Dominion - Origins

Dominion - Origins
-> Birth of MAN

1.48.4E1246 / Palace of the 'al Torro
Lyzrantii System, Lyzrant

They stormed the last bastion of Nel Ent 'al Torro in the deep of the night. Silence, determination and the clatter of assault rifles followed them. Across blurred marble floors and past hanging paintings and tapestries they dashed. Firefights exploded and died as quickly as a trigger was pulled. In the end, only death and victory waited for them. The moon hung in the sky while a smattering of cloud cover rained down tears as the bulge of the celestial body wove a strange dance as it watched on. Two hundred years ago, it was; the night of 'al Torro Despada, or "The Great Unification." Nel Ent 'al Torro died, and as his body fell limp to the flecked marble flooring on that night, a gun in his hand and a bullet through his head, the United Lyzrantii States rose up to take his place.

General El Antigo vel Maro's quest to unify the world was at long last completed with the last Warlord painting abstract macabre art on the floor in the form of a twisted corpse before him. He chose his senate wisely, suppressed any rebellion before it could form, and created an empire that he headed. A single ruler. Such a thing had never before been, and all the years of fighting and cajoling and pleading had paid off. But in the end, El Antigo vel Maro would die of a heart attack on the senate floor giving a speech to rally the people to his cause. But instead of something to inspire them with, the speech was punctuated with him collapsing to the floor as he coughed, quite literally, pieces of his own lungs and blood onto the floor. His dying words were "My friends!"

His good friend, or the only person who could even be called a friend, superseded him -- Nathanial Jacobs-Elsandro. He assumed El Antigo vel Maro's title, and would later be crowned the First Emperor of the Unified Lyzrantii States. El Antigo vel Maro and all he had stood for would soon be forgotten. Nathanial Jacobs-Elsandro led for many years and later sired a son, who would be crowned Second Emperor of the Unified Lyzrantii States upon his fathers death when he was aged 42. But with the beginning of Lennard Jacobs-Elsandro's reign came an unexpected turn. His father, known for his zealous ravings, had said that their enemies were not the people of Lyzrant, but the threats that came from the stars themselves. It was said that Nathanial Jacobs-Elsandro had seen in a vision their enemy from the beyond. Lennard Jacobs-Elsandro believed his father.

Many believe Nathanial Jacobs-Elsandro was mad, especially in his later years, and the fact that his son, Lennard, believed him and began a space program, only furthered the rumors. Slipspace travel through the stars was something newly discovered, and Lennard Jacobs-Elsandro sent many scouts into the uncharted regions, hoping to search out and find the threat and extinguish it before it could ever come back and hurt his people. But his drive and motivation became his downfall.

A religious figure, rather zealous at the least, Matthew Alexander Nault, would murder his way to and usurp the thrown. Elsandro Entiga, "The Elsandro Eradication", began with gusto, and Lennard Jacobs-Elsandro would soon find himself starring wide-eyed at a ceiling, gasping for air and a goblet of poisoned win splashed along a carpet. His death created two factions, those for him and his programs, and those against. The following in-fighting caused many return calls by scoutships to go unheard and be forgotten altogether. After ten years of continued fighting, Matthew Alexander Nault ascended the great Imperial Thrown to become the First Emperor of the Lyzrantii Dominion Empire, the First Empire of MAN.

---

-> Encounters

1420 Hours (Galactic Standard) 2.15.4E1453 / LDE Scoutship Starflung
Unknown system

The system was quiet. The seven planets moved in their preexisting tracks, slowly racing around a yellow primary like children on a merry-go-round. Distant stars dotted the blackness and added color and depth to the nothingness. A small star seemed to brighten, flashing closer for a moment. It twisted and oscillated, the space around it scintillating until an object burst into view and the corona of light snapped shut as the ship exited the event horizon, dying in the instantaneous transition from slipspace to real space. An LDE scoutship, the Starflung, pushed at the bounds of space for a moment before settling. A small craft, an oblong sphere with four distinct bulges in the rear with glowing efflux and smaller cancerous bulges along the craft.

