The Warring Ages, Part 3

by Tim Bancroft

The general timeline of PanHumanity across Antares can be found in the Universe guide. Most of these articles were published on the Warlord article site, so we’re reproducing them here in a more condensed format.

In Part 1 we ran through an overview of the Fifth Age, had a look at the more influential peoples of the period, and made a quick dash through the Early Factions. Part 2 covered three of the most influential factions: Gethderah, Teveron and Ha’Ruul who eventually formed the alliance called the Ascendancy. Here, we look at the timeline of the Ascendancy and itsdevastating interaction with a resurgent Isor. We also have a side look at one of the more strange factions: the Ordo of Humanity.

The Ascendancy Timeline

The fortunes of the Ascendency are probably best illustrated in a timeline, as shown below.

5th Age Date	Ascendancy Event
~950	The Time of Treachery: numerous, small, panhuman empires on Antares wane and collapse. Trust is in very short supply with even an offer of alliance being seen as a tool of manipulation and an indicator of impending conflict. With panhumans fighting amongst themselves, the Vorl find it relatively easy to pick off the isolated, non-Vorl empires and fiefdoms.
~1100	The Gethderah Trade Federation, League of Ha’Ruul and the Saviours of Teveron ally against the growing Vorl menace to form the Ascendency of around six hundred connected systems. Over the next few hundred years, the political machinations of the Ha’Ruul NuHu helped encourage more invitations for membership from smaller empires, the Teveron legions encouraged others to join through fear of destruction and other empires and fiefdoms flooded to join from fear of neighbouring threats, particularly Vorl incursion.
1350	Isori rejects political overtures by the Ascendancy, claiming to be merely one of many, neutral systems.
1380	The Ascendency switches to an expansionist programme including the forcible annexation of nearby naval shipyards and poorly defended worlds. They use a wide mix of the Teveron legions, privateers, sub-contracted raiders, espionage and political means to ‘encourage’ fiefdoms to join. Derivar and other independent, specialist shipyards are particular foci of the expansionism.
~1470	Under pretext of the Isorian League harbouring enemies of the Ascendency, warships of the Ascendency begin raiding systems on the Isorian borders. Apparently random annexation increase over the next hundred years until a pattern emerges: a thrust into the heart of the League and Isori itself.
1594	The Ascendancy attacks Isori and is repulsed. Isorian defences prove much more potent than the Ascendancy realised, using a prototype null-space weapon within its system that almost completely wipes out the Ascendancy armada.
~1600	A renewed and co-ordinated Vorl offensive forces the Ascendancy to relinquish its pressure on the Isorian League. The next century sees the Ascendancy shrink in size to around 8,000 systems before it manages to recover from the losses incurred in the assault on Isori.
1748	The NuHu enclave calling itself NuXon is reconnected to the Nexus and is immediately courted by the NuHu rulers of Ha’Ruul to join the Ascendency.
1798	With the shipyards of NuXon pouring out advanced ships in ever greater numbers, the Ascendancy begins a number of major campaigns against the Vorl Extents and push the Vorl back.
~1800 –1900	The Ascendancy expands until it has over 20,000 active, member systems and as many more that have been ‘cleansed’ by the Vorl and are now stripped bare of sophont-level life. The Vorl devastation shocks much of panhumanity and the Ascendancy’s political elite, fostering a hatred that fuels many to volunteer to serve in the Ascendancy’s military.
~1850 –2020	The Ascendancy’s influence grows to claim over 30,000 full members. Around a half a million further independent and isolated, panhuman and alien systems flock to the Ascendancy’s banner, all claiming to be part of its extended alliance even though they are not active members of the Ascendency nor its military. Many other empires try to weather the storm and declare independence of any broad alliance.
~1900 –2050	The Ascendancy wipes out the heart of many Vorl Ordo and triggers a collapse of trust amongst the Vorl: infighting between the many Ordos is rife allowing the smaller panhuman empires to take advantage of the Vorl’s diminishing resources. Whilst many panhumans might have been tempted to commit the same horrors on the Vorl that the Vorl committed on panhumanity, they are saved from such a decision as almost every Vorl, combatant or not, fights to the death against panhumanity. The few Vorl that are injured and captured commit suicide rather than live amongst what they apparently refer to as ‘The Insane’ – the panhumans and their allies.
2020	The Ascendancy begins piling political pressure on many smaller empires such as the Isorian League to join their fight against the Vorl. After the Isorians refuse, the Ascendancy gathers military resources around the small Antarean enclave of the Isorian League and its allies. Isori protests as, over the next thirty years, their allies are conquered and fall to Ascendancy forces until the Ascendancy threaten a series of overwhelming assaults against the Isorian gate.
2049 –2053	An initial assault by the Ascendancy against Isori is repulsed by an improved null-space weapon that leaves few survivors. Within months, the Isorian gate collapses and the Ascendancy begins pulling back its military resources based on nearby systems. Whilst there is no proof, it seems likely that the Isorian null-space weapon triggered a cascade of gate collapses, casting a transdimensional shadow that spread from the Isorian gate around the Nexus. The side effect of the shadow includes the destruction of nanospore and the blocking of each NuHu’s nanospore receptors. Such a dire side-effect causes havoc, killing many NuHu and the leaders of Ha’Ruul are almost completely wiped out. Within the space of five years, there are no more gates recorded as being connected to the Nexus.

