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

Sagittarium was a semi-fascist junta state occupying the majority of the re 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. This way of thinking, originally popularized by The Neo-Terrans caused the nation to destroy the one civilization in the core, the Unir.

The nation fell in 21833 to the newly founded Confederacy of Borealis. The reason for the invasion was partly to free the people from the brainwashing they had undergone, but also to access the incredibly valuable Sagittarius A*. The Sagittarius Space Station, capital of the nation was captured in early 21805, with the rest of the invasion being the slow conquest of radical holdouts. When Vay himself was captured in 21833, the radicals lost what they were fighting for and mostly surrendered. The destruction of this nation marks the end of the Split of the Lactean Confederacy.

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, and the large amount of gravity in the area inhibited the relatively primitive wormholes of the time.

The area, just like the rest of the galaxy, was claimed by many nations at once. Even as colonies formed on the edges of the galactic core, they very slowly worked their way into it due to the large travel times.

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.