Screk Empire

The Screk Empire is perhaps one of, if not the oldest, known interstellar nations in the whole Milky Way, one that predates even the ancient polities such as the Vran, the Ti-Zru and the Baanthurians. As a technologically superior, albeit waning power, the Screk Empire was once the most advanced and powerful nation in the Milky Way in the distant past, ruling over a significant portion of the Milky Way galaxy during the height of their power.

However, the unexpected mishap that occured during their experimentation on wormhole technology saw the Unbidden invade the galaxy, subsequently leading to the devastating Unbidden-Screk War that led to their slow, terminal decline. The extensive damage inflicted on its hyperlane network, along with the subsequent conflict against the once-emergent Vran, Ti-Zru and Baanthurian nations further exacerbated their decline, transforming the once mighty empire into an inward isolationist state, a mere shadow of their long-forgotten glory.

The Screk Empire was eventually conquered and annexed by the Confederate Republics of Antares, during the latter's crusade against the Empire and its client state, the United Terran Protectorates.

## History

### Prehistoric Screk Empire

Any record pertaining to the founding of what would be the Screk Empire along with its distant past had been lost a long time ago, yet much of the logs of history and society prior to their first downfall are extraordinarily accurate and highly detailed.

In contrast to their modern reputation, the ancient Screk people were well known for their compassionate and selfless behavior. The prehistoric Screk polity formed what could be regarded today as the center of the prehistoric galactic community. As the most powerful and advanced race in the galaxy, they were highly respected for their willingness to, among other things, offer their advanced technology to the lesser races, technologically uplifting various species, and providing protection to the weaker polities at that time. They were pacifistic and diplomatic by character, evident by their tendency to avoid taking part in conflicts perpetrated by the lesser polities while simultaneously offering themselves as a reliable neutral mediator to end those conflicts.

The Screk are notable for having built the Gateway Network, a large system of gates scattered across the Galaxy, binding together systems that would otherwise be thousands of light years apart. Eventually, the Screk Empire began working on an interstellar transportation known as the Wormhole nexus, a system which had it been finished, would have made the Hyperlane Network obsolete and bring a new era of peace and discovery with renewed access to most, if not all stars in the Galaxy.

### Arrival of the Unbidden

After decades of work and dozens of tests in the Wormhole nexus, a large dimensional tear in reality opened in a Nexus testing site. Hundreds of stellar objects, planets, and stars passed through the rift before it stabilized, and from it, arrived thousands of powerful beings made of pure energy. They consumed all in their path, draining star systems of all life before moving onto the Next.

The Screk mobilized their large fleets and armadas towards the so-called 'Unbidden'. What followed was a century-long war between the relentless extradimensional invaders, the Screk, and whatever empires remained from the onslaught. Their less-advanced allies were subsequently rendered expendable, as they employed disastrous means of encasing worlds of former allies to occupy the Unbidden and, when all else failed, resorted to slave armies drawn from their once-respected allies to protect their own race.

Finally, derived from the old Wormhole technology that had brought the Unbidden to the Galaxy in the first place, the Screk detonated several super-weapons across the galaxy, and the rift was closed. Their pyrrhic victory earned from this war was catastrophic; Trillions were lost, hundreds of planets lost, and the Hyperlane Network all but collapsed. Failed attempts at restoring FTL travel resulted in fleets getting either lost or destroyed.

### Post-Unbidden Period

By the time the Screk ventured into space once again, they had become a cruel, despotic and unsympathetic race, following the centuries of hardship they had went through. Their once complex governmental system became scattered groups of administrators and bureaucrats, who took the burden and hardships of guiding the remains of their declined civilization. An amount of central authority rested on the hands of the Archivists, however this group had become extremely insular, often senselessly giving directives to long-lost worlds and demands on civilizations already collapsed.

The Screk Empire later came to discover new civilizations, less affected by the failure of the Hyperlane Network, had laid claim to many systems of the galaxy during their abscense. The disorganized Empire fought fierce wars against these new rivals, only to result in humiliating armistices in each conflict. With these blows to their national pride, the Screk began turning more and more inwards, to the point of only holding few worlds of their own. The Screk dedicated themselves to hoarding the ancient knowledge of their civilization and society, and guarding the millenia-old archives. This cycle caused their Empire to rot even further, with even much of their own knowledge and technology remaining incomprehensible to them.

As time went on, the Screk grew obsessed with the idea of alternate realities and dimensions, developing a system on one of their worlds capable of seeing into those dimensions. They watched thousands of realities, some were indistinguishable from their own, while others were completely unrecognizable. In one of these realities, the Screk witnessed a race much like their own, yet entirely different in goal. They saw bloody conflicts, victorious fleets and violent acts of vengeance. The Screk gazed upon the destruction of a world, and the domination of a galaxy beneath the eyes of a triangular emblem, one which resisted the Unbidden, and drove them back. To this vast empire they saw (which, as it turn out, was actually the Greater Terran Union from the aforementioned dimension), the threats they faced were merely an inconvenience.

