Sagittarium

"A symbol of unity for all the live in the core, the brightest object in the entire galaxy... Ironic considering it is a black hole, but brightest nonetheless. In the night sky of all planets privileged to be under the control of our nation, and in many of their skies during the day, its brilliance shows through. Truly, no nation could ask for a better symbol of unity." -First General Lexus Castillo, 21007

Template:True Nation InfoboxSagittarium is a fairly large state within the Milky Way Core. While originally having a human majority, the nation has since become one of the most diverse nations in the galaxy, with no one species clearly ahead in population figures. The core itself is almost entirely occupied by the nation, almost 10 billion stars make up this nation, making it a Kardashev III civilization, one of many in the Milky Way Galaxy. Sagittarium is one of the most populace nations within the Confederacy of Borealis, and is the second largest in terms of area. The capital of the nation is Thalia, a planet numbering in the top twenty most populace planets.

Sagittarium was the first modern nation to colonize Sagittarius A*, the central black hole of the Milky Way. The nation was founded in 20567 CE by Klein Vay during the Split of the Lactean Confederacy, a time of chaos in the Milky Way. It was founded as a means to reinstate order to the then chaotic Milky Way Galaxy. In its crusade for order, the state became totalitarian, regularly reeducating and quite often times killing dissenters. The relative freedom enjoyed by those of the former LaC was widely terminated by the government in favor of radical devotion to the government.

During this period, Sagittarium was the largest and most powerful great power in the Milky Way. Its influence extended many kilo-light-years around its literal and political center, Sagittarius A*. When the Confederacy of Borealis was founded, it could hardly hold a candle to the energy available to Sagittarium.

In the 32nd millennia, the death of Vay caused a succession crisis. In the same year, The Ekrosian Guardians began their crusade, destroying everything in their path to the center of the galaxy. Felix Adebayo, a prominent general within the nation took power and became the successor to Vay. Adebayo was able to organize the offensive against the Guardians, allowing for the nation to stop and even push back the Guardians, a feat in and of itself. With the Confederacy of Borealis gaining great power after absorbing the majority of other nations in the galaxy, the power and prestige of Sagittarium slowly began eroding as foreign companies, individuals, and policy began effecting the once incredibly isolationist state.

A revolt by Rendell marked the beginning of the end of the nation's golden age. Already declining, they decided to invest huge sums of money and resources into keeping the small dwarf galaxy under its control. An economic crash during the invasion, felt across the wider galaxy, hit it especially hard. The Sagittarian government, with debt larger than its entire gross domestic product, withdrew from the small dwarf galaxy. It could do little to aid the struggling economy, and continued dwindling even as the rest of the galaxy recovered.

Widespread protest from many non-humans across the region, starting in the late 41,000's tested how the nation would respond to internal instability. It fared poorly, using lethal weapons on crowds was the worst possible move and the nation saw extreme sanctions. The Chancellor at the time, Eris Sailem, stepped down amongst pressures to reform the authoritarian state. A decently functional democracy was established, just democratic enough to permit entry into the Confederacy of Borealis, the only way the new government believed would aid the struggling economy.

To this day, ghosts of its authoritarian past haunt Sagittarium. Many presidents have been corrupt and it has one of the lowest democracy scores in the Confederacy. The nation is permitted to remain in the Confederacy due to the huge value of Sagittarius A* as an energy source as well as its undeniably large economic output.

History

Background

Before the formation of Sagittarium, the core of the Milky Way was largely empty. Planets were far more likely to be ejected from their systems and supernovae were more common, leading to the core having far less life for having far more stars than the rest of the galaxy.

Until the 25th millenium, the distance to the core was too great for most civilizations to consider colonizing it. Much easier energy sources were available. They planned to wait for FTL technology to advance to the point of allowing easier travel to the area. As it stood, it took several hundred years to get to the area, the density of the stars made colonization even harder, as terraforming planets required moving hundreds of stars into new locations.

The Lactean Confederacy was the first to land ships in the area. They chose a fairly stable system, home to the then unnamed planet Thalia and set up a military base on it. The base was used to aid the construction of a means to gather power from Sagittarius A*. This base and construction project were mostly to solidify its claims over the core rather than actually defend it. During the the War of the Decamillennial Transition, it was reinforced several times, but remained a minor base as few believed it to be worth to attack the entirely undeveloped core.

Early History

With the collapse of the Lactean Confederacy (LaC) came a power vacuum within the galaxy. Nature abhors a vacuum and the former remains of the LaC soon filled with hundreds of thousands of nations, fiefs, and organizations vying to shape the galaxy into their own image. The federal government of the LaC left behind the resources of largest recorded military in history. Most soldiers deserted the day the government collapsed. What remained of the chain of command became little more than stubborn troops and a handful of generals that refused to accept that their nation was destroyed.

