Aidus system

  

Aidus system

Aidus and its major planets (distances not to scale)
Age	551.606 billion cycles
Location	Local Bubble, Orion Arm, Milky Way
System mass	1.034 Aidus masses
Nearest star	Vesin (6.23 ly)
Nearest known planetary system	Efesa system (6.94 ly)
Planetary system
Semi-major axis of outer known planet (Mora)	2.13 OO
Distance to Kuiper cliff	20 OO
Populations
Stars	1 (Aidus)
Known planets	7: Svarus Achlisa Pechlus Orbalia Velesa Chaius Mora
Known dwarf planets	3: Lubof Aloina Temnoa
Known natural satellites	None
Known minor planets	Hundreds of thousands
Known comets	19
Orbit about Galactic Center
Invariable-to-galactic plane inclination	≈96° (ecliptic)
Distance to Galactic Center	27,000 ly
Orbital speed	54 km/s
Orbital period	56.445 bcy
Star-related properties
Spectral type	M8v
Frost line	≈1.650 OO
Distance to heliopause	≈80 OO
Hill sphere radius	≈0.75ly

The Aidus system (Volsh: Aidus; Langin: Aydó; Podchin: Эйд, Ayd) consists of the gravitationally-bound planetary system orbiting the ultra-cool red dwarf star Aidus. Of the bodies that orbit Aidus, the largest are the seven terrestrial planets, followed by a handful of dwarf planets and many smaller objects, including asteroids and comets.

The star Aidus is approximately 551.606 billion cycles old, with an average surface temperature of 2560 Kelvin. Aidus is not a variable star, and as such, it has no solar cycle. The star's relatively low temperature and lack of variability are held to be key factors in the development of natural, biological life on two of its seven terrestrial planets. The seven planets of Aidus orbit the star in precise numerical ratios of 8:5, 5:3, 3:2, 3:2, 4:3, and 3:2. This orbital resonance is believed to have existed since the formation of the star system. All of the planets are tidally locked to the host star, meaning that those which harbor life do so on narrow meridional bands of perpetual twilight between the planets' day and nightsides.

Human beings are believed to have arrived in the Aidus system approximately 120,000 cycles ago, after a 26,000 cycle-long voyage from a now-unknown home system. It is believed that massive Solsailing ships brought approximately 120,000 to 250,000 persons intermittently over a period of approximately 600 cycles. The environmental conditions found in the twilight band of the middle-most planet Orbalia are believed to resemble the conditions of the legendary Human home world Zemais. The history of humanity before the Drevnian War, which occurred approximately 105,000 cycles before present, remains inconclusive, as this pseudo-historical conflict is believed to have resulted in a near extinction of humanity and the complete destruction of its first civilizations. The only absolute evidence that humanity possesses of its alien origins lie in the stark contrast between the Human genetic sequence and that of almost all other animal life present throughout the system.

As of the 13th millennium of the Fourth Age, the Aidus system is home to more than 600 million humans, most of whom reside permanently within the Aidusian Empire, which holds supreme political power on all of its inhabited planets. A very small portion of individuals live outside of the Empire, primarily in the free ports of the Scattered Circumtorus, the outermost portion of the star system. The Aidus system is the only star system known by its inhabitants to harbor sentient life.

Etymology

The Anglatin and Volsh word Aidus is believe to derive from the Zemaian pantheon of Old Gods, in particular, the Old God Aides, ruler of a mythic underworld realm. Modern scholars at the Orbital University believe that this name likely arose as a reference to the death-like circumstances that the earliest humans migrating to Aidus would have been undergoing, in that their voyage to Aidus was similar to the voyage to the underworld that souls undertook at their end of their time in the earthly realm of Zemais. This theory of the etymology of the stars' name relies heavily on the truth of the Zemaian migration theory, which technically remains unproven despite its commonplace acceptance.

Alternatively, Aidus is posited to derive from a corruption of the Anglatin word aether or aither, a word with ambiguous original meaning, but generally taken to refer to the upper regions of the sky, and more broadly, to the entirety of space beyond the lowest levels of a planet's atmosphere; i.e., the "Heavens" of Drevnian mythology. Given the strong continuation of study in the Anglatin language, however, it is considered a less likely candidate than the aforementioned derivation from the Zemaian Old God Aides.

Exology

Star

Main article: Aidus (star)

The star of the Aidus system, known eponymously in Anglatin as Aidus, is by far the system's most massive component. Its large mass produces high enough temperatures and densities in its cores to sustain nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium, making it a main sequence star. This reaction releases an enormous amount of energy, which is released into space as electromagnetic radiation. Aidus is a late M dwarf star. It has unusually low density when compared to other stars of its kind.

Aidus' age is believed to be 551.606 billion cycles, making it a particularly ancient star in relation to many observed in its local group. Due to its low density and relative temperature, Aidus has a low rate of hydrogen-helium fusion, meaning that it will outlast the present age of the Universe by potentially trillions to hundreds of trillions of cycles. Consequently, Aidus is believed to last to the point that it will remain as one of the last stars burning in the Universe.

Aidus has an extremely strong magnetosphere of roughly 600 G. This magnetosphere is powered by the star's strong level of chromospheric activity. The magnetosphere of Aidus is so strong that it is capable of capturing coronal mass ejections. This is believed to be one of the key reasons that almost every planet in the system was capable of maintaining its atmosphere, despite their relatively close distance to the star when compared with confirmed exoplanetary systems.

Like all other stars, Aidus loses mass through stellar wind. This stellar wind has long been of great significance to the system's human inhabitants, who have harnessed it throughout civilization to power interplanetary spacecraft at relativistic speeds.

Planetary system

Svarus

Main article: Svarus

The closest planet to Aidus, Svarus has a semi-major axis of 0.397 OO. Svarus is not within the system's habitable zone, with the planet receiving more than four time the amount of solar radiation that Orbalia does. It has runaway greenhouse conditions, with thick and supercritical conditions increasing as one's altitude on the planet lowers. Like all planets in the system, it is tidally-locked, with a hot dayside and colder nightside. Its heavy and hot atmosphere mean that unlike most other planets in the system, the atmosphere remains in a fully gaseous state on the nightside.

Svarus has a total mass of 1.201 Om and a radius of 1.196 Or. It's surface gravity is 0.818 Og, and it has an equilibrium temperature of about 307.3 Kelvin. The planet orbits Aidus every 0.248 cycles, the quickest of any planet in the system.

Achlisa

Main article: Achlisa

The second planet from Aidus, Achlisa orbits at a semi-major axis of 0.545 OO. Like Svarus, Achlisa lies too close to its sun for it to be habitable, with a thick and hot runaway greenhouse atmosphere. It receives about twice as much solar radiation as Orbalia, half that of Svarus, but it still experiences runaway greenhouse conditions. Similarly to Svarus, its nightside contains gaseous atmosphere.

Achlisa has a total mass of 1.365 Om, the highest in the system, and a radius of 1.169 Or. It's surface gravity is 0.973 Og, the most similar of any planet to Orbalia, the home world of humanity. It has a surface equilibrium temperature of 339.5 Kelvin, far too hot for human habitation on the surface. It orbits Aidus once every 0.397 cycles.

Pechlus

Main article: Pechlus

Pechlus is the third planet from Aidus, with a semi-major axis of 0.759 OO. It is far away enough from its sun for liquid water to exist on its surface, but the planet still receives roughly 6% more solar radiation than Orbalia, resulting in an atmosphere dominated by steam and violent storms. Like the other liquid water surface planets in the system, Orbalia and Velesa, Pechlus is an eyeball world.

Pechlus has a mass of 0.351 Om, the lowest in the system, and a radius of 0.837 Or. It's surface gravity is 0.486 Og, also the lowest in the system. It has an equilibrium temperature of 286.1 Kelvin. Its low gravity and extreme weather have long made it unsuitable for large-scale human colonization, although several attempts have been made in recent ages. It orbits Aidus once every 0.665 cycles.

Orbalia

Main article: Orbalia

Orbalia is the fourth planet from Aidus, with a semi-major axis of 1 OO. The home planet of humanity in the system, Orbalia has long been used by exologists and planetologists as a standard for comparison with other planets. Tidally-locked to Aidus like all other planets in the system, Orbalia has a high-heat desert dayside and a low-heat glacial nightside. Temperatures remain stable enough in a meridional band around the planet to allow for a temperate environment with relatively moderate seasonal variations. Humanity is believed by some to have originated from Orbalia's meridional band, although there is also a body of evidence which suggests the planet was specifically chosen by prehistoric humans for its similarities to a hypothetical original home world.

Orbalia's planetary metrics of mass, radius, gravity, and orbital period (in cycles) are all equal to 1, much like its orbital semi-major axis. The planet has an equilibrium temperature 249.6 Kelvin. Its orbital period around Aidus is used as the basis for the Cyclical calendar, in which one revolution equals one cycle.

Velesa

Main article: Velesa

Velesa is the fifth planet from Aidus, with a semi-major axis of 1.310 OO. It lies on the outer edge of the star's habitable zone. Well within the frost zone of the system, Velesa is a true eyeball ocean world, with a glacial nightside and an exposed ocean dayside. As a world high in water content, it is much stormier on the surface than Orbalia, meaning that its human population has long preferred to live in its subsurface ocean.

Velesa has a mass of 0.803 Om and a radius of 1.115 Or. It has a surface gravity of 0.624 Og and an equilibrium temperature of 219 Kelvin. These planetological conditions make it suitable for the harboring of native biological life, which is vibrant in its subsurface planetary ocean. There is also a small population of surface-dwelling lifeforms in its meridional band. Its planetological similarity to Orbalia and its large exposed ocean have seen Velesa long remain the second home of humanity in the Aidus system. The planet orbits its sun every 1.512 cycles.

Chaius

Main article: Chaius

Chaius is the sixth planet from Aidus, with a semi-major axis of 1.621 OO. Although outside the absolute habitable zone of the star, it teeters on the edge of the frost zone, meaning that its antisolar point does have a small patch of exposed ocean surface, an area which has long been referred to as the planet's "pupil" in its near-eyeball-world state. Otherwise, the surface of the planet is coated in a thick layer of ice.

Chaius has a mass of 1.355 Om and a radius of 1.225, the latter being the largest in the system, making it the planet with the most absolute surface area. Chaius has a gravity of 0.877 Og, the second-most similar to Orbalia in the system after Achlisa. It has a planetary equilibrium temperature of 197.2 Kelvin, unsuitable for human surface habitation even in its meridional band. Like it's sister glacial world, Mora, Chaius has a long history of secondary human colonization. The planet orbits Aidus every 2.029 cycles.

Mora

Main article: Mora

Mora is the seventh planet from Aidus, with a semi-major axis of 2.138 OO, the greatest of any planet in the system. Mora lies outside of both the habitable zone and the frost zone of the system, meaning it is the coldest planet in the system and the only "true" glacial world, with no natural interruptions in the glacial layer covering its planetary subsurface ocean.

Mora has a mass of 0.391 Om and a radius of 0.825 Or, both metrics being the second-lowest in the system. It has a surface gravity of 0.559 Og and a planetary equilibrium temperature of 171.6 Kelvin. While the surface of the planet is wholly uninhabitable, Mora has long been a target of secondary colonization in the system by Velesans, due to its high planetological similarity. Mora has the longest orbital period of any planet in the system due to its orbital distance, revolving around Aidus once every 3.098 cycles.

Other objects

Circumtorus

Main article: Circumtorus

Intersecting and extending beyond the orbit of Mora is a region known as the Circumtorus, a zone of asteroids, comets, meteoroids, and other planetesimals. The Circumtorus extends from roughly 2.2 OO, near the orbital plane of the planet Mora, to as far as 20 OO and can be divdied roughly into two groups: the Resonant Circumtoroids and the Scattered Circumtoroids. The Resonant Circumtoroids are located in-line with or nearing the orbit of Mora, persisting in their location after having been locked into precise resonance with the outermost planet. Most of these Resonant Circumtoroids maintain a 2:3 orbital resonance with Mora, these objects known as Fesnoids, while the remainder are known as Tzimoids. The Scattered Circumtoroids can extend into Mora's orbital plane in a way which disturbs their own orbits. Often these objects are thrown into further exaggerated eliptical orbits, with some becoming what are known as comets, bodies which get close enough to Aidus to form comet tails from the star's ambient stellar winds.

The Circumtorus is home to some of the youngest and furthest-known human settlements in the system. These settlements typically lie outside the authority of any planet-based sovereign government, and as such, the region is often rumored to travelers and prospectors alike to be ridden with as many pirates as there are rare mineral deposits in its hundreds of thousands of planetesimals. The largest of these settlements, Lubof, is often described as a free port, one of the only such stations with its resident population exceeding 100,000 individuals in the 13th millennium of the Fourth Age.

Aidosphere

The Aidosphere is the stellar-wind bubble formed by the collision of Aidus-origin stellar winds with the winds of the interstellar medium. The collision occurs at a distance of roughly 40 to 80 OO from Aidus, upwind to downwind respectively. At this boundary, the winds slow dramatically and condense, forming an ovular structure around the whole star system known as the Aidosheath. The outermost layer of the Aidosphere, the Aidopause, is the boundary at which the Aidusian-origin winds terminate and true interstellar space begins. The shape and outer edge of the Aidosphere is affected by fluid dynamics as well as Aidus' own magnetosphere. Beyond 100 OO lies the bow shock, the plasma wake created by Aidus as it travels through the Milky Way. Aidus' relatively extreme-strength magnetosphere means that objects orbiting within the Aidopause are well-protected from potentially devastating cosmic rays.