Long- and short-range sensors slid out of their jump recesses with smooth animosity, metallic silver inset with circular gold mirror lenses. They began to scour the space all around the craft, hungry for specific shapes before focusing on the farther celestial objects. Every molecule was searched and prodded for an instance, and then, when it was deemed safe, the craft began its slow, arduous journey inwards.

For the first ten hours, the Starflung and its crew of five remained diligent and extremely bored. The system looked like the hundreds they had already seen over the past seven years. Continuous readings and bets were taken on the probability of them finding life on any of the planets based on the fact they hadn't in the past seven years. The man in charge, lieutenant Kim Wong Tei, was sitting in his seat and yawning ferociously and attempting to distract himself from his boredom by flipping a coin and watching it tumble in the three-quarters standard gravity.

"What's the count, Kimmy boy?" Gregory Fitzpatrick, his lead sensor specialist asked.

"Twenty one heads, fifteen tails."

"So, what, heads no life found, tails life found?"

"I always say heads for life, tails for no life, because no life sucks tails."

They lapsed back into silence. Janis Del Garcia noted two objects moving in the asteroid belt that didn't look right, referred it to Kim, but it was shrugged off. More hours later, return readings suggested that two of the inner-most planets were habitable, but there was no way to tell from their current distance. It would be another week before they reached the third planet in system, and were just now passing the seventh, an enormous gas giant tinged brazen orange and yellow with a dozen or more moons and dotted by a giant swirl of a storm that took up a quarter-hemisphere. Kim left the bridge to go get some sleep, leaving everything to those awake.

"That's odd," Mandy Anderson said. She and Lisa O'Reilly were the only two people awake.

"What's odd?"

"There's something moving just beyond the convex of the gas giant. It's too small to be a moon."

"Maybe a meteorite trapped in a degrading orbit?"

"No, no. It just seems, wrong."

Lisa moved in behind Mandy, looking down at the screen. It was already at full zoom. The image was grainy, fuzzed and heavily distorted from the range they were viewing the object at. It had a fairly distinct shape, though. A long shape that tapered back from the front into a set of massive blocky features that were glowing.

"Those are engines!"

"Jna'eehn! Wake the others. This is big, way, way too big."

Moments later, Kim strode in, stumbling and fumbling and attempting wakefulness while rubbing sleepsand away from the corners of his eyes. He asked what was the problem, why the excitement. Mandy told him. Whatever sleepiness that was in him drained away with the color in his face as a surge of adrenaline took hold.

"A-, a ship?"

"Not just one," Mandy said, "two. A second one is just starting to come around. Both look like they're heading our way."

Kim somehow went whiter than he already was.

"Can you figure out how big those ships are?"

"Not at this distance, but they're closing fast enough. Will probably be on us in another couple hours."

Kim made a command decision, the first and last in his career.

"Core dump into a slipspace probe and send it back to Lyzrant."

"What? That's crazy, we'll lose all our astrological data, everything!"

"Do it!"

Five minutes later, it was done. They were now sitting blind, all records on their ship transfered to a missile-like probe. Kim hovered his hand over the launch button a moment, seeming as if to have second thoughts. He breathed out and his hand fell hitting the switch. He watched as the slim shape of the slipspace probe slid out from under the cockpit and into view. Watched it trace a long curving arc away and stared at the blue efflux trail. It was an hour and a half later that he got a good look at the enemy ships, kilometer long beasts. He had Janis hail them, but the calls went unanswered. Moments later, Kim didn't feel anything anymore, and never would.

The probe was still rocketing away, but wouldn't enter slipspace for another hour, not until it was outside the systems gravity field. The probe would watch with unfeeling, inhuman eyes as the Starflung was touched by light before turning into a cloud of ever-expanding incandescent gas and debris. The two alien cruisers had fired when in range. The Starflung was gone, her crew with her. Moments later, the probe launched itself into slipspace.