Galactic Empire

## Founding of the Empire

The Galactic Empire was founded by Lu Weng, a former Grand Admiral of the Protectorate Navy and the most senior military officer present in the Tau Ceti system, on 1 April 2196 after Vasily Spiakov, the Bandorian Supreme Leader, had fled with many Bandorian ships to the Darkstar system at the end of the Second Interstellar War. Lu Weng, backed by over 90% of the Protectorate Navy and over 75% of the Protectorate Army, gained the allegiance of 24 surviving Bandorian systems; he reformed these systems into an alliance, which he called the Galactic Empire, and renamed them after the letters of the Greek alphabet.

## Origin of the Renegades

Notably, a small group of Bandorian rebels held out in the outer reaches of the Mystic system, even claiming Mystic 5 at some points in their history and later only some planetoids. The Bandorian Protectorate, under Spiakov, declared the rebels to be no longer part of the Protectorate, and ordered them to surrender peacefully, which the Renegades refused. The war between the Empire and the Renegades lasted until 2350, when the Renegades managed to build several large makeshift interstellar starships, and used them to evacuate their entire population out of Imperial territory. For a long time, it was believed that the Renegades managed to achieve this on their own; however, Imperial records have since come to light, showing that an Imperial diplomatic agent, Gai Ling, was engaged in secret talks with the Renegades for at least 25 years leading up to the Renegade exodus. This was done with the approval of the Emperor at the time, Kaidin, after he had been pressured by the Bandorian Protectorate to come to some sort of agreement to allow the Renegades to leave Imperial space with minimal casualties; this effort had secretly been ongoing since the start of the Empire, but Kaidin was the first to actually act on it. Gai Ling offered the Renegades a ceasefire on terms that they would use materials provided by the Imperials to construct several large starships in the outer regions of the Mystic system, and use them to transfer their entire population out of Imperial space. She promised that they would not be attacked during the construction effort, and that the Imperials would not attempt to track the courses of these ships once completed. It is estimated that over the slightly more than 150 years that the Renegades had been engaged in conflict with the Imperials, nearly 400,000 Renegades and 250,000 Imperial soldiers had been killed. At the time of leaving Imperial space, the Renegade population numbered slightly over 100,000; the Fiskov estimate in the late 39th century, showed a population of around 200,000.

## First Imperial allies and territorial gains

10 systems originally declared their alliance to Spiakov, and the remaining former Bandorian systems were undecided at first. The Protectorate, under Spiakov, quickly declared itself an ally of the Empire, and the Union of Human Workers, which had unofficially supported the Protectorate in the Second Interstellar War, did the same. All of the undecided systems, and many systems which had formerly been under the control of the UN and then declared their independence, eventually applied for membership in either the Protectorate or the Empire. The alliance between the Empire, the Protectorate, and the UHW, as well as the counter-alliance between the Asgardian Alliance and the UN, lasted until the Empire's fall in 3506.

## Perth War

The Perth War began on 13 August 3205 when the Perth invaded the Psi Imperatoris star system and attacked the Imperial colony there. The Empire was a major part of the human military forces battling the Perth, and on 19 October 3207 the Empire formed the Imperial Alliance between the Union and the Empire and its allies. The Perth were defeated in the war largely due to humanity's innovations, including the Roi Shershnei, a specialized cluster missile weapons system developed by Ruslan Kusnetsov and Sergei Komarov in order to counter the Perth's gunships. The Imperials and Bandorians made numerous efforts to communicate with the Perth during the war, none of which were successful; the Asgardians and the UN did not make any similar efforts, and dismissed them as useless. The Imperial Alliance was dissolved in 3227, ending the brief period of humanity's union under one banner; the original treaty had declared that the alliance would last for twenty years, to be renewed if necessary (this provision was added in case the human military forces had failed to defeat the Perth before the treaty expired).

