The Triumvirate
Civilizations have never been very stable in Martial Space; the region is notorious for being difficult to unify. To tame Martial Space and unlock its full potential was a goal seldom realized. The numerous empires that tried have often collapsed, usually from the mounting internal stability that results in uniting so many disparate species. Internal instability, like entropy, has resulted in the downfall of every great empire in Martial Space. For one civilization, however, unity was maintained for over 2,000 years.
The Triumvirate Civilization (also called The Triumvirate, The Triune, Triune Empire, or The Triune Republic) was a series of successive states ruled by The Three—Ma'eau, Holos, and Titania. The Triumvirate Civilization is considered to have begun in 5838 CE when its three leaders agreed to cooperate in the pursuit of their goals. Its history is divided into three periods, the Classical Triumvirate (5838 CE - 6113 CE), Imperial Triune (6113 CE - 7971 CE), and the Triune Republic (7971 CE - 8058 CE).
The Triumvirate evolved from a decentralized union to a sort of semi-federal system in which its provinces had limited self-governance. Afterwards, it upgraded its provinces into states and gave them broad self-governing powers. After the states rebelled and the Triumvirate lost control over its territory, its leaders would assert their authority during the War of the Final Transition, committing one of the largest acts of genocide in history against their own populace. This collapse ushered in the modern state of Martial Space.
The Triumvirate Civilization has contributed greatly in the fields of technology, society, politics, government, warfare, architecture and engineering. This civilization created and spread the Republic as a form of governance which remains common to this day. The Triumvirate has achieved high technology still unattainable to this day as well. Artifacts from the Triumvirate are prized for their unique properties.
Classical History
Foundation
The Triumvirate emerged during a conference organized by Holos. Envoys from the Providence Union and Sedrua paid close attention to its preceding. A new civilization in the then-nameless patch of space full of nothing but nomadic civilizations could be a threat to trade across the core. Sedrua took great issue with Holos' involvement, nearly declared war as the Conference began. Holos was infamous for its destruction of Ohko's Civilization. When Titania appeared, her heresies against every religion in the universe only increased tension. It was Ma'eau, the vast hive-mind that created all life in Aylathiya, that gave the Triumvirate's neighbors solace. Friendly and willing to trade for thousands of years, they viewed Ma'eau as a check on the power of the much more unpredictable Titania and Holos.
The tract of space that the Triumvirate declared sovereignty over was nearly worthless save for the Hyperlanes passing through it. All it contained were ruins, such as the city of Paradigm, or derelict stars such as Gira Gira whose ruined megastructures dimmed it. Save for the occasional single-planet state, the ruins of Martial Space contained hardly anything of note. Merchants traveled through the region to access the rest of Aylathiya, but hardly interacted with the primitive inhabitants who possessed little of value.
After tense discussions and the eventual blessing of both foreign states, the Triumvirate was established in 5838 CE. A triarchy, nearly all of the power was wielded by Ma'eau. The Three were theoretically equal, but Ma'eau held the largest fleets and armies. However, without much knowledge of Thaumaturgy beyond the very basics, Titania offered the nation access to the art. Holos offered something its co-rulers lacked, a plan. Ma'eau was a fundamentally reactionary being and, Titania, who was so absorbed in her philosophy, could never take a step back to manage the economy of international relations. The finer tasks were up to Holos. Despite sitting on the left side of immense throne room they built, with Ma'eau in the middle and Titania on the right, Holos had disproportionate influence from the beginning.
Entrance onto the Stage
One of the first steps of the Triumvirate was to assert their sovereignty over their region. While nomads were left alone, the rogue artificial intelligences called the Nachleben represented an ever-present threat. Often with large armies at their disposal, they represented the last fragments of the destroyed Boreal Empire. An even bigger threat were the Overlords, powerful Magi that were also often superintelligences. Working together, the Three were able to subdue most of them. The Resonant Divinity, Marduk, and Asarluhi. The inhabitants of their territory, if they produced even a small amount of valuable material, were taxed. A primitive system, The Three would simply send large numbers of automated warships to any planet with a significant gross domestic product and extract what was due. In exchange, The Three brutally punished marauding pirates and forcibly created peace on planets such as Hathia.