Galactic context

The Aidus system is located in the Milky Way, a barred spiral galaxy with a diameter of about 100,000 light-years and containing more than 100 billion stars. Aidus resides in the Orion Arm of the galaxy at a distance of roughly 26,700 light-years from the Galactic Center. With a speed of 54 km/s, Aidus completes one revolution every 56.449 billion cycles: this value implies that Aidus has completed only 10 full revolutions over the course of its existence and its presently on its 11th. Far from the star-crowded, radition-dense environs of the Galactic Center, Aidus' relative position in the Milky Way is believed to be a key factor in the development of life on its planets.

Within a 5 parsec radius of Aidus, this distance defined as the "stellar neighborhood", there are 28 other stars, of which 17 are fusors. Only four of these stars are visible from the nightside sky of Orbalia, the homeworld of humanity: Efesa, Fomalsamk, Algheti, and Ladisa. The closest star to Aidus, Vesin, is a brown dwarf of the spectral class T, meaning that it is not large nor dense enough to sustain hydrogen fusion in its core. Vesin is located at a distance of 6.23 light-years from Aidus, and the dwarf is not visible to the unaided eye from any of Aidus' planets due to its low level of luminosity. Aidus, Vesin, and Efesa exist in a shared bubble of the interstellar medium known as the Local Bubble; it is believed that these three stars share a common nebular origin, and the relative age of all of these stars implies that this early nebula would have been among the first in the history of the galaxy.

Nearest stars

Map of known star systems within 5.0 parsecs (16.3 light-years)

List of known star systems within 5.0 parsecs (16.3 light-years)

Designation		Distance (light-years)	Stellar class	Mass	Magnitude		Notes
System	Star			MA	Apparent	Absolute
Aidus system	Aidus	0	M8v	1	−26.74	18.1	7 planets; home system of humanity
PIL56	Vesin (PIL56)	6.23	T7v	0.308	21.43	25.05	Closest star to Aidus
Efesa system	Efesa	6.94	K5v	4.01	5.76	9.15	Closest star to Aidus visible to an unaided eye from Orbalia
PIM15	PIM15	7.65	L4.5v	0.402	18.35	21.53
Chlomus system	Chlomus	8.77	M3v	3.165	7.57	10.45
PSL510	PSL510	11.11	Y1v	0.117	29.9	32.27
Fomalsamk system	Fomalsamk	11.32	F7v	15.224	1.13	3.46
PSL211	PSL211	11.6	T8v	0.2875	23.27	25.55
Smerna system	Smerna	11.98	M0v	3.467	7.64	9.85
Filadela system	Filadela	12.49	M0v	4.627	7.01	9.13
Katovom system	Katovom	12.96	M4.5v	2.023	11.51	13.54
Vrakinaus system	Vrakinaus	13.02	M3.5v	5.506	8.58	10.6
PSL411	PSL411	13.17	T7.5v	0.235	25.85	26.85
Perman system	Perman	13.24	M1v	3.492	7.96	9.95
PIM513	PIM513	13.33	M9.5v	0.282	18.81	20.78
Mavrus system	Mavrus	14.35	M4v	1.624	10.43	12.24
PIL67	PIL67	14.59	T5.5v	0.439	20.87	22.65
Eksartes system	Eksartes	14.99	M1v	4.719	6.63	8.35
PIL415	PIL415	15	T9v	0.223	25.54	27.26
PIM112	PIM112	15.1	T5v	0.281	23.85	25.55
Asprus system	Asprus	15.19	M3v	2.257	9.61	11.3
Thiatar system	Thiatar	15.19	M2v	3.243	8.57	10.26
Algheti system	Algheti	15.29	A7iii	22.472	0.75	2.43	Brightest star in nightside sky on Orbalia
Chonus system	Chonus	15.33	M5v	2.267	9.91	11.58
PSL19	PSL19	15.54	T1.5v	0.348	22.32	23.97
PIL515	PIL515	15.64	T0v	0.134	20.87	22.5
Ladisa system	Ladisa	15.72	K4v	8.0238	4.74	6.38
PIM810	PIM810	15.75	L4.5v	0.844	16.69	18.3
Sartus system	Sartus	16.3	K5v	5.178	6.82	8.35
System	Star	Distance (Light-years)	Stellar class		Apparent	Absolute	Notes
Designation					Magnitude

History

Forgotten Age (ended 102,500 CBP)

Human origins

There is a large amount of ambiguity surrounding the origins of the first Human civilizations on the Aidus system. As of the Fourth Age, there are three primary theories which are held by a majority of scholars and lay folk throughout the system. These are: the Zemaian migration theory, the Orbalian homeworld theory, and the Xeno-Creator theory. Of these three theories, none are more widely accepted and subjected to scientific scrutiny than the Zemaian migration theory.

The Zemaian migration is a supposed event which took place approximately 120,000 CBP, at what is considered the general starting point of the prehistoric Forgotten Age. In the migration, some one to two hundred thousand Humans would have sailed across the interstellar medium from a distant system and planet, the latter broadly referred to as Zemais. Key evidence for this theory comes from the existence of technologically advanced prehistoric ruins throughout the system, which indicates that the civilizations of the Forgotten Age were just as, if not more so, technologically proficient as contemporary Human societies are. Given this, along with significant differences between the genomic structure of Human beings and crop plants to other flora and fauna found throughout the system, as well as fundamental circadian and metabolic incompatibilities between Human beings and Orbalian fauna, many scholars have put their weight behind the Zemaian migration theory.

The Orbalian homeworld theory posits that Human beings evolved from natural pressures on the middle-most planet Orbalia. Evolutionary research suggests that the native fauna of the planet have changed over the course of millions of cycles to their resultant present forms. Human beings would have evolved themselves from some now extinct ancestor species, and alongside them, would have cultivated plants and livestock beneficial to them through the process of selective breeding. Positive evidence for this theory remains limited to adaptationist explanations of certain Human behaviors and traits, and instead, adherents of the theory rely on the improbability of the earliest Human societies harnessing the power of spaceflight and the improbability of other Orbalia-like planets existing elsewhere in the Universe. There has been little to no discovered, concrete evidence, however, that Human societies ever existed at a non-spacefaring developmental stage, especially given the long presence of Humans on other planets in the system. The Orbalian homeworld theory is sometimes subsumed as a component of the next theory, the Xeno-Creator theory, in that an alien species was the cause of the technological ruins and specifically uplifted the Human species to its present form of sentience from an unknown lower life-form.

The most controversial of the widely-held origin theories, the Xeno-Creator theory posits that Human beings were created, either benevolently or scientifically, by an unknown alien species approximately 120,000 CBP. According to Xeno-Creationists, the Drevnian ruins throughout the solar system are the ancient facilities of these alien creators, in which the first Human beings were created and released onto Orbalia. There is greater variation in beliefs after the release of Humanity, with some claiming that the aliens had a guiding role in the creation of the first Human civilizations, while others claim that the aliens departed soon after. Some proponents of this theory also point to the genomic, circadian, and metabolic differences of the Human species and their most commonly cultivated plants and livestock as the key evidence for this xenological intervention, while others subsume the Orbalian homeworld theory to explain the differences through an adaptationist methodology. Xeno-Creationism serves as the basis for one of contemporary Aidus' largest religions, Estrelism, leading to a resultant controversy over the theological connotations held by many of the view's adherents.

Drevnian Empire

Orbalia and the Orbital University (not to scale). The University is one of few Drevnian constructs in operation to this day.

Regardless of Humanity's precise method of emergence in the Aidus system, archaeological findings indicate that the first Human civilization was capable of extremely advanced technological practices, through a demonstrable understanding of solsailing and nuclear fission. By as early as 117,000 CBP, this earliest civilization, now referred to anachronously as the Drevnian Empire, had expanded across much of the meridional band of Orabalia and even onto the half-frozen sea-world Velesa. It is believed that in this early period of Human history that the massive Orbital University's ring-station above Orbalia was constructed, one of the only Drevnian constructs to survive in a functional state into the contemporary period.

Little in the way of primary sources remain of the Drevnian Empire. Much of what is known is derived from legends and second-hand reports predating and postdating the Belvisajine Inquisition. It is believed that the original power structure of the Empire was at first democratic, sliding slowly into a more oligarchic form as time went on. People in this civilization are believed to have enjoyed a generally high quality of life at first, with a great deal of technological advancements allowing for a life free of basic survival concerns. Findings dating from the later periods of the Empire indicate widespread socioeconomic strife, especially in colonies outside of Orbalia proper.

Starting around 105,500 CBP, a latent power struggle began to emerge between several competing factions within the Empire. Within a mere 500 cycles, this power struggle shifted from political maneuvers to open military conflict. The possible causes for a violent confrontation in what is otherwise believed to have been a harmonious state of affairs seem limited, leading most scholars to conclude that the conflict must have arose from ideological divergence between rivalling factions.

Drevnian War

The Drevnian War was a major conflict waged between, at first, a myriad of powerful factions within the Drevnian Empire, resulting in its collapse. Evidence suggests that the conflict broke out approximately 105,000 CBP, around 500 cycles after the emergence of open political hostilities between the leading factions. Little is known of the factions that did not survive to the very end of the conflict, due to the victory of the Drevnian Divinity and its associated purges via the Belvisajine Inquisition (sometimes referred to as the Divine Inquisition).

The effects of the War and the following Inquisition are known to have been severe. The Drevnian Divinity purged a wide array of texts and persecuted almost every belief group it saw as deviant from itself, in an aim to bring total ideological alignment among the remains of Humanity. Only the Orbital University was left unaffected by this Inquisition: whether that being due to diplomatic assurances, ideological agreements, or defensive measures remains a general mystery to this day.

After approximately 2,500 cycles of conflict and strife, the Belvisajine Inquisition ended with the foundation of the city of Aetarlux by the first Divine Leader, Belvisaj I, marking the beginning of the subsequent First Age and the start of the contemporary calendar system.

First Age (ended 84,404 CBP)

Early Divinity

The Drevnian Divinity stabilized for a time as the sole superpower Human civilization in the Aidus system. All of Orbalia was submitted to the rule of the Divine Leaders from the temple-city of Aetarlux, which grew to become the largest Human population center in the system within a few hundred cycles of its founding. Only small, undersea pockets on Velesa continued to hold out again Drevnian rule, with most of these communities serving as the foundation from which the eventual Podchin people would emerge.

In the first series of administrations after the completion of the Belvisajine Inquisition, the Divinity would focus a great deal of its organizational resources on rebuilding the war-torn meridional band of Orbalia. The population of the planet had collapsed during the War, due to a combination of food shortages, purges, and fierce orbital bombardments. The complete destruction of many established population centers would allow the Divinity a prime opportunity to restructure human society at large from the ground up.

In I.9933, after nearly 10,000 cycles of peaceful reconstruction across the system, the undersea rebel strongholds on Velesa began experiencing their worst wave of unrest since the underwater retreat. Corroded equipment and a series of particularly devastating flooding events were key motivating factors in the near-uprising of many working class districts against their militarily enforced order. Seeking to prevent a collapse of the Velesan anti-Divinity cause, in an unprecedented move, the Commanding Admiral of the Velesan Underfleet, Aleksi Popof, voluntarily dissolved the military junta and formed the Velesan Council.

Divinity spies reported these events back to military leaders on Orbalia. The then-ruling Divine Leader Niklas II believed that another attempt at fighting the Velesans in their own element of undersea would likely be fruitless, and for the first time in the history of the Divinity, sent a message of peaceful intentions to the newly elected Council Chair Ifana Ifanofa. This move shocked many in the higher elements of the Divinity, especially the more hardline Pretrars, who, despite institutional bounds to uphold the infallibility of the Divine Leader, questioned the decision publicly.

Later Divinity

Trenshaya, Trenshaya Voblas, on Velesa, the site of the signing of the Trenshaya Accords in I.9935.

The Trenshaya Accords were signed between Divine Leader Niklas II and Council Chair Ifana Ifanofa in I.9935, marking the first-ever official Divine recognition of a Human polity other than itself. With settlement efforts on Orbalia itself undergoing a series of chronic struggles, the peace between Orbalia and Velesa was an attempt by Niklas II to foster the growth of humanity for its overall betterment. The Accords, and its associated pledge of allowing the free Velesan settlement of the outermost ice worlds Chaius and Mora, further outraged the already stewing hardliner Pretrars who called for a return to the ideological purity of their forefathers.

While Niklas II's intentions may have been peaceful, the consequences of his decision to normalize relations with the Velesan Council would see the formation of the first-ever ruptures in the leadership of the Drevnian Divinity. Although a nominal cordiality had been established between the Divinity and the Velesan Council, the two polities began to engage in a military-scientific arms race, at first secretly, and later, more openly, as relations declined over the course of the next several thousand cycles.

