Thelsan Assembly

The Thelsan Assembly is among the oldest nations within the Vernarca Nebula, second only to the First Federation. Dominated by the Bronze and Gilded Thelsa, this nation can be found controlling much of the regions of the Tarangul Cluster and Caracal-Zagrade Association. By territory, it is the second largest nation within the Vernarca Nebula after the Vernarcan Federation itself.

The Thelsan Assembly was notable for its extreme conservatism and political calcification, but the recent destruction of Kyx and with it the elder Thol Court forced the nation to begin to modernize or fall entirely to the Void. Approaching the close of the War of the Broken Bow, the Thol Court was rebuilt from scratch on Elaris, beginning a series of modernizations unprecedented in the nation's nine thousand year history.

History

Founding Era and Great Unification

What would become the Thelsan Assembly came into being over nine thousand years ago c. 8,971 BC, as the Gilded Thelsa unified numerous disparate nations. More specific details have largely been lost outside of the Constitutional Scripts of the Founders, and as such this era is shrouded in mystery, and the earliest days of the Assembly have largely passed into the realm of legend and myth. During this time, the territory controlled by the Gilded Thelsa likely spread over approximately 15 star systems, a far cry from the modern size of the unified Assembly.

After a few centuries of expansion, contact was made with the species now known as the Bronze Thelsa, hailing from Aristaz around 9 light-years away from the Pharumas System. The Assembly and the disparate nations of the Bronze Thelsa entered in a long-standing trade relationship, and one by one they began to join the Thelsan Assembly outright due to the drastically greater ease offered by such a relationship. Due to the fragmentary and often propagandized nature of records of this era, it is unclear exactly how long this process took, but it is believed that the last of the independent Bronze Thelsa nations joined the Assembly around 7,480 BC.

As these nations began to integrate more fully into the Thelsan Assembly's political structure, it also continued to expand into the unclaimed space in the direction of the galactic core from the homeworlds. The Thelsan expeditions entered the core of the Tarangul Cluster c. 7,290 and crossed the border into the Parallelogram Cluster a few centuries after that. During this time, the Gilded Thelsa maintained de facto control of the Assembly's politics in part due to their extremely long lifespans, despite the fact that they only represented 39% of the nation's population at the time.

In ~6,540 BC, the people of Koraco achieved spaceflight only to find themselves already within the outskirts of the Assembly's controlled territory. Now known as the Iron Thelsa, this species found itself largely trapped, and so elected to join the Thelsan Assembly to enable its population to spread out beyond its homeworld and take advantage of the advanced technology wielded by the other two Thelsa species. Conveniently, the Iron Thelsa have very similar environmental requirements to the Gilded Thelsa, making their integration very easy for all involved. While historians are sure it wasn't quite this simple, the post-Sand King "propaganda mill" (for lack of a better term) makes it difficult to ascertain anything for certain about this era.

War of the Sand King

One of the most well-documented eras of the distant Thelsan past is that of the War of the Sand King. However, much of this documentation is historically suspect, as the ruling elite class which dominated much of politics for most of the rest of the Assembly's history had an annoying habit of lying about their past. However, it is clear that during this era the tensions between the Gilded Thelsa-dominated elite class and the Bronze Thelsa majority were coming to a head. It was into this situation that the mysterious figure known as the Sand King emerged, a firebrand leader claiming to speak for the entire Bronze Thelsa species and fight for their liberation.

The civil war began in 5,483 BC with the Sarival Massacre, which saw the deaths of millions of protesting (supposedly "rioting") Bronze Thelsa in the capital of their ancient colony of Sutvel. In response, the Sand King led many of the Bronze Thelsa into war against the Assembly's government. While the Assembly was nowhere near as calcified as it was closer to the modern era, it remained very slow to react to the rapidly changing situation. Taking advantage of this, the Sarival Coalition formed around the regions of Thelsan space in support of the Sand King, claiming that Gilded Thelsa oppression would end at the barrels of their cannons. Support for the new Coalition spread like wildfire through Bronze Thelsa populations throughout the Assembly's territory, and propaganda measures were put in place in a futile attempt to prevent further growth of the Sand King's power.

