Providence Union
More actions
United Revarea
Kornerax
Alkonis
Ekasli
Felakaa
Template:!Nation InfoboxThe Providence Union is a name known across the universe. Until less than 50,000 years ago, they exerted great power over large swathes of Florathel, and were reviled across the universe until their fall in the War of the Last Alliance. After its birth from the bloodbath of the Peony Wars, the Union has changed form numerous times over its long history, from a short-lived egalitarian democracy to seven separate military dictatorships. It saw the rise of galaxy-spanning religions and the entire life cycle of some species, and is arguably one of the most important nations in all of history.
History
Background
After the fall of Yanaris, the galaxy was thrown into chaos, and there were hundreds of factions scattered across the galaxy. At that time, the deep core was sparsely populated, and no one expected the factions there to become more than a footnote in history. At first, the five most powerful factions, specifically United Revarea, Alkonis, Kornerax, Ekasli, and Felakaa, after conquering the surrounding systems, went to war, like many factions of the time.
What followed was the Peony Wars, a centuries-long conflict mostly on and around the Heart of Providence resulting in the unification of United Revarea and Kornerax, the subjugation of Ekasli and Felakaa, and the complete destruction of Alkonis. Thus the Providence Union was born.
Aftermath of the Peony Wars & Expansion
Revarea and Kornerax's unification proved to be a fateful event, and with control of the most valuable place in the galaxy, the new Providence Union rapidly expanded, conquering many nearby nations and establishing control over the inner central spiral of Florathel. There were still many other nations in the core region, but the little known bounties of the Heart of Providence gave them a massive advantage in the form of many unique thaumic materials found there.
The Providence Union used the bounties of the Heart of Providence to great effect, doubling in size over the next century, and settled into a fairly peaceful state with control over the central spiral. This expansion was arrested when the Anemone Revolution ousted the military dictatorship and ushered in the Unity of Peace, a fairly egalitarian democratic state.
For the first time in its history, the Providence Union developed good relations with its surrounding nations and increased the rights of the conquered species, and in the future these species would mostly retain their rights and the core would maintain some semblance of prosperity even as the reaches devolved into poverty and chaos.
The Great Coup
Towards the end of the reign of the Unity of Peace, rebellions began to spring up from the cracks, with charismatic leaders leading their species on a charge for independence. This caused the brief secession of the Kajakali Nation, as well as other, smaller nations allied with it.
After the secession of the Kajakali Nation, citizens of the Providence Core were convinced by the charismatic Narekai Vel Karnos that the "sluggishness" of democracy was what was allowing the Providence Union to lose so much territory, and they mostly supported his military coup as it was happening. This transfer of power was swift and violent, and the previously elected government was ejected into space. Any public supporters of them soon shared their grisly fate, and soon Vel Karnos had absolute control over the Providence Union.
By this time, the Kajakali Nation had been followed by many other smaller states, cutting the area of the Union in half. The fall of the Unity of Peace heralded the creation and indiscriminate use of a much more powerful military, and the Kajakali Nation's short existence ended in bloody horror and a massive string of war crimes culminating in the destruction of Vecroxmer. The Kajakali species spent the rest of their history in a second-class status after this event, but the brief shining moment of independence would go on to inspire many future independence movements, eventually culminating in the fall of the Providence Union itself.
After the fall of the Kajakali nation, Narekai Vel Karnos retained power and began a dynasty of rulers, which rapidly became severely inbred after three generations straight of brother-sister marriages. The Vel Karnos Dynasty was soon overthrown and replaced with general Koroltai Vel Naire, who was much more politically savvy and did not require a massive war as an excuse to take power.
The Vel Naire dynasty was the longest lasting dynasty of the Providence Union, and a tradition of political skills training among the heirs of that dynasty held them up through attempted rebellions and secession movements, artfully stopped through diplomacy. Due to these skills, the Vel Naire Dynasty was fairly prosperous, and most species had all their rights. The art of compromise was what let the Providence Union last as long as it did.
Among their great achievements was the conquering of the last scattered remnants of Yanaris, including the fortressworld of Yalai. Yalai's impregnability would prove to be utterly pointless, as it was diplomatically arm-twisted into unconditional surrender and annexation.
