Eighth Age of the GHD

The Eighth Age of the Great Horned Dragon Empire is known as the new beginning for the whole galaxy. After Grand Admiral Zackariah died, the Federation council did not elect a new Grand Admiral. The reasons for this lack of an election included many things. For starters, with the entire galaxy in such disarray many systems were unfortunately completely cut off from communication with the Core Sector; without any way to bring mass communication back, a central power figure would likely spring confusion and uncertainty. Some might claim that they are in fact in charge, and this would tear everything left into numerous civil wars. The next big issue is that there was hardly any highly organized military left to command. The third reason is because the entire federation was in a state of emergency, and every ounce of time and effort was going into reconstruction; it was determined that a central authority figure would simply complicate things.

As a result; the military was not at all organized. Systems and clusters fortunate enough to have communication ended up reserving the regional military to themselves. The entire torn up empire got by through hundreds of planet to planet alliances and treaties. In such a bad state, each individual ship was liable to start a rebellion. Every small group of people was essentially its own nation; the largest sub-nation located in the Core Sector, where the strongest pieces of the old federation still stood. The Eighth age as a result was characterized by thousands of heroic individuals of various ranks and authority. Around this time also began the rise of a singular organized religion; over 90% of the galactic population began to accept the theology of a one God, called by many names by many peoples, but all roughly the same principles of peace, unity, and compassion.

Captain Farstrong
Captain Farstrong was promoted by his ship's crew after their former captain died. The ship was a refitted Jericho class named the "St. Marco." The ship until then stayed in the Retth cluster, and assisted in the defense of the planet Dakka, in the Duria system. Farstrong chose to sever the former captain's pact with the planet's admiral and convert the ship into a trade vessel. At the time, the Retth cluster, formerly the pinnacle of the Federation's trade, was cut off from all of it's usual trade routes. With no-one to trade with but each other, the value of their available recourses, which were primarily used as energy production goods, dropped significantly. During a pirate raid on the planet Dakka before they were leaving the planet, they aided in the planet's defense, and captured a wormhole key from a pirate vessel, and installed it into the St. Marco. They then were able to reconnect an ancient trade route to the Oilatis cluster, and made a fortune selling the desperately needed supplies. Over the next several years (based on the time in the ship), the two clusters eventually began rebuilding greatly through their trade. By the time Farstrong died, the Retth Cluster had a re-established nation, and the two systems of the Oilatis cluster were joined onto them as well. Through another nearby black hole, they managed to re-establish a connection to the Core Sector, and rejoined the Federation, which supplied them security in return for the needed energy recourses.

Captain Blackstone
Captain Blackstone commanded the ship "Dead Fury," a Sovereign A class warship, in the Spaca system around the time Farstrong began to supply energy recourses to the Core Sector. After Farstrong died, Blackstone was given an assignment to go through a black hole and re-establish communication with the Magrus Gateway, the cluster containing the black hole connecting Sectors Prim and Core. After a successful mission, he was promoted to become the Admiral in charge of the Magrus Cluster. At the time, only one planet, Abyson of the Magrus System, had re-entered the Federation; the other systems and planets were in no agreement, and rejected a central authority given to them by what they called "a broken empire desperately clinging to its dead alliances."

Blackstone was given several outdated warships and charged with the conquest of the micro-nations that the Federation wrote of as rebels. While Blackstone and his lieutenants were planning the first assaults, a prophet came to them and urged for Blackstone to unify the cluster with peace rather than force; he claimed that he knew for certain that the micro-nations would unite for the sake of unity on their own if they were given the proper chance, and that they only were worried that the Federation would become an oppressor.

Blackstone discredited him and sent him away. The prophet warned him then that if he assembled an army for attack, then the whole cluster would unite just to fight back. Blackstone did not listen, and moved his ships for assault on the Aepine in the Jakea system. When his fleet arrived there, just as the prophet warned him, the entire collection of fleets from the entire cluster showed up there, and drove out Blackstone's forces. With only 4 ships remaining, Blackstone retreated back into Sector Core.

After the battle, the cluster stayed united, and became one larger nation formed solely on the principle of unity, and adopted a religious cause to their strength. In later years, they would go on to re-establish an empire with all of Sector Prime.

