Alkari Challenge - Introduction

The year is 2508. There is chaos in the empire. The noble Alkari people have spread across more than half the galaxy, surviving war on five different fronts as well as terrible setbacks like the massive industrial accident that irradiated Cygni - once a lush, Terran world that stood among the greatest in the galaxy. We have survived the violent lizard-beasts of Sssla that sought to destroy us, the swarms of Kholdan, and even the mad Psilon technophiles of Mentar from the Deception Nebula - survived their attacks, and survived their deaths, defeating them in battle and claiming their worlds for our own. We survived even the depradations of Ursa's Bulrathi warriors ... but it was not we who tore their homeworld from their massive claws. For though four fronts have closed forever, the fifth remains, and the Meklar machine collective grows ever more powerful, threatening even now to wipe us from the face of the galaxy.

Their technological edge is devastating, but might we not survive even this - we the Alkari, fearless in defense of our nests, lords of the skies and stars? Perhaps we might, were we united ... but the empire is in chaos. The terror of the Meklar sweeps before them, and none know how to respond. Even the emperor himself - the noble Alkari champion who led us to so many victories, and the only one alive who knows the makeup of the Meklar fleets - has fled the power of the machine collective, and abdicated in despair.

Our worlds flail about, leaderless, uncertain of what to do, with no one remaining to guide them all toward the same objective. Crippling war taxes drag at our people's efforts, feeding an emergency fund that can now be used only by whatever ruler - if any - might emerge out of the chaos, while massive energies are spent to train avian spies doomed to summary execution by the Meklar's impenetrable computerized security grid. Hundreds of billions of credits are being spent each year to maintain our ancient war fleet over Escalon...

...even as new fleets are ordered to proceed to the staging star of Galos, the system that should itself become by far our greatest shipyard, but which - having just completed its factory infrastructure - has instead been assigned by its panicked local governor, lacking orders from on high, to churn all its available energy into theoretical research.

The doom of the Alkari sounds through the skies of our worlds, amidst confusion and fear. Prophets of the end times cry out that the Meklar will consume our empire world by world, year by year, until nothing remains. With no one to lead us, we have no hope ... and so one must arise. Some turn to despair, and so help to ensure their own destruction. Some rail against the emperor who led them so well and so far, or against those who - like themselves - dare not take up his mantle. Some pray, and may it do them good.

I lead.

By our ancestors, by the blood of emperors that runs still in our veins, for our lives and for our future, someone must lead us against the Meklar. One of us must claim the High Perch lest we all die. One, should all be lost, must take the blame. One must lead us, that though we die, we may die with honor and with purpose - or that we may yet survive and succeed!

Very well: Let that one be me!