The Screk later came to realize the species destined to create this empire existed in their own reality, as a disunited primitive civilization located on Earth. The Screk took the opportunity to control the raw power of Humanity they saw in the alternate reality, and subsequently launched an invasion on Earth. Nevertheless, The United Terran Protectorates that formed in the wake of this invasion were nothing but a pale imitation, in an attempt at twisting Human destiny to their desire.

### UTP and the Confederacy

The Screk ordered the UTP to embark on campaigns of conquest across the Galaxy, and with the advanced technology of their overlords, Humanity conquered dozens of worlds and races. While most nations of the Galaxy weren't able to directly face against the might of the Terrans and the Screk, resistance and opposition to their conquests came from an unexpected source at the other side of the Galaxy: the Confederate Republics of Antares. While first dismissed by the Screk as another empire in the wider Galaxy, Antares later grew to become a formidable power, even at one point capable of rivaling the Screk themselves.

The Screk were shocked to see that Antares had not only endured, but thrived in the Miasma, a location they had previously considered uninhabitable. The Screk believed a free Human Nation could not be allowed to exist, and that they must be kept under control. Attempts were made to further weaken the Antares Confederacy, from covertly weakening their neighbor, the Cloister of the Spirits, and sparking a war between the Cloister and the Confederacy, to even demanding the Antares government to give up all of their territories save from the Antares system itself under the threat of extermination.

But by the time the Screk ordered the extermination of the Confederacy, it was too late; the Antares Confederate forces preemptively attacked both the Screk empire and its Terran puppet state during the Great Screk Crusade. The direct attack on their homeworlds caught the Screck off-guard, as it was always assumed that the UTP territories would be attacked first. The blitzkrieg saw its sole centralized authority in the form of the Archivists collapse following their mass-suicide.

With its core systems under siege, many Screk fled to the Protectorates and had been granted refuge, only to be subsequently betrayed and murdered by the newly-established Greater Terran Empire. By the time the Confederate forces landed on the Font of Knowledge, the empire itself had devolved into the shattered remnants of warlords clinging to whatever was left of the forces they had, and the subsequent occupation over its entire core territories marked the end of this ancient galactic power.

## Government

The prehistoric Screk Empire was thought to resemble that of a monarchical system, with the Autarch serving as its leader presiding over a number of ancient dynasties. However, the devastation wrought by the war against the Unbidden along with their over-reliance on automated system had led to the extremely confused, disorganized, and decentralized form of governance under the collective rule of the leadership caste, which essentially divided what remained of the Screk realm into several feudal sub-empires where informal agreements with one another was the norm.

Out of the many institutions that survived the post-Unbidden decline, only the Archivists had been able to retain what little centralized authority it had, which remained on the world of The Archives as the de-facto capital. However, this ancient group had become so insular that its directives were often incomprehensible, and they were generally unwilling to disclose the true rationale behind their directives to the wider Screk leadership caste. Nevertheless, their directives were often followed without question.

### Military

The military force of the Screk Empire are thought to be one of, if not the most, technologically advanced in the galaxy, but much of their military and institutional strength had gradually eroded over the course of the Unbidden-Screk War and the wars against their historic rivals, the Vran, the Ti-Zru and the Banthuurians. It is known that the Screk employed slave armies drawn from the various species that had once served as their close allies in the distant past, and their armadas of space vessels could effectively slice the formations of the numerically superior Antares Navy. The latter however was proven insufficient to prevent their defeat at the Battle of Rijjin, and the subsequent occupation of their homeworld.

### Foreign Relations

#### Prehistoric era

The prehistoric Screk Empire served as the centre of what was thought to be the center of the galactic community, serving as a major diplomatic force where they mediated the conclusion of warfare amongst lesser nations of the distant past. Their generally selfless nature and willingness in freely offering their advanced technology and military protection had likewise earned them a large, albeit unspecified, number of trusted allies and partners across the Milky Way.

Much of that well-earned goodwill and stellar reputation however completely dissipated as the Empire essentially sacrificed most, if not all of their allies as cannon fodder and slave armies during their desperate war against the Unbidden.

#### With other Fallen Empires and the Banthuurians

The Fallen Empires of the modern era, such as the Vran and the Ti-Zru, as well as Marauders such as the Banthuurians, are the historic rivals of the Screk Empire. Clashes occurred between them as the Screk Empire returned to the wider galactic politics following their long recovery after the war against the Unbidden, with several wars launched against the new galactic powers in order to restore their long-lost hegemony.

It is said that in each conflict, the Screk Empire suffered a “humiliating armistice”, although whether these outcomes resulted in strategic defeat or cultural humiliation for the Screk remains unknown. This is due to the fact that their rivals similarly suffered terrible decline as well. The Vran and the Ti-Zru, like the Screk, also suffered a form of cataclysm that reduced them into isolationist powers, while the Banthuurians suffered a much worse fate, their once powerful state now reduced to a collection of decrepit space stations orbiting dead worlds, whose surviving population now live in squalor.