Governing the five systems under their control—Gira Gira, Sachitel's Idyll, L'Starte, Tryvya, and Arlioux—was quite difficult even as they joined forces. Ma'eau technically had control over much of Aylathiya; the hive mind was the one that seeded most of it with life after all. The issue was that it was only conscious on its home world of Velevev, meaning that the ecosystems it set up on other worlds, while sentient, were more or less free agents. The result was that Ma'eau needed to send ships from its home world like any other empire. The Administrator directly controlled the system of Tryvya and Gira Gira with its intelligent weapons, machines known as Administrivae. Titania had a large following amongst nomadic Atlins but no control over their home system.
Expansion
While controlling these five stars was a great place to start, expansion was the ultimate goal of the coalition formed by The Three. The best target was the star Eos, a small red dwarf surrounded by a large abandoned megastructure. The disk around the star had only a population in the tens of billions despite a surface area hundreds of times greater than the largest terrestrial planet. With only ruins on its surface, monuments to the ancient successive civilizations that both built and resided on it, the inhabitants were mostly small bands of Humans or Kristals. As Triumvirate forces, mostly mercenaries from Sedrua, explored the structure, they discovered the home of the Atlins. Titania immediately relocated to Eos to spread her religion and to bolster her following.
After a bit of time, it was found that the Atlins did not develop technology on their own but received it from another empire. The Orcubor, hailing from the planet Gohbrin, began colonizing Eos in an attempt to create an interstellar presence. Well aware of the existence of other civilizations, the Orcubor were unwilling to join the Triumvirate. The mercenaries and native soldiers would soon change their mind; the Triumvirate's preferred form of persuasion was very effective. The inner Angreifer System entered the empire and would soon become a nexus of scientific development.
The last obstacle to full sovereignty were the nomads. While originally they were peaceful, as the Triumvirate meddled with their affairs, they grew more hostile. Marauders and pirates turned to the nomads to transport contraband, a massive headache that took a lot of The Three's attention. Law enforcement within the civilization was originally a matter of military power. If a soldier witnessed a crime, they would stop the crime and arrest the perpetrator. If crime in the city went down, local officials would be rewarded. The result was a large prison population, an unruly populous that increasingly fled cities to the countryside, and rivalries between different officials.
Not only would civic order need less heavy-handed maintenance, but tax collecting would also need to be far more stream-lined. The solution was found in the Ror Units, a mostly nomadic species whose philosophy of Alkanism having given them access to the powers of Paladins. With great abilities such as space-flight, decreased vulnerability to physical damage, and increased mental acuity, they would be the perfect force to maintain Triumvirate control over their territories. The Ror Units that were willing to enforce the Triumvirate's laws formed the Great Intendancy, a trans-national police force that was quasi-independent from the government that sponsored it. Effective at both routing out spies and spying themselves, Sedrua and the Providence Union both had to greatly increase their intelligence budgets to account for this new organization.
The Un'oit remained independent, refusing to even trade with the Triumvirate. It would take more than a simple police force to contend with this battle-hardened species, a commitment that the Triumvirate could not make. Militarily, it was well behind its neighbors, its only saving grace was the fearsome reputation of its leaders. To the Un'oit, however, the Three were merely another set of foreigners that wanted their territory. Thus this species was left alone under the pretense that they controlled little of value. The Triumvirate did wrestle out an embassy around Oratorio, however.
Colonization of Eos
As the Triumvirate gained strength, it was able to gradually begin governing all of Eos. The Three grouped species or sub-species into large prefectures. The local officials that ruled them, called prefects, were the most powerful individuals in the region, but they proved to be of little use. Corrupt, tyrannical, and uncooperative, the local governments proved to be a nuisance. They often hired different divisions within the Great Intendancy to fight, creating large staged battles that had little in the way of casualties but proved very expensive. Locally-raised militaries would also play the game, which was essentially about getting into a position where one could easily best the other if they so chose. Sometimes cities were destroyed, but usually in overwhelming defeats.
