History of the Constitutional Dominion of Ersetu

Note: This entire document is undergoing rewrites

Being a continuation from the history of the Kishargal people, this page details the history of the world government of the planet Ersetu and the Kishargal people.

With the foundation of the Constitutional Dominion of Ersetu in the year one of the new calendar, the unified people of Ersetu were fully at peace for the first time in their long history. This is not to say that there were not difficulties and disagreements during this time. There was much frustration and bickering between politicians as to how this new world government was to be run and who was to run it. The long tradition of elective monarchy was agreed upon well enough, as it was the way most of the clan kingdoms governed themselves, but there was much debate over who would be included in the new parliament and house of lords and who would be eligible for election as the new king or queen and rule over their world and all it's holdings.

It took nearly two years to settle the debates and set a system in place before the first elections were held and. As it was, there was at least a short period of time when the fledgling government was nearly abandoned due to the interim councils inability to agree on anything. But, with all major hurdles passed, the first election was held and King Aryle of clan Leod was elected in the year three. Noted as a calm and thoughtful man, King Aryle came from one of the smaller clans. Despite this, he had held much respect within the international political venue and was well liked by many. His rule would last for nearly eighty years before he would step down and allow a younger member of the populace to be elected in his place. During his reign, Aryle set in place a great many of the building blocks that would be the bases for the modern government.

During this time, the fledgling government kept to it's self, Ersetian ships did not venture far from their home space as the new combined navy was structured and management of the colonies reworked. There was some expansion though, in the year fifty six, the Dunnain system was first explored and colonized within ten years.

The second king's reign of the Constitutional Dominion of Ersetu was short lived, King Adarr of clan Barkemp was of ill health and died six years after his election. Following him, Queen Nishaba of clan Kinnon, who later in history has become known as Nishaba the Great, was elected. She had climbed the political ladder fast, having served the parliament from an early age and was then elected at the young age of forty three. She was an aggressive and driven woman with aspirations for the Ersetu and the government she now ruled over.

During her reign, all known systems within reach of the Ersetu at that time were explored and colonized at least in part. She was the driving force behind a mass migration of Ersetu to other worlds, her belief being that Ersetu was too small and fragile a world to continue to support the bulk of their population and that it was to the benefit of the race to expand beyond the confines of their own system and few colonies.

To support the expansion of their colonies, Queen Nishaba put into place a program to build up the Royal Navy, both for a tool of exploration and for protection of colony ships and out of system holdings. Within her reign, the navy grew from the few dozen ships that had survived the war before unification, to a navy of hundreds of ships. Under her rule, the navy was modernized, upgraded and bolstered. As was the army, to protect the colonies on the ground and ensure the Ersetu were safe in their new homes.

For one hundred and thirty three years the Constitutional Dominion of Ersetu thrived and grew under Queen Nishaba's rule, and this age of prosperity did not come to an end upon her death in the year 219. The monarchs that followed continued her plans and with her drive and vision for the growing empire. Within a hundred years of the passing of Nishaba the Great, the Constitutional Dominion of Ersetu's borders looked much as they do today.

Over the years, the Ersetu made contact with various local races, traded with them, had minor disputes over territories, but generally got along with their neighbors. Their influence with the interstellar community grew as they spread out, Ersetian trade ships could be found plying the space lanes far and wide across the known sectors of the galaxy and they were known for their skill at sailing the stars and their aptitude for trade and navigation.

As with anything that grows, it eventually comes into conflict with another entity that repels its expansion. And such an obstacle did the Constitutional Dominion of Ersetu encounter. It was in the year 605 that Ersetian trade ships began to fall prey to a powerful and, then, unknown force. King Ishmed, the ruler of the empire at the time, sent forth the grand fleet with the intent of finding out who was attacking their trade ships and putting an end to it, in the hope of safeguarding continued trade with the galaxy at large. Over a thousand warships were sent out, an armada of line of battle ships, ships of the line and other smaller vessels fanned out from the Dominion's territory, to seek out the new enemy. Most would find nothing, this new enemy was sly and stealthy, remaining in the shadows, keeping quiet when Royal Navy warships were about. But this did not last.

In late 607 the Grand Fleet's 47th battle squadron, was ambushed by a fleet of warships, the ensuing battle lasted for three days, ending with the only three ships of the 47th battle squadron able to withdraw, the other nearly fifty ships either destroyed or disabled and captured. The ships that escaped did manage to bring back the computer records taken from an enemy warship that had been disabled and raided. This data was key in identifying the enemy, a coalition of smaller interstellar nations, known as the Eastern Alliance, who had always been at odds with the Dominion for decades over trade and territorial claims.

Outraged by this alliances attacks on Ersetian shipping and the near total destruction of a battle squadron, the parliament was quick to support King Ishmed's call for war and, a week later the Dominion was at war with the Alliance. The war was long and bloody. Early on, the Alliance held the advantage, with more ships and a larger army, they pressed their advantage, to the point of capturing the habitable worlds and stations in the Baelltainn and Reult systems. Even the Kuangirru system, the center of the Dominion, was under direct siege before the tide began to turn.

It was not until the twelfth year of the war that the armed forces of the Dominion began to make headway, driving the enemies forces from the Kuangirru system and another two years before they were able to begin operations to liberate Baelltainn and Reult in earnest. Finally enough warships, enough soldiers could be wielded to break the stranglehold on the eastern most systems.

The final battle in Ersetu space was above the world of Ninkashi, capital of the Baelltainn system, where the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet broke the coalition invasion fleet, destroying a great many of the enemy ships and taking the enemy flagship as a prize in a bloody boarding action conducted by the Grand Fleet's own flagship, which rammed the enemy warship before storming it. The enemy admiral was cut down in the ensuing fight. Their leadership gone, the remaining invaders broke off and ran from Ersetu space.

