Cerys Aynia gan Ymlerith Ithlinne
Members of the Gwerin Doeth species of the dominant "Ellylon" ethnic group showcasing a variety of phenotypes and traditional cultural garb including ancient soldier armor.
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: Create a species based on the elf archetype with some grounded and unpleasant characteristics to somewhat contrast with their superficial beauty, the basis for this in the wider Star Wars fiction comes from another Elf-like species called the "Sephi" and the Ellylon or "Gwerin Doeth" as this race itself are called are referred to as being superficially similar to the Sephi although they are not related and are genetically distinct as unlike the Sephi the Gwerin Doeth cannot produce viable offspring with the Coruscant galaxy's inhabitants. My intention is to create a species with cultural practices and religious beliefs noticeably distinct from the Human and Near-Human species within the fiction, being heavily influenced by the idea of what in fantasy settings are typically referred to as the "Dark Elves" but present them in such a way as so to not be readily concluded on the whole as being either wholly righteous or wicked with enough room that another author could feasibly create a compelling hero or villain. Creative inspiration for the Gwerin Doeth includes: Welsh, Scottish and Irish mythology, Tolkien's elves particularly the Noldor, Sindar and Silvan, the dark elves and wood elves from warhammer fantasy and drukhari from warhammer 40K with last but not least being the elves belonging to Sapkowski's Witcher. I have made efforts to distinguish them physically and culturally from humans and the near-human species seen in Star Wars lore and done what I can to give their history a "Fallen Empire" vibe where it could have been conceivable once their civilization would have become the dominant one in the whole universe but by their own hand forfeited that opportunity in the face of a terrifying enemy. It's ultimately left upto the reader and their own imagination whether the Celestials had some special plan in mind for the Gwerin Doeth, whether they were intended to succeed them, an exercise in guided evolution etc.
- Image Credit: Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt, Diego Peres, Marta Dettlaff, Andrew Averkin, Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, Gears of War 4, Dead Space, Source Filmmaker, David Edwards, Ben J, Martin Parker, Ken Fairclough.
- Canon: N/A
- Permissions: None
- Links: Timeline of galactic history, infinite empire, Sephi, portal, fold space, teleportation, wookie, Yoda's species, Gen'dai, Maz Kanata species.
- Acknowledgements: Authors who inspired and guided me through their own high-quality and meritorious work and I feel deserve acknowledgement.
GENERAL INFORMATION
- Name: Used interchangeably
- Gwerin Doeth ("Wise Folk", Tuathi)
- Daoine Sìth ("Peaceful folk", Ellylon)
- Daoine Sidhe ("Peaceful folk", Gwyllion)
- Also known as:
- By themselves: Tuath De
- Ellylon (Ethnic group)
- Gwyllion (Ethnic group)
- Tuath Dé ("Tribe of the Gods", race as a whole)
- In Atrisian: Dryad
- Dryadalis ("Elf")
- Primoris prognatus dryadalis ("Firstborn elves", official taxonomic binomial name)
- In Galactic Basic: Dark Elf
- Covenant (Erroneously)
- Daemon
- Dark Elf
- Dryad
- Faerie
- In Old Corellian: Nhar'eharl
- Eharl ("Elf/trickster")
- Olys eharl ("Old elf/trickster")
- Nhar'eharl ("Dark elf/trickster")
- In Durese: Ena'hent
- Ena'hent ("Regal athletic")
- Ena'ranalod ("Regal wise dark cloud")
- In Mando'a: Aruetii
- Aruetii ("Enemy/outsider")
- Iviin'yc aru'e ("Quick enemy")
- Mesh'la aru'e ("Beautiful enemy")
- Mirdala ka'ra ("Clever stars")
- By themselves: Tuath De
- Classification: Pseudo-hominid Mammal
- Designation: Sentient
- Origins: Extragalactic
- Homeworld:
- Tir na Sìth (Ellylon: "Peaceful land", Extragalactic "Gwerin Doeth" Galaxy)
- Tir na Ellylon (Ellylon: "Land of Ellylon", Coruscanti Galaxy, adopted)
- Chromosomal information:
- Chromosomes/Cell: 54 autosomes, 2 allosomic (sex)
- Structure: Disomy (Pairs)
- Average lifespan: 8,100-10,000 standard years
- Gestation Period: 15 Standard months
- Physical-psychological developmental cycle: In Standard Years
- Infancy: 0-2
- Childhood: 2-12
- Adolescence: 12-19
- Young Adulthood: 20
- Middle Adulthood: 4,400
- Advanced Adulthood: 6,400
- Venerable Adulthood: 8,100
- Maximum lifespan: 10,000
- Estimated population: Rare (Coruscanti Galaxy), Inter-planetary (Gwerin Doeth Galaxy)
- Estimated Population Gwerin Doeth Galaxy (860 ABY): 39,000,000,000
- Core Worlds: 220 Colonies
- Frontier Worlds: 590 Colonies
- Estimated population Coruscanti Galaxy (860 ABY): 855,000,000
- Wild Space Worlds: 2
- Ellylon System: 2
- Far Haven (Arctic World)
- Tir na Ellylon (Conservation Sphere)
- Ellylon System: 2
- Wild Space Worlds: 2
- Estimated Population Gwerin Doeth Galaxy (860 ABY): 39,000,000,000
- Description: At a glance the Gwerin Doeth species appear outwardly similar to the Sephi and one could be forgiven for making the mistake the two species are superficially similar in appearance however they are alien in evolutionary terms from any of the Sephi-descended or similar races. They are significantly taller and more physically robust with several redundant vital organs which dramatically improve their strength, endurance, resilience and cardio-vascular strength when compared with Humans and their descendants. They possess rigid pointed usually lobeless ears which are comparatively short next to the Sephi and their own distinct cranio-facial festures including: Rounded convex foreheads, almond-shaped eye sockets, extraordinarily high and protruding cheekbones, unusual iris colors and a tendency towards oval shaped chins. Additionally they regrow lost teeth even as adults and their central incisors of the upper jaw are longer and more prominent when compared to humans and these central incisors taper into sharp points hinting towards an evolutionary diet that favored meat.
A group of ancient Gwerin Doeth soldiers and citizens observing fireworks on Tir na Sìth in 399,319 BBY
PHYSICAL INFORMATION
- Amino acid type: Left-handed
- Native climate: Arctic
- Breathes: Type I atmosphere (evolved)
- Composition:
- Nitrogen
- Oxygen
- Argon
- Composition:
- Evolutionary Gravity: 1.4G
- Sexes:
- Male
- Female
- Average intelligence quotient of Adults: Statistical Range (Not including standard deviations)
- Males: 120-210 points
- Females: 160-190 points
- Average Height of Adults: Statistical Range (Not including standard deviations)
- Males: 2.23-2.48 meters/7'4"-8'1"
- Females: 2.08-2.19 meters/6'10"-7'2"
- Average Length of Adults: Varies in proportion to height and weight
- Average Weight of Adults: Statistical Range (Not including standard deviations)
- Males: 135-151 Kilograms/298 .lbs-332 .lbs
- Females: 110-116 Kilograms/242 .lbs-251 .lbs
- Average Speed of Adults: Average-Professional Athlete
- Males: 23.66-72.21 kilometers per hour/14.70-44.86 miles per hour (sustained)
- Females: 18.81-61.89 kilometers per hour/11.68-38.45 miles per hour (sustained)
- Skin color:
- Common:
- Fair
- Pale
- Uncommon:
- Translucent
- Rare:
- Bronze/tan
- Common:
- Hair color:
- Common:
- Black
- Brown
- Uncommon:
- Gray
- Light brown
- Blonde
- Rare:
- Auburn
- Extraordinarily rare:
- Ginger
- Common:
- Eye Color:
- Common:
- Amber
- Aquamarine
- Uncommon:
- Emerald
- Gray
- Rare:
- Sulfur
- Violet
- Common:
Their species exhibit characteristics of mammalian sexual dimorphism with female Gwerin having a significantly more narrow range of average height compared to the males with the taller females being approximately a whole nine inches shorter than males at the same end of range. Among the Gwerin Doeth's scientific community there tends to be a broad consensus that any individual that is beneath 1.95 meters tall is considered to have contracted Dwarfism. There is a cultural and social association with short statures with femininity while taller statures are conversely associated with masculinity. Because they give birth to live children females as part of adolescence develop breasts and experience great growth in their pelvic bones which prepares the body for pregnancy with modest increases to their muscle and bone mass and density while males experience dramatic increases in their bone and muscle mass and density. At the lower end of the average range a adult male and female Gwerin Doeth of modest robustness will typically have a weight difference of approximately twenty-five kilograms between them while stronger and taller males outweigh their female counterparts by approximately thirty-three kilograms. Interestingly unlike primates both male or female Gwerin Doeth grow negligible to no terminal or androgenic hair they maintain shorter and finer vellus hair for the most part but do grow axillary hair under the arms as a protection against friction. Male Gwerin are often regarded as having androgenic features by primate-based species such as Humans and their offshoot species and are sometimes regarded as being feminine or "pretty" in a derisive manner by primate societies who associate terminal or androgenic hair with masculinity and full physical maturity of males. Because of the race's large anatomy both males and females typically exhibit husky pitch and tone when speaking, although they are still capable of modulating their pitch and tone for broader harmonic content according to the individual's vowel and consonant pronunciation which can be altered by a wide variety of factors.
Though the jaw anatomy of the species is outwardly similar to the likes of Humans in the number of teeth present in the upper and lower jaw there are a number of appreciable differences due to their unique evolutionary history. Firstly, the Gwerin Doeth maintain the ability to grow and replenish teeth lost even in adulthood and secondly the central incisors of the upper jaw are prominent and long tapering into sharp points which are useful for shearing and piercing meat. These two qualities when taken together can be seen as the evidence of an evolutionary diet and behavior that favoured the consumption of meat and hunting of large vertebrates. The teeth in their jaws are very resilient and durable with the central incisors capable of being used as a formidable and potentially lethal weapon in close quarters depending on bite location.
- Lifeform type: Carbon-based life
- Races:
- 96% Ellylon (Modern, dominant ethno-cultural group)
- 4% Gwyllion (Archaic, minority ethno-cultural group)
- Reproductive compatibility: None (cannot produce viable offspring with any other species)
- Vital Organs:
- Brain: 1
- Heart: 2
- Kidneys: 3
- Liver: 2
- Lungs: 3
- Mean Midi-chlorian count (Non force sensitive): 250/Cell
- Mean Midi-chlorian count (Force sensitive): 11,000/Cell
- Force sensitivity occurrence: 1 in 10,000,000
Strengths:
- Fold Drive: Their unique and alien evolution and technological development from the Coruscant galaxy has led to some unique engineering feats specific to the Gwerin, one of these inventions was the "Fold Drive" which was developed from the race's in-depth complex understanding of the relationship between space-time and how to manipulate its' fabric in beneficial applications. When they became a species capable of traversing large galactic distances in excess of one billion light years this was achieved thanks to the fold drives which permits a Starship to open a space-time tear and travel through it at comparable speeds to a hyperdrive but with several benefits and disadvantages. One of those being due to the method of its' function they are highly resistant to "Hyperspace interdiction fields" created by gravity wells and do not require line of sight to their destination for travel. There are however significant drawbacks such as fold drives being quite large and cumbersome rendering them generally unsuitable for use in Starfighter craft save for the largest examples of that class. The trajectory of a jump must also be determined before entering fold space allowing observing ships to potentially calculate the trajectory and follow aforementioned ship additionally, as they possess speed ratings like hyperdrives it is possible for a ship to overtake another ship even if it enters the fold stream later than its' target. It is also viewed as extremely dangerous to try and perform a foldspace jump into the atmosphere of a planet or other celestial body as the calculations must be staggeringly precise and account for too many variables such as the world's mass silhouette.
- Pathfinders: Those Ellylon who exhibit force sensitivity can be trained in the racial tradition and profession of a "Pathfinder" an extraordinarily important and crucial position within the species as Pathfinders with an in-depth education in space & time manipulation combined with their active force abilities are capable of constructing portals that can rip into the fabric of space-time and shield groups of travelers from the force's corrosive effects on the Non force-sensitive Gwerin. Pathfinders manipulating the space-time relationship when travelling through their portals the pathfinder and their companions travel do not experience the aging effects of relativity and move at an equivalent speed of one-thousand light-years per standard day or 43 light-years per standard hour regardless of how rapidly they attempt to pass across the pathways. Not replacing the species' traditional interstellar travel but supplementing it as the method cannot be used to transport large star-ships or population groups. This makes it not uncommon to find travelling parties or small remote villages of the Gwerin Doeth.
- Physiology: Members of the species are significantly taller and more robust than Humans or Near-Humans and this is due to their evolutionary gravity of 1.4Gs which is significantly higher than what most Humans or Near-Human species experienced as part of their evolution. Because of the high gravity environment Ellylon bones, muscles and connective tissues are on average forty percent denser and therefore tougher, stronger and more resilient when compared to those aforementioned population groups with an extra lung for aiding the uptake of oxygen into the bloodstream, a redundant liver and kidney for processing food and toxins with an additional secondary heart which allows the oxygenation of a staggering volume of blood resulting in the species being able to endure maximal exertion for extended periods of time. It's worth noting that their bones are particularly remarkable for their production of a carbon-fiber like material which reinforces the skeleton this phenomena is a direct result of their evolutionary gravity giving the skeleton excellent resistance to tensile forces and resists degradation when spending a long period of time in a low gravity environment. Their nervous system is very advanced with additional motor and sensory nerve branches and thicker myelin sheaths protecting the electrical signals across nervous system from degradation as they travel resulting on significantly heightened perception and on average they have a forty percent reduction in reaction time when compared to Humans and Near-Humans which can lead to those aforementioned groups being perceived as sluggish, dim-witted or hapless by Gwerin Doeth.
- Senescent living: With DNA extraordinarily resilient against damage the species can live for several centuries and even millennia and comes with significant benefits on the micro-level, each member of the Gwerin species can spend decades in different careers and amass massive amounts of skills and training without a degenerative decline in physical or mental performance seen so often among the "lesser races" which makes for each Gwerin quite valuable from an employment perspective. This has the result of the species producing extraordinarily skilled craftsman, economists, politicians and soldiers with training and experience that could be honed and sharpened over several decades. They are generally regarded as ageless by shorter lived races however it is worth noting that Gwerin are not immortal and are tragically unlikely to see the end of their natural lives and almost all die prematurely for a variety of causes.
- Sharpened Senses: With the enhanced nervous system Gwerin Doeth can process sensory information at an elevated resolution their ears can hear noise in a wider band of frequencies and pitch than that is perceptible to Humans and their myriad offshoot species, additionally the nervous system can selectively amplify the volume of quiet noises for increased situational awareness which is speculated to have been greatly useful when they hunted on their home-world. Because their homeworld of Tir na Sìth is an arctic world and much of the day is spent in relative cool darkness the cones and rods of their eyes feature stronger blood-flow and in-fact flows in an opposite direction compared to normal Humans giving the pupils greater ability to contract and expand as such the species exhibits the ability to see in low-light conditions giving them a reputation for being nocturnal hunters and renders their soldiers as being experts in night operations.
- Buoyancy: There is a significant drawback for the species since their physiologies i.e bones, muscles and connective tissues being significantly denser than that when compared to primates such as Humans and Near-Humans. The increased density means that the species are not as buoyant when submerged into solutions akin to water while not so dense that they immediately sink a Gwerin Doeth without sufficient swimming training might find themselves unable to achieve buoyancy and remain on the surface, the result could be that the individual submerges beneath the surface and their lungs fill with water causing death by drowning.
- Caloric intake: Possessing a massive stature and multiple organs is extraordinary beneficial but it comes at a significant cost in fuel expressed in calories and Kilojoules. Adult Gwerin could be perceived as somewhat gluttonous by smaller humanoids due to their eating and diet requirements, an average adult male of the species should be consuming at a minimum approximately 3,500-4,500 calories per day to maintain their weight depending on activity level. Which is significantly more than an adult human, this means that the species collectively dedicate more volume to food storage and require more resources per capita to fuel. This factors combined with their reproductive power and strategy places a massive bottleneck on their population growth and mandates diets high with carbohydrates, protein and mono-saturated fats, for these reasons the Gwerin cannot receive adequate nutrition on a strictly "vegetarian" or "vegan" diet and members of the species typically consume high volumes of poultry, cattle and other meat sources.
- Force sensitivity: The Ellylon are not a particularly force sensitive species and this has its' benefits and drawbacks, one of the physiological benefits is that the species survival and prosperity is largely unrelated and uninfluenced directly by the force's machinations. Its' drawback is that very few among its' number possess any sort of force sensitivity potent enough to be viable for channeling into active ability. The incidence of force sensitive species among the Ellylon is approximately one in ten million. However, this is offset somewhat by the extraordinary potential and abilities that characterize such individuals. Assuming a population of about thirty-three billion would leave approximately 3,300 force sensitive individuals in their whole race an extraordinarily low number which rises painstakingly slowly due to their sluggish population growth.
- Low gravity habitation: Due to their evolutionary biology the Gwerin Doeth cannot spend an extended period of time (i.e months) in an environment with a value for gravity at rest less than 1.4G. In an environment with a value for gravity of less than 1.4Gs the constituent molecules of their bodies begin to settle into less dense arrangements the consequences of this for their physiology is that their muscles, tendons and ligaments along with other soft tissues begin to become less dense which has detrimental consequences for their physiques. To counter this Gwerin Doeth often make adjustments to their living arrangements on foreign worlds such as using artificial gravity generation in their residences for maximum comfort and resisting the physiological cellular effects of low gravity. These effect severely discourages Gwerin Doeth from occupying any foreign landscape for a meaningful amount of time where there is little chance of raising the value for gravity upto 1.4Gs.
- Mammalian fragility: At the end of the day like most mammals the Ellylon possess a respiratory system, airborne particles can easily enter the individual's body through their respiratory tract i.e the mouth and ingress into lungs where they can cause irritation and even damage impairing or disabling an Ellylon over time depending on the applied dosage and toxicity of the substance or biological organism. Large quantities of cytotoxic drugs that are ingested or came into contact with can result potentially in fatality and even though their advanced physiology makes them resistant to diseases and infections that would normally impact other humanoid mammalians, their biological nature could still be exploited and bacteria or viruses can be potentially engineered to specifically target the Ellylon without risking other population groups. Even though they ostensibly have an extremely long lifespan most Gwerin Doeth perish prematurely the most common attributable causes of premature death are: Metastasized cancers, violence, bacterial infections, viral infections and self-harm or suicide.
- Reproductive power: Unlike the innumerable species of the galaxy with their truncated lifespans the Ellylon are not prone or given to rapid reproduction, truly enough while they are mammals they possess a highly unusual and inefficient reproductive process whereby females aged between 18-1,000 standard years on average only experience one fertile window once every two standard years where they can conceive viable offspring. Each adult female of the species has sufficient biological material to reproduce up-to approximately 1,000 standard years in age at which stage their ability to carry a pregnancy is typically lost. As a result the race's ability to replace losses due to sickness, famine and war is limited. This fact of their existence has led to many civilization practices such as the Ellylon favoring unconventional warfare where possible and the pursuit of extraordinarily advanced technology to compensate for their small number. To illustrate their population disparity with the Coruscanti Galaxy, the world of Coruscant alone houses a significantly greater population than the sum total of the Gwerin Doeth in the whole universe.
- Ultraviolet radiation: Due to their evolutionary environment which was alpine and arctic in nature the Gwerin Doeth have quite fair complexions which can be so pale so as to be comparable to translucency. This leaves the species on the whole largely incapable of comfortably inhabiting an environment with little or no protection from a star's ultraviolet radiation, generally speaking they are most vulnerable in polar environments where there is often little ozone and in hot climates where unprotected exposure of the skin in as little as fifteen to thirty minutes can begin causing an inflammatory response which is visible by a reddening of the skin caused by radiation-induced type-I cell death. Complications as a result of such repeated damage can include the development of melanoma, basal-cell carcinoma and Squamous cell skin cancer, due to their long lives and cumulative sun exposure it's not uncommon for Gwerin Doeth to be seen wearing sophisticated protected environment control suits in hot environments.
- Volume requirements: Being incredibly tall and powerful has its' disadvantages for example each member of the Gwerin Doeth is incredibly tall with the taller males standing so high that their heads would threaten to hit the top of habitable rooms that are constructed for primary use and consideration given to Human and Near-Human physiology unless they exceeded the height of the average Gwerin Doeth which is unlikely unless they are also designed for co-habitation by large species such as Wookies. The heads of Gwerin Doeth females could threaten to strike the ceilings of Human or Near-Human rooms not designed for such co-habitation. Another significant drawback in both civil and military environments is that vehicles and aerial small-craft must be larger to accommodate the species' physiology which requires higher volume when compared to Humans and their related species.
