Great War
The Great War, referred to alternatively as the First Shivan Incursion or the Coming Darkness, was an armed conflict between the Klonor Empire and the Shivan Imperium during the mid-2330's, with combat throughout the entirety of the Klonor nation. All five of the stellar-systems under the rule of the Grand Duke Solomon Klonor endured assaults from the xenocidal Shivans and, with the Klonor Space Corps unable to inflict anything approaching severe damage upon the alien military, the Klonor people were constantly on the brink of complete defeat and, ultimately, extinction. There was no successful communication between the Duke and whatever leaders may or may not have existed among the Shivans, and the sole goal the Shivans seemed to posess was the complete extermination of all Klonor life. When faced with such a powerful enemy that was unable to be reasoned with, defeat seemed inevitable.
First Contact: 1.7.2335
The first documented contact with the Shivans was in the form of an unprovoked assault on the Klonor military installation Riviera within the Ross 128 system. The first casualties were the pilots of an out-system standard patrol who, despite piloting the most advanced of current fighter craft, were quickly and brutally slaughtered without downing a single enemy craft. Though one fighter did manage to escape the battle and report the assault to the distant Riviera, the warnings of the frantic pilot and his descriptions of the brief battle were misinterpreted as to mean he had been ambushed by "rogue" members of the Jimathonian military. Ever since the Klonor/Jimathon Split from years earlier there had been a surprising amount of defection from the Jimathon armed forces to piracy. Though officially denied, it was widely believed they were acting with the knowledge and support of the Jimathon government and such ambushes had become almost routine. However, since none of the ambushes had involved anything larger than armed freighters, the command staff of the Riviera felt they were safe from attack and saw no need to immediately dispatch its stationed combat vehicles.
Unfortunately, the Shivans posessed a force which greatly surpassed the Jimathon pirates and, when they emerged from Sub-Space a bare few seconds after the Riviera dismissed the terrified pilots warnings, the entire military facility was demolished by what was later determined to be the SD Lucifer. However, it should be noted that, though the recovered evidence does point to the Lucifer being present, that conclusion is actually conjecture due to the lack of any concrete sensor information. There were no survivors from the assault and the entirety of the of the vessels in-system were either completely destroyed or disabled beyond hope of repair.
Declaration of War
The Riviera and the other vessels of the Corps stationed within Ross 128 were defeated within minutes of the Shivans arrivals and, with the complete surprise of the assault, the station Commander was unable to dispatch any message to the Klonor Admiralty stationed within Gamma Draconis. As a result, the other systems of Klonor remained completely ignorant of the Shivan assault and were only concious of a suspicious silence from the Ross 128 garrison. Two days later, 1.9.2335, a Fenris class Cruiser was dispatched from Deneb to investigate the lack of communication. Upon its arrival in Ross 128, and finding only rubble and debris where there was once a heavily armed and defended installation, the 5'th Fleet from Gamma Draconis was mobilised to re-secure the system and investigate the cause of the bases destruction. For several days afterwards there was no indication of who, or what, had destroyed the installation and, with no known weapon technology identified from the wreckage, the Corps was considering the possibility that an unknown alien species was responsibile for the attack. When several of the cargo shipments ferrying supplies between Gamma Draconis and the ships newly stationed within Ross 128 were intercepted and destroyed on 1.16.2335 the suspicion became fact.
Initial attempts at communication were met only with violence and the 5'th Fleet was quickly driven out of the Ross 128 system, sustaining massive casualties and only forestalling complete destruction by a hasty retreat. All assaults against known Shivan positions within Ross 128 were defeated easily and, when the Duke was forced to concede that the Empire had effectively lost the system, the Klonor forces stationed within the remaining systems were mobilised to defend against a large-scale invasion. There was one final attempt made at opening communications, a disastrous mission which resulted in the loss of 514 lives, before the Admiralty realised that there could be no dialogue established.
In responce to the Shivans actions, the invasion of Ross 128 and the continued assaults on other Klonor holdings, the Klonor Empire officially declared a State of War on 1.23.2335. Unfortunately, despite the activation of the entirety of the Klonor Space Corps and a sudden surge in enlistment, it seemed impossible to drive the Shivans from the territory they had already conquered.
