Imperium of Cerlus

"Advance, The Victorious Army/Long Live The Emperor/Through The Stars We Fly/Our Noble Flag" - excerpt from the national anthem of the Empire
The Imperium of Cerlus is the largest and most economically, militarily, and politically powerful nation in the entirety of the Cerlus Cluster. Controlling a territory of over a thousand stars, the Imperium is one of the only nations in the cluster to have acquired FTL technologies.
Originally comprising of just the Bontarardi and Akurispecies, as the empire expanded it subjugated and absorbed three other species; the Fedrastia, theJekari and the Hadran. The Akuri were wiped out during The Shameful Years
== History ==
Like most nations of the Cerlus Cluster, the Imperium uses the "Standard Era" dating system. See, Cerlusian Standard Era.
=== Beginnings ===
The very beginnings of the Imperium can be traced back to the moment when the still tribal Bontarardi and Akuri split, becoming wildly aggressive towards each other. For thousands of years, these two groups stayed separate, eventually forgetting about one another. However, the Akuri temperamentality and the Bontarardi xenophobia only began to heighten as the two groups occasionally clashed. Finally, fourteen thousand years ago, the two groups clashed in open warfare following Akuri escalation of a dispute over territory. This spurred the race for technology, culminating in the complete revolution of culture and society. Within only two hundred years, the two groups had developed from a tribal, semi hunter-gatherer existence to kingdoms and empires covering vast swaths of the planet. In this period of history, lasting around five hundred years and marked with the blood of billions, hundreds of empires and kingdoms fought for territory until two powers remained - one representing the Akuri, and the other representing the Bontarardi. A long cold war followed, lasting for another two hundred years until the Akuri invented steam power, and, keeping it a secret from the Bontarardi, industrialized their entire nation. Finally, they had the advantage. The war lasted sixty-two years, but the Akuri prevailed and dominated Afarr for the second time in their history, the other being to long-forgotten time when the Akuri where the only sentients on the planet. 
=== Akuri Domination ===
What followed is now known as the Blood Years, as the Akuri committed mass genocide on a scale never seen before. 99% of Bontarardi were eliminated, and the remaining millions were treated as little more than animals. As the Akuri nation further industrialized and began to invent nuclear power and the first tentative steps to space travel. The Bontarardi, suffering under the oppressive breeding and labor practices, could do nothing but watch as their masters dreamt of the stars, as they were forced to conceive and labor, and conceive again without any thoughts of their wants and wishes. Through this, the Bontarardi species was genetically manipulated to become something more than they were.
After a hundred and twenty years of this, the Bontarardi snapped. With roughly equal numbers as their masters, the Bontarardi rose up and fought a bloody nuclear war with their masters over the planet. In the end, after the death of five billion Bontarardi and Akuri, the Bontarardi rose up and claimed their place as the masters of Afarr. And so began The Shameful Years.
=== The Shameful Years ===
The Bontarardi, finally in a position of power over the Akuri, unleashed their most primal instincts and slaughtered them in the deadliest campaign of genocide the Cerlus Cluster has seen on a primitive scale. Akuri were rounded up into town squares and shot, while Bontaradi partied and disrespected the bodies of their former masters in all manner of ways. Rape, torture and mutilation were the defining words of the Shameful Years. After two years, 99.9% of the Akuri were dead, and out of the remaining 0.1% the vast majority were infertile due to all manner of abuse. The Bontarardi, whoever, did not have a moral epiphany, and proceeded to forcefully sterilize the remaining fertile Akuri. Within twenty years of the end of the Blood Years, the Akuri were extinct.
Following the nuclear war that ended the Akuri's domination, nuclear winter set in and a vast mass extinction took place among the biosphere of Afarr. As the Shameful Years unfolded, the nuclear winter only got worse. In the dying months of the Akuri, civilization totally collapsed. In the aftermath of the Shameful Years, the Bontarardi regressed into total savagery returning Afarr to what it looked like 800 years ago, with kingdoms and empires ruling the barren, radioactive land.
=== A New Dark Age ===
The Dark Ages lasted for twelve thousand years, an abnormally long time for a nuclear regression. Little can be said about it, apart from the billions that died from pure savagery. Numerous empires rose to conquer Afarr, but only one held it.
=== Rebuilding their Civilization ===
Out of those Dark Ages the Imperium of Afarr rose to power. The unification of Afarr with the fall of the last independent state marks the end of the Dark Ages. Soon, technology began to be used once again, and the Imperium rose in power and wealth. 
After three hundred years of growth, the Imperium finally broke the barrier and rose to space, colonizing most of the Erula System. Soon afterwards, they discovered an anomaly in the nearby star of Ponimula. They began a project to reach the star, and within a decade, the ship was underway.
