Falacian Dominion

The Falacian Dominion is the second largest state of the Ervo Sector after the Verdan Federation, found on the borders of the Vernarca Nebula around the planet Darossa. The Dominion is the current primary state of the Falaci species, although how long it will remain so is in question. 
The Falacian Dominion has fostered a generally violent culture, and the fall of House Kor'ann from the Ruby Throne has resulted in a long period of political instability. Many nations took advantage of this instability to secede, creating the Krask Hegemony and the United Planets, as well as the current Verdan Federation member states of United Earen and the Republic of Avor. The Verdan Federation's support of the latter two's independence led to the Dominion's withdrawal from the Yazera Pact and the beginning of the Falacian Cold War. Relations with other Ervo Sector powers were only renormalized shortly before the beginning of the War of the Broken Bow. 
== History ==
=== Birthed from the Flames ===
Before the time of the Dominion, a number of Falacian states were scattered through the stars surrounding Darossa. The homeworld itself had receded from political relevance since several centuries prior, controlled by the tiny fiefdom of House Oda and lacking any real political power. However, this all changed when House Kem'tas began a campaign to unify the species, believing that the Falaci would be stronger if they stood together.
Ragor, leader of House Kem'tas at the time, declared the new Falacian Dominion in 439 BC after the houses Kor'ann and Hayusa joined her in this crusade. Within three years, he had swiftly brought most of the other houses into the fold, but House Oda still somehow held on, keeping control of the homeworld from the new Dominion, supported by a completely unknown source. Electing instead to surround the Vothan System before the final march to reclaim the homeworld, Ragor attacked House Pelasa, his main rival. The impressive battle of Atrate ended in a draw, with much of both fleets being destroyed by each other and environmental factors. The feud with House Pelasa was ended by an efra, a ceremonial duel, between Regor and Saikan, House Pelasa's leader. The efra also ended in a draw, but Regor's use of strategy in the efra to compensate for her smaller physical stature finally impressed Saikan enough for him to call off the feud and join the Dominion. 
At exactly the same time, House Oda folded. This tells modern historians that the mysterious support that the house was receiving in its defense of the Vothan System was likely coming from House Pelasa, and Saikan's joining of the Dominion resulted in this support being withdrawn. 
===Stars Drenched in Blood===
The newly consolidated Dominion covered roughly 40 percent of the territory that it does now, let alone its height before the Tyran War. To attain this height of power, it had to conquer. The first target was the ocean world of Neeia in the Tirea System, its waters home to the comparatively primitive Pahvo species. The Pahvo put up quite a fight for the technological levels they had, but the species' not-even-unified populace had no realistic chance against Regor's famously bloodthirsty general Kraios. She destroyed any military opposition and began to shell the brood-houses of the Pahvo as some sick punishment for their defiance against their "rightful rulers".
While this sort of treatment would become the norm even less than a hundred years later, Kraios was convicted before a war crimes tribunal and executed for genocide. After this, Regor quickly found herself disillusioned with the idea of infinite expansion, warned her successors against it, and retired to a farm in southern Darossa to raise children. 
Predictably, her successors did not listen. Over the next century, the nation slowly expanded into territory once claimed as resource extraction grounds by the heavily centralized Pahvo. While Kraios' genocide was seen as despicable at the time, it certainly did provide the Dominion with a lot less resistance in claiming their former territory. In the mid 300s CE, the Dominion would soon begin to probe the dense clouds of Keuramaske's Labyrinth, trying and failing to find a way through the nebula and finding only two reliable paths into it. 
In 341 CE, the Dominion began to encounter the Krask Confederation, a proud nation deeply committed to pacifism and a strict reading of their Great Law of Peace. This made Goral, last ruler of House Kem'tas, view them as weaklings occupying valuable territory that could be used to serve trillions of worthy Falacian citizens.
Fortunately for Goral, the Krask campaign was exactly as easy as he thought it would be, as the 400-year-old, unprepared, and politically calcifying Confederation was instantly steamrolled by the powerful Falacian fleet. Unfortunately for Goral, he died during this campaign, and he never declared an heir for his House. This led to a miniature succession crisis, during which House Hayusa took advantage of the chaos to swipe control of the larger Dominion from the house along with much of their holdings. After the crisis resolved, House Kem'tas was reduced to but a husk of its former glory, holding onto a single planet in their system.