General Arhaum
About the time Captain Blackstone was launching his assault on the Magrus system, General Arhaum was made the commander of a micro-nation on the planet Galdoras in the Amedierin System, the first, and for thousands of years, the only, colonized planet in the entire Lost Sector. The Lost Sector has never had much economic, or strategic value, even during the recent struggle for galactic supremacy by Tyranis. Even the planet was nothing more than a distant outpost in what was always considered a far reaching edge of the galaxy. The only galactic sector of less value is the Silent Sector, where there are no known hospitable planets, and where no known life-forms have arisen from. After the Federation fell apart, Galdoras was left completely alone.

The planet Galdoras could be easily mistaken for a war torn planet; in fact, the widespread ruins and planet-wide dust storms are a result from a slowly dying population that has no food, no fuel, and very poor protection from celestial bodies such as meteors. On top of poor soil, almost no precipitation, and no possible way to get off the planet left, the few remnant colonies split apart, and were reduced in population until nothing remained except dozens of small nomadic, tribal nations. Very rarely did anyone have even a fire-arm; and some-one who did was often in charge. All weapons, tools, structures, or anything really, had been constructed from pieces of ruins; these tribes were dressed in cloth debris, and wielded shrapnel weapons, the planet was utterly devastated and for the most part doomed to die.

Amidst these unlivable, hostile conditions, a leader arose, Nashumka Arhaum. He managed to forge a small alliance between his own tribe, and two other tribes. He then took control of the warriors from each tribe, along with another second in command, and went out on a conquest of neighboring tribes. Within twenty years or so, they had re-collected all the surviving descendants of a whole former city. This generation of people, none of which were alive to ever see a ship fly into space, had begun to dig up old technology; in doing so, they triggered an ancient, automated spacecraft to fly into the lower atmosphere. The spacecraft was an old, emergency activated, terra-forming vessel, and within a few hours, several had been activated around the globe.

Thinking the space vessel some form of deity, or at least a sign of one, Arhaum and his second in command ordered for the people of the micro-nation to begin harvesting the land immediately in order to grow sacrificial harvests. It worked, and for the first time in generations, a huge crop sprung forth. With as much food as they had, they made their micro-nation stronger, and being as large as it was, they spread out and took over nearly one hundred nomadic tribes that spawned from neighboring cities.

Quickly becoming the only super-power on the planet, they explored and researched more and more the old technologies and archives of the planet, and soon began rebuilding their past. They quickly came to understand that the spacecraft were not themselves gods, but forming as religiously as they did, they still believed that it was nothing short of a miracle for the vessels to be randomly tripped and activated. They adopted the old system of government, and unanimously named Arhaum the 4-Star General of the Planet.

Captain Harim
(continuing off of the story of General Arhaum) After four centuries, and conquering the entire planet and restlessly working to reach back into the stars, they became uncertain of whether or not any other planets anywhere in the entire galaxy still possessed such organized, sentient life. Deciding that since no rescue of any kind had come for nearly 700 years, then it was likely that they were alone.

Finally, they managed to construct a spacecraft capable of flying interstellar. Mestuda Harim was chosen to captain the vessel, "New Dawn," and launch a mission to colonize near-by planets, and strip-mine them for resources to construct a ship capable of travelling through the wormhole that would, according to the information they managed to recover, take them right back near the heart of the ancient space aged civilization.

After 68 years, they finally succeeded. Captain Harim was again chosen to be the captain, as old as he was, to hopefully re-connect with the Federation. They arrived in the Tucus-5 system, in orbit of the planet Teneia, some 650 years after Captain Blackstone's defeat in the Magrus System.

Admiral Asher
A century after Blackstone's defeat at the Magrus system, after which, Blackstone was stripped of his military title and decommissioned, the Federation had gathered and outfitted a much more formidable force to attack the now extremely dangerous 'rebels' (still not recognized as a nation), and put in charge their most experienced admiral to go and wage a war of extermination against them. The 5-star Admiral Asher led a huge fleet through the Magrus Gateway, and immediately moved in to take over the Magrus System, and the Jakea System.

By this time, the alliance of micro-nations, who called themselves The Alliance, had re-established an imperial connections with the entire Mirae Cluster, and were quickly growing influential and powerful in about half of the Prima Cluster. When word reached them that Jakea and Magrus had fallen, they rallied forces together and set up a strong assault fleet to retake Jakea.

As Admiral Asher moved her forces into the broader area of the Magrus Cluster, The Alliance swiftly moved in from all angles at Jakea, and took it back from behind the Federation's front lines of interstellar warfare. When Admiral Asher had taken over several systems, and was preparing to return to the Magrus Gateway to send for reinforcements and supplies, The Alliance already had total control over the area.