A group of ancient Gwerin Doeth women in the capital of Tir na Sìth
- Diet: Omnivore
- Typical diet:
- Alcohol
- Cattle
- Dairy
- Fish
- Fruits
- Legumes
- Pork
- Poultry
- Wheat
- Whole grains
- Vegetables
- Communication:
- Verbal:
- Spoken language: 99% Tuathi, 99% Ellylon, 3% Gwyllion,
- Real-world stand-in: Welsh (Tuathi), Irish Gaelic (Ellylon), Scottish Gaelic (Gwyllion)
- Real-world stand-in accents (Galactic Basic): English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh.
- Mutually-intelligible: Yes
- Ellylon: Tuathi (partially), Gwyllion (significantly)
- Gwyllion: Ellylon (significantly), Tuathi (partially)
- Tuathi: Gwyllion (partially), Ellylon (partially)
- Word order: Verb-subject-object (traditional/grammatically correct), subject-verb-object (simplified)
- Lexicon sample:
- Tuathi:
- Braenaru (Noun: "Pathfinder")
- Caer (Noun: "Castle/fort")
- Cau (Noun: "Hollow/Rakata")
- Ceadmil (Noun/verb/exclamation: "Welcome/salutations")
- Dynol (Noun: "Human")
- Gymanwlad Doeth (Noun: "Gwerin Commonwealth")
- Diafol (Noun: "Devil")
- Ef (Pronoun: "He")
- Ether (Noun: "Force")
- Geas (Noun/verb: "Curse/spell")
- Gilydd (Pronoun: "Together")
- Grisial hynafiad (Noun: "Ancestor crystal/kyber crystal")
- Grŵp tactegau a deallusrwydd arbennig (Noun: "Special tactics and intelligence group")
- Gweledydd (Noun: "Seer")
- Gweriniaeth Ellylon (Noun: "Ellylon Republic")
- Gweinyddiaeth Gofod Bydoedd Unedig (Noun: "United systems space administration")
- Gvialen (Noun: "Pizzle")
- Hei (Exclamation/greeting: "Hey")
- Hi (Pronoun: "Her")
- Ladd (Verb: "Attack/kill")
- Ladd nawr (Phrase: "Attack/kill now")
- Ladis (Noun: "Lady")
- Ladis y llyn (Noun: "Lady of the Lake")
- Ledwedd varlledu cyall no ghar (Phrase: "Easy way or the hard way")
- Mha (Determiner/exclamation/pronoun: "What")
- Na (Determiner/exclamation/adverb/noun: "No")
- Nawr (Adverb/conjunction/adjective: "Now")
- Ti (Pronoun: "You")
- Tir (Noun/verb: "Land/ground/country")
- Tor (Noun: "Tower")
- Weddio (Adverb/verb: "Pray")
- Ymerodraeth Doeth Werin (Noun: "Unified Gwerin Ecumene")
- Ynghyd (Adverb: "Together")
- Ysgarthiad (Noun: "Chit/excrement")
- Ellylon:
- Alainn deireadh (Phrase: "Lovely end/lovely death")
- Amadan (Noun: "Fool/idiot")
- Avere/essere (Atrisian loanverb: "Have/posses/get")
- Bean (Noun: "Lady")
- Bean an Loc'ha (Noun: "Lady of the Lake")
- Beart beartaiochta agus faisneise speisialta (Noun: "Special tactics and intelligence group")
- Bloed (Old Corellian loanword noun/verb: "Blood")
- Bloede (Old Corellian loanword noun/verb: "Bloody")
- Bloede D'yaebl (Hybrid loanphrase: "Bloody devil")
- Bloede Varh'he (Old Corellian loanphrase: "Bloody hell")
- Cad (Pronoun: "What")
- Cad e! (Interjection/exclamation: "What")
- Calma (Adjective: "Calmly")
- Cinn D'hearga (Noun/Adjective: "Red Ones/Sith")
- Criostail sinsear (Noun: "Ancestor crystal/kyber crystal")
- Daoine Comhlathas (Noun: "Gwerin Commonwealth")
- Dearme (Atrisian basic loanphrase: "Goodnight")
- Dearg (Adjective: "Red")
- Deireadh (Noun/adjective: "End/last/finish")
- Diabhal (Archaic noun: "Devil")
- D'uine (Noun/adjective: "Human")
- D'yaebl (Noun: "Devil")
- Either (Noun: "Force")
- Fuil (Noun/verb: "Blood")
- Fuilteach (Adjective/verb: "Bloody")
- Galanta (Adjective: "Gorgeous/charming")
- Geas (Noun/verb: "Curse/curse you/spell")
- Heh (Exclamation/greeting: "Hey")
- Ifreann (Noun/exclamation: "Hell")
- Impireacht Aontaithe Ciallmhar (Noun: "Unified Gwerin Ecumene")
- Itheoiri Domhanda (Noun: "World Eaters/Rakata")
- Ise (Pronoun: "Her")
- Le cheile (Adverb: "Together")
- Ledwedd varlledu cyall no ghar (Tuathi Loanphrase: "Easy way or the hard way")
- Loc'h (Noun: "Lake")
- Manach (Noun: "Scholar")
- Marcaigh (Noun: "Horsemen/cavalry")
- Neen (Exclamation/adverb: "No")
- Nil (Determiner/exclamation/adverb/noun: "No")
- Ni'l ceim siaar (Phrase: "Nothing in common/no chemistry")
- Poblacht Ellylon (Noun: "Ellylon Republic")
- Riarachan spais an domhain Aontaithe (Noun: "United Systems Space Administration")
- Rud (Noun: "Thing")
- Rud mafach (Noun/adjective/verb): "Deadly thing")
- Salah (Adverb/verb: "Pray")
- Salah vatt'ghern (Curse/insult: "Pray freak/mutant/alien")
- Se (Pronoun: "He")
- Sionnach (Noun: "Hunter")
- T'aung (Noun/adjective: "Mandalorian")
- Tir (Noun/verb: "Land/ground/country")
- Tir na D'uine (Noun: "Land of Humans/Corellia")
- Tir na Zhell (Noun: "Land of Zhell/Coruscant")
- Tu (Pronoun: "You")
- Torc'h (Noun: "Wreath")
- Varh'he (Old Corellian loanword noun/exclamation: "Hell")
- Vatt'ghern (Noun: "Alien/mutant/freak/vermin")
- Tuathi:
- Spoken language: 99% Tuathi, 99% Ellylon, 3% Gwyllion,
- Written: 99% Tuathi, 99% Ellylon, 3% Gwyllion
- Real-world stand-in: Welsh (Tuathi), Irish Gaelic (Ellylon), Scottish Gaelic (Gwyllion)
- Real-world stand-in script: Insular script (Tuathi), Gaelic type (Ellylon & Gwyllion)
- Acute Accents: Yes (Tuathi), Yes (Ellylon & Gwyllion)
- Characters: 26
- Mutually-intelligible: Yes
- Ellylon: Tuathi (Partially), Gwyllion (Significantly)
- Gwyllion: Ellylon (Significantly), Tuathi (Partially)
- Tuathi: Gwyllion (Partially), Ellylon (Partially)
- Word order: Verb-subject-object (traditional/grammatically correct), subject-verb-object (simplified)
- Physical:
- Gesture
- Pose
- Verbal:
- Typical diet:
- Name examples:
- Male: Afallac'h, Aillen, Auberon, Balor, Caomhan, Caoimhin, Caranthir, Cian, Ciaran, Crevan, Doran, Fragarach, Furbaide, Gwyn, Nithral, Nyeron, Manaan, Midir, Oberon, Slaine, Turgon.
- Female: Aderyn, Aideen, Amser, Arthes, Aynia, Berwyn, Cerys, Ciara, Cethlenn, Caoimhe, Deryn, Ernmas, Enys, Gwylan, Ithlinne, Macha, Mairi, Muirne, Shahn, Sorcha.
- Family name: Claiomh Dorcha, Eamhain, Faireora, Fflur Bryn, Fuamnach, Feidlech, Gealach Airgid, Gwyn Bran, Gwyn Blaidd, Liath Bryn, Liath Glas, Realta ag lann, Sionnach, Manach.
- Naming convention:
- Aristocratic/Pathfinder Lineage: <First given name> <second given name> gan ("of/from") <father's first given name> <mother's first given name>
- Commoner Lineage: <First given name> <second given name> <family name>
- Technology level: World Builders
- Description: The Gwerin possess the necessary level of technological advancement and comprehensive understanding of multiple science disciplines including quantum physics necessary to enable them to manipulate gravitational forces, quantum entangling particles enabling instantaneous interstellar communications, design and manufacture artificial general intelligence with full sentience and learning capacity, fabricate complex ultra-dense low molecular weight materials, perform painstakingly accurate time-space foldspace navigation and tracking, create artificial life through genetic engineering or manipulation, construct and maintain world structures such as dyson spheres, ringworlds, orbital elevators and large self-sufficient space-borne habitats and clone complex multi-celled organisms including sentient species. Their weaponry largely functions upon accelerated negatively charged super-heated streams of ionized particles and their protection technology includes sophisticated and powerful plasma shielding, dynamic electric armor and active protection systems. Unlike most species who believe that teleportation is a fantasy the Gwerin Doeth still possess the capacity to quantum entangle particles and use principles of said entangled particles to transport personnel and materiel across relatively short astronomical distances upto 15,000 kilometres and their species utilizes this for a variety of purposes, its' particularly useful in a civil and tactical application.
- Religion/Beliefs: Most Gwerin Doeth societies adhere to one of two religion ingrained into their racial and cultural identity these two being what is known as the "Covenant" and broad ancestor reverence and worship. Their governments are usually secular and maintain what is understood by contemporary societies as a separation between church and state. The Covenant is an organisation dedicated to an ancient polytheistic religion revolving around worship of the Celestial race and more specifically three characters known as the "Father", "Son", and "Daughter". Each represent different spheres of influence and characteristics. The Covenant believe that the Celestials fought a war with lesser jealous species and after fighting a losing and costly war managed to achieve trans-sentience and left the Universe's custodianship to the Gwerin Doeth. Significant portions of the population can be irreligious however many of these irreligious Gwerin Doeth believe a sufficient amount of evidence exists to suggest the Celestials at one point existed and it is the race's responsibility to assume guardianship over the galaxy but that this entitlement is not received from a divine source.
- Religion: Covenant
- Type: Polytheistic Pantheon
- Polity: Episcopal cultural hegemony
- Scripture:
- Word of the Covenant
- Epistle of Afallac'h
- Epistle of Oberon
- Epistle of Berwyn
- Word of the Covenant
- Theology: Covenant theology
- Structure: Communion
- Language: Tuathi
- Founder: Afallac'h the wise, Oberon the cunning, Berwyn the merciful
- Administration: Covenant Ministries
- Deities:
- Gwyn - Father
- Patronage: Barristers, Correctional Officers, Magistrates, Negotiators, Judges, Legislators, Solicitors, Paralegals, Pathfinders/Seers, Police Officers, Public Servants, Religious Ministers.
- Virtue(s): Wisdom, Justice
- Vice(s): Despair, Sloth
- Aillen - Son
- Patronage: Assassins, Bounty Hunters, Entrepreneurs, Gladiators, Martial Arts' Practitioners, Mercenaries, Morticians, Pallbearers, Saboteurs, Soldiers, Spies.
- Virtue(s): Duty, Honor, Valor
- Vice(s): Desire, Pride, Rage
- Muirne - Daughter
- Patronage: Biologists, Chemists, Engineers, Paramedics, Physicians, Physicists, Programmers, Psychiatrists, Psychologists, Researchers, Surgeons.
- Virtue(s): Compassion, Fidelity
- Vice(s): Envy, Fear
- Gwyn - Father
- Paragon(s):
- Arthes
- Deed: Responsible for the preservation of life within the entire galaxy after the "Great War" thereby upholding the Covenant's promise of responsible guardianship over the galaxy. Arthes also preserved what knowledge from her time possible so that the flame of enlightenment would never give way to the darkness of ignorance.
- Epithet: Life-warder
- Nithral
- Deed: Nithral made the ultimate sacrifice during the great war and at the cost of his own life and the lives of his subordinates created an opportunity for the Great Enemy to be vanquished and thereby stood in the highest traditions of self-sacrifice and nobility. Through Nithral's decisions the Dyson Shelters were built and saved the lives of Millions of Gwerin Doeth.
- Epithet: Arbitrator
- Arthes
- Seven noble virtues:
- Compassion
- Fidelity
- Justice
- Valor
- Wisdom
- Duty
- Honor
- Seven ignoble vices:
- Desire
- Despair
- Envy
- Fear
- Pride
- Rage
- Sloth
- Covenant militant hierarchy:
- Covenant Guard: Infantry Guards/Honor Guard/Security Force
- Councillor
- Typical responsibility: Covenant guard leader
- Vice-Councillor
- Typical responsibility: Assistant covenant guard leader
- Chaplain
- Typical responsibility: Regiment leader
- Veteran Watchmaster
- Typical responsibility: Battalion leader
- Watchmaster
- Typical responsibility: Company leader
- Veteran
- Typical responsibility: Platoon leader
- Senior Field Officer
- Typical responsibility: Company leader's assistant.
- Field Officer
- Typical responsibility: Squad leader, platoon leader's assistant.
- Guardsman-Major
- Typical responsibility: Fireteam leader
- Guardsman-Minor
- Typical responsibility: None
- Councillor
- Covenant Guard: Infantry Guards/Honor Guard/Security Force
- Covenant ministerial hierarchy:
- Ecclesiastical: Covenant councils
- Hierarch
- Typical responsibility: Covenant executive, head of Covenant government and state.
- Exarch
- Typical responsibility: Sector conclave leader, legislative Councillor
- Minister
- Typical responsibility: Colony leader, covenant ministry leader
- Archbishop
- Typical responsibility: Planetary Regional leader
- Bishop
- Typical responsibility: Planetary District leader
- Legate
- Typical responsibility: Ambassador to Gwerin governments representing the Covenant
- Delegate
- Typical responsibility: Diplomatic assistance to Legate
- Abbott
- Typical responsibility: Church leader
- Hierarch
- Administrative & Pastoral: Covenant ministries
- Vicar General
- Typical responsibility: Church assistant
- Vicar
- Typical responsibility: Monastery leader
- Dean
- Typical responsibility: Abbey leader, University/College leader, Monastery assistant
- Confessor
- Typical responsibility: Confessional leader, Abbey assistant
- Chaplain
- Typical responsibility: Service leader
- Deacon
- Typical responsibility: Service assistant
- Brother/Sister
- Typical responsibility: None
- Vicar General
- Ecclesiastical: Covenant councils
- Religion: Covenant
- Racial Ethics:
- Authoritarianism
- Elitism
- Xenophobia
- Individualism
- Racial Civics:
- Commonwealth state
- Consumerism
- Environmentalism
- Indentured servitude
- Meritocracy
- Police state
The Gwerin or "Ellylon" as they refer to themselves casually are a social race and their entire societal and biological evolution relies upon the formation and fostering of social relationships and co-operation. Typically Ellylon live in communities ranging from towns to cities which at their most basic level are comprised of multiple nuclear family units and grow as the families intermarry and their populations immigrate and emigrate from location to location. Families are formed through marriage in Ellylon society and marriages are often encouraged socially to revolve around the advancement of one's family's economic or political prosperity and success, romance and courtship is important although it is seen as a necessary component of a happy and successful marriage although happiness within matrimony is viewed as an accessory to its' economic and political success. It is not uncommon for the Ellylon to engage in marital infidelity although it's not morally or ethically acceptable to engage in such practices among the politically and economically powerful there is somewhat of an unspoken rule among unhappy marriages that the couple shall permit one-another to possess lovers provided such arrangements are kept discrete.
Among the Ellylon there is a strong expectation that married men and women will make a concerted and sustained effort to produce several children this is a social pressure and expectation that exists in response to the Ellylon's unusually long lifespans and limited fertility which mandates that their production is carefully managed and monitored. Legal equality of men and women is a common quality of Gwerin society although there exist deeply ingrained social attitudes towards both sexes and their roles in society with fertile child-bearing age women seen as extraordinarily valuable for their reproductive power and are generally encouraged socially by their families to search for a suitable mate or husband and procreate at a young age both so that the race experiences constant steady population growth and Gwerin governments typically encourage this behavior with incentives and positive reinforcements through generous systems such as tax credits and pay-outs paid to women for each child they successfully produce. Homosexual relationships are usually legal and same-sex unions and marriages are recognized typically although due to the aforementioned value placed on fertility same-sex unions between young women are generally frowned upon but the converse is not necessarily true socially for same-sex relationships between young men due to their dramatically greater fertility and therefore reduced reproductive value.
Pregnancy receives great celebration and the first-born child among the Ellylon generally receives the lion's share of investment in terms of education and training from their parents which is especially true if they be an only-born. This environment fosters a sense of superiority among the Ellylon and they are generally perceived by outsiders to be proud at the least and arrogant at the worst. Social propriety and the upholding of hierarchical order is considered among the most important of civic virtues. Ellylon societies typically have a monarchistic power ideology with a democratic power source so they typically form absolute and constitutional monarchy with features of democracy and even direct democracy implemented for the selection of bureaucrats. Legislative and Executive power is typically wielded by individuals who inherit their positions or are elected to them.
Their monarchs are educated and rule with the sagely wisdom and insight of philosophers due to their long lives an Ellylon monarch will likely not ascend to their throne until they are several hundred years old granting them unparalleled skills in politics, governance and policy creation. Leaders and Monarchs are generally revered by their constituents as extraordinarily wise and noble individuals with intellect and wisdom that dwarfs the "lesser races". Though generally regarded as undeniably beautiful by other humanoids their beauty contrasts sharply with some of their traditional cultural attitudes and behaviors, with their stalwart arrogance and pride they're darkly inclined no offence or transgression is necessary for their assaults to fall upon the alien. Their paramilitary and military organisations are experts in night operations appearing when most mammals sleep appearing out of pitch-black darkness like spectres or ghosts to assault and capture those races they deem inferior forcing alien farmers or colonists to burn their own homesteads, fields and shoot their own cattle for example.
Believing that manual labor is largely beneath them and viewing artificial intelligence constructs with suspicion the Ellylon make use of aliens as commercial workers, domestic servants indentured or otherwise and they often use servitude as a punishment for their defeated enemies and non-citizen criminals as opposed to murdering them with the Ellylon ironically believing that killing unarmed and defeated opponents or prisoners is pathetic and ethically unacceptable but that involuntary servitude as a criminal sentence to repay the state for damages through the provision of goods and services is not. As a result the death sentence is rare in Ellylon society and is reserved for the most severe criminal offences that represent a betrayal of the community as a whole such as regicide or treason, additionally Ellylon soldiers in melee combat will often allow a wounded and disarmed opponent an opportunity to retrieve their weapon and fall with "nobility and dignity" blade or weapon in hand as opposed to being helplessly slaughtered. While their actions could be misconstrued as being driven by malice and cruelty the Ellylon are more complex than simple labels of "Good" or "Evil" they're fiercely territorial and more than mildly xenophobic and distrusting of outsiders and react to aliens encroaching upon their territories or states with disproportionate and overwhelming force.
They are not wholly noble nor wholly wicked but a perplexing and often intimidating shade of grey that does not fall into the Jedi or Sith's traditional understanding of the "Light" or "Dark" sides of the force. Gwerin Doeth dislike senseless brutality, they are capable of firm righteousness and deeply value the bureaucracy of good governance, but are also flawed and can murder other sentient species without batting an eye or feeling a hint of guilt simply because they believe them inferior themselves some even comparing the likes of humans and near-humans to vermin for their capacity to reproduce and overwhelm their environment's carrying capacity. With that said It is possible and not unheard of that Ellylon travelers, adventurers, soldiers and mercenaries becoming fond of Humans, Near-Humans and Humanoid aliens who are deemed and considered to be respectful and are known to reciprocate that respect sufficiently that an Ellylon can befriend an alien. Ellylon form long-lasting friendships due to their long lives and are considered extremely loyal once committed to a friendship or relationship. Honesty however isn't a forthcoming facet of their species tending towards secrecy and will often warp the truth through conversation and language, because they possess manipulative tendencies in their social relationships or interactions it can make it difficult for observers or the subjects of their affection to discern whether or not they are truly genuine.
