Milky Way Galaxy

The **Milky Way Galaxy** is one of the galaxies recognized as a part of The Cluster, commonly considered to be the most isolated part of The Cluster for much of its recent history. It has given rise to many intelligent species, much like the Triangulum and Andromeda galaxies, and was the home of the proud Vygen Empire, the Slin Combine and the Coalition of Intelligent Organisms. However, its distance from Triangulum and Andromeda prevented it from being the focal point of intergalactic history up until the emergence of the Coalition, the last great intergalactic civilization.

## Involvement With Major Governments

For what is presumed to be many millions of years, more than half of the MWG was controlled by the Qutixma Worlds, a venerable interstellar civilization of almost equal strength to the Tuoctlo and Lapidus. Under the rule of the Old Qutixma and New Qutixma, the Qutixma Worlds went largely unchallenged, up until the arrival of the Only Hierophant. After becoming the first Black Witness, the Only Hierophant gathered followers from various species subjugated by the Qutixma Worlds, eventually leading the Black Crusade that drove the Qutixma out of what would come to be known as the Guild Expanse. The Qutixma Worlds disintegrated, and the Old Qutixma and New Qutixma combined into the White Qutixma, who corralled the newly-formed Infinity Guild inside of the Guild Expanse by creating impassable networks of Null Obelisks within the Bleak Divide and Great Divide. The Infinity Guild has remained in that region of space ever since, only losing power following the mysterious disappearance of the Only Hierophant at the conclusion of the Second Vuokra Invasion. Thanks to its distance from Andromeda and Triangulum, the MWG has been able to avoid the most adverse effects of the various Vuokra invasions that have plagued The Cluster.

The Spur Trinity, the region of space opposite the Guild Expanse, is the only part of the MWG not influenced by the Infinity Guild, and likewise, it has served as the birthplace for a select few major civilizations. The Vygen Empire appeared around 720,000 B.C.E, and lasted for many thousands of years before transforming into the Vralminiir Regime that fought in the First Vuokra Invasion. Excessive destruction was wreaked by the Black Sect during this war, and caused the Spur Trinity to be largely devoid of any major civilizations for a considerable period of time afterward. Though the First Vecuuri Empire eventually appeared in the central-western portions of the Trinity, its emergence was largely overshadowed by Kaeolian occupation of the Spur Trinity during the First Cluster War. Scientific colonies, created to distance Kaeolian research efforts from the war front in the Triangulum Galaxy, appeared in the same region, and brought the Vecuuri into the fold of the war against their will. These colonies, which served as the origin point for the Paragon Project, were eventually destroyed by Zetylian incursions, leaving behind the species of the Paragon Project to fester among the ruins of former Kaeolian colonies, some of which formed minor interstellar civilizations of their own.

Later on, the Slin Combine emerged in the western portions of the Spur Trinity, becoming one of the first multi-species major civilizations in the MWG. Though it eventually collapsed due to a series of plagues that killed off many of the species living in the Combine, its role in the political dynamic in the MWG can not be underestimated. Of course, its existence was largely overshadowed by the formation of the Coalition of Intelligent Organisms a few thousand years later, which retains the legacy of being the last great intergalactic civilization.