Majestic Galaxy

## The Majestic Galaxy

The **Majestic Galaxy** is a dark, irregular, dwarf galaxy, probably better referred to as small, collapsing collection of star clusters rather than a full-fledged galaxy. It is a galaxy whose history is very enigmatic, and not well known by it's few inhabitants or the inhabitants of the nearby **Silky Way** and **Asharbyel** galaxies. Several times life has arisen, but each time, it's fate was consigned to tragedy.

## Overview

The Galaxy was named the **Majestic Galaxy** by it's inhabitants after one of the brightest galactic regions, the **Majestic Cluster** and lays 460,000 light years out from the **Silky Way**. The Galaxy has a radius of 1,300 light years and weighs 8.9 million solar masses which extends the Galaxies hill sphere to a 46,000 light year radius

However the Majestic Galaxy is centered around the **Orchid Cluster** whose center contains the heaviest Blackhole in the galaxy, a light "supermassive" blackhole named **Kraphid** which weighs 2,900 solar masses. Other notable structures include the **Oblivion Nebula**, the **Choir Nebula**, the **Majestic Cluster**, the **Calmari Nebula** inside the **Nova Association**, and **Çilae Association** among others. On the very outskirts of the Majestic Galaxy lies the **Shadow Sphere** a massive halo of dark matter thought to weigh thirty million solar masses.

The structure of the galaxy is comprised of several clusters and other structures among a sea of hydrogen and dark matter.

The Galaxy is home to the **Vondunke**, **Selthen**, **Rei**, and **Sonsovo**, as well as **The Ruins** of the former **Were**, **Primaform**, and **Dthalvan** civilizations. However the echoing myths and fears of it's inhabitants both current and former include tales of the fabled **Meyrow**, legendary beings of immense size and strength, roaming the galaxy and functioning as the apex of the void ecology.

## Stellarography

The **Majestic Galaxy** is a highly irregular, dark matter dominated galaxy, interspersed with the remnants of the **Stellfix Proto-Galaxy**, acting as mostly isolated areas of stars, planets, and nebula, separated from each other by vast stretches of vacuum practically devoid of ordinary matter as we know it, save for a few intergalactic stars absorbed by the Shadow Sphere. *These islands referred to as "**Shoals**" were once thought to be independent star clusters, micro-galaxies, or over-densities before the discovery of the overarching Majestic Galaxy*, which was so named after the nearest of the Shoals to the Silky Way, the **Majestic Cluster**.

#### The Orchid Shoal

The densest region of the galactic neighbor hood is the **Orchid Cluster**, likely the nucleus of the former galaxy, Home to 70,000 stars and **Kraphiodr**, a behemoth blackhole weighing 3,000 Solar Masses at the heart of the cluster. The remainder of the Orchid Shoal outside of the Cluster bears residence to a further 40,000 stars.

#### The Majestic and Oblivion Shoals

The **Majestic Cluster** is the second-most prominent star cluster in the Galaxy and the centerpiece of the surrounding **Majestic Shoal**. The Cluster itself is home to a modest 10,000 stars while the rest of the Shoal supports a further 30,000. The Majestic Shoal lies within a very close proximity of the **Oblivion Shoal** which contains 20,000 stars as well as the famous **Nebula of Oblivion** after which it is named, at the heart of the Nebula lies the galaxy's second largest black hole **Modus Çeleo**.

#### Calmari Shoal

The **Calmari Shoal** is named after one of the Galaxies largest stars Calmari also named the Krakken star which was thought by early astronomers to be much much larger but that opinion was disregarded soon afterwards. The Calmari Shoal has 20,000 stars, with the largest grouping comprising the Nova Association.

#### The Choir Shoal

The **Choir Shoal** is dominated by **Choir Nebula**, which forms the densest area of space of the whole Majestic Galaxy. It also holds a relatively fewer and younger stars with a count reaching no more than 10,000.

#### The Eyes

**The Eyes** are several smaller yet more notable groups of stars which will mostly become disbanded due to Galactic strains in the coming millennia. Together they contain an additional 10,000 stars within the eyes, whilst the rest of the galaxy's free floating or marginal groups contain only another 10,000 again. The most prominent of the eyes is the so called **Çilae Shoal**, a group of 2,000 stars led in orbit of the rest of the galaxy by the **Kraethek Association**.

Another of the notable eyes is the Singing Sorority, though it only consists of thirty stars it's notoriety comes from the presence of the Sonsovo civilization.

## History

Near the end of the Galaxy forming Era, an intermediately sized **Stellfix Proto-Galaxy** took form. Some time later after drifting a little to close to the **Silky Way**, it experienced a collision which consumed most of the proto-galaxy while the remnants of the Stellfix proto-galaxy, principally the **Majestic and Orchid Clusters**, were tossed deep into the intergalactic void, gradually merging with an intergalactic a dark matter halo named the **Shadow Sphere**.

During the near collision with the Silky Way, a race of the antecessors dubbed the "**Primaformes**" colonized the galactic remnants, but disappeared after entering the Shadow Sphere due to unknown means.

After the merger there was an event in the reconstituted galaxy, known as the "Doom at the dawn" likely set off by a spectacular hyper nova or something even more drastic in magnitude. A few speculate that it was artificial in origin. not designed by a vast civilization, but by a single sapient super predator still lurking in the depths of the void, invisible to anything made of atoms. and that this is the true reason why the **Vondunke** do not live around stars, not because of the decree of the **Paradigm** but rather a terror and knowledge of something far more dreadful. Whatever the cause, this event wiped out an early species in the galaxy called the **Were** and another species called the first **Dhalvans** in an enormous supernova.

