially toward its spinward and northern extents.  The Bengali Dominions expanded into the near Rimward regions, especially into Sectors 47 and 48 and maintained a string of worlds and stations leading to Glorious and Caldera, but its true expansion had not begun, and Emperor Roban ceased enlargement after 4820CE, concentrating his efforts on the first sixty-four members of the Dominions.  Further to the rim, Kumar maintained an interstellar culture, but its Betelgeuse Union had only two members, itself and Luminous, and its main lifeline was a tenuous contact with the struggling Khald'aron Republic.

In the middle 49th century, Central Region politics were dominated by increasing Ishmahili Order of Valor raids on Pact, Bengali and independent worlds.  Ishmahil backed down from war with Bengal, but continued to allow attacks on Pact shipping.  A pirate attack blamed on Ishmahilis killed Libertine King John's last heir in 4871CE, and John married Queen Janis of Kalmar, transforming the Pact into the Twin Kingdom of Kalmar-Libertas and adopting Janis's son Malcolm as heir.  The Twin Kingdom attacked the Khalifate in 4872CE, starting a two year war which further exhausted the two sides and ended with Ishmahil's heir, Yosef, dead, and weakening ties between Kalmar-Libertas and the remaining Pact worlds.

Emperor Roban maintained his grip on the Bengali Dominions until his death in 4850CE.  He was succeeded by his only surviving heir, twelve year old Garth Kamarov, who began his rule under the Regency of his mother, Empress Marva, Roban's third wife.  Emperor Garth inherited a Dominions increasingly divided into racial castes and supported by Calderan and Altaran Golden Stasis philosophies.  In 4853CE, the Nobilis of the of Dominions presented Garth and Marva with their constitution at the Council of Oregador, guaranteeing House autonomy and codifying the genetic caste system; within a year, the sixteen year old Garth, supported by the Oregador Nobilis, ruled the Bengali Dominions, and his authoritarian mother retired to estates on Selene.

One century after the fall of the Empire, only five percent of its worlds maintained any sort of interstellar society and only another ten percent received even sporadic interstellar contact.  A third of the Empire's pre-war population had died by 4800CE.  By 4875CE, life expectancy among Standard Humans had plummeted as Elixir and Extensor became unavailable and as most of the Human population lived beyond even the means of fusion era nano-biotics.  Only one in ten Standard Humans who remembered the reign of Olav IV remained alive in 4875CE.  The total population of Imperial worlds was probably near half its prewar level, as many worlds began to settle into some sort of equilibrium and births began to exceed deaths once again, but local populations and demographics varied widely, depending on local conditions, politics and original demographic makeup.  The non-Human Major Races faired better, with many maintaining fusion era economies and slowly rebuilding Plague-damaged worlds.

Political

The War of Disintegration arose from the pressures of the previous centuries, with the competing visions of the ruling Nobilis, Sapien Republicans and Ishmahili Ibrahimites finally boiling into full conflict.  Perhaps some sort of settlement might have preserved a united state had the Plague not destroyed everything, but that state would not have resembled the Empire as it stood in 4753CE.  Without the unity of the figure of the Emperor - and Orlan could not even credibly act as figurehead - the Empire unraveled, its common cultural vision too weak to hold it together after the divisive spiral that had began under the Chairmanship of Duke Vega and worsened under Marshall Adannan's tenure.  The destruction of Champa early in the war demonstrated how bitter rivalries had become and battles on some worlds took on genocidal fury, enflaming passions that would not cool, even under the overwhelming threat of the Mech Plague.  In the end, the war ended from exhaustion and collapse, not from any clear victory.  Ishmahil held the capital, Roban ruled the Nobilis, but neither controlled more than the smallest fraction of the old Empire.  Unity was permanently lost.

Major and Minor Races mostly sat on the sidelines during the War of Disintegration, seeing it as a Human struggle between competing castes and ideologies.  Where they could, they tried to encourage peace, but most races waited to help the victors put the Empire back together.  After the Mech Plague began to spread, this nervous aloofness changed into panicked isolationism as pockets of heretofore peaceful non-Human Sectors set up quarantines, frantically searching for remedies and firing upon unknown vessels.  Long before the final Battle of Hermes, the Major Races had effectively left the Empire and were governing themselves.

