On Sun, 14 Apr 2019 at 13:33, Nicole Susans <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:
 
The collapse of the Third Imperium

The Rebellion began in 1116 with Archduke Dulinor's assassination of Emperor Strephon. This murderous act left the Empire in turmoil. Without a clear successor, the Imperium split into a number of rival factions, each with its powerbase in a different region of the Empire. Initially these remained committed to the idea of Empire and were simply vying for the throne. However as the long bitter struggle wore on regional differences, long suppressed, came to the surface. The horrors of the Rebellion caused many to question the very concept of Imperium. From the early 1120s the Rebellion increasingly turned from a struggle for the throne to a series of wars for local secession.


The first signs of this change occurred in 1119 when Dulinor renamed his stronghold the Federation of Ilelish as sop to these growing pressures. By 1122, the conventional fighting was winding down due to the massive losses all factions had suffered. The Rebellion then entered the 'Black War' phase. It was at this time that the true horrors of the Rebellion began as each faction targeted the economic and productive base of the others. Commerce raiding and planetary strikes to destroy manufacturing became common. Worlds deemed to be economic centres were subjected to orbital bombardment, with the attendant millions of civilian casualties. Merchant shipping was ravaged with the aim of disrupting trade. Thus the vast majority of the Imperium began its rapid decent towards barbarism. The only areas spared were the isolated Domains of Deneb, shielded by the Great Rift and Gateway, protected likewise by The Lesser Rift and the powerful local fleets of the Luriani.


Thr first real signs of the separatist forces now facing the Imperium came in 1124 with the start of the Massilan Wars against Margaret of Delphi. These wars would ravage the vital productive heartland of Massila, completing the destruction wrought by the black war. These local wars of secession continued and spread. By 1128 only two factions remained vying for the throne, Dulinor and Lucan, the others having given in to local secessionist feeling and now just fighting for survival. It was then that Dulinor launched his final offensive to take Capital. Having carefully husbanded his resources, he launched an attack the scale of which had been unseen since the early days of the Rebellion. Dulinor's Victory Fleet drove deep into the Emperor Lucan's territory, sweeping all resistance aside. However the toll of loses mounted and by the time Dulinor finally reached Captiol, the Victory Fleet had been greatly reduced. Thus while Dulinor did again sit upon the Iridium Throne, he did so only briefly before the inevitable withdrawal began.


It was during this long retreat the true brittleness of the Victory Fleet became apparent. Thirteen longs years of war had fatally weakened it. For many ships maintenance had been neglected and damage only hastily repaired. Ships crashed, misjumped or simply broke down. Morale plummeted and desertions became common. Dulinor's flagship itself was lost in the final days and less than 15% of the fleet ever returned to Ilelish. Ilelish stood wide open to attack, Lucan still controlled the now vital Domain of Gateway, its economy untouched by the Rebellion and home to the most powerful remaining fleet, that of the now autonomous Luriani. Dulinor's daughter Isis assumed the reigns of government and braced for the inevitable attack.


The attack never came, for the Luriani's greatest fear, extermination, had been reawakened by the K'kree Dominate. The Luriani, who until that point had been steadfast in their support of Lucan baulked at his demands fearing they would leave them defenceless. Archduke Tranian and his brother Kamees travelled to Capitol to reason with Lucan, only to be executed as traitors. In 1130 the Luriani effectively seceded, taking the entire Domain of Gateway with them. Lucan was furious at this betrayal and turned his attentions from a prostrate Ilelish to this formidable new power. The result was disaster, Lucan's fleet was destroyed and the Second Luriani War dragged on fitfully for four years. Eventually Lucan's admirals had had enough and decided to act to bring an end to this last phase of the Rebellion. Lucan was assassinated and his infant daughter Lydia placed on the throne. The long brutal Rebellion finally drew to a close, armistices were arranged and the front lines became borders. But twenty years of warfare had left much of the former Imperium a blasted wasteland know as 'the wilds.'

