On June 23rd, 341al, the Confederate Republics of Antares formally withdrew from its military
alliance with the Cloister of the Spirits and the Moya Pact was dissolved.
Diplomats from both nations worked to mitigate the damage of such a transition, but the legacy
of division, tension and wars of dubious merit that the Pact left behind, would take decades
to heal.
But now free to pursue its own foreign policy without entanglement, the Antares Confederacy
embarked on a campaign of reconciliation.
Despite the war that had divided them, their conflict had brought a kind of mutual respect
between the Confederacy and the Kelarr Clans and it was here that the first attempt at
detente were made.
A normalization of relations with the Anthorian and Beldross Empires was also attempted, but
their respective regimes showed little interest.
For all its willingness to forgive past transgressions and forge new ties, few states neighboring
the Antares Confederacy showed any sign of the same.
Yet with the threat of war on multiple fronts easing, the Confederacy could again devote
significant resources to exploration and discovery.
Since the CAS Earhart had crossed beyond the boundaries of the Antares System, the region
of space the Confederacy settled had provided far more questions than answers.
First among these was the nature of the Baanthurians.
It was doubtless their race had once been a formidable civilization capable of great
works, but their fire had long since gone out of the universe.
What remained was a collection of decrepit space stations clinging to the orbits of dead
worlds.
Each was home to hundreds of millions of Baanthurians, living in squalor and governed only by whatever
gang or petty tyrant could seize power.
An endless string of civil wars, revolutions, coups and insurgencies left their small region
of space a chaotic battleground, and one that had been forever restricted to the Confederacy
since its discovery nearly a century earlier.
In 356al, after nearly twenty years of tests and refinements, the CAS Rho Phan successfully
completed the Confederacy’s first warp jump.
Using a new method of faster than light travel altogether different from the wormhole gates
utilized by the Earhart Flotilla or the cosmic strings navigated by modern day vessels, the
Rho Phan was able to circumnavigate Baanthurian space.
It emerged on the far side of their territory, but the mystery of their fall only deepened.
Sites of ancient battles against some terrible foe littered the star systems of that distant
territory.
At its center, was a machine construct of unfathomable power, performing some automated
duty above any understanding.
Elsewhere in the Confederacy, worlds that had only been given a cursory survey were
studied in more detail.
At the time of its discovery, Lideco had been dismissed as yet another barren world without
the environment or resources to warrant any consideration of permanent settlement.
Even among the growing multitude of species that now made up the Confederacy’s citizens,
none were amenable to its thin atmosphere and soil.
The only presence on Lideco had been a monitoring station used during the war against the Anthorians,
and a small research outpost.
It was during an expansion of the latter site that an unprecedented discovery was made.
Buried beneath shifting sands and broken by the weight of time, was a tomb.
It was a mammoth complex, so large that even the great underground cities of the Tehnali
Republic would have been lost within their depths.
The complexity and scale of the structure seemed beyond the ability of all but the most
elder of starfaring races, though to whom it had once belonged, could not be ascertained.
For months, an ever growing team of researchers and scientists from across the whole of the
Confederacy descended on Lideco, mapping out its vast labyrinth and working to unlock its
hidden vaults.
What they discovered within the deepest levels of the structure, sealed behind ancient doors
and eldritch puzzles, was a single corpse.
It was remarkably well preserved within the structure, but it resembled no species known
to exist across the wider galaxy.
Yet covering the walls, floors and ceilings that adorned its mausoleum was a script instantly
recognizable.
The language had long since died out, but such was its importance that dozens of species
across the galaxy, could trace the evolution of their own alphabets to this one.
Whoever this creature had once been, he had influenced the fate of great interstellar
nations long before humanity discovered fire.
Recognizing its importance, the Confederacy sent an envoy to the Vran.
They were among the oldest species ever encountered, and it was to their language that the runes
used within the Crypt most resembled.
Like the Banthurrians, the Vran had once been a great power in the universe, only to have
suffered some cataclysm and locked themselves away behind their borders.
Even so, they remained hundreds, if not thousands of years more advanced than the other species
of the galaxy, and regarded the younger races with annoyance and condescension.
In a departure from their typical dismissive rhetoric however, representatives from the
Vran State appeared before the Antares Parliament.
They praised the Confederacy, and requested the return of the body discovered in the Tomb
of Lideco.
The Confederate delegation that accompanied the remains to the Throne World of the Vran
were the first outsiders to set foot upon its surface in millenia.
They were honored, blessed, and profoundly thanked.
To the Vran, the figure within the Vault had been a messianic figure, and to achieve in
finding him where they themselves had failed, the Confederacy was seen as divinely inspired.
A plethora of gifts were bestowed to the Confederate envoys, with one among their number reserved
solely for the Prime Minister of Antares.
While the Confederacy enjoyed an age of enlightenment and opportunity, the frontiers around it grew
turbulent.
In the absence of the Moya Pact, renewed conflict had broken out between the Cloister of the
Spirits and the Anthorian Empire, with the latter collapsing into anarchy as the conflict
wore on.
The failure of the Anthorian state led to an enormous refugee crisis and the Confederate
border posts were overwhelmed with requests for asylum.
Amidst this worsening crisis, the Confederacy itself suffered tragedy, when a solar flare
nearly wiped out one of its newest colonies.
Despite a tremendous evacuation effort, not enough ships could be mobilized in time and
tens of thousands were killed.
What historians would refer to as “the golden age”, had ended.
When the first changes in Baanthurian society were observed by frontier outposts and reconnaissance
satellites in 377, Confederate Intelligence failed to recognize its importance until it
was too late.
