The LGM War

art due to a third party species which involved themselves in these disputes. Cometspawn, is general parlance for a collective of four subspecies of what the verses' most esteemed xenobiologists can only guess to be some form of fungal humanoid covered in plates of a crystalline exoskeletal armor. The exact nature of their anatomy is unknown, because all Cometspawn dead, be they Soldier, Assassin, Seer, or Sentinal, is decreed by divine law to be delivered unto the Order of Ajirine upon their death. The Order then sees that each and every fallen Cometspawn is swiftly, securely, and secretively sent to Ajirine to buried in the same soil which birthed them. For Ajirine is not only the name given to their sacred and hidden holy homeworld, but is itself their fabled Creator God. The Order beleive that the sacred task and underlying purpose of all Cometspawn is to affect rigid order, establish effecient organization, and spread lasting peace throughout the galaxy and greater universe without coercing, co-opting, or enslaving the wills of their fellow Sapients. Rather, their mission is to teach, guide, and inspire other civilizations by acting as exemplars and arbiters of well ordered society, from the collective down to the individual. It is this ethos which compelled the Order of Ajirine's ruling theocrats, the so called "Saints", to sue for peace amoung two factions whom the Cometspawn had no prior ties or investment. Empress Ophelia the Expansionist was reaching the end of her days when the first Cometspawn envoys appeared. Sueing for peace on behalf of the Emorae (and on behalf of peace itself), the Cometspawn offered their services and resources to the Empress if she agreed to cease her efforts to colonize the systems. If Ophelia continued her present campaign, and sought domination over the Emorae peoples, the Cometspawn would be compelled by Ajirine, their creator god and the Arbiter of All Order, to wage holy war upon the Manics until not just their invading forces, but entire empire had been completely destroyed. Ophelia was tired, and though the choice was easy to make for herself, it was easier to make for her daughter Ursela, whom she refused to saddle with the miserable headache of waging such an undignified war. And so integration began under her rule to prosperous effect. The Cometspawn derive their nutrition and are sustained through the kinetic energy (or "Kenergy" for short) that they absorb from the world around them. Combined with their culturally instilled desire to sew peace and order, the Cometspawn's low recourse consumption made their presence highly desirable by the various governors, and chieftains heading Manic and Emorae Settlements. Ironically, by entering these communities in the interest of aid and unity, they often became the source of conflict, as many working class sapients found themselves replaced by Cometspawn laborers and organizers. Tensions had already been high since increased interspecies cooperation and innovation lead to the development of various forms of advanced automation, putting larger and larger swaths of biologicals out of work. Nonetheless, from the perspective of Royals and Hierarchs such as Empress Ophelia The Expansionist, the civilizations of the Perseus Galaxy had entered an unprecedent age of wealth and exploration. Her daughter would inherit a comfortable throne atop an empire fast pushing the boundries of its scope and splendor. Shortly after the passing of Ophelia, and the coronation of Ursela, a fourth species made themselves known. They wished to wage unconditional war. From and unknown and un-wanting abyss, the Nam-Yu lunged forth upon peoples of the Perseus Galaxy. These diminutive, verdant, invaders possessed a shared pursuit for material conquest which they waged as holy war, and held true to the belief that their greed and their bloodlust were blessings from their depraved god, Nekri Maz. Their force so overwhelming in number that they singularly matched the military mights of the United Aquaric Emorae Systems, the Cometspawn Order of Ajirine, and the Manian Interplanetary Empire combined. The technology with which they waged war was far beyond anything their opponenets were prepared to encounter. The Manics, while having warred amoungest themselves for ages, had long considered combat a sacred art, and for eons Manian conflict was resolved by blade alone. The few firearms which did come exist in Manic society were either elegant dueling pistols held by Manian women of high standing, often forged of precious metals and encrusted with jewels and gemstones, or unweildy bolt-action rifles reserved for the hunting and slaying of megafauna. Neither well suited for large scale war, and both traditionally illegal and taboo for Manian men to posses and train with. Subsequently Ursela would be forced to both break centuries of tradition by advancing the technology and training males in the ways of projectile weaponry. The Emorae peoples were even less along in their development of combat tech. Many of the Tribes of Tropikae had proudly relied on their many distinctive biological defence and attack systems when battling one another, and only became more cooperative and peaceful after exposure to the Kanths influence. Ironically enough, the Cometspawn, champions of peace and order, were the most heavily armed amoungst the Free Peoples of Persius. While their bladecraft met and even excelled the Manics (in no small part due to the rarity of minerals which they had access to) the two death-dealers that helped bring the Manics to heal and would in turn come to the Manics' aid; were the Lever-Action