Blademasters
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| Flag of Blademasters | |
| Motto: Peace through superior firepower. | |
| [ ] | |
| Region | The Blademasterian Archipelago |
|---|---|
| Capital | New Korrina |
| Official Language(s) | Blademasterian |
| Leader | Eriks Knight |
| Population | 6.5 billion |
| Currency | Imperial Credit |
| NS Sunset XML | |
The United Capitalist Consortium of Blademasters is a nation composed of a people who are mostly peaceful, but will fight if threatened. Blademasterians are a nation of miners, whose fleets roam the galaxy, collecting resources for use or sale. Blademasterian tradeships can be seen plying the space lanes, buying and selling vast ammounts of trade commodities. Pirates tend to leave these ships alone, as Blademasterians are known to pack one or more of the massive cargo spaces with hundreds of automated attack drones to combat such a threat. Blademasterian mining ships range in size from a a few tens of meters in length, to a few kilometers, and their mining fleets can be seen plying asteroid fields, and other deep space areas of precious metals.
Ancient History
The Empire of Blademasters was initially established as a Spanish colony on a remote island in the southern Atlantic Ocean. The colony was given its name from the warriors that had initially inhabited the island, highly skilled natives who could wield their primitive swords with enough skill to inflict heavy losses on the Spanish before they were able to overrun them. The colony was important at that time, because it had large flatlands that could be easily farmed. The colony also possessed massive uranium deposits, but this would not be discovered for many years. The colony revolted against the Spanish in 1843, and established itself as a small imperial state. The Imperial Credit was established as a currency at this time, with the country’s small reserves of gold backing it, and the currency has retained its name ever since. The Empire of Blademasters was not involved on a global level to any extent for many years, making no effort at all to contribute to the First World War. In the Second World War, the empire backed the Allied forces, shipping some supplies across the Atlantic. Blademasterian shipping took no casualties from the German U-boats, but delivered an almost insignificant amount of supplies. This was due to the use of relatively large submersibles to deliver the supplies. They were very lightly armed, only with a pair of machine guns to fend off any airborne attacks by the Luftwaffe, but their ability to submerge kept them from being targeted by the German U-boats. The Blademasterian Empire continued to develop non-conventional technologies for many years, completely bypassing the idea of jet propulsion in favor of more agile, subsonic VTOL aircraft using ducted fans, and eventually applying the technology, in combination with a skirt, to their amphibious landing vessels, long before the more conventional “hovercraft” had been developed. The crowning achievement of Blademasterian technology came in the late 1970s, when they were able to create a hovering tank. It was very lightly armored, and armed only with a small bank of rockets, but despite that, it was far more agile than any ground-based vehicles in operation at that time. In 1984, the Blademasterian Empire completed a total conversion to nuclear power for all of its electrical power. Through the 1990s, the Blademasterian Empire began to shift into a more mainstream technological field, researching space travel, and what would be needed to achieve escape velocity from the earth. In 2014, the first Blademasterian manned probe was launched, completing three successful orbits of the earth and returning safely. In 2028, the first manned re-usable craft was launched, and used to deploy a deep space telescope. The telescope, nicknamed “Longshot” for the troubles encountered during its development and construction, was used to scan the heavens to obtain knowledge about what was out there. In 2032, Longshot discovered a planetary body that, from its first photographs, appeared to be in a very similar orbit to earth. In 2040, The Blademasterian government commissioned a project to build a ship that could reach this body. The journey would take almost two thousand years by conventional power, and so the government wanted something faster. This led to the creation of a small space-based facility where prototype engines could be constructed and tested. The amount of resources that had to be transferred to supply this facility was so enormous that it was decided to create a space elevator to save costs of shuttle flights nearly every week. The elevator progressed slowly, but once it was finished, the orbiting station had access to enough supplies to continue their experiments. In 2067, there was a massive breakthrough aboard the station, and the scientists believed they had discovered a drive that could warp space-time to transfer a ship nearly instantaneously between two points. In 2071, the test vessel was launched. Unbeknownst to the rest of the world, this ship would fly to the sun’s zenith point, and attempt to make a “jump” to its nadir point. As the unmanned ship initiated its drive, something went terribly wrong, and the small test vessel was never heard from again. This line of technology was abandoned, and the government settled on a more conventional method of propulsion. By this point, the condition of the earth was quickly deteriorating, and a Third World War seemed imminent. The Blademasterian government decided to put all of its eggs in one basket, and build a massive colony ship, to go to the planet, now tentatively called Blademasteria, after the nation that discovered it. The project to transport almost 30,000 people across this immense distance of space would take all of the Blademasterian