Given that the War of the Sand King lasted for 72 years, longer than the lifespan of any Bronze Thelsa even in the modern day, it is clear that the eponymous figure was not a single individual. It is believed by modern historians to be a title taken on by the leader of the liberation movement, or even possibly by multiple people concurrently. The Thelsan elite of the time was not aware of this, and so wasted enormous time and effort in assassinating the Sand King only for him to reappear somewhere else. Meanwhile, the Sarival Coalition grew to pose a threat to the Assembly's dominance over the region and even, so they said, its very existence.

The conflict wore on for decades. While the Sarival Coalition originally wanted simply to exist in peace, the Thelsan Assembly which it had left had been propagandized into believing that its mere existence was a threat to their way of life. Even many of the Bronze Thelsa which still lived in Assembly territory were subject to this propaganda, seeing their counterparts as bloodthirsty maniacs. The War of the Sand King did not see a swift and decisive conclusion, but instead gradually closed in upon an end as bits of the new Sarival Coalition were slowly torn off by the Assembly's military. But surprisingly, when the raid on the Coalition military stronghold on Rix in the Serco-Emat System reported a successful kill of who they assumed was the Sand King, no one took his place. Those who surrendered quickly enough were quietly returned to re-education camps. Those who weren't were quietly iced.

The Rot Sets In

After the conclusion of the War of the Sand King, the Thol Court decided that the possibility of rapid change was what led to rise of the Sand King and the Bronze Thelsa's liberation movement. Whether they were right or wrong is still debated by historians, but this is what the official histories say. The Assembly of Stars was drastically stripped of power, transforming it from a true legislative body to simply a microphone with which the prefecture governors aired grievances with the way things were run – a microphone that didn't work. While the country was ironically still known as the Thelsan Assembly, the Thol Court and its supporting bureaucratic apparatus held all of the political power.

Many attempts were made in this long and uniform era to institute change. Corporations wanted to strip regulations away. Workers wanted more regulations. Civilians wanted a stronger police force. Other civilians wanted a weaker police force. But by this time it was dogma that the words of the Founders was law. Nothing could ever deviate from this, or a repeat of the War of the Sand King (by then propagandized into something much more catastrophic than it actually was) would come along and destroy their way of life. Thus, nothing could ever change, no matter how minor, unless it could be argued that the Founders meant that all along.

This era also saw increasing anti-Iron Thelsa sentiment, as the ruling elite sought to use them as a convenient scapegoat to vent the low-level anger of some Bronze Thelsa about their de facto second-class status. Some said that the Iron Thelsa were the REAL power of the Assembly, puppetting the Gilded Thelsa, a conspiracy theory not helped by their conveniently compatible environmental needs. As such, over thousands of years the Iron Thelsa began to be slowly driven away from Thelsan space, forcing many of them to strike out on their own into the corewrad territory now filling with fledgeling spacefaring powers. The ecological collapse suffered by the Iron Thelsa homeworld of Koraco wiped out a sizeable fraction of the already low-population species, leaving the rest of them scattered thinly throughout the Vernarca Nebula by the modern day.

As most of the Iron Thelsa left for parts unknown, the rest of the Assembly continued to grow more conservative and calcified, leaving it unprepared for contact with anyone new. The Urann nation of Nephran began to spread from Vistari near the edge of what was ostensibly Thelsan space, merely sweeping aside the sparsely arranged rotting bones of the Assembly's control to make way for their own expansion. The precursors of Kethan-Enol found themselves a little closer to the Thelsan core, but still did not have much difficulty in shoving them out of the way. The ancient Kesstra migration from Teralla far predated the rise of the Bronze and Gilded Thelsa, but they spent much of this time in the stone age after their extremely diminished population found themselves stranded on Riojan. However, they were among the earliest of the more modern Vernarcan civilizations to coalesce, and came into small-scale conflict with the calcified Assembly as they established their interstellar holdings.

