The Mezant is a star system located in the galaxy of Orion 5. It was formed around seventeen billion years ago and lies over seven million light years from Earth. It is home to an unknown number of states and many sentient species.
History[]
The emergence of different life forms on planets across the Mezant System occurred nearly within fifty years of century 4, with the Novaterran Heskuars and the Elarion Celekons establishing space travel in this time frame, leading to diplomatic relations and technology sharing being established. Other races, including the Zid, Tyvk, Pulsarians, Dræth, Valkyri, Korinth, Lorthrid, and multiple other races, then took to space, all achieving faster-than-light travel within this fifty-year frame, with colonial expansion as a main focus. Upon first contact, many of the civilizations, driven by expansionist initiatives, engaged in armed conflict with each other. This period of armed conflict lasted until century 5, when the spacefarers started to form peace agreements out of war-weariness. These peace agreements turned into formal alliances based on mutual interest. A period of calm ensued throughout the galaxy, allowing the states to recuperate.
During the opening period of century 6, the Mezant races formed sovereign states:
- Elarion (Celekon)
- Elementium (Zid)
- Valkryia (Valkyri)
- Dræthis (Dræth)
- Pulsars (Pulsarian)
- Novaterra (Heskuar)
- Quasars (Korinth)
- Orionis (Tyvk)
- Luminara (Delhinorg)
- Andromeda (Lorthrid)
The new states were quick to achieve technologies improving production output in the early 6th Mezant century. This development led to economic prosperity and a booming interstellar market. This was accompanied by a political shift in the alliance of the eastern states of the Mezant map, later known formally as the Astral Dominance Alliance. It saw the expansion of megacorporations and close cooperation between them and states whose space in which they were present, contributing to unobstructed economic growth in most states. During the Greater Tyvk Expansion, the Tyvk discovery of several resource-rich solar systems, Orionis created multiple biologically engineered species to fulfill an array of roles, marking a period of advancement in Orionis. This spread to Vortexia, with the creation of Trans-Vortexians, or Enginix, between 6040-6047. Armed conflict between Elarion and Elementium had largely been ignored by the rest of the Mezant community, and attempts by the Interstellar Administration League ultimately fell through.
By 6050, the entirety of the Mezant was discovered. Competition for the newly discovered space led to renewed tension between the Astral Dominance Alliance and the Pact of Nationhood led to heated diplomatic disputes, opening the doors for more conflict, with the Andromedan invasion of Novaterra that same year, which, given the latter's PoN membership, had tensions deepened. In this time, new weapons were developed; bio-engineered viruses were created and deployed in warzones often in order to destabilize economic output and erode enemy morale. Warring states openly defied the Interstellar Administration League, acting in violation of mandates and passed resolutions, especially during the terms of Novaterra and Elarion as members of the Mezant Council. The Vortexian race created Republic of Vortexia in 6056, seceding from the Pulsar Republic, in the buildup to the First Pulsar-Vortexia War, after two centuries of maltreatment from the Pulsarian species' majority; this conflict provided the Pact of Nationhood a chance to assert its influence by supporting Vortexia militarily and diplomatically. In 6073, the bio-engineered Tyvk rebelled against the Orionisian regime after developing their own identities and belief systems, and formed sovereign entities of their own. Orionis never attempted to retake the lost territories, and wiped all records of the existence of the Outer Tyvk. In 6076, a cybernetic race called the Vern began its own era of enhancement, taking on improvements which resulted in the emergence of the artificial intelligence race known as Prime, who would form the modern-day polity of the Nebulon Consortium. The Vern would become extinct by 6091.
Between the 6.1st and 6.6th Mezant centuries, relative peace was maintained, while conflicts occurred outside the star system in the Milky Way. In this period, changes in ideology and governance were made, with each state holding more pronounced ideological positions. This was when the spacefarers of the Astral Dominance Alliance adopted more authoritarian and xenophobic positions. In this time, many spacefarers expanded their territories far outside the Mezant, opening the door to new armed conflicts over territories in adjacent star systems, a notable one being the brief Isskian War (or the Ishkian War) between Valkyria and Orionis. Many of the Outer Tyvk, who had by now been isolated from the wider Mezant community for almost seven Mezant centuries, had finished building their own respective societies. The meteorite-feathered Tyvk-M, employed by the Orionisian government for microgravity habitats and asteroid mining, created six generation ships by this time, becoming a stateless transient race. The obsidian-feathered Tyvk-X remained stateless and engaged in either hunter-gatherer or technoprimitive survival systems.