Among these generals was Klein Vay. He, however, was fully aware that no amount of fighting would bring back the LaC. He wished to establish a new nation, a fundamentally different one. With a large number of soldiers still following his orders, he managed to secure a handful of planets somewhat near to Earth. From there, he attacked the more brutal warlords or dictators scattered throughout the galaxy, giving the people a relatively free life. This carried on from 20387 to 20650, when the focus shifted from taking planets one at a time to taking far more valuable targets. After several months of deliberation, it was decided that there were no location more valuable than the center of the Milky Way. The large amount of energy that can be extracted from this black hole made it ideal for colonization.

All the citizens of the planets were given a choice. This choice was to abandon their home worlds and board a stolen colony ship or to be left behind on a derelict world stripped of its resources to fuel the fleet. They were essentially forced to accompany Vay to the core. This is when the nation first declared itself to be "Sagittarium." Vay, instead of continuing as the Grand General, became the first Chancellor of Sagittarium.

Voyage to the Core

Being empty of civilization as most cores are, the main challenge to overcome was defeating the remnant of the Lactean Federal government within the core. There was nothing particularly challenging about venturing to the core itself.

With one of the largest and most advanced fleets in the galaxy, the newly formed Sagittarium began to make its way towards Sagittarius A*. This fleet consisted of ten mega-freighters converted into ark-ships each able to hold several billion in stasis, three hundred battleships also containing people in stasis, over one hundred thousand corvettes, and over ten million fighters. The journey took almost 200 years of nigh continuous travel. Most of the crew and passengers remained in suspended animation, with only a handful of officers and the Chancellor being awake during the trip. The long voyage was uneventful. Most systems on the ships were automated, so the chances of a coup or mutiny were almost none.

The True Establishment of Sagittarium

The remnant of the Lactean Federal military was split from the rest of the nation by centuries of light-lag. Their only wormhole, leading to Aeros, was destroyed, leaving them stranded. The soldiers were entirely unaware of the chaos taking place and decided to wait for the wormhole to be repaired. When the large fleet of Vay arrived, rather than a fight like he expected, they embraced his return. He had the vast number of people awoken slowly, only as fast as habitation could be built for them. As soon as he arrived, he became the de facto leader by virtue of his eloquence alone. He had the original general presiding over Sagittarius A* become his second in command. Shortly thereafter, construction resumed on the Sagittarius Space Station, picking up where the Lactean Confederacy left off.

Expansion

With access to the most massive object for millions of light years in any direction, Sagittarium wasted no time taking advantage of this. The large power output of the black hole was used to star lift all the nearby stars. Truly massive beams of energy were fired from the black hole (taking several years to hit their targets). Once they did, the matter of collecting the materials was simple. Star lifting, a process usually taking many decades, took mere weeks with this huge, and cheap, energy source.

The people soon began expanding from the center. Soon, they occupied several hundred stars. While there are no official records of this occurring, it would be impossible to populate these stars without some use of cloning. This cloning allowed the population to jump to several trillion within a century. Whole planets would have needed to have been occupied by facilities to create so many clones.

In what was first an effort to expedite population growth, billions of androids, named Thalians, were created. The government soon realized the potential of these beings and took care to make them blend in to society perfectly. Most Thalians were entirely unaware of their identity as machines, and their mostly biological flesh gave the illusion of being alive. The government altered their subconscious to be eternally loyal to the state. They were designed to be nationalists, thereby encouraging the rest of the population to be the same. These were an almost entirely synthetic machine designed to insight loyalty in the population. They influenced the population subtly, creating a nation of fanatics without the relatively costly manipulation via drugs and nanites other polities have tried in the past.

From Thalia, trillions of individuals went to colonize the core. These individuals crewed ships and terraformed worlds. In 21107, the capital of Sagittarium was moved to the station itself from Thalia. After another 250 years, the population had exploded after the presumably cloned humans were able to have children of their own. What went from a small colony around the central black hole exploded into one of the most powerful empires of the galaxy. The large power of the central black hole was not only enough to tear apart every star for several light years for materials. The raw mass available to the empire rivaled nations thousands of years older than it.

Zenith

The nation reached its most powerful in 21732 CE. It occupied almost one percent of the stars in the core while having power consumption equal to 1% of the total stars in the galaxy. They were striving to become a Kardeshev III civilization. The nation was truly a power to contend with. It offered the same stability the LaC did, except they were far more open about their imperialism. The energy Sagittarium had at its disposal made it a force to be reckoned with.

Unlike most of the other nations within the Milky Way at the time, Vay never had Sagittarium form alliances. This was not a foolish strategy, rather, it served to advance the idea that Sagittarium was the most powerful nation in the galaxy with no need for alliances. Weak allies drag a nation down and, in a galaxy where no nations rivaled it, all allies were weak. Various treaties were signed, however. They were mostly designed to secure access to lucrative trade deals which would further the strength of Sagittarium. Despite being an empire, there were thousands of state-owned corporations created to serve the interest of the state first and deliver profit second. These corporations were some of the largest in the galaxy at the time. CloseSpace Corp was the most extensive of these businesses, operating in several thousand nations selling weapons slightly inferior to the weapons produced for the Sagittarian military.