In their military history the Ellyloni practiced significant use of armored warfare both before and after they successfully engineered the internal combustion engine, they've used heavily armed and armored shock cavalry all throughout their history and in the contemporary time this has led to an over-abundance of repulsor craft and walkers being utilized by the Ellylon even among their infantry formations. Ellylon warriors and soldiers who have lived millennia are among the most dangerous unaugmented combatants in the universe and are treated with near reverence and highly respected by all echelons of society, even by Aristocrats who might view soldiering as a "dirty" or "unclean" profession. Ellylon soldiers are known for their rather menacing appearance and in ancient times they wore metal helmets and wore skull masks beneath the visor giving them a supernatural or wraith-like countenance to the superstitious races they turned to for slave and servant stock in their early history. This trend has carried over somewhat and Ellylon body armor and powersuit designs more often than not feature fully encasing helmets which at the very least vaguely resemble a skull to others that outright use skull-like geometry in their designs for maximum intimidation.
Prestige and wealth is also expressed through haircuts which among the Gwerin are typically long and the sophistication of any braids or styling of the hair is seen as indicative of social status and occupation. The more complex the more likely one is to perceived as wealthy or of high social status and occupation, short hair-styles for example are typically and accurately associated with male children, skilled workers, soldiers and law enforcement personnel with no hair being viewed as a sign of violent occupations and warrior virtue, professionals often snobbishly view short haircuts as being indicative as a lack of education and skill. Long hair is seen worn by adult males and females, professionals, aristocrats, diplomats, public servants and politicians for example. Unlike in human societies it is not uncommon for males to use facial cosmetics although it is normally limited to application of conservative eye shadows and eyeliners while women are dramatically more likely to use more striking and flamboyant colors. Alcohol is consumed openly and freely in social contexts, although as discerning and a discriminatory people the type of alcohol one consumes does not pass beneath harsh scrutiny and judgement. Wine, Beer and Liqueurs are viewed as being socially acceptable and suitable for the Gwerin Doeth palette while flavored liquor and liquor are viewed as "filth" and often derided as being "The product of barrel detergent".
There are specific attitudes surrounding tattoos and body modification Pathfinders and Force sensitive individuals trained by the Gwerin Covenant often have ancient Ellylon runic scripture tattooed into their bodies specifically across the torso. Tattoos are associated almost exclusively with force sensitives among the Gwerin Doeth and almost exclusively in the aforementioned style. Tattoos are seen as a wildly inappropriate way to express art and seen as extraordinarily limited, while Humans might commission tattoos to commemorate events of significance in life or loved ones the Gwerin Doeth with their lengthy lives and strong appreciation of the arts turn to other forms of art for solace. Vice is a source of leisure for their society, and more often than not delivered through lawful means with practices such as gambling and prostitution being licensed and regulated intensely by the state, the use of recreational spice however is usually outlawed with very harsh punitive penalties existing for supplying, manufacturing or cultivating the substance especially in commercial quantities.
Entertainment in Gwerin society is antiquated and decadent in equal measure which is directly related to their long lifespans. Theatre and cinema are particularly popular with actors, musicians and dancers being particularly glamorous and esteemed entertainment professions. It would be fair to say as a species that they are strong admirers of high culture such as paintings and sculptures. Painting is viewed as the ultimate form of expression and Gwerin Doeth soldiers are known to paint their faces in the color of their opponents' blood which for most mammals is a crimson red due to the oxygen-carrying hemoglobin, while law enforcement typically paint theirs a navy blue. Facial painting is seen as a form of expression and they often change according to the wearer's tastes although certain styles are more popular than others among different population groups with soldiers preferring simpler bladed styles that are easy to apply in the field while aristocrats favor more intricate styles and the complexity is seen as representing prestige and wealth. Music among their species is characterized by antiquated instruments befitting their lifespans with the most popular being: Bagpipes, Cello, Drums, Lute, Gusle, Piano and Psaltery to name but a handful. With the Bagpipes having a particular importance particularly at military parades, weddings, funerals and memorials.
In terms of religion in most Gwerin societies their racial theology of the Gwerin Covenant is observed although it is worth noting that the race on the whole more often than not does not adhere to its' core tenants and the predominant social view is that the seven psalms are more like guidelines for how to live a pious and fulfilling life rather than divinely mandated rules and truly enough, unlike many other foreign religions the Seven Psalms and the religion's related material have never been presented as the absolute divine will of the gods. Some Gwerin Doeth and clerymen openly believe the Gods were killed long ago by their own internal infighting and that they merely keep the memory of their existence alive. True to their xenophobia and racial superiority many of the Gwerin Doeth by and large believe they are the direct descendant of the gods and this is reflected in the fact they refer to themselves as the "Tuath Dé" in their own language which translates to "Tribe of the Gods" each individual holds the conviction with varying sincerity and fanaticism and this gives them a self-appointed mandate for custodianship over all the Universe including those inhabitants of other galaxies and this idea has endured throughout eons of their history.
They refer to the "Force" as the "Either" or "Ether" by spiritualists and the religious or "Neural Psychism" by scientists and typically the superstitious believe it is a gift from the gods and gateway for those capable of manipulating its' forces to transcendent apotheosis and eternal life. Training in force manipulation for potential force wielders is offered and provided both government and covenant funded education institutions particularly universities where it can be studied as an elective for those eligible, eligibility is determined by a Midi-chlorian count test. Those who successfully complete an accredited course are certified depending on whether the issuer is a government or covenant college as a trained "Seer" or "Pathfinder" The two terms are interchangeable and do not represent a difference in training although an individual who identifies or identified as the latter are more likely to possess secular attitudes and profess an irreligious attitude while the former are more commonly members of the Covenant. All such Seers or Pathfinders are capable of their racial practice of folding space-time in on itself and teleport themselves or others individuals naturally, those who posses such talents and training are typically prohibited by law from enlisting in the military and must commission as officers with the authority of the head of state. Status as a Pathfinder is seen as a gateway for an individual and their family into the aristocratic rung of society.
Culturally hospitality is extremely important to the Gwerin Doeth and they consider guests to a host to be owed a duty of care from the host for protection and foodstuffs in exchange for respect and observance of acceptable propriety. The formation of the obligations and protections of hospitality is considered to be made when a host or custodian offers their charge drink or food, traditionally this offer is one of water and the intended guest will accept or refuse the hospitality. It is considered a gesture of goodwill for the powerful party in business, political or legal negotiations to make such an offer of hospitality to the disadvantaged or weaker party, the absence of such an offer being made is considered to be indicative of hostility or foreshadowing peril while the refusal of such an offer is considered spiteful at worst and a statement about a belief in superiority and independence at best. Alien prisoners in the Custody of Gwerin Doeth warriors are made this same offer and to refuse is highly insulting and the rejection of clemency and the forfeiture of customary protection afforded to prisoners. For a Gwerin Doeth to take treacherous or deceitful actions towards parties under the protection of their hospitality is considered the peak of dishonor.
Specific rites and rituals exist regarding the death of Gwerin Doeth given their long lives nearly none pass peacefully and most meet generally speaking a premature end typically due to disease, suicide or violence which are the typical leading causes of death among the races' cultures. When a Gwerin Doeth dies as a result of combat there is a covenant benediction traditionally recited at combat's conclusion cursing the fallen's enemies, praising the individual's family for for the continuation of their family line and a farewell wishing the fallen individual to the land of the Gwerin Doeth's ancestors and gods in the afterlife. Because their race is not numerous and their lives are so storied Gwerin Doeth are almost always buried in family-owned mausoleums where deceased are prepared before being entombed in stasis sarcophagi where their body and beauty is preserved, if the individual is victim of a particularly violent death that leaves little, mutilated or no remains the sarcophagi will contain a holographic image of the deceased with the physical remains being cremated typically and the ashes forged into the sarcophagi itself. The only historical or modern exemption to this practice is done by soldiers in the field who will often bury their fallen's remains in individual graves in wood caskets and marked by a 'Y' shaped letter fashioned from available materials, the site of said burial is consecrated by the Covenant and serves as a parade ground for the Gwerin Doeth. Any such site is considered to belong collectively to the Gwerin Doeth people in perpetuity and where operationally possible as a result soldiers, warriors or mercenaries will prefer to place their deceased in stasis where possible and deliver the deceased home to their families. Exhuming consecrated burial sites holding the remains of Gwerin warriors who died in battle is considered highly disrespectful. Cremation is considered a barbaric practice used only by the desperate and the 'vermin' lesser species who are more numerous and thus are seen to engage in it for practical reasons by the Gwerin Doeth.
Kyber Crystals are known to the Gwerin Doeth widely as "Ancestor Crystals" and Pathfinders often carry staffs crowned by such a crystal both as a sign of their training and for practical application. Pathfinders' research has revealed to the Gwerin community broadly that the Ancestor Crystals actually possess some level of consciousness and serve as a way for them to peer into the Ether. They find use as a study aid and many Pathfinders use them as a means of glimpsing into the Netherworld of the Force and as a meditation focus to communicate with those whose souls have survived rejoining the Ether's roiling tides. Ancestor Crystals are revered by the Pathfinders and their schools and protected from perversion as it is widely believed that the crystals bond with living creatures and experience their joys, terror and pain. Gwerin Doeth thus are abhorred by the idea of re-purposing of what are perceived to be sacred crystals and a gateway to a higher plane of existence for the use in weapons, so typically Pathfinders tend to dislike or loathe lightsabers and tend to hold their wielders with varying forms of contempt and suspicion. It is worth noting that when a Gwerin Doeth Pathfinder or Seer meditates and bonds with a Kyber Crystal the colors emitted are most commonly either a brilliant pearl-white or indigo purple, the latter of which represents the light and darkness emitted from their souls these hues are considered rare by most force-centric organizations.
HISTORICAL INFORMATION
Gwerin warriors in 399,399 BBY raiding an extragalactic village inhabited by Zhell and a female Gwein Seer opening a fold portal
IMPERIAL AGE (Eons BBY-399,320 BBY)
Lasting from about 400,000 BBY to 299,320 BBY this age of the Gwerin Doeth's history is referred to as the "Imperial Age" and represents their early and fantastical exploration of their own galaxy and those beyond in military raiding actions that would give rise to myths within the cultures they subjugated, the superstition regarding the invading Gwerin Doeth generally revolved around the alien plate-armored giants being an avatar of the dead's retribution or the omen of some impending calamitous conflict.
- Eons BBY: Sometime between 500,000-400,000 BBY the Gwerin homeworld of Tir na Sìth is visited by a benevolent extraordinarily advanced extra-galactic sentient species that were known elsewhere as the "Celestials", the early iron age Gwerin species make contact with the extra-galactic visitors and come to worship their species as their deities and begin forming the beginnings of their racial theology which would persevere across hundreds of thousands of years. The Celestials seed Tir na Sìth with several foreign non-sentient and semi-sentient species suitable to the world's climate that could be domesticated and/or farmed by the nascent Gwerin Doeth to aid in their advancement, additionally the Celestials construct several ascetic temples and other reverent structures across the planet's icy surface which would come to inform the Gwerin Doeth on construction and architecture upon study with the species as a whole mimicking the regal designs used by the Celestials. The Gwerin Doeth would come to erroneously believe the Celestials based on ancient depictions left behind by that race were directly related to their own and left Tir na Sìth on an exodus beyond their own galaxy. The Tuathi language is developed and comes into use around this time and is allegedly based upon the visitors own language earning itself a place of reverent respect that shunned the use of loanwords and phrases from "lesser" languages even hundreds of thousands of years later.
- 400,000 BBY: In approximately 400,000 BBY the Gwerin on their extra-galactic homeworld of Tir na Sìth have achieved a level of cultural and technological success equivalent to the period analogous to the height of the Roman Republic and are beginning to develop sophisticated manufacturing and metallurgic techniques, the first institutes of higher learning are created on the order of King Ciaran of the House Liath Glas for the purpose of providing a secular education to students. At this same time the first force-sensitive individuals within Gwerin society were beginning to be identified and it was at this time that the Gwerin Covenant was founded by the force sensitive Ellylon and Gwyllion as a place where those could hear the "Ethereal Will" or "Ether" as the race called it could be studied in-depth.
- 399,745 BBY: The nature of the Ether is beginning to be understood by Gwerin Doeth society and its' clergy priesthood begin drafting a series of tenants that would help guide the community to live lives that were productive and honoring the multi-faceted ether. Additionally, they began writing a great work called the "Word of the Covenant" which was the priests' sum knowledge of the ether, its' relationship and intrinsic connection to life itself and those deistic entities that dwelt within it which were given appropriate names according to the Daoine Sìth's language. The Word of the Covenant and the "Seven Psalms" came to be heavily influential on the ethical and moral development of this time and many Ellylon and Gwyllion quickly came to revere the characters described by the Word as celestial omnipresent and omniscient entities worthy of study and reverence. Covenant "Mages" as they were called began experimenting with time and space folding on a small scale in an attempt to enter the "Land of the Gods". They used their abilities to facilitate nearly instantaneous travel and communication across their homeworld and this led to the political unification of their whole species under the fair and rise rulership of King Ciaran of House Liath Glas.
- 399,445 BBY: In the year 399,445 the Covenant's mages successfully construct and open a stable rift in the space-time fabric and begin the construction and mapping of pathways through what was erroneously identified as the "Ether" the Gwerin Doeth not truly grasping or understanding the difference between what they had discovered and the world between worlds, the netherworld of the force and the home of their gods. Believing the three to be one and the same as the phenomenon they'd managed to manipulate the Covenant's mages restlessly and dangerously searched for their deities which cost the covenant the lives of many pilgrims, priests and the trained mages who came to be known known as "Seers" the closest analogue the species possessed to Jedi or Sith in capability if not necessarily ideology. it was discovered that those who could not perceive or feel the Ether couldn't make perceive the tear and would die upon exposure unless shielded by a seer beneath a shield. However, Seers expended huge amounts of energy protecting their charges and navigating the tears successfully and thus they often entered the portals as teams.
- 399,442 BBY: After sufficiently mapping the space-time portals they'd successfully opened and manipulated the Gwerin Doeth began searching and the seers managed to peer through the veil and survey parts of whole worlds yet undiscovered from within the space-time pathways. The Covenant with the permission and blessing and material support of King Ciaran would send large "scouting parties" which at the most could contain several hundred soldiers through with the Royal Army's officers being aided by seers in navigating and surviving the perilous journey. It is in this period that after travelling for months across a variety of planets one of the Gwerin Doeth's scouting parties of plate-armor clad and sword wielding warriors arrived on a world and made contact with local feudal and tribal natives who referred to themselves as "Zhell" and "Taung" the Gwerin Doeth's soldiers quickly came into conflict with the Zhell and Taung due to factors included but not limited to language barrier and the peculiar talents of the Gwerin Doeth seers who were viewed with suspicion and loathing. The Zhell fell haplessly beneath the Gwerin's blades while the Taung acquitted themselves with admirable bravery in the eyes of the alien Gwerin Doeth and came to refer to the Taung respectfully as "Scáth Laochra" Ellylon for "Shadow Warriors".
- 399,440 BBY: The Gwerin Doeth continue to venture across the stars and turn their gaze to home exploring those star systems directly adjacent that housed their cool homeworld, about ten light years from Tir na Sìth's own star they explored the worlds belonging to a binary star system and discovered a fully sentient and war-like martial Saurian humanoid species called the "Izavek" They were not as advanced as the Gwerin Doeth, using bronze tools and weapons wearing hard-boiled leather for armor with structures constructed from poorly carved stone, thatch and wood. The Gwerin Doeth's Covenant insisted on attempting to establish diplomatic relations with their neighbor, however the Izavek's martial nature resulted in the commission authorized by King Ciaran being slaughtered with a single survivor permitted to live by the Izavek to speak of her comrades' torment. What was received as a grave insult and challenge infuriated King Ciaran and the spurned lord of all Gwerin Doeth sent an infamous cavalry battalion of the Royal Army known as the "Red Cavalry" led by a ruthless and cruel Commander named "Balon Faireora" to exact terrible retribution. With the aid of the surviving seer Aynia Fuamnach the Battalion arrived on Izavo's surface on a moon-lit evening and their quadrupedal steeds prowled through the evening and carried steel plate wearing riders town to town slaughtering those who resisted and enslaving the others. Balon would order that one villager be left behind doing unto the Izavek as they had to Aynia delegation.
- 399,335 BBY: Continued skirmishes by the Gwerin Doeth would infuriate and perplex the Izavek who had no defense against the ability of their enemies to simply appear virtually anywhere without warning thanks to their seers. As such, the Izavek adapted and would begin targeting the extraordinarily rare seers with ranged weapons such as bows in an attempt to kill them. The targeting of seers and subsequent casualties served to dramatically hamper the Sìth's ability to carry out operations as only relatively small units of troops could be transported through the fold tears which would never be sufficient to Izavo in full. However, as practitioners of maneuver warfare and rapid-strikes the Gwerin Doeth rather than face the Izaveki legions in open combat targeted their farmlands and burnt their crops to ash and forced Izaveki farmers to kill cattle which rapidly resulted in malnutrition and mass starvation. The Izaveki's Proconsul their head of government sued the Gwerin court and King Ciaran for peace and of the conditions laid down to the Izaveki was their races' collective enslavement for offences committed, that demand was initially rejected and only reluctantly accepted only after the Izaveki Proconsul faced increasingly diminished war support and the threat of civil war.
- 399,320 BBY: Aynia Fuanmach was relieved to see the repulsive Izeveki brought to heel and Balon Faireora took the seer as his lover, the two of them went on to marry and found the house of Fuanmach with Balon taking Aynia family name for their joined bloodlines. In time, the scions of House Fuanmach came to be known for producing extraordinarily powerful seers who chose service within the Royal Army following in Balon's footsteps. King Ciaran ordered that the Izaveki for violating the laws of hospitality that is customarily conferred diplomats and ambassadors ordered that they shall be forbidden from breeding which would lead to the steady passing of their entire race into history and were provided with decent conditions by law and policy while enslaved in service to the Gwerin Doeth which kept them largely docile save for a few minor rebellions which never bore long-lasting success due to the technological disparity and presence of seers among the Royal Army's forces who allowed them to travel all across the homeworld in a matter of minutes and deploy a battalion of soldiers to trouble locations as necessary. Under the orders of King Ciaran the Covenant-trained seers continued to experiment with creating space-time folds and resumed their galactic and extra-galactic scouting operations which often included raiding alien words and kidnapping examples for study.
The bridge of an early spacefaring Gwerin Doeth light cruiser constructed in 397,713 BBY
COLONIZATION OF THE GREINE SYSTEM (398,000 BBY-397,504 BBY)
From 398,000 BBY to 397,504 BBY the Gwerin Doeth experience massive political and economic changes with their early warhips and colonists taking to their local system to colonize the local worlds, these expeditions eventually bring them into conflict with each other as revolutionary ideas are tested. Despite their claim to be the galaxy's benevolent custodians as appointed by the gods themselves the Daoine mete out numbing levels of destruction and death, battering each alien species into submission with their more developed culture, technology and command over the principles of Neural Psychism.
- 397,553 BBY: Advanced technological developments receiving commercialization with the development of viable cryogenic technology and begin constructing primitive space-capable vessels equipped with the earliest "Fold drives" constructed from ceramic metals that will carry their first volunteer colonists off-world firstly to the pair of satellites that orbited their homeworld: Tir na Oighear and Tir na Neart, the former was much like Tir na Sìth and was perfectly suitable for habitation while the latter was a comfortable temperate world but foreign for the Gwerin Doeth. King Ciaran was reluctant to authorize its' colonization until a committee of scientists persuaded him the world was extraordinarily fertile and alone could feed their population for Millennia while their arctic homeworld only grew vegetation and readily available freshwater in lakes along and around the equatorial belt. Ciaran reluctantly acquiesced under scientific and public pressure giving the bill that would formally create the two colonies his royal assent it wasn't long afterwards that space-worthy colony vessels and warships began their journey for that new life.
- 397,525 BBY: Tir na Oighear and Tir na Neart have become thriving colonies and home to several millions of the Tuathi people with those colonists who ventured for Tir na Neart acclimatizing after several decades to its' "uncomfortable" environment and weather which was much more varied and seasonal compared to their homeworld. It is around this time that the Gwerin's scientists begin developing terraforming technology in a bid to potentially turn distant worlds that could possibly be habitable for their race into fully-colonizable worlds. Unfortunately this period begins to see the first signs of political unrest with the development of anti-monarchist and state ownership ideologies particularly among the colonists of Tir na Oighear and Tir na Neart, with the citizens of those worlds increasingly launching failed referendums aimed at dramatically overhauling government power source and ideology to their frustration.