Known as the Nu'kalash, the ship arrived at Ponimula and found an abandoned Alderson Disk. On that disk, the discovered the most pivotal device in their races history - the Alcubierre Drive. With this device, the Bontarardi began missions to other star systems.
=== Civil War ===
However, not everyone was happy with the Drive. A devout religious faction believed that the Drive was a temptation from evil, and should be destroyed. They attempted a coup, and almost succeeded, resulting in a massive civil war that occupied the entirety of the Imperium for two decades. After the ending of the war, the Imperium formally recognized that it was no longer just Afarran, and proclaimed the Imperium of Cerlus.
=== Exodus ===
This was the golden age of the Imperium, entering a period of extreme wealth and prosperity as it subjugated three others species, as well as well over a hundred worlds in what would be known as the Campaign for Supremacy. During this team, even with the near-endless wars occurring, the Imperium still found time to not only colonize, but terraform and industrialise entire worlds. At the conclusion of the Campaign, the Imperium comprised of just over two hundred habitable - and inhabited - worlds, plus well over five thousand smaller settlements and colonies spread through eight hundred systems. In the following century, the rate of expansion slowed, and finally the Imperium met other forces which held their own against it. Currently, the Imperium of Cerlus holds dominion over 1293 star systems, 482 terraformed worlds, 12 932 settlements and smaller planetary governments, and approaching a billion smaller habitats throughout the Imperial Volume. It has not expanded majorly in over fifty years, and is currently exhibiting signs of senescence, or decay, as the radicals like to call it. 
== Astrogeography ==
The Imperium covers 1293 stars, centered around the Core Systems of Erula, Ponimula, Tulkan, Desforn and Cadi. These five stars house over half of the nation's population. Smaller, high-autonomy areas have been designated surrounding the homeworlds of the conquered species, a shadow of the former nations that ruled over these spheres. Such worlds include Yr'rlan, the homeworld of the Fedrastia, Galkor, the homeworld of the Hadran, and Tapori, the homeworld of the Jekari. Outside of the Autonomous Spheres, as they are called, the population is scarce. Colonization has not been heavily undergone, and the average population per system is just over twenty million. The exception to this rule is Olikori, of the Kankor System. A rare world, it was naturally habitable to the Bontarardi species, and was heavily industrialized and exploited until it's biosphere collapsed. Today the world is almost uninhabitable, and the population steadily shrinking. At it's peak, Olikori rivaled the core worlds in power and prosperity and almost broke away from the Imperium, only to be defeated by Imperial forces last minute. 
== Culture ==
The Imperium's culture is mostly decided by what world or what species you are around. The Core Worlds are extremely xenophobic and authoritarian, with everyday life controlled dramatically for even regular Bontarardi, while the "lesser races" need a permit to even walk outside for longer than their allotted time. Police brutality is rampant, and cullings of entire neighborhoods are not uncommon. 
Meanwhile, in the Autonomous Spheres, the culture is dictated by the conquered species. In the Fedrastia Autonomous Sphere, the prevalent feelings are of consumerism and excess. An extreme capitalist society, the Federated Sovereign States of Yr'rlan almost destroyed Yr'rlan's ecosystem with their rampant consumerist habits before their nation was conquered, vassalized, and subsumed into the Empire. The war was short, but deadly. Both sides suffered heavy losses, but only after the Imperium brought in massive forces to conquer the nation did the FSSY surrender. Out of respect for their adversaries and the similarities between Bontarardi and Fedrastia culture, the Emperor granted their entire species second-class citizenship, the only species ever to have been granted such an honour in the history of the Empire. 
At the same time, the Hadrani Autonomous Sphere is almost the complete opposite. The Hadran had formed a semi-communist society with no form of currency whatsoever. Instead, the Commongood of Hadrani looked after all it's denizens equally, administered by a AI. During the Campaign for Supremacy the Commongood was completely annihilated and the AI destroyed. The Hadran bowed down quickly to the Imperium, and were given the least harsh treaty terms. Inside of the Hadrani Autonomous Sphere, they were allowed to keep their communist government, except administered by Bontarardi instead of an AI. The Hadrani people were, and still are, and oppressed group, only allowed to take part in rudimentary Bontarardi society and culture. They were granted third-class citizenship, made to serve and maintain the Empire's war machine. 
