Baroque Space Opera

For two thousand years the Great Hermetic Empire was the center of human civilization, a slowly-shifting aggregation of worlds that lived, even thrived in the shadow of the Elders. Having stitched a star-spanning polity out of the ruins and remains of the Atlantean Empire as well as dozens of realms dating to the post-Atlantean diaspora, the Great Hermetic Empire was not a golden age but was nonetheless a time of strength.

Having generally avoided any long and truly damaging wars with the Elders, the Empire was nonetheless brought to the brink of ruin by said Elders; not by design or malice (at least, none directed solely at humanity) but as collateral when the Elders fell into bitter and genocidal warring.

Known by many names - Ragnarok, Armageddon, Götterdämmerung, the Apocalypse, the Godswar, the Endwar, the Elder War - this cataclysmic conflict is believed to have begun with antercine conflict among the Giantkin. Coming out of the century-long 63rd Roar the Empire and humanity as a whole was busy dealing with its own internal issues and was essentially a bystander and then victim of this war to end all wars. Between roughly CC4750 and CC4950 all of the Elders were drawn into the bitter and uncompromising war; by CC4800 the Elders had escalated to strategic weapons and the multisided war had become a broken-backed conflict as higher authority broke down and individual splinters took to fighting, raiding and destroying whoever and whatever they encountered, even as dwindling stocks of strategic weapons continued to be used with increasingly little restraint or for any 'strategy'.

The long-heralded arrival of the 64th Grand Roar circa CC4950 put an end to organized warfare but, stoked by the use of weapons invented by ten thousand years of malign genius, the 64th Grand Roar was a terrible force itself. Radiants dimmed and worlds already scarred by biochemical and mutagenic weapons were scoured by the scorn of a damaged universe. It would be known as the Endroar and for many, it was indisputably the end.

When the Imperial Navigator's Guild declared the 64th Grand Roar over in CC5063, the Elders were no more. Oh they still existed - the Hobbits, least of the Giantkin, had survived and even began to prosper in the 64th Stadial, while the Zwerg, second-least of the Giantkin, shattered into uncountable holds but persevered as they always did. The Gingolic had become monsters, casting aside their nobility to become debased caricatures of themselves to better slay a universe full of enemies. The Tengrid fled to the deep darks, changing themselves to survive. Even metahumanity itself, not a party to the conflict's genesis, saw many worlds collapse into technobarbarism or just collapse altogether.

Many of the worlds of known space were - and still are - severely damaged by Ragnarok. Insidious environmental poisons, scouring winds of energy, erratic fluctuations or greatly decreased local illuminance, dessication, weaponized biospheres, mutagenic miasma and ether deserts . . . the list is long and depressing. In hindsight it could be seen that many human-inhabited worlds, already marginal when settled, bore the scars of similar but far more ancient war. A commonly accepted figure is that 9/10th of human-occupied arable land was lost over the course of Ragnarok and the Endroar, though given the intensive cultivation (sometimes to the point of nutrient depletion) that was undertaken afterwards this is probably a significant underestimate.

But in the destruction there was rebirth as well. The strength and length of the 64th Grand Roar saw new worlds pulled into existence and the 'petit roars' of the 65th and 66th were gentle, as if the cosmos was exhausted after its tantrum. There are once again new frontiers for those with wanderlust and, for those with hearts steeled to adventure, old frontiers in the Elder Wastes.

Ages of Empire

• Atlantean Period (BCC100-CC1100) - The first great realm-spanning empire of humanity, the ancient Atlanteans were infamously masters of ancient gene-alchemy and various sorcerous arts. They were also the patrons (or creators, depending on the historical source) of the Alfar. Temporal distance and occasional suppressions and purges has left Fated Atlantis more myth than well-documented history.
• Republican Period (1776-2285) - The Hermetic Republic was the direct predecessor of the Hermetic empire, a mercantile-militant league of statelets and cities to eventually become the greatest post-Atlantean human polity.
• Early Imperial Period (2300-2900) - Broad, sweeping reforms in the late 23rd century saw the old Republic reshaped into the Empire; while still nowhere near as large or powerful as it would be in late stadials, the early imperial period is widely considered to have been a golden age of arts and sciences. Many later Imperial institutions date to this period and most critically, the Atlantean-built Bifrost network was returned to functionality near the end of the early Imperial period.
• Great Imperial Period (2900-4800) - The human empire that emerged out of the privation of the 60th Grand Roar was more militant, more dogmatic, more xenophobic and was propelled to its eventual heights of power and size by a manifest destiny to unify all humanity. While never achieved - there were always those outside of the Empire such as the Aegir Althing, the Phoenician Farscape and the Rutasan Synergy - it is was indisputable that the Great Hermetic Empire was the greatest human power. Note that while Imperial historians recognize a half-dozen discrete periods in the height of the Great Imperial Period, they are of little import to later events.
• Exodus Period (4800-4950) - As fallout both literal and figurative from the Elder War ignored any borders and spread across known space, famines of various sort began to afflict the Empire. Ragnarok respected no borders and as various human worlds suffered attacks or more lingering damage, many citizens from the highest to lower classes decamped for the outer edges of charted space. Their destination were various isolated worldlets, drifts and the like of limited value, but in having limited value they were also far away from the madness.
• Anarchic Period (4950-5075) - Already weakened as collateral damage from Ragnarok, the fury of the 64th Grand Roar shrivelled true Hermetic control to the realms easily accessible by the surviving Bifrost network. Many taboos were broken and formerly sacrosanct restrictions were first skirted then openly flouted as isolated realms fought stormriders or simply fought themselves; various forms of gene-forging and cyber-augmentation to create everything from chimerical kill-beasts to mass produced vat-swarmers to savagely bellicose cybersoldiers became common.
• Exigency Period (5075-5350) - Effectively a continuation of the Anarchic Period, the Exigency was a nadir of civilization; warlords, bandit-fleets, privation and the progressive failure of many technologies all conspired to bring the survivors of Ragnarok low. At the same time the clearing of space led to a renaissance in travel and the shattering of ancient taboos - many of which were slowly reestablished - allowed information to flow freer than it had in millennia.
• Confederation Period (5350-Present) - The Hermetic Empire endures, but is diminished in many ways. Much of what was once Imperial worlds is some combination of ruined, striken by poverty or destitution, de facto independent or de jure independent. But amidst this political disunity many of the horrors of Ragnarok have been laid to rest even as new worlds are settled and economies once again put on an upwards course.