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
