Alganna Eternity

Alganna Eternity
Notable Populations		Kimmigani, Civago, Zylari, [marsupials]
Capital		Algan, New Alba - Gamikaniina System
Ruler		Emperor Wilvaris Frando
Official Political System		Imperium
Evaluated Political System		Decentralized Imperium

Overview

The Alganna Eternity has its origins in an ancient ecological disaster on the Kimmigan homeworld of Alba. Most of the population was wiped out, although thousands of society's elites and tens of thousands of their servants escaped on massive sublight colony ships, mostly as one single fleet but in some cases as fragmented groups of craft splitting off from the main body. This disaster occurred over 1500 years ago, and the Kimmigan spent the subsequent 642 years exploring the neighboring systems for habitable worlds. Of note is that given their primitive level of technology, the fact that the fleet survived at all is a remarkable achievement, and the Foremarch, as this period is called, still occupies a large place in Alganna culture. As it grew, this roving fleet left behind stations and settlements of excess population, some of which were slightly modified with primitive biotechnology to adapt to their new homes. During its journey, the Kimmigan fleet came across another devastated world still populated by Civago survivors, who despite said devastation had managed to rebuild a pre-spaceflight but sophisticated society and culture. The Civago were contacted by the Kimmigan and offered a place in the journey that would eventually lead to the planet of New Alba.

New Alba, upon its discovery by the Kimmigan around the Terran year 1600, was praised as a lush and beautiful paradise world with a strong resemblance to the Alba of old. Although by this time the centuries in space had led to an attitude of detachment from planetary life, it was deemed entirely appropriate to colonize the planet at least in memory of their fallen homeworld. However, it was upon New Alba a century later that two discoveries would fundamentally change the role of the Kimmigan species: faster than light travel, and quantum entanglement communications. Once the possibilities were fully grasped, the Alganna Eternity was declared as an empire, with the current fleet's admiral as Emperor and Shipmaster, and its capital at Algan on New Alba.

Kimmigan society had always been stratified, and over the 642-year 'Foremarch' this stratification had transformed from cynical material elitism to a genuine system of rank and nobility. Over the next century, the ten or so planets that had previously been colonized were contacted, and brought into the fold and elevated under semi-independent but distinctly subordinate noble houses. However, in light of the hardships of the Foremarch and the flexibility required to face them, Kimmigan society had also become paradoxically meritocratic; the station of one's birth certainly matters, but only when privilege breeds competency. Competency itself is the goal, and if a commoner proves themselves capable, they can rise to high station without controversy.

There is no strict distinction between civilian and military in the Alganna Eternity; ones rank exists as both simultaneously. However, those seeking to avoid a martial role in life would do well to avoid rising in their station; the life of a serf is not exactly uncomfortable with the automation of manual labor, and the majority of serfs contentedly work as accountants, scientists, roboticists, supervisors, or any number of comfortable but humble jobs. Neither are serfs forced into combat; combat is socially regarded as the reward of those brave enough to seek it. All that defines a serf is that they are at the bottom of a social hierarchy with which they seldom interact, and that they need to ask permission to move or to change professions; most of them will never meet anybody of rank, and so they live with one another more or less as equals. The nobility is hardly any more free, for their role in life is to ply the void in which they will fight and almost certainly die, and every one of them but the Emperor has someone above them in their hierarchy.

The Alganna Eternity, although its foundational population was largely Kimmigan, espouses the same meritocratic beliefs about station as it does about species. Several times in its history, the Eternity has discovered a sentient species at a pre-spacefaring level of social development, and the standard practice is for Eternity representatives to quietly and covertly contact the world's leadership and offer them a choice: to spend the next several generations altering their society to join galactic society on equal terms, with the elites retaining their status as thanks for aiding in their species' development; or resist this change, and be reduced entirely to servitude. The Eternity prefers that a contacted species chooses the former; so far, all have. Notable such populations integrated by the Eternity were the Zylari and the [marsupials].

The Eternity, despite its martial culture, has never truly warred with another power. This is largely because for a majority of its history, it was the only galactic power. Instead, its Great Houses have sparred with one another. There can't be said to be a single unifying Alganna culture; it's fractious and varied and competitive. It's a little known fact that Galactic Common originates as an internal lingua franca that escaped