SCIENCE&ARTWORK | THE HOKU | STELLAR STAGE | PART 2

THE LOWER STELLAR ERA

The recorded history of the Hoku is complicated to track through certain periods of time, the pre-stellar wars and lower stellar era are two great examples of such periods.

That happens because our society's particular records only extend so far up to its annexation by the Dominion, from that point and beyond, a great deal of information became withheld and controlled by the Arrene. I believe that the Hoku born within the Dominion do know some of the stories as passed of oral tradition, but the specifics are only known or hypothesized by historians and archeologists. Such studies are currently frowned upon despite the historical importance, and I understand very well why, we spend so many resources and travel to distant places only to return with notes which must be worked on afterwards, which is why we often ferry in cargo ships venturing onto the outlands for scraps, a good portion of those scraps belong to hoku warships, starships, battlestations, transport and mining vessels scattered across what is now a wasteland space.

Apart from scrapping this secular equipment, a few communities still negotiate with the tribes of starpeople, or Chelok. The Chelok are very secretive about their ways and affairs for strangers, but my team and professors have managed to gather some interesting pieces of Chelok culture which I'm eager to share in future notes. Alright, back to the Chelok, it is well noted that they were neutral allies to the Hoku people, provinding technology and a few insights into fields they have long ago mastered, however, despite the admiration those old enough to remember feel for the very few notable Chelok warriors we once fought aside, understandably many Chelok and Hoku feel quite a resentment against each other - during the times of great need they haven't moved a single finger towards humanitary help, as well they have lost their only outworld to the Force during the Fall of Hokushoku. Despite the overall consensus that what happened is nor their fault or fight, some groups are still interested in the trades with the Dominion as we posess a few goods and spices which cannot be found anywhere else...

CIRCA 1997 PSE

It was the day of winter solstice, so of course the hoku people had parties as usual in the Muhori system, for the entertainment of the people, it also happens that Muhori traverse the orbits of several comets during the winter solstice, it was a great opportunity to take photos of the hundreds of comets and the meteor showers.

Ground telescopes looked for any new comets for that season, but amongst the bright comets they noticed outgassing and ices spraying and settling on the surface of a very dark object past the asteroid belt, later observation lead to finding the object in a very inclined and hypervelocity orbit, which meant the object did not originate from within the systems sparse comet cloud, instead, it pointed the heart of the Dominion... Authorities kept the existence of the object a top secret and limited the use of large telescopes to avoid employees and students from leaking the news, they only had a six-year window to study the object before it were catapulted out the system. It took a few weeks for the rendezvouz with the object, within a month of mission Kooratalil (in hoku mythology, the serpent that guards the gates of the Underworld) decent visual contact with the object could be made, about 752 meters long, a constellation of debris surrounded the bulky halved starship, the dark metal coating the lizard-like armor plates were flaking away due at least four millenia of micrometeorite impacts.

Exploring the ship revealed that this half seemed to be the lower deck and engine module of a sort of warship, given the amount of warheads and ammunition for energy weapons onboard, no crew in sight, but enough biological samples were collected for several species to be cloned in-vitro back on Muhori by our xenobiologists.

The warship couldn't be slowed down without risking being too public about it, and so the government scanned and collected everything they could about it and allowed it to drift away into space. The problem with the whole secrecy of the operation is that you can't tell people not not go there because you don't want them to know something is actually there. Less than 3 years later, the crew of a comet-mining ship stumbled upon the dark vessel, taking time to document, explore and stream it for the whole world to see, while they attempted to jump-start it for several days, too far to be jumped upon by the authorities, they finally managed to turn the warship on, which immediately cried for help before being shut off. The crew of the Pearly Tear IV was trialed and executed for high treason in-situ upon arrival of the navy.

"THE PING"

... As the event would come to later be called by the public was a day of panic worldwide, for centuries the consensus was that the we were safe for as long as they kept moving away from the Dominion, and now that the Ping was sent, it was only a matter of a century or two before They showed up inside the Hoku Expanse. Although the panic was quickly settled out by the authorities, various commands and investments were issued in further developing weapons and combat ships for a possible disastrous first contact with the races of the Dominion, this Lower Stellar Era had its development focusing on faster and smaller maneuverable starships, energy-based and relativistic weapons.