While the expansion of Council settlements came with an unprecedent level of social cohesion, the same could not be said for the Divinity. Two major competing factions emerged among the Pretrars: those who supported the peaceful coexistence of the Divinity with other Human polities came to be known as the Paixists, while those who sought a return to the ideological purification of the earlier Divinity were the Littraelists. The Paixists enjoyed wide-ranging popular support, whereas the Littraelists were concentrated in the emerging oligarchic elite classes of the administrative-military-religious complex that represented the upper echelons of the Divine state.

The influence of the Paixists at first was strong in the higher levels of the Divinity, although with each passing generation, the Littraelists became more and more prominent. The first Littraelist Divine Leader, Ujinia, was elected in I.14337. Ujinia intensified the expansion of the Divine military, while at the same time instituting a secret police-based crackdown on dissent throughout Orbalia. In I.14869, the Paixist Petrar Leyo Artis was arrested by Ujinia's secret police on the charges of conspiracy, the first-ever arrest of a Petrar in the history of the Divinity. When civilians in Artis' Petrash attempted to organize a public demonstration in support of their Petrar, the crowd was dispersed violently and the ringleaders apprehended. The moves galvanized the broader Orbalian population, leading to widespread contempt for the Littraelist ruling class.

Ujinian Inquisition

The Ujinian Inquisition began in earnest in I.14878, after a major protest in Aetarlux that saw the public endorsement of several leading Paixist Petrars against the imprisonment of Leyo Artis. Ujinia and the Holiest Petrars denounced the protests as heretical, and flying in the face of the Divine Leader's infallibility. As a result of this crackdown, the Paixist movement began to shift towards a more underground strategy, hoping to evade a full-scalem catastrophic purging like that of the original Belvisajine Inquisition. Paixist Petrars were ousted from every level of state, many arrested en masse alongside lay protest leaders.

As the arrests continued, it became clear to the Littraelist hierarchs that attempting to simply eliminate the Paixist movement by sheer force would potentially lead to open civil conflict. Instead of taking the route of the original, Belvisajine Inquisition in the use of lethal force, the Ujinian Inquisition established a series of hard labor and reeducation settlements. Massive recruitment campaigns within the general population aimed to both bolster the Divinity's military numbers, as well as provide a reciprocal form of additional supports and privileges for the new recruits and their families that would better their lifestyle, and thus, insure their loyalty to the state. These enlarged forces were then tasked with the enforcement of the Inquisition's precepts, that the Paixists, and any heretics to that extent, would be captured and reeducated back into loyalty through mendicancy and hard labor, and in actuality, a form of state slavery.

Unlike the Belvisajine Inquisition, the Ujinian movement would outlast its namesake, being carried on for nearly 2,000 cycles. By I.16500, nearly 21.1% of the population of Orbalia had been enslaved, a number of roughly 29.5 million people, and a standing army comprising 8.2% of the population had been mobilized, roughly 11.48 million individuals. At this point, a minority of adult, working-age citizens were not tied to the state in any direct way, whether through enslavement or recruitment.

Sundering War

Dayward Gate district, Aetarlux Capital Metropole, Orbalia, shortly before the outbreak of the Sundering War in I.16549.

Having paid close attention to these developments through its comprehensive spy network, the Velesan Council worked clandestinely to support any and all remaining underground resistance cells on Orbalia, including a small segment of the Divine Military which found the enslavement of its fellow humans unconscionable. In I.16549, upon receiving intelligence that one of the largest of these cells was under direct threat from the Divine Secret Police, the Velesan Navy, in coordination with resistance network and military dissenters, launched a surprise attack on Orbalia's largest orbital anchorage, destroying over a third of its fleet in a mere half hour. This would be considered the first engagement of what later came to be known as the Sundering War.

On Orbalia proper, open fighting developed between the resistance-dissenter forces and the Divine Army loyalists. Weapons were distributed among many of the reeducation centers, and despite an initial advantage, the Divine Army loyalists soon found themselves on the backfoot, as orbital communications arrays were methodically struck out by Velesan task forces. In less than 60 cycles, the Divine Navy had been completely annihilated. The ground war waged indecisively between the rebels and loyalists, with no side capable of achieving a clear advantage over one another due to the general destruction of the planet's infrastructure.

The capture of key military manufacturing centers by rebel forces in I.16608 signaled a shift in the conflict, whereby up until that point the Divine Military had maintained general sub-orbital aerospace superiority across Orbalia. Velesan-produced goods, alongside military reinforcements, precipitated the advantage in favor of the anti-Divine coalition. By I.16650, the Divinity had been reduced to its principal strongholds in the Aetarlux Capital Metropole. While relief efforts for the civilian population outside this region were strained at best, the Capital Metropole was undergoing widespread famine and constant resource shortages.

In I.16667, the nearly 17-cycle long siege of the Capital was broken by a key victory in the Nightward Gate manufacturing district. Coalition forces poured into the city, and after only a cycle of urban warfare, the Drevnian Citadel at the city center was captured. Divine Leader Kailael II, the last to hold the position, was captured, along with the Holiest Petrars, and most of the Divine Military's remaining leadership. Following the form of the Velesan rebels at the end of the Belvisajine Inquisition, Divine Military holdouts retreated to the deepest waters of the nightside Subglacial Ocean.

Despite a general sentiment of unease in the Capital Metropole, news of Kailael II's capture led to widespread jubilation across the liberated cities of Orbalia, as well as the metropolitan centers of Velesa. By the end of I.16668, the next cycle after the capture of the city, the terms of the First Aetarlux Treaty had been negotiated by the Orbalian Free States and the Velesan Council. The Treaty reaffirmed the territorial commitments of the Trenshaya Accords, as well as guaranteeing the mutual cooperation of the two polities in affairs both civilian, economic, and military.

Free States collapse

While the planetary government of Velesa enjoyed high stability and economic success in the wake of the Sundering War, the Orbalian Free States struggled to reach consensus on the nature of reconstruction and reparations. Various factions disagreed on the path forward: some called for the execution of Littraelist leaders and the total dismantlement of the religious bureaucracy, while others, generally those who had remained faithful to the Paixist movement, sought a more tempered form of theocratic government which incorporated democratic elements. While the Free States' government faced general disunity, Littraelist loyalist holdouts in the Subglacial Ocean consolidated its forced and began making headway in the establishment of an on-land espionage cell network.

In the aftermath of the I.16671 elections, the balance of power in the Free States Assembly rested with a handful of smaller factions and independently-elected Assemblers, who remained generally uninterested in the ideological extremities of both the Anti-Divinists and the Paixists. While the Assembly wrung hands over the formation of its first government, a wave of Littraelist terrorist acts took place at regional government centers across the planet. When several regional leaders met to discuss a path forward given the inability of a single national government to form, key leaders of the two primary Assembly blocs were met with the urgent realization that continued inaction on their part might tear the Free States apart and leave its individual regions vulnerable to the lingering Littraelist threat.

In I.16673, after two cycles of negotiations and an increasing frequency of terrorist activities, compromise was achieved between the Anti-Divinists and Paixists on key issues, and the first Free States' administration was on the cusp of its inauguration. Yet, this compromise came hours too late, as several regional governments with strong single-faction majorities had already declared their independence from the Free States' government. Fearing the total collapse of Orbalian unity, the planetary government issued an ultimatum demanding the revocation of these independence declarations. Regional leaders, however, saw this as an empty threat, calling the government's bluff. Out of a lack of desire to trigger yet another plant-wide conflict, the Free States' government reneged on its ultimatum.

After the failure of the Assembly-backed government to stand its ground to the independence-seeking regions, several more regions declared their independence from the planetary government. Its hands tied and its soldiers more loyal to their home regions than the vague idea of a planetary government, the Free States Assembly was almost completely vacated by members from the independence-seeking regions. By I.16674, the Free States had completely collapsed, with even its most fervent advocates returning to their home regions.

Embers War

Following the collapse of the Free States, ideologically aligned and regions began to coalesce autonomously into larger federations. Although many of these federations would have weak central governments, political expediency in the face of the Littraelist holdout groups meant that many regions were better off combining what limited resources they had, albeit voluntarily. Within the next 400 cycles, a handful of planetary super states had emerged, with a few smaller, ideologically independent regions remaining scattered across the meridional band. The Littraelists, in the meanwhile, consolidated a great deal of the Subglacial Ocean under their control in the name of the Eternal Divinity.

In I.17011, a Divine battlegroup emerged in a meridional sea, beginning a land invasion of the politically independent Yerba Region-State. The Paixist superpower of Luxaria immediately mobilized its military forces in support of the Yerbans, with the Anti-Divinist superpower, the Graslaender Union, following suit shortly thereafter. These actions would comprise the first engagements of the Embers War.

While the land-based Orbalian superpowers quickly repelled the Divine landing force, taking the fight to their strongholds in the Subglacial Ocean proved challenging. While the Velesan Council agreed to assist in the construction of submarine shipyards where they could, the government was under strong pressure at home against involving itself directly in yet another costly conflict on an alien world. It would take 1,085 cycles before Luxaria and the Grasslander Union possessed enough naval forces to adequately strike the Divine strongholds in the depths of the Subglacial Ocean. After the coalition victory at the Battle of Portoscura in I.18096, the Embers War finally concluded. With the complete elimination of all remaining Littraelist forces, the High Petrar Lutzero Roesas declared the end of the First Age, heralding the Second Age as a new era of peace for all mankind.

Second Age (ended 40,702 CBP)

Gilded Peace

The Gilded Peace proceeded throughout the Aidus system after the annihilation of Littraelist holdouts on Orbalia for nearly 14,000 cycles. While, despite the name, the period was not entirely free of any conflict, compared to most other periods in Human history, the Gilded Peace is one of the longest-running epochs free of major conflicts between any of the Orbalian or Velesan powers.

The Gilded Peace was marked on Orbalia, initially, by the extensive reconstruction efforts of the two subsequent wars there, and later, by the growth of new settlements outside of the planet's meridional band. Utilization of otherwise previously unexploited, less hospitable territory became widespread throughout the Gilded Peace, as the Orbalian economies sought resources to fuel their extensive growth. To the Velesan Council, the Gilded Peace was marked by the creation of the first major off-world settlements on Chaius and Mora, as well as the growth of Velesan population centers into the first genuine metropolises of that planet.

From II.0 to II.14000, the Velesan population increased from 29.75 million to 49.95 million, a cycle over cycle increase of nearly 32% compared to previous periods. On Orbalia, after having experienced nearly 16 million total deaths during the Sundering War and subsequent conflicts, the population rose from approximately 124 million in II.0 to 210 million by II.14000, marking a dramatic growth in major population centers and across the rural areas of the planet as well.

The Gilded Peace is so named as a reflection of the fact that this high level of growth and development did not map throughout the entirety of the system's population in an even manner. Massive corporations developed out of and profited immensely from the first claims over many previously uninhabited regions, this especially being true of Velesa's involvement on Chaius and Mora, and the Orbalian nation-states' colonization of the Subsolar Desert and Subglacial Ocean. Inequality reached a level throughout the system unprecedented in recorded history.

Moran Revolution

Sfazina Bore-Station in II.14517 at the eve of the Moran Revolution. At the time, Sfazina was the only such Bore-Station connecting Mora's interior ocean to the exterior side of the icy crust.

By around II.14000, the closing cycles of the Gilded Peace, the Velesan colonies on Chaius and Mora had grown substantially. Mora especially so, with that planet's gravitational conditions being more similar to Velesa's than Chaius'. As these colonies grew, their non-inclusion on the Council led to an increasingly discontent colonial population, which, especially among the working classes, saw itself as beholden more to corporate governance than as participants in a society of equals. By II.14500, Gildaist organizations had become widespread across Mora, and as colonial policies sought further suppression of these movements, they only grew stronger in response.

In II.14517, after a mass demonstration in the Moran colonial capital Sfazina turned bloody, the Mezdugildaiya Sofiat call for an armed uprising against the Velesan colonial administration, leading to the outbreak of the Moran Revolution. Urged by a myriad of powerful corporate lobbies on Velesa, the Council government voted to implement martial law on its colonial possessions, sending the bulk of the Velesan Navy into orbit around Mora, and landing a substantial number of troops on the planet. While Sfazina was quickly taken back by the reinforcements, the Gildaist rebels had quickly assumed control over the remainder of the planet's subglacial outposts.

Additionally, Gildaist sympathies ran high in occupied Sfazina, and those who did not immediately attempt to flee the capital were subjected to severe conditions. After only a few cycles, the military leadership of the Velesan Council began pressing their civilian superiors that taking back the entirety of Mora would be impossible without recruiting a more loyal labor force from Velesa proper, which the Council attempted to oblige. However, dangerous conditions imposed by constant Gildaist terrorist activities made the number of volunteers few, and the Council was not willing to impose such conditions on its home citizens involuntarily. Thus, in II.14549, the Velesan ground forces were recalled from Mora, an action which was lampooned by Velesan domestic media as cowardly and moronic.

With the retreat of Velesan ground forces from Mora, Gildaist forces reentered the capital, where they would establish the first Gildaist government in the Aidus system in II.14553, the Moran Mezdugildaiyan Union, or CMM (Soyuz Mezdugildaiyov Moraskii). However, the planet remained blockaded by the Velesan Navy, making trade and migration next to impossible by standard means.

