THE GREAT TRIBULATION, 652 - 1 BdF
Here lies summarized the series of events that lead to the collapse of the Luminary Combine and the creation of the Foundational Dominion.
652 BdF, fall or Forzai
From the perspective of Arrene logistics and communications, Forzai simply went dark.
No distress signal was ever received. It wasn’t until survivors started washing ports on every major nearby colony that the reality of what happened started to sink in.
Far Haven, the Luminary Combine's principal stronghold in the Forzai system, had been struck by a single relativistic projectile. Well over 90% of all planetary infrastructure was destroyed within moments. Orbital defense platforms, shipyards, industrial complexes, logistics hubs and strategic stockpiles ceased to exist almost simultaneously. The remaining infrastructure was rendered largely unusable by global firestorms, atmospheric collapse, and the fallback of ejecta as vast quantities of molten crust re-entered the atmosphere.
Within days, the Luminary Combine declared the entire system "Lost with All Hands." Local military forces withdrew immediately, and the surrounding frontier entered its highest recorded state of strategic emergency.
Contemporary reports proved remarkably inconsistent regarding the projectile's origin. Independent observatories reconstructed trajectories pointing toward widely separated regions of the sky, leading early investigators to speculate multiple simultaneous strikes or unknown propulsion phenomena. Modern reconstruction instead attributes these contradictions to extreme parallax effects. Current consensus suggests the projectile was launched from within the Forzai system itself, likely no more than several hundred astronomical units from its target. A point-blank relativistic strike.
Later Foundation scholarship would identify the destruction of Far Haven as the earliest confirmed interaction between the Luminary Combine and the civilization now collectively referred to as the Qire.
The timing of this attack seems loosely correlated to a preemptive strike launched at the star now known as Sutirte, after it echoed back a previous Arrene transmission. It is currently unknown whether Sutirte actually received any hits. All that is known, is that it now resides within Qire Space.
500 - 446 BdF, fall of Festar and Thosuo
The emergence signal reached all nearby colonies, the preparation phase for a potential second strike lasts decades. Platforms ready to fire on first-contact are built and scattered across systems, this time, they wouldn’t be so oblivious.
In 500 BdF, a faint gamma ray and pion emission pointed directly at Festar precedes the launch flash of a relativistic missile directed at the planet Radiant, the system’s central hub. It was a matter of a few hours before the colossal, arrow-shaped Elder Starship entered the killzone of the closest defense stations across the system. Ablation lasers, nuclear fire, relativistic weapons, nothing sufficed to disable it in its relativistic flyby - it only warranted a flip and second strike, as the starship - nicknamed Omicron - disappeared beyond the system’s comet cloud, faster than any ship in Arrene possession at the time could manage to pursue. The attack on Thosuo, in 446 BdF followed a similar escalation of events, near-lightspeed flyby with the deployment of a ~2-ton Fe/W/Co alloy warhead.
Strategic reviews concluded that interception was fundamentally impossible. Even assuming complete knowledge of the intruder's trajectory, no known propulsion system at the time could achieve the required pursuit velocities before the target had traversed several parsecs. The problem therefore ceased to be one of interception, and became one of denial.
Over the course of a few centuries, known space becomes a minefield filled with metal obelisks and steel spheres projected to vaporize relativistic travelers on contact, unless they fly across designated paths in between stars. The oldest Starlanes date back to this period in history.
414 - 397 BdF, fall of Endreka
The Luminary Combine’s prediction was of a 10-50% kill rate for mined space depending on the accuracy of their measurements on the cross section of Elder Starships, such as Omicron. Important systems to the empire were mined with enough penetrators to guarantee a 50-90% kill rate unless flying with prior knowledge of their dispersal in space. Still, it could not guarantee the interception of missile payloads, deemed too small for reasonable prevention beyond a small statistical probability.
Confirmation of the models came in through the complete obliteration of one Qire vessel during its flyby of the Endreka system. Generally regarded by Arrene historians as the same Omicron vessel, given the timings of previous attacks, though that might be unlikely.
