Second Galactic Empire

The **Second Galactic Empire**, also called the **New Empire**, **Empire of the Galaxy** or **Greater Galactic Empire**, was the Empire to be formed by the two Foundations created by Hari Seldon at the dawn the Interregnum according to the original Seldon Plan, following the fall of the First Empire, its predecessor. While Daneel Olivaw betted against Seldon in his last years of life that the Galaxia superorganism would ultimately supplant the planned Second Empire, it is heavily implied that Galaxia was synthesised with the forming Second Empire and its individuality as Hari himself eventually foresaw.

## History

As early as 4922 AD, R. Daneel Olivaw thought that an Empire built on the Settler worlds would perhaps also decline and fall, as one built on the Spacer worlds would have.

In the 13th century GE, Hari Seldon and the other members of the Seldon Project, most prominently Yugo Amaryl, developed psychohistory, and predicted the fall of the First Empire. Seldon prepared for the Fall by preparing for one Foundation to be established on Terminus, in public, another on Trantor in secret, to eventually form the Second Empire. The Second Foundation was established in 12,058, before the First. In 12,067, the Project was trialed and "exiled" to Terminus by Linge Chen and the Comission of Public Safety, after slight meddling from the Second Foundation. The First Foundation was established on Terminus two years later in 1 FE.

From 1 to around 1,000 FE, the two Foundations grew in power in preparation for the formation of the Second Empire. Gaia guided it along, fixing the ramifications of the Mule. The Second was believed destroyed by the First by 378. By 498, the Foundation Federation was "virtually a Galactic Empire already", with power around the Galaxy. Later that year, prompted by Gaia, Golan Trevize chose a Second Empire built off Galaxia.

By 520 FE, a First Galactic Coalescence existed, a very likely precursor to the Second Empire.

According to the psychohistorical redictions of the Second Foundation, made in the late 4th century, the Second Galactic Empire would formally exist by at least the 8th century FE. In the late 8th century, according to the same preditictions, the Empire would be in the grip of rival personalities who would 'threaten to pull it apart if the fight is too even, or clamp it into rigidity, if the fight is too uneven'. There was also, according to the Second Foundation, a 12.64% chance of a compromise between two or more of the the conflicting personalities. According to them, it would freeze the Second Galactic Empire into 'an unprofitable mold', and eventually, civil wars would cause more damage then if there had never been a compromise. First Speaker Preem Palver contributed to the plan a method to avoid the last possibility.

According to Bliss, Galaxia would be fully formed around the 9th century FE, around the same time R. Daneel Olivaw, merged with Fallom, would die.

The Second Empire doubled with Galaxia was, one way or another, formed, by at least 1020 FE. The 116th Edition of the Encyclopedia Galactica was published on Terminus by the Encyclopedia Galactica Publishing Company that same year. By this time, the Second Empire customarily used low-order mechanical forms, "tiktoks", rather than robots, as the First had until at least 12,028 GE. However, like in the First Empire, they constitued no competition with humans, since they performed only simple and often disagreeable tasks.

The 117th Edition of the *Encyclopedia Galactica* was published in 1054 FE, during the time of the Second Empire. By this time, the times directly before the Foundation Era, even the life of Hari Seldon, were mosty shrouded in myth and mysticism, but things such as the Three Laws of Robotics, as well as the times of Earth and other information on Galactic prehistory, had been rediscovered.