A Brief Chronology of Imperial Space Part 1

Dates given in Terran Reckoning

The Ancients

750,000 to 450,000 B.C.   Milky Way Galaxy visited by at least two highly advanced races collectively known as the Ancients. These races are theorized to have engaged in projects of planetary and stellar scope increasing the number of stellar bodies with planets with life sustaining conditions. They are also suspected to have seeded many of the worlds so positioned with pre-sentient life.

450,000 to 200.000 B.C.   Height of Ancient civilization. Ancients inhabit much of the galaxy creating multiple artifacts of stellar size. Surviving examples include the Centari Rosettes and the Shaloi—Mintak Stargate.

200,000 to 150,000 B.C.   War of the Ancients. Galaxy wide conflict devastates Ancient civilization(s). By the end of the period all remnants of the ancients are either destroyed or fled the galaxy.

Rise of Life

120,000 B.C.   The first of the sentient species discover hyperspacial jump technology and begin to explore space.

110,000 B.C.   Multiple empires rise and then fall as they grow too large to be managed centrally.

 95,000 B.C   Deep space explorer Shanta’s Hope is lost and presumed destroyed. Seven year later the ship returns to Talosia refitted with previously unknown star drive.

94,950 B.C.   Rise of the House of Eximus. With the secret of the new Warp drive the mercantile house of Eximus rises to prominence.

94,850 B.C.   Discovery of faster than light communications by House Eximus escalates the tactical position of the house.

94,790 to 94,775 B.C.   Domination of interstellar trade by House Eximus causes unrest among competing houses. A series of conflicts escalate into full fledged interstellar war as House Eximus defends then defeats the aggressors.

94,774 B.C. House Eximus, tired of the ongoing external threats goes on the offence and begins the Consolidation Wars. Other houses are given a choice of allying with House Eximus or being conquered and assimilated into the house.

94,710 B.C. After defeating the last dissenting house, Largus Eximus declares himself First Emperor of the Talosian Empire.

First Empire

94,700 to 50,000 B.C.  Massive expansion and consolidation of the empire into noble houses centered on key technologies. Designations of House Major Status are initially assigned to houses that supported House Eximus during the wars. Additional Minor House designations are granted for development of new vital technologies and for exceptional service to the Throne.

50,000 to 20,000 B.C. The empire reaches its largest size and enters its Golden Age. Advancements in technology allow for the majority of the Imperium to pursue academic and cultural endeavors free of the need to provide sustenance or shelter. Development of non-organic sentience provides a workforce that requires only power and repairs to sustain it.

20,000 B.C. Several Minor Houses, dissatisfied with the calcification of the house system (it had been over 6,000 years since the last minor house had been elevated to House Major Status) form the Reformation League. The League begins petitioning the Throne for a review of five key Houses Minor for elevation.

19,950 B.C. After repeated attempts to get the Emperor to review the house system the League begins to grow as more of the minor houses join. The League’s planning begins to move away from reforming the system from within to exploring the possibility of unseating the Emperor and replacing him with a representative government.

19,940 to 19,245 B.C. League grows in support, though it is agreed that unseating the Emperor without first acquiring the secrets of the FTL communications is unworkable the end goal of the League remains the establishment of a representative government.

19,244 B.C. After a failed attempt to seize a ComNet station fails, House Darlen is declared a renegade house and its holding declared forfeit. The nobles of the house flee into uncharted space along with all the house technology they could transport.

18,953 B.C. After increased attempts on Imperial research and manufacturing facilities by the minor houses, the Emperor declares that every minor house will be overseen by a major house in close proximity to their holdings. The League is also ordered to disband and further membership in that body punishable by being declared a renegade house.

18,934 B.C.  Using agents within the Imperial scout service the League reclassifies an undeveloped system as having an unstable sun and begins establishing a base of operations beneath its prime habitable world.

18,900 B.C. The League begins building the “Graveyard Fleet” of ships reported as destroyed in battle or dismantled for scrap. Ships are repaired to operation status then mothballed in the oort cloud of Prime Base.

17,255 B.C. The Graveyard Fleet reaches 10,000 ships.

16,964 B.C. Accident by researchers at Prime Base causes one of the system’s gas giants to ignite. Incident is written off by Imperial government as proof of the instability of the star and the stellar classification is raised from hazardous to banned.

16,352 B.C Researcher’s at Prime Base develop the StarKiller device, a weapon capable of inducing a nova-like eruption of a stellar body.

15,990 B.C. Construction begins on a weapon platform capable of powering the StarKiller.

15,850 B.C. StarKiller completed, Graveyard Fleet reaches 100,000 ships. The League gains the support of House Carlion, a major house built on android production. Recruitment of crews for the Fleet begins.

15,545 B.C. A scout vessel belonging to a loyalist merchant house mis-jumps into Prime Base system undetected. After recording the StarKiller in orbit around Prime Base the ship limps back to Imperial space with its discovery. The League begins activation of the Fleet.

