The Hundred-Years War

The Hundred-Years war was an extended period of rebellion against the rule of the Psyonic Templars of Eternity. It culminated in the overthrow of that empire and eventual establishment of the Assembly.

## Origin

Following the culmination of the Phantom Wars, the Templars were left with a considerable military force at their disposal, and a shortage in energy resource to supply their expanding population. In order to offset that deficit, they turned their military on their former allies. The organic races, more depleted by combat losses than the energy-based templars, lacked the strength to oppose them, and one by one fell unwillingly beneath the yoke of tribute status.

The templars also expanded their empire by means of conquest, invading systems supporting less-advanced races, and using their superior technology to compel both tribute and worship. Often, the planets were systematically stripped of resources by the templars' demands, proscribing any possibility of the client race developing their own advanced technology. It was this ruination of developing races that finally led the Ercineans and the Ronins to rebel against the templars' rule in 210 BTA.

## Key event(s)

* 210 BTA: The Ronins confront the Overseers in the Sielle Speren system, with the aim of freeing the native population, shooting down the templar command cruiser and landing on the planet to encourage an insurgency. The natives are persuaded to rise up against the templars and are slaughtered in their tens of thousands. As reprisals against the rebels continue, the enraged Templars order the Guardians to hand over the Ronin leadership for summary execution. The Guardians refuse, activating the defences around Aluxi and retreating into the fortress system.
* 210 BTA: The Ercineans, disgusted by the mass executions in Sielle Speren and urged on by the Farseers, arm their first forces since the end of the Phantom Wars, ending an eight-hundred year period of pacifism. Their blitzkrieg assault on the Aristarchus and Asgard systems forces the Templars to withdraw from those positions, and they soon force the withdrawal of all Templar forces from their own territory.
* 162 BTA: After a fifty-year siege, the Templars are finally forced to withdraw their blockade around Aluxi. Combat losses in repeated assaults on the Guardians' territory costs the empire one-third of its forces. The Guardians deploy their main force to Sielle Speren, capitalizing on the depletion of templar troops in the area, and force the Hegemony to abandon the system altogether after decades of insurgency and resistance.
* 110 BTA: The Leviathans and Giants participate in a massed allied offensive, the only time the Giants have ever involved themselves in a conflict beyond their own territory. The templars are pushed back to the Perseus Arm and forced to discuss terms.

## Aftermath

The templars surrendered to the the allied races early in 109 BTA, ceding their territorial claim to anything but their colonized systems. They were compelled to reduce their military force by a further third, and most of their ordnance and materiel was either confiscated or destroyed.

Protesting the terms of the surrender, a small but significant faction of templars, predominantly military personnel, seceded from their civilisation, staking a territorial claim to several templar systems and cutting themselves off from all contact with other races. They maintain this isolation for approximately two centuries, until their hit-and-run raids on newly established Terran colonies in the Perseus Arm earn them the nickname Stalkers, and precipitate the conflict known as the Perseus War.