#### Modern day

As an isolationist polity, much of their current diplomatic relations with other younger nations remain unknown, with few exceptions. Chief among which is the United Terran Protectorates, a puppet-state established following the Conquest of Earth where the modern Screk nation shared much of their knowledge and granted its own autonomy, with Screk individuals holding significant influence over their policy-making and administrative aspects. The UTP in turn serves as their reliable proxy in further strengthening the Screk’s position in galactic affairs, often via conquest against the neighbouring polities of the Protectorates.

Another outlier in this list is the Confederate Republics of Antares, an interstellar nation established by the descendants of the Earhart Flotilla colonists. Originally dismissed as just another insignificant nation, they have since had earned the ire of the Screk leaders upon learning their true nature and the fact that this human-led nation had grown powerful enough to challenge the Screk on equal footing, with the Confederates similarly enraged upon learning the fate of Earth at the hands of the Screk. This intense rivalry would persist up until the destruction of the ancient Screk empire following the end of the Confederacy’s Great Crusade.

## Society

The Leadership Caste of the Screk lived as nobles similar to that of the medieval European monarchies of Old Earth, while most of the common citizens of the Screk lived a much more complex lifestyle. As the Screk were divided into several other feudal sub-empires, it depended on the Kings and Queens of the Leadership Cast to dictate the lives of the common Screk populace. Mostly, the common Screk citizen lived a life without hardship. With hard labor relied on by automation and enslaved races, the common Screk lived relatively comfortable lives without the need to worry about crime and instability. However, not all Screk Kingdoms were so kind. There remained a few that relied on tyranny, and fear to control the population. These Kingdoms were often looked down upon by the other Screk nobles, who saw their own people being used as common slaves by their rulers who were sworn to protect their citizens.

Ultimate rule over the Screk Leadership Caste laid in the hands of the Archivists, who rarely ever left the halls of the Chronicler Palace, located on the Archives. As the Archivists continuously obsessed over the Unbidden and their seemingly inevitable return, the Archivist began neglecting the Ruling Caste and the complex bureaucracy that only they could navigate successively, and they began to look more and more outdated by the Screk nobility. But none of the Screk would dare betray the Archivists, for all their negligence, they still were extremely powerful and held many loyal followers within the Screk ranks. But still, the Leadership Cast of the Screk continued questioning the leadership of the Archivists as they obsessively studied alternate realities and the Unbidden.

Suddenly, the Archivists emerged from the Chronicler Palace in a mad hysteria, as they saw a vision of absolute terror. They saw an alternate reality, where a younger race overcame the Unbidden, and banished them from their reality. Not only that, but they also managed to learn new technologies and powers that were marvelous in their sheer scope. They saw a flag marking the corpses of this reality’s version of the Screk (The Tyrum), saw a weapon of absolute vengeance unleashed upon their defenseless world, wiping out the entire race. They saw this nation overcome the entire Galaxy as they attempted to stop them, to no avail.

The Screk Ruling Caste saw these visions, and grew terrified. Their fear quickly turned into hysteria as the Archivists revealed that the same race was in their reality as well, and could have the potential to destroy the Screk in a similar way. The Ruling Caste sent a fleet of warships to find and conquer this race while it was still in its infancy. Little did they know, it was too late. As the Screk conquered the planet Earth, the Earhart Flotilla left, and colonized a star system that would eventually birth the Antares Confederacy.

### Technology

From the era of prehistoric Screk Empire until now, the Screk species remained one of the oldest and most technologically advanced in the galaxy. During their prehistoric golden era, they were the principal disseminator of knowledge to the lesser races, and ahead of all others in regard to scientific research and innovation. Some of the greatest accomplishments include the Gateway Network, and their research into wormhole science prior to the Unbidden invasion. Some of the ancient, wondrous ruins scattered across the galaxy are believed to have been made by the prehistoric Screk species.

The decline following the Unbidden War had seen the Screk’s scientific, cultural and artistic advancement stagnated, with the exception of the research on the Unbidden and the observation of the multiverse, the latter centered on the world of The Archives.

Much, if not all, of the aspects of their society were automated. However, this overreliance on automation had inevitably led to their decline and eroded much of their centralized administration millenia after the end of the war against the Unbidden.

## References

https://youtu.be/1jJ5lPfQJdA

1. ↑ https://youtu.be/1jJ5lPfQJdA

1. ↑ https://youtu.be/gwrAiAlQHWM?t=527
2. ↑ https://youtu.be/gwrAiAlQHWM?t=623
3. ↑ https://youtu.be/FfFA36qpfYk?t=332
4. ↑ https://youtu.be/FfFA36qpfYk?t=101
5. ↑ https://youtu.be/1jJ5lPfQJdA?t=591
6. ↑ https://youtu.be/1jJ5lPfQJdA?t=647
7. ↑ https://youtu.be/Y-K8cDuMY9k?t=411
8. ↑ https://youtu.be/1jJ5lPfQJdA?t=712
9. ↑ https://youtu.be/1jJ5lPfQJdA?t=742
10. ↑ https://youtu.be/wYOXTp60glQ?t=79