The final Automonous Sphere, the Jekari Autonomous Sphere, was almost completely alien to the Bontarardi. The Jekari had composed a society of almost constant chemical bliss, with each and every member almost always high on some sort of drug or hallucinogen. AI and robots ran their society, keeping the Jekari in a state of pampered bliss. When the Jekari Society came into contact with the Imperium, a massive war ensued that lasted for the majority of the Campaign for Supremacy. For a large portion of the time, the Bontarardi believed that they were actually fighting an AI civilization, until they captured live Jekari whom they interrogated and discovered that they actually had no knowledge of ANYTHING. The Imperium eventually annihilated the AI, and enslaved the Jekari as a twisted form of punishment for their "laziness and lack of ambition and order." Only recently have the Jekari been released from slavery, and have been allowed to resettle their homeworld of Tapori, which is in a state of nuclear winter from the massive devastation wrought by the war. At the same time, the Jekari were granted third-class citizenship, after centuries of being considered little more than flora and fauna. 
== Population ==
The Imperium is a developing nation, sustaining less than half of it's population above the poverty line. Of the 9.4 trillion sentients that reside within it's borders, only 41 trillion classify as not impoverished. Only 1.2 trillion actually count as well off, and of that only 1.2 billion have a decadent lifestyle, as classified by the Cerlus Living Standards and Poverty Board. As such, the Imperium is widely regarded as one of the worst if not the worst nation to live in, because of it's inability to support is people AND the rigid authoritarian and autocratic extreme right-wing politics. 
Of those 9.4 trillion, 5.9 trillion reside in the core worlds in the following distribution: Afarr - 1.23 trillion, Cache of the Ancients - 89 billion, Has Cavada - 985 billion, Fedna - 813 billion, Haki - 1.04 trillion, Yeranla-Coori - 623 billion. The remaining 1.12 trillion reside in habitats, kilostructures and deep space stations floating in between the stars. 
The 3.5 trillion sentients that do not live in the core are more or less equally distributed between Yr'rlan, Galkor, Tapori, Olikori and their respective Autonomous Spheres, with a tiny minority living in peripheral star systems. 
== Major Worlds ==
NAME 	IMAGE	SYSTEM	POPULATION	DOMINANT SPECIES
Afarr 	 	 	 	
Sekoa 	 	 	 	
Montor 	 	 	 	
Cache of the Ancients	 	 	 	
Has Cavada 	 	 	 	
Fedna 	 	 	 	
Haki 	 	 	 	
Yeranla-Coori 	 	 	 	
Yr'rlan 	 	 	 	
Galkor 	 	 	 	
Tapori 	 	 	 	
Olikori 	 	 	 	
== Military History ==
=== Pre-FTL ===
Over the course of the nation's history, the Imperium has more-or-less been centered around war. Ever since the original discovery of the Alcubierre Drive and subsequent explosion of colonization, the Imperium's First Contact policy has always been to attack and subjugate. Even before the colonization of Cache of the Ancients, the Imperium was always at war with some minor nation or reclusive faction vying for independence and sovereignty. Though Afarr was truly united at the end of the Dark Ages, certain regions have always resisted Imperial rule and have been fighting a guerrilla campaign for independence for well over five hundred years now. 
=== Campaign for Supremacy ===
Approximately 310 years after the establishment of the Imperium of Afarr, the precursor state to the Empire, the Campaign for Supremacy began. Comprising of a multitude of military operations and wars, the Campaign lasted for 254 years, officially beginning with the deceleration of war on the Federated Sovereign States of Yr'rlan, just three weeks after their first contact and establishment of relations, and ending with the defeat at the Battle of Carcal and the ending of the Second Confederate-Imperial War. 
The wars and military operations that comprise the Campaign are, in order: First Bontarardi-Fedrastia Subjugation War (white peace), Second Bontarardi-Fedrastia Subjugation War (complete victory), First Bontarardi-Hadrani Conquest (major victory), Bontarardi-Jekari Subjugation War (complete victory), Second Bontarardi-Hadrani Conquest (complete victory), First Confederate-Imperial War (minor defeat), First Alkete-Imperial Conquest (minor victory), Second Confederate-Imperial War (moderate defeat).
After the failed campaigns against The Confederacy, the Empire's economy entered a steady decline and moral was low. Large regions were rising up in protest against the government's repressive tendencies, taking all of the Imperial Fleet to deal with. The nation entered an economy collapse that is only just managing to claw it's way out of. It was at this time that Olikori emerged as a major world and fought it's independence war, only just being defeated by the crippled Imperial forces. 
=== Modern Day ===
The modern Imperium has not engaged in any wars of any kind in over sixty years, and has not conquered or gained any new territory in over a hundred. It is safe to say that the economy will not allow for any major conquests such as those seen during the Campaign in the near future, and, as such, most pessimists are predicting the downfall of the Imperium within the century. Power-hungry rivals and opportunistic neighbors, coupled with a the unruly populace and the stagnating government are sending the nation into a downward spiral, which even the biggest optimists are viewing grimly. 
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