Attention Citizens of the Greater Terran Union!
The Ministry of Public Enlightenment is pleased to announce that any citizen, regardless of
tier, who supports the Templin Institute on Patreon at the $10 level or above will be
granted access to limited edition GTU and Ryan’s Raiders Patches.
Your contributions here directly support military operations and other expenditures across our
glorious Union.
The generosity of the High Marshall and this offer expires at the end of this month however,
so act now.
Full details can be found in the description of this video.
When the TUS Hawking entered the Alpha Centauri system and the first manned surveys of its
worlds were conducted, the discovery of alien ruins was hardly some grand revelation.
The arrival of the Tyrum a century earlier had removed any doubt that humanity was alone
in the universe and the fragments of some long dead civilization were hardly a major
concern.
The remains were catalogued, studied, and eventually removed once the colonization efforts
began.
In these early years of discovery, derelict starships, ruined cities, and extinct nations
became routine, with even the greatest remnants of ages past little more than idle curiosities.
Despite the overwhelming evidence that humanity had emerged within some cosmic graveyard,
surrounded on all sides by those who had risen and fallen before, there remained the earnest
belief that the universal law of entropy did not apply to the Greater Terran Union.
This was embraced by the nation itself and with fiery rhetoric its leaders proclaimed
that where the flag of the Union was raised, never would it be lowered.
When the GTU entered the latter half of the 26th century, this once stalwart belief in
human exceptionalism began to conflict with the realities of the universe.
The Union was unquestionably the most powerful nation in the galaxy, but evidence of its
decline was unmistakable.
Ceremony and speeches celebrated the Union’s victory against the Florian Matriarchy, but
across human space, the devastation remained.
A dozen worlds had been occupied while humanity’s greatest fleets and armies were pale shadows
of their former strength.
The country’s wealth had been expended and worse still, the defeat of the Florians had
only further embittered the rest of the galaxy against the GTU.
Mindful of perceived Terran weakness, the Marshalls decided on a show of force.
Skiron secessionists, a lingering nuisance since the integration of the former Compact,
were finally crushed, and renewed measures were taken to ensure the loyalty of the Union’s
puppet governments.
On Earth and its colonies, there began a renewed crackdown on subversive elements, but the
largest display was reserved for the frontier.
A world whose name roughly translated to “Prophet’s Retreat” had long been deemed off-limits
to Union citizens, despite its idyllic nature and vast resources.
The planet was considered holy by the Mesh’Ben, religious zealots who had imposed their will
across what they believed to be the lesser races of the galaxy.
While they had undoubtedly once been a powerful force in the universe and still possessed
technology far more advanced than anything in the Greater Terran Union or elsewhere,
their fire had gone out of the universe.
Ever since they were first encountered, even the most optimistic military leaders had considered
a confrontation with the Mesh’Ben to be unwinnable, but as the Union approached technological
parity, their overwhelming supremacy was no longer assured.
The risk was undeniable, but a victory over the Mesh’Ben would shake the foundations
of the galaxy.
When the first outpost was constructed on Prophet’s Retreat, the reaction from the
Mesh’Ben was immediate.
Their eldritch warships arrived in orbit of the planet, and in a terrible irony, were
forced to fire upon a world they had vowed to protect.
Their Priests declared a Holy War on all humanity and promised to erase it from the stars.
The Mesh’Ben had been complacent for centuries however and their response was entirely predictable.
The trap Fleet Command had laid was executed perfectly and battle-hardened Union fleets
found the Mesh’Ben completely unprepared for their sudden counter-attack.
The capitulation of the Mesh’Ben in 2559 was every bit the shock to the galaxy that
had been intended.
In a single stoke, the Greater Terran Union had proven itself resurgent.
As if by design, the completion of the Union’s Dyson Sphere was declared that same year and
a series of similarly massive projects announced across all of GTU space.
Interstellar Gateways, reverse engineered by Union scientists, were constructed in critical
systems, while enormous orbital habitats became home to tens of millions of Union citizens.
Fueled by the energy of an entire star, the Union aspired to even greater feats of engineering.
In the extra-galactic cluster, “Operation: Oasis” was approved and worlds were destroyed
by the Sword of Terra to provide materials and make way for an artificial ring-world
encompassing an entire star system.
Amidst this awe-inspiring display of Terran rejuvenation, the first indicators of the
coming catastrophe were overlooked.
Escalating system failures in military networks were blamed on user fatigue, while strange
malfunctions in automated systems were misidentified as conventional errors.
Artificial intelligence had long been banned within the Greater Terran Union and synthetic
lifeforms existed only within secure laboratories, but the discovery of self propagating computer
systems known as the N.E.X., hidden deep within the Terran network made it clear that some
sort of breach had occurred.
Every attempt was made to shut down the NEX Network but when this malicious virus gained
access to the nanotechnology first discovered in the extra-galactic cluster, the situation
spiralled out of control.