The Fortunes of Isor

Isori is the fourth world in orbit around the star Isor and is one of many rocky planets and giants in the system.  The system is extensive and abundant in resources, with habitable (terraformed) moons and many planetoids and dwarf planets in far-flung orbits. The two planets in the theoretical ‘goldilocks zone’ for panhuman life are Isori (Isor IV) and Isor III. Isori itself has a carefully controlled climate, extensive, ‘greened’ cities and arcologies, and is home to numerous research and manufacturing facilities. Isor III is a jungle-like, ‘garden’ world whose temperate zones are used extensively for farmland and crops with the hotter zones kept for leisure.

Even during the Fifth Age, NuHu regarded Isori as their spiritual home and there are more NuHu – or Senatexis – on or in orbit around Isori than any other world, even that of the Ha’Ruul homeworld. The Isorian policy of independence was only sustained due to the Isorian policy of sharing advanced defence technology with their neighbours and establishing a mutual defence federation, the Isorian League. By the 5A1590s, the Isorian League had around 50 systems with varying amounts of Isorian technology in a tightly-maintained, mutual defence pact.  

The Isorian League proved largely successful at defending its borders from both Vorl and panhuman attacks. Though it had plenty of opportunity to do so, the League declined to turn its defensive successes into aggressive expansionism, only inviting a very few stable, non-hostile systems on its borders into its arms. As a result, it grew slowly, only reaching 90 systems by 1800s where it stabilised, future expansion being curtailed due to extensive Ascendency military activity around its borders.

The Isorian 5^th Age Timeline

A rough timeline of Isori activity during the Fifth Age might read as follows.

5th Age Date	Isorian Event
~1250	Isori reconnects to the Nexus. They quickly establish a small alliance – the Isorian League – with the nearby, advanced systems but after taking stock of the chaos around them, remain largely insular in outlook. To the isolationist Isorians this time it is known simply as the Dark Age.
1350	The Isorians reject political overtures by the Ascendancy, claiming to be merely one of many, neutral systems.
~1470	The fringes of the Isorian League are attacked by Ascendency forces. Over the next eighty years the attacks develop into a bold salient pointing towards Isor itself.
1594	The Isori system is attacked by the Ascendency but its defences prove too much for the attackers – though the Isorians barely hold on. Whilst the Ascendancy regroups, Isori steps up extensive research into space-time and the Antarean gate technology in order to build radical new defences against the military forces of panhumanity, aliens and Vorl.
2020	Isori again rejects requests to join the Ascendency. Over the next thirty years, their Isorian allies are conquered and fall to Ascendancy forces until the Ascendancy threatens the Isorian gate.
2049	The Isorians uses their newly upgraded null-space weapon against the Ascendancy fleet. Inadvertantly (though the error is much clearer in hidsight), this causes a transdimensional shadow that spreads to their own star and through the gate into the Nexus. The Isorian gate collapses, putting Isori into isolation and killing many of its NuHu, and the collapse spreads across the surface of Antares.

The Ordo of Humanity

(This is best seen as an influential side note to the main events.)

About 5A1100, a loose alliance of panhuman empires came into being formed from the Ascendancy, including the Gethderah Trade Federation, the League of Ha’Ruul and the Saviours of Teveron. Whilst the Saviours were initially treated warily, they had taken a new leadership after becoming bogged down in a war with a Vorl Ordo and an extremist panhuman group: the Ordo of Humanity. 

The Ordo of Humanity was primarily a cult-political movement: its leaders claimed that humanity could live in peace and even flourish under a benevolent Vorl leadership. The movement was particularly well organised and around 1060, its members stood for office in, and took control of, a number of worlds that had seen heavy fighting against the Vorl and Teveron’s military.  The movement opened up their worlds to Vorl invaders and even went to the extent of infiltrating the Teveron military where they isolated ships and front-line forces from their supplies. Teveron’s losses were initially huge, leading to internal strains on resources and leadership that eventually saw the Saviours replaced.

When the systems who the Ordo of Humanity turned over to the Vorl were eventually retaken by Teveron, they were deserted: the Vorl had slain entire populations bar a few, scattered pockets of resistance. The community-minded Vorl struggled to understand why anyone would betray their own species – their own  Ordo, as it were – and regarded the cult members as particularly aberrant panhumans.

Inadvertently, the actions of the Ordo of Humanity changed the Teveron governance system. The losses and betrayal at the highest levels forced Teveron to take a more considered view. Whilst their military remained the backbone of the new Ascendancy, the sabotage forced them to be much more reliant on the technological leadership of the Ha’Ruul NuHu as well as the manufacturing and distribution capabilities of the Gethderah Trade Federation. 

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