The intent of miniaturizing combat-able ships and starships was to ease in the manufacturing effort and the formation of potential resistance militias across Hoku space. This wasn't much of a problem due the common traditions of the spacefaring peoples, there was no shortage of work and technological niche opportunities in the industry, and the time for the outsider's arrival had been set into the foreseeable future, thus infighting almost completely ceased.

Soon enough, many of the hoku born into the LSE were enrolled into local militias, interstellar patrol groups and radar stations across known space, waiting for the Dominion to respond to the ping.

The Chelok at their nearby homeworld of Dhéģhōm were the first to detect the ping some 50 years later, and immediately frowned upon the trading with us, because they were bringing the Dominion closer to them and such an encounter could have unpleasant consequences.

At the time being, the south polar star of Auot'zae, Kuoosate'zapa (or Forzai, by its arrene name) was the nearest Dominion system and the first to respond the Ping. The message took 106 years to arrive at Forzai, and they promptly recognized the ancient ping from 5000-year old warship, upon a decade of discussion they've decided to respond with an escorted diplomatic fleet totalizing ten vessels. Being as advanced as they were at the time, the fleet penetrated far into Hoku space unnoticed, being finally detected a few weeks before decelerating near the Muhori system within 120 years of receiving the message.

CIRCA 2239 PSE

Upon arriving at the Muhori system, the Arrene fleet blasted known radio channels with a minute of noise which contained a coding key that should be used to read the data they would be sending, later broadcasting simple mathematical equations and quantum chemistry notes, some of which were commonly known by the us and some of which completely new to science. Upon being asked to point which stars belong to the Dominion, the ships simply responded with the same list of known nearby stars, claiming ownership over half of the sky. The arrene revealed that four races lived in the Dominion, themselves, the Ygiv, the Qire, and the Chelok - they were not very surprised upon finding that Chelok also lived among us, they were however, surprised by learning such a dense population center of them existed this close to the Dominion.

Rira, flagship of the Qiro-Arrene diplomatic fleet in orbit around Kip'haulte, an outgassing hot-jupiter in the Muhori system. Qire ships are coated in a dark bronze-looking titanium alloy, which makes their ships actually white in infrared, grandiose and impecable to alien eyes

Being inquired about the nature of the Dark Vessel found over 200 years prior, the arrene told with shame the story of the Qiro-Arrene wars, though enforcing they do not engage in such large scale conflicts anymore. When asked about the Hoku Expanse, the Arrene had initially no interest in the Expanse - being so far away and with plenty of space within nearby systems, it seemed irrational to engage in any further interaction with the Hoku, although praising us for their inferior but notable technological prowess. The Dominion has plenty of space and resources for both civilizations thousands of times over, there was nothing the we personally had that was of interest to them, except our known biospheres, which as arguably non-negotiable given the scale of the Arrene force. Private groups however had great interest in trading and learning the ways of the hoku to sell their culture and artifacts as novelties back in the Dominion's capital worlds.

Many Hoku, mainly as researchers, opted for returning with the diplomatic fleet to the heart of the Dominion to learn more and establish a viable pacific presence within, in such a way as to have a representative seat within the community. This was quite a historic moment for both parties, for the arrene, it would be a chance to start pacific relations from the start with a new race. Given the first encounters with the Chelok and Qire were pretty disastrous, not to speak from the outright oppressive way they colonized the Yigiv people before they became a spacefaring civilization as preemptive action. The Hoku were more like an alternate arm of the Dominion, a distant neighbor state rather than part of it, nonetheless given the power and technological disparity, many saw the relationship as a creeping assimilation. It was not without reason, the hoku had clear motives to be lightly concerned being under a duke's command at times.

