5 - Imperial Politics

As previously mentioned, the Ñezyeki Empire was extraordinarily unstable, and was very bad at managing its holdings. Its ineffective military led to huge losses of territory and colonial holdings, while its extremely centralized government led to bad management of the territory that they had not already lost at the time.

It was a very common sight to see in the news that yet another breakaway state had formed- be it on a planet, a whole planet, multiple, whole systems, even entire groups of stars, and that the Empire had not recognized it as its own governing body. Fighting may occur between imperial and rebel forces, but the outcome is almost entirely dependent on the imperial military’s loyalty, which continued to decline day by day.

The loyalty of the people on Yiphra was often forced, due to imperial rule being strongest there, suppressing any and all dissent in a very authoritarian way. Often, due to how sheerly different the worlds are, alien species may be left alive but confined solely to one or a few planets. Others, on worlds that the Ñezyeki view as habitable, will meet a rather unfortunate fate, either by extermination or being forced to egress straight off of their homeworld and find somewhere new to live. The citizens of the newly colonized world almost always welcome the species back to their original homes, and usually allow them to live together, in exchange for trade and good relations. More recently, other initiatives have been taken to de-yiphraform planets and resurrect species- this has been effective for over 99.8% of the species lost.

Though the Ñezyeki Empire is a fearful force when you hear of what they have done, they are not in practice. None of it matters when you’re ruled by leaders like those of the Yannis dynasty. When the final living heiress, Dresi Yannis, was due to ascend to the throne, they fled immediately, stealing a ship and vanishing into the abyss… and that was the last breath that the once-sprawling empire took, before collapsing in on itself like a dying star.

This would surely not be the case, however, if any of the previous dynasties or parties were in charge. The very first group, a million (Yiphran) years ago, when they first left home, was the Planetary Freedom Front, a (by Earthly standards) communist state which unified Yiphra under no single banner but that of the Ñezyeki. This rule lasted approximately 103,498 Yiphran years, rather obviously encountering numerous rebellions and splinter groups and breakoffs, but finally losing its final territories after such a long time.

An era of chaos followed soon after- nearly 50,000 years of chaos and anarchy, the planet itself being plunged into a mess as well, with the first nations of Yiphra popping up now, thousands of years after space travel was achieved. The concept of borders did not last long, though, as soon enough, a unifying power emerged from the ashes, showing the remnants a beating that could not be outmatched.

The Pangalactic Federated Territories, a coalition of at least twenty solar systems and colonies owned by the Ñezyeki, sought to reclaim Yiphra, and in a final bloody conflict lasting about eighty Yiphran years, eventually succeeded to regain the rightful heart of the species. Peacekeeping went into full swing, representatives from over fifteen sentient species sending in task forces to bring the ashes of Yiphra back to life. Over a period of 500 years known by historians as the First Rebuilding, life was breathed back into the beautiful homeworld of the Ñezyeki, and the Pangalactic Federated Territories continued to expand outwards.

98,336 years later, the Federated Territories underwent the biggest civil war known to Ñezyekikind to this date. The Raaŋul, a strikingly similar-to-the-Ñezyeki draconic species, were fed up with the Territories’ rule over their “rightful empire”, and sought to change that. The bloody conflict lasted over 5,600 years, and ended, by a small margin of a mere planet, with the reformed Ñezyeki Stellar Coalition winning the war, with the agreement of the release of the Raaŋul as a peoples-governed state under the Coalition. Ushering in a new era of peace, expansion through the galaxy continued for over 350,000 years, bringing in never-before-seen levels of diversity and freedom within the state, allowing colonists, worlds, and entire systems to do as they please, with their only condition being loyalty to the state in times of conflict- functionally, like the HRE of our own world, but with more trust involved. And they were right to imbue this trust into the vast galactic state, for the day did come that a unified effort was required. Extragalactic invaders, never revealing their names to those which they attempted to subjugate, entered through a gateway of pure energy, beginning to glass every single sentient-colonized planet in its wake. Taking the force of every species, every planet, and every person in the galaxy that could be rallied, quadrillions of people from every walk of life in every part of the galaxy died for the cause of saving the rest. After a period of over 85,800 years, over 2.2 quintillion deaths from the destruction of planets and loss of manpower combined, the galaxy was left decimated, yet still alive.

The following millenia came as a time of rebirth, and revamps, fixing the old and bringing in the new- countless species from countless worlds were lost during this era of crisis, and yet, there was still a way to reclaim these planets. Terraforming operations from the numerous species in the galaxy began reshaping the glassed planets to their old selves, resettling them and rebuilding the once-great worlds of the galaxy. 330,410 years later, the Second Rebuilding was finally complete. The galaxy’s population had been enriched with never-before-seen species, some coming from other galaxies entirely, some being created, and some even naturally reaching their own space ages, the quintillions of lives lost finally being outweighed by the new life breathed into the galaxy. Having now spread across the void to its neighbors, the species of the galaxy finally began to realize that they were not, in fact, as different from each other as they figured they would be.

All of this was for nothing, however, when the monarchy began to be put in place. Though the initial dynasties did continue the legacy of the old state, things began to drift away. Hold over the colonies began to tighten, distrust began to grow, politics began to radicalize, and things began to fracture. The Yannises were the final wedge in the stone, before everything came apart, back to the way things should be- disunified, but truly free once more.