The Azani homeworld in the Erosa System is only five light-years from Kyx and 12 from Aristaz, placing it deep within the Thelsan core territories. The Denatzan Union's expansion thus stalled out in the region of space immediately surrounding its capital, and the Azani as a whole couldn't get that much farther. Or so the Thol Court believed. Caravans of colony ships made their way through interstellar space, establishing presences across Thelsan space before the Assembly's paralyzed government could do anything about it. Independent Azani clans established themselves as far out as Siratkar, previously host to a possible Thelsan colony target at Lires, and in the Rho System. It took until after the creation of the theoretically-unified Clans of Azan in the Tarchannen Accords for the Thol Court to finally agree to a treaty.

Modern Era

As late as 25 BC, the disparate Pr'rana colonies in the Tarangul Cluster coalesced around the Unity of Fass Karan, forming yet another checkerboard border with the Thelsan Assembly. Luckily for the Assembly, the newly formed Unity had little interest in expanding beyond its hodgepodge of holdings in the more energetic regions of the cluster. The Unity of Fass Karan even entered a trading agreement, sending surplus power from some of their brighter stars in tightbeams towards neighboring red dwarfs claimed by the Assembly. During the Tyran War, the Enolian Coalition broke free of the Tyran Empire, eliminating the potential threat posed by its advance towards Thelsan space and, less fortunately, eliminating a compelling justification to change anything about the government.

Unfortunately (or otherwise, depending on how one thinks of it), the dictator Lukasho decided to start doing exactly what the old Empire did and invade the systems surrounding Skiltreb and Sirato. As these systems had few planets traditionally habitable to the Thelsan species, most of the population was on mobile habitats and was able to escape the invasion force. Those who did not fell prey to Lukasho's ruthless tactics trained on the other side of this exact kind of conflict. Thelsan habitats were deorbited directly onto some of the surface colonies, most notably on Bolarn and Yaijan. Luckily for those in the war zone, the Enolian advance abruptly ended in 49 AC upon Lukasho's death and his successor's declaration of elections. The Thelsan Assembly still controlled about half of the important Sirato System, including the highly populated colony worlds of Zelaj and Kalont. The growing movement pushing for societal change thus stalled out as the Thol Court decided that everything turned out just fine once again due to the """minimal""" loss of life.

The Thelsan Assembly saw minimal involvement in the Kaegan Conflicts (48-53 AC) and the later Falacian Cold War (79-122 AC). Brief skirmishes occurred on its short border with the Kaegan Sovereignty during this time, but nothing that resulted in any large-scale material changes. The easy trade relationship with Marakat did not survive the reign of the Materica Courts Union or that nation's later collapse into anarchy, but Burumal attempted to continue it in 133 after it finished its break with its mother nation.

War of the Broken Bow

The ruling elite of the Thelsan Assembly fully expected the largest war in recorded history to pass them by if they didn't go poking anyone. A few Bronze and Gilded Thelsa colonies even cropped up on the other side of the Szalana Wormhole in the years leading up to the conflict. Unfortunately, while the other Alliance nations had little interest in the Assembly, the Kaegan Sovereignty's newfound support from them enabled them to expand their territory into Thelsan space. The fighting on the Thelsan Front did not go very well for the Assembly, as the slow-moving nature of the Thol Court and the rest of the government let the Kaegan war machine march into the Tarangul Cluster virtually unopposed. Civilian militias, used to thousands of years of no help from the central government, were surprisingly effective, drastically slowing the Kaegan advance. The Unity of Fass Karan even contributed ships to the battle lines, knowing that they would be next if the Sovereignty's expansion got too far.