Local kings and warlords from throughout the civilization, and especially Eos, also played the game. The Great Intendancy and other unofficial militia groups began wielding significant amounts of power. Even Titania engaged in the political struggle, using her share of the taxes to sponsor friendly factions.
The Three abandoned this decentralized form of rule in 5870 CE, replacing it with an organization called the Five Ministries. These ministries had direct access to most of The Three's military assets, was required to return ever-increasing revenue every year, and had a robust system of checks of balances to ensure wide distribution of power. The ministries were staffed entirely by Atlins with fanatical devotion to the government. This bureau gave the Three direct control over the population of Eos, beginning a paradigm called "Governmental Deism," where the leader of the Five Ministries, called an "Administrator," was effectively a monarch. They would occasionally get orders from The Three but were more or less free to run the territory as they saw fit. The title was at first an appointed one, but it soon became hereditary as The Three became even less involved.
Administrators controlled roughly a third of the budget, where the rest went was decided amongst The Three. Much of this budget went to hiring the Great Intendancy, hiring mercenaries, or bribing marauders to enforce Triumvirate rule. The remainder went towards maintaining infrastructure, censuses, and tax collection. Failure was met with quick extermination, making the position fairly undesirable throughout much of its history.
The population of Eos, while ruled by an advanced civilization, was not introduced to modern science or empiricism, neither concept having any sort of sway in the Triumvirate at the time. Philosophy, especially the highly formalized kind practiced by the Ror Units, became the dominant way to learn about the world. An elaborate intellectual system formed where good arguments took precedent over experimental evidence. The belief that the universe was a simulation, one based on little evidence, became very popular along with ideas of common decent for all intelligent species living on Eos.
The Orcubor did much of the heavy-lifting when it came to scientific advancement, themselves the only species to have embraced science. The issue was that their chemistry was utterly different from that of all other species. Their agricultural methods were useless beyond the idea of selective breeding. The result of this combination of middle technology and philosophy created a stagnant society in which the only way to accomplish great works was through Thaumaturgy as well as any latent technology the Orcubor or Ma'eau were willing to share.
International Relations
The Triumvirate was noticeably partial to the Quintet Payotari Association, given that both were not too friendly with Sedrua. It entered into a formal alliance with this nation, even as the Alliance entered into the Sedrua-Alliance War. The Triumvirate gave support in the form of escorting Association ships across trade routes as well as blocking Sedruan trade. This would further cement the antagonistic relationship the two sides had.
By the 6000s CE, the Triumvirate became a proper civilization in the sense that it was centralized, had clear laws, and possessed borders. It had control over seven stars. While most certainly not the largest civilization in history, the Triumvirate was well on its way to becoming an entity on the galactic stage. The Dotsk, ruling the binary star system Mili-Medb, entered into a formal alliance with the Triumvirate to secure trade with the Providence Union and to protect itself from the Quintet Payotari Association.
While relations with Sedrua were as fraught as ever, trade had only increased with the population of the Triumvirate. Large privately-ran hubs where freighters could stop to refuel and exchange goods began popping up across the nation. Essentially miniature kingdoms complete with hereditary transfer of power, these newly-built hubs existed in orbit around both Eos and other star systems. While officially citizens of the Triumvirate, these independent groups would soon become very influential in Triumvirate politics. Overly-eager bureaucrats often picked fights with them, creating small skirmishes as they hired independent paladins to fight back. They would become official parts of the government around 6980 BCE in exchange for a small tribute every year.
Economic Growth
The early economy of the Triumvirate was heavily centered on the Overlords that populated the region. With their ancient factories that had consistently produced goods for thousands of years, they possessed the vast majority of useful goods. Most nomads or cities relied on agriculture which proved useless to The Three. Immortal beings had no use for crops but did have a use for metals, weapons, and other processed goods.
Thus, the Five Ministries had an important task ahead of it, de-monopolizing the useful productive output of the nation. All it took to get the Orcubor to start building up infrastructure were investments of raw material. Since it brought more investment from both the Three and from independent investors, the Orcubor's wealth quickly blossomed mostly at the expense of the Overlords.