To the horror of the Luminary Combine, Omicron wasn’t alone this time. It was only the spearhead in the formation, later designated as Lambda, Nu, and Tau. Which given the gamma ray and pionic flash, had started to decelerate to increase their chances of survival. The Elder Starships also started firing relativistic missiles at nearby large asteroids and dwarf planets, the resulting plasma cone being enough to clear paths through the minefield around Endreka.
Lambda stays behind in the system’s outskirts, while Nu and Tau enter. Following the strike on Endreka, Lambda and Nu leave the system together while Tau lags behind, firing conventional nuclear weapons at the system’s infrastructure and resistances for four days, until finally leaving. The first instance of a proper Qire counter attack on Arrene forces.
311 - 295 BdF, fall of Nizel and Kaegaels
The Elder Starship Nu is sent to Nizel alone, inevitably announcing its arrival by obliterating comets and dwarf planets in order to clear a corridor into the system. The flyby is successful and the Arrene's presence on Hardpoint is neutralized.
Over the Kaegaels system, Lambda faces quite a welcoming salvo while trying to attack Stormport, causing it to miss the planet TWICE, with a third one being needed to clear the debris cloud around the planet, for a fourth shot to go through.
311 - 2 BdF, Operation Whil-o'-Whisp
The Qire backtrack colonies they've attacked before, and are seen jumping in between random star systems. The Arrene have since tried to hide from the Qire for over 400 years now. Upon realizing that they have absolutely no clue which of those worlds is their Arrene homeworld. They hope to divert attention with stealth ships and probes created to simulate interstellar activity far away from Argost, and thus lure them into minefields.
Lambda and Tau are grazed by mines. Tau is beyond repair and destroyed by the Qire themselves to avoid capture. Smaller Qire warships are rumored to have been spotted or detected by probes in interstellar space, possibly in an attempt to avoid probabilistic collision with said mines.
Nevertheless, they eventually stumble upon Argost.
2 BdF - 0 AdF, fall of Argost
Lambda shows up to the Aa Rithel system accompanied by ships not yet seen before - Alpha, Upsilon and Theta. Home Defense fleet is given little over a month to brace for impact once the pion pulse washes over the system.
The sky is brazen with the plumes and cones formed by relativistic fire opening a breach in the cloud of steel spheres surrounding the system. The four ships disperse into different capture trajectories after decelerating to manageable speeds, all while spraying nuclear weapons and actively firing their main weapon at various concentrations of defensive positions. Concentrated defensive fire repeatedly forced alterations to the squadron's projected trajectories, increasing fuel expenditure and delaying the attack by several hours. Resorting to enact area denial and unit dispersal through use of splashed relativistic plasma from hitting moons and planetary surfaces back into the defense fleet.
The starship Alpha misses its first shot at Argost, then hits it twice a few hours apart. The second shot seems to completely cease all Arrene hostilities system-wide.
The stall and silence is reciprocated by the Qire, followed by the infamous ghostly broadcast of “Halt claw, halt foot. Failure. Undone.” in Standard Arrene, heading a series of star positions relative to Forzai. The transmitted stellar catalogue demonstrated that the Great Expedition had independently reconstructed the complete spatial distribution of the Luminary Combine. Whether this knowledge predated Operation Will-o'-Whisp or had been acquired during it remains unknown.
They understood the message’s intent immediately, though it's debated on what are the exact conditions that would trigger further Qire intervention.
Circa 5 AdF, Treaty of Forzai
The Treaty of Forzai officially establishes the Dominion as a collaborative framework enforced by the Arrene, overwatched by the Qire. Also signed by the witness interstellar nations of man, the forty four Qire crewing the vessels involved. Alpha, stays behind, stationed over Argost while the other Elder Starships scatter into deep space.
By proxy, the humans and the Ygiv peoples are freed and added to the Dominion as extra-signatary races. It still will take over a century before Argost can be re-terraformed by Arrene survivors from the outer colonies and resettled.
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