The combined Unity and Assembly forces managed to fight the Kaegan Sovereignty to a standstill just beyond the Vargo-Roha System. The concurrent Talarian Rebellion against Kaegan occupation forced them to divert many of their forces there, allowing the tide in the Thelsan Front to turn towards the favor of the unofficial alliance. Starting in 145, the nations of the Alliance of Five began to break away from the organization and thus pull their support from the Kaegans' own war effort, allowing the two nations to push the Sovereignty further back towards their own territory. The Treaty of Praxis cut off the last of this support, and the fleets successfully pushed the Kaegans back to Surias as of 148, just in time for the Thol Court to issue a formal protest against the initial invasion.

But these good fortunes quickly turned as black as night. In 150 AC, the supernova of Arwell heralded the beginning of the largest Void invasion yet seen. Dozens of Voidspears, of which even one was nigh-indestructible, poured through the Szalana Wormhole, tossing the broken hulls of even the most powerful of oppositions aside like they were nothing. Three Voidspears broke away from the pack after entering the Vernarca Nebula, heading rimward into the Thelsan Assembly. The Rela System, a high-mass ternary highly valuable for its energy production to the entire region, underwent a catastrophic collapse as two of the Voidspears seemingly pulled the two most massive stars into each other, creating a luminous red nova and wiping out the majority of the system's massive population and infrastructure. The Azani-controlled white dwarf of Cyliar suffered a type-Ia supernova, destroying almost the entire system and reducing Clan Kraisul to the barest shadow of its former power, and beginning to severely irradiate nearby systems. Thelsan military generals, fed up with waiting for the Thol Court to decide on anything, took their fleets into battle with lone Voidspears, dramatically succeeding in damaging a few meters of stealth paint before their total destruction.

All the while, civilian-led evacuations were taking place across the regions of space most directly threatened by the incoming Void ships. Murspik's research outpost in the Airov System successfully evacuated samples of the majority of that planet's primitive ecosystem, and at least 20% of the system's habitats escaped, before the Voidspear triggered a premature supernova in the blue supergiant star through unknown means. The evacuation of Geroon and the rest of the Pharumas System was proceeding according to plan when the Thol Court ordered it stopped in a rare moment of doing something, with the logic that an at-scale evacuation would cause too much interruption to the economy. But this was their last, fatal error.

The three Voidspears traversing Thelsan space converged in the Pharumas System. Some of the highest leaders of the Assembly's minuscule military outright mutinied and took their ships out of drydock to effect a valiant last stand in the Battle of Ruya. This battle was an abject failure, with all three Voidspears suffering absolutely no damage whatsoever after tearing the Thelsan fleet to shreds and consuming the debris. The three Voidspears converged at equidistant points at the edge of the system, appearing to envelop it in some bizarre forcefield before contact was lost and Pharumas exploded in an inexplicable supernova. Geroon was consumed by the shockwave in the first minute, followed scant minutes later by Kyx. The twin jewels of the ancient Gilded Thelsa were summarily vaporized, gone without a trace. The entire Thelsan government, prohibited from evacuating by the Thol Court for the same reason as the halted evacuation of Geroon, died with them. The Voidspears continued without a care, splitting up and making for Erosa, Delsar, and Kimera.

After the Pharumas Supernova and the eradication of the ancient government, local governments at Elaris, Aristaz, and Quoras quickly banded together to form a new government. The provisional, and later formal, capital of the new Thelsan Assembly would be established at Elaris primarily since the Voidspears had already passed by the Phalensh System. The faraway events of the Battle of the Colony would put an end to the urgent Void threat to Aristaz and to the surviving Assembly systems as a whole, enabling the newly reconstituted Thol Court under Jeron of Amenti to enact a slate of modifications to the original model which would come to be known as the Elaris Reforms. Under this new system, the revitalized Thelsan Assembly would be able to adapt to the changing realities of politics, and hopefully be much more resilient to future attacks. Today, the new government continues to rebuild from the catastrophic Void attack, and the deaths of uncountable numbers of people are still being calculated and mourned. One hopes that this new government will succeed where its predecessor failed.

