Galaxy 492-X (Notes)

Galaxy 492-X

Galaxy 492-X, codename Althanas, is situation thirty seven billion light-years from our own. On the fringes of known space, it surrounds a central star, Thayne Alpha, and has innumerable solar systems in its purple clusters able to support life. Only a few, however, have civilisations in them, and only those in the northern arm of Althanas. The southern arm long ravaged by a war, countless ages ago, leaving barren husks and dying stars in long dead spaceship graveyards.

One such system in the north stands at the centre of a youthful galactic empire. Scara Brae, a small, yet prosperous agricultural region. It connects all the other political entities in Althanas together; Raiaera, Salvar, Alerar, and Dheathain. Each named after one of the countries from the progenitor world, long forgotten in form, but immortal in the mythology of the new empire’s people.

These entities vary in size, power, and influence. They vary heavily in ideology and religion, often to their detriment. It is only by the merit of the Galactic Senate, and the Auditorium, that relative peace amongst civilian and militaristic populations exists. The trade families, however, are typically exempt from galactic statue. The Auditorium watches over then, to an extent, but war is fickle and often rife in the poorer and less controlled regions.

• Scara Brae is the smallest, and primarily agricultural in nature. It is a collective of border towns, verdant farm worlds, and biospheres, spread across two closely situated solar systems on the inner northern rim to the central star. It is closest, territory wise, to the centre of the galaxy. It is primarily down to this proximity to the star that it is so abundant with life. Lonely old temples serve as makeshift homes, and alternative communes of biomancers and retirees bolster the workforce. It is the primary source of foodstuff for all the empire. Scara Brae is, because of that, incredibly wealthy despite its size.

• Raiaera is the largest of the territories. It covers most of the arm’s northern end. Its internal geography is eternally shifting, due to immense temporal distortions running amok throughout. These electrical storms cause the gravitational pull of moons and stars to fluctuate, tearing planets from their orbits and crashing them into other celestial bodies like dominoes. Tired of their homes swiftly torn apart, the people of Raiaera, native or otherwise, have taken to a nomadic lifestyle. Their homes are vast planet ships, hulks that can move out of harm’s way as and when required. They rely on constant trade and freight runs from the Trade Families. Raiaera has seen conflict break out in recent months between insurgent crime families and Salvarian emissaries.

• Salvar is a theocratic region, a conglomerate of M class planets at the zenith of a burgeoning golden age. As a result, its worlds are overpopulated, and its infrastructure is at breaking point. As its doctrines and emissaries became as much a weapon as a defence, it has slowly but surely begun to expand its reach to fringe colonies and embassies. It does charity and refugee aid work to gain the native trust, and then slowly but surely it takes over. It decrees immigrant statutes, and then vents its excess populous from its home worlds to the new territory, all in the name of “divine command”. It has all but taken over the former state of Alerar, leaving nothing but a lawless fringe region, full of refugees and desperate pirates, too debauchee for even the galactic senate to contest.

• Dheathain is the second largest of the political powers, yet it is also the weakest. It is home to the galactic senate, seated in the Nalith system at the heart of the territory. Here, the largest concentration of civilians and law enforcement is. Hive worlds, and prison worlds extend outwards through Dheathain’s territory from there on. Crime from the other regions inevitably flocks to the biggest markets and industrial worlds in the galaxy. As such, it is one of the most rigidly controlled, and law is swift to deter repeats of any incidents. The Auditorium’s home world used to be here, but the Berevar sector, the Salvar state’s only foothold in Dheathain, is no long a tenable position for them. Stellar cartography is difficult in this region, as intense levels of magnetic interference radiant out from Nalith’s star.