Gildaism spreads

By II.15000, Gildaist movements had spread from Mora to Chaius, Orbalia, and Velesa: one of the core beliefs of the ideological system was the spreading of revolutionary practices to all mankind, to insure the perpetual existence of the movement in the face of foreign attempts at destabilization in any one successful particularity. While the Velesan Council formally banned Gildaist trade unions on both Chaius and Velesa, Gildaism became popular among working class populations across several nations in Orbalia. Nowhere was this more pronounced than in the Graslaender Union, which had been suffering from a more extreme degree of wealth disparity than any other major Orbalian nation.

In II.17892, the first democratically elected Gildaist government took power in the Graslaender Union under the Graslaender Gildaist Party, which aggressively moved forward with its promises to breakup the corporate oligopolies in cornerstone industries and infrastructure networks. This caused massive amounts of capital flight and panic selling across the country, which in turn began a series of economic downturns that resonated across Orbalia and the Aidus system at large, as the Graslaender Union was at the time the second-largest economy in the system.

Nonetheless, the Gildaist government of the Union persisted in its goals, seizing major corporate assets and redistributing them to their respective gildais. To ease the wildly fluctuating level of inflation, price controls were instituted for almost every good on the market. By the beginning of II.18000, the Graslaender economy stabilized in a much different form than it had began the previous millennium in. In line with its goals to perpetuate revolution across all human societies, the Gildaist government of the Union began a massive militarization program, which alarmed many of the other nations on Orbalia.

Coalition War

A Luxarian envoy vessel approaches Velesan defensive lines in II.21211.

By II.20000, the Graslaender Union and the Velesan Council had entered into a fierce arms race and engaged in proxy wars across the system. Gildaist revolutions had been attempted and were ongoing in several nation-states on Orbalia, while underground Gildaist organizations had permeated the Velesan homeworld and its colony on Chaius. While the Graslaends had a ground-sea force unmatched by any other polity in the system, its interplanetary capabilities were far behind that of Velesa, which had for tens of thousands of cycles remained the system's premier exonaval power.

The Interplanetary Treaty Coalition, headed by Velesa, had been formed in response to territorial incursions by the Graslaends on several smaller neighbouring states undergoing Gildaist revolutions. Luxaria, Orbalia's other hyperpower, remained neutral despite courting attempts by the ITC, as the theocratic state had pledged itself to complete neutrality in temporal affairs following the end of the Embers War some 20,000 cycles beforehand, choosing to refrain from military commitments barring only the most egregious spiritual transgressions. Alongside this temporal neutrality, Luxaria had fielded a large number of Gildaist sympathizers among its general populace and religious bureaucracy, as several core tenets of its Paixist belief system aligned with the basic principles of Gildaism.

In II.21028, as the Graslaender Union was reportedly nearing the completion of its comprehensive orbital defense network, a battlefleet from the Velesan Council engaged the central orbital shipyards of the Union in a surprise assault. Despite inflicting severe initial damage against the Union's orbital facilities, the incomplete orbital defense systems were activated in time to deal major damage in return. This first engagement of the Coalition War was considered a stalemate for both sides, representative of a military status quo which would hold throughout most of the conflict.

With its ground-sea hegemony unchallenged and the surprise Velesan exonaval assault a failure, the Graslaender Army waged a quick and decisive war against the ITC's Orbalian member states, having much more difficulty in maintaining order there in the long run than in their initial capture. Having failed to inflict a deathblow on the Graslaender orbital forces, and its Orbalian allies fallen much faster than initially hoped for, many in the Velesan military middle command questioned the prudence of their superior's decision to begin the conflict.

The stalemate of control in Orbalia orbit would prove more costly for the Velesan Exonavy than the Union in the long term. The comprehensive defense systems employed by the Graslaenders allowed for a continuous build-up of non-stationary forces, while the Velesan Exonavy had lost most of its most experienced fleets by the end of II.21100. Additionally, increased Velesan commitments to the attempted incursions around Orbalia meant that the long-standing blockade of Mora became less of priority, allowing for an unprecedented amount of trade between the Moran Mezdugildaiyan Union and non-Coalition states.

In II.21202, the Graslaender Exonavy won a decisive victory over the Velesans in Orbalian orbit, forcing a general retreat of their exonaval forces into a defensive posture around their home world. Soon after the Graslaenders struck hard against the Velesan orbital forces around Chaius, landing hundreds of thousands of ground forces on the planet, while simultaneously defeating the skeleton blockade force that remained in orbit of Mora. Having lost all of its exoplanetary possessions and allies, the Velesan Council government suffered from an unprecedented level of popular discontent.

In II.21211, the Velesan Council offered a mediated surrender, which the Graslaender Union agreed to. The Second Aetarlux Treaty was thus negotiated between II.21211 and II.21215, mediated by neutral Luxaria, which hosted the negotiations in its storied capital city. Under the terms of the Treaty, Velesa agreed to grant independence to Chaius and renounce claims over Mora, officially recognizing the status of its former colonies as sovereign. The Velesan Exonavy and Graslaender Exonavy were both limited in size by the Treaty, in exchange for which the ITC was dismantled and its Orbalian member states annexed by the Union. Finally, all parties of the Treaty, including Luxaria, agreed to the establishment of the Aidusian Council, thereafter inviting all other sovereign states in the system, to avoid the outbreak of any further conflicts by offering a neutral body for diplomacy.

Early postbellum

Generally, the majority of nation-states in the Aidus system experienced an era of peaceful development and growth following the conclusion of the Coalition War and the establishment of the Council. The level of political centralization on Orbalia was at its highest since the collapse of the Free States. The Graslaender Union rallied other Orbalian Gildaist states under the Grasborg Pact, while the Free Orbalian Community coalesced between all remaining obmenist states on the planet. Luxaria flourished in a renaissance of commerce, culture, philosophy, and science. Chaius and Mora entered a new age of growth, albeit under vastly different systems of socioeconomic organization, but both due to the lifting of all former mercantilist and embargo-induced trade restrictions which they respectively experienced before.

Only on Velesa did economic and political unrest continue to foment. Thousands left the planet, seeking a better life elsewhere. Ruthless ideological suppression and years of educational tuning meant that most Velesans saw the failings of their planet more as symptoms of external factors exacerbated by foreign elements and influences permeating their society. Embittered by their defeat in the humiliating Coalition War, many Velesans turned to nationalistic, populist organizations which took direct action to counter the rise in socioeconomic ills.

By II.23100, Velesan politics had become highly volatile, as tensions simmered between the ruling obmenist elite and the rapidly growing prochnist paramilitary and political associations across the planet. Once prochnism had entered into much of the lower ranks of the military, the Velesan Council government began shifting its state agency to purging the greatest excesses of the increasingly threatening ideology. After the attempted arrest of preeminent prochnist leader Ikor Yulnovik in II.23109, the tensions erupted into full-blown conflict, as prochnist paramilitary organizations rose up across the planet in the outbreak of the First Velesan Civil War.

First Velesan Civil War

A man in Trenshaya, Velesa, suffering from the later stages of the Haemopneumonia bacterial infection. The disease-causing bacteria is believed to have been either man-made or man-altered due to its propensity to attack only human cells.

The First Civil War was a brutal affair from the outset. Prochnist rebels seized a great deal of Velesa's Underguard, while at the same time employing guerilla and covert tactics in major settlements to wreak havoc on obmenist power centers. Having lost a great deal of its soldier population to the prochnist rebellion, the Council government began a massive conscription campaign, which caused even more people to attempt to flee the planet. While at first both sides attempted to minimize collateral damage, eventually, as stalemates were reached across the planet, both resorted to more severe actions.

The Aidusian Council at first officially adopted non-intervention in the conflict in II.23121, creating and enforcing a demilitarized zone in high orbit of Velesa after highly criticized shipments of weapons by a Chaiusine assosaiya reached Velesa's surface. Both the Graslaender Union and Luxaria contributed to the enforcement of the DMZ. Civilian ships were allowed to exit the planet, and all ships leading in were thoroughly searched for weapons or other non-humanitarian materiel.

After almost 500 cycles of open conflict, by II.23600, the Civil War entered a new stage resembling something of a prolonged insurgency on the part of both belligerents. The Velesan Council government the the now centrally self-organized Velesan Yedinstate had exhausted much of their military capacity in a series of repetitive offensives and counteroffensives. The planet was divided between them in a patchwork of territory, and the continual shifts in resources and manufactories had led to a mass emigration of many people uninterested in conflict.

In II.23996, the course of the war would be permanently altered after the emergence of the Haemopneumonia epidemic, a disease believed to have been genetically engineered by Yedinstate scientists. A unknown respiratory illness was first reported spreading rampantly throughout Trenshaya, the capital of the Velesan Council, in II.23995. By the next cycle, it was reported to be spreading throughout most of the Council's other major cities. After two more cycles, the first wave of deaths began. The Aidusian Council voted to place Velesa under a strict quarantine, with no vessels allowed to transit out of the planet's low orbit. Ships which had left in the cycles following the outbreak were tracked down, and their passengers and any contacts they had, placed under isolation in their destinations as well.

By II.24000, Haemopneumonia was running rampant throughout most population centers on Velesa. Approximately one quarter to one third of the planet's population would die as a result of the plague. After a carefully selected team of experts were sent in by the Aidusian Council to study the epidemic in II.24033, it was concluded that the bacteria causing the disease shared no genomic similarity to any known native bacteria on Velesa and that there was a possibility that the bacteria was indeed man-made or man-altered.

In II.24153, Yedinstate forces captured a key military production center in the Velesan Council's territorial heartland, due to a continuous drain of military-able population faced by the Council government. After nearly a third of the Velesan Council's high command had died of the Haemoplague, there was very little will on the side of the Council's controlled population to continue fighting, especially after Yedinstate doctors were reported to be successfully treating plague victims in settlements that they captured.

In II.24202, as the largest-yet assembled battlegroup of Yedinstate submarines closed in on Trenshaya, the garrison there signalled their unconditional surrender. Yedinstate forces entered the capital of the Council government peacefully, while Council leadership attempted to flee to holdouts in deeper waters of the planetary ocean. A significant number of Councilors were killed by a Yedinstate scout submarine when their transport refused to submit to a boarding party and was subsequently torpedoed. In II.24203, the Yedinstate leader Ikor Yulnovik declared victory in a speech at Trenshaya, nearly 1,100 cycles after the beginning of the Civil War.

Later postbellum

While the Velesan Council government may have been driven into hiding in some of the planet's most unnavigable regions of terrain, for the most part, the Yedinstate established effective control over the entirety of the planet's surface by as early as II.24210. Despite their victory planetside, the Yedinstate did not have any control over the Velesan Exonavy, which itself had lost contact with its legal superiors while remaining loyal to them. After negotiations with the Aidusian Council Quarantine Fleet, the Exonavy was permitted to leave low Velesa orbit after thorough screenings of all vessels cleared them for Haemopneumonia. Collectively, these vessels defected to Chaius.

The Yedinstate initially made no attempts to contact the Aidusian Council regarding the quarantine, focusing its earliest efforts to eradicating Haemopneumonia bacteria and general reconstruction efforts in Velesa's devastated metropolitan areas. The first population estimates from this period ranged from 25 to 30 million individuals: the Civil War and the Haemopneumonic plague had resulted in the deaths of over 20 million people. In II.24339, the Yedinstate initiated its first communications with the Aidusian Council, requesting an end of the quarantine in exchange for providing information regarding the cure for Haemopneumonia. The Yedinstate accepted the Council's counteroffer that it be permitted to screen outgoing vessels for the next 100 cycles along with the cure.

Although internally the Yedinstate promoted a xenophobic, nationalistic line which urged a complete riddance in Velesan society of foreign influence, the Yulnovik administration was still interested in claiming what it saw as its rightful place on the Aidusian Council. While representatives from the Velesan Council government had initially planned to remain on the Aidusian Council indefinitely, they were voted out by a two-thirds majority of representatives in favor of the Yedinstate in II.24341, which at the time had established effective control over the planet Velesa. Representatives of the Velesan Council ousted from the Aidusian Council left Aetarlux for Chaius, where a substantial Velesan expatriate population had developed.

Haemopneumonia was assumed to have been fully eradicated before the beginning of the screening period. The Velesan Yedinstate was able to focus its administrative capacity on rebuilding the Velesan economy and society from the ground up. The principles of prochnism were applied in this mass reconstruction of Velesan society: unwavering loyalty to the state above all else, the elimination of foreign cultural and societal influences, and the revitalization of the population through the restructuring of labor relations and living conditions.

Uranian Peace

The Uranian Peace was a period of just over 8,300 cycles where no large-scale conflict existed between any of the major powers of the Aidus system. Although there were intermittent times of instability in more localized contexts, generally, peaceful development and growth was enjoyed by many nation-states. Like the element uranium, however, with an underlying potential to cause a devastating reaction given the right conditions, this peace was characterized by an uneasy tension between the primary Orbalian powers of Luxaria and the Graslaender Union with the isolationist Velesan Yedinstate. Although the Yedinstate had put extreme limits on spaceborne commerce and travel, it remained a member of the Aidusian Council, and grew ever more increasingly hostile towards the representatives from Chaius and Mora, planets whose populations were descended from Velesan colonists in the earliest days of the Second Era.

