Interstellar Conflict

## Summary

The Interstellar Conflict was a four-year war beginning in 2428 and ending in 2431 between the human and alien forces, or the Santalis Core Order and Celestial Vanguard respectively. These four years are also commonly referred to as the Interstellar Era.

## History

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Many years ago, a nation known as the Santalis Core Order was prospering from a revolutionary new energy resource known as Ichor. Said to have been the literal “blood of the gods” that poured down from the mountains into the land, it was used as a plasma-like substance that after undergoing a refinery process, would be able to create clean energy for long amounts of time. Originally being discovered and distributed by Armeli, these clean reactors known as “Fusion Drives” would power the nations of the Santalis Core Order for a long time. That is, until the day interstellar life came to invade.

Decholonian engineers were performing coastal patrols over the areas of the Santalis Core Order when they accidentally awakened a strange, gargantuan machine crashed in the ocean. Thought to have been an alien craft, researchers would later realize this was a scout ship of an alien race known as the Celestial Vanguard. Detecting the ichor that was fueling the engineers' ships, the scout activated a beacon which signaled the rest of the Celestial Vanguard fleet. The armada would then make their way to the SCO. They would hold their fleet in space above Decholon.

The first actual conflict between the Order and Vanguard was the Contact Event, which began in the summer of 2428. A single Celestial Strider, the massive superweapons and main weapons of the Vanguard, was deployed over the Decholonian (Draconian) coast, and began to decimate the local towns and cities in the area. Local military and air forces were sent to counter the Strider, but to no avail. After three days of the Strider's touchdown, it was decided under the SCO that an ichor-based ballistic missile be used on the machine. This proved to be a success, and left the Celestial Strider Crashed up on Decholon's mountain, Mount Draco.

Following this first conflict, several more striders descended from space and into the SCO. Not only were they deployed on the Draconian Coast, but the Aquarian and Cassiopeian coastlines as well. Because of this concentrated attack on Decholon, the Decholonian government (with support from the island nation of Armeli) proposed two projects that would hope to give them a fighting chance against these imminent threats. Thus, the Mercury and Garrisai Projects were born.

Collectively known as the Harbinger Project, the goal of each was to develop a combat-capable Superweapon that would be able to counter the Celestial Vanguard. The First was the Mercury Project, which involved using Armeli's highly efficient energy source (later known as Ichor) and develop a high-output battery capable of powering the second project. This involved the concentration and rapid energy flow of Ichor into a machine. The Second was the Garrisai Project, which involved using Decholon’s large metal supply and refinery outposts to create a mass-production humanoid weapon. Since the Celestial Striders had humanoid designs, this was partly what inspired the designs of the Garrisai themselves.

With these two projects together, they were able to produce the first series of walking tanks capable of countering the sheer size of the CSs. Instead of it being a human fighting a skyscraper, it would now be a human fighting a three-story complex.

Following the Harbinger Project, several large developments were made to combat the Vanguard. Some, such as the AEGIS Program, produced many different designs of Garrisai. Each would have different roles and functions on the battlefield, unbeknownst to the Vanguard. Arms manufacturers such as Kestrel Technologies, Omega Armories, and the Instinct Corporation began to adapt their current ideas for use by Garrisai. Many of these companies were based outside of Armeli and Decholon, seeking to profit off of the ensuing conflict as they weren't immediately affected. Scientific advancements made by the Nu Helix region, namely around the technology of the Vanguard, brought new control systems for Garrisai such as the METACOM and NU METACOM systems.

In the concluding moments of the Interstellar Conflict, the Armeli and Decholon forces were able to push back the Vanguard out of the planet, and began an era of peace. During this era, the NDRC was disassembling an CS crashed atop Mount Draco when they discovered its fuel - which would become known as Dechalus - had seeped down into the stone in the mountain and became usable.