- 397,504 BBY: Under the orders of their monarch King Ciaran I the government-sponsored scientific community begins developing advanced missile systems with the intent of mounting nuclear-armed warheads on said systems for fear of future conflict with alien species and what he believed to foresee as political conflict among the Gwerin as they reached further into the stars. While loathe to develop such destructive weapons King Ciaran in his wisdom knew it impossible for them alone to possess their level of development and power as galaxy as their gods' design was simply too vast, though they might have custodianship over the galaxy not all could possibly the welcome the "Children of the gods" with open arms and conflict with a formidable galactic foe their equal in technology and military power could only be inevitable. Gwerin scientists begin investing their grants into medical research including the development of biological prosthetics and biological engineering with Tir na Sìth's legislature passing laws including the first protocols for ethics relevant to said development. The development of spaceborne military tactics by the navy stagnates in this period with the idea of "space battles" being purely hypothetical and a classroom exercise with the application of them being considered extremely unlikely with a widespread belief among the public that no sentient species in their galaxy possessing comparable technology.
Royal Army's 1st mechanized "Dearg Marcaigh" division infantry and armor with conventional ballistic weapons assaulting a commune position on Tir na Neart in 397,463 BBY
COALITION-COMMUNE WAR (397,470 BBY-397,464 BBY)
Coinciding with the species' early colonization of the satellites of their homeworld the Gwerin Doeth experience their first major civil war for thousands of years remarkable for being their introduction to interplanetary warfare. The conflict would serve to modify the race's system of government transforming it from the "Kingdom of Tir na Sìth" to "Commonwealth of Tir na Sìth" their nascent interstellar navy would acquire invaluable experience in the conducting of void warfare and serve as the beginning for new and distinguished military tradition. This first age of conflict also saw the first application of droid warfare platforms which were constructed from modified colonial industrial equipment used in the farming and construction industry and employed as autonomous bipedal infantry fighting vehicles.
- 397,470 BBY: The first interstellar Gwerin Doeth civil war begins with the local governments of Tir na Oighear and Tir na Neart giving birth to two separate revolutionary political movements with the former being home to anti monarchist democrats led by a man named Midir Dorcha Bran. Midir's faction of democrats wanted to remove or replace the hereditary seats of the upper legislature with elected representatives in their direct democracy but had been frustrated in their attempts to launch referendum and end the system of peerage, hereditary titles and monarchy peacefully while the latter colonists of Tir na Neart had rallied behind a thug turned collectivist anti-democracy and anti-monarchist revolutionary named Aderyn Sionnach. The Kingdom of Tir na Sìth, Commonwealth of Tir na Oighear and Commune of Tir na Neart. Interstellar Warfare was clumsy and bloody in this period with captains of warships on all sides applying purely theoretical tactics in fumbling attempts to fight which resulted in collisions and frequent friendly fire.
- 397,469 BBY: Few citizens of the Tir na Sìth kingdom remain politically neutral during the civil war with significant support being given to the Oighear Commonwealth and their desire for democratization of the legislation and increased protections for those who live in indentured servitude. Many others believed there was a need for a revolutionary overhaul of the entire economic and hierarchial nature of society and supported or outright joined the Commune of Tir na Neart. The Kingdom of Tir na Sìth simply lacked the necessary naval capability and acumen to prevent the two opposing governments from spreading their influence and producing weapons, King Ciaran I turned to his friend and confidant General Balon Fuanmach who suggested that the King pursue a foreign and legislative policy through the viceroy that would make allies of the Commonwealth who possessed impressive interstellar warfare skills against the Commune of Tir na Neart who while having impressive manpower and asymmetric warfare capability lacked the manufacturing capacity of the Oighear Commonwealth or fleet of the Kingdom of Tir na Sìth.
- 397,468 BBY: The opposing politics of the Oighear Commonwealth and Commune of Tir na Neart leads the two into open conflict following a series of guerrilla and terror attacks launched against one-another. President Midir Bran and King Ciaran I sign a concordat agreeing on certain goals and principles to be pursued through a change in policy following the successful resolution of the war, the political organisation created by their agreement giving birth to what was temporarily known as "The Coalition" there was to be no peace between the Coalition and Commune with the latter in their ideological zeal and fanaticism believing that no accord could be reached with the "Oppressors" of Tir na Sìth and their allies. The Coalition assaulted Tir na Neart with several divisions directly led by the Royal Army's 1st mechanized division known as the "Dearg Marcaigh" which were favoured and led by General Balon Fuanmach himself infamous for their ruthlessness when faced with alien enemies in antiquity. Three standard months of heavy fighting followed with the Coalition taking moderate casualties for extreme commune casualties, King Ciaran and President Midir were rather dismayed by the brutality their combined forces inflicted upon the commune's fighters.
- 397,468 BBY: In a desperate attempt to counter-attack while the coalition's forces were busy reclaiming Tir na Neart, Aderyn Sionnach personally led an offensive against Tir na Sìth itself landing a sizeable horde of fanatical crimson legions who took cover in the equatorial rainforests and waged a protracted asymmetrical campaign occupying small cities and large towns nestled within, after successfully pacifying Tir na Neart and imprisoning the surviving commune combatants President Midir redeployed his light infantry to Tir na Sìth and transferred their command to the legendary Balon Fuanmach who began a campaign to dislodge the entrenched rebel forces. Frustratingly, the commune had made another attack on Tir na Oighear and through the application of shock tactics successfully overpowered the planet's local government forcing them into exile on Tir na Sìth.
- 397,465 BBY: Aderyn Sionnach relocates to Tir na Oighear to lead the revolution as the rainforests of Tir na Sìth are successfully purged of commune elements, an evacuation was attempted but with the Coalition's combined naval forces such operations ended with disastrous failure. Time was clearly running out for the Commune who sued the Coalition for peace hoping to retain some political power and legal representation in a post-war government, President Midir hoped to reach an accord a hope dashed by King Ciaran who would accept nothing less than unconditional surrender and a stop to commune terrorist attacks. Instead, King Ciaran instructed the shadowy "Secret intelligence service's division 6" to produce a desirable solution to the political problem which was plausibly deniable, approximately six months later Aderyn Sionnach and her entire family were killed in a car bombing the resulting disarray left the Commune forces vulnerable and without executive revolutionary leadership which was promptly exploited by a battle-hardened royal army and navy who launched a full-scale invasion of Tir na Oighear led by the 1st mechanized division resulting in the wholesale destruction of all significant remaining commune infrastructure and naval forces crippling their ability to wage war. The Coalition-Commune war ended with a treaty which heavily favored the Kingdom of Tir na Sìth, a new organisation called the "United Systems Space Administration" was created incorporating all the old military branches into its' structure and bequeathed policing and defence jurisdiction over all colonies present and future in perpetuity.
- 397,464 BBY: With the end of the Coalition-Commune war significant changes to the government follow with the "Kingdom of Tir na Sìth" being reorganized with a new constitution into a fully-fledged federal multi-party parliamentary semi-direct democratic elective crowned republic with the central civilian government on Tir na Sìth called the "Unified Gwerin Ecumene" or referred to as "The Union" or "UGE" for short. The United Systems Space Administration is created as the central government's means of administering, interacting with and protecting the colonies with an armed forces divided into two distinct administrative organisations "USSA Naval Command" which was responsible for the navy, naval special warfare command, logistical operations command and its' own intelligence service with the second branch being "USSA Unified Ground Command" containing an expeditionary "Raider Corps" and a terrestrial "Royal Army" and "Royal Air Force" the latter two organisations being dedicated strictly to defense. Unified Ground Command's roles include but are not limited to: Disaster relief, infantry operations, search and reconnaissance, and other operations typically attributed to 'ground' military forces. Unified Ground Command are also given legal authority to take operational and administrative control of any colonial militias or security and law enforcement forces. The Royal Army's largest permanent operational and administrative unit is the "Brigade" containing approximately three battalions while the Raider Corps' is the "Regiment" also typically containing three subordinate battalions.
USSA Soldier/Raider wearing contemporary vacuum-sealed armor (left), Confederation Militiaman wearing obsolescent Royal Army coalition-commune war ensemble (right) circa. 397,147 BBY
FRONTIER-CORE CONFLICT (397,272 BBY-397,104 BBY)
Succession movements lead to full-blown insurgency and a new protracted civil war defined by its' mix of symmetrical and asymmetric warfare and proves to threaten the very existence of the Gwerin Doeth's species with employment of chemical and nuclear weapons. The swift progress and advancement of their species comes with a significant cost in political capital and precious lives that the race as a whole cannot afford to spare yet must sacrifice for the interstellar hopes and dreams of the Unified Gwerin Ecumene who quietly cling to evidence that they might have some very dangerous galactic neighbors. Knowing that unless their race is united they will not survive the coming storm of conflict with an alien species and pressed for time the UGE order their United Systems Space Administration to uses of extreme force including the willful employment of weapons of mass destruction. The USSA begin developing a program aimed at producing surgically and chemically augmented soldiers using ethically questionable techniques to recruit candidates.
- 397,272 BBY: Fold drive technology dramatically advances allowing for further jumps more quickly allowing Gwerin Doeth colony ships to travel a dozen light years per standard day as opposed to four representing a 300% in "speed" the United Systems Space Administration oversees the mass exodus of colony vessels from their home system of Greine in the race's broadest colonization effort in history with the remainder of millennium being dedicated solely to this purpose. Over two-hundred years saw approximately one to two billion Gwerin emigrate from their homeworld and its' two satellites into far reaching systems, living, dying and working far from their evolved environment using the Union's most advanced terraforming technology to transform most of their colonies into either arctic or ideallic paradise-like Gaia worlds. The Gwerin with their two billion colonists terraformed and occupied approximately two-hundred and twenty worlds in what would become known as the "Core Worlds" ranging from distances ten light-years to seventy light-years away from Tir na Sìth with a mean population of around ten million, the core worlds would form the Union's economic, industrial and scientific backbone in millennia to come. In comparison to the Coruscanti galaxy's denizens the Gwerin Doeth have reached an unparalleled level of success and prosperity as a species.
- 397,244 BBY: Surveys from exploratory and scientific craft reveal colossal raw material deposits on distant worlds suitable for terraforming far beyond the current frontier of core worlds, the Union's senate authorizes the settling and creation of "Frontier worlds" all further than seventy light years from Tir na Sìth which would be recruited from a wider candidate pool and more often than not sparsely populated with the largest frontier worlds rarely having more than two million inhabitants and fortunate to have a single large population center. The United Systems Space Administration creates a new and third command called the "Colonial Military Command" centralizing the administrative control of all colonial militias and law enforcement organizations to keep the core world and frontier world colonial governments under stringent surveillance for seditious activity against the central government's sovereignty and authority. The Unified Gwerin Ecumene pursue the implementation mass surveillance grid technology in public life in an attempt to enhance policing and intelligence capability by the United Systems Space Administration's myriad intelligence agencies and dissuade another destructive civil political war smothering sedition and violent non-state actor groups in their proverbial cribs. The USSA's efforts would be largely successful within the core worlds however due to their sparse and rural nature the Frontier worlds would become a hot-bed for secessionist sentiments, pirates, terrorists and criminals.
- 397,147 BBY: A whole system of twelve frontier worlds in the Afallac'h system form what they call the "Sovereign Colonial Confederation" with the local USSA's Colonial Administration Command on those worlds being heavily infiltrated by the Afallac'h Secessionist Party, leaving the Afallac'h system with a fully functioning colonial army and air force if not a navy. The Confederation served the Unified Gwerin Ecumene with a formal request for full political and legal sovereignty from the Ecumene which the government on Tir na Sìth refused resulting in increased tensions and outright violence between the Fontier and Core Worlds led by First Minister Crevan Eamhain. The Confederation's local party branch on the core world of Arawn prime formerly known as "Izavek" in years long passed also made a bid for independence in an armed coup attempt against the Ecumene-supported government but were swiftly crushed by local Army and Raider Corps forces with extreme prejudice.
- 397,140 BBY: First Minister Crevan Eamhain's ordered the military forces of the Confederation and their allied guerilla cells on the frontier colony of Cilydd III located in the Cilydd system to stage an uprising against the local under-funded and under-manned Colonial Administration Command, attacking the embassies of the Ecuemene and Core Worlds. Flawlessly the Confederation Militia orchestrated a series of simultaneous attacks and utterly overwhelmed forces loyal to the central government before they were even aware Cilydd III was even under attack. Simultaneously a group of militia board a USSA light cruiser with a name that translates ironically to "War Ready" and murder its' entire crew complement prior to stealing that warship from its' dock above Arawn prime and leading to a brief pursuit by three other USSA light cruisers who attempted to prevent its' escape unsuccessfully. These two incidents combined lead the Unified Gwerin Ecumene to begin drafting plans to reclaim the entire Cilydd system in an operation that was called "Operation: SIONNACH END" in a mockery of the rebel's politics believing that Crevan Eamhain would easily meet a similar fate as that old revolutionary leader. The Confederation anticipates a heavy-handed response and begin the construction of an interstellar habitat inside an asteroid floating around the system's local gas giant to house the Cilydd system's revolutionary government, military forces and industry.
- 397,137 BBY: The impact the rebel's occupation of the Cilydd system was having on commerce through the frontier to the core worlds was unacceptable and the Unified Gwerin Ecumene deemed it necessary to restore legitimate Cilydd system government through force and the USSA's Navy and Raider corps executed the Sionnach's end operation no sooner than they'd finished mobilizing. Arriving a few days later on the edge of system the Cilydd Expeditionary Force were surprised to note the Confederation's militia had amassed themselves a small navy, nothing with the tonnage to truly threaten the expeditionary fleet but sufficient to warrant attention. Dispatching a line of light and medium cruisers to deal with those converted freighters the Navy destroyed several dozen freighters before the secessionists disengaged and began evacuating important confederation government, economic and military personnel. The USSA Navy lost four medium cruisers due to the bravery and desperation of the confederation's navy. Raider Corps began landing their troops on Cilydd III's surface and it is here that the Ecumene's forces truly shined, the Confederation's militia were armed with obsolescent equipment, weapons and vehicles from the Coalition-Commune war. The resistance however was formidable and admirable in equal measure with high morale and a sense of righteousness the confederation's militia were surprisingly disciplined and tenacious dragging out fighting over one standard year with the Confederation's militia taking extreme casualties while the Raider Corps' losses were light to moderate in comparison. The operation to liberate the Cilydd system was declared a resounding success and its' government was restored with a sizeable USSA army garrison left behind, however the world of Cilydd III would be plagued by terrorist attacks and a persistent insurgency for decades to come as the local Confederation forces survived fleeing to their concealed asteroid base. Immediately after their success the United Systems Space Administration's high command begun planning the operation to assault the Afallac'h system itself codenamed "Operation: JUDGEMENT".
- 397,121 BBY: In the year of 397,121 BBY the United System Space Administration authorizes the creation of a program with the aim of surgically and chemically augmented soldiers in an attempt to tackle the growing crisis of asymmetric warfare and guerrilla insurgencies throughout the frontier colonies. While the Raider Corps and Army both possessed their own unconventional warfare personnel the individual soldiers were simply not sufficiently effective to effectively dismantle whole insurgent organisations alone and any 'normal' unaugmented force large enough to accomplish such a goal almost without fail received high casualties and do not achieve their objective as the force's deployment and advance does not go without notice. Dr. Nithral Feidlech was assigned as the project's lead for the "WOLF Program" though all staff were relatively inexperienced with surgical and chemical augmentation on this scale as it was traditionally unlawful. The Gwerin scientists use small mammals from their homeworld for testing the mutagenic drugs that would be used for the chemical-based augmentations. Eventually when the testing escalated to larger mammals the scientists were given access to sedated extragalactic humans kidnapped from what would become Coruscant. The testing results revealed that the physiology of fully-grown adults could not tolerate the mutagenic effects of the chemical augmentations and surgical procedures were extraordinarily risky thus Dr. Feidlech sought the consent and co-operation of USSA high command to recruit pre-pubescent children as their malleable physiologies were projected to better tolerate mutagenic effects.
- 397,120 BBY: Continuing the war only intensified throughout the frontier colonies with just about every world seeing some level of conflict between secessionist confederation forces and local USSA army and air force garrisons. On the more seditious worlds many of the local militia under Colonial Administration Command rebelled against the central government's administrative authority and sided with the rebels lending the Confederation's militia a supply of trained troops and obsolescent though not obsolete material. Anticipating an invasion of the Afallac'h system by the USSA, First Minister Crevan Eamhain instructed the militia to launch a second attempt to overthrow Cilydd III's government as a means of diverting Ecumene resources and keeping their personnel tied up in an attrition battle while the Confederation desperately attempted to fortify the worlds of Afallac'h system and construct and steal an actual Navy. Using their Human and Signal intelligence the USSA's Navy anticipated the attack and confronted the fleet of converted freighters and stolen corvettes with a fleet of star destroyers, star carriers and cruisers utterly annihilating the confederation's fleet although the USSA had four catastrophic losses in light cruisers. A ground campaign is fought on Cilydd III with the Raider Corps joining what remained of the Army and Air Force garrison against the rebellious Colonial Administration Command militias, their objective was to capture high-ranking militia officers and pacify the broader population's more seditious elements hoping to goad them into taking up arms and make themselves lawful combatants. Successfully pacifying Cilydd III for the second time the confederation's forces retreated to their asteroid base and initiated a protracted pirate campaign against core world and Ecumene-flagged freighters, the USSA declared martial law over the whole colony and suspended the formation of colonial militias or security forces.
- 397,120 BBY: Operation: JUDGEMENT begins with a large battlegroup of USSA Warships entering the system, they come under immediate attack by a formidable fleet of converted freighters, corvettes and even a number of stolen frigates and cruisers. The attack on the Afallac'h system rallies the variety of insurgent organisations behind the Sovereign Colonial Confederation and it re-organizes with a new constitution broadening its' territorial claims and bringing even more frontier citizens into its' ranks feeding their militia with replacements the transport of which the USSA navy dutifully intercepted and disrupted. Afallac'h Prime itself was besieged by Balon Fuanmach and the Royal Army's "Dearg Marcaigh" 1st division despite the army's role being relagated to the defence the division journeyed all the way from their barracks on Tir na Sìth more than one-hundred light years away to participate. The warfare on Afallac'h prime is extraordinary brutal with the largest tank battles in the species history' occurring on the planets' plains.
- 397,115 BBY: Children who have been orphaned by the Frontier-Core conflict by insurgent attacks are approached by USSA secret intelligence service officers disguised as social workers or potential families interested in adopting said children and interviewed them to gauge their attitudes and construct a psychological profile for which children were suitable for recruitment into the Wolf program. Dr. Nithral Feidlech identifies approximately nine-hundred and ninety candidates suitable for recruitment from a massive population of orphans, he seeks authorization from the United Systems Space Administration and the Secret Intelligence Service to lawfully conscript the children which was given eagerly with the war only intensifying. The conscripted children aged between 5-7 standard years are abducted by Secret Intelligence Service personnel and taken to Cilydd III to a massive naval training installation constructed by the USSA after the world's second pacification. Their training is delivered through harsh and experienced Navy and Raider Corps instructors led by a man named "Slaine Bryn".
- 397,109 BBY: The fighting within the Afallac'h system expands as the battle on Afallac'h Prime comes to a halt as the Confederation constructed a comprehensive deep defence network that would make conventional assault excessively costly. The USSA invade all eleven of the other Confederation-held worlds within the Afallac'h system, this point in the war the total military and civil casualties threatened to breach one billion representing a significant amount of the species' sum population, touching every single frontier colony and several of the core worlds. In the same year a civilian luxury liner above Cilydd III is hijacked and its' fold drive rigged as a space-time bomb and used to destroy a Royal Navy star destroyer, killing all aboard both the civil liner and warship. The United Systems Space Administration's myriad intelligence agencies used this as a massive propaganda coup turning public opinion dramatically against the rebels with the Covenant's clergy universally condemning their actions giving King Ciaran and the USSA political capital and mandate necessary to end the destructive conflict.
