WIP

Nation Name: The Terranis Empire

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Government Type: In theory, an absolute monarchy. In practice, increasingly decentralized neo-feudalism.

Capital System/World: Terranis
Dominant Species: Humans
Other Species: Human biosynths, Mekniks (Short canine industrial species, nicknamed "Gremlins"), Mithrans (Subjugated felinoid servant race), Snathi (Subjugated evolved squirrel-esque species), various other conquered alien species.
Leadership: Star Empress Sylina Tyran

Persons of Importance:
Lord Chancellor Valarn- Master of the Empire's economy, and notorious for his tax-farming methods and corruption alongside his economic prowess. Disdainful of war, mostly because he cannot apply his cost-cutting methods to turn a personal profit from it.
"Ishmael" - An ancient noblewoman of the early Empire age, now a cynical observer of its decline and decadence while one of its greatest players.

House Wander: One of the core Houses of the Empire, being custodians of several Pleasure Worlds and vital positions in the Imperial Administration. While unambitious, their connections and administrative positions have resulted in the extended House family possessing considerable political power. That, and they also maintain a lot of nobility's resort palaces.

Military:
The Terranis Navy is a vast and powerful organization, composed of fleets upon fleets of heavy capital ships. The Empire's navies are built upon the premise of shock and awe. If a capital ship's firepower is neccessary in a battle, send a whole battlegroup of capital ships to put the issue down for good. To that end, they have built grand battleships, titanic dreadnoughts, missle-swarm laiden podnaughts, grand battlecruisers, and mobile starbases to wage conquests and war that few other powers could match during the height of its power.

However the Navy is not the all-conquering superpower it once was, in part because it is now so vast and widespread and numerous. Fleets of battleships and dreadnoughts depend on massive amounts of fuel and infrastructure, which makes conquests difficult due to their enemies not possessing the same scale of capital ship infrastructure as the Empire that can be captured and repurposed to fuel campaigning fleets, and the costs of long-range supply chains or building forward supply bases of sufficient scale are unstomachable to the current administration. Under the guise of "consolidation", the Battlefleets have been quietly retasked as defensive forces, and only lighter (and cheaper to maintain) battlecruisers and escorts are used beyond the core and mid-shell worlds. Furthermore, much of the older elements of the fleet are being mothballed or sold off to private noble fleets and planetary organizations to deal with the growing costs of a warmachine that does not conquer.

[hider=Ship Ratings]
Rating System
1st Rate: Dreadnoughts, Strategic Supercarriers, Dreadnought missile-pod layers (Podnaughts), Titans

Superheavy capital starships. 2-4 kilometer craft, often equipped with triple-stacked broadsides of heavy ordinance, entire fleets of small craft, and some of the greatest weaponry and technology the Empire has. The last deployment of the dreadnoughts beyond the core worlds was over 50 years ago, and they are largely a prestige position for the noble admiralty. Only the supercarriers see any real use, and even then precious few times.

2nd Rate: Battleships, Flag Battlecruisers, Fast Battleships, Fleet Carriers

Large capital ships meant to be the core of the battlefleets. 

3rd Rate: Battlecruisers, Escort Carriers
4th Rate: Cruisers, Flight-deck Cruisers
5th Rate: Light Cruisers
6th Rate: Destroyers, Frigates, Corvettes
Escort craft built en masse for a immense array of duties and patrol tasks[/hider]

History:
"Too vast to conquer, too decadent to incite fear, too corrupt to be respected, too old and powerful to be ignored. The ideal state of empire, really."
- [REDACTED], aka [REDACTED], aka "Ishmael"

[hider=History]
The Terranis Empire's origins lie within the nebulous and ill-recorded times of the early Terran Diaspora, where an authoritarian imperialist government rose to power amidst a collection of destitute colonies under siege from the expansionist Meknik Confederacy in a desperate bid to fight back. Yet despite their efforts, the fast-breeding Mekniks and their superior industry resulted in a steady grind of attrition against the human colonies.

The tide was turned ten years into the war by the discovery of a lost colony ship, intended to seed a world with biosynths, an artificially bred and genetically specialized series of subhumans. Yet biosynth designs optimized for colonial engineering and farming could be repurposed for maintaining warships and freeing up support personnel for the frontlines. And biolabs made to produce workers could be reverse-engineered into massive forced-growth plants for entire divisions of biosynthetic soldiers. Implementation of massive numbers of biosynths on the frontlines was the essential turning point of the war. Even then, it would be a slow grind to reclaim lost worlds and take the fight back to the Meknik worlds. 30 years would pass before the Meknik's were finally driven out.

Yet the rising central government would not be content with merely retaking the lost human colonies. In a daring blitzkrieg assault, one of the Meknik supercapital shipyards was captured and turned to produce battleships for the Empire while biosynth production reached massive heights. And the conquest of the Meknik worlds began.

Worlds burned in the Empire's desire for revenge, while the Meknik race were deemed to become a subjugated vassal species under humanity in reparation for its assault on human colonies. Turning the industries and technology of the Meknik's against them while guided by legendary commanders, the Empire soon conquered the Meknik Territories and established itself as a stellar power of the Orion Sector in blood. But it would not stop there.

Border tensions with the Snathi State, who profited from the war and had pirates raid both sides, turned into full blown war that did not last long as Mithran raiders were flattened under thousands-strong battleship fleets. Then the Mithran Corporate Union was the next to find themselves in the crosshairs as the humans lashed out at their exploitive policies towards other human states. Yet while the first conquests were brought about in the name of saving fellow humans, gradually over time the noble leaders of the fleet and Empire were replaced by those with less noble goals as successes grew less important and conquests gradually became more costly than the plunder they returned, and the fleets grew far too large to maintain across increasingly greater distances from their bearths within the Empire.

Gradually, expansionism gave way to consolidation, and consolidation turned to being content with the sizable gains they had. An Empire of a hundred stars, both within and some even beyond the Orion Sector, was to many enough of a prize. A prize worth exploiting to its marrow.

Decadence and corruption set in among the now unconquering empire. While new life was infused at times when outside and internal powers dared attempt to strike at the Empire, they were fleeting remembrances of a past age of heroism and courage. Without true enemies, as the fat and rich empire preferred to settle matters through court intrigue, trade, and weight of bureaucracy to the point where many other stellar powers left it alone, the Empire slowly began to decay in a million cumulative ways.[/hider]

"The Empire is dying. Yet the Empire is eternal. The two conditions are hardly exclusive."
- Ishmael

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