The total population of Orbalia reached a record of 380.5 million. Velesa, too, made a recovery in its population to 38.5 million by the end of the Uranian Peace, though this number was still well below its historical high of nearly 50 million before the outbreak of the Civil War. Having benefitted from a great deal of Velesan immigration during the Civil War, Chaius' population stood at 3.35 million by the end of the Uranian peace. Mora did not see as large of a wave of immigration, with a population of 4.285 million by the same date.

The closing cycles of the Uranian Peace were defined by a series of openly hostile actions from the Yedinstate against other members of the Aidusian Council. The Yedinstate ignored Council-based limits on the size of its Exonavy, which had been carried over from the Second Aetarlux Treaty when the Yedinstate replaced the Velesan Council as a conditional part of the formers recognition. Additionally, the Yedinstate had grown increasingly hostile towards Chaius and Mora, and frequently clashed with the Graslaender Union, which it despised for its long-standing Gildaist and Gildaist-revisionist governments.

Two Cycle War

Bombardment of Vespèr Industrial District, Orbalia, II.32510, during the Two Cycle War.

In II.32510, Velesan Exonaval forces, having been built up to their largest size in history, entered into high orbit around Orbalia, much to the perplexity of the Luxarian and Graslaender Union Exonavies. When it became clear that the Velesan ships were charging a never-before-seen configuration of railguns, the Graslaender Exonavy immediately engaged. Much to the surprise of the Graslaenders, however, the Velesans had developed an advanced plasma-based electromagnetic-projectile defense system which nullified almost all barrages fired against the ships. Once the Velesan railguns had charged, they unleashed a volley of shots that indiscriminately targeted both Exonavies and the planet beneath them. This engagement was the first of what would come to be known as the Two Cycle War.

The Velesan bombardment of Orbalia was extremely devastating. Not only were the bulk of all Orbalian Exonavies destroyed, but large metropolitan centers and primary agricultural and industrial areas were targeted as well. The bombardment was so powerful and long-lasting, that an ensuing global winter would be triggered by the sheer amount of particulate matter that was kicked up into the atmosphere. While many cities were destroyed, much of the governing structures of the major Orbalian superpowers had retreated to defensive holdouts not accessed since the time of the Embers War over 30,000 cycles beforehand, insuring the immediate survival of most of their leadership.

After an entire two cycles of continuous bombardment, the bulk of the Velesan Exonavy left Orbalian orbit for Chaius, which had received word of the Velesan attack and hosted a great deal of ex-Velesan Exonaval forces alongside a smaller Chaian Exonaval force. Upon receiving word of an impending Velesan assault on Chaius, the Moran Mezdugildaiyan Union went into high alert as well, sending what Exonaval forces it had to its orbital neighbor, although these forces were predicted to arrive later than the Velesans due to the then orbital position of Mora as further away from Chaius than Orbalia.

The Velesan Exonavy defeated the Chaian forces within minutes, causing the Moran fleet to turn around mid-transit. Within only two cycles, the Velesan Exonavy had managed to defeat the entirety of all other exonaval forces in the Aidus system, putting a quick end to the Two Cycle War and seeing a transition into what would become known as the Caligum.

Early Caligum

This period of Aidusian history was a long epoch of oppression by the Velesan Yedinstate, which had successfully destroyed all opposing exonaval forces in a mere two cycles from the onset of the Compact War. The Yedinstate then engaged in a prolonged campaign of extermination and forced assimilation on the worlds of Chaius and Mora, which hosted large Velesan-derived populations and which were colonized by Velesa at the beginning of the Second Age. Gildaist leadership on Mora was exterminated and much of the civilian population was processed for those considered to be "ideologically poisonous," with these individuals being exterminated as well. Chaius fared marginally better, though the number of overall deaths on both planets was very high, amounting to approximately 200,000 on Chaius (roughly 6% of the population) and nearly 1 million on Mora (roughly 23% of the population).

No planet would suffer from more general destruction than Orbalia, on which approximately 250 million people (roughly 66% of the population) had died over the course of the initial bombardment and from the dire famines that would plague the planet due to the ensuing global winter. For many, rampant death and destruction signaled the coming of the end of the world, and in those states which the governments had survived, there was little that could be done to stop mass unrest from resource shortages and general hysteria. Additionally, Velesan Exonaval forces still in orbit of the planet indiscriminately targeted any ships attempting to leave the planet, forcing the population to remain on their suffering world in a semblance of vengeance for the suffering faced on Velesa in the postbellum period of the Coalition War.

The Velesa Yedinstate had forcefully asserted itself as the ruler of the whole Aidus system, considering all planets to be under its effective control and all populations outside of Velesa to be its implicit subjects. Upon realizing the sheer administrative capacity needed to effectively occupy Chaius and Mora, Velesa began recruiting even more of its population into its military, and by II.32600, nearly 6 million people were in service, roughly 20% of the planet's total population.

Later Caligum

While Orbalia's surface civilization had been thrust into a dark age, the cities in its Subglacial Ocean survived the bombardments virtually unscathed and took in millions of refugees in the coming cycles. It was in the city of Valtnebra that all remaining Orbalian governments pledged their mutual association in the name of self-defense, self-preservation, and the destruction of the Yedinstate by any means necessary, no matter the cost. As the Velesans continued to consolidate their power over Chaius and Mora, Orbalia was left under guard by a skeleton fleet of the Yedinstate, its surface scarred with ruins and pockets of survivors.

Over the course of the Caligum, Valtnebra became the only real scientific center on Orbalia, with the scattered, surviving intellectuals of the planet consolidating in the safety of the deep, subglacial city. Valtnebran refugee scientists became foremost technological leaders in the development of stealth systems, genetics, biochemistry, and electrophysics, all areas which the Valtnebran leadership believed would be crucial for the overcoming of the technological prowess of the Velesans.

In II.36781, the first successful electromagnetic-scattering field was deployed on the surface of Orbalia, allowing for the reintroduction of nuclear power generation outside of the Subglacial Ocean without the threat of bombardment from above. Havra became a major center of redevelopment on the surface, attracting hundreds of thousands within the first 100 cycles due to its rumored existence spreading quickly across primitive, low-energy communities on the planet. Soon, cities began to reemerge across Orbalia, as Valtnebran technology was enthusiastically proliferated by its creators with the hope of rebuilding the ravaged planet's surface societies.

By II.40000, the use of stealth fields were so commonplace that it appeared to Velesan observational vessels as if society on the surface of Orbalia was simply vanishing. Seeing this as an opportunity for the potential initiation of colonization efforts with a natively Velesan population, scout vessels were sent to the meridional twilight band. After several of these scout vessels disappeared right after reporting strange electromagnetic phenomenon, a more thorough investigation of the planet was issued by the Yedinstate military high command.

In II.41409, a Yedinstate military science team was sent to the surface of Orbalia, only to disappear outright without even an initial report back. Initially believing that Orbalian society had moved underground, Yedinstate researchers were instructed to begin the development of "crust-cracking" bombardment techniques, and despite warnings from these scientists that such weapons may very well make the planet completely uninhabitable, the military high command insisted they oblige.

Quiet War

An Iyusar cloaking on assignment in a hostile Yedinstate installation on Velesa during the Quiet War in II.41454. The Iyusi were masters of stealth and deception, able to remain undetected throughout the entirety of the unconventional conflict.

When the Yedinstate had sent many scout forces to investigate the surface of the planet, these scout vessels and their occupants were commandeered by the planetwide organization of protectors and stealth engineers known as the Iyusi. Masters of stealth and deception to the charge of sometimes being referred to in popular culture as shapeshifters, the Iyusi were devoted to becoming masters of insurgency and the protection of Orbalian civilians through remaining undetected. The Iyusi used the captured technology and soldiers to infiltrate first the blockade fleet, and then later, Velesa itself. With the Yedinstate not even suspecting that Orbalia had rebuilt itself to some extent, the Iysui were able to remain undetected throughout the entirety of their operations against them in the Quiet War.

In II.41409, upon learning of the Yedinstate plan to develop weapons which were capable of penetrating Orbalia's planetary crust, the Iyusi accelerated their goal of toppling the Yedinstate from the inside. The Iyusi utilized Veltnebran advancements in bioengineering to replace a top scientist of the Yedinstate with a genetically altered Valtnebran scientist in II.41419, slowing the progress of the crust-cracker to a near standstill. Iyusi agents further infiltrated Yedinstate forces on Chaius and Mora, where much of the population had been reduced to living in slavery-like conditions.

In II.41468, having infiltrated command posts across the Yedinstate, Iyusi agents coordinated a mass poising campagin against Yedinstate leadership. Within less than a cycle, more than 120,000 Yedinstate officials of various ranks were killed, causing the Velesan military to fall into disarray. As surviving mid-level commanders were recalled to Velesa, Iyusi agents organized a simultaneous mass uprising on Chaius and Mora. With no clear leadership structure, the patchwork response of the Velesan forces on those planets proved unsuccessful in quelling the unrest.

The greatest success of the Iyusi came in II.41501. Much of the Velesan fleet had been gathered into orbit of Velesa as the Yedinstate was undergoing a series of factional power struggles among mid-level commanders all competing for the positions vacated by the deaths of many of their leaders. Iyusi agents overloaded and reversed the charge of the Velesan fleet's electromagnetic hard plasma shields, such that the majority of the Yedinstate Exonavy was destroyed outright. Additionally, the leadership talks held on the planet were infiltrated by Iyusi agents, with many of the leading contenders killed en masse in the same method as those they sought to replace.

Hysterium

By II.41600, less than 200 cycles after it began, the Quiet War was a total victory for the Iyusi, as the Velesan Yedinstate descended into a mass paranoia and quickly collapsed in a violent Second Civil War. Orbalia, Chaius, and Mora were freed of Velesan blockade and occupation; all the while the Iyusi remained virtually unknown outside of the highest levels of Orbalian leadership, aside from rumors of a shadowy organization which were denounced by officials as superstition. The portentous fall of the Yedinstate's system-wide heirarchy led to a high degree of superstitious and religious revival across the populations of the liberated planets and even among civilians on Velesa, a pervasive phenomena of mass excitement and revival referred to as the Hysterium.

On Orbalia, a religious revival of the ancient Drevianic religion grasped the planet, in a series of religious conventions and transitions which would become known as the Septoilan Reformation. By II.43500, most of the planet had seen the impact of this religious revival in the widespread acceptance of Septoilanism, a branch of the Devnianic-Paixist tradition which posited that the Septoilies' auspicious position relative to that of Velesa was a significant factor in their sudden and inexplicable downfall, as if some holy force had emanated from the already revered star system and smote those that did ill to their fellow man.

Velesa's war would go through varying periods of intensity, with the widespread use of bioweapons wreaking havoc upon the population. In II.44702, Iyusi masters began a series of meetings with political leaders from the disparate entities which were maintaining order throughout the emergent reconstruction efforts across Orbalia, Chaius, and Mora. The Novel-Vespèr Agreement, named after the Orbalian city of Novel-Vespèr, saw the establishment of the Aidus Combine, a discrete political arrangement of the various sovereign entities of the Aidus system, in which the Iyusi became entrusted with ensuring that no one political entity threatened the existence of humanity in the way the Yedinstate had before. Publicly, the Novel-Vespèr Agreement was announced as a multilateral treaty of mutual defense between the myriad of sovereign states on the three aligned planets. The Novel-Vespèr Agreement marked the end of the Second Age, and the transition into the Third Age, which was declared as one in which the renewed systemwide peace would not be taken for granted.

Third Age (ended 12,515 CBP)

Solnuch Confederacy

One of the first actions of the Combine in the Third Age was to intervene in the Second Velesan Civil War and to prevent the spreading of bioweapons to the system at large. Due to the biological nature of the Iyusi's technology, the intervention had to be careful and slow, lest its agents be exposed to potential contaminants or public knowledge. In III.12, a covert orbit-to-undersea base was established on Velesa, with a significant number of researchers sent alongside Iyusi agents to study the extensive and dangerous bioweapons which had been proliferated across the war-torn planet.

The individual factions of the Second Civil War were mostly made up of warlords who had since become ideologically distant from their prochnist upbringing. Most were incredibly bent on the acquisition of power or wealth, and this allowed for opportunities of the Iyusi to find entrance into the courts of some of the most powerful at the time. By III.100, an extensive library had been established of the various bioweapons in use on Velesa with a number of them considered treatable. It was at this point that the Haemopneumonic plague of the Second Age was determined conclusively to have been man-made, as records collected indicated the process by which it was incepted, and by which a number of new bioweapons had been designed out of it.

In III.434, the Solnuch Conference was held between eight of the most powerful warlord factions on Velesa, in which it was agreed that each would be apportioned territory equally between them in exchange for an alliance against the remaining factions on the planet. With the covert intervention of the Iysui, this alliance became unstoppably powerful. The whole of Velesa was pacified through the Solnuch Confederacy by III.604, and soon after, the Iyusi scaled back their operations on the planet.

Owing to the necessity to keep the Iyusi as covert as possible, representatives to the Combine agreed in III.610, not long before the association of the Solnuch Confederacy, that a new leadership structure was needed to further centralize the decision-making abilities of the organization. In III.611, the Combine Council was formed, with one representative from each of the member planets, for a total of three at its foundation. The Confederacy was accepted as an associated polity within the Aidus Combine in III.619, the cycle held as the end of the Second Civil War. Unbeknownst to the Confederacy's rulers, their selected representative to the Combine Council was an undercover agent of the Iyusi, further strengthening the grip of that organization over the political power of Velesa.

