Spiritum – Prologue

A Brief History

Out of the inconceivable number of galaxies our universe plays host to, none have been observed to possess the same structure as our very own, the Sea of Spirits. Nine rings, one inside the other, separated by mostly empty space, and orbiting a supermassive black hole like the ring systems we’ve observed around many planets throughout the universe. The names of the rings, from smallest to largest, are as follows: Haleona, Pranchia, Obaronor, Calessani, Sintus, Icaetennas, Ranuulan, Triantus, and Aragana. The reason behind our galaxy’s unique structure has frustrated the greatest minds across all species, and continues to be just one of its most enduring mysteries.

The Sea of Spirits has known many empires in its long and messy history. The first known is that of the Relb’qur. Theirs was the first race known to unlock the secrets of Warp Space Travel and traverse the stars, and to whom we owe the names of the nine rings. They discovered and collaborated with many species, forging an empire to span the entire galaxy, and ushering in a golden age to last millennia.

But it was the Relb’qur’s peaceful and trusting nature that would be their undoing. Over millennia, they discovered and uplifted many species, one of which was the Chinchi, large and brutal reptilians from the planet Pollon. Cunning, the Chinchi appeared to embrace the Relb’qur’s philosophy of peace and cooperation, quickly gaining their trust and joining the empire; but this was only a façade. Slowly, The Chinchi integrated themselves into Relb’qur society, all the while waiting patiently for the time to strike and, when the day finally came, turned on their allies and slaughtered them to extinction along with any other species which stood against them. Once the dust had settled, the empire of the Relb’qur had fallen, and the Chinchi Empire rose in its place. Now, the last remaining trace of the Relb’qur is the names they ascribed to the nine rings of the Sea of Spirits. Like their former allies, the Chinchi would travel the galaxy, in search of new worlds to conquer, and species to enslave.

Humanity emerged on the planet Karasen many years later, and, like the Relb’qur, were intelligent and resourceful, soon on the cusp of developing their own technologies for travelling the stars. But the Chinchi would discover them first, and, despite their most valiant efforts, they were conquered and enslaved like so many others.

For centuries, the humans languished in slavery alongside the other species conquered by the Chinchi, brutalized, oppressed, and downtrodden, their cultures and histories all but erased until there came a day when enough was enough. After centuries of mistreatment, the species the Chinchi had terrorized for so long rose up against their masters, sparking the longest and bloodiest war the galaxy had ever seen: the Insurrectionist War. War raged for years, and, with unconstrained mercilessness, the Insurrectionist Forces drove the Chinchi into extinction. After centuries of fighting, the Sea of Spirits was free.

The species of the insurrection then came together to form a new society, one free from terror and oppression, where all would be treated equally, and no creature would ever again fear the evils of slavery. And so, the Galactic Collective was born, a society to stand for freedom and justice throughout the galaxy.

But the Collective was anything but a success. A period of rapid cultural rediscovery and expansion resulted in tensions between individual species that quickly boiled over into all-out war. Soon, the Collective was gripped by greed, corruption, and near-constant conflict and, despite standing for over a thousand years, was a resounding failure.

The Collective would ultimately collapse, and, from the ashes, two new empires rose: The Imperium Siderum Et Caeli, and the United Galactic Confederacy. The former a violent and oppressive regime where the Haelqen subspecies of human reigns supreme, and the latter a collection of allied states that wish to retain the ideas of the Collective but free from the conflict and corruption that brought about its collapse.

While the Confederacy was happy to coexist with its counterpart in an admittedly uneasy peace, the Imperium made its hatred for its smaller neighbour clear, regarding it as an affront to the bigoted beliefs they cling to with unquestioning fanaticism. In the decades since the fall of the Collective, tensions between the two sides have grown little by little, until now when war seems all but inevitable. A war with the potential to bring an end to all life in the galaxy.