History of the Mindsea Empire

They say that humanity first spread through the galaxy after Kokkiro, King of Earth, ascended the Stairway of Ice that leads to the center of space and time.

Because this event took place a thousand millennia before the empire arose, it is only one of many possible pasts leading to the empire, but it is one imperial citizens choose to enshrine.

The colonists who followed in Kokkiro's footsteps took with them the genetic codes for all Earth's life-forms, both living and extinct, and seeded their new homes with familiar flora and fauna. The human mind and body remained largely unchanged on many colonized worlds, so although contact between worlds was lost in many cases, and new languages and customs evolved, a basis for eventual reunification remained.

Attequol was born on a small island on the planet Tywoshak. Although his people were simple fishermen, Tywoshak was a technologically-advanced world that had anti-aging genes and universal education. Theirs was a trading world, and Attequol was so impressed by the interplanetary merchants who visited that he built his own ship to follow them.

Attequol was gifted with the ability to perceive deep-level forces and to design equipment that made use of those forces. He sailed the universe-generating waves of the Deep as he had sailed the ocean of his native world. He is credited with inventing the science of Patternistics.

His mindpowers caused Attequol to be called the first mindsea, although historians feel that Kokkiro must also have been a mindsea.

Attequol had a transforming vision. He foresaw that, just as the myriads of islands on the Tywoshakian ocean were united under one government, the inhabited planets scattered across the ocean of space might be united. He set out on a mission of conquest. Most of the planets he visited were primitive compared with Tywoshak, but even the more advanced peoples could not withstand the patternistic weapons Attequol had developed. Within the course of a few millennia, he forged an empire consisting of three thousand and ten planets.

Attequol ruled his peaceful empire for almost five hundred years. Then he vanished. As the years passed, histories traced back to the moment of his disappearance multiplied. Some maintain that he died aiding citizens during a disaster. Others say that he ascended the Stairway of Ice and never returned, just as Kokkiro had.

Attequol's son, Aturon, was supposed to take over the reins of empire, but he preferred to hunt planets, and vanished for millennia. A magnificent patternistic detector was constructed at the galactic capital, meant to light up brilliantly when Aturon returned, but it lay forgotten long before that event occurred. A theocracy was established, centered around the galaxy's absent gods—Attequol and Aturon—and the patternistic technology that had melded the empire.

Holy Emperor Teong, a woman who rose from obscurity to seize control of the galaxy, guided the theocracy during its first millennium, impressing upon the people of every planet that they must be pious and worship her as the representative of the absent gods in order for their technology to continue to work. Her successor, Holy Emperor Skiokian, was a mindsea like Teong. Even more narcissistic, he tried to replace the ancient emperors as the galaxy's primary god.

Aturon returned at last to the capital after a voyage that had seemed much shorter to him in the Deep, as far removed from ripples of time as creatures of the abyss are removed from disturbances on the ocean's surface. He put an end to the false piety. But he did not enjoy the responsibilities of governing, and departed once again for other galaxies.

Sometime later, Quokisa appeared and took power on the dubious claim of being Aturon's granddaughter. She set about hunting down the soul-gems, conduits of deep-level force that had been forged by Attequol and lost or destroyed by his successors. It was her dream to rediscover the secrets that had made the early empire prosper, but she was thwarted by remnants of the old theocracy, who called her requisitioning of the ancient artifacts piratical and supported the return to power of Skiokian.

In 10,971 a mindsea named Reorza rose from obscurity when she defeated Skiokian in a mindduel and took the throne. She did away with the state religion, instead emphasizing galactic productivity. A financial genius, she tapped previously unused resources, putting the galaxy's animals to work alongside its human citizens.

Despite a couple of setbacks, including one thousand-year banishment, Reorza's power structure controlled the empire into the Twenty-First Millennium, as vast corporations run by her favorites arose and slowly consolidated positions controlling all of the commerce in the empire. The corporations remained long after Reorza's final overthrow in 16,483.

Holy Empress Ashia, who took power in 20,973, was the longest continuously-serving galactic emperor. During her interminable reign, she wrested control from the corporations and invested it in organs dedicated to her worship. Her dogma doubted the divinty of ancient mindseas, instead pointing out the present and practical (herself) as the true omnipotence in citizens' lives. She had no mindpowers, and towards the end of nearly ten-thousand years on the throne her personality disintegrated in the process of crystallization that affects most citizens despite antiaging. Long habit kept the theocracy running smoothly for another two hundred years after her death.

Emperor Rathax, who took the throne in 30,464, was inspired to use mathematics creatively in order to increase the empire's wealth. Other rulers had tried to maintain a unified timeline across the many imperial worlds, but Rathax reasoned that if one allowed the timelines to proliferate freely,income could be collected from all of the multiverse. Rathax tried to reduce all of the timeline-fusing towers Attequol had built, and was crushed by a falling wall.