In the beginning of the 7th Mezant century, some more interstellar technological gains were made, especially by Elementium, who utilized wireless planetary-scale energy transmission, and more recently, time dilation. In 7002, Elarion was completely defeated in the First Elarion-Elementium War, its remaining naval units withdrawing to a neutral planet called Ellanea. They reformed into the modern-day Elarion Technocratic Federation later, rebuilt its military power using preserved technologies, and launched an offensive against Elementium to reclaim its lost planets—this offensive succeeded, and even saw Elarion occupying frontier planets of Elementium. Currently, some of the most researched technologies are gravity weapons, autonomous self-replicating colony ships, live starships, and mind upload. To this day, there are approximately over 36 billion races within the Mezant star system, an overwhelming majority of them either stateless or originating from entities outside of the Mezant.
Politics[]
The Mezant is known for its unstable geopolitical landscape which has persisted for decades, defined by the long-standing rivalry between the Pact of Nationhood and the Astral Dominance Alliance, commonly known as the Astralies. Neither alliance has a de jure leading state. The two alliance have competed for influence in the Mezant since century 6; specific speculated dates range from years 6773 to 6812. Before then, many species had not traveled beyond their home planets. The geopolitical era is thought internally to have been caused by mutual distrust between the alliances and competing colonial ambitions. The first recorded proxy war in the Mezant System, the First Elarion-Elementium War, lay the path for more proxy wars for the next two centuries, notably the First and Second Pulsar-Vortexia Wars, the Second Elarion-Elementium War, the Andromeda invasion of Novaterra, and the Outer Tyvk Uprising. The often large scale of the proxy wars and the lack of compliance from member states contributed to the rapid loss of power of the system's interstellar intergovernmental organization, the Interstellar Administration League, which has only held jurisdiction over the Mezant.
The Mezant has seen recent conflicts in century 7, many of which part of the larger conflicts between geopolitically opposing states. The recent conflict between the Luminara Commonwealth and the Nebulon Consortium and the Lex-Frosthavn conflict not long after the Outer Tyvk Rediscovery have brought the old issue of geopolitical rivalries to the Mezant as Nationhood states like Novaterra and Quasaria continue to get involved.
Technology[]
The technology level of the Mezant star system may vary between spacefarers but is generally considered to be a single level below the Outside Organization, at Tier II.VI, which is attributed to an interstellar scale. Most known Mezant spacefarers make use of antimatter energy, Dyson swarm energy, planet-killer weapons, and fully reliable faster-than-light travel, including warp drive. As the Mezant went through warring states, new technologies were sought after, leading to multiple states discovering planet-killer weapons, warp drive, and administrative artificial intelligence at the same time. Xenobiology was heavily influenced by interstellar politics, resulting in states following biased conclusions regarding the races of other states.
The most advanced spacefarer in the Mezant is currently the Prime of the Nebulon Consortium, who are known for their automation of most areas of society. The Prime maintain their status as interstellar leaders in AI-assisted resource allocation, post-scarcity economies, and terraforming technologies. The first space megastructures, large orbital habitat complexes and artificial intelligence conclaves were built by Andromeda, while the first sentient AI conclaves were created by the Dræth. By the 6.8th Mezant century, medical advances had eliminated all diseases. Elementium had been able to remain a dominant Mezant power due to its flourishing arcane technology, which had soon become the backbone of Zid society. Luminara is known for its environmental advancements, notably in self-replicating ecosystems, allowing for guaranteed habitability sustainment.
In the 6.9th Mezant century, the Interstellar Administration League mandated the creation of a new race to serve mediation efforts between warring spacefarers. This unnamed race participated in peace processes in the Pulsar-Vortexia Wars and Elarion-Elementium Wars, which both ended up failing. When the IAL encountered difficulty in regulating interstellar Mezant law and was increasingly ignored by Mezant states, the unnamed race supposedly dispersed across the Mezant, as traces of the unnamed species had been lost over sixty years. By 7002, records of the unnamed species completely strayed. Some members of the unnamed race were thought to have defected and become transients, possibly roaming across or beyond the Mezant. Since then, several more species have been created, including the technologically enhanced humanoid Axel-A, Axel-B, and Axel-C species. These species serve multiple functions, these being peacekeeping, unity formation, decontamination, and environmental restoration roles.
Which spacefarer was the first to develop memetic weapons is unclear. However, memetic warfare emerged in the late 6.9th Mezant century, with the creation of an unnamed neuroviral propaganda meme in the Andromeda Hegemony. Memetic weapons would only be developed further in the contemporary 7th Mezant century, and make presences in modern conflicts, the War in the Hathaau Nebula and the Lex-Frosthavn conflict serving as stark examples.