Hey there! Fae back again with another Void Dreaming crosspost from before the Itch page went live!

Last time we got to explore the history of the galaxy, from the rise of humanity from Earth to their sublimation, to the Seeding project, and finally to the ascension of their children to the stars in their stead. Today however we’re not going to wind the clock quite so far back, and instead have a look at the nature of the galaxy in its current state and how exactly it got to be where it is. So, let’s get cracking!

A quick warning, however, that we’ll be discussing matters and topics that have been covered in the previous post. If terms like sublimation and ascension confuse you, then you might want to go back a step and acquaint yourself with their meaning. Otherwise, let’s go!

Commonality

It’s worth pointing out that ascension didn’t exactly go smoothly for any of the children of Terra. Whether it was part of humanity’s plan or not, the deactivation of the Seeds with their last gift of advanced technology left a hole in many of the societies that had developed across the galaxy. What had previously gently guided them by influencing the development of major figures in each world’s history was no longer there. The training wheels had come off, and the ascended had the technology, power, and most importantly the absolute freedom to act as they so chose. And with that, of course, came the freedom to make mistakes.

All of the ascended made them. Some biospheres saw extinction of multiple native flora and fauna. Some saw many lives lost through expeditions that were too rashly developed and too feebly thought out. Some were even terrified at the prospect of freedom, and retreated so far into themselves that it would take another century for their people to fully emerge and embrace the galactic community. And one, in particular, catalyzed the formation of the great power in the galaxy in Rael’s time: the Galactic Authority.

When the ascended first intermingled with one another and shared their history and development at the behest of the Seeds, they did so in an extremely decentralized manner. There was no one overarching governmental structure that was conceived by any of them that would allow for the peaceful, stable implementation of policy on such a scale. The simplest solution that was available, and the one that almost every birthworld in the galaxy took, was to mind their own damn business.

This worked well, for a time; the children of Terra flourished, and spread across many new worlds. They used the technology of the Seeds to further develop the new systems they came across, terraforming and colonizing them as they spread out further and further. Some species did this better than others. Some worse. No one minded, of course; it was a big galaxy, and their individual efforts were able to ensure that the galactic core and large swathes of the midrim were mapped out and colonized within a generation.

But as these peoples began to bump into and up against one another, cracks began to form. Criminal elements had always existed, but thanks to the power of the Seeds and their technology, and the rapid expansion of their home societies, those given over more to taking what they wanted than building something for themselves had a new frontier to explore and exploit. Much like societies turned a little insular after the ascension, various criminal organizations developed and did the same. This, too, was fine for a time.

Disunity

The Rashemai Incident occurred seven years after the founding of the Galactic Authority, and is widely cited as the defining moment that proved its necessity. Rashemai was a freshworld; a planet not claimed by any one species and developed at the behest of the Seeds. It was an experiment led by Doctor Taris vys-Rashemai, the planet and the society named after the vulpine sociologist who held that the galaxy ought not be separated into the rigid, species-defined societies that had arisen on the birthworlds. Taris suggested that, much like Mother Terra, her world would take in those from all corners of the galaxy, all species, in the hopes of fostering a greater galactic community through it.

At the same time, influential political figures across the galaxy were developing their own ideas about how the galaxy could be ordered. A far cry from the communal experiment that Taris had inducted, they crafted a sprawling bureaucracy and a code of laws and economics that would give a distinct structure to the burgeoning galactic civilizations. This was to be the Galactic Authority; entrusted with overseeing the development of the galaxy for the good of all.

Naturally, the two efforts butted heads. The Rashemai developed a much more community-focused structure that saw the Rashemai society develop across a number of nearby worlds. This Rashemai Cluster shared their resources and efforts equally amongst the population, and developed into a fiercely egalitarian society that assigned equal value and rights to all sapients given citizenship within its ranks. It began to draw more and more people to its side than the Galactic Authority, whose effort to organize and direct the flow of people and resources led to disillusionment and accusations of dictatorial control. Still, even as the Galactic Authority consolidated military and strategic assets and the Rashemai Cluster became a beacon of the arts and culture, there was peace.

At least until the death of Taris herself.

A group of star pirates, the Black Sky Corsairs, attacked Rashemai City and toppled the doctor’s administration building. It was viewed by the Rashemai people as an attack, and one which claimed the life of their visionary leader. Blame was assigned quickly, of course; a captured pirate had spilled that they’d been financed by a number of influential individuals in the Galactic Authority who had been chomping at the bit to remove the charismatic and well-regarded sociologist from the head of her experiment. It didn’t matter if the pirate had been telling the truth or not. It was cause, and the people of the Rashemai Cluster knew who had fired the first clandestine shot. Anger boiled over, and despite the generally peaceful nature of the Rashemai people, a few managed to secure a small supply of munitions and milgrade starships, and prepared a counterattack while the general population struggled to find a successor to Taris.

