NationStates Jolt Archive

There had been through the years those who thought it just a long-winded, pompous name. But, born on what some civilisations retrospectively refer to as the year 2500BC, The Eternal Golden Empire of The Ralish stood today on the edge of space.

Akralon

The island lay off the south coast of mainland Aisa and was one of the first states conquered by the Alshorians during the creation of the now ancient empire. Then it was home to perhaps quarter of a million people united by pride in their maritime tradition, now it was populated by one hundred times as many citizens of the global empire, all fixated by the space launch that was to occur.

King Ralish Akralus Deniptas (AKA Ralish CCXVII) presided over the launch into orbit of the final crewmembers destined to take the empire’s first ship into deep space. There were fireworks and cameras and parades and excitement. Elsewhere there was general disinterest, because it wasn’t like they were going to find anything- there were no other liveable planets in the system, and it’s not as if there was anybody beyond that. The ship would cruise out to the third and last planet, establish the little science station in orbit, and come back on a skeleton crew, then everybody would get to be bored by another launch as another ship went out to enlarge and replenish the station and replace the crew.

((The Ralish is an old nation usually set in the bronze age, but I never got much RP out of that- anyone who started playing in that classical era soon gave up. So now I’m having a go at jumping on a few thousand years, but must confess pretty much total ignorance of the conventions of future tech RP and science, so if anybody’s interested, feel free to chip in, but, uh, be nice. We may be stupid, but there’s a lot of us :)
For your information, The Ralish Empire controls a single planet in a three planet system ‘somewhere’. The people are human, though why or how they ended up here is an open question, and I’m willing to eventually grant some radical solution like something out of Stargate, we’ll see what happens. Technologically they are beyond modern earth, evidently, but how far beyond remains unclear. The society however remains arguable backwards. In isolation the Ralish Empire has its two hundred and seventeenth king who is all but absolute ruler of the empire, and slavery is still considered a perfectly acceptable part of the economy. It has been this way for thousands upon thousands of years, and no alternative has ever even been seen.
What they’re doing now is to establish a manned satellite above the outermost planet of their system from where, amongst other things, they will attempt to observe deep space and send out signals in the hope of finding intelligent life. Few actually believe that they’ll find anything, but that rather depends on other players now, doesn’t it?))

[Tagged for later (Sorry, but I'm in a hurry)]

Florez, Sutruah, The Eternal Alshorian Empire

Despite the current PC trend for shirking the Alshorian in favour of Golden in the empire’s title, most of Sutruah’s political elite preferred the elsewhere out of fashion official title. Thousands of years ago, the Sutruah had put up a disappointingly poor fight against the all-conquering Alshorians when it came time for their nation to join the empire, and the people had ever since thrown themselves into filling-out the vast civil service and the halls used for frequent society events. Today the state was home to over two hundred million loyal subjects of the empire and enjoyed a per capita GDP akin to more than forty thousand USD. Now it was home to a significant movement of opposition to the latest scientific ventures of the empire.

“Look, heresy is bad enough to begin with, but when it starts to cost a billion shel here and eight billion there it really becomes too much.” The hall returned a murmur of agreement with the speaker’s words. “We all of us know from where the life we see around us springs, we all understand evolution, but we don’t try to talk with fish... we certainly don’t spend eight billion shel sending submarines to shout at them!” A ripple of laughter. “This mission is a waste of time and money, and all that it serves to do is to make a mockery of our beliefs and our science. We understand that we as intelligent people are special- the Alshorian pony evolved from the lesser highland pony, the domestic dog from the wild pack animals of our forefathers’ day, but we, we are unique. It is apparent to all of us that this process of evolution exists to serve the intelligent beings of Aisa, the divine beings. So why, if we are unique, do we waste our wealth in trying to contact others like us?”

Ralish science had, as on earth, come to understand evolution, but there was on Aisa one important difference. Besides very minor changes in height and build, it was apparent that people had always been as they stood today. And they hadn’t been at all for close to so long as, well, their ponies, fish, and dogs, for example. So it was widely believed that people were unique and special. Many struggled to understand why anyone was trying to find other intelligent life, because it didn’t seem to follow that there would be any, but never the less, a significant part of the current space programme was focussed on just that search.

