#amswydd

The founding of the Imperium itself cannot be accurately attributed to any single species or individual, an event which predates most credible sources of recorded history, truly detailed historical analyses only mention the Imperium by the time it’s populace, society, and government were flooded with different ethnicities. It also had undergone several changes of both its name and form of government, but none generally lasted long enough to mark the Imperium as being remembered by them. It is impossible to recognize which species actually founded the Imperium.

On the other hand, it is known that for the greater majority and highest points of the Imperium’s lifetime, it’s ruling elite was primarily dominated by a species call the Amswydd, native to the Imperium’s (most recent and longest running) capital world of Belisartha. The amswydd likely were responsible for designating the Imperium with their name upon assuming majority control, intentionally or not. Thanks to the Imperium’s talent for record keeping and luckily enough, fossil finds, the likeness and biology of the amswydd themselves is not lost to time.

Gaunt, grey figures, the Amswyydd were sshorter than most of their contemporaries, averaging at approximately 1,75 metres tall. Their bodies were startlingly devoid of many conventional features and resultingly unsettling to behold, save for a pair of large, albeit nonfictional wings attached to the backs of the shoulders. Though they may have once resembled the wing structures of a pterosaur, the wings present in the amswyydd no longer had any membrane or other surface that may generate lift, effectively rendering them as little more than long, crooked arms without apparent function. Otherwise of note, the cheekbones and orbital crest swept out backwards from the skull forming crest-like growths on either side of the head. Mostly hollow, these structures seem to have contained organs sensitive to vibrations.

Amswydd themselves lived startlingly long lives, measurable in thousands of years, which may have contributed to their dominance in Imperium society. In addition, lifespan could be stretched even further by an extreme form of hibernation that put an individual into a death-like sleep for centuries at a time, reverting cellular damage dealt by senescence. Theoretically, this process could be repeated indefinitely.

Despite the distance in time of the Imperium’s existence, a surprising amount is known about it; the result of the Amswydd’s far-reaching influence and advanced technology. Many records exist that analyze them in detail, written by sapients not native to their nation. The greatest source of knowledge on the Imperium is without a doubt the Ancestral Library on Belisartha, deep beneath the catacombs of the city of Soporatium.

Soporatium, easily the largest and oldest city on the planet (possibly the oldest intact and inhabited settlement in the galaxy) is well known for it’s colossal labyrinth of catacombs running for kilometers beneath the city. Today these catacombs are used by the downtrodden as a home, and occasionally by the remainder of the citizens as emergency shelters.

It was only fifty five years ago that the Ancestral Library of the Imperium was discovered deep within Soporatium’s catacombs, during a threatened white phosphorous attack on the city by the dissenters who hide in the nearby mountains. The panic induced by this warning was so great it forced hundreds of thousands of civilians underground into the catacombs, inadvertently exploring depths that had not yet been properly catalogued. When a mob of fearful citizens accidentally collapsed a wall deep beneath the surface, many feared that the tunnels would collapse and crush them, instead it revealed a hidden antechamber, which gave way to a huge athenaeum filled with digital records on the Imperium’s history, and what appeared to be an attempt at archiving all the knowledge acquired over the Imperium’s twenty thousand year lifetime.

The archive was immediately sealed off for study and became one of the greatest archaeological finds of the century. While significant sections of the repository were damaged beyond repair by structural collapse, flooding, or sheer age, the wealth of information that the “Ancestral Library” brought forth was staggering.

Foremost, it brought forth details of the Amswydd Imperium’s government, social structure, and the lives of those within that had long been lost to the warping effects of time. The Library teaches that while notoriously decadent, Amswydd took great pride in it’s history and culture. The Imperium’s incredible and rich past was apparently painstakingly preserved, indicated not only by the incomparable magnitude of the Ancestral Library, but also by cultural traditions that find their origins in the Imperium, albeit mutated or bastardized by  thousands of years of misinterpretation.

In Amswydd, land was wielded exclusively by the aristocracy. Titles were granted by a provincial council of augurs, while power itself rested solely in the Archon as in most conventional monarchies. An Archon’s rank was hereditary, and families ruled the Imperium over the course of dynasties.

Both within and without the nobility, Amswydd society was highly stratified. A society with such a large class divide. Despite this, the upper class was not prone to infighting, and still ran as a fairly effective – if not dubious – ruling machine. The Amswydd Imperium was evidently governed by these powerful magisters for the practical entirety of its history.