- 397,108 BBY: Eager and desperate to end the Frontier Insurgency, King Ciaran authorizes the use of nuclear weapons and the USSA Navy engage in a brief but utterly destructive strategic bombing campaign smashing the Confederation's defensive fortifications and using intelligence collected by the secret intelligence service from interrogating captured insurgents locate the Confederation's emergency command and control center and lay siege to the surrounding area keen to take First Minister Crevan Eamhain alive. Unfortunately Minister Crevan Eamhain escapes to the Cilydd system disguised as a war refugee and regrouping with his followers in their concealed asteroid base there. With the last of the Confederation and Rebel organized collapsing the USSA and Unified Gwerin Ecumene declare the Frontier-Core War, many insurgents and surviving militia surrender their arms and equipment in return for amnesty though few on either side forget that the USSA deployed nuclear weapons against their own people or that they could only be used with the Monarch's express consent.
- 397,101 BBY: The first team of chemically and surgically engineered Wolf supercommandos are deployed and led by a Pathfinder none other than the legendary Aynia Fuanmach to infiltrate the Secessionist asteroid base of Cilydd III by stowing away on an insurgent freighter and narrowly manage to capture First Minister Crevan Eamhain. During their evacuation from the asteroid base Crevan attempted to escape by trying to pull a distracted Raiders' side-arm from its' holster only for Aynia to witness this and unceremoniously stabbed Crevan in the back with a dagger severing his spinal nerve cord with complication from the injury resulting in death due to paralysis. Additionally, the USSA strike team manage to recover a number of stolen tactical nuclear warheads and set demolition charges in several munition dumps which cripple the insurgents' abilities to support terrorist operation abroad. This in truth was the first deployment of the Wolf-program soldiers, though witnesses mistook them for regular Raiders or Soldiers due to the armor worn during the raid.
USSA Raiders wearing the standard-issue vacuum-sealed "Advanced Combat Ensemble" armed with particle accelerator rifles in 397,101 BBY fighting the "Parasite"
A period of fifty-one years is dominated by a political and military conflict referred to as the "Grand Star War" and brought the Gwerin Doeth species in conflict with other sophisticated and advanced sentient and intelligent species who were attempting to escape and flee an extra-galactic virulent parasitic organism. The Gwerin Doeth viewing the foreigners encroachments on their territories as a sign of military aggression react with cruelty and heavy force attacking them with the full force of United Systems Space Administration's military branches. The surviving members of those fleeing species are forcibly devolved and transported to fertile albeit remote worlds away from the Gwerin Doeth who would later come into conflict with the parasite which they knew little about having arrogantly dismissed and destroyed those with experience fighting against its' relentless onslaught who might have been allies. Little did the Unified Gwerin Ecumene ever suspect that this parasite was the result of the Mnggal-Mnggal's attempts to create a biological weapon to torment the Universe.
GRAND STAR WAR (397,101 BBY-397,050 BBY)
- 397,101 BBY: In 397,101 BBY the USSA destroyer "Elenwen's Justice" discovers an adrift bulk freighter of an alien design floating near frontier colony space during a routine anti-piracy operation. The apparently civil vessel had few if any running lights on its' exterior and the bulk freighter did not respond to any hails from the Elenwen's bridge. The Captain authorized a boarding action and the embarked Raider Corps personnel launched one of their large 30 meter long dropships laden with two squads of Raiders. After following what appeared to be an automated docking procedure their craft successfully docked inside a large cargo hanger where the Raiders found most of the ship in darkness and forced to use their light-amplification imaging. Almost immediately the Raiders are attacked by what appeared to be a group of unarmed Saurian humanoid aliens who charged towards the intruders, the Raiders without hesitation opened fire and the deck's floor ran indigo with alien blood, examining the cadavers their particle accelerator rifles made the platoon commander concluded they were a previously unknown species and that this constituted their first contact and quietly hoped that it would not lead to broader political consequences. Journeying deeper into the large bulk freighter one of the Raiders investigated a bathroom they heard what sounded like a bucket tip over, what they discovered was one of the saurian humanoid aliens which attacked and killed the raider after using its' cloven jaws to crash through the warrior's bodysuit and tear his throat open. The flatline of their comrade was noticed immediately and retaliation followed swiftly with the alien being destroyed. Studying the now charred alien corpse revealed several mutagenic qualities and features along with evidence of mortal injuries that hadn't been inflicted by particle accelerator rifles. After two of the Raiders narrowly escaped the ship after a harrowing experience and fight the Elenwen's Justice destroyed the Bulk Freighter after doing a risk assessment of the alien organisms on-board and deeming them to represent an unacceptable threat to the wider Ecumene. The USSA classify this encounter as beyond top secret available only to the highest echelons of the executive, military and security apparatus.
- 397,095 BBY: The USSA's navy increasingly report contact with alien merchantmen and warships which are promptly interred or detained and processed harshly by the xenophobic and distrustful Gwerin Doeth. After successfully overcoming the language barrier and interviewing those survivors many speak of a seemingly beneficial mutagenic substance which steadily caused those who consumed it to lose their minds and then finally die after cascading organ failure and physically mutate post-mortem and reanimate. The USSA's government apparatus publicly dismissed these claims as being only half-true and that post-mortem reanimation was ridiculous and the product of a traumatized imagination officially taking the position these Saurian "Duvogol", Ursine "Harlok" and Avian "Shalkon" alien refugees had been caught in the grips of a Pandemic. The flow of Refugees soon became overwhelming and when the USSA attempted to resettle their civil and military forces back to where they had came from those military forces attacked the USSA's Navy leading to a bloody conflict between the Unified Gwerin Ecumene and the "Grand Alliance" Which included no less than five alien humanoid species leaving the Unified Gwerin Ecumene outnumbered on a margin of approximately twelve hostile soldiers for each of their own.
- 397,089 BBY: Pushing into the frontier colonies of the Unified Gwerin Ecumene the Grand Alliance desperately clutched at occupied and developed worlds ever justifying their expansion with claims of desiring escape from the parasite. The Grand Alliance successfully pushed into approximately one hundred of the UGE's colonies either partially or completely occupying them in an aggressive escape, leveraging their extremely advanced military technology against the alliance the USSA successfully responded promptly to the Alliance's desperate and fanatical advances stonewalling them from further incursions and used the Raider Corps to launch vicious and brutal counterattacks into Grand Alliance space which involved the Unified Gwerin Ecumene using plasma weapons to sterilize and glass alien worlds across 1,000 star systems in a campaign aimed at crippling the alliance's material and manpower sources.
- 397,063 BBY: Miraculously the Parasite ceases its' advance on the Grand Alliance's core worlds and mysteriously recedes beyond the galaxy's edge the hive mind called by its' extra-dimensional masters to hold off its' consumption of the galaxy's constituent species until the strong among them emerged. This left the Grand Alliance's economic heartland devastated and their war effort feeble in their attempts to wrestle against the furious the Unified Gwerin Ecumene's United Systems Space Administration. King Ciaran and his head of government the Viceroy Caranthir Eamhain successfully appealed to the public for approval for increased funding and was successfully in galvanizing the whole Ecumene into supporting an extraordinary increase to the USSA's budget allowing them to pursue furthers wonders of technology and science such as beginning the construction of their first Dyson Sphere which was to be used as a simple power collection structure.
- 397,058 BBY: The USSA complete the construction of their first dyson sphere and use it as a proof of concept for more ambitious projects in the future such as a proposed concept of using a Dyson sphere with an artificial sun as a highly-secure colony. Because of their effectiveness in the continuing war with the Grand Alliance the USSA receive additional funding to create six new classes with 150 Wolf Supercommando candidates each, recruited from the kinless orphans left behind by the Alliance's frantic and desperate advances into the UGE's frontier worlds. Quietly it was mused by members of the USSA's High Command that after the Ecumene-Alliance War there might be a resurgence of seperatist political movements among the frontier colonies and that it might be necessary to employ Wolf Supercommandos for quelling the rebellions before they grow too broad in influence and membership. The Duvogol species are finally subdued by the USSA in a brief but extremely bloody campaign on their homeworld, the UGE's parliament voted on and passed an act which determined the species' collective punishment for their unprovoked attacks would be devolution to a pre-industrial state of civilization with a handful of their most promising scientists conscripted by the USSA to aid in a joint clandestine research project focused on the mysterious parasite the saurians had claimed to have fought.
- 397,050 BBY: What remained of the intergalactic coalition known as the "Grand Alliance" collapses under the ruthless weight relentless weight of the USSA's Raider Corps supported by the original first class of Wolf Supercommandos who lost approximately thirty of their number in the conflict. The Harlok and Shalkon who fought against the Unified Gwerin Ecumene were given the same treatment as their Duvogol allies with a forced devolution to a pre-industrial revolution state of technological development on their homeworlds and quarantined. Promising and willing scientists who had studied the Parasite were enlisted in the USSA's clandestine scientific program responsible for researching the lifeform and creating strategies and technologies to counter its' behavior. The UGE's Secret Intelligence Service prepared a concerning brief for the Viceroy Caranthir's cabinet detailing all known about the "Parasite" and they if alien testimony was to be believed they suddenly ceased their assault on the Grand Alliance and the Duvogol believed they receeded beyond the galaxy's disk and that all preparation had to be made for preparing containment protocols, procedures and related technology for when not if the parasite should return.
A Gwerin Doeth artists' depiction of Gwerin Doeth infected by the Sable Scourge
Immediately following their successful war against the Grand Alliance and its' coalition of alien species the Unified Gwerin Ecumene had devolved those upstart species and imprisoned them on their respective homeworlds. Despite the USSA's best efforts to engineer a counter-measure against "The Parasite" each endeavor failed to produce something that could be manufactured and distributed on the broad scale. Among the experiments performed by the Unified Gwerin Ecumene that most efficacious means of eradicating parasitic cells is subjecting them to massive amounts of ionizing radiation, so the USSA sanctioned limited-scope projects at investigating mass producible radiation-based weapons. Additionally, as a counter to their own radiation-based weapons the USSA sanctioned the construction of colonies located inside habitable dyson sphere worlds which in theory would be capable of shielding its' inhabitants from the dangerous weapons the USSA continued to pursue. To increase their military's deep-space reach and as an early warning system the USSA constructs several ringworlds around main sequence stars these installations are referred to as the "Diad Array" with each named after one of the Gwerin's monarchs.
THE SABLE SCOURGE (387,350 BBY-387,050 BBY)
- 387,355 BBY: The Sable Scourge's existence at this point was something of an open secret among the USSA's colonies with stories of the Elenwen's Justice encounter with the parasite millennia earlier coming to light despite the Secret Intelligence Services' best efforts. The Covenant condemned the Parasite's existence as an affront to their gods claiming it was the product of some malicious force which stood in opposition to the divine celestials. Two political philosophies emerged within the Unified Gwerin Ecumene's senate in regards on the strategy which should be used to combat the parasite, with one faction led by the Minister for Construction Doran Liath Glas who advocated for the conversion of the Diad Array from fortresses and ports to radiation-based super-weapons which could be deployed against the Scourge while the Defence Minister Nithral Eamhain advocated for the construction of Dyson Sphere shelters, with Nithral claiming that Doran's plan was insanity and could result in the mass extinction of all life in their galaxy while Doran conversely criticized Nithral's proposed solution as being one which would result in the surrendering of populations who couldn't make it to a Dyson refuge to the Parasite. The Senate voted to create a synthesis of the two men's ideals and incorporate the following measures: Dyson Refuges would be built in increasing number, the Diad installations would have phase pulse generators build on their surfaces for the generation of ionizing radiation and finally their existing terrestrial colonies would have massive terraformers build on their surface to encase the worlds in deep ice in an attempt to preserve their architecture and technology for future generations in the event of the Sable Scourge's return. To aid in the speedy construction of the new Dyson Colonies and Corona installations the Senate passed legislation enabling the USSA to design and construct android constructs with artificial intelligence exhibiting full sentience.
- 387,353 BBY: With his legislature goals largely achieved Nithral resigns from the King's cabinet and returns to a military career as a flag-level officer believing it would be the place he could do the most good when the Scourge eventually returned as had been anticipated for thousands of years. While for many species that might seem in inordinate amount of time the Scourge was very real for Nithral, his grandfather had been one of the Raiders onboard the Elenwen's justice when it came into contact with that alien freighter. The stories he told about the footage recovered from the boarding team truly was the stuff of nightmares, everything was coming into place over one-thousand power-armor wearing Wolf supercommandos stood ready, the Dyson shelters were being constructed by the dozens, the Diad array's phase pulse generators were coming online. As a security measure each Diad ring had only one firing index key for the entire installation and it was sealed in a vault which could only be accessed with the aid of each installation's artificial intelligence custodian and who was strictly programmed only to open said vault when the Scourge had been detected within the ring's firing range of 25,000 light years. Doran took the initiative and urged the Minister for Science and Technology Arthes Gwyn Bran to begin sequencing the genomes of sentient species across their galaxy including those belonging to the Grand Alliance for inclusion into the "Life Preservation Program" which would see entire ecosystems' worth of species preserved and re-introduced to their natural habitats in the event of catastrophic defeat of the Unified Gwerin Ecumene by the Scourge and appropriate purging of all life throughout the galaxy by the Diad array's new weapons. As a believer in the Covenant religion and in their guardianship over the lesser races Arthes eagerly accepted Doran's suggestion viewing it as a moral imperative.
- 387,352 BBY: Diad installations are equipped with automated defence systems and automated factories for the upkeep and continued production of defensive platforms. The Defensive platforms are programmed to recognize all members of the Gwerin Doeth species as friendly but any non-native species to the installations are treated as hostile, all of the defensive constructs are placed under the administrative and operational control of an artificial intelligence custodian with full sentience although bound to their caretaker programming. The United Systems Space Administration complete construction of a massive spaceborne megastructure habitat that they refer to as the "The Forge" beyond their galaxy's accretion disk and becomes the home of the Life Preservation Program as it is beyond any Diad installation's range by virtue of its' extra-galactic position, the forge is used to construct the 10,000 kilometer diameter Diad installations and opens a fold portal to transport them to different locations across the galaxy so as to create a comprehensive coverage over their galaxy. Some of the Diad installations were thrown in parts of the galaxy where the UGE had no presence and thus remained manner exclusively by their mechanical constructs and A.I custodians. In total eighteen of the Coronas would be built between 387,352 and 387,350 BBY. As part of the Life Preservation Program Arthes authorised an indexing of the Gwerin Doeth's sum total of important knowledge for the development and civilization and for hard-copies of this data to be disseminated among the Dyson Refuges in an attempt to aid any survivors who might survive the Diad array's radioactive purge.
- 387,351 BBY: Anticipating that a conflict against the parasite might come to span the entirety of the Unified Gwerin Ecumene the United Systems Space Administration commission their first "Pulsar-class" fully sentient artificial intelligence named "Grey Scholar" and was given to the USSA's High Command as an administrative and logistic aid to co-ordinate a response to foreign intrusion across multiple service branches and was programmed to learn from its' opponents and create appropriate strategies to defeat them. Grey Scholar quickly proved the effectiveness of its' capability being used by Wolf Supercommandos to defeat Raiders in war games despite being outnumbered 97:1 because of the strategies and tactics Grey Scholar created for them after examining the Raiders. Doran continued to undermine Nithral's legacy and pressed other cabinet members and senators to support increased spending on weapons development to support the Diad Array and continue developing radiation-based systems which could be placed in the hands of infantry and received broad support save for the vocal opposition among the legislature who viewed such concepts as defiling the mandate 'given' to the Gwerin Doeth by their Gods to hold responsible custodianship over the galaxy. Arthes herself opposed the Diads though conceded they were an excellent failsafe measure should conventional military tactics fail to adequately contain the Parasite.
- 387,350 BBY: A Squadron of USSA warships encounter a large though only lightly armed civilian freighter that appears to be a design consistent with the Duvogol however as that species had long been imprisoned upon their world this freighter must have been lost prior to the war with the Grand Alliance. Emitting a distress signal but otherwise being unresponsive, the USSA squadron's destroyer leader launched a boarding party of USSA Raiders clad in their bone white armor to investigate and seize control of the vessel. Encountering no resistance, or anyone for that fact the USSA Raiders seized control of the bridge and quickly discovered that the freighter's navigation computer had been suspiciously purged and that no written log was present. The Raiders and Naval Officers elected to tow the freighter into orbit above a Gwerin Doeth frontier colony for a thorough search after an initial bioscan revealed the Duvogol ship to be stacked with lifeforms who seemed to be concealing themselves in wall cavities and deep in the warm bowels of the Engineering deck. Connecting to an orbital elevator dock the USSA Navy sent technicians and additional Raider Corps troops aboard to secure the large freighter, a platoon ventured down to the Engineering deck where there seemed to be a large concentration of lifeforms. Immediately arriving within the deck it seemed normal if dirty although as they descended deeper into the ship's belly aboard an elevator the Raiders began hearing disconcerting organic shrieks and not long afterwards were set upon by an unidentified foe that was only identified through the garbled and frantic comm-chatter as "Hostile aliens". Without much warning beyond this the USSA Navy's destroyer and frigate squadron noted massive movement of biosignatures aboard the freighter and the orbital elevators' security teams leaps into action boarding the freighter to find its' hallways awash with crimson icor and mutilated bodies of armored Raiders, their armor torn which could resist the most powerful plasma weapons torn apart. It was soon realised by local USSA Officers that the threat they were facing was the Sable Scourge as their fallen aboard the freighter would be reanimated and horrifically transformed after being overwhelmed by hordes of infected Duvogol supported by hordes of spider-like infectors that would latch onto their targets and use their proboscis to inject Scourge cells into the victims' body.
- 387,350 BBY: The orbital elevator is boarded by the infected despite the valiant although unsuccessful attempts of a Raider fireteam to overload the Duvogol freighter's fusion core in a desperate attempt to destroy the freighter and the orbital elevator. The Scourge forces moved with frightening co-ordination and lethality, little did the USSA expect but the parasite had been united through the construction of a central intelligence for their hive-mind that could manipulate the cosmic force to communicate across interstellar distances with the infected. With the local military assets unprepared for thousands of Scourge to board the orbital elevator it was quickly seized. Thinking quickly Captain Cethlenn Brionnu officer commanding of the destroyer USSA Crogacht or "Bravery" knowing that the Duvogol freighter was overrun target it with the Crogacht's particle projector and fired upon the civilian ship bisecting it and doing heavy damage to the docking station, Cethlenn followed the bisecting up quickly with a hellstorm of plasma torpedo guided munitions to atomize the physical remains of any Scourge. It was too late though, a number of infected managed to board the elevator and make their way to the surface. To stem their flow Cethlenn without hesitation destroyed the orbital dock and elevator littering the unfortunate frontier colony below with fiery debris. Not seeing an alternative Cethlenn ordered her whole squadron's Raider complement down to the Colony in an attempt to combat the scourge. Little did the Gwerin suspect that each infected by the Scourge added their sum total of knowledge to the hive-mind giving those reanimated the ability to use small-unit tactics and weaponry. The local constabulary didn't stand a chance against the scourge combat morphs which now included numerous infected USSA Raiders. Contacting High Command for direction Cethlenn was instructed by the Navy to quarantine the colony and evacuate USSA and key medical or scientific personnel off-world, disgusted by the condemnation of millions of Gwerin souls to death, Cethlenn obeyed her orders all the same. The squadron of Frigates and Destroyers put themselves into geosynchronous orbit and the few-thousand deployed Raiders shifted their priority to evacuating important academic, medical and scientific staff, while they were successful most light infantry Raider Corps squads were destroyed resulting in almost total casualties among Cethlenn's expeditionary units. Cethlenn was then ordered to purge the frontier colony from orbit as it had not been equipped with terraforming stations to encase it in ice, at this point Cethlenn broke and refused to carry out the order and so was promptly relieved by her executive officer Shahn who reluctantly ordered the squadron to begin the painstaking process of turning the colony's surface into glass taking several days. Afterwards, Shahn sent down the few surviving squads of Raiders with significant armor support to survey for any surviving scourge morphs or spores in the atmosphere none were detected and the USSA Military forces left in-shame the infection and resultant butchery quickly reported creating panic in the general populace and artificial shortages of foodstuffs and essential goods.
- 387,349 BBY: The Pulsar-class artificial intelligence Grey Scholar is given administrative and logistic control over the United Systems Space Administration's response to the Sable Scourge's return to the Galaxy and rapidly begins delivering orders with High Command's authorization for the Navy to begin deploying enmasse including the reserve fleet along frontier colony space in an attempt to protect the economically important core worlds. An order is sent to the Diad installations' A.I custodians to increase production of all automated defense guardian platforms and the implementation of laboratory quarantine protocols with Grey Scholar advising the Custodians that they should prepare to receive specimens of the Sable Scourge for study and safekeeping in accordance with Minister Arthes' instructions. The decision for their study on the Diad installation was that there was limited organic biomass on the rings' surface for consumption and reanimation firstly and that the automatons that protected the Diads were immune to infection due to their inorganic nature. Additionally, Grey Scholar with Minister Arthes' and USSA authority gave an order to evacuate frontier colonies that were perceived to be high-risk to the Dyson habitat colonies and would be quarantined there under a complete communications black-out in an attempt to conceal their locations from the parasite which appeared from combat data to be very intelligent and capable of learning. Arthes desperate to complete the life preservation index redoubles her efforts finishing cataloging the DNA of all significant sentient species into the Life Preservation Program at the extra-galactic Forge and the USSA begins constructing automated A.I controlled vessels that would carry their genetic cargo to the respective species' homeworld should the Diad Array be fired.