Without any assistance, Asher's fleets were eventually dissolved, and destroyed. Admiral Asher herself fled into less populated parts of the galaxy, and was never seen or heard from again.

Fleet Commander Lot
After Admiral Asher was defeated, a champion arose from The Alliance. Aaron Lot, a fleet commander in The Alliance's interstellar forces, was chosen to lead a strike force through the Magrus Gateway and to attack the Federation at the Leinemon System. The surprising attack caught the Federation completely off guard, and The Alliance took control of the system, and then moved to attack the Tipporon System, planet Jestico, the capitol planet of the entire Federation.

Having sent most of their forces into Sector Prime to die, they were weak. Lot's fleet was still no match for the Federation's primary defensive forces. He ordered his ships to land, crash land if they had to, but land nonetheless near Jestico's cities. The ships were evacuated, and their soldiers stripped themselves of identifying equipment, and hid themselves within the Federation's population.

After about twenty years (Jestico), Lot's soldiers had become a virus in the Federation's society. They spread their religious beliefs, and by the next century, the planet, and with it, the entire Federation was overtaken by the fanatical uprising. By this time, Lot was dead, but very quickly after his death, there was peace between the Federation and the Alliance, and they united at last, forming the Galactic Imperial Alliance.

Captain Alan
Quick summary: the captain who first spoke to Captain Harim when he first arrived in Sector Core from the Lost Sector. He later goes on to spread the word of the one God, and with it, peace, through Sector Gemini I.

Captain Noah
Captain Noah is a prophet of the one God who speaks out against the continued mining, colonization, and militarization of the planet Arckas (despite it's quite evident, deeply engraved history with one of the greatest war heroes ever) due to it's uniqueness and insurmountable biodiversity. After about a hundred and eighty years, the Galactic Imperial Alliance votes to turn every untouched piece of the planet into a wild-life sanctuary with the exception of small towns at appropriate distances as necessary for transportations and way points.

Admiral Joshua
About 500 galactic years, Joshua Rahul is promoted to the rank of a 5-Star Admiral (at the time, the highest ranking military officer since the beginning of the Eighth age). A prophet sometime between Noah and now foretold of the return of an ancient evil that would arise and bring great upheaval upon the galaxy, and that the fate of all life that was considered good (not just believers in this case, but all life-forms that were not considered purely destructive) would be at stake, and a great leader would be hand chosen by the one God to deliver the Alliance from such a fate. For a very long time there was much debate about whether or not the time to come was now.

From the Sunflower Galaxy, an unspeakable force of millions of dreadnought sized warships had begun a devastating rampage all across the galaxy. They had taken over all of Sector Prime, and were moving up that particular arm-band towards Sector Core. The technology of their enemies was completely alien, and getting past it and fighting against it was a huge struggle. After a long and gruesome war, the Alliance had finally begun to gain an upper hand. They eventually retook most of the galaxy until this strange enemy was reduced to a single small cluster of stars; finally, they put up a white flag, and for the first time in history, intergalactic contact had been made.

The species of this strange enemy was not too different from the Instruments that had ravaged the galaxy once before. These creatures however were very short in stature, and had no legs but a thick, slimy tail. Their upper bodies were brutish looking, with arms and broad shoulders. They had no eyes, and instead relied on a magnetic field sense to gain their visual-spatial reasoning (which explained their defenselessness against laser based weapons). They possessed cybernetic implants that gave them a huge variety of advantages. After a long study and several fact-finding missions, it was determined that these beings had fled another galaxy, with their entire civilization, from an unspeakably powerful enemy, and not only that, but actually followed the footsteps of a much older civilization that had been pushed out before them to the same galaxy. When asked to describe this enemy, they could only describe that this civilization was so far advanced that they had actually mastered time travel.

The Prophet Aisaus
Shortly after Admiral Joshua's death, the Galactic Imperial Alliance experienced a time of great peace and expansion. All across the galaxy they spread the word of the one God and collected numerous allies. Their message of peace kept them away from war, and brought unity and meaning to the once fallen Federation. In their peace they began to explore the universe in logistical ways, and soon began to re-open hard-lined scientific fields of study. At first, no-one would dream of letting themselves question their faith in the one God, but over time, and many generations down, people began to forget and forsake their God. A man then came and prophesied great and undeniable truths, and attempted to return all of the lost children of the one God back towards Him. Aisaus was originally an unbeliever himself, but was spoken to physically and in person by a messenger sent on behalf of the one God in a vision.