For the cities on Eos, however, making them economically useful was far more challenging. The Ministries invested heavily in factories and simply drafted civilians to work in them for pay in local currency. Automation played a large role in the early economy, but the primitive machinery available made it a work-multiplying tool rather than a work-replacing tool.
At this point in history, technological advancement was largely non-existent across most of space. Even though the Providence Union was willing to trade, they usually only traded finished goods instead of the capital necessary to produce them. Thus, the Providence Union was a sort of gatekeeper for advanced goods. The solution was to produce something they did not have and a lot of it. Magi seemed to be a logical solution. Training more Magi meant the ability to produce Hardlight and other exotic materials the Union demanded. Additionally, they could produce large amounts of energy cheaply, powering factories without resorting to rare materials such as Uranium. Cheap energy meant cheap goods, such as pure Aluminum, that could even fetch a profit in markets in the union.
The Ministries set a very low mandatory price at which private refineries or facilities would be compensated for their materials. The materials would then be shipped elsewhere and return a tremendous profit. The Alliance and Sedrua engaged in this strategy, but the tensions between Sedrua and its neighbors effectively cut it off from foreign markets.
The Sedrua-Triumvirate War
Main Article: Sedrua-Triumvirate War
By the time the Sedrua-Triumvirate war started, Sedrua had already humiliated itself numerous times with failed campaigns and constantly shed territory. Its failed war with the Payotari Alliance caused its economy to crash. Sedruan leadership decided that the Triumvirate was a loose end that would soon grow to surpass Sedrua. Really, the ascension of the Triumvirate had already begun, especially as it began establishing colonies near to Hathia, a Sedruan colony at the time.
Many of the nation's leaders, known as Sydiah's Architects, grew increasingly worried about the thaumaturgical abilities of The Three, all of which having long since surpassed many of them. Holos in particular grew to surpass even that of their then-leader, Itrian Yutira. If this advancement continued, Sedrua feared that the Triumvirate would be able to create beings similar to Sydiah's Architects, nullifying any edge Sedrua had.
In 6087, Sedrua launched a preemptive strike against against Eos. Defenses in Eos were overwhelmed within weeks and its strongholds soon fell, forcing Titania to flee. It was the rest of the stars that proved to be difficult to invade. Not only had the Triumvirate withdrawn nearly all military assets to D'Naevium, it quickly deported every Magi to Tryvya for training.
In response, Sedrua began using large numbers of Sydiah's Architects against the Triumvirate. These beings, powerful Magi, were able to effectively counter the Administriviae, allowing for Sedruan fleets to approach the capital. Sedura eventually ordered virtually every Architect to assault the capital. Sedruan generals and oligarchs were confident that their attack would overwhelm their enemy. In a grueling period lasting almost five hundred years, Sedrua used vast amounts of resources to destroy Holos' core and track down the rest of The Three. While occupied with these objectives, they also had to contend with guerilla forces on Eos. The subjects of The Triumvirate were loyal to The Three. After experiencing many defeats, the arrogant Sedruan leadership refused to change their tactics, even as many generals on the ground requested more reinforcements and a change in tactics. When Dotskgard finally mobilized, a second front opened as hoards of unorganized ships took down supply chains, merchant vessels, and other soft targets the Triumvirate could not take advantage of. Soon after, the Quintet Payotari Association would join in as well, putting enormous pressure on Sedrua.
Towards the end of the war, The Three unleashed numerous weapons beyond the capabilities of the Sedruan forces. These weapons included the ERS Moon Signal and the VSS Readymade in addition to craft that have still not been identified to this day. What exactly many of those weapons were is unknown. The Triumvirate used these craft to great effect, pushing Sedrua away from the capital, Eos, and, eventually, out of the Triumvirate's territory altogether. The war ended in 6113 CE. Sedrua entered another state of decline due to this defeat. The large amount of resources the war took and the reparations it was forced to pay caused it to remain isolationist for the remainder of its ancient history.
