Magna Empire – Galaxy P8X-P4 (Silver Stream) – Finibus Sector – Lutum System – Planet Farlook

The Planet Farlook is at the outer edge of the sprawling civilization that is the Magna Empire. Farlook is a Merged World. Merged Worlds are planets where the Veil either failed to completely solidify, or it suffered some cataclysmic event that tore it asunder.

This allows the various beings that inhabit the Veil to roam freely in the physical world. Merged Worlds are incredibly dangerous planets, but they are also extremely profitable. The Veil-Beasts that slip out of the Veil are highly sought after for a variety of purposes by magi, cultivators, and normal people alike.

Their magic rich bodies are used to craft superior grade armor and weapons. Magi and Alchemists both prize many different components taken from their forms. And some powerful Veil-Beasts form mana and/or Ki cores that can be used by cultivators and magi alike to increase their power and understanding of their respective disciplines. Additionally the mana cores, which are much rarer than Ki cores, are the only way for normal magi to use the various forms of Veil-Magics.

The Farlook Family rules their planet from the three dozen scattered fortified cities. The cities are connected by massive Teleportation Arches. The Arches are roughly the size of a two story house, and function by feeding off a world’s ley lines and piggy backing along its power flow to transport people and cargo to other cities.

Using this method the cities are all connected to each other, and thus the thirty-six cities of Farlook function more like a single massive city with separate districts. This eliminates the need for common citizens to travel outside of the fortified cities and risk death from the very hostile indigenous fauna.

The Capital has an enormous plaza that houses the Teleportation Arch on one side and the Realm Gate on the other. The inner workings and mechanism of action of Realm Gates are unknown, and research into them is outlawed on pain of death by the Empire. The Realm Gate on Farlook connects to the Waypoint System, the capital of the Finibus Sector. It is through Waypoint that the entire colonization of Farlook was possible.

The Magna Empire is billions of years old. It rose from the ashes of the great space faring civilizations that fell after the Final Exodus. The Exodus was when all of the Beings of the universe banded together and left the known universe. They had become disgusted with the various acts of decadence and outright evil the mortals they had once protected were engaged in.

The Beings took a vote on whether to destroy all mortals and let life start over in the universe, or to simply leave and let the various empires, kingdoms, and republics try to stand on their own. They decided to leave along with the very few mortals whom still followed their lead. The Beings were intrinsically connected to many things within the societies and their departure caused the collapse of most large cultures.

The power vacuum caused by the Exodus led to a war the likes of which the universe had never seen. In an attempt to grab power the greatest of the high technic civilizations deployed a weapon that was meant to destroy the ability for all races except their own to travel faster than the speed of light. The weapon did not do what they thought it did. The explosion fed off of itself and the resulting ripple sped through space-time and actually altered some of the fundamental laws governing the universe.

Faster than light travel became impossible for everyone and the physics that allowed technology higher than Paleotechnic ceased functioning. Only a single race was able to escape this fate as their technology was based on what used to be a much more elusive power source, mana.

Magic became far more prevalent and as the old civilizations fell to ruin, ever so slowly new ones began to rise up. After many, many generations the chance meeting of the last space faring race – the Travelers – and the only remaining multi-system government – the Magna Empire – gave rise to the Magna Empire we know today.

The Magna Empire was able to build their Empire through the use of artifacts known as the Realm Gates. They are a combination of complicated magic circuitry and power generators that extract energy from a transmission of entangled particles linked to the Empires home galaxy’s galactic core. The math is incredibly complicated (AN and completely made up, so made up that I used imaginary numbers – HAH!) so I will not go into it here.

The Magna Empire was able to use the still functioning gates to maintain an Empire spanning sixty-three worlds. Eventually the Travelers followed strange energy readings to meet the Empire, and after a rocky start that I will not go into, they formed a partnership.

The Travelers were able to decipher the Realm Gates in order to construct new ones, and they called for all of their ships to meet and begin to slowly spread out from the core of the Empire and deposit new Gates on habitable worlds.