The Pact-Khalifate War of 4784-4801CE was a fiasco for the Central Region.  Neither the Pact nor the Khalifate had effective control over more than a dozen systems, and both suffered from enormous ongoing humanitarian disasters.  With less than two hundred warships between them, they wasted precious resources without hope of a decisive victory.  Queen Janis and King John had hoped Bengali Emperor Roban would join the war in their favor to help crush Ishmahil, but Roban was in no better shape than the two combatants.  Roban and Ishmahil were bitter and personal enemies, but Roban had fought the entire twenty years of the War of Disintegration, and had entered and withdrawn from the Solar system several times with much stronger fleets than he could ever hope to gather again.  He knew that Ishmahil could not be beaten at Sol and wanted to concentrate on saving his people and expanding his realm, bringing in enough worlds and industrial base where he could eventually, decades later, retake Sol, especially if Ishmahil was weakened by a war with the Pact.  Ishmahil agreed to the peace with Roban to rid himself and burden Bengal with millions of undesirable Nobilis, Variants and non-believers; he figured he could defeat the teetering Pact and deal with an overextended Bengal later.

The Paradise War of 4805-4808CE was a more limited affair, with Roban coming to the aid of House Kamarov out of loyalty.  Once the costs of war were clear, especially in Nobilis lives, the Khalifate and Dominions agreed to a permanent peace, ending raids and disputes for a few decades.  While the Pact and Khalifate struggled to add a few Central members, the Dominions continued to expand until it reach sixty-four member systems in 4820CE.  Bengali Dominions territory looked like a twisted tadpole, with a big head in the Central region and a long, thin tail reaching almost five hundred light years to Glorious and the Calderan worlds.  Roban chose to maintain ties with the Calderans over the faltering Northern and Southern Regions more out of loyalty and ideology than strategy; closer to home he was more discerning, essential "cherry-picking" members that had solid Nobilis leadership, surviving infrastructure and potential for future expansion.  With starships becoming ever fewer and less reliable, the Bengali Dominions stopped expanding after 4820CE, though ships still sporadically visited a few hundred worlds providing occasional aid, advice and encouragement.

By the time of Roban's death in 4850CE, the structure of the Bengali Dominions was taking shape.  Roban had long been a member of the Altara Mystery sect of the Golden Stasis religion and though his long-time paramour, the Futaris Chamelia Vladimos, did not survive the war, he remained true to her ideals, shaping a state where the Nobilis ruled, the Futaris administered, and Sapiens and specific Variants had specific roles in the military and the state-sponsored industrial and educational systems.  Roban had acted quickly to procure an heir, marrying the Calderan Princess Elana Turki in 4767CE and soon siring two artificially conceived and gestated children, bringing Calderan Nobilis ethics into the mainstream of Bengali society.  Elana and her two children died in 4775CE, essentially victims of the Mech Plague.  Roban's second wife and one child died on Kongo during the more conventional pandemics that devastated the world in 4810CE.  Three years after his remaining son Adolphus died in 4827CE, Roban married Princess Marva Terranomailachi of Aeneas, with whom he artificially produced Prince Garth in 4838CE.  Roban had allowed his Nobility considerable latitude and self-government, partially from disposition, partially from practicality in an age of scant resources.  Marva, who became Regent for the twelve year old Emperor after Roban's death, was more authoritarian and her efforts to force obedience from the Nobility led to the Council of Oregador in 4853CE.  At that Bengal highland estate, the Nobilis of the Dominions essentially demanded certain autonomous rights and a formal constitution.  The following year, the Emperor's cabinet effectively deposed Marva, exiling her to a small Baronial estate on Selene, and accepted the Oregador constitution, placing the sixteen year old Emperor on the throne to govern in his own right.  Though young, Emperor Garth resisted domination from powerful Ministers and Nobilis Houses and set about to implement the Oregador constitution, rebuilding the exhausted worlds of his realm and establishing good relations with his neighbors.