Imperial Era
Integration of Sedruan Territory
Immediately following Sedrua's defeat, the Triumvirate seized large amounts of Sedruan territory, ballooning in size to over seventeen stars. Many of the colonists in the region were deported to the planet Hathia. The large Arkhosian population on Hathia gave it a distinct Sedruan identity and culture. The Triumvirate devised the province system after this, dividing its subjects by species into somewhat self-governing provinces. The first provinces would be created in this time. The Arkhosians would get Avoryo, the Molkor would form the province of Molkoryo, the Ror Units would form into Alka, the Atlins into Lowuks, the Orcubor into Orquiem, and the newly-conquered Humans into Anthrovia. While the conquered species desired to form their own government systems, the Triumvirate forced each province to have a uniform government, a puppet state controlled directly by the central government.
During this time, The Triumvirate began embarking on various large-scale projects. The Administrator spent most of its time overseeing the creation of Holo's Ring, bent on unraveling the mysteries of thaumaturgy. Ma'eau spent most of its time fixated on improving its military. Given its obligation to protect all life, it invested in large amounts of defenses around its core. In its pursuits, it created what would later be known as the TRS Platinum Disco, TRS Night Running, and hundreds of other advanced weapons. Lastly, Titania became fascinated with what he called "The Empyrean." She greatly expanded on Ibaradist doctrine during this time.
This period saw nearly no involvement in governance from The Three. The civilization largely ran on its own, with the vast bureaucratic apparatus requiring little maintenance. Thus the status quo remained set in stone, the rigidity of government institutions making them at higher levels incorruptible but at lower levels very exploitable.
Crisis of the 71st Century
Main Article: Crisis of the 71st Century
By the 7000s CE, technology had begun rapidly advancing as materialism became the dominant view of philosophers across the Triumvirate. With this view came an enlightenment where the original Magi ruling class would need to contend with civilians gaining the ability to hurt them. Non-magi quickly united to form organizations devoted to specific goals, what were essentially para-states vying for control against the Magi. Local officials became little more than poker chips incapable of moving beyond their assigned roles for fear of retribution from higher-ups.
The mass exodus of civilians to uncolonized space represented an unprecedented challenge to existing power structures. A magocracy, the Triumvirate had little provisions for the protection of rights for the populous. The provinces erupted into civil war in 7059 CE, the rebellion expecting the central government to be so overwhelmed it would need to capitulate. Nearly every species saw rebellions against the Magi or the Magi cracking down on local organizations. In a bloody conflict, billions died as the Magi unleashed their power onto civilian populations.
The civil war ended with most local governments destroyed and much of the settlements leveled, especially on Eos. As smoke filled the sky of Eos, entire worlds became depopulated, and industry across the nation collapsed, the central government struck a deal with the rebelling groups to make the provinces democratic and to remove Magi from the government. The Three did not respond to this rebellion at all, but they did approve of the reforms that emerged.
Post-Crisis
While not a golden age or age of peace, regular rebellions were the norm even after the Crisis, this era brought with it a large increase in the Triumvirate's power. One of the main issues came with the increasing population. Non-governmental organizations began controlling large tracts of space and an increasing portion of the population lived in "free areas," areas the Triumvirate had no means to govern. Consequently, the civilization became far less centralized. While this was at first no problem, rebellions would grow increasingly common.
The solution, at first, was to recognize these organizations as official governments. The Triumvirate would set up Collegia as a means to gain greater influence over governance. Organizations would essentially become provinces unto themselves, each one having representation in the central government. With time, the ambassadors from these organizations would organize themselves into what was called The Senate, giving them a huge amount of control over policy. The Three decided to take the path of least resistance and accept the Senate as a co-ruler of the nation. At this point, in 7971 CE, the Triumvirate would become a semi-democratic republic.
Republic Era
Following the adoption of the the collegia as legitimate state entities, the provinces would gain statehood and half of the representation in the senate. At this point, every company, organization, or religious order would enter into a state of stiff competition for control over the senate. As they competed, their control over territory would become increasingly sound. What the federal government ended up accomplishing was calcifying an elite group of states and para-states who controlled the vast majority of Triumvirate territory.