Government

Prior to the War of the Broken Bow, the government of the Thelsan Assembly has existed unchanged since the end of the War of the Sand King over 5,500 years ago. Functionally a gerontocracy, the Thelsan government is primarily controlled by a body known as the Thol Court, which is tasked with interpreting the words of the Founders and fashioning them into laws. Before Kyx's destruction, the Thelsan Assembly was notable for completely lacking a means by which to pass new laws, but the Elaris Reforms of early 150 drastically increased the power of the Assembly of Stars to enable this.

Most of the day-to-day governance of the Thelsan Assembly is conducted through the bureaucracy beneath the Thol Court, with various divisions dating back thousands of years to their establishment by the Thelsan Founders unchanged until the Elaris Reforms. During this era, the Gilded Thelsa were politically dominant despite their drastically lower population due to their comparatively long lifespans, but the Void attack of 150 AC caused catastrophic damage to the regions of space primarily populated by them.

Elaris Reforms

In early 150 AC, almost the entire federal government of the Thelsan Assembly died at a stroke with the Void's destruction of the national capital of Kyx. The aging Thol Court was completely wiped out, and many of the bureaucratic offices went up with the debris alongside them. While this event was a tragedy unmatched in the entire history of the Assembly, it also provided a unique opportunity to modernize the government in the process of reconstituting it. The Thol Court had to be completely drawn from scratch from the surviving literati within Thelsan space, and the up-and-coming Bronze Thelsa lawyer Jeron of Amenti spearheaded the project of building a new Thelsan government which could actually serve its people instead of the ghosts of five thousand year old fears.

The first task was, of course, to decide where to put the new government. Kyx was obviously off the table, and Aristaz would lead to a repeat of the disproportionate Gilded Thelsa dominance of the previous 9,000 years. Thus, the homeless Thol Court selected the planet Elaris, a highly populated but historically unremarkable planet with a diverse population of both species. The rebuilt government also drastically elevated the power of the Assembly of Stars, enabling the existence of a real legislative branch.

Thol Court

The highest and most powerful body in the Thelsan government is the Thol Court. This organization was dedicated to the interpretation of the Constitutional Scripts of the Founders and other quotations from these individuals, fashioning them into something resembling law. Prior to the Elaris Reforms, this fundamentally prevented the adaptation of the Assembly to new cultural and political realities, both within it and beyond its borders. When the Court was established, almost none of the species which today dominate the Vernarca Nebula had even achieved space travel yet. As such, almost everything involving such interactions has needed to be extrapolated from the pre-Sand King treaties and laws, making it very difficult for the nation to adapt to new situations.

The Thol Court most visibly consisted of a council of twelve elders educated in the words of the Founders and related history, with a vast array of bureaucratic offices existing to execute the laws of the Thelsan Assembly. Because of the nature of Thelsan society, the Thol Court itself had very little to do in most situations, spending most of its time dealing with judicial disputes.

Assembly of Stars

Prior to the Elaris Reforms, the Assembly of Stars spent thousands of years as a formality. The Assembly from which the nation takes its name was in fact a meeting of the governors of the 49 prefectures (in reality almost exclusively representatives appointed by them), which took grievances to the Thol Court for them to change absolutely nothing. However, it has now been elevated to the legislative branch of the Thelsan Assembly, passing laws to allow the postwar nation to adapt to the new reality.

Foreign Relations

The Thelsan Assembly has spent most of its history in a quiescent state, picking fights with no one and changing little. This, alongside the fact that the territory most valued by the Assembly is completely uninhabitable to everyone else, means that it has few enemies. Free trade agreements exist between the Assembly and several nations surrounding it, including the Talarian Union, the Unity of Fass Karan, the Vernarcan Federation as a whole, and theoretically Marakat if it actually had control of itself. As always, the Clans of Azan have mixed opinions, with some allying with the Assembly and others quietly hating it.

