The Will of the Ancients

Factions > The New Empire

Originally written by Neil January 2004. Updated by Geoffrey Duke, May 2005

During the era of planetary unrest historians would later call the Great Fall, the old Empire split apart, cutting its population in half. The rapidly changing climate precipitated by the deactivation of ruins designed to heal the deep scars carved into the planet by ancient wars became too inhospitable for the remaining pockets of human civilization to endure any longer. Temperatures rose and fell to both extremes, burning and freezing people to death, and the landscape shook and collapsed under its own weight to form new craters as the planet's crust surged uncontrollably, pulling and pushing the land in conflicting directions. Somehow, however, the Imperial Academy containing all the knowledge accumulated by the Empire over the last two centuries, survived the Great Fall intact. Once the amorphous climate settled after the world had reshaped itself free from the grip of the Towers, these fragments of the once glorious Empire began to feud amongst themselves. The Empire would rise from the ashes and pull itself together again mostly due an influx of new people from an area long neglected whose aid couldn't come soon enough.

Sidenote: The strike Craymen launched on the Imperial capital was so destructive that literally nothing was left standing, so the only logical conclusion we can draw from this sequence of events is that the Academy itself was located outside of the capital.

It soon became apparent that the few remaining citizens of the once glorious Empire were not the only ones falling on harsh times: a civil war was brewing on a group of neighbouring islands off the southern coast of the barren continent the Imperials called home. A power struggle between the heirs of a recently departed king had broken out, and more than a few islanders fled to the continent in the small hopes of putting the past behind them and starting a new beginning. They were desperate for a chance to plant new roots away from the conflict, which presented the Empire with a rare opportunity to replace its losses. The islanders had no leaders to follow and the Empire had no army to lead, so the southern migrants were welcomed with open arms. Thanks to the mass immigration, the population of the Empire suddenly found itself no longer clinging to the brink of extinction, but now in a position to write itself back into the history books. The 8th Emperor said to be a distant relative of the Imperial bloodline united the warring human factions that were divided by the Great Fall with the sole aim of leading them to a new era of prosperity. Towards that end, the Imperial capital was rebuilt atop a massive network of ancient ruins filled with all the technology the Empire would need to restore itself to its lost former glory. Slowly but surely, the Empire was being reborn.

The people escaping the southern islands to find a new home for themselves practiced archaic religions which centered primarily on the art of warfare. These religious beliefs may have gone into the realm of the unfamiliar to the people of the old Empire, but the art of war was something they were all too familiar with. The common goal of perfecting this art saw the Empire of new and old ideals make huge strides towards that end. The influx of the southern migrants has without a doubt had the hugest impact on the Empire's change in direction as a whole. The marriage of these two distinct cultures also shaped Imperial industry to the point where it soon became difficult to tell where the old Empire ended and where the new Empire began, as the island nation's culture continued to spread. As time passed, the two cultures almost became inseparable from one another. The instruments of folk music played by the southern island natives echoed their exotic chimes throughout the land for all to hear; people even adorned their houses with colorful baubles and trinkets native to the southern islands. However, not all Imperial citizens welcomed the southerners so openly. Many Imperials still gave their allegiance to the 7th Emperor whose heroic deeds lived on in the memories of his followers long after his death; they believed their fate was still in his hands. Those still loyal to the ways of the 7th Emperor were influential enough to impose sanctions restricting the influence the southern culture had on Imperial design, and even succeeded in banning southern music from being playing in the Imperial capital during the night. These laws didn't stop the flow of exotic southern practices from reaching other areas of the Empire, however.