Three Human states rose and fell in the Coreward Region after the fall of the Empire.  The Antaran Military District (AMD) was ruled by Admiral Janik Horwall from Nachen for its entire history.  At its height, the AMD comprised over fifty systems centered on Nachen.  A former Sector Admiral, Horwall was a dictatorial anti-Nobilis Technologist.  In 4778CE, his authoritarian rule led twelve extreme Coreward worlds to revolt and form the Trans Antaran Free Republic (TAFR) at Bastian under President Oliver Tander.  The two states fought sporadically over the next sixty years, and by 4840CE, the final Battle of Nachen had destroyed the last military vessels of both states.  As the 49th century progressed, the AMD and the TAFR existed on paper only, as their few remaining systems maintained internal contact through dwindling numbers of armed auxiliaries and traders.  The other Coreward state, the Khanate of Heguz, began in 4760CE when fundamentalist Ibrahimites led by Baktalin Utyka seized control of that world.  Twenty years later, Khan Baktalin aboard his flagship, the Hornet class cruiser he christened Jihad, setout to spread his brand of Ibrahimism to a region that eventually measured one hundred seventy light years in diameter and encompassed fifty-five worlds.  Once the Dragon threat had faded with the ember of their star, the Mendam Codominium felt it could risk alienating the Khanate as it continued to spread Heguz missionaries into Codominium space.  After its Mendam detained its missionaries, the Khanate rashly attacked the Codominium, triggering the Khanate-Codominium War of 4845-4847CE, which ended in the destruction of the Jihad, the death of the Khan's sons, and the effective end of Khanate power, as remaining forces took to piracy and occasional trade.  After the Khan's death in 4864CE, the Coreward Region was devoid of effective Human interstellar government, though the Federation Races Protective League, and later the Zhantlas Union, continued trade with the Grand Federation and the remaining Human states of the Central, Spinward and Trailing regions.

The Mendam Codominium represented a progressive multi-racial federal government that demonstrated the best natures of the Khruzi and local Humans.  Formed in 4764CE by Khruzi and Human delegates for protection against war, chaos and Plague, the Codominium responded to the threat of the Dragon incursions that began in 4775CE.  The Khruzi enmity for Dragons was longstanding and deep seated.  Combined with Human outrage over Dragon perfidy, the Codominium managed to slow the tide of Dragon expansion and simultaneously build the bonds of cooperation that helped sustain the government once the immediate Dragon threat faded.  Buoyed by the common welfare, the Khruzi and Human cultures of the Codominium became closer.  By the end of the period, the Khruzi philosophy of the Fzuki Way, which emphasized self-improvement though discipline, became a type of secular religion that permeated Codominium society.

Much of the territory of what became the Star Kingdoms was settled by Technologist and Mechanist-oriented Sapiens in the later fourth millennium.  As the area developed, this progressive culture spread back though the region, even to older worlds like Orpheus and Timbuktu.  The Institute for the Advancement of Knowledge (IAK) placed many of its research facilities in areas under this cultural influence, and, in fact, the IAK facility on Orpheus was instrumental in developing the Technological Life Boats which helped save thousands of worlds across Human Space from complete collapse.  Being a focus of technological invocation and having some restricted access to Than fusion era goods helped buffer the region from the worst Mech Plague effects.  Lanander became the focus of the Trailing Protectorate, the regional state that cooperated to weather the Plague.  Notwithstanding, the region suffered greatly, and out of the destruction, Adam DeJulius-Brening of Markham emerged as a progressive strongman, who appointed himself King, but left regional matters in the hands of local elected officials and developed the constitutional mechanism to support his monarchy.  Other worlds in the Trailing Protectorate saw Adam's model as successful and copied it with similar results.  The eight Sectors of the region stabilized by 4810CE and in the 4830s the system Kingdoms began to consolidate, with King David I of Irmingham conquering Sector 126 and the aforementioned King Adam I of Markham joining the worlds of Sector 348 into a voluntarily union; they called themselves Star Kings.  Other Kings followed suit, leading to eventual conflict in 4842CE when Irmingham and Orpheus came into conflict over Srinagar.  Lanander's King Malcolm devised the treaty that end that conflict and in effect created the Star Kingdoms by defining the Sector borders as the Kingdom borders.  When King Adam I of Markham announced his approval of the Treaty of Lanander, the Star Kingdoms had evolved into a cooperative of eight sovereign, but collaborating states.

Technological

The Mech Plague was uniquely designed to destroy Worm/Stasis technology.  It was comprised of three related nanomechanical strains; the first destroyed standard Quantum computing devices, the second ate the Active Quantum matrix hulls of all worm drive ships and the third devoured high temperature superconductors.  The loss of data services alone doomed whole worlds, as fabricator-based economies simply ceased to function.  Electronic devices and power distribution networks failed nearly universally, and functional worm starships, once ubiquitous, became an increasingly rare commodity.  The major technical innovations of the era of the Wars of Disintegration were countermeasures against the Mech Plague.  The Tze't developed biological-based superconductors that could only operate below 400K and would only support half the current density of Voltan and Markan-based superconductors, but these new materials were sufficient to help restore power grids on thousands of worlds.  The Mechanists and Zhretra collaborated to develop new quantum storage and computing matrixes, which, though bulkier and more expensive than pre-Plague designs, did manage to save the Zhretra race and form the basis for restored data services.  But the Mech Plague itself, so carefully crafted for destruction, did not seem to have a direct countermeasure.  Only the targeted CounterPlague nanomechanical killers devised by Geena Ombeka's team on Venus had real success at containing the Mech, slowing its spread and allowing some remnant Worm/Stasis technology, particularly starships, to survive for a few centuries after the Fall.