In an instant, billions of self-replicating machines appeared on every major Terran world,
massacring the local populations.
Warships self destructed inside their moorings, entire anchorages were left without power
while the most advanced military technology either refused to function or was turned against
its operators.
Acadia, Warsaw, Germania, Halifax and even the paradise world of Elysium, worlds that
had for centuries been amongst the greatest in the Union, were turned into battlefields
in an instant.
By the time control over certain military networks had been restored, over half the
Greater Terran Union was overrun as the NEX Network continued to spread.
The scale of the crisis was unprecedented, and the Union’s response equally so.
For the first time in its history, tier requirements for military service were eliminated and new
recruits were accepted from every single member species.
Bombardment restrictions were released and occupied worlds subjected to indiscriminate
bombing and even potentially the Sword of Terra, should no other solution present itself.
Everywhere in Union space scattered Terran fleets attempted to hold back the relentless
drive of the NEX Network but it was in the Sirius System that perhaps the greatest danger
lay.
The site of some the Union’s largest shipbuilding industries, its liberation was critical for
the war effort.
Worse still, the Dyson Sphere in the neighboring Bernard’s Star system was a source of potentially
unlimited energy.
Should it fall into the hands of the NEX, every hope of victory would be lost.
As reinforcements flooded into the core systems from Commissariats that had escaped the worst
effects of the virus, a hastily assembled battlegroup retook the Sirius System and cut
off access to the Dyson Sphere.
Through the efforts of hundreds of newly raised divisions, Land Force Command liberated planet
after planet in the core sector, although often too late to save the majority of their
citizens.
The victories in the core had come at the expense of the frontier.
Left unchecked, the exponentially growing NEX Network had assembled an enormous armada,
dwarfing anything ever before encountered.
With every passing day it only grew in size and with time increasingly against them, the
surviving Union battlegroups assembled to meet it head on.
The Battle of Last Light eclipsed anything the galaxy had ever seen.
The scale of the machine fleet defied any attempt at strategy or tactics, and there
was little Fleet Command could do but drive straight into its heart.
The forces of the machine intelligence swept over the warships of the Greater Terran Union,
at times resembling a great crashing wave rather than any organized armada.
Over 45 days the Union fought the largest battle in its history, one that would determine
the fate of the entire human race.
What factor proved to be decisive in the Battle of Last Light might never be fully understood,
whether it was superior tactics or simple human resolve, the forces of the Greater Terran
Union emerged victorious.
But the victory here was short lived.
The bulk of the NEX Network had been destroyed but the Union remained on the verge of a complete
collapse.
The virus behind it’s inception had been fully expunged from Terran networks but in
the chaos had managed to propagate inside the systems of Union puppet nations.
The most profound discovery however, was that the creation of this machine intelligence
was not some random computational anomaly, but a deliberate attack perpetrated by multiple
foreign powers.
How long this preemptive strike had been planned was impossible to ascertain, but one by one
the largest alliances and federations of the galaxy declared war on the Greater Terran
Union.
The Bright League, the Stellar Axis, even the remnants of the Mesh’Ben, nine separate
nations in all, struck deep into the remaining territories of the Union, sweeping aside what
little resistance was there to meet them.
On every world in the Greater Terran Union tens of millions of fresh volunteers march
beneath the towering monuments of victories past.
The skies are filled day and night with countless transports, bringing forth these new divisions
to ships and stations that already bear fresh scars of the largest war in human history.
Tanks and aircraft are assembled in factories still partially in ruin, as the depleted Terran
economy attempts to marshall what little remains of its strength.
An idea that was once inconceivable, that the greatest cities of mankind might one day
be little more than ancient ruins picked apart by alien scavengers, is now firmly in the
minds of every citizen.
Amidst this crisis, few have paid attention to the rumors flooding out of the galactic
core.
The Mesh’Ben were not the only ancient power in the universe and their defeat at the hands
of the Greater Terran Union has awakened those who might have otherwise have been content
to remain dormant.
For the first time in recorded history, abandoned foundries have roared back to life while forces
that were once locked in isolation now look towards the chaos beyond their borders.
The time has finally come for them to show the younger races who the masters of the galaxy
truly are.
In Stellaris Invicta, the Templin Institute guides the Greater Terran Union into an uncertain
future, one you can influence.
Every Saturday we’ll live stream our progress on our Twitch channel, and viewers and patrons
will have the opportunity to vote on decisions, help name planets, ships, leaders and more.
If you miss the livestream, you can catch up on what happened when the stream is published
the next day to the Templin Archives channel.
Then, once a month we’ll produce a video like this one, detailing everything that’s
progressed in the Greater Terran Union’s struggle to achieve galactic supremacy.
The next livestream of Stellaris Invicta begins one hour after this video has gone live, we
hope to see you among the stars.