Others simply worried that it was a bad idea because they felt the empire too primitive. Not that they knew it, but their technology was generally akin to early C21st technology on earth, it was just that the Eternal Empire was a little more ambitious and generally a lot larger and wealthier than was ordinary for a single society on earth. The Ralish couldn’t travel faster than light –not even close to it. The weapons carried by the empire’s six or seven million soldiers were reasonably familiar kinetic devices. Scientists were struggling with the last bits of their genome. A few of the land’s most infamous diseases had been vanquished, a few others remained stubborn. It was just that the planet’s gross product was something in excess of a hundred and fifty trillion dollars in familiar terms, and it was united behind one empire. One ambitious, self-confident empire with no enemies to worry about (the army was maintained out of tradition and a history of periodic division, usually as Gerash or some other outlying province got that independent itch).

In spite of various opposition movements, the mission was under way, the ship en route to the edge of the system, the station destined to be established, and the signals to ring out.

(The station has yet to be positioned and the signal established, but until I get that post together there's still a Ralish ship thundering through its little system towards that objective, for the sake of anyone who happens to be watching. Back later with something more.)

"I don't think I'm alone when I say I'd like to see more and more planets fall under the ruthless domination of our star system."

"Vasram, have you been at the blast-off opiates, again? Those are only for either end of the voyage... we're a million miles from one of those."

The Tudkahali man grumbled as he dragged himself back through the little ship to replace a little box of something, drifting about and crashing into more than a few things on his way. He happened to be bad at most of the traditional Alshorian games played by other bored crew members. It was all pegs in holes, balls on strings, there was no room to kick a bundle of rags and goat entrails in this damn thing, and as the only none-Alshorian member of the seven man crew Vasram was feeling homesickness like a build up of calcium in... oh, well, he seemed to be suffering the effects of zero-G living, too. It was something of a contradiction in the little man that he was the least well adapted to space travel, and at the same time the one who thought that they were stopping too soon, setting too many limits. His earlier comment was another such contradiction as he was a moderate supporter of Tudkahali independence from the Eternal Alshorian Empire on Aisa, never mind the prospect of said empire expanding into the heavens.

Another couple of weeks fell by as the crowded little ship raced on from the second planet in the Aisan system to the third and final such big rock. This one had a lot of clouds. Vasram liked clouds, at least. They didn't get many in Tudkaha, and he ascribed to them something of a spiritual quality, possibly in relation to the intoxicating clouds that usually surrounded him personally.

"Yeah, we're there."
"What?"
"Yeah, we're there."
"Oh! Hell, lets do something!"
"Yeah, let's orbit the **** out of that ****er!"
"Vasram, have... never mind, just get to your station."

Within a matter of hours the craft had established a stable orbit high above the cloudy little outer planet and sent word of such back towards Aisa. It'd take a while before they heard any congratulations, of course, but that was okay, there was work to do. The next days were spent docking with an unmanned probe orbiting here for nearly four years, giving it a software upgrade so it could better survey the planet below, carrying out some repairs to it, and setting up the transmitter that would tell the cosmos of the Eternal Alshorian Empire, and invite ET round for chariot races and opiates.

Oh, and then there was the unfurling of the impractically large flag of that empire and the casting of said into deep space, because why not?

http://www.nationstates.net/images/flags/uploads/the_ralish.jpg

The Ralish ship had been on the edge of the Aisan system for several days. A couple of the crewmembers had typed several thousand words on new information forthcoming from the 3rd planet, congratulations had been received from home, and the controversial becon was by now sending out messages to aliens that relatively few people believed would exist. One of the men who'd set it up did so while grumbling that the transmission would take years to get anywhere, quite apart from the fact that he, like most of the Ralish, he was still religiously convinced that his people were unique, a view that persisted because no Ralish remains more than a few thousand years old had ever been discovered on Aisa, unlike other animals that could be seen to have evolved over millions of years. Most of the crew believed, after generations of scientific research had changed some old religions slighty, that people had been put on Aisa by one god or other, depending on their culture of origin, after millions of years in which the planet was prepared for them by the evolution of its surface, weather, and inferior life forms.

The message sent out contained a small section on major Ralish religions, more information on the Alshorian Empire, the location of the three planet Aisan system, and a general extension of scientific curiosity in inter-stellar diplomacy. It was delivered in simplified form in various codes believed by scientists to be basic enough to make some sort of sense to beings that may not know language as the Ralish do, as well as the more complex and lengthy transmissions in native languages. Alshorian was a language that had here and there one or two aspects not entirely different to Sumerian, the Tudkahali dialect shared a little with long passed tongues from around the Indian sub-continent, and a number of Atlan words might have pricked the Phoenician ear.

None of this mattered, of course, if nobody existed to pick up the Ralish communication.

(Aw, c'mon, somebody has nothing better to do than wander around deep space looking for relatively primitive signals originating from isolated global empires!)