DOMINION ERA

With a total population of 200 billion, the Hoku Expanse had no shortage of work to be done, though many repetitive tasks were acomplished by machinery, we were reaching a near post-scarcity societal stage, with very few places struggling with obtaining sustenance or resources and only for a lack of heavy equipment, since the off-world colonies needed vast amounts of supplies and tech coming from the core worlds in order the keep productivity and growth rate. The terrible weather and acessibility meant many of those colonies would make it cheaper to manufacture machinery in nearby asteroids, moons, or simply import it from the Dominion's merchant flocks and scout ships. So while the core worlds and capital colonies across the Expanse concentrated the Hoku tech and prowess, the Dominion basically taught colonists how to survive in those extreme environments in which the we were just barely able to settle, given the greater reliability in delivery times by the faster Arrene and Qire ships.

The flag of the Hoku Expanse, a lotus-like aquatic flower has a similar meaning in both hoku and chelok culture: strength, renovation, and rebirth

Because of the political reasons behind the expanse, colonies never had any necessity of rebel against the Hoku domain because they weren't really being pressured to produce any goods, their only goal was to be there as a backup in case of catastrophic fail of mainland society, of course, from time to time, companies, private groups, and the navy would bring new technology, goals, and gratifications to the most succesful settlements. Over time, several moon, belter, and farmer colonies were simply abandoned by succeeding generations, because of lack of greater opportunity and goals, with populations migrating towards the core worlds and even venturing into the dominion.

Though the Expanse did not posess any goods that peaked further interest within the Dominion, apart from the occasional novelties, the paved starlanes were still of importance for Dominion scouts and researchers because it signified safe paths to reaching further regions of space of particular interest like nebulae and potentially habitable star systems, without risking slow and dangerous trips across the frontier. Allowing them to remain close to civilization in case of emergencies while they venture into uncharted space.

This state of peace lasted 1000 Chelok-years, and were recorded as one of the most prosperous periods in Hoku history. A period before the 'Unrelenting Force' came upon us...

- M.O. Valent, 28/01/2023

SCIENCE&ARTWORK | THE HOKU | STELLAR STAGE | PART 1

THE CENTURY PRIOR

The great wars of the 200-100 years PSE saw the deployment of many new technologies such as machine guns, magnetic mines, rockets, chemical weapons, tanks, and TNT. Many of those technologies helped the avipodans to boost the agricultural and industrial prowess, greatly increasing not only their population, but also their economies and of course, the business and field rivalry. By the turn of the century, the eventual development of nuclear power and subsequently the theoretical use of nuclear weapons, lead to an eventual instability between the major powers at Auot'zae, as now they had another major concern to the pile. When the fourth world war circa 105 PSE erupted throughout the globe, the six great nations saw themselves not only against each other, but also against each other's allies and other previously neutral territories, fighting like dogs for the sparse deposits of oil, gas, and iron - trying to scrap each other's countries apart for resources needed for the ever growing industry, things seemed as usual for the first few years of conflict, with many generations born and growing with the war culture already, but this time the war escalated far too much over what the superpowers thought acceptable - at this point, fortifying their major cities against at least 3 foreign nations at once...

The records of the second half of the decade are blurry, destroyed and forgotten, but rumors and stories of the time said the generals accorded that it would be better to get a pruning of the avipodan society before it would destroy itself for good, erasing the worlds borders with a strong flash, to start again in a world in which hardship would inspire cooperation and innovation instead of conflict.

The bombs crossed the sky by the hundreds from east to west and west to east, and in just a few hours, the whole globe got a light barely noticeable shake, followed by the city-leveling blast, and a few hours later, the radioactive fallout covered the last day of summer in 92 PSE with a cloud of sooth from which fell the black burning rain... Over 600 million gone instantly the day the bombs fell, and 6 billion left to die out, either from contamination, starvation, or freeze with the forced winter...

🎶We'll meet again🎶

THE POST-NUCLEAR WORLD

The southern regions of the world were largerly unaffected by the immediate nuclear holocaust in long-term survival, even though every capital across northern Sidessia was leveled by 100-kiloton warheads, remaining somewhat functional with less than 20% of its population affected by the winter and fallout. The first few years were the harderst to deal with, but after the southern sooth settled out, the survivors and what was left of any organized states later coalesced into the Commonwealth of Sidessia.

Without communication with other survivor communities in the north, south sidessian engineers and scientists pieced together the best technology left in the remains of the former republic to rebuild the world as well as its former capital. The rebuilding efforts invested heavily onto genetic research, to mitigate the effects of radiation in their barely growing population and food supply such as plants and cattle. After several decades, they rebuilt a reliable society based on genetically engineered individuals and new technological advances in agriculture, factory production, and transport.