It wasn’t too long before everything changed; the culture clash threatened to turn into open conflict. Imperials primarily of southern descent formed the Imperial Elite, a military brigade whose members were given the sworn duty of protecting the capital and Imperial family from harm with their lives. This was originally the job of the Imperial Academy, which didn't take kindly to being stripped of that duty, helping to only create more internal strife between the two cultures. The Emperor was said to be a direct descendant of the Ancients, and thus, his relatives believed themselves to be divine by association, often referring to themselves as the chosen ones. These chosen ones resented being marginalized by outsiders, and were alarmed by so many southerners taking so many positions within the government so quickly as if it was a silent coup. In the Imperial year 148 A.F (After Foundation), officials who were afraid that devotion to the Emperor was slipping through his grasp banned all southern religious practices within Imperial territory; the mere thought of people worshiping anyone or anything other than the Emperor himself posed a potential threat to his authority, which until now, had been absolute. Followers of the Southern royal family, who violently opposed this decree, dragged the Emperor to a church where all sides of the dispute started hasty negotiations. After compromises were made and the negotiations were finalized, the clashing of these two cultures gave birth to two distinct Imperial factions. One was the “Prince Faction”, which supported the Emperor's son who had southern blood flowing through his veins and was destined to one day rise to the Imperial throne as the 9th Emperor, and the other was the “Academy Faction”, which rallied its full support behind the current Emperor.

During its reconstruction efforts, the Empire discovered an ancient Bio-reactor, and a drone, a living breathing relic of the Ancient Age, capable of operating it. Otherwise known as the Cradle to the Imperial leadership who saw it as a cradle of new life, the Bio-reactor was capable of spawning living weapons, which alone was a prospect that quickly drew the Empire's undivided attention. The Empire focused its research on genetics, hoping to design a workable genetic template of a dragon. The brilliant Letral Naus Demilcol soon created the template for a new type of dragon whose power was beyond the Empire's wildest dreams. The human element of course, was riddled with imperfection. The drone unearthed by the Empire earlier, known only as Abadd, agreed to help the Empire spawn these distorted dragons, or dragonmares for the people that created them, by interfacing with the Bio-reactor. Dealing with the drone was a necessary evil; all the Empire knew was that the Bio-reactor couldn't be operated to spawn its highly sought after dragons without a drone. As the Empire started claiming all the ancient technology found inside the ancient ruins within its borders as its own once again, the Empire failed to learn from the Ancients' mistakes. In a way, the people of the Empire filled the Ancients' shoes. While the parts used to build Imperial technology were built upon a biological foundation themselves, until now they were nothing more than excavated relics of the long forgotten past. The Empire went full steam ahead in the same direction as the Ancients by creating its own living weapons using the newly discovered Bio-reactor. The Empire's first bio-weapon was the dragonmare, a dragon-type creature implanted with a control core to bolster a newly constructed fleet of warships. Five of these creatures, which spat balls of corrosive acid capable of melting through the thickest of armor and were ridden by armored riders strapped to their backs, formed the Imperial cavalry. One other was created, but was reported missing. Deployed in combat situations by the floating assault carrier Vermana, this squadron of dragonmares earned a grim reputation for being unstoppable. Not everything went quite according to plan, though, as Abadd disappeared shortly after the first batch of dragonmares was created...

By A.F. 156 the Empire had not only stabilized into a fearsome military force once again, but had conquered most of the continent with impunity thanks to the aid of its new dragonmares. As always, the advanced aerial war machine of the Empire couldn't be confronted on its own terms. In the Imperial year of 156 A.F, the new Empire faced its first great challenge. On a blustery evening, the Imperial dragonmare unit attacked a Seeker outpost hidden within Yelico Valley, engulfing the native inhabitants in flames until the dragonmares reached their intended target: a towering prison of stone overlooking the outpost which held a young white-haired female half-drone named Orta.

Just moments after the dragonmares had torn through the walls of the stone tower to reach the girl, the legendary dragon of destruction blew them away with searing arrows of light, saving Orta from certain death just in the nick of time. Caught off-guard momentarily, the Empire reacted the only way it knew how by sending the dragonmares and the Imperial airforce to stop the dragon and girl from escaping the city with the utmost hast.

However, the legendary dragon, which played a small role in destroying the last Empire, proved to be too much for even the new Empire's dragonmare cavalry to handle. The dragon of destruction quickly broke through the blockade of airships and dragonmares, escaping the city with its new cargo in tow. Captain Evren, the very masculine female leader of the dragonmare squadron could hardly believe the ancient mythical dragon had returned to thwart the Empire's plans once again.

The assault carrier Vermana, which was the floating base of operations for the Imperial strike launched on Yelico Valley, was the only thing left standing in Orta's path to freedom. Even though it was fully equipped with powerful missile turrets, it was left vulnerable without its dragonmare squadron to support it. Not only did Orta send the airship with its panicky crew crashing to the ground in flames, but she unknowingly sent all the scientists involved in the dragonmare project to their deaths with it, including Letral Naus Demilcol, creator of the dragonmares, leaving his son Iva without a father...

