Great Merician Exile

The **Great Merician Exile** was an event that resulted in the stripping of rights of Keeper's Dance Fleet Yards (KDFY) from further construction of Drift Gates or to carry out settlement efforts and the creation of the Merician Freehold. ,

## Background

About fifty seasons after the construction of the first ever Drift Gate, KDFY was driven by their early works on Drift Gates and their massively successful colonisation efforts on the system of Axius to monopolise the colonisation market. In order to solidify their holdings, the corporate staff at KDFY wanted to open up Drift Gates to as many new systems as they could. One such plan involve expansion beyond the Axius system.

## The Great Gamble

Beyond the Axius system, KDFY was hoping to find another system that would be rich in Drift. Instead they end up jumping into a system of what turns out to be nothing but dust and rocks. With the location not worthy of settlement, KDFY have decided to press on and not wanting to come out empty-handed from their venture.

The venture into the next system followed the same protocol as any other exploratory missions performed by KDFY. Assembling another Drift Gate, a large construction fleet was sent through and to observe what was on the opposite end and to construct a return gate. However, this time around KDFY never heard back from the construction fleet and had declared lost after a year of radio silence. As a result, KDFY received a massive political backlash and were forced to dissolve their gate-building division having lost their license to construct any further Drift Gates.

Little did the rest of Tantalus knew at the time, the fleet did made it into the uncharted system. However, a large portion of the construction fleet were destroyed in the process having landed in the middle of a massive solar flare from the local A-Type star. At the same time, nearly all of the KDFY's corporate staff that was with them were wiped out along with a large portion of their return gate. With what is left of their fleet, the survivors of the event would later organize themselves around the chief engineer of the mission, Adam Meric.

Despite the fact the system the fleet have entered were just as dead as their previous system with no planets or potential colony sites, the system was teeming with Drift and rare metals. Trapped and with nowhere else to go, the survivors would construct makeshift stations from old ships and extract materials from the local astroid belts under Meric's leadership, beginning what would later be called the "Great Merician Exile" (having been effectively isolated from the rest of Tantalus) and the beginning of what would later become the Merician Freehold.

The initial Drift Gate which had originally brought them into the system would eventually turn into Meric's Keep, with the people of Mericia being able repaired the damaged return gate roughly 150 seasons later and re-establishing contact with the rest of the cluster.

## References

1. ↑ The Sojourn: Worlds of Tantalus - The Centrum Assembly
2. ↑ The Sojourn: Worlds of Tantalus - The Merician Freehold

 Systems

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