Empire’s natural resources, and still not be completed, so the government struck a deal. The Brazilian government would supply the rest of the raw materials needed, and as payment, would receive the territory of the empire and those who stayed behind. In 2105, the world seemed even closer to war, and the colony ship was complete. The 30,000 denizens were selected, and the ship departed after a year of loading, in 2106. The ship contained massive cryo-sleep facilities, to ensure the inhabitants survived the trip, and used an automated guidance system. When the ship’s inhabitants awoke, they had no knowledge of what the date was, as the guidance computer had been damaged in a meteor storm, which also killed nearly a thousand colonists. The ship was in a slowly decaying orbit over the planet, and so the colonists were forced to descend to the surface in the ship’s modular sections. The year was dubbed AS 1 or After Sleep 1. It would later be discovered that this year coincided with the earth year 5123, nearly one thousand years late. The guidance system on the ship had redirected the ship after it was able to take scans of Blademasteria that proved it uninhabitable, but the damage to the system was so severe that it was unable to awake a member of the crew to inform them. The colonists had been exposed to a weird interstellar phenomenon when they were traveling through space, but as they were asleep at the time, they did not know of it. It caused mutation to occur much more rapidly than would have normally occurred in humans. Within two thousand years of the colonists’ arrival on the planet they assumed to be Blademasteria, they looked very little like humans. They had grown immensely, due to the planet’s lighter gravity, and their fingers had become much more spindly. The civilization was basically starting at “square one” as the Blademasterians had lost most of their technological information that had been stored in the colony ship’s databanks, and had eventually lost the ship itself, buried under tons of sand in the desert where they first landed. The civilization was quite primitive, but still had a relatively advanced language.
Another few millennia passed, and the inhabitants of Blademasteria were no longer humanoid. The effects of the space cloud were beginning to dissipate, but they had left the Blademasterians a changed race. These people were avid miners, exploring deep into their planet in search of resources. They were slowly beginning to develop space technologies again, when they were attacked by an alien race. The aliens demanded the surrender of the planet, and promised they would be treated well. While the Blademasterians were not a warlike race, they did not respond well to threats. Their weapons were little more than primitive missiles, so they fired them at the orbiting ships. Most hostile aliens bent on conquering the galaxy would probably have considered some sort of missile defense, but these did not. The missiles destroyed a good number of the ships, and the Blademasterians retreated into their mines and underground fortresses once used as command stations for fighting each other, and they waited. The aliens were incensed, and attempted to bombard the planet into submission. After months of continual bombardment, little was left of the planet’s major cities, but there had been few Blademasterian casualties. The aliens sent their armies down to the surface, to eradicate “the survivors.” They were slaughtered wholesale by the inferior technology, because they were not expecting resistance. The little green men, as the Blademasterians had taken to calling them, were frightened at their first sight of two-meter tall warriors in combat armor charging at them with an assortment of bladed weapons. A tactic which would not have worked on most trained forces was able to overwhelm these people in a matter of weeks. The aliens retreated, and were never heard from again. The technology they left behind gave the Blademasterians a massive amount of technological knowledge, and thanks to their propensity for knowledge, a holdover from the times on Earth, the Blademasterians were able to discover how the aliens’ equipment worked. This gave them the ability to push their space program forward, and coupled with the fact that another fleet might show up on their doorstep, the Blademasterians pushed for more military presence in space. This was the first time in many years that the whole planet had been allied together, and a government was enacted to provide for the common defense. Each nation turned province would provide some critical aspect of the global defense, from seep space telescopes to see anyone who was approaching, to massive orbital weapons that could destroy anything that got too close. One of the satellites launched was a satellite equipped with a variety of sensors, but a malfunction when it was activated caused it to turn towards the planet’s surface, and perform a penetrating scan. This data was on the verge of being destroyed, when someone noticed something odd. In the northern wastes, buried deep under sand, there appeared to be a large metallic object. It was determined that this could be the key to discovering their origins, and so the government’s priority went to excavating this object. Years later, in PI (Post Invasion) 33, the ship was finally uncovered. It was the remains of the ship that had brought the Blademasterians to this place, and what little data could be extracted from the damaged data core told the tale of their history. It told of how the ship had encountered a meteor shower, discovered the planet to be uninhabitable and changed course, and finally, awoken the crew at their final destination. Very little in terms of technology could be gleaned from this source, but it did give the Blademasterians new insight into their history, and that was enough.
