2300: To the Stars!
My first Centennial celebration was a tremendous success in spite of the mistrust in which I was held by the military aristocracy. All the commoners hated my predecessor's draconian solutions to the chronic danger of overpopulation, and at the height of our celebrations, I proposed my solution: To just let them breed like crazy, and find more room among the stars!
Here you can see our initial plan of exploration and colonization. The green star just to the southwest was tempting, being closest, but the yellow star was nearer to the heart of the galaxy, would expand our scout's range further when we built our colony supply depot there, and - sharing our own star's color - seemed most likely to harbor a planet like our homeworld. Moreover, it lay close to the eastern red star, which according to Draco's calculations was also likely to hold a hospitable world in case our hope for the yellow star failed. We therefore sent our prototype Colony Ship northeast while our prototype Scouts moved to the flanking red and white stars; meanwhile, Sssla's factories would start turning out the cheaper assembly-line model Newscouts, to speed our exploration. That way, when the first one off the line was sent to the nearby green star, we would be able to explore all four stellar systems within three parsecs of Sssla in the year...
2303: Birth of an Interstellar Empire
The yellow star, dubbed Romulas, harbored a beautiful world, covered with lush, verdant jungle, with plenty of space for 80 million lizards to breed. We colonized it at once, and 4 million Sakkra departed to begin their new lives there. Far more were clamoring to go, but I had other plans for them, especially since we had spent most of our time and energy building Newscouts in lieu of infrastructure in the first few years of the interstellar age (notice the five ships still in transit toward the distant reaches of the galaxy and the new fleet at Sssla, which consists of two more Newscouts waiting to receive their orders; we would also build two more by the following year). Knowing that they would breed at an immoderate rate anyway, I would only send 3 million more over the course of the next few years - one transport in 2305, two in 2306 - and that would be it for many years. I wanted more colony ships, as soon as I could get them, especially in light of the other scouting reports we received! Though the white star unsurprisingly had no habitable planets - just the Antares asteroid belt - the red star was Beta Ceti, a warm desert world with room for 45 million lizards. And the green star ... the green star was Arietis.
Once the homeworld of an ancient and powerful people, Arietis Prime held only crumbling ruins and desert sands. According to the records found there, the planet's people were known as the Arietans, bitter enemies of the "Guardians of Orion" - as our chief historian put it so eloquently, "whatever that's supposed to mean!" The Arietans were a space-faring people who had developed technology far in advance of our own, but our engineers and scientists found to their deep regret that the powerful, unknown forces that destroyed Arietan civilization did a very thorough job of the thing, aided still more by the passing centuries. Away teams managed to recover little of immediate value except plans for a military rocket barely more advanced than our own nuclear missiles (whose use I had banned in 2283), tentatively named the Hyper-V on the basis of patchy records found in the ruins.
Disappointment in this feeble discovery was quickly drowned however. Though the fallout of the ancient war with the Guardians left Arietis a mere desert, capable of supporting no more than 35 million Sakkra, enough remained of the ancient cities that I hoped we could someday learn to match and even exceed the Arietans' knowledge. We just needed a long-term research colony to delve deeper into the place's secrets (this was my mantra in the early years, I'm afraid). I was almost sorry we hadn't sent our prototype Colony Ship there at once ... but it's hard to argue with our beautiful jungle world at the heart of the galaxy (especially with Sakkra commoners breeding like ... like ... well, like commoner Sakkra, if you've any notion of what that means)!
Perhaps more important still was the fact of the Arietans' existence! From what our away teams could gather, they were not saurian in nature, but fur-covered marine mammals (small wonder that they died when their world was turned to a desert!) bearing a slight superficial resemblance to certain types of otters that live in Sssla's seas. (There was also the question of the Guardians, but surely they couldn't be important! After all, they'd lived centuries ago, and we'd never heard from them!) For the first time, we came to understand that we were not alone in the galaxy. My military advisors at once began to clamor for war ships built around the new Hyper-V rockets. Ridiculous notions, frankly. We had yet to meet another living species, and I believed that when we did meet others, we could learn together from all our neighbors in the vast galaxy we shared, forever at peace! Look, I was young, okay?
OOC Note: The die roll at Arietis will have a huge effect on the game. Any planetology or construction tech would provide a huge boost - especially coming as it does on the second or third turn of the game - as would any propulsion tech other than Stabilizer (especially an engine, considering our propulsion tree). Even semi-advanced weapon, shield, or computer techs could provide significant benefits. The draw I got had little or no impact on my game, but it wasn't the worst possible outcome by any means. I've seen Artifacts worlds yield Robotic Controls 3 ... and if you had to pay 15 BC per factory starting from turn 2 or 3 ... well, I'll bet it made things challenging!_______________
Next: Our Friendly Neighbors ... and their war fleets