## Empire-Union War

In the late 35th century the Union began a propaganda campaign against the Empire and its allies. The campaign was begun because the Imperials had successfully ended a rebellion against the Empire; this rebellion had been funded, supplied and supported by the Union, and they hoped to use it to overthrow the Empire. The movement was very large; it had over 15 million active combatants at its height. The campaign against the rebellion, of course, resulted in the deaths of the vast majority of these combatants. The Union used this to claim that the Empire was "suppressing democracy" (even though the Empire had never claimed to be a "democratic" institution in the first place), and "committing genocide against its citizens". In 3498, Union naval forces began actions against Imperial ships, especially civilian convoys. The Emperor at the time, Han, signed a mutual defense treaty with Supreme Leader Mi Xinchiang of the Protectorate and Karen Foss of the Union of Human Workers on 29 October 3498, and the Imperial Navy began a series of counter-actions against the Union naval forces. As the war went on, it became clear that the Imperials and their allies' strategy had failed; the Emperor ordered most of the Imperial forces to protect the Imperial colonies and outlying systems, causing them to be spread very thin. The Union's forces were able to maintain a consistent offensive of rapid, powerful attacks, decimating the Imperial forces and causing many civilian casualties, as well as severe damage to the infrastructure. By 3505, the Imperial Navy had lost over half of its ships, and nearly two-fifths of its shipbuilding capability. The Union forces closed in on Mystic beginning in April 3505, attempting to blockade the entire system, although this was highly unsuccessful. Over 200 Union ships were lost in the blockade effort, but more were brought in, in an attempt to destroy the massive defense stations orbiting Mystic 4 and 5, and then to land troops to capture the Emperor. The Union admirals changed their minds later about the strategy, largely due to the high rate of devastating suicide attacks used by Imperial and Bandorian forces, causing major damage to Union capital ships and to their troop formations on the ground; it was decided to use an orbital bombardment from long range to kill the Emperor and his family in the Imperial palace on Mystic 4. On 15 June 3506 the orbital bombardment went ahead as planned; however, one of the Emperor's family had escaped to Mystic 5: his daughter Tai, now the last surviving member of the Imperial ruling family. On 16 June 3506 Tai sent a broadcast ordering all remaining Imperial forces to rejoin the Protectorate, before killing herself to avoid being captured by Union forces. 10,000 Union ground troops landed on Mystic 5 near her location twenty minutes after the broadcast had ended, but they were driven off the planet just two hours after landing. Heroic efforts by the Bandorian and UHW forces drove the remaining Union ships out of Mystic. Unfortunately, many former Imperial systems were captured by Union forces.

## Fall of the Empire and its results

The Empire's fall caused a major power vacuum, most of which was taken by the Protectorate; however, at its fall, a new faction emerged: the Alliance of Independent Settlements, a loose alliance between independent systems based mostly on mutual defense. The former Imperial systems captured by the Union, many of which were later recaptured by the Protectorate, underwent a brief era of extreme oppression under Union rule. One example was the planned massive penal colony on Tatov, in which 40 million of the "most troublesome" former Imperial citizens, considered by the Asgardian central government to be the most likely to cause uprisings, were to be confined. The Bandorian Protectorate under Mi Xinchiang began the Twenty Years' War in revenge for the attack on the Empire and their original betrayal by allying themselves with the UN to form the Union in the first place, as the Asgardians and Bandorians had formerly been allies against the UN; this resulted in a massive loss of Asgardian and UN territory and influence, and ultimately the dissolution of the Union completely. The main reason for this was the massive loss of starships in the Union navy, caused by highly effective Bandorian naval tactics and the introduction of Vengeance Squadrons, specialized units equipped with extremely powerful weapons. The Twenty Years' War was a great victory for the Protectorate, and the liberation of many former Imperial systems controlled by Asgardian or UN forces during the war was seen as one of the major contributing factors for the peaceful integration of the Imperial populace into the Protectorate.