15,544 B.C. House Carlion convinces the League that they can capture one of the ComNet hubs intact using a strike force of advanced androids. The League begins its offensive into Imperial space. The Fleet is joined by the combined fleets of the minor houses as it pushes through the Empire towards the Imperial home world of Talosia.

15,540 B.C. The Graveyard Fleet reaches Talosia. As The Imperial Fleet engages the League buying time for the Imperial House to launch the Seed, a vessel designed to carry the Imperial heir and vital house secrets out of the hands of the rebels. Once the Seed is reported clear of the League the Emperor engages his own counterstroke and shuts down the ComNet by ordering all the hubs to self destruct. The League begins the siege of Talosia. The siege lasts 127 days and finishes with the death of Largo Eximus XXXIV.

15,538 B.C Seed passes out of Imperial space after 18 months of evasive maneuvers designed to avoid contact with League forces. With the departure of the Imperial heir the secret source of the warp power systems dries up and the Empire begins a slow decent into a new dark age.

To be continued

Setting the stage

Every story has a setting, every event has history that explains how it was that things came to that point and demonstrate its importance. So it is with the Empire.
Called the Talosian Empire, The New Empire, or simply The Imperium it is home to hundreds of races, mostly humanoid, and is a place of marvels and deep secrets.
 The posts here will be in two forms:
The first, like this one, will be looks behind the curtain and will discuss the development of the setting and why some things were ordered as they are and how the setting evolved over time.
The second, which I plan to make up the bulk of the work, will be written from the point of view of someone writing within the setting. Some will be common knowledge, but much of it will be peeks into the dark corners of the Empire giving you an idea of what is really going on.
The history of the Empire spans over 500,000 years as it's origins lay far in our own past and extends almost 600 years into our future.
The Empire was the brainchild of three minds, L. Ken Layton(He did not like his first name and no, I am not sharing it with you.), Chris Elliot,(no not the star) and myself. We served together for a time in the navy and became inseparable until the Navy sent us to the four winds. Over the years we lost touch with one another but the setting sat in my head and grew. We had originally developed and adventured in the Empire using a free-form style of role-playing where we basically told the story together and rolled where we felt it was appropriate. Together we discovered the basis of what I am going to share with you in these posts.
These early sessions combined elements of a multitude of material we had watched, read, and imagined. There was no attempt to write most of this down as we were creating this for the shear joy of it with no thought of the fact we would eventually go our separate ways.
I give credit to Ken for the original seed we built from. He had a passion for drawing ships and cars and had built a rough background history to explain them. As he shared this with Chris and I we decided it would be fun to take it further. Chris and I were already roleplayers and we taught D&D to Ken. We took the basic concepts and used them to build our first characters and then took off. Ken ran the majority of the sessions but looking back I can see that most of where our characters went and what happened to them did not exist until we sat down and pushed in that direction. Those adventures were pure space opera fairly rough by today's standards.
After we parted I tried to take what I had, mostly notes we had written down to keep track of things as we went along, and went in search of a set of published rules I could use to share the setting with the gamers I played with afterwards. Every system seemed to be too dedicated to the vision of its creator and would require extensive re-writes to adapt to our setting.(Yes, you can read into this that I had no desire to write a set of rules from scratch.)
The three closest matches I found for the longest time were "Traveller" by GDW, "Space Opera" by Fantasy Games Unlimited(major geek points if you remember it), and "Spacemaster" from Iron Crown Enterprises. The only problem with the first was that there were elements of the setting that had no existence in Marc Miller's Traveller,  my main problem with the other two at the time, was their complicated rules for character generation and combat resolution. It was not until TSR/Wizards of the Coast published Alternity in 1998 that I found a home for the setting and started a regular campaign in the Empire. (a late revision is required as I ended up abandoning Alternity for a number of reasons mostly financial. I have since returned to Traveller realizing after all this time that the revisions needed to run the setting were neither as vast as I had originally considered them.)
All the time I was searching I was also reworking and expanding the setting in my head. Some items got swept away because we had pulled them whole cloth from other work and in retrospect made the whole look like just patchwork of other people's work. I began to flesh out things we had glossed over and began to look for logical reasons for some of the things we had encountered. I looked at this with both the eye of a storyteller and as well as that of a gamemaster. I decided much of what I was coming up with would be unknown by the population as a whole and a few parts would only be known by someone standing outside looking in because no one in the setting was in a position to see the whole picture. What I ended up with was a setting where the the secrets are as dangerous as any physical menace.
One of my favorite authors once said that a writer writes because he has no choice, what he has inside him has to be expressed or else. I understand what he meant, I find myself explaining elements of the setting out loud as if speaking to an audience when I am alone doing things like laundry or the dishes. When I am at rest my mind turns to explaining things and events in the setting. It has always been my desire to share my worlds with others so perhaps they can find their own adventures in this thing that lives in my head.

Welcome to the dawn of the 27th century. The Empire awaits you.