It began a righteous war, but righteousness alone does not ensure victory. The first interstellar conflict among the children of Terra began and ended in the space of less than a month. Rashemai’s vengance-fuelled few made the first official strike in the so-named Rashemai Incident; a retaliatory action for the deaths of their leader that destroyed an economic space station operated by one of the alleged masterminds of the Black Sky Corsair attack. Only five lives were lost, but one of them was the Galactic Authority’s Secretary of the Treasury, and the others were his children. Even as outrage at the attack spread through the Cluster, it was too late.

Following that, the Galactic Authority mobilized their entire fleet - a fleet that had honed its claws for years by this point on pirates and other rebellious elements - and struck back with what the history holos consider to be measured effort, steely resolve, and tight, proportional response. Or, at least, the histories of the Galactic Authority claim as much. Even as the people of the Rashemai Cluster tried to secure peace through nonviolent means, more and more of them found their lives threatened, or ended, in a fight that none of them had chosen.

The conclusion of this short-lived conflict saw the Rashemai Cluster, and Rashemai itself, so devastated by the Authority Star Fleet that it had no choice but to be integrated into the Galactic Authority. Aid packages were dispatched. The wounded were tended. The people of the galaxy rallied under the Galactic Authority’s direction to help the war-torn cities and settlements of the Cluster; a victor reaching out the paw of mercy to the rash, barbaric peoples who had so callously fired the first shot of the galaxy’s first true interstellar war.

War Never Changes

To this day, there are conflicting theories about the Rashemai Incident. Whether the Corsair attack on Rashemai City and Taris vys-Rashemai had been designed to provoke exactly the sort of response that had been witnessed, or if the captured Corsair had merely underestimated the effect of their words, no one knows. The event did solidify the Galactic Authority as a military power if nothing else, and a marked increase in propaganda that followed all but martyred the late Secretary of the Treasury and his family as victims of the sorts of lawless, honorless monsters that dwelled beyond the Authority’s reach

The Rashemai Cluster, in turn, grew bitter and much more insular. They fell further and further from the vision of unity that Taris once had so eloquently and charismatically spoken to the galaxy on. There would be many, many more clashes with the forces of the Galactic Authority as the centuries turned, but the Authority never chose to end them completely. Every conflict and every rebellious act they stage is doomed to failure; they have never been large and well-armed enough to actually face the Galactic Authority in any meaningful way. But righteous war has become something of a point of national pride; that even loss in the name of fighting the oppression of the Authority is something to be commended. They’ve become something of a heroic symbol to rebels everywhere, and much of Rashemai’s cultural exports are all about bucking the trends of the Authority in one way or another.

In the modern era, the rule of the Galactic Authority is absolute. The Rashemai Cluster is considered an independent vassal state; a collection of a dozen or so inhabited systems that are allowed relative autonomy in spite of their abject hatred for the Authority and all it stands for. While they growl and seethe in the dark, the Authority say, the Galactic Authority directs industry, economy, democracy, and invest in the bright future of the galaxy for the betterment of all. The peoples of the galaxy, by and large, are with them. Rashemai is considered by the vast majority to be little more than antagonizers and blowhards who don’t know how to pick their battles, and would prosper along with the rest of the galaxy if they could just learn how to fall in line. Some still sit on the sidelines, trying to figure out if there is a means by which the conflict can be ended once and for all, without tremendous loss of life. Following a protracted period of galactic quiet, their voices too are on the rise.

Their voices, and many others. That galactic quiet is slowly growing louder, much to the concern of the galaxy at large. The Galactic Authority isn’t as invincible as it once seemed, with pirate and criminal enterprise nipping at its outer reaches, a military unused to failure growing more frustrated, corporate and megacorporate interests taking outsized roles on the Ruling Council and in individual planetary concerns, and reports of strange stellar phenomena are well and truly on the rise. The people are wondering if the Authority really has a good grasp of the situation, and more and more are feeling abandoned by those who are alleged to have their best interests at heart. Rashemai too grows louder by the day, warning people that it’s not too late to leave behind the oppression of the Authority and join the Rashemai in freedom… and more people have begun to emigrate from the Authority’s worlds to those of the Cluster than has been since since Taris herself invited them. Their message is clear, it is concise, and it is gaining traction that concerns the Authority gravely.

It’s clear, at the least, that times are on the verge of changing once again. The whole galaxy is tensing, just waiting for someone to say or do one wrong thing, and plunge billions upon billions of people into the devastation and suffering of war once more. It may happen tomorrow, or it may happen a decade away, but as sure as day follows night, everyone knows what’s coming if something drastic doesn’t happen soon.

I wanted to make sure that I had an interesting galaxy built up, even if the story of Void Dreaming doesn’t directly touch on it all. Who knows? Maybe I’ll write stories or novels (or even more visual novels) in the setting in future and I can explore some different stuff I’ve worldbuilt for it. If nothing else, it’s fun and gives you as a reader a nice idea of what sort of setting you’re in for.

Next time, we’ll focus in a bit on some more worldbuilding with the structure of the Galactic Authority itself! How its politics work, what the leadership structure is like, and maybe we’ll even get to see if the Rashemai maybe have a point.

Until then, stars guide you.

 - Faora