Although common folks were often the product of gene editing, or later acquired apprimorations for performance in work, research, or combat - one group invested into taking gene editing to a new level, complete design.

This went against all early regulations, but the shaky economy as well as the constant need for more work to be done rebuilding infraestructure and venturing into the wastelands for resources, meant that mass-producing that work-force needed to become a reality - if they wanted to return to their former glory and some more. The new individuals were usually imbued of all the previous enhancements granted by society and some more, like extra radiation tolerance, greater strength, or a faster efficient intellect, kept in check by constant work and vigilance. For decades, this type of individuals existed as elite slaves, as the government limited its small numbers as a policy of minimizing the possibility of accidental contacts and abuse from either side.

Eventually, as their population grew, they reached a state where for the most part, they were just working for a parcel of the population which was inferior to them in every aspect and field, since any major progress was not only thought out, but also carried by them. Soon enough, satellite and splitter communities of both enhanced and designed avipodans started forming far into the countryside.

With a far better economy and sense of community direction, though in small numbers, many of those of first generation Kahikōpafi (better translated as "Angel" or "Divine Servant") eventually came to form a schism of whether the "original" avipodans should still be fabricating more Servants by the hour like they were coke cans. And far worse, making corrections regarding the "defects" of previous generations, like shortening lifespans and hormone balances to increase subservience to their masters. Others still engaged in mass production of their kind, though focusing in enhancing their social skills or just securing a stable population number since later kinds were very hard if not impossible to breed naturally.

At this point, both sides were trying to agree and cooperate like those who pressed the buttons once hopped, with a few factions taking side against each other ocasionally thought not endorsed by any major groups, as the world was mostly empty and full of space for everyone now.

With the ever-settling of nuclear ash getting thinner each winter, a collaboration between both kahikōpafi and hoku in several fields took place, to clean the old northern cities and re-settle wherever possible, one of those many projects saw the revitalization of a telescope array called the Somoga Square Zaega Array (Okuiuka Zaaega Iutso det Somoga, O.Za.I.So. literal for Plateau), which would in a few years become able to make deep-space radio observations.

Within a few months of running the telescope, the Somoga Event happened, the evidence of violent interplanetary and interstellar conflicts happening in the far reaches of the Dominion. Upon the sudden realization that their whole society might be in very real danger from an outside force, the known governments of the time agreed upon a minimal radio-leakage term, as well as investing in ways of reaching other planets and stars as fast and silently as possible, in order to safeguard the existence of the hoku ways. It was generally agreed upon that from afar, and given the distance from the Dominion, the Paza system seemed particularly dead and non-attractive for the time being, the nuclear holocaust granted the advantage of not being of any presential interest.

THE FIRST STELLAR ERA

During the first three centuries after the Somoga Event (also abbreviated with SE, see what I did?), the space industry focused on the establishing of the hoku on Namenza, only decently warm rocky body to Auot'zae apart from their own moon. First sending a few better probes than the ones of Pre-War time, then automated equipment to pave space for bases and landing sites. Sending kahikopafis or hoku was beyond their technological and physical capabilities yet, and it is in this context of exploring and automating work in space in which appears their first spectres, similar to those developed by humans in the early 22nd century, spectres are a kind of general service A.I. platform, initially developed for simple tasks like factory management, or unmanned support combatants. The advent of better AI made independent spectres the driving force behind space infraestructure, being able to take on different orders and be easily relocated to other functions within a few hours of library update, which could be done during transport of units. Unlike genetically altered individuals, those fully synthetic workers in general got better with time, accumulating a long history of experience within several fields being able to solve complex calculations and problems on the run while doing other tasks. The spectre chassis varied with the designated tasks, from being simple cores operating whole factories, to UAVs and UTVs, down to being more avipodomorphic with recognizable and relatable faces and expressions, working as police, healthcare, or assistant units worldwide and offworld.

