Star Crusader

For those of you who have read Ad Astra Per Aspera, this should be a special map - it is a remake of AAPA's "father," so to speak, that I have mentioned in the past. The premise was humanity becoming like the Covenant and expanding through the galaxy - before I learned about Warhammer 40K and realizing that it's already been done. So I've decided to rework it, add in a little A Struggle for Empire 2236, and elements from a space RPG I played a long, long time ago. 

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Humanity's first forays into the stars began in the 21st century, when the Anglo-Saxon Empire competed with the Asiatic Union. The Anglo-Saxon Empire was formed from the ashes of the American, British and German empires, which were destroyed in the ashes of the Great War in the late 19th century. The Anglo-Saxons, committed to the supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon race over man, united most of the world west of Moscow and east of Sydney under their banner. They were faced by the rival Asiatic Union, which they ultimately triumphed over in the quick Second Great War. Having united Earth, the Anglo-Saxon Empire continued its expansion through the stars. And then, in 2236, they met the Kairet.

The Kairet  Empire was an alien empire centered around Sirius that dominated the region around Sol. Having enslaved the neighboring procyon and eridanians, they turned their sights on the growing human race. The Kairet-Human War was a bloody, twenty-year long affair, which even saw the forges of Mars besieged by Kairet killer-craft. But humanity fought back. Ornate warships, armed with massive autocannons, nuclear weapons, and powered by gravitic engines reverse engineered from the Kairet, relentlessly attacked the Kairet fleets and ultimately drowned them in numbers. Carbon fusion was discovered, allowing starships to be powered with coal. With the aid of a slave rebellion, the Kairet Empire was destroyed. The humans created the Tristar Confederacy, a union of human colonists, procyon and eridanians, from the ashes of the Kairet Empire. The kairet were enslaved, reduced to the status which they had imposed on their neighbors so callously.

But humanity's empire was also transformed. During the war, the Anglo-Saxon Empire experienced a major religious revival, as some believed the end was nigh and that the Kairet were demons sent by God to punish the wicked. Even after victory, these feelings were strong, affecting even Emperor Edward IX. Edward IX came to believe that God had delivered the Empire from defeat, as he had prayed for salvation during the war's darkest days. After the war, Edward IX wanted to appease his god by transforming his empire to praise him. Pragmatically, this was also the best way to appease the growing mobs of religious fanatics that threatened to tear down everything they saw as sinful. Edward IX declared that his empire would be officially (Protestant) Christian, thus forging the Holy Dominion of Christendom. A new church, the Dominion Church, was formed from various Protestant denominations, and made the state religion. A wave of religious madness swept the Dominion, with many "heretics and witches" fleeing to the Tristar Confederacy or from known space entirely. Little did the Dominion know, but these would form the seeds of some of its greatest rivals.

As the Dominion expanded through space, they encountered various alien species. Not wishing to allow a second Kairet Empire to arise, the Dominion conquered these worlds and enslaved them. These aliens, although never fully considered sapients because they have no God-given souls, became integrated into the Dominion's rigid social caste system. Aliens became servants, workers, and soldiers for the Dominion. The Tristar Confederacy was left behind, as the Dominion did not permit their expansion; and with the Dominion's military dominance, who could argue? The Dominion steadily grew larger, consuming more and more systems and bringing more aliens under their iron jackboot. Russia and Japan, both Christianized to the Dominion's particular form of Christianity, were allowed to form their own societies, as they were too culturally divergent for the Dominion leadership's tastes. Young boys and girls were taken from "heathen" populations and trained and modified to become Star Crusaders, super soldiers intended to enforce the Dominion's will upon all of human space and destroy its most threatening foes, both from within and without. Then, the Dominion encountered the United Centauri Republics.