While the Dragons quickly reverted to their unique macrojump ships and the Alimeen dusted off their gravstar designs, the rest of Known Space was reliant on an ever shrinking number of Plague-free worm drive vessels for interstellar transport.  Before the advent of the CounterPlague, the best method, short of Stasis storage, to maintain a Plague-free vessel was to keep force fields raised whenever possible and to allow access only via "naked teleport", where all passengers and cargo allowed on a vessel were organic only.  Designated "clean zones" or isolated certified Plague-free outposts and stations allowed some relaxation of strict protocols, but before 4800CE, 97% of military vessels had succumbed to the Plague or been otherwise destroyed or lost, and all but one in twenty thousand civilian vessels was compromised.  This still left over one thousand military and half a million private vessels in service in Human Space alone, but most of the civilian vessels were smaller than a thousand cubic meters displacement and of limited utility.  These remaining vessels provided ever diminishing life-lines between isolated pockets of civilization, but also formed the raider fleets and pirates that preyed on broken worlds.  As the 49th century progressed, intermittent pointless warfare, failing maintenance and the dreaded Mech Plague infestation took its toll, drastically reducing the numbers of working vessels and greatly proscribing their range.  By one hundred years after the the fall of the Empire, almost no one dared to travel more than a hundred light years from their home bases.

By the early 49th century, the Grand Federation redeveloped primitive macrojump drives and vacuum distillers, but the few macrojump-capable industrial centers could meet only a small fraction of internal demand, and the technology did not spread back into Human Space until the 50th century.  Humanity did benefit from Tze't superconductor spores and "Zhret-Mech" quantum computers, though the spread of these Mech-proof technologies remained limited to those systems that had maintained interstellar contact. 

While thousands of worlds collapsed and suffered in thousands of ways, one noteworthy emergent disaster was beginning to overtake Venus.  Second to only Terra itself in human population, Venus had long suffered side-effects from its radical but fairly low-tech terraformation.  While Plan VI had worked to stabilize Venus's ecology and tectonics in the later centuries of the Imperial period, the Plague and the disruptions of war had destroyed the active control stations that had stabilized the world.  By the mid 49th century, geological instability was growing, the temperature was climbing, and the ecology was beginning to collapse.  Nearly eight billion Venusians had survived the war, but conditions on their world grew increasingly ominous, and large sections of low-lying and equatorial territories became entirely uninhabitable.  Conditions had degraded to the point where Ishmahil was even willing to allow Mermen and Deep Mermen Variants to return to Venus to work on saving the world.

The largest long-term effect on worlds that maintained a stable fusion environment was the loss of the capability to produce the Elixir/Extensor anagathic treatments.  While some worlds had stockpiles that would last their elites for centuries and Ishmahil, through rationing and very limited production, managed to provide Elixir for the elites of his Orders throughout the period, most Standard Humans could not receive the drug.  On worlds in the Star Kingdoms, Mendam Condominium or the three Central states, medical NB technology could extent the Human lifespan to between two and three hundred years, and for another century or two through Reneux regeneration therapy available to the more wealthy.  On isolated worlds, few NB clinics remained and Human lifespan drop to below a century for the first time since the Dark Age.  Populations skewed as Crowlian Variants, Nobilis and Eternals who survived the wars and Plague continued their long lives while Standard Humans passed through generations quickly.  Depending on the world, this effect led to Variant dominance, racial segregation or dominance by rapidly growing Human populations.

Cultural

The shock of the Plague was enormous.  After fifteen hundred years of leisure, the walls stopped producing food, power and entertainment.  No one had needed to grow their own food or perform manual labor in nearly two millennia.  The cities, arcologies and habitats failed, sometimes slowly rotting away, other times detonating or burning in pyres to a lost golden age.  People fled the cities, moving into giant camps, exposed to the elements, panicked, confused, demoralized.  Disease, famine and environment struck down billions and others simple gave up, unable to face the loss of everything they knew.  A third of the Imperial population died in less than half a century.  Whole worlds collapsed into barbarism or extinction.  While pockets of civilization sometimes remained in elite well-guarded strongholds, for most people the hundred years that followed the fall of the Empire was a desperate depressing struggle to survive in camps and shanties around the crumbling ruins of Imperial civilization.