Repose

The Repose was a period of extended regrowth and development for the Aidus system, which had suffered collectively from over 10,000 cycles of violent conflict. At the beginning of the Repose, Orbalia had a population of just over 150 million, Velesa 27 million, Chaius and Mora a mere 3 million each. The average population loss on each planet compared to its pre-Yedinstate levels was roughly half, a significant portion of the total human population in the system and a figure which worried the Combine Council as testament to the fact with how easily the human race could extinguish itself.

Under the Combine Council, disputes between planets were preemptively resolved, in no small part due to the intervention of the Iyusi, which grew extremely powerful as the most exercised tool of the Combine to maintain a strict systemwide peace. As the Combine grew more meticulous in its management of conflict, it began to overstep its original intended purpose of insuring the sovereignty of nation-states on planets from the domination of any one planet. The Iyusi became widespread and heavily utilized by the Combine Council in this period: at one point it was rumored that the Iyusi had become more numerous than the largest militaries of any one sovereignty in the Aidus system.

Nonetheless, this pervasive peacemaking by the Combine Council resulted in the flourishing of human life and civil society within its member planets. Orbalia had fully recovered from the devastation of the Two Cycle War, its population divided among a number of independent, highly-cooperative nation-states of relatively even size. Velesa, albeit prone to periods of intermittent factional warfare, saw a resurgence of economic development and intraplanetary trade under the Solnuch Confederacy, which evolved a highly complex feudalistic structure over time. Chaius and Mora thrived economically under loosely associated station-states, which traded among each other and rarely came into conflict due to the vast amount of unclaimed territory afforded to each settlement on those sparsely populated planets.

By III.9000, Orbalia had grown to a population of over 200 million people, Velesa 32 million, Chaius 5 million, and Mora 6 million. Trade between planets and nation-states on the planets was widespread; alongside this trade, technologies developed independently on each of the planets during the end of the Third Age became widely utilized throughout the system. Any diplomatic disputes which simmered between states was resolved before the notion of open conflict even arose publicly, due to the panoptic oversight of the Combine Council and its loyal Iyusi.

Three Sisters War

Empress Lutmila I of Transvelesa, known also as Lutmila Popof, Atmirala of the Popof Atmiralty after her victory in the Three Sisters War. Lutmila I's conquests in the creation of the Transvelesan Empire would serve as the direct predecessor of the modern Aidusian Empire. The rulers of the contemporary Empire trace direct lineage to her.

While the Combine Council and the Iyusi maintained a rigid grip on political systems throughout the system, it could not directly control the actions of individuals empowered within those systems. Atmiral Yutzuf III Ikorofik, one of the ruling warlords of the Solnuch Confederacy, died childless in III.9089, leaving the Ikorofik Atmiralty without a clear path of succession. Atmiral Yutzuf's closest living relatives were three sisters, whose mother was the Atmiral's second cousin and two of whom were twins. Although in normal circumstances the oldest next of kin would inherit the title, different sisters were supported by different Atmirals across Velesa, each with the intention of taking a respective sister as their bride and uniting their two Atmiralties via marriage, a feat never-before accomplished in the history of the Confederacy due to the covert, but watchful, intervention of the Iyusi.

Before the Combine Council had determined an appropriate path forward, the Three Sisters War had already begun. Unlike in previous planetary conflicts, bioweapons had been successfully purged from the planet, and the ability to make more was consistently eliminated through Iyusi intervention. Although the Combine Council deliberated the notion of direct intervention in the conflict via the Iyusi, it was determined that the most stable outcome among the warlords could only be arranged through the self-determination at the end of the conflict, and that so long as Velesa remained divided, it could never pose a direct threat to peace in the system as a whole. Thus, the Combine Council agreed among itself to allow the conflict to reach a natural conclusion and to only curb the most violent of excesses by both sides.

The Three Sisters War concluded in III.9761 after 672 cycles. Lutmila I Popof succeeded where her siblings did not, being crowned Atmirala and seeing the inception of the Popof Atmiralty. Already having given birth to a son, the succession of the Atmiralty remained safe, and conflict on Velesa, just as quickly as it had come into being, once more ended conclusively.

Popof Hegemony

The ascendency of the Atmirala Lutmila I was, to the ambitious woman, the mere beginning of her influence on Velesan politics. In III.9803, her husband, Atmiral Demeto Tzukof, died under suspicious circumstances, and her firstborn son Falentin succeeded his father as Atmiral, under great supervision from his mother. In line to the Popof Atmiralty as well, the Popof dynasty stood to become the dominant ruling family on Velesa, a notion which caused great concern to both the Combine Council and many of the other Atmiralties.

The Combine Council considered the use of the Iyusi to eliminate the dynasty entirely, but this was determined to potentially create more problems than it would solve. It was ultimately concluded that the best course of action was to allow the Popof dynasty to become dominant on Velesa, but under conditions which left it vulnerable to the implicit vassalages that this would entail. If either the Popof dynasty or its detractors were to completely eliminate each other, the Combine Council believed, then there would only be further centralization and the eventual reemergence of a militaristic Velesan super-state.

Hence, in III.9881, the Iyusi were sent to infiltrate the court of Atmirala Lutmila I with the intention of replacing a key advisor and gently influencing her to the desired course of action, as well as to the court of several other Atmirals across Velesa, with the intention of influencing them towards a peaceable vassalage under the Popof dynasty. In III.10021, after a crisis was engineered by the Iyusi to endanger the sovereignty of one Atmiralty, its Atmiral sought protection from Atmirala Lutmila I, who, under the influence of her counselors, negotiated the first vassalage of what would become known as the Popof Hegemony.

With the breakdown of the equality between Atmiralties insured by the Solnuch Conference, various Atmirals feeling threatened by this development went against the advice of their Iyusi advisors and attempted to collectively invade the domain of the Popof Hegemony in III.10069. The outcome of the First Atmirals' War, however, would run counter to their intentions, with their defeat in III.10488 leading to their amalgamation into the Hegemony under the condition of their continued existence as vassal Atmiralties. Thus, by III.10500, all but one of the eight Atmiralties of Velesa had been integrated under the rule of Hegemon Lutmila I.

Iyusi Crisis

In III.10508, the secrecy of the Iyusi was revealed to have been permanently compromised when thousands of its Iyusar on Velesa defected alongside the Planetary Master Kaetina Maurapos. Maurapos led what would later become known as the Imperial Iysui, swearing her allegiance and the respective allegiance of her followers to the service of Hegemon Lutmila I. In their defection, it was revealed that Lutmila I had long known of the Iysui and been in constant contact with Planetary Master Maurapos, utilizing breakaway Iyusi agents to not only murder her first husband but also to subtly influence Velesan politics under the nose of the Combine Council's own Iyusi agents.

While at first the defection of the Iyusi was not known to the wider system, it resulted in a snowballing of events that would become known as the Iyusi Crisis. By III.10515 the existence of the Iyusi and their extensive relationship with the Combine Council lead to political upheaval on every planet except Velesa. The Combine Council collapsed quickly, and with it, the systemwide peace that had been maintained through the shadowy influence of the secret organization. Most circles of the Iyusi were co-opted by the sovereignty they existed within; only on Velesa did a planet-wide organization of Iysui agents remain.

The collapse of the Combine Council did not have any immediate exopolitical consequences on the scale of the entire system. It did, however, mean that various exopolitical arangements uniquely insured by the Combine Council collapsed with it. Soon, regional blocs on Orbalia as well as the Popof Hegemony had begun a renewed era of Exonaval development. Chaius and Mora entered into a mutual defense pact with one another, combining their resources to build a fleet with the responsibility of protecting their worlds and their small mining outposts in the Circumtorus.

Nowhere were the implications of the Iyusi Crisis more acute than on Velesa, as the Popof Hegemony declared itself as the Transvelesan Empire. Lutmila I Popof was crowned Empress Lutmila I in III.10517, shortly after the amalgamation of the last independent Atmiralty into her realm. Unlike the Velesan planet-states that had existed before her own, Empress Lutmila I was very aware of the potential long-term instability that would rear from the violent suppression of other Aidusian nations, and thus, in response to systemwide fears of a second Caligum, the Empress decreed that the Imperial Iysui were to insure that no future ruler of the Transvelesan Empire ever be allowed to cause the death and destruction experienced under Velesan leadership in ages past.

Imperial expansion

While Empress Lutmila I's oath was made in good faith, it did not exclude the possibility of any expansion of the Transvelesan Empire whatsoever. It was, in fact, very much the goal of Empress Lutmila I to rule over the entirety of the Aidus system, uniting all of humanity under one crown in perpetuity. The ageing Empress initiated her campaign by reestablishing Velesan control over the outer planets of Chaius and Mora. In the Transvelesan Conquest, the Imperial Exonavy managed to quickly assume control over the orbital regions of the two planets, as Velesa had much more ease in reestablishing its exonaval shipyards than the relatively depopulated outermost planets.

Imperial Iyusi agents quickly infiltrated all levels of Chaian and Moran governments, offering incentives to many political leaders to swear fealty to the Empress, who in return, would insure the continued existence of their civil societies uninterrupted. Only on Mora was an armed resistance mounted, but instead of executing the ringleaders of the resistance, they were instead banished to the Circumtorus with ample supplies and a promise to continue with those supplies, so that they could found new settlements in the outermost regions of the system. By III.11000, the outermost region of the Aidus system had become well-integrated into the Empire.

Empress Lutmila I did not believe that an invasion and integration of Orbalia would be a feasible task for herself or any of her successors. If the planet were to be integrated into the Empire, it would have to be done so voluntarily on the part of the Orbalian nation-states and in agreement among the people of the planet. Thus, the Empress devoted the rest of her reign to peaceful development and economic growth within her realm, to demonstrate to the myriad Orbalian peoples that humanity could flourish if it were unified in its goals and shared a common political project.

In III.11109, construction of the monumentally-sized Imperiya Station began in orbit of Mora, with materials being brought in from the Circumtorus and processed in the newly established Moran Imperial Industrial Complex. Utilizing a careful exterior-based study of the Orbital University which orbited Orbalia, Imperiya Station would have more than three times the inner surface area of that station, and would have multiple layers of rings which would simulate the specific gravity conditions of every inhabited planet in the system. The extremely ambitious construct was projected upon initiation to require at least 3,000 cycles before the first permanently, pseudogravitionally operative habitats would be ready for occupants, and an additional 5,000 to as many as 10,000 cycles of continued construction until full completion after that point.

Popovian Peace

Imperiya Station, completed in III.24891, is the largest space station in the Aidus system by size and population and serves as the capital of the Aidusian Empire. Shaped as a massive ring, its population lives on the interior surface and enjoys a stable implant-assisted pseudogravity through its rotation.

Upon the death of Empress Lutmila I in III.12889, the title of Emperor fell to her grandson and chosen heir, Demeto I. Ruling in line with the principles of his mother, Demeto I oversaw the beginning of a systemwide peace known as the Popovian Peace.

Under the reign of the Popofs, interplanetary commerce in the Transvelesan region flourished, as hundreds of thousands of people were employed through the construction of Imperiya Station. Wildly expensive, the station's construction was only possible through the further "imperialization" of economic activity in the Empire, that being the creation of state monopolies in the key industries whose products were necessary to build the structure. Synthesizing state ownership with Gildaist principles of the Second Age, Transvelesa enjoyed a high level of economic equality and stability throughout the period.

During the first part of the Popovian Peace, Orbalia experienced a wave of popular unrest, its nation-states reeling from the collapse of the Combine and the fragmentation of the Iyusi. Sectarian divisions between nations that had emerged during the Hysterium were exacerbated by a decline in economic conditions as regional trade networks broke apart and sovereignties engaged in highly protectionist policies. For a time, intermittent conflict became a common ocurrance on the planet, as minor disputes escalated with no overarching organization to provide forums for mutual dialogue.

After of this burst of transitional struggle, Orbalian nation-states stabilized by III.18000, roughly the middle of the Popovian Peace period. Three major powers had emerged on the planet: the theocratic Benian Divinity, the plutocratic Havran League, and the aristo-tenebrocratic Dammeringia. Benia, largely occupying much of the same territory as its historical predecessor Luxaria, controlled a little under half of the meridional band as well as a significant portion of the Subsolar Desert. The Havran League controlled an array of coastal cities on the Juxtiglacial Seas as well as the majority of the Subglacial Ocean. Dammeringia, its heartlands made up of the territory of the former Graslaender Union, controlled just over a majority of the meridional zone as well as the remaining portion of the Subsolar Desert.

By the 25th millennium of the Third Age, Orbalia had grown to a population of 320 million people and had enjoyed over seven millennia of coexistence among its consitutent nation-states. Velesa had grown to a population of 50 million, its historic high in the middle years of the Second Age, while Chaius and Mora had respective populations of 8 and 9 million each, those being records on those planets. Imperiya Station, completed in III.24891, saw an influx of almost a million people through aggressively liberal immigration policies for people both within and outside of its borders. Collectively, the Transvelesan Empire had a population of 68 million people, a total which placed it as the third most populous sovereignty in the system after Dammeringia and Benia respectively.

