The Warring States Era

5347-5534CE

Overview

The Middle Chaotic Period began with the Warring States Era, a time of increased interstellar activity marred by a series of conflicts across all regions of civilized Human Space.  While less than ten percent of inhabited systems had reentered interstellar society by 5500CE, these systems represented well over half the total contemporary Human population, living in Fusion and Interstellar Era societies that had membership or at least peripheral contact with the interstellar states.  Access to interstellar travel and antimatter did not lead to unbridled prosperity, however.  Wars dominated the period, ranging from revolutionary fervor to all-out inter-Kingdom warfare in the Star Kingdoms, to the dismemberment of the Reconstruction Federation and the destruction birthplace in of Mechanism in the Jihads of Ibrahim and Ishmahil, to another war between the Bengali Dominions and the renamed Federation of Orion, to two more Dragon Frontier wars. 

Pockets of civilization spread to other Major races as well, with the Turgil building a mercantile Commonwealth and the Rootjalik, !Tak and Khaddahl returning to interstellar space in a more warlike capacity.  The former Grand Federation Races and the "Old" Imperial Major Races, the Alimeen, Khzraut and Swarm, continued to develop their distinct interstellar states.  The Alimeen incorporated millions of Human refugees from the fallen Reconstruction Federation, especially from Prometheus, slowly turning the Confederation into a two-race state.

In the Central Region, Khalif Ibrahim, with his rimward border secured by the Treaty of Vulcan, focused his attention on the Reconstruction Federation and in 5354CE began the thirty-year Jihad of Ibrahim at his earliest opportunity.  Ibrahim's Jihad proceeded in stages, slowly dismembering the Federation, allowing millions of Osirans and Prometheans to flee aboard city-sized gravstar exile ships, but subjecting billions of remaining people to forced conversions and Benalfira drug treatments.  In his Jihad, Ibrahim saw fruition of his century-old dream of expansion to the coreward with no remaining secular states restraining those borders.  Ibrahim died in the final battle of his Jihad, and his son, who became Khalif Ishmahil II, was concerned more with integration and conversion than with conquest, but that did not prevent Ishmahil from launching his own Jihad against the Mechanist homeworld of Karinsky.  Ishmahil's Jihad ruined Karinsky and triggering two futile Crusades by fleets of coreward-dwelling Mechanists under the leadership of Joshua Revarri.

Some secularists escaped the Khalifate's onslaught.  The Alimeen Confederation absorbed six Promethean exile ships that journeyed for decades to reach Central Region havens.  Over a decade earlier, the Osirans exiles, fearing unbounded Ibrahimite expansion, had set out on centuries-long voyages, traveling between four and six hundred light-years coreward.  Nineteen of twenty Osiran ships safely arrived at their destinations between 5465 and 5579CE.

The Star Kingdoms underwent two bouts of political unrest and warfare during the era.  In the later decades of the the 54th century, the Republican revolts brought unrest, revolution and warfare, especially to the Lanander, Albus and Orpheus Star Kingdoms.  After a decisive victory by Lanander's Star King Otto II at the Second Battle of Orpheus in 5386CE and subsequent quietly implemented economic reforms, the Republican movement faded from the Star Kingdoms' political landscape.  The second conflict within the Star Kingdoms, the Succession Wars, began with the contested succession of Otto III to his father's Lanander throne.  Though Otto III had clearly won the election, the minority candidate, Prince Alexander Frey, had support from Tannberg's Star King Arnham and from the Irmingham industrial elite.  The years between 5489 and 5534CE saw four periods of inter-kingdom warfare and featured turnover on the thrones of all but one Star Kingdom.  Eventually victorious, Otto III consolidated his leadership over the other Star Kings and established the Star Kingdom Confederation, linking the sovereignty and elections of the Star Kingdoms for the first time.

The Bengali Dominions spent most of the Warring State Era in relative peace, slowly expanding to become the the largest state in Human Space, encompassing over two hundred fifty systems by 5534CE.  The Skim or Second Rim War with the Federation of Orion, fought over Servant Race freedoms and immigration, was the only major conflict in Riwmard Space during the period.  The disastrous conduct of the Skim War led to the resignations and suicides of the Ve'eri Twins, Marin and Lorin, facilitating the rise of Malcolm Hu-Ve'eri-Stark to Prime Minister of the Dominions.