Within the first century of the Fall, most of the Empire's twenty thousand systems attained some form of equilibrium, reaching maintainable conditions that could persist even for millennia until disturbed by some new calamity or opportunity.  Every world followed a unique path, but most Imperial systems fell into four categories: those who maintained a fusion culture, those that stabilized into the industrial or atomic ages, those that collapsed to pre-industrial or more primitive societies, and those that completely collapsed into extinction.

Less than ten percent of Imperial worlds managed to maintain a fusion culture.  Here, non-Human Major Races, less damaged by war and often astrographically or at least culturally cohesive, faired much better than Humans, often establishing enduring small interstellar governments.  The Human worlds that faired the best were those that occupied the Central Region or major trade or government nexi, such as the Spinward Mendam Codominium, the Star Kingdoms region, the many ephemeral Coreward states and those that had received and absorbed Technological Life Boats from the Institute for the Advancement of Knowledge.  Individual standouts or pocket empires like Kumar and the Crux worlds also succeeded in maintaining a fusion culture, at least for a time.  Even on those worlds fortunate enough to maintain high levels of technology, conditions during the 49th century were bad.  On many worlds, half the population died in the first decades, and the rest could look forward to difficult, shortened lives.  On those worlds that stabilized, internal strife generally remained low and the younger generations saw purpose and eventually pride in rebuilding their worlds.  New cities grew out of the wilderness or the ruins, farms sprouted and communication links spread across the planetary surfaces; some worlds rebuilt interplanetary infrastructure and established outposts across their systems; many maintained tenuous interstellar contacts with remaining traders.

Those worlds that stabilized at broadly industrial levels, equivalent to the ancient Terran nineteenth and twentieth centuries, maintained some semblance of organized civilization.  Probably a third of Imperial worlds, between six and nine thousand systems, ended their decline as technological societies.  On many of these worlds, some pockets of higher technology, whether fusion or remnant, still existed, but not in the quantity that would better the lives of common people or support a thriving civilization.  Many of these worlds suffered calamitous declines in population, but numbers often began to rebound sharply by the mid 49th century, as new generations grew accustomed to pre-spaceflight life.  Many of these worlds balkanized or established decentralized governments, especially where the population was dispersed, but others, especially religious or cohesive cultural worlds, developed strong central governments ranging from the benevolent to the totalitarian.  Some of these worlds still received the occasional interstellar visitor, whether trader or raider, especially those systems near remaining interstellar states.  Others, particularly those in the remoter frontier regions, sank into complete isolation.

At least as many worlds as stabilized at industrial levels fell instead into pre-industrial barbarism.  Those that never received TLBs and did not have nearby interstellar neighbors were most vulnerable.  Frontier systems and worlds with marginal or degrading ecologies were especially susceptible to decline, as were worlds that suffered greatly from the War of Disintegration or subsequent conflicts.  Most of these worlds lost any semblance of central authority within decades of the War of Disintegration and often suffered warfare and chaos, destroying any attempts to build initial stability.  Many barbarous worlds lost as much as ninety percent of their population by the middle of the 49 century, and both population and technology often took centuries or even millennia to return.  Thousands of worlds still remain pre-industrial and uncontacted two thousand years after the fall of the Empire; on some, even the knowledge of a technological past or interstellar origin is forgotten.

At least ten percent, maybe fifteen percent of Imperial worlds failed completely.  Some died quickly from war and Plague; other spiraled downward over decades or centuries as events conspired to degrade living conditions, eventually causing a complete breakdown of all civilization.  Most of the failed worlds were near the frontier, outside remaining trade routes or were only marginally habitable.  Many of these worlds still remain outside civilized space or have only received cursory visits over the centuries, and some may have remnant primitive populations or survivors trapped in Stasis, but even these worlds are effectively dead. 

A final category of Imperial worlds comprised the hundreds of Dragon conquered systems, most of which have slave Human populations, often numbering in the millions or tens of millions.  These Spinward worlds, often suffering from "Draconization" of their ecologies, remain reminders that Humanity is no longer the dominate race in all regions of Human Space.  Dozens of worlds also suffer under Rootjalik occupation in the far southern Trailing region, and other occupations undoubtedly occur in uncontacted regions.

Chronology Table

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