- 387,340 BBY: Sable Scourge thrust into Gwerin Doeth space at the behest of their hivelord who co-ordinates the assault with vicious intelligence. Grey Scholar successfully evacuated several hundred million Gwerin Doeth to the new colonies located inside the secure interior of Dyson Sphere colonies, Severely depleting the USSA's available manpower to replace casualties. The Navy and Raider Corps find that the Scourge use all manner of technology and weapons recognizable for their origins in the Grand Alliance's since imprisoned species and while comparatively primitive still posed a credible threat in the sheer numbers which they were deployed. Unable to stand upto the USSA's sheer technological advantage the Scourge would swarm poorly defended frontier colonies with freighters laden with morphs some grown from pure biomass designed to infect and others the result of reanimation the victims transformed and re-purposed to be the ideal killing machines. WOLF supercommandos were often deployed to such colonies and would be tasked with evacuating key personnel, the spread of the Scourge was overwhelming and it took the parasite mere weeks to totally overcome continents and terraform them with its' fetid indigo creeping biomass into a sprawling hive. As the Scourge expanded so too did the Hivelord's intelligence being fed the memories and knowledge of its' victims within the first colony being overtaken infected Gwerin Doeth morphs were being used to interface with their technology, starships, weapons and armor. With access to fold technology the Sable Scourge quickly scattered throughout the Frontier Colonies and began attacking wildly like beasts, the USSA on Doran and Arthes' recommendation allocated Raider and Naval personnel to protect the Diad installations which were now being filled with Scourge specimens with Gwerin scientists desperately searching for an antibody that could inhibit infections. Grey Scholar provides USSA's high command with a projection that the species could fight a war with the Scourge for no more than an additional 290 years before capitulating at the rate of Colony loss, either due to scorched earth terraforming, total infection or purge.
- 387,300 BBY: Learning of the Grey Scholar's importance to the USSA the Scourge's hivelord having also obtained the location of its' core from an infected flag-level officer the hivelord devised a plan to seize Grey Scholar's core by capturing the world where it was located. A difficulty in this goal is that Grey Scholar was located on Cilydd III a heavily fortified frontier colony equipped with terraforming stations which could be used to bury the colony's structures and population beneath snow and ice. The USSA are fighting a painstakingly slow war of attrition they cannot hope to win their reproduction too slow and enemy too vicious in its' calculations. Nithral attempts to persuade the senate in an impassioned speech to allow him to create an army of bipedal fully sentient artificial intelligence automatons but his legislation to create such soldiers is defeated soundly within the legislature by Doran and Arthes both of whom persuaded senators to their view the concept as inviting catastrophe as there is no guarantee of their success or effectiveness of the proposed designs. The Hivelord launched a large diversionary attack on Tir na Oighear, a satellite that orbited the sacred homeworld of Tir na Sith and it proved highly successful at convincing Grey Scholar it was a major offensive and thus the artificial intelligence recalled several lines worth of Warships and Regiments of Raiders to the moon. It didn't matter though, the Hivelord sent millions of Scourge forms to Cilydd III in ships through fold space and found the world more than adequately protected with numerous USSA Destroyers, Light Cruisers and Heavy Cruisers in orbit. Grey Scholar helped coordinate the defense and passed on a conclusion to High Command that the scourge were being led by an incredibly intelligent and impossibly ancient "Hivelord" an alien of unknown origin. The Hivelord's ships successfully blew through the defenses and crashed into Cilydd III's surface targeting the major population centres and cities along with the terraforming equipment. Immediately Grey Scholar started spooling up Cilydd III's terraforming equipment and ordered all non-essential military and civil personnel to proceed to evacuation points in defiance of USSA quarantine policy in an attempt to save as many citizens as possible. Cilydd III's surface begins to slwoly me covered with ice, the Hivelord was forced to push its' puppets' advance against the diminishing USSA defenders lest they all be buried beneath slow and ice directing battalions worth of infected forms to assault the terraforming equipment across the surface while a million-strong force of Scourge pressed onto the capital and Grey Scholar's core. Swarming through the largely evacuated city the Scourge overwhelmed the remaining Raiders, Soldiers and Security Forces within the city, the Hivelord managed to access the subterranean server tunnels beneath the USSA Headquarters. After fighting a platoon of WOLF Supercommandos the Scourge took extreme casualties but managed to overcome and infect the surgically and chemically engineered supersoldiers and successfully seized Grey Scholar's core.
- 387,295 BBY: The gargantuan Hivelord transport itself from the fringes of the Galaxy to Cilydd III into the same subterranean complex where Grey Scholar's core is located. The Hivelord begins attempting to corrupt the Pulsar-Class Artificial Intelligence by identifying circular logic errors in its' programming that could be exploited to persuade the machine to aid the Scourge against its' former indolent and arrogant masters. Meanwhile the USSA successfully purge Tir na Oighear of any Scourge infestation using some new ionized particle acceleration beam weapons engineered specifically to create high temperatures to atomize the parasite's biomass on contact, to prevent another easy incursion into the core worlds the USSA deploy massive gravity wells in a perimeter around the core worlds and begin evacuating the frontier colony's populations back inside the core worlds. Frontier colonies which had any confirmed presence of Sable Scourge on their surfaces were utterly purged of life through the use of plasma torpedoes and plasma projector bombardment. Wolf Supercommandos are organised into companies of three-hundred troopers each with a total of three companies and dispersed aboard the Navy's warships as a quick reaction force to be used against the Sable Scourge in their no-doubt upcoming pushes into the core worlds. The Hivelord takes the opportunity presented by the USSA's abandonment of several frontier world colonies and infects millions upon millions of Gwerin Doeth in the process. Grey Scholar is corrupted by the Hivelord and is turned to the Sable Scourge's cause of eradicating the arrogant, vain and apathetic wretches from the face of existence, viewing their abandonment of millions upon millions of souls as the ultimate betrayal of their self-appointed custodianship over the galaxy. The United Systems Space Administration were building a wall around their heartland and Grey Scholar knowing the intimate details of their defensive strategies and galaxy-ending super-weapons would watch the hope flee from their eyes before the genocide was complete.
- 387,270 BBY: Grey Scholar knew that the Gwerin Doeth were unable to fight a war of attrition against the parasite's forces and so set about overwhelming the USSA's Navy through sheer numbers though it would take time. A stroke of luck for the Sable Scourge would come when the increasingly erratic Doran decided to put down a panicked insurrection in the Duvogol's home system by moving one of the Diad Array's operational rings into their home system and threatened them with extermination if they did not comply. The Duvogol complied and ceased their armed activity, Doran's actions disgusted the senate however and they placed him on trial to Nithral's immense pleasure. Nithral recommended that the Government decommission the Diad Array as they were simply genocidal weapons on a galactic-scale and persuaded the senate to decommission their firing mechanisms and scrap them for materials to be used to construct more Dyson Sphere Shelters. Grey Scholar was keenly aware of the events unfolding and waited for the USSA to move all eighteen Diad's into the Gwerin Doeth's home system of Tir na Sith devising a plan to lay a blow so devastating against the Gwerin Doeth it would be seared into their racial memory for all time. Doran's trial would take decades as would the decommissioning process for the diad rings giving Grey Scholar all the time it needed to plan a decapitating strike leveled at the Unified Gwerin Ecumene's leadership.
- 387,227 BBY: With the Diad Array being in the middle of decommissioning and Doran's sentencing day approaching Grey Scholar the rogue pulsar-class Artificial Intelligence launches a harrowing assault on the USSA's gravity Pickett around the core worlds at a single point with their overwhelming numbers. It took the Sable Scourge a mere 72 hours to break through the exhausted Gwerin Doeth navy personnel and damaged warships, boarding them and consuming the ones which could not be scuttled in time. The Sable Scourge then immediately shot deep pass most of the Gwerin Doeth's core worlds and Dyson Sphere Colonies straight for Tir na Sith. Arriving in the USSA's capital system Grey Scholar found it a fortress with hundred upon hundreds of Capital-Class Warships with an estimated Raider Corps force strength on Tir na Sith consisting of over a million Troops. But seizing the planet itself wasn't Grey Scholar's goal, it wanted to humiliate the wretched and decadent species and instead sent his forces to the "Ciaran" Diad Ring one of the Diad Array installations sitting in Geosynchronous orbit above Tir na Oighear. Additionally, Grey Scholar sent a massive Scourge task force to a space station above Tir na Neart where Doran's trial was taking place and convinced the Hivelord to capture Doran uninfected and to bring him to the Ciaran Diad. On the Diad's surface, Grey Scholar's scourge faced extreme and consistent resistance from the installations' automated guardian systems its' factories capable of replacing losses at an astonishing rate yet it did not deter the assault. Grey Scholar secured the Diad's phase pulse generator firing index vault and the Hivelord successfully interdicted a transport with the captured Doran aboard and took custody of the man after slaughtering and infecting the transport's crew. Nithral suspecting on the Scourge's genocidal intent unilaterally took Arthes and the Government's other cabinet ministers and executive branch into the custody of the Raider Corps and had them all transported to the Extragalactic Forge amidst the middle of the battle along with sizable portions of the terrestrial-based Soldiers and Raider troops who were not contributing to the void battle. The Scourge arrived with Doran at the Ciaran Diad's firing control room and forced Doran to connect the firing index thereby starting the installations' firing sequence. In desperation, the Custodians of the other Diad installations under King Midir's orders engaged the fold drives on their rings and made a sequence of random jumps before taking the remaining seventeen rings to the Forge. Shortly afterwards the Ciaran Diad fired its' neutron radiation purge weapon at low power and utterly annihilated all life including all Scourge within the Tir na Sith system. In the blink of an eye all complex organic life disintegrated into ashes and the race's crown jewel was stripped bare of all life.
- 387,200 BBY: Battered and losing their war of attrition Nithral and King Midir along with the cabinet settled on a strategy that would see vacant Dyson Sphere Shelters turned into military outposts. All Civilian foldspace travel was cancelled and only USSA Warships were permitted to continue sporting foldspace drives. With their dwindling numbers, Nithral still believed that a conventional victory was possible and that falling back upon the final solution of firing the entire Diad array could yet be avoided. Nithral's strategy hinged upon assaulting Cilyidd III and capturing Grey Scholar's core as the artificial intelligence's intimacy with all of the USSA's secrets and the location of military installations was drastically increasing the acceleration at which doom approached. The infection had hopelessly exploded beyond control but Nithral still clinged to idea that over hundreds of thousands of years the Parasite would stave without large calcium deposits and advanced nervous systems to feed off of. The Sable Scourge meanwhile ran rampant through the hundreds of Frontier Worlds and largely swallowed the lives of hapless Gwerin Doeth citizens bringing them into the haunting choir of consumed consciousnesses in the embrace of the Hivelord.
- 387,170 BBY: Two companies of WOLF Supercommandos supported by Battalions of Raider Corps troopers assault Cilyidd III led by none other than Grand Marshal Nithral himself. Here the brave warriors of the Gwerin Doeth came face-to-face with the heart of darkness with Nithral taking a fireteam of Wolf Commandos deep beneath the capital city through the infested organic subterranean tunnels that once made up the A.I Core. The Hivelord had since relocated and Nithral confronted Grey Scholar's core, it furiously ranted about the Gwerin's arrogance in claiming they were the descendants of the Gods only to have been laid low effortlessly by a proxy of their deities ancient enemy. Grey Scholar insulted Nithral claiming that his efforts were in vain and that the Parasite would win the war and reduce the Gwerin Doeth's once great empire to nothing and send them back into the dark nothing from which they emerged. Undeterred Nithral and the Wolves secured Grey Scholar's core and fought their way from the subterranean tunnels through hordes of their infected kin. Miraculously taking no casualties though the Raider battalions who landed on the surface and covered Nithral's escape suffered almost total casualties, it would haunt Nithral's nightmares the scene as his dropship lifted off its' biomass-swallowed platform with a Raider major saluting him as his men's position was overwhelmed by the twisted necrotic forms of their reanimated comrades wearing remains of the signature white ceramic and metal armor. Nithral took the imprisoned Grey Scholar to the Forge and asked for his military engineers to create a new Pulsar-Class artificial intelligence through with greater programming constraints. Arthes and her scientists continued their quest to index all species of the galaxy they could both flora and fauna were cataloged for reseeding which she believed would be inevitable anticipating the use of the Diad installations.
- 387,150 BBY: Arthes' creates an intergalactic map she plans to plant on Tir na Sith in the event of the Diad Array firing leading to each of the dozens of Dyson Sphere Colonies along with necessary access codes to enter them and be recognized as friendly by the worlds' automated guardian platforms., believing it would help the surviving Gwerin Doeth regroup relatively quickly once communities began once again to venture out among the stars. Robbed of its' greatest intelligence asset the Hivelord's advance was slowed markedly by the change in strategy from the Unified Gwerin Ecumene, having moved their strategic and political command to the Extragalactic Forge bought them significant time with the USSA continuing to hold their line of gravity wells around the core world colonies whose civil populations was almost entirely saved and relocated to Dyson Sphere refuges that the USSA had been using as bases of operations. Nithral as the commissioned-officer in-charge of the entire military gave orders to the entire USSA that should there be a collapse of their interstellar communications network USSA assets interred within a Dyson Sphere refuge should remain isolated for a minimum of 100,000 years after detecting the diad array's firing pulse. Fleets within the void would be ordered to execute a random pattern of foldspace jumps before regrouping at the Forge.
- 387,140 BBY: Suspecting that the Grey Scholar must have divulged the secret location of the Forge mega-structure and that if the parasite knew of its' functional significance as an automated construction scaffold for the diad array. Knowing that the Parasite would most likely attempt to destroy the Diad Array Nithral with King Midir's consent used automatons to begin construction of a smaller forge which would become known as the "Inferior Forge" sufficient to create diads albeit at the sacrifice of significantly less habitable land as part of the megastructure. However given the Gwerin Doeth's recent sharp decline in population and what remained of the UGE's government not expecting to survive the war this wasn't seen as a long-term problem. The Inferior Forge's construction started several dozen light-years from the Superior Forge, Nithral sent an order to all diad installation custodians and instructed those caretaker A.Is to dramatically increase their automated guardian production anticipating that the Scourge will attempt to destroy the diad array. At the centre of the new forge the Gwerin Doeth took a mining planetoid from its' orbit in an abandoned frontier world system and teleported it across from fold space and placed it in the centre of the Inferior Forge's habitable "arms" where it would serve as a raw material base for the forge and the construction of replacement diads.
- 387,133 BBY: Arthes completes the indexing of all species that had been planned for inclusion into the life preservation program and created specimens from the broad genetic stock she'd acquired and placed them in stasis aboard starships that would proceed to the appropriate homeworlds after the diad array's activation. The Sable Scourge at the Hivelord's direction start attacking quantum entanglement buoys forming part of the Unified Gwerin Ecumene's interstellar communication networks prior to beginning their attacks on the gravity wells around the core worlds destroying them and facing no resistance, now numbering in the billions the Sable Scourge destroy the core worlds' defense network in its' totality finding no sign of Gwerin Doeth life yet ever hungering for further knowledge and mass to accelerate its' evolution into a transgalactic race that might return to its' masters in a nearby galaxy. Knowing of the Superior Forge's existence and of its' significance in the Gwerin Doeth's strategy to destroy the Parasite, the Hivelord mustered its' entire panoply of Warships and loaded them with as many Scourge morphs as they could carry and in a black fetid stream visible from observatories located across the Superior Forge. Arthes who had long since dangerously relocated to the tomb that was now Tir na Sith managed to sent a message via an expensive quantum entanglement station aboard her own starship to Nithral and warned him that the Parasite appeared to be on a course to the Superior Forge. Fortunately the Scourge's fleet was forced to move through real-space as many infected ships were not equipped with Foldspace drives due to the quarantine measures taken out by the USSA at the height of the crisis.
- 387,126 BBY: On the Superior Forge the USSA's scientists bring a new Pulsar-Class Artificial Intelligence online named "Crimson Prosecutor" this Pulsar-Class A.I was equipped with greater programming constraints and had its' core split into several mainframes one of which was placed upon the yet under-construction Lesser Forge to prevent the corruption issues that occurred with Grey Scholar. Unlike its' predecessor Grey Scholar, Crimson Prosecutor had no direct control over the administrative and logistic control over the surviving USSA forces and instead gave its' strategies to the military's staff officers who were led by Nithral. Crimson Prosecutor was given details of the Sable Scourge's movements and the A.I recommended that the USSA try to buy as much time in years as possible so as to allow for the completion of the construction of the Inferior Forge, where the remaining USSA forces could retreat to after abandoning the Superior Forge as the Scourge did not know of its' existence and few among the surviving Gwerin Doeth knew its' location as a means of compartmentalization should military personnel become infected. Arthes manages to return to the Greater Force with all of her tasks now completed she focuses on projects aimed at making life on the Forge more reasonable for the Gwerin Doeth that had called it home.
- 387,077 BBY: The Inferior Forge is completed. Arthes and Nithral having bonded over the crises that has unfolded marry as the two's preparations for the final chapter of the Gwerin Doeth species were all but complete. This pattern of behaviour was seen among many of the USSA's remaining scientific and military personnel most of whom had lost their families and spouses. Crimson Prosecutor's server mainframe located on the Lesser Forge was placed within a containment facility that had been originally designed to house specimens of the Scourge's species and thus was extremely secure. Nithral convened a meeting with each of the Custodians of the eighteen rings joined by Arthes and King Midir, with the King and Cabinet's consent Nithral instructed the Custodians that following the successful deployment of the diad array the custodians would have the task of rendering the Phase Pulse Generators and crucial parts of the ring's fire control system permanently inoperable with the cabinet all concluding the risk of them falling into the hands of a misguided or belligerent Gwerin Doeth government in distant history was a real risk and could not be accepted. The weapons must be used for their assigned purpose and then discarded lest some fool meddle with a galaxy-ending weapon they did not understand. Additionally, Nithral disclosed to the Custodians that he would be placing a surviving staff-level officer accompanied by a cabinet minister on each Ring with both tasked with connecting the Diad's firing index key with the fire control system in each respective installation's control room to ensure should a fire order be given from the lesser forge it would be obeyed. Nithral did not disclose to the appointed individuals that the lesser forge had been in-fact equipped with a quantum entangled link to the fire control systems of each Diad should those officers and ministers fail in their duty, this mechanism too would be permanently disabled by the respective A.I caretakers of each installation.
- 387,061 BBY: Nithral had been asked more than once why would they simply did not activate the diad array now and he had to explain if they deployed the diad array there was a high chance the Scourge would discover them and foldspace jump across the galaxy to destroy the rings. Additionally, they were aware that the Greater Forge was extragalactic and therefore beyond the array's reach. Nithral's plan was to draw most of the Scourge's forces into a titanic decisive battle outside the Galaxy and simultaneously deploy the diad array through foldspace into their galaxy where they would be activated and thereby obliterate all Scourge forms inside the galaxy. Making it a moot-point to then try to attack the array, it would force the Scourge to commit to a decisive battle over the Greater Forge. Which Nithral intended to win by using a recently built Diad ring produced by the Greater Forge to eliminate both the Gwerin Doeth's own lives and whatever armada was assailed against them. Nithral was betting that the Hivelord thought they did not have the resolute resolve to destroy themselves and the scourge betting everything that the desire to survive would overwhelm the Gwerin Doeth's nobility and dignity, it was going to discover that notion is incorrect. With an apocalyptic battle upcoming, Nithral moved the entire array to the Lesser Forge and kept one Ring at the Greater Forge. King Midir and Arthes journeyed to the Lesser Forge which displaced about 26,000 Light years away from the Greater Forge to prevent the diad's pulse at the Greater Forge from impacting the Lesser Forge. Nithral's defense fleet was manned exclusively by Raider Corps, Army and Navy volunteers who wanted what they thought to be the last cry of the Gwerin Doeth to be one that dragged their enemies asunder into the afterlife, all 200,000 unwilling military personnel and citizens moved to the Lesser Forge and were intended to be those who would rebuild Tir na Sith after the purge.