The Spinward Region continued to be beset by constant low-level conflicts and two full-fledged wars between the Dragon States and the Mendam Codominium.  On the periphery, the Defender Worlds and the Rouge Defenders continued to fight the Dragons and occasionally each other, maintaining an abrasive armed defense against further incursions.

The Trailing Region, outside the Star Kingdoms, saw some return to interstellar civilization, with Turgil trade routes, Recontact Service mission and Bengali Expansion penetrating into the nearer Trailing sectors.

The near planar Human areas of the Coreward Region remained under Merchant Guild dominance, with some smaller states, notably Nachen, beginning a tentative push back into interstellar space.  During the later part of the period, the Osiran exile ships beginning arriving, one to a sector, over much of central coreward space, establishing themselves in habitable systems and often developing close contacts with the Merchant Guild.

During the Warring States Era, the near Northern and Southern sectors saw some interstellar contact, as the Bengali Dominions begin to expand outward from the Empire's near rimward central regions, but much of the polar regions and most worlds on the peripheries, remained without regular interstellar contact.

Political

The demise of the Reconstruction Federation was clearly the major political event of the period, though the evolution of the Federation of Orion and of the Star Kingdoms Confederation also had long-lasting significance.  Within the Khalifate and Bengali Dominions, government institutions also continued to evolve as the realms expanded to encompass more worlds.

The Reconstruction Federation and the Terran Khalifate had been at odds for centuries, and when Ibrahim's Khalifate looked for an excuse to attack its coreward neighbor, the Reconstruction Federation gladly complied.  Infighting within the Reconstruction Federation government and the numerical and disciplinary superiority of the Khalifate combined to facilitate the secular government's dismemberment.  Over a series of campaigns, the Khalifate slowly, methodically and ruthlessly dismantled its rival, pausing to allow two worlds, Gladsheim and Khronos, join the neutral League of Vulcan, and to allow two other worlds, Osiris and Prometheus, spend vast resources to allow tens of millions of their citizens to escape into exile on city-sized gravstar vessels. 

After Ibrahim's death at the Battle of Nova in 5384CE, his son, Khalif Ishmahil II, concentrated on integrating his father's gains, favoring a generally peaceful, gradual expansion, not willing to endure the costs in blood and reputation of his father's Jihad.  He believed that the Missionaries of the Order of Truth would accomplish more with words than the warriors of the Orders of Valor and Purity could accomplish with weapons.  In the end, many worlds joined the Khalifate for economic reasons that had more to do with the Order of Generosity's work than with religious conviction.  Many within the military Orders chaffed at the glacial expansion following the Jihad of Ibrahim, the more vocal joining Grandmaster Urduman Hoar's revolt in 5530CE, but Ishmahil II prevailed; his message that the righteousness of Ibrahimism would triumph over time satisfy most of his subjects and many of his external critics, though of course not the seething Mechanists.  Ishmahil also recognized the need for local autonomy to entice worlds into accepting membership in the Khalifate, and duplicating similar efforts in the Bengali Dominions, he appointed semi-hereditary, often native, Sultans to exercise executive authority on member worlds.

In the 5360s, the thirteen world Betelgeuse Union struggled under a system of government designed by Kumar for a small Kumar-dominated Union.  Complicated budget restrictions and an undemocratic legislature led to popular discontent, especially among the newer member worlds.  As the Union contemplated an expansion to include seven neighboring worlds and struggled to resolve a health care funding crisis, the political leadership realized that the current structure was inadequate for thirteen worlds and would be hopeless for twenty or more worlds.  The result of this crisis was a new constitution, agreed upon in 5366CE, which developed a democratic, federal structure, based loosely on the ancient Terran United States constitution, complete with independent, often adversarial branches of government, with limited federal government powers and with considerable self-government for individual members.  The renamed Federation of Orion, with Rohan Norgalas as its first president, established its capital in the Armpit Nebula, first on the Verne Drift and later on the Great Nebular City, and served as a growing and prosperous beacon of civilization and freedom in the far Rimward Region.