Aisaus was given great power and authority by the one God who was held to be truthful, and the one God made himself known as 'I'. He told Aisaus to take a ship and crew to the planet Arckas and told him exactly where to find an ancient, unbelievably powerful artifact. He told Aisaus that by finding this artifact on Arckas would be more than enough reassurance for all the unbelievers he would hire, and from those few, would strike faith back into the Alliance. Arckas was chosen because of its size. Arckas is a huge planet, and there had always been a saying, "Buried somewhere in Arckas," or "Lost somewhere on Arckas," or "Hidden away on Arckas," and the sayings meant that whatever was being discussed was gone, and was never going to be found again. The planet is so huge that over 90% of its surface area has only ever been explored with a satellite from space view, and it is believed that only about 45% of the reachable area on Arckas can actually be easily seen from orbit. If some-one wanted something to be hidden away forever, all they had to do would be to drive around Arckas for a day or two, find a cave or lake, and bury whatever they wanted hidden; and no-one would ever find it afterwards.

Aisaus led his ground crew through a spot on the planet in the Arashana mountain range, a mountain range nearly 2 million kilometers long, and covering an extraordinary surface area. They traveled through miles of jungle and went into a cavern that ran 3 miles deep into a mountain. Aisaus swam through a small underground lake and came up on the other side to find a small bed of land, and on it, was a metal chest. He opened it with a key that he had acquired from a stolen cargo ship years ago. Within the chest he found an elaborately decorated golden trumpet, and a note that said, "This is the long lost, and by now forgotten trumpet of the seventh and final trumpeter of King Kahn's personal entourage, who led the Great Horned Dragon Empire into the interstellar age from planet Nierdro. The trumpet's owner ordered me, his great grandson to take the trumpet and bury it here; I was never informed why until the day he died. He said that he heard a voice from within tell him to do so, and so I did as requested. Perhaps someday the cycle of the destruction of civilization would cease, and perhaps someday the God that has brought me here will make himself known to all; long live King Kahn! Long live the Empire! And to the one God be the glory forever!"

This stunning find was seen as nothing short of a miracle by all of his crew. when others were told of the find, they were torn whether to believe that the one God had really done these things, or if Aisaus was lying to everyone. The religious leaders of the Alliance agreed that Aisaus was indeed a prophet. Within 10 years, most of the Alliance had returned to faith, and soon following they began to disapprove of much scientific research into questionable fields such as the idea of cybernetic soldiers. The minority soon attempted a rebellion and waged war against the Alliance.

Aisaus then came to the Alliance's Imperial Leaders and told them of another vision he received. He said that the one God had told him to take a single fleet to rebel territory, and to command them in combat. For a few days, the imperial officers couldn't agree on it, and were not sure whether or not it was a good idea. They finally gave him a fleet of 15 Jestico class warships, and sent him on his way with a substantial crew. When they arrived at the main planet to launch an initial assault, they were heavily outnumbered, and the one God gave Aisaus another vision saying, "Have faith; I am powerful and mighty, and I will lead you to victory for my own glory. Do as I command you and you will be victorious. Have your ships circle the planet and do not fire a single shot for a whole seven days. The rebels will be intimidated, and confused at why you do not fight, and will not fight back until the seventh day. On the seventh day, they will begin the battle, and so their blood will be on their hands; when they fight, sound the seventh trumpet and they be defenseless."

So Aisaus did so, despite the lack of faith from much of the fleet's crews. On the seventh day when the rebels began the war, Aisaus blew the trumpet and then ordered all of his ships to slaughter their enemies. The confused crew wasn't sure of what to think, feeling as if they were the ones to be slaughtered, until official confirmation came in that all enemy shields and defensive systems were suddenly offline. They crushed their enemies and not a single rebel survived on that planet. The remaining rebel systems surrendered immediately.

80 years later, in the end of Aisaus's life, he received one last vision. He then gathered up the highest officials in the Alliance, and gave his last words before returning home and dying in his sleep the next day. He said to them, "I have seen a vision from the one God; He has told me that I must warn you that a great evil is about to come into the galaxy, and they will threaten our existence. He has told me also this, that He will send you a leader to be called the Grand Admiral once again, and He will make his choice known by putting a miraculous sign on her, and she will also receive a vision of her authority. This will not be for generations, so pass it on to your heirs, and their heirs so that when the day comes, the identity of the new Grand Admiral will be clear."

The Prophet Aisaus's body was burned, and his ashes were scattered across the galaxy ceremonially. A city was erected soon after his death near the site of the seventh trumpet, and is a historic, and holy city named after him.