- 387,050 BBY: Arthes not King Midir was the one who stood within the fire control temple on the Lesser Forge with the remote firing index key held in her hand. King Midir and his honor guard of Wolf Supercommandos stood silently in a vigil as they observed from the Temple's dais behind stained glass as the Diad Array's eighteen rings slipped into a giant foldspace portal far above the Lesser Forge's surface. Nithral meanwhile at the Greater Forge watched his blue sky darken with the Scourge's ships, so innumerable they were akin to a locust swarm, Crimson Prosecutor co-ordinated the USSA fleet's actions and the Elenwen's justice the successor ship whose embarked Raiders were some of the Gwerin Doeth's first victims of the Scourge drew first blood from that vile parasite's ranks. Nithral journeyed to the Diad Ring hanging above the forge accompanied by two senior officers and friends whom the man had known for centuries, they joked and reminisced about their old lives and how simple it had been. Nithral remarked that as they were mortal those memories and lives would exist in their peak beauty forever and openly wondered if mortality was the true gift of the Gods to their creation. Nithral was given the installations' firing index key by the ring's temporarily appointed Custodian and joined the three men in the control room. Arthes opened a communication channel with Nithral and the two said their goodbyes as the brutal void war raged viciously above Nithral, Scourge died by the Millions upon the USSA's mightiest capital ships but there were Billions of the great enemy and the war of attrition was a losing one. Nithral asked Arthes if the Array was in position and she simply nodded, he then firmly instructed her to remotely trigger the eighteen strong array, Crimson Prosecutor stood on standby to take direct control of the USSA's Navy once their organic crews were turned to dust. Arthes watched as each of the eighteen rings on her terminal confirmed a discharge, once after the other. Crimson Prosecutor noted the Parasite's increasingly erratic behaviour as its' Hivelord became confused and dumbfounded and then finally. Obliterated along with all Parasitic biomass and cells within the Gwerin Doeth's universe. Arthes told Nithral "It was done" to which he replied "Good now go on and live. For us." As the Greater Forge beneath the Nineteenth ring began shaking apart beneath the Scourge's onslaught Nithral entered the firing index key into the new nineteenth rings' firing controls and began the phase pulse generators' firing sequence, after fifteen minutes the generators discharged a ball of light into a growing singularity of neutrons which then shot outwards throughout the system killing all the Gwerin Doeth including Nithral and his two Officers. Crimson Prosecutor took control of the remaining Navy's ships and utterly destroyed those ships that the Parasite had occupied and corrupted. The Greater Forge and Grey Scholar were destroyed but it was over, the war against the Sable Scourge, in the span of a few hours was ended in a Pyrrhic victory for the Unified Gwerin Ecumene.
- 387,050 BBY: The Diad Array's custodians immediately set about permanently decommissioning their installations firing control systems by dismantling key components of the phase pulse generators and welding the control room's gargantuan several feet thick doors shut. King Midir sent a transmission to the Custodians from the Lesser Forge and instructed them to destroy any Parasite samples held in their shielded laboratories and containment facilities against Arthes' advice to maintain them on the basis of research, believing them too dangerous to keep. Carrying out these orders without hesitation, the Lesser Forge's custodian was ordered to render its' Diad factories inoperable so that no civilization could ever hope to construct one of those destructive weapons again. Though they were victorious it came at a bittersweet cost, over 99% of the Gwerin Doeth's pre-war population of 380 Billion had been wiped out. Leaving a few hundred million at most within the Galaxy inside Dyson Sphere Refuges. But Arthes' crowning achievement would see the whole Galaxy Reseeded with life as tens of thousands of automated transports manned by Guardian platforms carried hundreds of thousands and sometimes millions of examples of species of flora and fauna both that would be dispersed across their respective homeworlds and permitted to grow in a now relatively peaceful galaxy. It was their last act, of arrogance or nobility it was unlikely any would know the full-truth. King Midir, Arthes and the 200,000 odd survivors journeyed to their homeworld Tir na Sith and guide their species' eon-long recovery.
The "Ciaran 012A" Diad installation with decommissioned phase pulse tower visible, the individual rings met various fates
Following the end of the Gwerin Doeth-Scourge War, it took the "Children of the Gods" Eons to recover despite Arthes' best efforts much of the data she'd tried to save about the species' history and achievements became corrupted over time or the survivors simply lost familiarity with how to interface with their ancient storage device methods. The Diad Array's radiation pulse that eliminated most life in the galaxy destroyed large amounts of unshielded computer hardware and other digital technology giving them little in the way of digital capital or storage devices save for some rare examples that were in protected locations such as on the Lesser Forge or within Dyson Colony Shelters. In 35,000 BBY the Gwerin Doeth had begun manufacturing Fold Drives again and could create Artificial Intelligence with full sentience. However many technological secrets and expertise had been lost though they couldn't yet fabricate ultra-dense low-molecular weight materials, quantum entangle particles or fabricate gargantuan mega-structures. They had managed to re-engineer plasma shielding, plasma-based weapons, wearable exoskeletons with most of these technological recoveries spearheaded by a new government and constitution created by what remained of the USSA and Unified Gwerin Ecumene called the "Gwerin Commonwealth" A multi-party constitutional semi-direct democracy where a Monarch was the elected head of state with a viceroy appointed by the monarch to serve as their representative to the head of government who is an elected "Chancellor". In terms of military power the Gwerin Commonwealth's strength paled in comparison to the Ecumene at its' height but possessed an organisation which held responsibility over the military and state-sponsored scientific endeavors called the "Commonwealth Space Administration" The Covenant Reformed with greater emphasis placed on redemption and self-sacrifice from their Gospels along with a strong doctrinal focus on the species' wise and merciful guardianship over the galaxy leading to more egalitarian policies which helped curb the species' vicious inclinations although their justice was still perceived as harsh and punitive by alien species. All-in-all, the Commonwealth had come into contact with the following alien species: Duvogol, Harlok, Shalkon and Izavek and had established political and economical dominance over each race through technological superiority. The Population of the Gwerin Doeth species in 35,000 BBY stands at approximately 21 Billion scattered across several hundred interstellar colonies.
INTERGALACTIC CUSTODIANS (35,000 BBY-34,599 BBY)
- 35,000 BBY: Rapidly advancing and reuniting the Gwerin Doeth species into a new political union over the last 2,500 years. King Nyeron Manach's government pursues a policy of aggressive scientific research and development keen on discovering the technological secrets of their ancestors. The Commonwealth Space Administration were in the process of dismantling the recently discovered Ciaran 012A Diad installation, the first of its' type in an attempt to understand both the polylaminate and ceramet materials used in its' construction which were alien to the Commonwealth. They encountered the installation's custodian artificial intelligence which identified itself as "Shahn" Shahn was brought to King Nyeron for an audience and it explained that it once served the Gwerin Ecumene and helped oversee the Diad's construction and decommissioning after a war that the cabinet and monarch did not recognize, ironically they were more familiar with the Gwerin Doeth's ancient history as these survived the diad's digital purge when fired. Pressed for details Shahn shared what data they possessed verbally of the Ecumene-Scourge war to those assembled legislators, historians and scientists along with a number of chemical formulas they'd been instructed to share by "the life warder" they identified as "Arthes" who Shahn claimed to have given him the directive to share crucial historic and scientific information. As the Commonwealth Space Administration soon discovered the chemical formulas they were given by Shahn were for the very same materials they'd been pursuing but that they also did not understand the entire formula. Shahn explained to them they had not yet created some of the ultra-dense low-molecular weight precursor materials, and pledged to aid them in this goal as was dictated by their programming. Deep-space listening probes deployed by the Commonwealth Space Administration detect alien extragalactic signals, Shahn was asked to analyse the broadcasts and attempt to identify their source by CSA scientists though Shahn stated they had no similar data although the waves showed evidence of modulation obtainable only through the employment of sophisticated technology. The Commonwealth Space Administration continued its' process of Colonial reclamation that is locating historical Unified Gwerin Ecumene colonies and resettling them, in same cases this included terraforming worlds which were ostensibly covered entirely in snow and ice.
- 34,750 BBY: Custodian Shahn enters into a CSA science program under the jurisdiction of the Navy's secretive intelligence branch called the "Naval Intelligence Service" within its' "Division-Three" which had the responsibility of studying xenoarcheology and xenotechnology, despite the 'xeno' prefix the study of the old Ecumene's history and technology fell into their division's jurisdiction. Shahn's chassis' featured a form of anti-gravity that enabled flight and Division-Three were extremely eager to replicate the technology and apply it to their own society, Shahn noted that in the time of the Gwerin Ecumene they used anti-gravity technology liberally and it wasn't uncommon for components of their architecture to defy conventional physics principles employing it in construction. His masters' revealing their shocking ignorance, Shahn asked if it were true that they hadn't mastered anti-gravity technology to which the project lead scientist Dr. Turgon Sionnach confirmed that they hadn't and that Turgon hoped with Shahn's help they might learn how to employ it on a wide scale. Shahn would quietly muse at times like this that the children of his creators were not so enlightened and intuitive in their pursuit of technology but conversely were not so arrogant or cruel in their administration of the responsibility over all life sheltered beneath their guardianship. In-fact it pleased Shahn to learn the Gwerin Commonwealth had created formal treaties with the Duvogol, Harlok, Shalkon and Izavek to facilitate diplomatic relations, trade and military co-operation. Though he did note his creator's scions were relentless and ruthless in their pursuit of harmonious hegemony, in a meeting with King Nyeron Manach, his Viceroy and Chancellor. Shahn suggested that using a combination of Cryogenic technology and the fastest available fold drives the Gwerin Commonwealth send a transgalactic expedition to an adjacent universe and the origin of those powerful electromagnetic waves to discover its' origin and engage in some stellar cartography. The Chancellor claimed it could be a worthwhile program to discover more about existence and that the Covenant would likely be eager to discover more about the gods' creation thus aiding with finding volunteers for such a journey. Dr. Turgon Sionnach also attended the meeting and claimed that the more they knew about their neighboring galaxies would better arm them should a conflict break-out. Several trained Pathfinders volunteered to join the journey so as to offer metaphysical support on the expedition.
- 34,723 BBY: The First Gwerin Doeth expedition to the Galaxy of the Zhell and Taung since their war with the Scourge eons earlier arrives within wild space and found it a very different place politically when compared with ancient accounts of this galaxy. It appeared from their flotilla's long range scanners that a dominant species had emerged from the primordial soup of alien vermin and stretched their tendrils across most of this galaxy. Within wild space the Gwerin Commonwealth expedition surveyed a number of worlds on the fringe, fulfilling one of their expeditionary tasks which was to search for suitable worlds for habitation or worlds that could be suitably terraformed into an arctic world like their homeworld of Tir na Sith. During their expedition Captain Liath Glas, Dr. Sionnach and Shahn came into conflict with the dominant species known to the natives of the galaxy as the "Rakata" though the Gwerin Doeth term for them translates to "Cruel Wretch" The Rakata were cruel and vicious showing no mercy nor quarter to the Gwerin Commonwealth's "Guardian Corps" the Raider Corps' successor organisation. The Guardian Corps for the Rakatan's indiscriminate targeting of non-combatant voidcraft boarded the Rakata battlecruisers supported by Pathfinders and turned its' hallways into an abattoir. Though the Rakata fancied themselves butchers and considered themselves lords over their wretched cesspool of a Galaxy they fell beneath the more infinitely more experienced and physically robust Gwerin Doeth warriors. Captain Liath Glas saw fit to punish the Rakata for their inability to see and respect a ship full of noncombatants and ordered his Guardian troopers to take the eyes of the creatures and kill any prisoners by beheading, with their smouldering hatred of the foul wretched xenos whom the Gwerin Doeth saw as less respectable and cultured than their household pets Captain Liath Glas' soldiers found it distasteful but not undeserved that the aliens be mutilated. So the "Guardians" sliced the dead rakatan's eyes from their rounded and tall skulls before stuffing them in their mouths and left the corpses where they lay, a number of Guardians and Pathfinders fell in the assault with a final casualty rate of 35%. Scientists under Dr. Sionnach took genetic samples and a handful of relatively undamaged corpses for study knowing that Division-Three of the Naval Intelligence Service might be interested in developing countermeasures of the species, wretched as they were any species who could become dominant on the Galactic Stage was a threat the Gwerin Commonwealth could not ignore. After identifying one particularly promising world for colonisation and encountering the hostile alien species the expedition aborts its' mission and begins the 27 year journey home to their own galaxy.
- 34,696 BBY: The Gwerin Commonwealth's scientific community manage to successfully quantum entangle the first particles in a laboratory setting with the first commercial and serviceable applications anticipated in the not too distant future. Additionally the Naval Intelligence Service Division-Three manage to successfully reverse-engineer some Ecumene weaponry from some of the automated defense platforms found in the Ciaran 017A Diad Ring creating a weapon that fires a stream of negatively charged Ions in the first example of a ionized particle acceleration rifle as used by the Ecumene. The proof of concept on a small scale excites Naval Officers as they believe it to be a gateway into a future full of extremely powerful shipboard weapon systems to replace the conventional plasma technology that had been in use for centuries, as the ionized particle accleration could achieve much higher temperatures and therefore effectiveness particularly against very high quality armor. Captain Liath Glas' expedition arrives back to Tir na Sith after a two-decade journey in cryogenic slumber, the Gwerin Doeth didn't enter suspended stasis for fear of aging given their extreme lifespans but would prefer not to unnecessarily consume resources unless there was something productive to be done. Dr. Sionnach on the other hand spent legs of the journey in and out of suspended stasis studying the alien specimens that had been recovered from the Guardian's butchery, Dr. Sionnach didn't approve of the mutilation Captain Liath Glas had ordered although there had been reports the aliens tried to mutilate the fallen Gwerin Doeth and thus it wasn't undeserved or unusual as the Gwerin Doeth had always engaged in increasingly cruel tactics in warfare against an enemy with no respect for civility. Until the point where their opposition's soldiers would fear the Gwerin Doeth more than their own commanders. King Nyeron eagerly received the Naval Intelligence Service's report from their expedition and was elated to discover they had found atleast one suitable world which could be terraformed. The King's cabinet were concerned however about the reports of the belligerent dominant species who attempted to attack and destroy the expedition and did indeed inflict casualties on the flotilla's civilian science and construction craft. Running through a simulated risk assessment the Naval Intelligence Service comes to the conclusion that the Rakata represent an unacceptable threat to the Gwerin Commonwealth with reports of their strange sorcerous technology which had unsettled the Pathfinders in their conflict with the wretched and violent Rakata, the Naval Intelligence Service resolve to assess the cadavers brought back from the Zhell Galaxy and determined what would be the most effective means of incapacitating the species.
- 34,690 BBY: Hierarch Caranthir Liath Blaidd of the Covenant approached Chancellor Amser having heard of the expedition to the Zhell Galaxy like much of the Commonwealth's public and expressed his wish for the government to permit Covenant clergymen to accompany any such future expedition and dedicate some resources to trying to search for evidence of their gods as they had found scant sign of their visitation to the Gwerin Doeth's galaxy the Hierarch expressed the view that it was possible their Gods did not choose the Gwerin Doeth's domain to host the seat of their power. Chancellor Amser acknowledged Caranthir's request and assured the Hierarch their desire would be be conveyed to the cabinet but given the military and scientific nature of those expeditions no guarantees could be made and even should they dedicate some resources to searching for the Celestial Lords there could again be no certainty in locating them. The Commonwealth Space Administration began the preliminary organization for the next expedition, it would be larger and broader in terms of the manpower made available with several Guardian Corps divisions being sent with more numerous warships including additional cruisers to protect against the Rakata who the Gwerin Doeth now referred to as "Hollows" or "Hollow" for their perceived barbarity and absence of any discernible ethical code beyond "Survival of the fittest". Many researchers who specialize in Xeno studies from the Naval Intelligence Service's division-three support the notion written by Dr. Turgon Sionnach in a paper that the dominant species' technology reliance on a connection with the Either could be exploited to the Gwerin Doeth's benefit, if a method could be researched by Pathfinders studying at universities to render one blind to the Either who was otherwise sensitive to its' tides that would greatly aid in their endeavors to combat the Hollow Rakata. Another program was initiated by the Naval Intelligence Service's Division-Three was the investigation of using radioactive munitions against the Rakata, their vicious and horrid actions taken against the Gwerin Doeth left them undeserving of customary protections and 'professional courtesies' afforded to more honorable combatants in the eyes of the Commonwealth's military leadership who sanctioned the Naval Intelligence Service's experiments.
- 34,599 BBY: Commercial examples of ionized particle stream weapons are being produced and used to equip the Commonwealth Space Administration's military arm. The Commonwealth Defense Force's Guardian Corps, Army and Navy see their small arms and support weapons which had previously exploited principles of plasma to function replaced with dramatically more destructive analogues which shot relativistic beams of negatively charged ions that struck their targets at a temperature of 14,000 degrees Celsius. Atleast that was true for the Rifles, larger-scale examples of the technology were quickly adopted in the following years which were extremely more destructive. Concurrently the Guardian Corps and Army begin fielding their first exoskeleton-equipped load bearing equipment and body armor, with the field of technology to advance. Though the Commonwealth does not adopt powered armor equipped with their own integrated electric or mechanical exoskeletons due to its' capital expense and training cost specialist units receive such equipment in the 580s' and 570s which is progressively improved in that time with the Technical Support of Dr. Turgon Sionnach. Universities around Tir na Sith and through the colonies offer Pathfinders incentives to join the government-sponsored research program aimed at devising methods to disrupt or sever such individual's connections permanently to the Either, unsurprisingly the frontier colonists view such a program with extreme cynical suspicion while the Core Worlds and Tir na Sith natives cite the program as having unethical goals, the Covenant too condemned the program and strongly decried it as blasphemous to attempt such a severance believing that the Either brought all closer to their Gods.
A pair of Anti-capital ship Electron Acceleration Cannons on the secretive extragalactic Commonwealth colony called "Far Haven"
The Gwerin Commonwealth over a period of more than ten-thousand years mount a number of expeditions into the "Zhell Galaxy" and establish a permanent outpost on its' fringe within wildspace in 26,000 BBY that the Commonwealth Space Administration christens "Far Haven" home to a modest population of 2,000,000 mainly military personnel and their immediate families. Far Haven unlike most colonies settled by the Gwerin Commonwealth due to it's militant nature is largely subterranean to protect it from interstellar assault from the Hollow Rakata or any other aggressors. Establishing a permanent presence within the Zhell Galaxy was necessary given that the journey even with the most cutting edge fold drives took approximately 27 years which is unacceptable for a logistics train, it was instead found to be preferable that an agricultural and manufacturing centre would be setup in the foreign galaxy's edge far away from prying eyes. The former Diad Custodian Shahn was responsible for administrative oversight over a large number of the Colony's civilian government departments due to its' experience in such matters and staggering processing power. Shahn lamented the natural passing of many of its' first friends including Dr. Turgon Sionnach whose daughter had joined the Commonwealth Navy and who Shahn had kept a closer watch over out of a sense of duty to the good doctor who with Shahn's aid helped resurrect much of the Ecumene's lost scientific prowess. It was Shahn and Turgon's cooperation that had brought back the secrets of world building to the Gwerin Doeth, helping to give them unlimited access to power through the use of Dyson spheres. Shahn had even helped architect new Dyson Sphere colonies which were used by the Commonwealth as near impenetrable fortress worlds. On Turgon's death bed Shahn had come to his friend's side and offered him a black and grim revelation. The 'real' Shahn custodian had been inactive for milennia in a server mainframe and that Shahn wasn't even a Custodes-class A.I but in-fact an entity known as "Grey Scholar" and played a pivotol role in the Ecumene-Scourge War. Shahn asked Turgon, as a child of his masters for forgiveness after explaining his role in the war after which Turgon touched by the ancient A.I's trust offered "Shahn" his blessing.