The nation was often seen as a liberating force when it conquered nations smaller than it, and, for the most part, it was. For the humans absorbed into their extensive empire, quality of life almost always improved as order was returned to their lives. For nonhumans, one would expect them to be drafted into the military according to their abilities. Stronger species would make better soldiers while the more intelligent ones would make better researchers. The racist dogma of Vay ended up causing aliens to be viewed as "useful" rather than inferior, often landing them better-payed positions, albeit with much less freedom that what was afforded to the average human.

Shifting Galactic Landscape

While Sagittarium absolutely dominated the politics of the Milky Way, behaving as the astropolitical and literal center of the galaxy, it struggled to gain influence far beyond Via Lactea. The few campaigns against satellite galaxies ended in failure for the nation, causing some of the few defeats it has ever experienced. Even the edges of the Milky Way were areas it had trouble influencing. Really, its sphere of influence extended only two to three kilo-light-years around the core (while not directly controlling this area, it had large influence there). Polities outside of this area, while most certainly conscious of Sagittarium in their foreign policy, were much harder to exert influence over.

The Tenth Lactean Congress, a coalition of hundreds of states and organizations, in particular was problematic for Sagittarium. Despite controlling less than a per mille of the energy of Sagittarium, the Congress time and again proved to seed resistance to its hegemony in the galaxy. Its abilities to spread democracy, its mobile nature (rarely convening in the same place), and its abilities to garner support among the common people were unparalleled. This and it tended to receive generous support from the few nations large enough to rival Sagittarium such as Cassiopeia Consortium and The Diunity of Fornax. The latter of this pair was especially generous, using the Congress for its own ends.

Vay's Death

Sagittarium continued its expansion, attempting several dozen times to gain influence in a satellite galaxy. Despite being the most powerful polity in the galaxy, each and every attempt ended in failure. Vay grew more and more frustrated with his general's incompetence, going as far as to fire his generals and lead the campaign against Sextans I himself. Leaving a specially designed Thalian to rule the nation in his place, he departed to Sextans I. With his ability to more easily understand the situation at hand than any of his generals, his armies began routing their foes. The Octet and their forces fell before the now much more strategic forces of Sagittarium.

Unknown to anyone in the Milky Way, the warfare disturbed members of the Pestelentia Family, a classification of organisms capable of interstellar flight. Similar to Von Neumann Probes, these creatures self-replicated with the material at hand. One of the more aggressive species, The Pestilence, would cause a disaster for the nation. Drawn to the warp bubbles of Sagittarium's ships like moths to a flame, they soon swarmed the ships once they got close to their habitat. At first, there were few, but they began increasing in commonality. Vay ordered the ships to reverse in course, but by the time they entered the habitat, it was far too late. They began eating away at the hulls of Vay's ships. Quadrillions of them slowly "bit" tiny pieces of the ships away. Cut off from the outside, those inside the ships died to air-leakage, starvation, or directly to Pestilence individuals that managed to board the ships. It was unknown how exactly Vay died, as the entirety of the fleet was consumed. His death, in 31431 CE, marked an end of an era.

Succession Crisis

Vay, having lived for so long already, was seen in a similar way as one would see a law of the universe, permanent and unchanging. His death sent waves throughout not just Sagittarium, but also the wider galaxy as a whole. The Founder's Council, as the highest council in the nation was known, was divided in how to address the issue. Since they were more than capable of carrying on running the nation as they had, half of the council decided they did not need another Chancellor. The other half believed that Vay was more than a leader, but a symbol of unity, necessary for the nation to continue as it has. Normally, the Chancellor would break ties in the council, so they ended up setting the issue to the side to focus more on running the country.

Many potential replacements, from both in the Founder's Council and outside of it began trying to gain support, mostly from generals and other powerful individuals. When one candidate was found to have paid for the assassination of another, everyone involved in the assassination were executed. The Council immediately voted to take the issue back on and appoint a new Chancellor. All of this, of course, was kept secret from the wider populace. They were still under the impression that Vay was in the Sextans I galaxy valiantly fighting to conquer it.

Debate again gripped the Council. Some switched sides, but they were still divided. In the end, they voted to enter a "state of observation" in which they would pay attention to all of the most likely candidates to the position and determine if any were worthy. They were intentionally vague as to make sure none of the candidates would try cheating.

The Ekrosian Crusade

Main Article: The Ekrosian Guardians

In the midst of the decision to observe, the most recent of the Ekrosian Crusades began. A time in which sextillions of machines, lifeforms, and other entities flood out of the Carina Galaxy, usually heading for a large black hole or significant body. The previous crusade targeted the Fluorescence Galaxy, with this one targeting Sagittarius A* in particular. The Founder's Council voted to take no action, instead seeing which individual would step up to defeat the Ekrosians.

Government

Sagittarium was split into millions of precincts, each of which contained several star systems. Most precincts only had one inhabited system, but several, such as the Thalian precinct, had several hundred inhabited systems under its jurisdiction. Precincts were organized into provinces. There were 104 provinces at the peak of Sagittarian influence.