The development of better and even more autonomous AI allowed the hoku to dare sending precurssor missions at various extra-solar planets during their first stellar era, both habitable and uninhabitable worlds, these robotic missions had the same intent of their first efforts, pave infraestructure and acquire intel for the upcoming organic population, once they figured how the hell one does safely traverse interstellar space.

Auot'zae never became habitable again in its full extension because of the still radioactive zones, but the fallout had thinned enough in areas which could be treated and recovered with work. Because many northern cultures and technologies were lost, groups of kahikopafis adopted the ancient languages, and custoums of these lost civilizations as their own, while some created entirely new ways to have a sense of ownership over their fates, hence why we see the reapperance of old tongues such as Hukat and Entselari throughout off-world populations later on.

THE GOLDEN STELLAR ERA

The Dominion is littered with stars, and stellar systems, unfortunately many of which consist of purely gaseous or barren worlds, and very few of the latter are actually suitable for terraforming in some extent. Even though a quarter of the Dominion's potentially habitable worlds can be found within 100ly from the Paza system, few candidates ever got an acceptable degree of similarity to their homeworld in order to be put as a prime target, the closest and first off-system populational center was quadruple system with a planet aptly named Muhori (in Sidessian mythology, it is an island where demigods reside), located some 20 light-years from home, a brand new oceanic world. Barren, of course.

For security and logistical reasons, the Hoku Expanse focused on a single region of the sky along the tropics, not only because it was practical, but because it put their domain above the plane of the radio-broadcasting worlds of the Dominion, thus, putting them far and out of reach. This strategy also allowed them to make continuous used of fixed starlanes between systems.

This meant that the more the closer stations and systems developed, the faster they were allowed to move throughout known-space. And though the first ships ever sent were of the cryo-embrionic type, which incubates and raises its crew on the final years of the trip - the Golden Era ships could complete the task within a century per 20 light-years, which meant that parents and their children could hop on a trip to the nearest star and still have a couple decades to live in the new world. Meanwhile, artificial crews would still be traveling at twice the speed to other distant habitable planet candidates.

In the year of 797 PSE, hoku settlers arrived at the tropical world of Qekohoshoku, where they not only have found the first planet inhabited by forms of life apart from their own, but by technologically developed humans. The humans of this world called the planet, Niniveh, after an ancient city of a long lost mythical era, and as they have uncovered, Niniveh has been continuously inhabited by humans for at least some 30 ~ 40 thousand years to an extent or another, that peaceful society was happy to share their technology and ways with the group once attested that they posed no threat to the world. With faster and safer interstellar travel technology from the humans which called themselves, Chelok, the Hoku could take on faster and further away from the Dominion.

The Chelok have a different position regarding the urgency the Hoku give to staying further from it as possible. While the small group that arrived at Niniveh had no choice but to establish contact and make it peacefully, the ancient race is sure that the Dominion is doomed to crumble within a few thousands of years, as they claim to have seen over and over again with their own race many many millenia ago, which is why their current attempt at a spacefaring civilization has limited itself to inhabit only two systems, and it has worked so far. Firmly believing that the human ways will far outlive the expansionist Dominion. Despite the soothing piece of information, it didn't really cost much for a post-scarcity civilization like them, to help the Hoku achieve their current objectives, so long as they kept minimal noise and respected the limits of human space on the planet surface, basically allowing them to live anywhere they wanted salvo a few specific places.

Humans of Niniveh pointed to a bright star in the sky, which was their capital world for the time being, the distant world of Dhéģhōm. After a few exchanges through beamed radio, the Hoku were allowed into the system for trades and scientific research on the newly discovered alien life forms, the arrival of that diplomatic and science mission marked the start of Lower Stellar Era.

It's been nearly 2000 years after the Somoga Event at this point, and though there is exchange of goods and personnel between Muhori and Auot'zae, cryo-embrionic light-sails still had to be used to seed distant outworlds, with newer faster Chelok-Hoku ships starting to enter in service. Now, the Hoku Expanse consisted of 7 civilized worlds (minus theirs and the human capital) spanning over 200 ly in a single direction.

During one particular night of winter in 1977 PSE, a strange object entered the comet cloud of the Muhori system at hypervelocity...

- M.O. Valent, 05/01/2023