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:Split of the LaC Sagittarium is a fairly large state within the Confederacy of Borealis. It was originally a semi-fascist junta state, but has since become a democratic republic. The nation occupies the majority of the core of the Milky Way. It was the first modern nation to colonize Sagittarius A*, the central black hole of the Milky Way, hence its name. The nation was founded in 20567 CE by Klein Vay 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. Long-illegal psychological manipulation attempts were liberally employed by the state to convince quintillions to follow the state without question.

The idea of "Cultural Hegemony" was widely promoted by the government. It had taken on more than just a cultural meaning, however. The majority of the nation was human. Diversity was looked down upon due to the common misconception that the blame for the split rested solely on the shoulders of nonhumans, while the humans were victim to their greed for more power in the government.

The nation fell in 41678 to the newly founded Confederacy of Borealis. Template:True Nation Infobox

Background

Before the formation of Sagittarium, the core of the Milky Way was largely empty. The distance to the core was too great for most civilizations to reach it. 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 for show and were mostly abandoned when the War of the Decamillennial Transition began.

History

Early History

With the collapse of the 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 the LaC was no more. He wanted to establish a new nation, seeing the opportunity as simply too good to pass up. With what few soldiers that still followed 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 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. The large gravity well of the black hole disrupted the ever delicate wormholes, but other forms of technology such as Warp Drives fared just fine in the region.

Getting to the core would take less time than travelling to even the Large Magellanic Cloud, hence the large value of this target to governments throughout history. 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 thousand corvettes, and over ten thousand 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 government 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, Vay 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 which took several years to hit the stars. 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 addition to the cloning, Thalians were created. These were an almost entirely synthetic machine designed to insight loyalty in the population. They were designed to subtly insert propaganda into the general populace without them even knowing. They were fully sapient, but given a prime directive of glorifying Vay and Sagittarium by their actions. They influenced the population subtly, but insidiously, creating hyper-nationalist fervor.

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 cluster while having power consumption equal to 1% of the total stars in the galaxy. They were striving to become a Kardeshev III civilization, and would have reached it were it not for The Siege of Sagittarium. 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.

The Fall of Sagittarium

Main article: The Fall of Sagittarium

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 lasted 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 percent 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. With a goal of creating a peaceful galaxy, the Diunity proved to be the undoing of Sagittarium.

The Treaty of Albedo

Main Article: The Treaty of Albedo

The Treaty of Albedo established the Confederacy of Borealis, greatly reshaping the galactic stage. While hesitant at first, soon all the great powers in the galaxy became a member. In a divided galaxy, Sagittarium thrived, however, in this newly united galaxy, it lost its relevance. The organizations once fully dependent on the industry of the core were able to find a stable place to invest elsewhere. The demand for weapons and energy actually went down as well, further reducing Sagittarium's power. Scrutiny from the international community over its alleged use of cloning, its fairly unequal treatment of nonhumans, and a host of other issues soon caught the eye of politicians all over the CoB looking to lead the charge against a dangerous foe. Most sought to land their names in history books for ending the Split of the LaC.

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.