Iyusi Wars

By the III.25000s, the emergent political systems in Dammeringia and the Havran League had come under the heavy influence of the Iyusi respective to those countries. The Dammeringian Iyusi and the Havran Iyusi wielded a large amount of political power in those respective countries, and often, whenever any sort of dispute would arise between two countries, the matter would in almost every case be resolved or responded to by the Iyusi.

In III.25101, the Havran League began a particularly contentious election for its new Duxar, during which period as a series of Neogildaist laborers' strikes and internecine struggles within the Havran elite. A group of Maiars made arrangements with the Dammeringian Iyusi to infiltrate the laborers' strikes and bring them to a peaceful resolution in a manner which would give those Maiars greater political standing for the upcoming election. However, the Havran Iyusi became very aware of this, and after assassinating key Iyusar from Dammeringia in an attempt to curb their influence, retributive actions on the part of the Dammeringians would lead to the outbreak of the Iyusi Wars between the two organizations.

As the political structures of both countries had already been under high levels of Iyusi influence, public relations between Dammeringia and the Havran League soured immensely. In III.26233, the continuous fighting for control over the wealthy cities of the Juxtiglacial Sea by the Iyusi culminated in the outright military occupation of Havra by Dammeringian forces loyal to the Elect-Landsehr, the political leader of that country. Unable to respond in kind, the Havran League, having lost its political capital and already rife with political upheavel, shattered among its Subglacial Oceanic cities into a variety of smaller city-states. Alongside the collapse of the Havran League itself, the individual circles of Iyusi which had formed its backbone broke apart as well, with the Dammeringian Iyusi assuming a dominant position in the tenebrocratic political affairs of all Orbalia.

Unwilling to lose tabs on the political occurrences within those newly independent city-states, the Dammeringian Iysui absorbed many of those circles which had previously been in the Havran Iyusi and took on a role in assuring that no populist or militarist tendencies emerged in the public discourses of those polities. This gave Dammeringia a large degree of influence, respectively, in the Subglacial Ocean, as it became a principal trading partner of many near-water Subglacial cities.

Estrelic Inquisiton

Preceding, and during the course of, the Iyusi Wars between its neighbors, the Benian Divinity had struggled with its own peasant unrest and emerging sectarian divisions within the Septoilan faith. Estrelism, at first considered a heretic offshoot of Septoilanism, had gained traction with many neogildaist-sympathetic peasants and lay priests across the Divinity, who felt that the machinations of power between the elites of all nations were corruptive and strayed all peoples from the path to salvation.

Predicated on the existence of alien life, Estrelism held as a core tenet of its faith that humanity was created by alien life, and that one day it might return and lift humanity into a new interstellar era of peace and cooperation. This arrival could only be achieved, however, by the unification of the human race into a single, stable political entity. This breakaway sect caught the attention of the Imperial Iyusar of Transvelesa, who saw its emergence and its spread as a golden opportunity to finally integrate Orbalia into the Empire through means aligning with the Lutmilan Protocol.

In III.27201, tensions between the Septoilan Divinity government and the Estrelic sects boiled over into an event known as the Estrelic Inquisition, a holy war pitting the Septoilan-loyal military and Benian Iyusi against the radical Estrelic peasant and priestly movements backed by Imperial and Dammeringian interests. The Inquisition, unlike the periods which previously bore such a name in Orbalia's history, was not noted for its exceptional violence. There was relatively little fighting, and the most violent scenes of the Inquisition proceeded its end in III.27961.

With the streets of the Benian capital Novel-Vespèr overrun with Estrelic peasant protestors, the government of the Divinity attempted to order the Divine Military to quash the rebellion by force. While a small number of soldiers obeyed, the leadership of the Benian Military launched a coup d'état, deposing the Cartnal and assuming control of the government. After intense negotiations between Estrelic leaders and Military officials, an arrangement was made with mediation from the Imperial Iysui, in which the Benian Divinity would become a client state of the Transvelesan Empire; such a move was widely supported throughout the peasant masses, many of whose relatives had been immigrating to Imperiya Station. It did, however, deeply shock and trouble the Dammeringians, as for the first time in an entire Age did Velesan military forces step foot on Orbalia.

Orbalian Dominion

The Palace of the Duxars, Havra, Dammeringia, in III.280223. The terms of the Dammeringian accession into the Aidusian Empire were negotiated and finalized here, which saw the full unification of the Aidus system in III.28187.

In III.28022, Transvelesan forces peacefully landed across key strategic points in what was formerly known as the Benian Divinity. In III.28023, the Orbalian Dominion was jointly declared in Novel-Vespèr to great jubilation. Imperial and Divinity forces shared in the announcement of the peaceful absorption of the Benian domains into the Empire, which from that point on would become known as simply the Aidusian Empire. After a sufficient level of security had been ensured by Imperial forces, the reigning Emperess Aleksandrina II made her inaugural visit to the newly acquired Dominion, in which she promised that the principles of sovereignty and peaceful cooperation announced tens of thousands of cycles ago by her ancestor would be maintained steadfastily for perpetuity.

While the people of the Dominion were overwhelmingly supportive of the accession into the Empire, Dammeringia found itself to be the last non-Imperial sovereign state in the entire Aidus system of relative power. The smaller city-states of the Subglacial Ocean, even combined, were no match, militarily or economically, against the Empire. Additionally, Estrelic sentiments had proved pervasive within Dammeringia as well, with the signs of peasant unrest slowly rearing in the vast Dammeringian countryside.

In III.28187, with a peasant uprising on the cusp and the high potential of capitulation in the face of any such uprising backed by Imperial Iyusi, the Landsmeet of Dammeringia sent representatives to the Dominion to arrange a possible path forward for Dammeringian accession into the Empire. Recognizing this as the golden opportunity for Orbalian unification under Imperial rule that had been forecasted by Lutmila the Great, Empress Aleksandrina II took a great personal interest in the negotiations, going so far as to partake in the dialogues herself.

That same cycle, a path forward was negotiated for the merging of Dammeringia into the Dominion in a way which preserved the integrity of its landed aristocracy. Through compromise, a 'Weldsmeet' would be established in the Dominion to serve a similar role to the Dammeringian Landsmeet, and the territory of the individual Landsehrs and Landsehrins of Dammeringia would be preserved and given equal status to the theocratically organized Prefectures that already existed in the Dominion. Finally, Prefects would be allowed to serve in the Weldsmeet, representing the complete political unity of the entire Dominion despite its highly disparate modes of governance at a subnational level.

With the unification of the Orbalian Dominion, Empress Aleksandrina II declared the end of the Third Age and the beginning of a Fourth Age, one in which the hopes for a unified humankind had been realized. Such a sovereignty had not existed since the Drevnian Empire of the Forgotten Age.

Fourth Age (Present age)

The Imperial Spire in the Spire Ward of Imperiya Station is the primary official residence of the Emperor and the seat of the Imperial Council.

Aleksandrine Peace

The era of systemwide peace that was enjoyed by all planets in the Aidus system following the establishment of the Orbalian Dominion is referred to as the Aleksandrine Peace. Even though it extended well beyond the reign of its namesake, Aleksandrina II's influence on the proceeding era were profound. She oversaw the establishment of the Imperial Council, a body which brought together the leaders of the largest subdivisions of each planet to provide a forum for the counsel of the Empress on matters unique to each.

The orbit of Imperiya Station was adjusted to Lagrange point 2 around Orbalia, so that it rested between the orbits of Orbalia and Velesa, the two largest planets of the system. Imperiya Station flourished with a new, continuous influx of peoples from Orbalia, many of whom were Estrelics that believed the massive station would serve as the vessel by which humanity would be reunited with its supposed alien creators. Additionally, Imperiya became the crux of the Imperial government, with the Imperial Council, Iyusi, Exonavy, and the Empress herself taking up permanent residence there.

The Aleksandrine Peace saw the introduction of many new Empire-wide legislative efforts to tackle problems with planetary inequality and a patchwork system of laws and rights. The Imperial Charter of Rights was amended by the Imperial Council and decreed by the Empress, a cornerstone legal document which outlined the fundamental rights of all Imperial citizens and the course of defense that could be taken should these rights be violated. The Imperial Constabulary was introduced to ensure the equal enforcement of Imperial laws across the entirety of the Empire, they were further charged with ensuring the protection of Imperial citizens from both criminal and civil disturbances, whether those be affected by illict organizations or even subdivision governments in the Empire.

As the focus of Imperial life shifted to Orbalia and Velesa, the Circumtorus, once considered the new frontier of the Empire, became something of a backwater to Imperial administration. While the planets of the system and even the inner part of the Resonant Circumtorus prospered during the Aleksandrine Peace, the Scattered Circumtorus became rife with problems of underdevelopment, piracy, and other organized crimes. The vast distance between that region and the inner parts of the Empire served only to solidify these problems; while it was simple for Imperial vessels to venture there, getting back to the center of the system was more of a challenge, and as most merchants and prospectors did not want to spend prolonged periods of time in space laden with pirates, the region was largely avoided by Imperial civilian ships.

Contemporary period

In IV.8625, Empress Yekatrina inherited the Cosmic Throne after the death of her father Emperor Ifan II. Empress Yekatrina lived longer than any of her predecessors; when she died in IV.12146, she was 7255 cycles in age. Having outlived her firstborn son, Prinsep Demeto, the title of Emperor fell to her grandson, Gavriel. At an age of 1668 cycles, Emperor Gavriel was the youngest Imperial monarch since his fourth-degree-great-grandmother Empress Aleksandrina to inherit the title.

The early reign of Emperor Gavriel has largely been described as a continuation of the Aleksandrine Peace. However, the young Emperor has been known to pursue personal pleasures with more interest than he takes in the ruling of his vast domain. While the security of his position is guaranteed for now by the loyal and ever watchful Imperial Iyusi, there are degrees of detractors throughout the Empire that would gladly see him replaced with someone considered more suitable for the role.

Nonetheless, Aidus, in the contemporary day, remains unified under the Empire. The planets prosper, and the current socioeconomic condition of living across the Empire is at some of its highest levels in recorded history. Imperiya Station has long since surpassed the population of Chaius and Mora to a total of roughly 11 million as of the 13th millennium of the Fourth Age. Humanity is more widespread across the Aidus system than at any earlier point in its history as well, with colonization even being ongoing on the steam world of Pechlus and a number of pseudogravitionally operative habitats existing in the far reaches of the Circumtorus.

Sociology

Culture

The individual cultures of the Aidus system are collectively descended from those of the Drevnian Empire. Little is known by way of primary knowledge with regards to this period, and as a result, descriptions of its cultural composition is limited to tracing the lineages of the individual cultures which have existed throughout the recorded history of the system. Generally, Drevnian culture can be divided into three primary subgroups: Volsic, Langic, and Podchinic.

The Volsic cultural subgroup is predominant throughout a large swath of Orbalia, primarily within its meridional band and extending into its Subsolar Desert. Individual Volsic cultures share several common subjects of greatest value: family, human and crop fertility, material prosperity within these communal family units, and general productivity. Throughout the various incarnations of the Volsic cultures on Orbalia, there has been an underlying societal emphasis on communal conditions and the continuous growth of those communities by way of improving upon material conditions. Volsic cultures have variously been definable as agrarian at their core and typifying a secondary concern for hedonic well-being. Volsic cultures take gluttony and other forms of overconsumption as a sign of surplus for one's community, and thus, as generally positive attributes, unless of course one person is benefitting at the expense of others within those communal units.

The Langic cultural subgroup is found across a smaller portion of terrestrial Orbalia in comparison to the Volsic subgroup, but dominates the planet's Subglacial Ocean and regions surrounding its Juxtiglacial Seas. Langic cultural values include: spirituality, piety, concern for the supernatural, missionary practices, moderation, and socioeconomic sustainability through heirarchization. Where Volsic cultures place emphasis on material well-being, production, and consumption, Langic cultures are noted for their historical tendency towards economic stability and constancy. Throughout history, this desire for moderation of material well-being has resulted in a number of different societal methods of implementation: the Divine Casta system of the First Age, the Catranibels of the early Second Age, and the separation of theocratic-political life from commoners during most of the Third Age in the Benian Divinity. Mendicancy and a concern of the form of the good are considered the most sanctimonious ways of life within Langic cultures, and as this way of living is restricted to only the most spiritually gifted of people, almsgiving and moderation are the most prized concerns of the common Langic culture.

The Podchinic cultural subgroup (sometimes referred to as the Velesic cultures) is the only one native to Velesa, with the commonly held belief being that its cultural forerunners moved to the planet sometime during the Drevnian Empire. Podchinic cultural values have been informed by its planetological and sociohistorical conditions: ingenuity, institutionality, endogeneous growth, exploration, and environmental mastery through technology. Podchinic cultures had accounted for their relatively small historical population sizes and growth rates through the large-scale utilization of industrialization and automation. Nation-states originating on Velesa and its colonially related worlds of Chaius and Mora have long been systemwide leaders in technological innovation and space colonization. The prominence of Podchinic cultures within Aidusian science at large is represented through heavy linguistic influences on a variety of contemporary scientific fields. Education and apprenticeships are considered key elements of a Podchinic upbringing, and a good life to Podchinic cultures is defined by constant curiosity and a focus on expanding one's intelligence and socioeconomic status.