The Star Kingdoms experienced their own governmental challenges during the era.  The Republican movement, aiming to replace the narrowly elected and essentially hereditary Star Kings with a democratically elected government, had many supporters among the middle and lower classes in over half the Star Kingdoms, but they lacked the political clout and ultimately the popular support and military force necessary to overthrow the Star Kings, their Electors and their Merchant Guild-backed corporate supporters.  The Succession Wars, which followed the century of peace subsequent to the fall of the Republican movement, were less about governmental structural concerns than about personal disputes between dynastic leaders.  The wars did little to change actually structure within the individual Star Kingdoms, but the resultant eventual victory of Otto III reinforced the links between the Star Kingdoms by reforming the Electorate process to include the other seven Star Kings as half the Electorate for each Kingdom election, ensuring some degree of codependence between the dynasties.  Otto III also created and occupied the position of Great King, freely elected by the eight Star Kings in theory, but residing with the Lanander monarchy in practice.

Technological

The Warring States Era was not a time of great technological innovation within Human Space, but the period represented a further spread and utilization of early macrojump technology, contributing to increased volumes of interstellar trade, more interstellar recontact missions, civilization's expansion, and as an unfortunate side effect, greater access to large quantities of antimatter.  The availability of cheap antimatter greatly contributed to the destruction during era's two Jihads and two Dragon Frontier Wars, as attack drones rained hundred megaton sub-munitions on cities and hardened targets.

More positively, the era saw the construction of large space-based settlements and the largest gravstar vessels ever built: the exile ships of the Osirans and Prometheans.  These Alimeen-designed vessels, essentially at their core stretched spheres two kilometers across and three long, cruised through interstellar space at nearly four times the speed of light for decades or centuries, each housing between two and three million people in mazelike apartments levels, like cramped interstellar arcologies.

More conventional Drift or habitat structures, even larger than the exile ships, reached completion during the era, including large additions to the Alimeen habitat and Drift complexes and the Great Nebular City in the Federation of Orion, a six-platform structure that housed the federal government, a major port, entertainment complexes and eventually five million residents.

Cultural

Few new cultural trends emerged and during the era, but many established customs grew in strength. 

By the dawn of the Middle Chaotic Period, the Mendam Codominium had become almost universally a culture dominated, at least superficially, by the tenets of the Fzuki Way.  Elsewhere, outside the Terran Khalifate, universal cultural or religious trends were hardly evident.

The Mechanist Church suffered a severe blow with the fall and destruction of Karinsky to the Jihad of Ishmahil in 5417CE.  The Church set up a new administration on Myrland and elected Ustan Ghavanaran as Primal, but the shock of the loss of their cultural core fostered policy disagreements that threatened to become schisms.  The Primal's condemnation of Sanjez Transformation as heresy in 5434CE, not only gave birth to the Heretics as an independent philosophical movement, but brought to life disagreements between the Traditionalists, led by the Primal, and the Progressives, informally led by Jon Gades.  Joshua Revarri 's call for a crusade to retake Karinsky in 5440CE and his two subsequent unsuccessful Crusades elevated him to the status of martyr but also placed the activist Crusaders in opposition to the more cautious Traditionalists.  Though all the factions continued to support the Primal and the basic tents of Mechanism, differences in approach and philosophy came to strain the Primal's authority in future centuries.

The Technologist movement had been long dormant or at least not activist since the fall of the Empire and the spread of the Mech Plague had lessened the general faith in technological progress.  Technologism finally began a renaissance after Kyrin Lambda established the Institute for Technologist Studies on Albus in 5449CE.  While condemning the Heretics, Lambda became a charismatic proponent for gradualist technological improvement of all sentient races, incorporating genetic reengineering and cybernetic enhancements to produce more perfect sentients.  This middle course and emphasis on self-improvement caught hold on the more prosperous worlds of the Star Kingdoms and Federation of Orion, where religious freedoms were well tolerated, and moderate, or Lambda, Technologism also spread widely across the Merchant Guild-dominated Coreward regions.

The Bengali Dominions continued to maintain Altaran Golden Status as the state religion, though piety was mostly superficially and politically motivated.  Within the growing Dominions, many Sapiens, by far the most common genotype, had become increasingly uncomfortable with the moral implications of the Nobilis ownership of Servant Races, slaves who now numbered in the tens of billions.  An Abolitionist movement gained strength on many worlds, and eventually gained the private sympathy of Emperor Talon.  In response to Abolitionist pressures, the Emperor opened two old failed colony worlds for Goblin resettlement and one for Casap resettlement, actions which satisfied few and ultimately led the Dominions into conflict with the Federation of Orion in the Skim War.  The "Goblin Question" as it became known, did not reach resolution during the era, but its effect on the internal politics of the Dominions was growing, and the Emperor began to search for better solutions to a seemingly intractable structural social problem.

Chronology Table

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