The Travelers are a very reclusive and insular group, but some facts have become known about them through the millennia. They belong to an offshoot of the Elven race and are functionally immortal, but with very low birthrates. Their race was kept as slaves by the only civilization to use magic and technology together. The Travelers had always been gifted with magic, but before the Exodus magic was not strong enough to be a weapon for any but the insanely gifted.

Once magic surged through the universe, the Travelers used their new found strength to slaughter their Masters and took their civilization for themselves. The built massive ships known as Arks after they discovered that FTL was no longer possible, and took to traveling the stars the old fashion way. The only way to speed things up was through the use of magic, which they became very proficient with. The math required for teleporting between galaxies was nearly undoable, but they managed to construct computers that could achieve the calculations if given enough time. Fortunately, time was the thing they were richest in.

They travel from system to system and look for habitable planets. Each system is thoroughly mapped and scavenged over for the scattered pieces of ancient fallen civilizations. All high-technology is taken and studied, and anything that is of no use is destroyed.

If a habitable planet is located it is then scanned for any high-intelligence. If a society of sentient creatures exists then the Travelers drop a pod that contains everything needed for an embassy near the civilization. The pod contains a Realm Gate and a Traveler AI that will activate it and remain in case any of the Directives are broken. Traveler AI’s use the same entangled particles as the Gates to communicate with the Traveler ship that dropped it. Then the Empire sends an ambassador to make contact with the indigenous peoples.

If a habitable planet does not have higher lifeforms then a pod containing just a Gate and an AI is dropped and the Family that is selected by the Traveler Matriarch is notified that they may begin colonization. Basically the way to get selected to colonize a planet is to submit your family’s name to the pool and make a donation to the Travelers. It can be money, ancient data, old tech, or anything that might sway the Travelers to grant your petition.

All that the Travelers require of those that purchase a world is that they follow the Traveler Directives.

1) No single Family or group can own more than two planets except for the Magna Empire.

2) Slavery, Indentured Servitude, or anything along those lines is expressly forbidden. Any attempt to bypass the spirit of this Directive is the same as violating the Directive itself.

3) Attempting to replicate either the Realm Gate or space-faring technology will lead to revocation of planetary ownership.

4) All planets must join the Magna Empire. Does not include those planets that belong to an indigenous race of sentients.

Through the Travelers the Magna Empire has grown incredibly strong albeit fairly slowly. And through the use of the Realm Gates the massive Empire is able to function with an ease that far surpasses that of the high-technic space-faring civilizations of the past.

The Imperial political structure is fairly simplified for such a large body. The Imperial Family is a very large group consisting of nearly thirty-thousand members, but only the core of the group has any real power. The Council of the Empire is made up of thirteen seats that are chosen from the Imperial Family by the Senate. The Senate has three members from each member world of the Empire, and in order to cast a vote at least two Senators must agree. The thirty-thousand of the Imperial Family are required to spend their entire lives from the age fifteen to fifty away from the Empire’s Core and serving in either the military or some sort of service within the far flung reaches of the Empire.

At the age of fifty they can return to the Capitol and they become eligible to be voted on by the Senate to sit on the Imperial Council. Council members can only serve for twenty years and then must spend twenty years off the Council before being eligible to be voted back on. Five of the twenty years off the Council must be spent back off world if they wish to become eligible to be voted back on.

The currency of the Empire was complicated and simple at the same time. It was a credit based system that was completely backed by precious metals. This means that at any moment a citizen could go to a bank and exchange their credits for their exact worth in precious metals.

1 Copper = 1 Credit

1 Silver = 10 Credits

1 Gold = 1000 Credits

1 Platinum = 10,000 Credits

1 Mithril = 100,000 Credits

1 Veil-Gold = 1,000,000,000 Credits

Veil-Gold, Mithril, and Platinum were introduced as the Empire grew and became more and more wealthy. They are not kept at most banks and require a citizen to have a special account with a high-security vault in order for them to even be deposited.