NationStates

The first such event was the Great Losses. It is unknown whether this was a cumulative defect in computer science, a loss of the physical memory systems of computers, or a deliberate virus that corrupted the memory of the systems, but regardless, this event caused massive damage to the entire nation, at the time known as the Idibulean Empire, and rendered all information prior to the event completely lost. The Idibuleans relied too heavily on computer systems, meaning that the information would likely never be recovered. After the Great Losses came a 960 year anarchy, where various successor states to the Empire tried to take it for themselves. This anarchy ended with the formation of the Coordinator High Council, which originated as an advisory council for the Emperor, and the wholesale adoption of biotechnology in place of mechanical computers.

While at war with the Va'zok State, the weakness and inefficiency of the Emperor was finally recognised as incompatible with victory by the Coordinator High Council. Millions of years as advisors to the hereditary monarch had left many opportunities not taken, and as the Va'zok began their full-scale invasion of Coordinator space, the High Council recognised that the Emperor was more costly than beneficial. It took a full year for the coup to succeed, with the planet of Idibulee-Prime itself being contested, and civil war breaking out throughout Coordinator space. However so much power had already been dedicated to the Coordinators that their victory was all but assured, and with the siege and storming of the Imperial Palace by Coordinator ground forces, final victory was achieved. This began the Second Coordinated Era, and founded the Second Coordination of Ekimi.

The entire span of the Third Coordinated Era, for 25,433,798 years, had been spent trying to see how ownership of the galaxy could be turned to control of the galaxy. The Coordination had developed what they called Nebular Engineering, a field of science allowing the precise movement of planets, stars and even star systems by the Mid Third Era. The greatest achievement that the Nebular Engineers of the Coordinator High Council hoped to achieve was the manipulation of the pre-Coordination superstructure known as the Great Black Hole Sphere, which was a large sphere built around the Eye of Ekimi, the supermassive black hole at the centre of Ekimi that had kept the entire galaxy from moving as a normal galaxy should. The culmination of their efforts was the First Galactic Conjunction. The sphere was powered up, a process that took 3,000 years in all to complete, and the entire galaxy was shifted by thirty light years - a small-scale proof of concept, to be sure, but one which nevertheless proved the concept - the Coordination now controlled the galaxy. The success of this event marked the transition to the Fourth Galactic Coordination.

The infection is a parasite which infects the brain of its host and essentially causes them to be a mindless zombie. This occurs due to the Radiance, an ancient religious figure, would manifest in the minds of people who had forgotten her, and then cause them to be infected when they resisted. The first time this occurred was when the nation was most prosperous. This prompted the Pale King (ruler over Hallownest at the time) to create a vessel (a child of his) which had no mind or will to be corrupted and then trap the Radiance in it. This vessel would be called the Hollow Knight and would spell the end to the Infection's first wave.

The second wave of the Infection was caused when it became apparent that the Hollow Knight was not pure, and the Radiance was once again able to cause havoc. This time, however, the Pale King vanished alongside his palace, and Hallownest crumbled as a result. The infection was only stopped for good when the Knight, who was one of the Pale King's discarded children on the road to the creation of the Hollow Knight, would wonder into Hallownest, free the Hollow Knight, and kill the Radiance for good. Due to the devastation the infection caused, anarchy soon rose and made the nation we know today.

Australia entered the war as a loyal subject of Great Britain, eager to fight for King and Country, blissfully unaware of the bloody reality of modern warfare that was to unfold over the next six years.

The effects of the dismal and bloody Great War on the Australic national consciousness were immeasurable. Shattered forever was the fragile sense of imperialist fraternity that the Australic had only a few years ago presumed with their colonial overlords; the countless needless and pointless casualties of loyal Australians under their command, like lambs to the slaughter, were but one instance in a continuum of imperialist exploitation beginning with Cook's landing at Botany Bay. The soldiers that returned home found themselves bereft of the honors and pensions promised to them for their service to the Empire, as too did the families of those lost to bloody war. Those workers who had been under the taskmaster to support the war effort and had their rights limited saw none returned nor their labors lessened. In its pyrrhic defence of the status quo the Empire, as all, had lost - and this hit none harder than those it deemed most expendable, a fetid heart abandoning its extremities to necrosis.

Prime Minister Billy Hughes and his Nationalist breakaways had turned from controversial figures during the war to downright pariahs in the aftermath for their political thuggery and stubborn grasp on power. The conscription order that sent many to their graves on the other side of the earth was signed by his hand in the face of mass union-led protest, and his original denouncement as a turncoat traitor by the Labor-left came to be considered well founded as he soon came to betray many with his postwar austerity and crackdown on speech and demonstration. His government had narrowly survived the 1919 election on the fading fumes of jingoism - a vicious sunk-cost fallacy - but with the war ended the writing on the wall spelt the end of the Nationalists' lunge for power.

Horrific military blunders, such as the Gallipoli campaign and the many bloody offensives of the Western Front saw public opinion turn bitter towards those who would so carelessly dash Australic men on the ramparts of the enemy. At home, the increasingly authoritarian Hughes government, which had just narrowly survived a party split between Hughes' Nationalist faction and the Labor Party, had begun heavily suppressing dissent, which was mounting in the face of Hughes' attacks on workers' rights and enforcement of conscription.