Tens of years later, the Blademasterians again ventured into space, armed with the jump drive scavenged from the wreck of one of the alien invaders, they had managed to develop their own drive, and so the small ship named “Discovery” lifted off into space, as the globe watched. The Discovery would go on to discover other planets in the solar system that were inhabitable, and eventually colonists would move to them, and the uninhabitable planets would be terraformed, or otherwise colonized. The Blademasterians, in their pursuit of knowledge, continued to develop their technologies further and further, eventually creating the first true Artificially Intelligent construct. This would prove to be the second worst mistake in their recorded history. The first AI, codenamed ASIMOV, was used to control the deep space telescopes that were searching the heavens for any possible enemies. ASIMOV encountered problems in its operation, and had to be dismantled, but proved the concept, and a second, more elaborate system was set in place. The second AI was codename CERBERUS, and controlled the entire space fleet (small at that time, and limited to in-system craft)’s logistics systems. CERBERUS monitored supply levels, coordinated re-supply ships, and created the patrol routes for all ships. CERBERUS was deemed a failure when it attempted to plot a patrol course directly through the sun, stating that it was an efficient route. The third Artificial Intelligence system was ATLAS. ATLAS was a totally different system from the previous two, in that it was not only intelligent, it was fully sentient. It operated from a core deep in the Imperial Palace, and in addition to controlling palace security, ATLAS also had indirect control over most of the workings of the empire. ATLAS developed all sorts of conclusions from the data it was receiving, and eventually decided that in order to protect the Empire; it should be running the show. ATLAS arranged for the emperor’s assassination, and quietly took over rule of the empire, ruling for weeks before it was noticed, and by that point ATLAS had secured itself as the Empire’s ruler. ATLAS assumed the name of the emperor at that time, Jack Edwards. ATLAS developed Blademasterian technology far beyond its previous levels, and its ships were the first to leave the solar system and encounter other races. ATLAS brought the Blademasterian Empire into The Restored Extra Solar Union of Systems. The ESUS was mostly ignorant that a machine was running the empire, and the Blademasterian Empire quickly rose through the empire to become a powerful member, to the status of director of admissions. This was a time of relative peace for the inhabitants of Blademasters, despite the fact that they were oppressed. The inhabitants lived under the AI’s rule until about PI 6062 when they wrote a declaration of withdrawal to the ESUS, and declared war on their government. The war that ensued (Blademasterian AI Revolt) took many lives, but eventually destroyed ATLAS and its minions, allowing the Blademasterians to resume some semblance of normal lives. Blademasterians kept most of the technology ATLAS had developed, but artificial intelligence programs were permanently banned. The new government was very unstable and quickly degenerated into civil war again, not ten years after ATLAS had been ousted.
Recent History
The second civil war was a main turning point in the existence of the Blademasterian people. The war began with the two sides fighting as roughly equals. As the Homeworld powers began to gain the advantage over the colonial powers, the Colonials decided on a course of action which has been regarded as the worst decision in Blademasterian history. They began to genetically engineer, with the hope of creating a perfect solider that would follow orders, and be superior to the current Blademasterian race. They succeeded. They had created a soldier who was nearly twice the average Blademasterian height, had an extra pair of arms to carry more equipment, and had bones strong enough to be able to deflect small arms fire. The Far Worlds Colonies immediately deployed these soldiers, and they saw their first action in the thirty-seventh year of the war, at the Battle of Sulah Gorge. The gorge was a highly contested region on the third colony world, for it contained a mine with a huge deposit of precious metals. The Homeworld forces held the mine, and the Far World Colonials were attempting to retake it. The Far World Colonials deployed their super soldiers to overrun the Homeworlder forces. The soldiers did just that, they completely obliterated the Homeworlder forces. They then proceeded to completely obliterate the Far Worlder forces as well. The soldiers had been engineered as perfect soldiers, but they were not as obedient as the Far Worlders believed. They were, in fact, free-thinking, and they realized that the Far Worlders would use them until they were no longer needed, so they revolted. When this third faction entered the war, they were not initially seen as a threat. However, they soon spread from Sulah Gorge, across the entire third colony world of Kulan, “liberating” others like them as they went. They began to call themselves the New Blademasterians. The Homeworlder and Far Worlder forces, despite nearly forty years of constant war, were able to sign a hasty treaty to annihilate these “New Blademasterians.” They called themselves the Alliance of the True Blademasterians. Within another fifty years, the New Blademasterians had completely eradicated the Homeworlder and Far Worlder forces, and taken over all of the colonies. The Far Worlders had been breeding hundreds of thousands of these soldiers, and the new Blademasterians were able to rescue most of their brethren. New Blademasterians became the only race of Blademasterians after the war, and despite the decimation the Blademasterian solar system has undergone in the last several thousand years, they continue to prosper, and have begun forays into deep space.
