Blossom Galaxy

The Blossom Galaxy, and its winding dust lanes and nebulae

The Blossom Galaxy is a unique dwarf barred spiral galaxy orbiting the Flower Galaxy relatively distantly and the largest satellite of the Flower Galaxy. Its three nations are members of the United Nations of the Flower Galaxy, and are highly militarized to defend against a possible NTIH attack, as any attack from them would have to go through the Blossom Galaxy.

The Blossom Galaxy is a starburst galaxy, with huge bursts of star formation going on, resulting in many bright and massive stars. The galaxy is also of the "Grand Design" subtype, which means that its spiral arms are very well defined and beautiful, with the space between the arms almost as sparse as the halo.

## **History**

### **Formative Years**

The galaxy was formed just after its parent galaxy, 12.5 billion years ago, and remained almost completely uninhabitable for the next billion years, as a huge number of massive stars were formed. This wiped out any new life that formed in this time period, resulting in the first civilization to arise in the galaxy 10 billion years ago. This civilization is now gone for unknown reasons, but civilizations in the galaxy were few and far between until the Lareas Alliance conquered the galaxy in what was to be its last completed conquest before it vanished off the map as it began conquering the Avana Galaxy. Not much has been learned about the era between this event and the conquering of the galaxy by the Providence Union.

### **Providence Union Era**

Most of the information the UNFG has gleaned from this period in the galaxy's history has came from the abandoned archives at Glanadi, which are somewhat patchy from billions of years of sitting around beneath kilometers of ice. However, some things are quite clear.

The Providence Union first conquered the Near Arm of the galaxy, encountering a large amount of resistance. The brutal quashing of this resistance, one of the most horrifying genocides in its history, which likely inspired huge number of rebels to construct the black hole bombs which would topple the morally bankrupt nation.

This catastrophe occurred before much colonization could occur in the galaxy, meaning that few artifacts from the era are known. However, it is known that conquest of the Blossom Galaxy was almost halted by a confederation of nations known as the Sororbi, of which almost nothing is known. The only thing known about it is that it was fighting the Providence Union's conquests, and no artifacts remain from these nations. Its stated capital, Sororbus, seems to have been uninhabited for all its history, for no apparent reason. This is not discussed in the archives, but it is thought by many leading scholars that all structures on Sororbus were destroyed by a brutal assault mere days before the fall of the Union. This explanation explains both the events' absence in the Archives, and why absolutely no structures were set up on it by colonists in the interim.

### **Wilderness Era**

This era seems to be a time when the galaxy was mostly inhabited by small civilizations, as we have found few artifacts which would have came from large civilizations. Because of the lack of a resource like the Glanadi Archives, very little is known about this era except for the fact that some notable stars were formed.

### **The Blossom Triumvirate**

Roughly 75,000 years ago, three civilizations formed at roughly the same time, the Cluelflago Entente, the Federation of Polinia, and the Queendom of Tancred. These civilizations expanded from their homeworlds to rule the entirety of their respective regions. When they first emerged, there happened to be a small number of other extant civilizations, allowing them to conquer their respective portions of the galaxy. Because of the relative dearth of inhabited planets, conquering went rather rapidly, allowing the civilizations to border each other after only 40,000 years. Border disputes immediately flared, and things seemed to be shaping up to an endless war similar to that around the Spider Nebula, but the recently founded Cnara-Frealee Federation interceded and calmed relations between them, giving the disputed territory to none of the nations, instead leaving it for smaller civilizations. However, the three nations began inviting, threatening, or even bribing the smaller civilizations between them to join them, which may flare up into a war in the future.

## **Galactic Geography**

The Blossom Galaxy, like its parent, is divided into many galactic regions. However, these regions went through much less change, especially considering the fact that the borders of the three major nations of the galaxy almost exactly follow the galactic regional borders.

### **Blossom Core**

    The Blossom Core is the innermost region of the Blossom Galaxy. Its borders extend from Darkla, the largest supermassive black hole here, to the edge of the galactic nucleus. Uniquely, the Blossom Core contains *three* supermassive black holes, located at different positions in the galactic core, each of which contains ruined birch planets, probably from an ancient, extinct civilization.

These black holes are each surrounded by very dense star clusters, each roughly a hundred light-years across. These clusters are irradiated by radiation from the accretion disks of the black holes, as such there are no habitable planets here. Beyond these clusters, there is a relatively sparser but still quite dense region which contains many rogue planets, most notably Polinia, the capital of the Federation of Polinia, the state which controls the whole region as of the present day.

The three central black holes of the Blossom Core are all surrounded by ruined birch planets, but as yet the only one refurbished enough to live on is that which surrounds the black hole Erkash, which is also one of the most densely populated regions in the Flower Subgroup.

### **Zakha Arm**

The Zakha Arm is one of the two arms of the Blossom Galaxy, and is mostly controlled by the Cluelflago Entente. The Zakha Arm notably contains roughly 2/5 of the total count of Keligan Stars, an extremely rare subtype of the Faresae, in the entire Local Universe, an utterly bizarre fact that as of yet has no explanation. All 37 of them are in UNFG neutral territory for study.

The Zakha Arm also contains the famous planet of Cluelflai, the capital world of the Cluelflago Entente, which rules the vast majority of this galactic region. As such, the region of the Arm near Cluelflai is very populated and very rich. However, in the regions of space very far from the heartlands, poverty is widespread. This region also contains many star-forming nebulae, a fact which is not the case in other regions of the galaxy.

### **Akhad Arm**

The Akhad Arm is the second arm of the Blossom Galaxy, and is almost fully controlled by the Queendom of Tancred. The Akhad Arm is not particularly interesting otherwise, except for the fact that it contains many abandoned megastructures from the days of the Providence Union, which are under heavy study by scientists from many nations.

(will add more)

### **Lowiras Bulge**

The Lowiras Bulge is a strange structure barely hanging onto the outer reaches of the Zakha Arm. It is incredibly tiny, with only 3 million stars. It is controlled by the State of Lowiras, which also controls a small portion of the Blossom Galaxy's halo. First noted from outside the Blossom Galaxy by renowned Salakela astronomer Deri Lowiras, this region is composed of massive amounts of dust, originally thought impossible for such a small galaxy. In fact, a full 1/10 of its mass is in the form if interstellar dust. This vastly decreases its luminosity, which made its discovery take a lot longer than other regions of its size.

These dust lanes are interspersed with vast tracts of empty space, centered on bright stars such as the wolf-rayet Elorar. These pockets are where most surveyed systems are found, with almost nothing known about the space hidden in the depths of the dust lanes.

## **Notable Worlds**

The Blossom Galaxy has many notable worlds, from capitals of ancient civilizations to centers of commerce to archaeological sites.