Mizar, the first Hayusa Emperor, pushed the Krask campaign so much harder than his predecessor that it ended in less than a year with the complete orbital bombardment of Tekarani and the scattering of the Krask across Dominion territory. This began the Krask Diaspora, a time period in which the Krask were forced to wander the galaxy searching for a place that would accept them as they were. 
===The Rising Dawn of War===
The later Hayusa emperors managed to maintain a sense of unity by the skin of their teeth, by constantly framing some other nation as an enemy that must be defeated for the good of the Dominion. First was the already vulnerable Krask diaspora, much of which lived in the Dominion itself. Emperor A'alai declared them to be "leeches", taking away valuable resources from the upstanding citizens of the Falacian Dominion. 
A'alai also ordered the beginning of the Siege of Earen, which he expected to take less than a year because of its ostensibly primitive technology. Earen was the center of a budding interplanetary nation in the Lekna System, and A'alai assumed that they would be an easy target for his people's ire. This was a mistake, as it was quickly revealed that the Ealai were fully prepared for their warlike neighbors, and had even been observing them with powerful telescopes hidden in the Limit Cloud. 
While the outer colonies fell quickly, Earen itself was a much tougher nut to crack. The military put little to no effort in their defense, simply evacuating most of their population to the homeworld beforehand. This led A'alai into a false sense of security, ordering some of the military off of the invasion and assuming that the homeworld would just as much of a pushover. 
If saying it would only make it so. The Siege of Earen lasted until the end of his life, and his dying wish was for the planet's fall. After A'alai's death, a string of successors followed him, each lasting less than a decade before being assassinated by the Vedran Guard for sheer incompetence. This process pushed House Hayusa completely off the Ruby Throne, and the Guard hand-picked Kam'pek of house Kor'ann to succeed them. 
===Pride Goeth Before the Fall===
The first Kor'ann emperors were harsh taskmasters, with Emperor Kam'pek brutally cracking down on several small-scale rebellions and instituting the Rite of Decimation, which meant the deaths of one out of every ten people in every city which participated in a rebellion. Everyone who personally fought on the wrong side were of course executed as well, but this level of brutality was unheard of before or since. Ksiro colony, on the far outskirts of Dominion territory at the time, rose in rebellion and was the first to receive this crushing punishment, losing over fifteen million people.
A disastrous first contact with the Tyran Empire occurred under Kam'pek's reign, a political dispute devolving into an epic fight over the Haras System taking place over a span of years. Superluminal cannon flashed across the gulf between planets, starships warping out of the way just before impact. The critical turning point in the War of Twin Worlds came at Shasu, a miniscule moon teetering on the edge of being a large asteroid. Buried deep inside it was a largely self-sufficient beachhead built by the Tyran fleets, which contained a nanofactory which effectively printed out new starships fast enough to replace those lost to Falacian offensives, completely negating the blockade of the system the Emperor ordered. While the Shasu base was under the control of the enemy, the war would only ever be a stalemate. To solve this little problem and give the largest such factory in the system to the Dominion, General Sadar of the Seventh Order ordered the infiltration of the base with a combination of spies already in place and judicious misuse of the atmosphere system. With the abrupt end of reinforcements, the Tyran fleet was swiftly removed from the system over the next week. 
None of Kam'pek's successors had to deal with quite as much as he did. Sure, they all stamped down their own lists of rebellions, or expanded the territory of the Dominion, but none of them reached the history books as much as their predecessor did. Such was the way of the Falacian Great House. The first of the name did great things, and their children failed to live up to them until someone else rolled up to knock them off their pedestal. 
===In the Mirror of Darkness===
== Government ==
The Falacian Dominion's government, if it can actually be said to have one, is a semi-feudal elite democracy with a large selection of noble houses holding territory across the Dominion. The current leading house is always the one who holds the fiefdom of Darossa, the Falacian homeworld and seat of government, and each house runs the empire differently. House Kem'tas ran it as an absolute monarchy in its day. House Kor'ann ran it as an elite democracy. Houses Hayusa and Pelasa, the two longest lasting houses after House Kor'ann's extinction, both elected to enlist the support of the common people, but they were both overthrown once again before this had time to bear fruit. 
== Society & Culture ==