Rathax was succeeded first by a cousin and later by descendants who called the problem of poor communications the solution to economic woes. A series of these weak emperors controlled the galaxy until the dawn of the Thrty-eighth Millennium, and kept the credits flowing.

The last great ruler of the plutocracy, Empress Bouk, scion of a lesser family, sought still more powerful and destructive equations to draw on the fundamental patterns of the universe. "Extend to the unknown," she urged the stewards of her monetary schemes. She reigned for nearly a thousand years.

In 37,889, Emperor Zipo, a son of old Empress Ashia, swept into power to begin a reign that would extend, off and on, to the first year of the Forty-Seventh Millennium. Zipo cast aside the reverence for mathematics and the focus on milking the timelines in favor of an old-fashioned warlike and expansionist philosophy, and the empire shifted from realms of time to realms of space.

The galactic throne had not been won in a mind-duel since the Evolved Plutarchy, but all that changed with Zipo. He paved the way for ambitious men and women to advance, not through family connections, but by deep-level fighting prowess. He himself was defeated and dethroned on four occasions, but managed to effect a comeback three times before dying in the mind-fire of Empress Teg, who would remain supreme for a millennium.

Imperial Major Reenet, ever seeking to solve the mystery of why she resembled ancestral human stock rather than her parents, engineered a supreme duelling emperor from wild hominid genes. Emperor Rocki triumphed in thirty-one mind duels and held onto the throne for two thousand years. Dying undefeated, he was followed by his and Reenet's great-granddaughter, Svishice, who herself regained the throne after her defeat by an unknown mind-duellist.

In 64,902 Mindsea-empress Besi, who claimed to be a descendant of Quokisa, took power. She cleared away the old engines of war and instituted a meritocracy. Her plan was to allow the most energetic and creative imperial citizens to come to the fore. She hoped to encourage a wide spectrum of improvements, in the arts and architecture as well as science.

In 65,530 Besi was assassinated by a son of Svishice. However, Emperor Treuho did not return to his predecessors' violent ways, but continued Besi's reforms. Instead of mind-duels, deep-level horseraces determined the winners of important positions throughout the empire. The seven millennia of Treuho's rule saw increasing benefits of patternistic technology, including transaxes that guided interstellar travelers across the timelines. Treuho was succeeded by a son who continued his policies for another fifteen hundred years.

During its last millennium, during the reign of Empress Druoheen, positions of power were often filled by military force or bought, though the name and form of the meritocracy continued.

In 76,558, Imperial Major Musa, weary of the tameness of imperial life, transformed the meritocracy into a theocracy. She succeeded in her search for a holy emperor who would believe in her vision of a terrrible god by using the DNA of Emperor Rocki's lineage to create Empress Quazi. Quazi did not reign for long, but her successors continued the theocracy.

In 78,529, a mindsea named Zah Lite ascended the throne with her expanded take on Musa's vision. She declared that existence was a battle between the human will and the uncaring, often dangerous forces of nature. She emphasized the need for masters of the universe to become strong, to use force against force. She herself provided an example of masterful will. She pointed out, triumphantly, that mindseas draw their vitality from the same deep-level realm that generates universes, and thus are immune to crystallization. Unlike old Empress Ashia, she could reign forever.

The following millennia witnessed the back-and-forth struggle between Zah Lite, the unleasher of cataclysms, and galactic business interests that craved less destruction of their resources and customers. Zah Lite was overthrown, but as she was the only one who understood how to maintain the deep-level systems that had been built during the previous era, the victors did not dare put her to death. Twice she broke free from supposedly secure prisons to regain the throne. Finally, in 86,206 she was imprisoned for the last time as Tashet, a great-granddaughter of Empress Quazi, took the throne. Zah Lite died two millennia later during the reign of Holy Empress Zupa.

Major Riemis Horl Draxurant bred, trained, installed and removed emperors during the seven millennia after the reign of the last Holy Empress Zupa, while he used the galaxy as a laboratory for his time experiments. His mastery of the timelines allowed him to banish rivals and detractors into other histories or to isolate them in worlds with spatial, temporal, or patternistic walls, while his chosen lieutenants enjoyed the benefits of his inventions and wielded great power over the common people of the planets they governed. In the end, one of his experiments got out of control and caused his downfall.

As the empire reached its hundredth millennium, mindsea emperors produced by the previous era's breeding program waged fierce battles for control of the galaxy, sometimes laying waste to entire planets. The secrets of temporal and patternistic engineering that Major Riemis had uncovered were again lost. In response to the violence and chaos, a movement grew to exclude the wild genes Major Riemis had introduced in his experiments and return the galaxy to the supervision of the empire's ancient and tested bloodlines.