The United Centauri Republics were made up of various human colonists who fled the Dominion during its formation. Technology took a different track in the Centauri Republics, preferring rail guns and precision missiles to the Dominion's more traditional cannons and nuclear weapons. The Centauri Republics were democratic and secular, rejecting the theocratic imperialism of the Dominion. The "reunion" between the two human factions in 2590 was not pleasant. The Dominion initially attempted to conquer the Centauri, but the Centauri had prepared for the Dominion's arrival. The Centauri, and their allies in the Rimward Star Union, fought the Dominion fanatically for every star system, to the point that the once-unchallenged Dominion military began to deplete itself. Reluctantly, the Dominion approached the Centauri for a ceasefire, which was granted, but the two states never trusted one another. The Dominion then expanded elsewhere, where they encountered new threats.

The Silagochi Consanguinity was a small alien empire composed of two related sapient species which both developed on their homeworld of Pretoeqo. When the Dominion, still reeling from the Centauri War, encountered them in 2862, they expected a short war that would give the Dominion's people the victory they needed. It was not to be the case. The Silagochi had mastered resonated light, allowing their craft to fire it at Dominion vessels and use "hard light" to protect their ships from the Dominion's counterattacks. As with the Centauri, the Silagochi knew about the Dominion, having learned about them through their allies in the Promethean Empire. The Prometheans were originally a group of mutant humans from Earth's polluted sectors that were scheduled for execution, but managed to escape Dominion space. They encountered the Silagochi and prepared themselves for war. The Dominion eventually signed a ceasefire with the two empires, but unlike with the Centauri, the Dominion viewed the Silagochi and Prometheans with utter contempt.

The People's Hive was a mind upload society, founded by a mysterious computer programmer known only as Tenebras. Tenebras and his followers fled the Dominion, as they knew they were quickly going to be persecuted for their communistic political beliefs. However, they had very little on their spacecraft when they fled, and so most opted to cryogenically freeze themselves. Tenebras and those that remained awake for the long trip into unknown space tinkered with mind upload technology, which became so well-developed that they eventually uploaded everyone into a single digital network. Committed to a perfectly equal society, Tenebras united all of these consciousnesses with his own, creating the single machine being known as the People's Hive. When the Dominion encountered the  Hive in 2889, they abhorred this monstrosity against the divine human form, but instead of attacking, they studied the Hive. The Hive had been highly militarized over the years, as they too expected Dominion invasion, and so the Dominion held off on attacking. Instead, Hive space was declared off-limits to all unauthorized craft. The Hive also studied Dominion vessels, noting with fear that they seemed to grow larger and more powerful by the decade.

Then, at the dawn of the 31st century, came the threat of the Scintilians. A massive star empire centered outside of the Orion Arm, the scintilians are a species of hairy creatures that resemble a cross between an ape, a crab, and a worm. The Scintilian Hegemony also has other alien species within it ,but like the aliens in the Dominion, they too are slaves. Highly advanced, the bulbous, blimp-like ships of the Scintilian dwarf any of those in the Orion Arm, as do the magnitude of their "blaster" weapons and energy shields. They first attacked the Chaerzech Empire. The chaerzech were a species of anemone-like sea dwellers, which crafted everything from a form of coral native to their planet. The Chaerzech were quickly defeated, and were forced to align with the Scintilians as the Hegemony's scouts. The Chaerzech informed the Scintilians that their pirates had encountered a powerful species at the fringes of their space, which they did not dare attack. Believing this species to be no challenge, the Scintilians attacked the Dominion colony of Burden, taking it by surprise.

It is the year 3065, and humanity faces its greatest threat yet. The rivalries which have defined human space have been set aside, for now, and humanity stands united under the umbrella of the Dominion. It is an unholy alliance, but so long as the ravenous Scintilians continue their invasion of human space, it will hold. Every state in the human sphere has entered a state of total war - Centauri, Tristar, Union and Dominion ships fight together and die together against the unending "Black Fleets" of the Scintilians. The Star Crusaders lead the charge, with soldiers they were raised to believe were their mortal foes, but it is not enough. The Dominion fears an opportunistic attack from the Silagochi, the Hive and the Prometheans, and have already sent diplomats over to inform them of the Scintilian threat, and that only by working together could they defeat this menace. Although suspicious of this change of heart, it is likely that these former enemies will align with the Dominion, as they do recognize the severity of the Scintilian threat.