Abadd, the drone who operated the Bio-reactor to spawn the first batch of dragonmares, reveals to Orta that he is also fleeing from the Empire on the back of the missing dragonmare. It is no coincidence that an attack was launched on Yelico Valley to retrieve Orta's body for study so soon after his departure; it seems the Empire was desperate to find a new drone to operate the Bio-reactor to finish the next batch of dragonmares in his absence. Abadd wanted to find Orta for his own reasons that had nothing to do with operating ancient technology, and everything to do with repopulating the world with a new race of half drones who were more deserving of it than humanity ever was, and using Orta's half drone, half human reproductive capabilities to achieve his goal. It is not known if Abadd's service to the Empire came with a price...

One thing worth noting about Abadd is his skeletal appearance. We assume his ancient masters were human, and that drones in general were made in their image, yet Abadd looks vaguely human-like. With his masters taken out of the picture, Abadd desperately searched for a way to bring them back to the world... in one form or another. He had prepared himself for a confrontation with Orta to take her body by force if necessary by enhancing his own dragonmare...

Of course, the Empire hadn't given up on capturing Orta's body in order to search her DNA for a way to breed its own drones just yet.

The Empire later sent the dragonmare squadron led by the vicious captain Evren herself to retrieve Orta once again, only this time along with the bulk of its huge fleet of armed and armored anti-gravity warships in the form of dozens of assault hoverships. Orta, who had recruited the aid of Mobo and his tribe of wormriders which had learned how to tame the worm-like Baldors over the years, and even made their home atop a giant Lathum, had other plans.

By mobilizing most of its fleet armed with missiles and high speed cannons to mount a strikeforce, the Imperials had no intentional of pulling any punches and every intention of bringing their prize home dead or alive. Most of the warships in the new Imperial fleet, surprisingly, have anti-gravity engines built into their hulls underneath instead of holding hulls strapped to them below from above like before. The Imperial fleet was eventually pushed back by Orta's dragon, but not before the wormriders were forced to abandon their home.

Captain Evren wasn't prepared to stomach the bitter taste of defeat or die without taking Orta with her. The captain believed drones were a menace that needed to be wiped out. She had been told tales of how drones only brought death and destruction to the world, and in Evren's eyes, Orta was living proof of that. Even though Evren set her dragonmare to self-destruct and tried to ram into Orta, Orta evaded this last desperate attempt to end her life.

Again, even after Orta and her dragon infiltrated the Empire itself with the aid of the wormriders once again, the Empire still failed to destroy her, and in the end, the rest of the dragonmare squadron was eliminated by the drone, Abadd. Orta had one last hurdle to overcome to be free from the Empire's newest living weapons: the Cradle itself. The dragonmare production facility had to be destroyed if there was any hope of living a life free from their clawed grip.

The Cradle was a floating ruin powered by anti-gravity engines which had to be tied to the ground to stop it from floating up into high orbit. A batch of dragonmare embryos were fully formed by the time Orta and her dragon reached it, and for a moment, the Imperials thought they were somehow responsible for their growth, and that they no longer needed drones to create more. Unfortunately, the Empire was going to be taught a lesson, and it was going to learn it the hard way. The Empire's burning desire for power threatened to consume it when it finally lost control of its dragonmares which attacked the fleet guarding the Cradle. Ships crashed into it and exploded, causing it to explode along with them. It didn't take the Empire long to figure out that Abadd was responsible.

Who knows what the Empire will do next? The inventiveness and sheer military might of the Empire has shown that humanity is still a force to be reckoned with. All I know is we haven't seen the last of it yet. The people of the Empire may even descend into civil war sooner or later as the Academy and Prince Factions vie for power... Hopefully the Empire will attach some beam cannons to its armada of assault hoverships in the future (that seems like the next logical step) as it works towards reclaiming the land from flesh-hungry mutants. The original Emperor founded the Empire to protect his own people from ravenous mutant predators spawned from ancient technology; perhaps we will see a nobler side to the Empire one day...

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