Demographics

The Thelsan Assembly is one of the few nations which holds multiple species within its borders at theoretically equal standing. While it isn't quite to the extent of the Vernarcan Federation with its numerous member states, the Bronze Thelsa and Gilded Thelsa, (and in the past, the Iron Thelsa now predominantly found in the Parallelogram Cluster) form the majority of the population of the Assembly.

Approximately 73% of the Assembly's population is made up of the Bronze Thelsa, followed by 21% Gilded Thelsa and 6% other species including the Pr'rana and Azani. However, for thousands of years the Gilded Thelsa maintained de facto control of the Assembly's politics in part due to their extremely long lifespans and the government seemingly designed to magnify the effects of them. Fortunately, the Elaris Reforms established a more equitable distribution of power within Thelsan space.

Astrography

The Thelsan Assembly is the second largest nation within the Vernarca Nebula following the collapse of the Falacian Dominion, found dominating the Tarangul Cluster and parts of the Caracal-Zagrade Association. Its 204 stars are divided into 49 prefectures, each governed by an officer appointed from the local population by the Thol Court. In addition, large parts of the less populated regions of the nation are classified as "territories", governed directly by the central bureaucracy. The wildly different environmental needs of the Bronze and Gilded Thelsa compared to other species native to the Vernarca Nebula results in a bizarre honeycomb-like appearance to the Assembly's territory when depicted on a map as other nations arose in its midst including the Clans of Azan and later the Unity of Fass Karan. The only true borders that the Assembly has with other nations are its coreward borders with the Vernarcan Federation member state of the Enolian Coalition, a few of the most counterspinward Clans of Azan, and relatively brief contacts with the Talarian Union and Kaegan Sovereignty at its most coreward extent.

Capital

After the destruction of Kyx in the latter days of the War of the Broken Bow and the resultant deaths of every sitting member of the Thol Court, the reconstituted Court was established on the terraformed planet of Elaris in the Phalensh System. While it was already a highly populated world, it had not been of great historical import for thousands of years and this choice was seen as bizarre by many of the commentators of the era. The new Thol Court released a statement explaining that this was an intentional choice to separate from the millennia of baggage holding the old court back from accomplishing its goals, while also announcing a slate of sweeping governmental reforms.

The actual planet of Elaris is physically unique in several respects. It is most notably a rare example of a cthonian planet, likely originating as an ice giant and experiencing long-term atmospheric erosion from its red giant parent star. Much of its surface is covered in molten rock, with an ancient terraforming project taking place early in the Assembly's history modifying the planet's climate to ensure habitability to the two Thelsa species. Its impressive ring system is also unique for a planet in such close proximity to its parent star, as normally such structures are eroded by sunlight pressure altering the orbits of particles. Its moon of Silgir is relatively similar to itself, orbiting around a third of the way to the edge of the planet's sphere of influence and home to billions of people.

Notable Star Systems

Neighboring Powers

The Thelsan Assembly predates almost every other nation within the Vernarca Nebula by thousands of years, and its surrounding political situation has evolved on numerous occasions. But what almost all of these arrangements have in common is the wide-scale overlap between the Assembly and its surrounding nations, due to the wildly differing environmental requirements of its primary species and that of the others. Today, the Thelsan Assembly shares a long "border" with the Vernarcan Federation states of the Enolian Coalition and Unity of Fass Karan. In the case of the latter, almost every system within the Unity is partly controlled by the Assembly, creating some of the most heinously complicated border control arrangements in known space. Similarly, the Clans of Azan exist almost entirely within the extent of Thelsan space, sharing control of numerous systems within the Tarangul Cluster and CZA. At its most coreward extent, the Assembly makes contact with the Talarian Union and Kaegan Sovereignty.

Major Worlds


	Elaris	Aristaz	Quoras

Location	Phalensh System	Delsar System	Sarc-Scantea System


Population	TBA	TBA	TBA


Unique Attributes:	Newly established capital of the Thelsan Assembly	Homeworld of the Bronze Thelsa	Major colony of both primary Thelsa species