The Nationalist government narrowly survived the 1922 election through a coalition deal with the Country Party, on the condition of Hughes's personal resignation in favour of party treasurer Stanley Bruce. However, rather than reduce wartime restrictions and provide the promised pensions and property to returning veterans, Bruce instead kowtowed to incoming enterprise from Great Britain to try and secure short-term investment to kick start economic recovery, further suppressing rights in order to guarantee labor.

The already burgeoning militant workers' unions of the nation, chiefly the IWW, grew bolder in the face of increased efforts of suppression. They found new and valuable comrades in returning soldiers and their families, and with the assistance of some of these military sympathisers the stockpiling of weapons began in earnest. Non-white immigration was all but prohibited by law - namely the White Australia Policy - but the preliminary relationship between these disillusioned soldiers and the union wobblies was to smuggle in friends and lovers from the fronts - Turks, Irishmen, Scotts, Italians, Arabs, and Greeks chiefly. Just as the Eureka Stockade was born from the embers of the Liberal Chartist movements in Europe carried to the goldfields, so too would the flames of the coming Syndic Rebellion be lit with torches carried by Irish and Turkish Revolutionaries.

The desperate Federal Election of 1922 would be the point of no return, with an uprising now well and truly on the cards. This impending doom was foreseen by the Bruce government, who began upon both a legislative and coercive race to mitigate the risk; arrests, raids, and the odd extra-judicial 'shootout'. On the other side of the floor, the Labor Party was divided in their support and response to the impending scenario; with some making impassioned speeches and others maintaining strict silence. The most outspoken Ministers would even jump ship to the Industrial Socialist Party. Defectors, too, came to dislodge the precarious majority of the Bruce government in its final months, as it stood to lose a dozen members to the Liberal Commonwealth Party. Whatever the case, their opposition to the Nationalists at least delayed the rollout of the most severe countermeasures.

In late April of 1923, the Revolution had begun in earnest. A general strike had been declared for the week leading up to Labor Day and the government had issued the order for the military to put an end to it. In Melbourne first, but later in most cities, the army would prove decisively ineffective. Most soldiers refused to act against their friends, or unarmed men, or women and invalids, and many were already willing or intending to defect to the side of the strike. In Melbourne, Ballarat, Adelaide, and Perth, on May 1st, a new Syndicalist Republic was declared by a council of union leaders, Labor and Socialist MPs, soldiers, and local governance. The nation's railways and communication infrastructure were promptly seized, and the cities' workers took inspiration from the Independence War of the Irish some years prior and established city-wide Soviets to maintain order and resources.

The National government was caught off guard and sequestered away in Canberra. Once Sydney had too turned over to the Syndicalists the uprising was all but over - there would be no reprisal from Britannia, only a government in exile allotted a small room in Westminster for Bruce and his fellows before Westminster too met its end.

Trouble arose immediately, however, between the Syndicalist and their Labor allies, who sought to deeply reform the nation's structure of government, and the more radical Leninist Communists, who wished to dismantle the existing structure of government altogether. Especially in New South Wales, where Premier Jack Lang and his forces seemed just as primed to storm the Communists' headquarters as the Communists were to martyr themselves, tensions risked boiling over into civil conflict. Thankfully, in the end, the Communists acquiesced on condition of amnesty and some minor concessions - they just simply couldn't muster enough support for any sort of conflict, especially against a faction with the military on-side and with at the very least vaguely congruent intentions.

A New Republic
In the weeks following the Labor Day Coup, by-elections were held for every seat to replace the ousted Nationalists and establish a caretaker government. Of the 75 seats at the time in the House of Representatives, Labor held the most at 27; no Labor MP had been unseated, though some had defected, and several seats had been regained from unseated Nationalists. Labor and the Industrial Socialists had agreed not to run against each other. The Industrial Socialists held 27, 7 of which were taken from Nationalists, the others defectors from Labor. The Liberal Union salvaged 15 seats, and the Country Party claimed 17. The Senate returned a proportion favouring the Industrial Socialist and Country parties.

The first government of Syndic Australia was thusly formed by a coalition of Labor and Industrial Socialists and led by (the overall 9th) Prime Minister T.J. Ryan of Labor and Deputy Prime Minister Donald Grant of the Industrial Socialists.

[Spoiler=1923 - 1926]

The remainder of 1923 was spent by the new government drafting, in conjunction with the Syndics, a new iteration of the constitution. As much of the drafting had been deliberated in anticipation of Revolution, it took several prompt Constitutional Conventions of fine tuning to produce a constitution ready to be voted on by the populace in a series of referenda - all passed without issue. By Easter of 1924 the transition had begun, with the old Imperial Commonwealth now firmly a fixture of the past.

Ever the sibling of Australia, New Zealand soon followed suit in replacing its own Imperial government with a Syndic Republic. It participated in the Australian constitutional initiative with the intent of union, and the two officially united on Labor Day in 1924. Full integration, as with other novel constitutional changes, was not final until the 1926 Federal Election, which returned an even stronger majority coalition, in which Labor was only a single seat the senior partner due to the emergence and inclusion of new parties such as the Christian Social Democrats and the ANZAC Veterans' League.