Darwinism became the name of the game with every organization aiming to become one of the collegia. Productive capabilities, energy generation, and even quality of life sky-rocketed to the point that the Triumvirate became the wealthiest civilization in the history of Aylathiya. The problem with this new ultra-competitive system was simple; the organizations became better at governing their own territory than the central government. By the 8000s CE, the rebellions returned, this time with a greater ferocity. As the senate grew more powerful, it began leveraging its position to influence the central government. First the senate used simple threats of economic action. Quickly this would escalate to threats of violence, not just against each other but against the central government itself.
The Triumvirate began rapidly increasing spending on its military, but even this could do little to counter the thousands of small governments attempting to form independent states. With fewer tributes being sent to the central government, the military, ran mostly by Atlins, began raiding cities for supplies. This, of course, made the revolutions worse, especially amongst Humans on Eos, the newest group to be added to the Triumvirate. As the rebellions increased in severity, trade with external nations began collapsing as a blockade by the central government, intent on starving the rebels, greatly damaged the galactic economy.
War of the Final Transition
Main Article: War of the Final Transition
The War of the Final Transition began in 8049 CE, as the Five Ministries declared war on the Senate, splitting the federal government in half. The Great Intendancy sided with the Ministries, their largest source of income, while Dotskgard sided with the much more trade-friendly Senate. Humans, one of the least populace species, were the only subjects besides the Atlins and Ror Units to side with the Five Ministries. Every other species began their rebellion, including Ma'eau, who abandoned its two co-rulers in favor of the people.
As the war ramped up, it escalated quickly beyond the crisis of the 71st Century, with over a trillion dying in the opening moves of the conflict. External nations were largely powerless to influence the course of the war, mostly placing troops on their borders just in case the conflict spilled over. It would not spill over, however as within another one hundred years, the conflict had come to a stand-still. As the conflict ground on, both sides became more desperate to lay waste to the other.
Starting in 8050 CE, the central government worked with Claes Dynamics to create Beatrix, a weapon of unimaginable potential. In what must have seemed like an apocalypse, Beatrix created and commanded a vast army of Administriviae to destroy the senate and its organizations. As the unstoppable tidal wave of machines crashed into the Triumvirate, the entire civilization was wiped clean. The machines swept across the region, leveling entire worlds. Despite the best efforts of the senate, it would prove impossible fight off the hoards. While Ma'eau and Dotskgard repelled them, their allies were annihilated.
As the war ended, the Triumvirate civilization was considered dissolved, its leaders forming mostly independent nations they each ruled. The lion's share of the Triumvirate's remaining territory would be split amongst various factions of Atlins who had the best claim to the territory. In the long term, Erstes Konsortium, an alliance of mostly Human organizations, would assimilate most of the territory. The rest was ruled by Titania and Ma'eau. Holos continued ruling some of Eos and Tryvya, maintaining the loyalty of the Five Ministries, the military, and the Great Intendancy.
Government
Early Government
Early in the existence of the Triumvirate, it operated as a simple autocracy in which the three leaders had absolute authority over a portion of the civilization. Ma'eau had by far the largest share, controlling over 75% of the region. Titania had most of the rest and Holos managed what was then a small military. As the nation expanded to control Eos, the entirely automated military alone would be insufficient to govern its large and spread-out population. This was the origin of the Five Ministries and the Great Intendancy.
The Five Ministries
An ancient organization that existed continuously since its creation, the Five Ministries were the central bureaucracy that ran the Triumvirate throughout all of its history. Each ministry was headed by a Secretary and above them as an "Administrator," the most powerful individual in the Triumvirate save for The Three themselves. Holos has been called "The Administrator" for thousands of years, a reference to their title as they took over the Five Ministries. It has not been called Holos since the beginning of the Common Era.
While initially created to manage the vast wilderness that was Eos, they soon began administrating the entirety of the Triumvirate's Territory. The Five Ministries continue to exist to this day, ruling the nation of Aztaya nearly unchanged from their creation.