Through diplomacy and brutal cunning, a single warlord had emerged within their decaying
civilization and rallied the disparate gangs, tribes and holdouts to his cause.
His title was beyond translation, to Antares, he was known simply as the Great Khan.
Within days of his ascension, the once isolationist Baanthurian race exploded outwards from their
enclave seizing star systems from all those around them.
The destruction of Naval Station Co Loa was a shock to all Antares.
The fortress had been specifically designed to deter the Baanthurians, only to be relentlessly
attacked in a series of engagements that had also crippled two Confederate fleets sent
to reinforce it.
When the fleets of the Khan arrived in orbit of Prithvi, site of the nearest Antares Colony
of Melaka, nothing could be done to save it.
After two years of constant defeats, the loss of nearly all its frontier territories bordering
the Khan and it’s single largest colony in the region, the Parliament of Antares began
discussing the possibility of surrender.
Despite the violence and suffering he had unleashed, in his actions on Prithvi and elsewhere,
the Khan had shown himself to be reasonable, and capable of acting with a kind of warrior’s
honor.
The Confederacy was militarily shattered and the road now open to the heart of the nation,
servitude under the Khan, it was argued, might be seen as preferable to extinction.
But the heroic actions of General Liliana Reyes who had led the doomed last stand on
Melaka, had revitalized the martial fire of Antares which now burned with a deadly heat.
For the first time since the Liberation of Torix, hundreds of thousands, then millions
rallied behind a single great effort.
Where before humanity had sallied forth alone, now it marched in tandem with the Vrul, the
Pneuma, the Tavurites, the Anoran, the Kelarr, the Bruggan, the Uthonian and dozens of others.
Each species had come to Antares for different reasons, but each now saw in the Confederacy
an ideal worth fighting for.
As the Khanate pushed further into both the Confederacy and distant territories, a counter-attack
was mobilized.
With the Khan himself occupied elsewhere, Antares struck.
The campaign to liberate Melaka cut through what little defenses had been left in orbit,
and after heavy fighting the system was once again in Confederate hands.
It was a defining moment, but even the growing strength of Antares could not hope to match
the armadas commanded by the Khan.
The ships that emerged within the Antares System never appeared on any form of tracking
instrument.
Not until their great forms loomed outside the windows of Reunion Station had it been
realized that they were even present.
Their commander materialized before the Confederate High Command with almost no warning, and shock
turned to relief as it unsheathed its ancient crystalline sword, and pledged the services
of the Vran Pilgrims.
With the forces of the Vran at the vanguard of the Confederacy’s counter-attack, the
scope of the offensive was expanded.
As plans were made to drive into the heart of their territory, came the news that the
Khan had been defeated, by some great power elsewhere in the universe.
The hope that this might lead to the end of the war was soon quashed, when it was confirmed
the Great Khan himself had escaped.
The myth of the Khan’s invincibility had been shattered but only heightened his desire
for renewed conquests.
Eleven years after their initial invasion, the Baanthurian Khante again turned its attention
towards Antares, this time with the Khan at their head.
The Second Battle of Prithvi was beyond anything in human history.
Confederate fleets were hastily organized and assembled from across the disparate counter-offensives
in the frontier, massing for a single battle that would decide the fate of the nation.
Failure here, and nearly a decade of effort would be wasted.
The first time the Baanthurians had arrived in Prithvi, they had faced only token resistance
in orbit, in the year 390, the entire might of the Confederate Navy had been assembled.
For over a month the two great fleets dueled across the system.
Baanthurian warships traded salvos with ancient Vran battlecruisers and against their eldritch
power, even the Khan could not prevail.
The destruction of his flagship scattered the remainder of his forces which were quickly
picked apart by Confederate battlegroups.
The death of the Great Khan threw his Khanate into chaos and this was exploited to the fullest
by the Confederacy.
As rival warlords jostled for positions, their star systems were systematically captured
one by one.
Decades of half-measures undertaken against the Anthorians and Beldross, combined with
the trauma leftover from the occupation of Prithvi had left their mark on the Confederate
leadership.
Antares would settle for nothing less than total victory.
In 395al, the Baanthurian Khanate surrendered.
The Antares Confederacy had taken not only the former enclave on its frontiers, but pursued
the expansion of the Khanate through a natural, stable wormhole within their territory.
For the first time, Confederate ships had operated in a distant part of the galaxy and
brought the weight of their forces to bear against the last distant holdouts of the Khan.
As part of the Baanthurian Instrument of Surrender, their nation-state was preserved, but a new
government acceptable to Confederate officials was installed, democratic reforms implemented,
and limits placed on the role of their military.
The War Against the Khan had pushed the Confederacy past its traditional limits towards a new
policy of heightened militarism and increased interventionism.
A new vision began to emerge of the role Antares could play in spreading peace and democracy
across the galaxy, and whether it even possessed the right to do so.
Much of the Confederacy’s population could trace their heritage within Antares back to
refugees fleeing from neighboring states and there came a desire to bring to bear the might
that had shattered the Khan, to liberate their own ancestral homelands.
First among these, was Earth.
The last gift from the Vran, the one reserved for the eyes of the Prime Minister alone,
was in fact, a warning.
It was then shared with the growing cadre of officials privy to the discussions taking
place at the highest levels of government.
Every fear was confirmed, and new details revealed that ended any hope of a peaceful
reunification with the rest of humanity.
During the war against the Khan, had come the news of his first defeat against some
great distant power.
Through the Vran, that power was given a name.
The time had finally come for the rest of
Antares
to learn the truth.