War in whispers

One system contains two warring factions, competing primarily for mining rights within the system. Brinksmanship led to the early warning shots of open war as each side geared up with fearsome weaponry.

In the end, both sides were about to engage in a cruel attrition and abruptly ceased. Their activity became entirely peaceful and minimally interactive.

An invasion from a mysterious source occurred that neither party saw coming. A shower of spores entered the system, each spore the size of a sand grain and light enough that it acquired little kinetic energy and did not burn up in the atmospheres of the planets involved. They numbered in the octillions, and those captured in the planets' gravity wells came in for a landing.

Upon contact with liquid water, the spores germinated and rapidly invaded all living things. Plants were consumed outright, while animals were simply occupied.

New Union of Xeriphas

History

Xeriphas was a planet in decline as a dominant intelligent species achieved interstellar travel. Establishing elaborate orbiting platforms, research was dedicated toward space travel, propulsion, and further expanding a local empire. Companies merged into massive conglomerates unified to pursue the ends of economic warfare, from which only a single monopoly survived. Development of the orbital space stations took all precedent. The surface languished, mired in pollution and radioactive waste, a problem that was simply cheaper to ignore.

As longer range spacecraft were finalized, a shower of meteorites struck Xeriphas, obliterating the orbital platforms and decimating the surface of the planet. Leadership of the monolith company made the decision to send a colonizing spacecraft with their favored executives and engineers to an inhabited planet to preserve their species. Though tens of thousands of individuals survived the initial meteorite strike on the surface, they were deemed inferior stock, and would make a poor representation for their vaunted empire.

In 25 BC the colony ship made landfall on what would be called New Xeriphas, a planet of natural beauty and atmospheric conditions similar to their home world. Rich in silicates, iron, and surface water, the engineers wasted no time in setting up a thriving colony. The executives were very careful to bring breeding stock of their species, and their population multiplied quickly with their high birth rate and short gestation period. Their traditional buildings of solar panel plated dwellings and concrete underground bunkers were soon filled with busy workers, and the training to establish automated factories to churn out carbon polymers and plasma engines began anew.

The Xeraphins had learned from their home planet that strict control of social strata was crucial to their long term goals of the rebirth of the monolith companies to which they attributed their success. A rapidly expanding worker population left their control, and Xeraphins spread out across the planet, hopping from island to island establishing new colonies of subsistence farming.

New Xeriphas was covered with a multitude of plant and fungal species that covered the entire surface in a complicated network of root systems that went down for over a kilometer, and solar extraction systems that vaulted up to three hundred meters in the air on this low gravity planet. Though there was a diversity of animal species that exploited these plant/fungal unities, there was one clearly dominant animal that was present on every island. Ambling on four spongy hooves, the Baira grazed upon plant life for a few hours per day, and then congregated in meandering groups for the remaining hours with contented shared noises and less than one hour of sleep. Oddly, they slept only when the sun shone, preferring to stay awake all night, noisily looking up.

The Baira became a handy tool of labor once leashed and trained, helping plow up the abundant plant life that was then replaced by agricultural products of Xeriphas. The soil productive and water abundant, the farms were highly productive, which demanded more beasts of burden. Though the Baira were resistant to their new role of cattle animal, the Xeraphins found they could train and subdue most of them, and kill the rest for meat, which became the delicacy of choice for the elite.

The original colony became a resplendent capital with an embryonic spaceport, where the elite dined in luxury and busied themselves with ideology intended to motivate and control the worker class. The manufacturing, mining, water purification, and disaster management was performed entirely by the workers. Disasters became a source of lucrative income for a new company led by 1003, a dynamic member of the elite, as mining on a planet that was mostly islands surrounded by water was a very dangerous enterprise. 1003 specialized in anticipating failure of a mine and evacuating workers swiftly via submarines that were at the ready within all mines before flooding occurred. The rest of the elite rewarded this innovation by absorbing 1003's company and abandoning the practice of protecting workers, since submarines were expensive to build and could be used in new enterprises.

The workers initially accepted their role of the lower caste in the name of species preservation, and the glory of a future empire that colonized space once more. As the first few decades passed, the workers noted their farming communities remained rude dwellings and their food stores went from fresh vegetables to food packets only purchasable from the capital city at a high price. The small farms were then taxed relentlessly for increasingly arcane and petty reasons, down to the number of Baira cultivated on farms. Still, the elite could not simply seize the animal stock, as they could only thrive on the farms, and only the filthy worker class would tolerate raising them.

Ideological rigidity took hold by 82 AC, as the elite selected special members of the working class, elevating them to a speaking role. They were no longer to farm, but to spread the evangel, venerating the elite class for their wisdom, and denigrating the worker class for their rude manners, base intelligence, and their overall shame for poorly representing the Xeriphas greatness of the past. All workers were required to attend classes for hours each day as the Speakers hammered this gospel home. Workers regularly murdered their Speakers, which led to brutal torture and executions of workers. This was excellent news to the Elite, who preferred any redirection of hatred toward the Speaker class.