- Ministry of Personnel: This Ministry was responsible for keeping track of government personnel, keeping track of Magi, promoting and demoting officials in the Great Intendancy and other bureaus, and appointments of local officials.
- Ministry of Revenue: This Ministry kept track of the census and enforced tributes from various local governments.
- Ministry of Public Works: The Ministry managed the construction of large projects, especially those built on Eos.
- Ministry of Philosophy: This ministry was responsible originally for making public various advances in Ibaradist thought. As the Triumvirate industrialized, it became responsible for spreading information in general, especially that which concerned scientific developments.
- Ministry of War: This ministry operated the large industrial base required to maintain the Triumvirate's large military. The weapons it produced were usually distributed to provinces or to the Great Intendancy.
Province System
In 6113 CE, the province system was developed, organizing each species into provinces administered by governors. This allowed for limited self-determination. The Atlins were split into two provinces, Lowuks and Aztaya, with Aztaya functioning as a sort of federal district where its various bureaus and military production would take place.
From the start the province system, meant to allow The Three to micromanage the affairs of the nation less, caused a significant amount of corruption. Like kings, the local governors took advantage of their station to gain power or wealth. While at first this was minor, the increasing density of the population created a huge managerial class devoted to simply making the billions of small decisions needed to keep the nation running. At this time, the Triumvirate was largely like Ohko's Civilization in that it prioritized Thaumaturgy over technology. What this means is that automation was very low, requiring the massive governmental apparatus.
The result was a class of elite Magi with tremendous power over vast tracts of space and large armies. Officially, they had no power as the governors just continued fulfilling their roles, essentially uncorruptible. The reason was simple, failure to properly manage the nation would mean instant death at the hands of The Three. This effectively religious fear kept the bureaucracy in line, but also kept it very rigid as The Three approved no changes. While The Three were busy exploring reality or crafting new technologies, the majority of the population lived in squalor or under deeply corrupt "rulers" with no official power. As the population began stagnating and people got desperate, many turned to Alkanism, creating a large number of rogue paladins unchecked by the Great Intendancy. These rebels are largely responsible for the crisis of the 61st Millennium.
As the dust settled from this expansive conflict and many of the provincial governments were destroyed, The Three began a push for automation in its territories. In place of the provincial governors, artificial intelligences would begin governance going forward. What The Three failed to understand is that once the people had a taste of self-governance and freedom, there would be no going back. As the civilization became increasingly technologically advanced, a mass exodus from the crowded cities took place. En masse billions left to nearly ungovernable border worlds or regions.
Republic System
As the people left to border worlds, they formed their own governments, para-states, and organizations. By 7950, they were constantly rebelling. It got to the point that the magi ruling class by themselves were unable to stop the growing hoards of spacecraft owned by various polities. During the creation of the republic, the central government created a title, Collegia, which would be granted to organizations that were loyal to the central government. With it came self-governance and it reduced the tributes which needed to be paid. The organizations represented as Collegia almost immediately formed the senate, an organization that was more like an internal confederation designed to counter the power of the central government.
As the senate and Five Ministries butted heads, they began constantly attempted to undermine the other's efforts. This resulted in a cold war in which external nations often dealt with both parties separately. There were numerous attempts to form "international worker councils," an early attempt at socialism, which usually failed to stand up to the highly entrenched senate and central government. Other third parties proved similarly impossible; the only way to gain power would be to fight their way onto the senate. This resulted in a civilization-spanning arms race to fight for a spot on the senate. The central government tried numerous times to increase the number of seats, but their new competitors simply ignored the weaker organizations that were being forced upon them.
Collapse
As war between the senate and central government came to a head, the relative few organizations loyal to the central government would get the Collegia title. While the Five Ministries and many Human organizations remained loyal, the central government would prove outnumbered. In 8057 CE, Beatrix would be developed, a weapon that essentially wiped the civilization clean. As the population fell to under one trillion, the central government remained in the ruins. At this point, The Three would continue ruling their territories until their deaths, technically meaning that the Triumvirate did not collapse until well into the rule of Erstes Konsortium.