Sororbi Conflicts
In the 532,000s BCE, the Sororbi Confederation, which had arose near the edges of the expanding Providence Union, was attacked. This proved to be a horrible decision, as their apparently pathetic military was in fact supported by a huge number of civilian ships outfitted with heavy weaponry that could be called to war if necessary, causing the military's size in times of war to balloon by hundreds of times.
The once peaceful confederation, a union of several species after a period of thoroughly pointless war similar to the Providence Union itself, was thrown into the greatest war it had ever known, as its history was marked by peaceful relations with its neighbors. But with its neighbors towards the core gone, the Sororbi was on its own as the Providence Union sent wave after wave of attacks into its territory. The great battle at Palikari led to a loss of almost half the territory of the nation, but the Providence fleet stalled out less than five light-years before reaching Sororbus itself. Soon, however, the military managed to push back almost to the original borders under the command of Sekar Valakis, who drastically increased morale by fighting directly on the front lines alongside the soldiers.
This string of great victories was ended when !Oraika of Nerax kamikazed his ship directly into Valakis' fleet, the detonation destroying all ships involved and killing Valakis. After this, the Providence Union rapidly advanced across Sororbi territory, and Sororbus itself was reduced to a hellworld ruled by the runaway greenhouse effect. The region was left completely uninhabited thereafter, with no one nearby able to send colonists and the surviving inhabitants becoming itinerant wanderers throughout Cosmoria.
The stunning victory against the Sororbi Confederation represented the first real challenge the Providence Union had had since the Peony Wars, and marked the high point of all their history. While they technically got bigger than this, the Providence Union was never so unified or powerful.
First Great Recession
With the finale of the Sororbi Conflicts, the Providence Union began to be complacent, slowly expanding into unclaimed territory. General unrest rose, and the government's functionality declined as the outer reaches went ignored. This came to a head with the secession of Aldyren-Sanaka, a unity of neighboring colonies in the deep halo of Cosmoria. Aldyren-Sanaka was home to the most far-flung Providence colonies of varying species, and its direct descendant survived into the modern era simply by virtue of being too far away to bother reconquering due to extreme supply chain issues, only succumbing to the radiation and sheer energy of the Tegerelis Supernova in 341,775 BCE.
Following suit, the large territories claimed by the Erkamar, originally forming a stable power block in the Providence Union, elected to attempt to gain full independence from the Union. This probably only succeeded because the secession took with it large sections of Providence military infrastructure, alongside roughly 1/4 of the population of the entire nation! The newly reunified Akradax Collective became a formidable rival for the Providence Union itself, expanding across many as-yet unclaimed systems and almost reaching the Lareas sector. Occasionally, some pretext would be invented and small sections of the Providence military would speed across the Akradax border and conduct raids on habitat clusters, but the two nations spent most of their shared history in an uneasy peace, recognizing that neither could really overpower the other without crippling losses.
War and Peace and War
After the successful independence movement of the Erkamar, several other species attempted independence. This created a sort of frothing at the borders, with tiny independent states ranging from a single habitat to multiple entire star systems appearing on the edges of the Union only to be reconquered fairly rapidly. Often, the same nation resurfaced multiple times, leading to great confusion in record-keeping.
In general, this era of the Providence Union was marked by perpetual shrinking as small nations seceded, seemingly forgot to run a nation, and collapsed again. Very few large-scale wars happened, and usually the newly formed states put up very little fight when the Providence military marched in.
One exception to this was the People's Coalition of Ernar. After its initial secession movement failed, a brutal crackdown occurred in the Ernar System and surrounds, and anyone accused of "treason" were promptly carted off to prison for the rest of their lives. This increasing oppression led to a resistance movement culminating into the true independence of the region for all of five minutes before relativistic beads were launched through the system and triggered Kessler syndrome within it. With the nation's leadership completely beheaded and the surviving inhabitants of non-shredded habitats and planets trapped within the system, the surrounding interstellar habitats quietly capitulated. Ernar remains locked off to this day, with any ships jumping into the system being promptly shredded by orbiting hyperfine debris. This became a favorite tactic of the Providence Union to lock off particularly troublesome worlds.