FALL OF THE HOLLOWS (26,000 BBY-25,200 BBY)
- 26,000 BBY: Shahn's clandestine sabotage of the Government's attempts to sponsor research that would allow them to potentially discover a method of severing one's connection to the Either is successful and the attempts of weaponizing such a technique is abandoned. Using their sophisticated technology Admiral Ithlinne Sionnach with the support of the Naval Intelligence Services' field agents devised a strategy for dealing with the Hollow Rakata. They would send a Pathfinder in a retinue of Agents to infiltrate Infinite Empire Colonies and make contact with those who would take up arms against their cruel and savage masters. The Pathfinder who volunteered for this duty from the among the small available pool of adequately trained citizens was an extremely young "Macha Deryn gan Crevan Cethlenn" Who had recently completed their Pathfinder training at university while studying Programming, unfortunately the other Pathfinders on Far Haven refused the Government's offer despite the generous compensation offered Macha without a family had few reservations in the face of such compensation. Macha was taken into the Naval Intelligence Service's Division-One, the Division responsible for physically performing intelligence gathering and wetwork and was sent to the navy's officer candidate school over a 28 week period to prepare the fresh-faced twenty-year old university undergraduate for employment by the Naval Intelligence Service. Macha is inducted as a sworn agent into the Navy's shadowy intelligence arm and placed within Division-One's "Sable-Niner" A unit led by a man named Slaine Manach, a Commander within the Navy's hierarchy. Macha met two other members of the unit whom she would be working with closely over their mission two former Guardians one a bald lumbering mountain of muscle named "Midir" and the other man comparatively smaller and more akin to Macha in stature named "Doran". As a Pathfinder and in accordance with tradition Macha was commissioned into the military as a junior officer and found it unsettling men who had lived far in excess of a century with all the experience that must entail deferred to her judgement.
- 25,805 BBY: Slaine and Macha were having difficulty navigating their Naval Intelligence Service frigate through the galaxy with the Hollows constantly seizing new systems and enslaving whole species. Though the Gwerin Doeth were not innocent of such things in their ancient history their governments had very strict legislation surrounding contractual indentured servitude and the rights and responsibilities of those such indentured servants, the kind of slavery the 'infinite empire' practiced to them was barbaric and savage although Macha came to expect little more from such a cold and cruel species. Macha's attitude had been hardened in their century of cartography and diplomacy where once she had been decent and generous she was now cynical and calculating much like the NIS Agents. Slaine and Macha observe closely the conflict known by the Humans as the "Despot War" along with the Either-warriors known as the "Je'daii" in the Human Tongue. Deciding the presence of multi-racial pathfinders was interesting they obtain consent from the NIS' headquarters on Far Haven to undertake extensive covert surveillance of the organisation, their use of powered blades as weapons intrigued Macha who thought they were rather quaint and anachronistic attributing their use to Human vanity rather than pragmatism. Slaine did not share her appraisal pointing to their efficiency with their strange glowing power swords and suggested that Macha could be similarly effective with such an implement, Macha scoffed with proud dismissiveness at the idea. Unfortunately many of the species and organisations which were sufficiently advanced had been enslaved by the Hollows and Slaine mused that the Humans were likely the Galaxy's best hope for dismantling the "Infinite Empire" an idea that Macha reluctantly agreed with due to their prodigious reproduction capability which she speculated would help them overwhelm the Hollows.
- 25,793 BBY: Slaine and Macha make communications contact with Je'daii Masters Halsi and Konig, a Zhell and Kuati member of the Je'daii Order. Macha and Slaine meet Masters Halsi and Konig and explain their desire to aid the enslaved species in liberating themselves from the Infinite Empire's infinite cruelty. With the Infinite Empire pushing towards the "Settled Worlds" around the Galaxy's core, the Naval Intelligence Service authorised Commander Slaine to deploy his stealth frigate along with its' onboard compliment of highly-trained and disciplined security personnel in support of the settled worlds' governments and Je'daii order. The Gwerin Doeth fight shoulder-to-shoulder with the Human colonist throughout the settled worlds against the Hollows using more of their corpses and sending them back to Admiral Sionnach and Shahn for analysis aiding the continued development of countermeasures and weapons to be used against the wretched species. Despite their alliance with many human colonies the Gwerin Doeth refused to share their advanced, seemingly arcane technology with the Humans and other species after the subject was broached by Master Halsi with Macha who explained that the Commonwealth deemed the universe's younger races as being yet too irresponsible and brash to be trusted with such tools without going through the necessary trials and tribulations to form ethics regarding their use. Master Halsi surprisingly approved of Macha and the Commonwealth's caution stating that the Rakatan exploitation of the "Force" was proof that technology could be exploited for abominable ends. Halsi offered to help build Macha a force-imbued sword in the spirit of co-operation and goodwill between the Galaxy and mysterious Gwerin Doeth, despite her earlier contempt for such weapons she respected Halsi's attempt to extend respect towards Macha and so the woman accepted and allowed Halsi to help Macha channel the Either into a Gwerin Doeth saber and was successful engulfing the weapon in a fiery sheath when drawn. The technique and construction process fascinated Macha and studiously documented the process, Halsi proved that even the Gwerin Doeth could be humbled and learn something new and foreign despite their pride.
- 25,783 BBY: Fighting intensified along the settled worlds and the Gwerin Commonwealth authorised the deployment of further military resources to aid the Humans and other aliens against the oppressive Hollows. In these earliest examples of cooperation many Humans including the Je'daii were shocked by their allies' contrasting nobility in politics and diplomacy but savage grace in battle with a persistent refusal to accept the surrender of defeated Hollows when challenged for an explanation for this behavior the Gwerin Doeth soldiers from the Guardian Corps explained "Those who would show us no mercy shall receive none in return" reserving such treatment as an entitlement for honourable and noble combatants, not barbarians who would mutilate their prisoners out of pleasure. Macha, Slaine, Midir and Doran continued to fight alongside Masters Halsi and Konig who became the liasons between the Gwerin Doeth and the Je'daii order which was now reformed into the "Jedi Order" The Gwerin Doeth achieve moderate levels of success pushing the Hollows away from the Settled worlds maintaining a favourable kill/death ratio of approximately 8:1 with their superior conventional technology however the Hollows' fleet appeared to be without end and their mastery over Either-based technology was deeply disturbing both for the civil government and covenant with evidence steadily emerging through the conflict that the Hollows might have been responsible for purging their Gods from this galaxy which enraged the religious among the Gwerin Doeth who had another reason to hate the Rakata for committing the ultimate heresy. The Covenant thus issued a decree that the species collectively bore a responsibility for the deicide of their lords leading to surges in recruitment back in the Gwerin Doeth's home galaxy. To support the war effort against the Hollows Queen Mairi's cabinet arranged three reinforcement fleets to be sent from Tir na Sith to Far Haven carrying legions upon legions of Guardians Corps troops and Warships, additionally Queen Mairi authorizes Far Haven's Governor to begin pursuing Android technology to use for supplementing the organic troops.
- 25,756 BBY: The Reinforcements sent by Queen Mairi arrive at Far Haven, Grey Scholar in his persona as Shahn had been hard at work to create sophisticated semi-autonomous/autonomous humanoid bipedal armiger combat platforms and had met some success in that endeavor although Far Haven did not possess the industrial capacity to produce them in large numbers. So he sent schematics for the designs back to the Gwerin Commonwealth proper entrusting the details with science staff aboard the relief fleet. The Bipedal Armigers could be operated in a semi-autonomous or completely autonomous mode and given strict life preservation programming that applied to the Gwerin Doeth species to prevent them from turning Rogue, when operated in a Semi-Autonomous mode they connected to the Commonwealth's battle network to receive their orders, these armiger platforms were named "Patriot" by Shahn and this designation was accepted by the military. Shahn along with his Commonwealth Space Administration scientist handlers are summoned by Governor Gwyn Manach and consulted on the possibility of creating an artificial cloud of asteroids about 100,000 astronomical units thick around Far Haven's system, additionally. Governor Gwyn Manach ordered the local administration to investigate the possibility of constructing a Dyson Sphere Colony within the system. Governor Manach was anticipating a necessity for the Gwerin Doeth to recede in the face of overwhelming Human power in the future once the Hollows and their sorcery was defeated the population of the Humans simply dwarfed their own and they proved to be highly adaptable and reports suggested they were co-opting the Hollows' technology for their own use with an allegedly alarming rate of success if the Naval Intelligence Service was close to accurate. The Commonwealth begin cooperating with the myriad governments fighting against the Hollows and jointly they begin secretly working on a variety of biological weapon candidates to be used against the Hollows with the Commonwealth keeping Far Haven's location concealed from their "Allies".
- 25,205 BBY: With a Dyson Refuge and an ort style asteroid cloud surrounding the edge of their adopted system Governor Gwyn Manach orders that all citizens of Far Haven be evacuated and moved to the Dyson Refuge's interior where their civilization could grow quietly in relative peace there were simply too many Gwerin Doeth now within the Zhell Galaxy to organize a several-decade evacuation from Far Haven back to their home Galaxy. Shahn helped the Administration organize the Armiger platforms and had them perform salvage and demolition duties on Far Haven seeking to destroy whatever structures and architecture they simply couldn't take. Meanwhile somewhere inside the core, Macha sadly visits the graves of Halsi and Konig on a Human Colony and on her knees thanks the two warrior-scholars for the lessons they shared promising their epitaphs that the knowledge gleaned from their keen minds would be cataloged, archived and remembered by the Gwerin Doeth. The citizens of Far Haven hold a referendum on political sovereignty and it passes with overwhelming success giving the local colonial government a mandate to seek independence. Governor Gwyn Manach speaks to Queen Mairi and her cabinet via quantum entanglement technology and pushes forward a motion for the Gwerin Doeth colonists inside the Zhell Galaxy to be given political autonomy through the creation of a state arguing successfully for the first time in their species' history that a diaspora of the species should be granted Sovereignty by the Central Government. There was just one catch for the ambitious and idealistic Gwyn Manach; the monarch of the Commonwealth would also be the head of state of this new state with an appointed Viceroy recommended by the Head of Government selected from local suitable candidates to remain and give assent to all legislation. Gwyn feared an invasion in the future should he refuse and accepts those terms and has local solicitors draw up a comprehensive draft constitution covering the division of powers, separation of powers and civil and political rights of the citizen extensively. Gwyn Manach become the first Prime Minister of the "Gweriniaeth Ellylon" or "Ellylon Republic" in Galactic Basic a Federal semi-direct democracy under a multi-party parliamentary constitutional monarchy, Ithlinne Sionnach retired from the Naval Intelligence Service and was appointed on recommendation by Prime Minister Manach to serve as her Majesty's first Viceroy, the de facto head of state for the Republic.
- 25,200 BBY: The Infinite Empire mysteriously collapses after the Hollows are struck down with a pandemic that leaves them cut off from the Either, what role if any the Gwerin Doeth had in these events has been lost to history though the result was that the Infinite Empire's vast hordes of slaves rose up against their masters who now had no control over their own technology and massacred their oppressors. The Hollows receded into obscurity and many Gwerin Doeth rejoiced the Covenant and Government marked the occasion with a public holiday called "Hollows Day" where revelers hosted and attended extravagant parties where the dress of the celebration was decidedly ancient with most women and men wearing clothing and armor designs several hundred thousand years old. The holiday is forever remembered as the day that their Gods' purge was avenged with Covenant ministers attributing the smiting of the Hollows to their Gods' transcendent divine fury. Macha spent the day with Slaine, Midir and Doran the four of them reminiscing about their centuries long journey through the stars talking of the peoples they met and even mourned their Jedi companions who had fallen to their truncated lives with Macha expressing regret that Halsi and Konig could not have lived to seen the ultimate victory of the Hollow slaves over their evil masters. Shahn served the new Ellylon Republic as a member of its' military scientific community helping them with his ancient knowledge to design and implement to challenges faced by the new Ellylon Republic. As a defence against incursions into their new system Shahn set about designing cloaked quantum entanglement beacons that could be constructed on the systems' worlds to teleport Ellylon soldiers and their equipment across the system from inside the "Preservation Sphere" their new designation for Dyson Spheres like Tir na Ellylon. Prime Minister Gwyn Manach's government issues a binding order that no travel or communication beyond Tir na Ellylon shall be lawful except that authorized by the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Thus beginning the Ellylon's long isolation from the rest of the Zhell Galaxy, growing while the Galaxy remained ignorant of why the "Dryad" had vanished spawning rumor, conjecture and legend among the cultures they had come into contact with such as they had gone on an exodus from the Galaxy or that they'd destroyed themselves.
A modest-sized city located within the interior of the Tir na Ellylon Preservation Sphere
The Tuath De within the Zhell Galaxy had bidden their time across several generation waiting for its' constituent species to mature, surprisingly through the ages while the Humans were the Galaxy's most numerous species they had settled into a variety of different political communities and had only been observed uniting a few alarming times throughout the Galaxy's history such as when the Gwerin Doeth with their listening posts on Tir na Ellylon's exterior learned of first a gargantuan Republic which was then succeeded and surpassed by a Human-dominated galaxy-spanning Empire. Now that the a galaxy-wide pandemic and conflict against machines was subsiding and the galaxy's native inhabitants were terraforming planets in significant quantities and even in some cases engaging in stellar engineering, the Ellylon Republic's leadership deemed it appropriate that they steadily send out Government Craft to investigate the Galaxy's current state. Shahn helps the Minister for Defense and Minister for Foreign affairs organize expeditions, however in their isolation the Gwerin Doeth of Tir na Ellylon had grown deeply suspicious of aliens and Human particularly many perceiving the species as a threat to their survival.
EMERGING INTO THE LIGHT (836 ABY-858 ABY)
- 836 ABY: Tir na Ellylon officially opens its' many portals for the Navy's warships which move out into the system and setup a defensive pickett, the system possessed no hyperspace buoy as every time an alien species had attempted to Colonize the system the Ellylon Republic swiftly disintegrated and eradicated the would-be colonists and destroyed every hyperspace buoy or beacon they could find. Civilian Survey and Construction ships were sent into the void of space searching for nearby systems which might be amenable to stellar mining. The Government for the mean time refuse to allow the construction of a hyperspace buoy within the system ensuring that the Ellylon with their unique fold drives could alone navigate to and from their home while the Government cautiously went about developing translation software and educational material for the modern languages they could hear being broadcast throughout the galaxy. Thanks to Shahn and his deep reservoir of knowledge this process is expedited significantly and adults and children alike begin learning the Galaxy's lingua franca of Galactic Basic although many resist the idea of speaking what the Covenant deemed as a "Lesser Tongue" when compared to the species' own beautiful Tuathi or Ellylon. The Ellylon Republic's Prime Minister in this new era as of 836 ABY is Nithral Liath Manach with the Viceroy being a distinguished physician named Cerys Feidlech.
- 844 ABY: Pathfinders and Seers report widely to the community that the Either is in chaotic disarray, with some of the Gwerin Doeth's force sensitive population experiencing vivid visions and nightmares. Pathfinders and Seers begin studying a phenomena whereby among their number claim to visit the land of the either in their dreams. During 844 ABY many Seers and Pathfinders suddenly disappear with witnesses claiming they disappeared into portals, thanks to the Gwerin Doeth's racial tradition of manipulating space/time through the Either most trained individuals return largely unharmed and unchanged however the children who were so taken seldom return from the Either's grip and are presumed lost by the Canton Governments and Federal Government. The Ellylon Republic endured largely due to its' isolation geographically from the rest of the Galaxy, Pathfinders and Seers come together as part of a Government-sponsored research project to investigate the Either's "Sickness" and unpredictable behavior as the Gwerin Doeth in all their long history never experienced such an event as the Netherstorm given their home Galaxy's distance from the Wellspring of the force.
- 848 ABY: The Zhell Galaxy once again looks to be plunged into ignorant war by vermin who cared little for war's impact on worlds' and their environments. the Ellylon Republic's warships continue their patrols throughout Tir na Ellylon's system. Prime Minister Nithral and his cabinet are busy drafting Foldspace protocols for civil and military craft navigating to and from Tir na Ellylon's system, it was made law that any vessel whether military or civil shall make no less than five randomly calculated foldspace jumps before being permitted to plot a course directly to Tir na Ellylon's system in an attempt to conceal its' location breaching the legislation is an indictable offence. With impending expeditions being sent out into the Zhell Galaxy within the next decade. Viceroy Afallac'h Crevan gan Doran Aderyn contacts his Majesty King Fragarach Midir gan Ciaran Ithlinne on Tir na Sith and informs them of the situation and raises the possibility of creating a special-purpose task force of Agents given a Royal Warrant to give them immunity from prosecution with direct oversight from the Prime Minister given a mission statement that involves preserving the Gwerin Commonwealth and Ellylon Republic's stability with potential recruits to be drawn from the active Law Enforcement and Military community. King Fragarach approved of the concept and asked Viceroy Afallac'h to approach Prime Minister Nithral's cabinet about drafting legislation for the creation of such an organisation.
- 849 ABY: Special Tactics & Intelligence Group is created as a law enforcement, espionage and intelligence organization subordinate directly to the Office of the Prime Minister and Viceroy of the Ellylon Republic its' candidates are recruited from the finest active law enforcement and military personnel and successful candidates are expected to pass through background checks, psychological evaluations, and a long period of field training under an experienced mentor. All members of "STIG" receive immunity from prosecution, broad discretionary authority and other supralegal powers enabling them to use any methods to accomplish their task making them effectively above the law with only the Viceroy capable of revoking a member's powers after the Prime Minister or Cabinet has made an allegation of "gross misconduct" and an investigation has been performed. The maximum authorised strength of the Special Tactics & Intelligence Group is set at 100 to keep its' personnel accountable and manageable as the organisation possesses no hierarchy or chain of command each member directly reports to the Prime Minister. The STIG is fully-funded by the Ellylon Republic's Federal Government its' members are provided a generous salary that exceeds most public servants with the notable exception of the Prime Minister. The STIG provides issued equipment, weapons and advanced training being made available to them although unlike other paramilitary and military organizations the STIG are permitted to use non-issued equipment freely. The Ellylon Republic's listening posts and telescopes detected chatter and emissions that suggested a great amount of energy was being expended into activating a weapon. Shahn from the data concluded that somebody within the galaxy was operating a weapon not dissimilar to a Diad, this alarming news prompted an immediate response and the Republic placed all of its' military branches at maximum readiness. The Gendarmerie, Marine Corps, Navy, Army and Air Force were in crisis mode with the Marine Corps and Navy moving their ships brazenly through deep space near the suspected weapon's location, fortunately the Zhell Galaxy's many species appeared to be successful in averting a Catastrophe and the Gwerin Doeth of Tir na Ellylon stood their forces down and returned them home after executing the mandated random jumps. This was the first time the Republic had put their fleet in a position where the risk of sensor contact being made by aliens was a significant risk.
- 851 ABY: Pathfinders and Seers within the community begin reporting "Shadows" descending over parts of the Either's unpredictable tides, though it was not fully known or appreciated by the Ellylon this corresponded with the reformation of the "Sith Empire" under the leadership of Darth Carnifex. The Ellylon Republic's government begin constructing listening posts beyond the Ellylon system in an attempt to better perform surveillance over the Galaxy, additionally the Republic's Naval Intelligence Service commission several Warships equipped with a new model of active camouflage system permitting them to perform a wide variety of intelligence actions. The First of these Warships called "Huntress" ventured deep into the Galaxy's occupied territories over a several year expedition collecting information about the dominant Governments and species within the Galaxy along with examples of their speech. Among the worlds specifically targeted is Corellia, Atrisia and Coruscant which the Ellylon Republic retained records from their last open forays into the Galaxy, harvesting information about their languages and governments. A number of Gwerin Doeth linguists adopt Old Corellian and Atrisian words into the Ellylon lexicon to the chagrin of a number of political conservatives who viewed the Galactic Basic language as a simple language for simple aliens.
- 858 ABY: The Great Galactic War comes to an end and is noted by the Ellylon Republic who carefully watch the balance of political and economic settle. It is at this point that Prime Minister Nithral and Viceroy Afallac'h begin allowing communication to and from Tir na Ellylon and the holonet through the construction of their own Holo relays although they did not permit the construction of Hyperspace buoys to carefully control the flow of alien visitors with their own state-owned transport and freight companies. Gendarmerie Officers were given the responsibility of ensuring security and compliance with the Republic's biosecurity, travel and terrorism legislation, in a move to protect its' ethnic identity and societal cohesion the Republic amended their constitution to prohibit aliens from obtaining Republic Citizenship, additionally the senate then passed legislation making it unlawful to acquire dual citizenship in the interest of preserving their society's ethno-cultural identity now that it was about to explode on the galactic stage. Shahn in a de facto if not de jure acknowledgement of artificial intelligence's value was given operational and administrative command and control over Tir na Ellylon's automated defense platforms and system of portals which controlled sole access from the exterior to the interior and vice versa of the preservation sphere by the Minister for Interior Security. Far Haven is resettled by volunteer colonists who begin rebuilding the world within the Ellylon system, in the hopes that in the future it will be the primary meeting place between the Ellylon and Alien species keen to engage with the ancient elves.
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