### Recent History

Two hundred thousand years ago, The **Erç Vondunke** arose on the interstellar stage along side the **Selthen** within the **Majestic Cluster** and the Rei in the **Choir Nebula** descendants of **Dhalvan** panspermia. After winning the **Werewolf Wars**, the Erç Vondunke gathered under the banner of the "**United Vondunke Entity**" which set out among the stars in what is now called the "**Great Departure**". The Selthen built a Dyson swarm around their small sun **Escene** and sent colonies to the nearby star of **Nyscene** after their own civil war the species came to form the **Eesceen Federation** preparing for the likely war with the neighboring Vondunke whilst Rei developed unhindered and unseen around the dim stars outer stars of the **Choir Nebula**.

By the end of the third bloom the Erç Vondunke had reformed their contract twice, first to form the "**Second Vondunke Council**". But a crises during the **Third Bloom** involving the rogue uplifting of a similar race called the **Sonsovo**, exploited weaknesses within the SVC and heralded the "**Supreme Entity, Vondunke**" as it is known today. The outgoing SVC decided to banish the Sonsovo from the **Majestic Galaxy** via a stellar engine. But as the two races parted ways the Vondunke left the newborns with the secret of "Çekan Vents" better known as Vondunke-style Fusion or **Singing Fusion**.

The VSE now turned it's attention to the Eesceen Federation who'd now colonized a handful of stars while the VSE had nearly forty federates. The Vondunke sent a list of outrages demands the the Eesceen Federation and three gas giants to the B-Type star of **(Liktr) Baradeç**. Naturally the Eesceen Federation refused the demands and reinforced their border creating **Grey Swarms** of self-replicating semi-sapient warships, and massive interstellar tankers to increase the swarms mobility. The three federates at Baradeç unpacked to create the Varadeç Nicol-Dyson beam. At the beginning of the war it was a mere barebones affair, but began to steadily increase in size and power as the colony mined the star.

The war was fought during the fourth and fifth blooms as the stars of the Eesceen and the Vondunke exchanged bouts of Dyson fire across the expanse of a few dozen light years. The war ended with Escene succumbing to a synchronized attack between several VSE armada's and a fully charged blast from Varadeç. The surviving populace of the federation were sued for war damages, losing almost all of their colonies and forced to rent out their own home suns, and to relinquish all legal claims to the larger Majestic Cluster and much of the galaxy. The Federation was toppled and reformed as the Vondunke puppet state the "**Escene Federation**" whose military has now been greatly regulated. However many commercial and private vessels are equipped with "Magnetic Delivery Systems" and "Lidar Detections Systems" called MDS' & LDS', These systems can be easily modified so as to be weaponized as railguns and lasers, avoiding set regulations. Few attempts have been made by the VSE to limit these systems as they are not seen to be worth deteriorating Escene-Vondunke relations further to remove.

Baradec then began the infamous sterilization project, via RKM strikes, of most of the Majestic Galaxy, devastating over three thousand worlds hypothesized to have high probability of spawning future rivals. Ironically the VSE passed a bill several decades later, illegalizing unprovoked mass genocide of sapient organisms. It was shortly after this law that the Vondunke discovered Rei in the Choir Nebula. A lack of understanding the organism prompted fears that it may be the mythological entity **Klathtar**, presumably responsible for the disappearance of the **Were** and even the ancient **Primaforms**.

### Contemporary History

During the sixth and seventh blooms the Vondunke underwent a process of merging many of it's constituent gas giants after agreeing upon the wide spread usage of "Off-Setting" a technique that uses the gravity from pairs of gas giants to bring their Federates up to higher speed, saving greatly on energy costs. The Vondunke had another uninterrupted ten further blooms increasing the number of Federates several hundred. At the end of the **Eighteenth Bloom**, **Çeleo** and another Federate, declared independence and gunned it for the **Modus Çeleo** system, a local black hole, where they formed a Gate type wormhole leading to the Æ cluster hundreds of light years distant.

### Future

It’s most likely that the Shadow Sphere will slowly dissolve the Shoals of stars over the next few billion years, merging them into a single small galaxy at the centre of the dark matter halo. By that time, all remaining molecular gas in the Shoals would have been exhausted, leaving the galaxy indistinguishable from an average ultra-faint dwarf galaxy.

## Political Geography

The vast majority of the galaxy and it's 200,000 stars remain uninhabited and completely void of life.

* The galaxy's dominant power, the **Erç Vondunke**, have visited and robbed slightly over 12,000 stars as they wander the galaxy in their free floating gas giants and also maintain a secretive post around **Baradeç**.
* **Rei** forms the second largest group, having colonized twenty smaller stars within the **Choir Nebula** with fully fledged swarms around a quarter of these systems.
* **Escene** holds control over three stars who aid the Erç Vondunke in their colonization efforts, persuaded to do so by the large military forces garrisoned within their aforementioned star systems.
* The **Sonsovo** preside on a single world within the **Singing Sorority** one of the **Galactic Eyes** as their system hurtles towards the intergalactic void, powered by a stellar engine, curtesy of the Erc Vondunke.
* The **Çey Vondunke** state of Çeleo wanders the outskirts of the **Silky Way** in a single gas giant having colonized a pair of systems.

## Notes and FAQ

* All text of this article in italics have pending canonicity.

1. ↑ In this case the Vondunke, the word being Kalnario in their language
2. ↑ The Nebula of Oblivion is a large absorption Nebula partially shaped by a supernova sometime in it's past
3. ↑ A Vondunke Caste closely tied to the ruling college and government
4. ↑ Also called the Supreme Vondunke Council