Dual Cylinder Core-Cracker Carbine and the Underhand Pump-Action Shard-Shatter Shotgun. The former functioned by shining a rudimentary beam of light through a serious of specialized crystals that focus and project the particles at lethal heat and velocity. The latter, utilizes large hunks of a brittle, quartz-like ammunition, which is squeezed against the guns interior muzzle until the pressure shatters the mineral in a barrage of stone shrapnel. These two simple firearms both allowed time, and engineering advantages to the Manics and Emorae as they feverantly toiled to meet the strength of their adversary. The Cometspawn's guns, and the LGM's greed. For the Namyu were well within their ability to bombard each and every opposing army with atomics from half the galaxy away without deploying a single soldier. But this would have robbed them of their glory, their bloodshed, their conquest... their stuff. And so attriciously they went about with endless numbers supplied by cloning and callousness, each sporting a standard issue Repeating Ray Rifle. A laser gun of almost insultingly simple design, and yet the most advanced infantry weapon to plague the LGM war for nearly a century. While little more than a highly advanced laser pointer, heavily charged and intensely magnified to bore through steal like a power drill to paper. It it also bore a surprisingly sleek, and appealing design. From all appearances the Triple R should have been easy to reverse engineer by the Free Armies of Perseus, but the intricacies of its internal technology were so advanced that not even the most learned of Cometspawn Seers, experienced of Tropikae Tinkerers, and craftiest Manic Gunsmiths could decipher it in concert. More vexing still, when subjected to psychic probes from Kanth Telepathy, the LGM's themselves seemed unaware of how their technology functioned. Captured Namyu soldiers who underwent psychic interrogation revealed that the technology behind the Ray Rifle, as well as their saucer-like warships, desiccation beams, zero-gravity suits, tripod walker tanks, and disintegrater technology wielded by the LGM's was of an origin unknown to even the highest ranking Namyu Generals. The knowledge of how to craft many of these technological marvels was either lost to the ages, or itself alien to the invaders who weilded it. Their only means of producing new weaponry, armor, ships, etc. was using advanced fabrication devices, the origin of which was also a mystery to the Namyu People. This in some small part fueled the Namyu's avaracious culture, as without the knowledge of how to repair the fabricators which sustained their way of life, their species would perish should they cease working. However, it was their shared beleif system that largely compelled them to conquest. For every Namyu knows that all Namyu are chosen by Nekri Maz, The Hand that Chokes Creation as the sole sentients who understand the value of plunder and pillage. What they could lay claim to was theirs by divine right and nothing would stand between them and their holy war, for it was not the cause, but the war itself that was sacred to the Namyu. Naturally, while the challenge was unexpected, the threat they initially presented was not wholly unwelcomed by the young Empress. While Empress Ophelia had hoped her daughter reign an era of peace, Ursela longed for a worthy challenge to prove herself worthy of the Title of Empress. The first of many challenges she would face was presented by her family's own royal decrees. While the men of Manian society has long held the role of infantry in wars of unification and colonization, they were forbidden from wielding what few projectile and bladed weapons their people had developed. With little more than glorified bats and hammers to fight their technologically superior foes, the Manics found themselves loosing battle after battle despite coordinated campaigns with both of their perceived inferiors: The Emorae and Cometspawn. The first solution that Empress Ursela and her War Council brought into being was the mass repurposing of Robots, traditionally reserved for construction and labor tasks, for combat. The Combat Robots were retrofitted with top of line munitions and reprogramed to exterminate LGM's on sight. For a time, the CR's succeeded in preventing the needless endangerment of Manian Women without arming their male counterparts. Their allies even remarked that the metal soldiers were not only were not only more efficient fighters than their organic counterparts, but also far more personable social company (an initially humorous observation that would prove sinister upon later re-examination). The CR's success was instantaneous and waged a form of psychological warfare upon the LGM's. They had trounced every biological foe they faced, yet now their cowardly opponents had sent cogmen to do their fighting. Namyu fighter's appreciated the cunning and craft of the CR's design, but pride and revile for the removed nature of their combat advantage forbade even the most curious of minds from attempting to replicate or repurpose their technology. The resulting widespread implementation led to the first serious reclamation of ground by the Free People's of Perseus. And then, as if called forward by the cried of the victorious, a new ally sprang out from the stars to aid in the battle against the LGM conquest. This advantage was not to last however, for an unexplainable shift in the very nature of reality. At first the signs were scattered, sparse, easy to write off as malfunction or anomaly, but slowly more and more accounts waded into the waters of unsettling impossibility. When a