In the years that followed the armistice signed after the enemy defeat at Ninkashi, the Ersetu military aggressively defended their borders and pursued the forces of the now broken coalition whenever they encountered them. Even, some fifty years after the end of the war, the Ersetu conducted a brief and decisive offensive war against the primary member world of the former coalition, breaking their navy for good in a series of quick battles that relieved them of their major warships and crippled their shipbuilding capacities. This was the end of hostilities with these worlds, whose defeat lead to a long age of peace for the Ersetu.

With any long peace comes prosperity and stagnation. The Dominion grew fat and comfortable off trade with it's neighbors, and while pirates were and still are a perpetual problem, their military had little challenge it's supremacy and it began to wane. Budget cutbacks and drawdowns shrank the army, laid up the ships as less and less was needed to protect the planets and peoples from the dangers of the universe. With their old enemies pacified, internal struggle non existent, the Ersetu of this time lived in what they considered the beginning of an age of universal peace and enlightenment. Science, the arts, exploration, the pursuit of pleasure were the aspiration of the Ersetu people, while the glory of combat and the violence of their past began to fade into memory. The Ersetu were becoming a more civilized people, putting aside their old ways in favor of new ones. While this was not a bad thing, this time of peace would not last and even as they began to relax their guard, a great shadow was spreading across the gulf of space, creeping towards their borders.

Rumors came first, slowly, of an evil menace from far off across the galaxy, a vast star empire of immense power, snapping up every system and planet in it's path. For a long time the monarchy did not entertain the thought that a new, dreadful enemy threatened the Dominion after centuries of peace, turning a blind eye to the subject despite urging from the military to investigate.

Some years later, when contact was lost with an outermost deep space colony, the Navy dispatched an expedition out beyond the borders of Ersetu space, without authorization from the government. A small fleet, no more than a dozen warships and their supporting transports were quietly provisioned and tasked with discovering the fate of the colony.

The expeditionary force found the deep space colony completely destroyed. Little more than rubble was left of the once massive space complex, which had measured over fifteen kilometers across. Outraged at the loss of hundreds of thousands of Ersetu lives, Admiral Barace Kinnon, commander of the expedition force, sent a dispatch boat with their findings back to the admiralty, then took her fleet on to track down those who had destroyed their colony.

Planning to exact revenge, Kinnon took her fleet into the deep black of space, pressing far through territories of friends and old enemies. As they traveled farther from their home space signs showed that things were very wrong. Probing systems known to be inhabited by friendly peoples, they found worlds subjugated and captured or wiped out entirely. The admiral ordered her ships to given further inhabited systems a wide birth, not wanting her ships to attract the attention of this still unknown hostile force.

Kinnon's hopes of continued investigation were cut short though, as they finally encountered the enemy. There was little advanced warning as Kinnon's force nearly collided with the hostiles in a vast nebula. The battle was long and viscous. Ships hammered away at each other, battering each other to wreckage. Kinnon's flagship, the 140 gun first rate HMS Illustrious was badly mauled, her starboard masts and FTL generators shot away in a close passing broadside with two enemy battleships. Despite being badly bloodied, Illustrious pounded her opponents into scrap and emerged from between their burning hulks, only to face down the rest of the enemy fleet.

Mortally wounded, Admiral Kinnon ordered the last three FTL capable frigates and all the transports in her fleet to escape and return with all their collected data to Ersetu. Kinnon knew she was done, knew her flagship and the rest of her line of battle ships were unable to escape themselves. So they turned their best functioning broadsides to the enemy and blocked the way as the frigates and transports ran. The fate of Kinnon's line of battle after the last moments seen from the trailing frigate's stern gallery is unknown to this day. It took nearly seven months for the remainder of the expedition force to get home. They were pursued for a long time and most of the transports and one of the frigates had to be abandoned along the way, either because of mechanical failure, lack of supplies and one final skirmish with the enemy.

When they did get home, the survivors of the expedition brought the proof that showed in vivid detail what was coming. This evidence, along with the loss of several more long range outposts convinced the monarch that a dark time was coming for the Ersetu people. The age of peace and enlightenment was over.

The shock of the news stunned the Dominion, which was slow to mobilize it's defenses. Their long time allies and trading partners were falling all around them to what they now knew was called the ANTAGONIST. A force who's true power was still unknown to the Dominion. In 925, the Queen, newly elected after the abdication of the former monarch, who believed their failure to the Ersetu people too great to continue leading them, called for the mass rearmament of the military and for all Ersetu assets to be withdrawn immediately within their borders.

The plan was to gather everyone and everything they had close to home and fortify Dominion space to defend against the oncoming shadow. Much to the amazement of the few unassailed friends they had left in the universe, the Dominion withdrew from all trade and defense agreements, cutting themselves off from the intergalactic community at large in a move to monopolize all military, monetary and supplies for the defense of Ersetu space.

Cut off from the galaxy around them, the Ersetu fortified their systems and planets, the Ersetu build up their navy and army and prepared for the inevitable invasion by an unstoppable force. They were alone as the universe around them seemed to go dark as one by one reports from outside their borders began to slow and eventually stopped coming. What happened to everyone around them, the Ersetu did not know for a long time. A ban on all communications and travel outside the borders was in place and enforced by the newly established navy border guard to a lethal degree.

No invasion came, no ships came, no transmissions came. The entire Dominion, the Ersetu people as a whole waited with held breath.

Gunsight1 created this article.