As this machine hummed without incident, 1003 lived in exile on the furthest island from the luxurious capital, perfecting vegetarian cuisine and finding what sorts of cuisine was most desired by the Baira. This inane hobby soon brought to his attention that Baira were swarming over his island by the thousands. Until this occurred, nobody knew they could swim. During a food test, Baira surrounded him and began making their herd noises. The Baira were capable of speech.

They quickly taught him their language, which sounded rudimentary only in the air. When pressed against another Baira or underwater, the speech became mellifluous, filled with hundreds of basic 'characters' with numerous subtle inflections based on volume and rapidity that was no less sophisticated than Xeraphin language. They were also capable of deep subsonic letters that traveled several kilometers as basic greetings and distress signals. By 100 AC, the language was well in hand.

The Baira took a great risk in teaching 1003 this language, as they also entrusted him with the secret that Baira seldom dwelled on the surface. They were a pelagic species capable of extracting oxygen from water for long periods, and the grazing on the ocean bottom is better than the surface anyway. They developed no technology, lacking opposable digits and mechanical prowess, focusing on peaceful pursuits, song, and art. They wished to share their planet with at least one other intelligent being to pursue this peaceful existence, or barring that, annihilation of the invaders.

1003 began making tools, used to augment Baira sight, as their hearing was excellent. He fashioned weaponry, based upon his mining experience, to drill through silicates or release explosives. He then departed, accompanied by dozens of Baira who swam him to neighboring islands. There he met and listened to farmers taxed into poverty and forced into servitude, their anger only just held in check by the universal teaching of Xeraphin Elite superiority and the absolute need to adhere to the laws given to them by the Speakers. The revelation that the Baira could not only feel pain and suffer, but speak and remember was devastating to the farmers.

Workers on one island after another came to learn the secret of the Baira, and where they once resented the Elite for dining in luxury on Baira meat, they now saw them effectively as cannibals. By 120 AC workers by the hundreds defected from their subsistence farms, joining 1003 on his island manufacturing weaponry and honing a fine edge to their humiliating existence. Naturally, some workers chose to tell this secret directly to the Elite. The first hundred to do so were executed for what could only be a ridiculous lie, and the second hundred were tortured first to ensure that they believed it to be true. Eventually, the Elite were forced to recognize that the Baira were indeed their equal in intelligence.

Their first act was to ban the mention of Baira as a language capable species, or indeed a species at all, anything other than food for the leadership. This act only verified the wild rumor as a truth, and workers went on large scale strikes. Speakers as a class were exterminated virtually overnight. The second act of the Elite was to capture - not kill - all Baira, as they wanted to continue exploiting the species. They failed to notice that Baira could swim and communicate over great distances, making capture or even killing them in significant numbers difficult to do.

Their third act was the capture and public execution of 1003, as a traitor to the state. The punishment, enacted in 146 AC included consuming him in a public feast as an example to the working class. They were correct in assuming the rest of the working class would be cowed by this example, and would live in fear and return to their farms, resuming their work and paying taxes to the capital.

In 147 AC the vaunted capital city, constructed on the original colonized island and home to the decadent Elite, slid into the ocean. The Baira had taken their mining tools and weapons provided by 1003 and proceeded to mine tunnel after tunnel underneath the island for over a kilometer deep over the course of a year. The detonation of the explosives removed the only support, and the citadel collapsed, taking down the spaceport. All Xeraphins who reached the water were seized in powerful vegetation-crushing jaws and dragged to the depths to drown.

The Baira spent the following months reassembling the Xeraphin population and spreading knowledge of their language throughout the farmers and workers left behind. The Xeraphins were reluctant to learn, given the long tradition of assumption of stupidity, but found to their surprise it was easier than their own.

Reconciliation began as the worker class and the Baira learned one another's ways, and atoned for the crimes of the past. The brutal lesson taught to the Elite was taken to heart - there would be no exploitation class. The Xeraphins learned to be open to learning new information, and appreciation of song and art. The Baira learned the value of technology and tools, and how to cultivate them through this new partnership with their former tormentors.

Government and Politics

Society and Culture

Foreign Relations

Demographics

Astrography

Although it is the smallest of the former Alliance of Five, the New Union of Xeriphas remains a very large nation in the grand scheme of things. Its 262 stars are spread across the Marritza Expanse, the Sikaat Cluster, and parts of the Akdorn Association and Mangalis Cluster. The New Union of Xeriphas is divided into 89 provinces, each of which is governed by a locally elected state government which sends representatives to the Forum. As well, the least populated outer reaches of the New Union are directly governed by the national government due to insufficient population required to establish a local government.

The New Union of Xeriphas contains a substantial diversity of species. Until very recently with the end of xurathi, these species were considered to be second-class citizens and in the case of the Baira mere cattle. These are the LIST TBA.

Notable Star Systems

Capital

Neighboring Powers

The New Union of Xeriphas borders a variety of nations within the reaches of the Apple Nebula. Most of the length of its border is in contact with the Carremmat Ro'kasa towards the rim and the Empire of the Hand to spinward, with small gaps for the Xalayin Planetary Alliance and the Keren Guard. In addition, the New Union also borders the Vernarcan Federation, including its member state of the Zahl Order.

Major Worlds