Across the remaining Falacian Dominion, most members of the society are expected to have excellence in the arts of violence, ranging from brawling to careful tactics. Many problems are settled by an efra, a nonlethal duel fought with special ceremonial swords. The feudal nature of Falacian society results in a severe stratification of society, with the lower classes having fewer legal rights and little possibility of recourse against their "betters". As such, most of the population has little opportunity to affect the political state of the nation.
=== Foreign Relations ===
The Falacian Dominion impressively has no good relations with any of its immediate neighbors. After the Verdan Federation vocally supported several secession movements in 79 AC, the Dominion withdrew from the Yazera Pact, citing the belief that the other nations of the pact were attempting to undermine their sovereignty and control. Two of those secessional states later joined the Federation, worsening their opinion of them. The Dominion has long had designs on the Varaltin-Zartha System, but the Tyran Free State's staunch support and protection of the Federate means that the two nations have a very frosty relationship.
The Krask Hegemony and United Planets are two more breakaway states. The Hegemony is small enough and its territory worthless enough that the current government simply does not care, and the United Planets are strong and entrenched enough in their territory that any attempt to reclaim them would be a long, bloody failure. 
In 141-149 AC, the Falacian Dominion fought alongside the Yazera Pact in the War of the Broken Bow due to predictions that mounting hostilities from the Void in the distant Hinthorn Sector would spill through the Szalana Wormhole and threaten the Ervo Sector powers. Today, the nation is much farther away from all-out war with the Federation and the rest of the Yazera Pact, but relations are still not as cordial as they were during the Tyran War.
== Astrography ==
The Falacian Dominion is a very large nation found coreward of the Verdan Federation and spinward of the Vernarca Nebula, spread over a great number of stars. The nation is split into a number of territories, each controlled by one of the feudal houses of the Dominion. The house that controls Darossa is officially the rule of the entire Dominion, but no single house has held this for longer than a year since the fall of House Kor'ann after the Tyran War. 
Dominion Territory, among its many stars, is home to a number of other interesting features, including the dense, dangerous, and very difficult to navigate Keuramaske's Labyrinth, where the Verdan Federation ship Kareland was lost in 124 AC after being captured in a Falacian raid. 
===Star Systems===
*Akivara System
*Alsanter System
*Anjai System
*Atrate System
*Borudeng System
*Densio System
*Drisuna System
*Ebaq System
*Firias System
*Haras System
*Ivor System
*Ix System
*Kyana System
*Manark System
*Metushol System
*Pelashin System
*Salkar System
*Tirea System
*Utola System
*Vothan System
=== Neighboring Powers ===
Rimward of the Dominion's territory can be found the Verdan Federation, a massive confederation of species formed during the Tyran War which the Falacian Dominion also participated in. Two of the bordering provinces in fact seceded from the Dominion during its current period of political instability, before voluntarily joining the Federation. Spinward lies the pacifist Krask Hegemony, another breakaway state whose territory is so desolate and the Dominion so chaotic that no one cares enough to reconquer. Coreward of the Krask is the United Planets, a unified alliance of several systems which similarly broke away from the Dominion, and rimward and antispinward lies the Tyran Free State and the tiny Federate of Varaltin-Zartha. 
=== Capital ===
The homeworld of the Falaci species, Darossa is a cold, marginally habitable moon in the Vothan System. It orbits the tranquil gas dwarf of Engkaran far beyond what should be the habitable zone, but the volcanic and geological activity stimulated by tidal forces from its parent planet warmed the moon just enough to save it from complete uninhabitability. As the Falaci spread across the stars, Darossa itself spent long periods of time languishing in obscurity under the fief of a minor house, with the other, often more powerful houses being near-completely independent and controlling much more habitable regions of space. 
Today, Darossa has been left in its historic state out of respect for its spiritual status as "the forge of the Falaci's strength", with terraforming efforts directed to new planets. Despite this, there is an impressive population across the planet's marginally habitable equatorial region as well as the pockets of habitability surrounding tidally stimulated polar volcanoes. The planet's orbit is also filled with a number of orbital habitats.
=== Major Worlds ===
 	 	 	
 	Darossa 	Haletrin 	Rayato
 	 	 	
Location 	Vothan System/Engkaran	Densio System	Haras System/Elarus
 	 	 	
 	 	 	
Population 	2.77 trillion 	6.1 trillion 	4.4 trillion
 	 	 	
 	 	 	
Unique Attributes:	 	 	
 	 	 	
 	Klast 	Neeia 	Annoro
 	 	 	
Location 	Akivara System	Tirea System	Salkar System
 	 	 	
 	 	 	
Population 	2.8 trillion 	1.6 trillion	5.1 trillion
 	 	 	
 	 	 	
Unique Attributes:	 	 	
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