However, similar records on the structure of Amswydd government from alternate sources – such as the – claim that it’s nobility was so well known to be over-indulgent that it was almost universally reviled by other nations, and often believed that the lower classes found the nobility to be utterly contemptible. In truth, most amswydd aspired to become part of it. Hereditary records indicate that a low-born peasant ascending to the higher echelons of power was entirely possible – and in a sense made the Imperium a kind of meritocracy. But the citizens of the Imperium seemed to mind significantly less than most, with many viewing the hedonism of the upper class as an excusable offense in exchange for their well-functioning government.

It was known prior to the Ancestral Library’s discovery that slavery was a staple of galactic society at the time, and the Amswydd were no exception. However, discovered documents on the structure of many magister’s households shows that many chose to sell themselves into slavery to provide for their families. This resulted in many poorer Amswydd citizens being better off than those in other sovereignties. The Library possesses several histories dedicated to slave revolts, but it stands to reason that these were comparatively uncommon compared to what may have been occurring in neighbouring sovereignties. Amswyyd slaves were still considered citizens of the imperium rather than a resource, and were more like indentured servants in this respect, and therefore fared much better than another slave might.

The Ancient Amswydd calendar measured time as a chronicle of ages. Each age lasted a strict thousand Belisarthan years (each Belisarthan orbit = about six and a half Earth orbits). The first age was marked by the creation of the Imperium, which could be read as 1:1, where the first number denotes the age – in this case first age – and the second number the year of said age, up to 999. On the last day of each age, the current Archon would search for a portent in order to determine the name of the new age. The first was the Morning Age, signified by the founding of Amswydd, followed by the Ash Age, when a series of cataclysmic volcanic eruptions caused a mass-extinction on their colony world Cor-Ansum.

Before the Library was unearthed, select little was known about the different amswydd ages, if the name of an age was even known at all. With the Library however, not only are all but two of the ages known, but some details about each are known as well.

Morning Age, 1:1

The imperium proper is formed after major reforms and civil war force the restructuring of the majority of government. The previous republic replaced by an aristocracy

Ash Age, 2:1

Unknown Age, 3:1

Unknown Age, 4:1

Unknown Age, 5:1

Crucible Age, 8:1

After an era of civil war, the aristocracy is further refined and comes to resemble the form it will take in the Imperium for the remainder of it’s existence.

Unknown Age, 9:1

Unknown Age, 10:1

Odyssey Age, 11:1

Incursion Age 12:1

Sadly, details on the Incursion Age are not greatly known due to hundreds of years submerged in a flooded section of the library – unfortunate, considering it may have well been one of the most dramatic.

Records from other parts of the library corresponding with the Incursion Age - such as economic surplus, military development and deployment, and population records all indicate one thing: a war of prodigious magnitude. The Age’s namesake suggests a foreign force of unknown origin began to hammer at the borders of the Imperium, and apparently with much success. The Imperium’s resources and power would become so taxed that this conflict left them effectively crippled for thousands of years following it’s close. It has been suggested that the “Incursions” of this age could even have been the catalyst that began the Imperium’s decline.

With the name of the age’s discovery, scattered evidence of a massive conflict from Savannah to The Crossroads became apparent. Ruined starships and the buried remains of scorched outposts - all dating back to 45,000 years ago, deep into the Incursion Age with the scars of projectile weapons – finally had an explanation for their presence.

Notably, not all of the archaeological finds suspected of being involved in the war of the Incursion Age are Amswydd. Wrecks believed to have belonged to the Tarban, Provig, and at least one more as-of-yet unidentified culture have been found – with the same projectile scarring. Whatever force this force was, it had a lasting effect on the galaxy, and severely weakened the foundations of the largest empires ever known.

Reason Age 13:1

Barbarian Age 14:1

Records on the Barbarian age are among the most intact of the chronological entries in the library, granting an in-depth view of the political atmosphere and events during almost the full length of the Age.

Summarily, with Amswyyd still shaken from the events of the Incursion Age, millions of slaves across dozens of worlds began to rebel against a weakened Imperium. The library’s records imply that while there was no organization orchestrating rebellions across these worlds, the relative success of those that came first inspired rebel cells across the Imperium to do the same. Soon the Imperium had a crisis on it’s hands, and culled millions of slaves in an effort to contain the problem, which only provoked more violence, both from slaves and domestically, from citizens who did not approve. The end result was many millions of slaves escaping the Imperium in droves and Amswydd losing swaths of territory in the Silent Expanse and Vale of Pearls.

           Passing references to these escaped slaves in future records show that many eventually congregated into nomadic tribes that endured for at least several centuries after. A popular yet controversial theory details the remnants of these rebel slaves still existing today in the form of the roaming Arda colonies.