Demography

A pie-chart showing proportionate locations of the total human population in the system.

  Orbalia (82.332%)

  Velesa (11.490%)

  Mora (2.232%)

  Chaius (2.050%)

  Imperiya Station (1.819%)

  Circumtorus (0.074%)

  Pechlus (0.003%)

  Aidus (star) (0.003%)

In the 13th millennium of the Fourth Era, there are approximately 605 million people living throughout the Aidus system. Of this population, the vast majority live on Orbalia, which has a combined 498 million inhabitants (roughly 82% of the total systemwide population). Velesa has a total population of 69.5 million people, or, about 11% of the population of the system. Chaius and Mora, with a population of 12.4 and 13.5 million respectively, each compose roughly 2% of the system's total population. Imperiya Station, the Imperial capital space station, has a population of approximately 11 million inhabitants, representing just under 2% of the total system population. The remainder of the population, less than 1%, resides in variously positioned space stations or asteroid colonies across the system. The largest of these stations are Lubof and Aloina, both located in the Scattered Circumtorus and containing around 100,000 or less inhabitants each.

Demographic shifts throughout Aidusian history have largely reflected the political status of relations between planets and nations on those planets. The turbulence experienced in the later half of the Second Age resulted in a long period of "catch-up" throughout the Third Age. It has only been in the Fourth Age that planetary populations have exceeded the maximum estimated populations which immediately preceded the Two Cycle War, notably the most demographically devastating event of any in the system's history.

Language

The languages spoken in the Aidus system have gone through several shifts over the course of their linguistic history into the form known today. The three primary languages spoken across the Aidus system reflect to a large extent its cultural divisions: the Volsh language spoken across the Volsic cultures, the Langin language spoken across the Langic cultures, and the Podchin language spoken across the Podchinic cultures. While all contemporary dialects of these languages are not considered sufficiently different enough to be classified as languages unto themselves, some have much more variation than others. Accordingly, the most homogenous of the three languages is the Volsh language, which has long been localized across a broad but contiguous portion of Orbalia. The Langing dialects can different somewhat, especially between those spoken on land in Orbalia and those spoken in the communities of the Subglacial Ocean. Podchin is distinct in being spoken across three different planets and even in distant asteroid settlements; it by far has the most diversity between its dialects and is the only language candidate for division into several distinct languages.

The Anglatin language is a uniquely scholastic classical language which is spoken only among members of the Orbalian University. Anglatin has been preserved mostly in a form true to how it was spoken during the days of the Drevnian Empire, making it an important language for the study of linguistic origin of all other languages in Aidus as well. Due to the relative isolation of the Orbalian University from the broader context of the system and the highly secretive nature of its members, Anglatin has largely been lost outside of the Orbital University. It is believed that Volsh is a descendant language of Anglatin, although there has been clear evidence of Volsh's deviation and mixture with another hypothetical precursor language, knowledge of which has been lost to history and whose influence is only discernable through historic-linguistic conjecture.

The precise origin point of the separate Aidusian languages has long been a matter of contention and relied principally on interpretations of Aidusian prehistory with regard to the origin of humanity as a whole. Due to the high level of phonemic similarities between all languages, it is hypothesized that all languages evolved from one, singular proto-language, whether or not humanity as a whole is biologically native to Orbalia. The subsequent division of child languages from the parent proto-language is a cause for much more contention. Generally, it is held that there were at least four and possibly five languages that diverged from the Proto-Aidusian language. Over time, these languages interchanged with each other to result in the old forms spoken throughout the Drevnian Empire, of which four are directly identifiable: Anglatin, Old Volsh (which at some point diverged from Anglatin), Old Langic, and Old Podchin. The modern forms of these languages came into being sometime during the Second Age, roughly in line with the reconstruction period which followed the collapse of the Velesan Yedinstate and the reemergence of planetary nation-states roughly in line with their modern incarnations.

Politics

The Standard of the Aidusian Empire, the highest political authority of all Aidusian planets and inner-system interplanetary space in the 13th millennium of the Fourth Age.

In the 13th millennium of the Fourth Age, the political composition of the Aidus system is defined by its high level of centralization through the Aidusian Empire, which claims as de jure the entirety of the system as its sovereign and indivisible territory. Technically, these borders extend to the Aidopause itself, with all space inside the system considered 'Imperial space.' However, the de facto area of control by the Empire is limited to a roughly 2.64 OO spherical radius around Aidus known as the Line of Control, as travel into the Scattered Circumtorus is limited mostly to small, endo-propelled vessels. As a result, the bulk of the Imperial Exonavy is not capable of navigating areas in the Circumtorus of high-planetesimal density, and consequently, the region remains under the sole influence of free port asteroid settlements, independent operators, and pirate bands.

Within the core of Imperial territory, interplanetary space and the various space stations inside of it are under the legal jurisdiction of the Imperial Constabulary. Interplanetary space is hence the only part of the Empire under the direct control of the Emperor and the Imperial Council. Svarus and Achlisa, as they are uninhabited, remain under the technical authority of the Emperor and Imperial Constabulary. Each planet is otherwise afforded a large degree of self-governance given a basic compliance with the fundamental principles of the Empire. Pechlus, colonized within the Fourth Era and thus containing only a very small population, is entirely under the control of the Pechlusan Dominion government. Orbalia, the planet with the largest population, is organized under the Orbalian Dominion, which itself is divided into a myriad of semi-autonomous subdivisions. Velesa is organized under the Velesan Confederacy, in which the Emperor serves as the hereditary ruler of the planet in a more direct capacity than any other in the system, owing to that planet's unique position as the founding planet of the Empire. Chaius is organized under the Chaian Dominion and Mora under the Moran Dominion. Each Dominion style government maintains a wide number of institutions and legal structures unique to its planet, and the Emperor rules over those planets de facto as the head of state. While these Dominions de jure exist at the convenience and invitation of the Emperor, attempting to directly and explicitly influence outcomes within those home rule jurisdictions could have potentially devastating consequences for the Empire in its entirety.

The Aidusian Empire, in the most general sense, is a hereditary monarchic empire with a high level of devolution among its Dominion planets. Imperial authority is formally and entirely vested within the Emperor, currently Emperor Gavriel, who serves as the head of state and the head of government of the Imperial Council. The Imperial Council is made up of the various leaders of the subdivisions of the Dominions, and as a result, its exact size and composition changes regularly. While the Imperial Council formally serves only in the capacity of advising and counselling the Emperor, its true authority rests in its solidarity as an entity, in that the Monarch of the Empire is beholden to its approval, lest the Monarch risk the complete disintegration of the Imperial system. Formally, the Imperial Constabulary, the Imperial Exonavy, and the Imperial Iyusi serve as the enforcers of Imperial laws throughout the whole of its de jure territory. Each agency is unique in its capacity; the Constabulary deals with law enforcement and justice, the Exonavy are charged with the defense of the Empire and its people in their capacity as its principle armed force, and the Imperial Iyusi serve as both diplomats and spies, entrusted with agency in dealing with the more delicate matters of Imperial statecraft.

Religion

There is a large amount of religious diversity among the different planets which constitute Aidus. On all planets, religion is guaranteed as a fundamental right of all people, in that the Imperial Charter of Rights insures the free practice of any religion by any citizen with no allowance for civil persecution against religions deemed to be of good faith. As of the 13th millennium of the Fourth Era, there are four major religions practiced throughout the Aidus system.

On Orbalia, Septoilanism and Estrelism are the two largest religions, both of which are related to each other in being branches of the Paixist-Drevianic religious family. Estrelism moreso than Septoilanism has spread beyond Orbalia, in part due to Estrelism's moral advocacy for missionary practices. While Septoilanism is a pantheistic religion, teaching that the whole of the material universe composes of an immanent divine character, Estrelism teaches a doctrine of pandeism, in that a once distinct creator deity became the universe while ceasing to exist as an individual consciouness. According to Estrelism, the unification of humankind is a moral necessity for the reemergence of the creator as distinct consciousness, and that in this reemergence mankind will be led into a new age of interstellar peace, expansion, and unity. Estrelism diverged from Septoilanism in the sense that Septoilanism holds that such a reemergence is impossible, and that rather life must be lived piously and tranquilly, as otherwise one risks adding to the entropy of the universe and its final unravelling.

Beyond the Drevianic faiths, Starveryanism is widely practiced across Velesa, Chaius, and Mora. Starveryanism (in Podchin, старверяа/starverya, literally meaning old faith) is a polytheistic and sometimes monolatristic faith which associates demi-material deities with specific aspects of the material universe. Unlike the Drevianic religions, which do not posit the existence of an immaterial or divine realm as separate from lived reality, Starveryanism holds that the multitude of deities which rule over aspects of the universe can exist both in this reality and in a separate, immaterial realm not typically accessible to mortal beings like humans. Humans are capable of communicating personally with the gods, and the gods are capable of intervening on behalf of humans in the material world. Some people dedicate their worship to a single god, typically done by those in speciifc professions or fields, while others dedicate their worship to gods depending on the situations they are in. Starveryanism has long been the religion practed by the Monarchy of the Aidusian Empire, although it is by no means considered a state religion.

Finally, Quelquism is a relatively young ietsistic religion practiced by small communities of people across the Aidusian Empire, and most notably, by the vast majority of people living the Circumtoroidal asteroid settlements of Lubof and Aloina. Although sometimes considered more of a moral philosophy than an organized religion, it is recognized as the latter on the Imperial Census, and as such is considered by Imperial law to fall in a practical classification as a religion. Quelquism advocates for private spiritual exploration and introspection, and in doing so, Quelquists aim to arrive at a mental representation of themselves which is both stable and permeable. To Quelquism, the person and their mind is the fundamental unit of spiritual existence, and only after the full realization of one's own personal ontology can that fundamental unit of spirit be expected to thrive in a community of souled beings, which share in their successes and misfortunes by the basic nature of being a community.

Technology

A simplified diorama demonstrating a variety of technologies present on Orbalia as early as the First Age, including aircraft, crepuscular agriculture, nuclear fission power, spaceflight, solsailing, and submarines.

Technology has been a widely critical aspect of the development of human society in the Aidus system throughout history. The ancient Drevnian Empire, the first historically recorded human society, was highly technologically advanced, and many of their technologies served as the basis for the wide array of technologies and mechanisms used in everyday life throughout the system. From the time of the Drevnians to the present, spaceflight, nuclear physics, electromagnetism, genetic engineering, biochemistry and robotics have played essential roles in the socioeconomic and political development of humanity in the Aidus system.

Derived from these general scientific fields, a number of specialized technologies are commonly utilized throughout the Aidus system in fundamental roles. Crepuscular agriculture on Orbalia and ecosimulators throughout the rest of the system are used to provide food, cloth, and other organic materials at an industrial scale. Advanced mineral processing and skilled labor fabrication practices have served throughout human history to take raw inputs and from those derive a vast number of consumer and industrial goods; this supply chain has served as the basis of human economics in the Aidus system since the First Age.

Transportation methods on and between planets have long been available to human societies through automotives: motor vehicles are widely employed across the surface of Orbalia, watercraft are utilized in oceanic environments like the Orbalian Subglacial Ocean and the planet-spanning ocean of Velesa, and aerospatialcraft are employed as a general means of transportation across planetary atmospheres and even the whole of the Aidus system. Of this latter category, Solsailing is primarily utilized for travel in the interplanetary medium; Solsailing uses a combination of the natural solar wind of Aidus and both ship and station-based maser technologies to provide low-energy cost propulsion in open space. Nuclear pulse propulsion was used for more precise maneuvering of spacecraft up until the middle of the Second Age, when the much lower energy intensive and electromagnetically silent Linear-magnetic drive came into service for high-precision necessitating environments. For intra- and interatmospheric transportation, more conventional hybrid-propulsion systems are utilized on detachable and standalone vehicles.

In all of these technological applications, electricity is a critical component. Nuclear fusion power systems are commonplace throughout the Aidus system, in both large and small formats suitable for stationary or automotive applications. In addition to nuclear fusion energy, solar energy and wind energy are utilized primarily in more stationary applications due to their environmentally-dependent conditional factors. Advanced battery systems allow for the storage of electric energy in times of surplus and its usage in times of deficiency, although battery-power is not considered an ideal long-term energy source and typically serves as more of a backup or emergency power supply.

Aside from these large-magnitude technologies, there are also more human-focused or individually-applied technologies which are commonly utilized throughout the system. One of the most notable such technologies is the wide-encompassing field of Mancia, which refers generally to a method of affecting change in the physical state of matter through human-biomechanically, bioelectrically, and biochemically powered apparatuses. Mancers, practitioners of the mancial arts, use highly complex implants to channel biologically innate mechanisms of material affectation to manipulate the physical universe for a variety of purposes. Aside from mancial implants, more generally, implants are used for a variety of other purposes across the Aidus system, referred to generally as Biotics. For example, Pseudogravity is only made possible through the use of Semicircular implants: small devices attached to the semicircular canal of the human ear which trick the body's perception of balance and motion into accepting the centrifugal motion of pseudogravity.

See also

• List of Aidusian polities and sovereignties
• List of Aidus system objects
• Zemais system