The Dominate War
The Dominate is a splinter state of the K'kree. Dominated by a militant fundamentalist sect, it is committed to ridding the universe of carnivores and meat-eaters. For nearly three hundred years it worked slowly to expand its power and conquer its neighbours but in 1124 it exploded in a holy crusade of genocide and destruction. The first check to this came in 1127 when the Khuur League held off the initial onslaught. It was this genocidal crusade that awakened the Luriani's age old fear of extermination and ultimately ended the Rebellion.

By 1129 the Luriani were pouring aid into the Khuur League and the Dominate launched what the thought would be a punitive raid to warn of the consequences of standing in their path. But thousand's of years of quietly putting aside resources 'just in case' had left the Luriani a massive military potential. The Dominate fleet was destroyed and the war began in earnest. The Dominate War dwarfed even the brutality of the Rebellion. Neither side sought or offered quarter, both thought of it as a war for their very survival. Eventually the superior technology and resources of the Protectorate began to tell and the Dominate fell back. Initially the Protectorate pressed their advantage, driving the K'kree from their recent conquests. However eventually the cost began to mount. There was no formal end to the war but by 1139 both sides had effectively withdrawn from active hostilities. While occasional clashes still occur in the disputed Gateway sector, the war is over, neither the Dominate or Protectorate seeking to reignite it any time soon.



Dear Nicole,

Yep, that's pretty much how I would have seen it playing out too.  

I see in your description of Dulinor's retreat from Core echos of the Grande Armee's retreat from Russia after taking Moscow.  That parallel requires Lucan's commanders to have strategically withdrawn intact forces behind Capital, and also have those commanders relying on the assumption that Dulinor's forces would have been more subject to exhaustion than Lucan's would have.  I had not considered that, and I think from your description that it could be a possibility.  (Certainly the "deep reserves" of Gateway are a possibility if the region remains cohesive AND remains loyal to Lucan AND is willing to commit their home defence forces to trying to push Dulinor off Capital.  I guess I'd always ignored Gateway's possible contribution to Lucan's faction.)

However, I still think that it is more likely that Lucan's loss of Capital would have been disastrous for his legitimacy (which was shaky at best), and Lucan himself knew it.  Everything about the course of the war described in Survival Margin suggests that Lucan's faction would have put every available ship hull and every available warm body between Dulinor and the Iridium Throne.  We're talking fall-of-Berlin type stuff here.
 
So we have two options.  First, Dulinor enters Capital over the corpses of the last forces loyal to Lucan, and Lucan himself dies in the bunker.  Alternatively, Lucan's attempt to make a pyrrhic last stand triggers most of the remaining loyal HiPop worlds, leaders, and military units to defect from his cause.  Not that they would necessarily join Dulinor's faction.  Even if Dulinor's capture of Capital was largely bloodless, and Lucan (and any heir) was publicly executed, Dulinor might well have realised that the power centres in the rest of Core sector were not going to jubilantly, or even meekly, accept his suzerainty.  And while his Coronation Fleet might have been able to decapitate - or even shatter - the Lucan faction, it did not have the power to occupy a whole hostile sector.  Hence the Long Retreat/inevitable withdrawal that you describe.  (See the Fall of Paris in March 1871.  Prussia was keen to declare a victory, and make short (2 day) and symbolic occupation of the city, and leave the new French Government to try to sort out the radical mess that was left behind.

Not sure that Dulinor would have been risking his personal safety by jumping in a clearly unsafe flagship, but stranger things have happened!

So net result I think is similar to yours as of 1132, with only cosmetic changes:
*  Dulinor, instead of Isis, leading the Federation.
*  Archduke Tranian being killed by Lucan in early 1130 for refusing to commit Gateway forces in the path of Dulinor's incoming Coronation Fleet, rather than in late 1130 for refusing to commit Gateway forces to Lucan's counter-offensive.
*  The last remnants "Lucan's" forces destroyed by Dulinor's Coronation Fleet, rather than in the Second Luriani War.
*  In fact, no Second Luriani War.  The Luriani secede after Tranian's murder in early 1130, and there is no-one to stop them.
*  _Maybe_ a remnant "Lucan" faction in Core after Dulinor retreats.  However, with no central authority and no significant military power, the "Lucan" faction is likely to be _highly_ decentralised.  More likely, there will be a number of (possibly peacefully) co-existing Autonomous Polities.


Cheers,
KenB