NS Name: Yuenaan
Nation Name: Sl’Tani Imperial Hegemony
Flag:
Capital: Kv’Lo, Sectus System
population size: 235 Billion
Primary species: Rv’Lonat (What's covering his face is a naturally occurring protruding bone growth)
Culture: The Rv’Lonat are largely family based, with blood connections often being the most important factor of any relationship. It is a culture of both blood feuds and favors, with familial grudges and loyalty carrying on across generations. A rather famous Rv’Lonat saying that is known throughout the galaxy is that “Every drop of goodwill will be returned with a river of kindness, and every spark of hatred will be returned with an inferno of rage.”
Rv’Lonat social structure is based largely on two different kinds of organizations. Clans and sects. A clan is a very large collection of extended family members, in which there is a prominent hierarchal structure, typically with the Clan Patriarch at the top. Placement within a clan typically relies on how directly related one is to the current clan patriarch. It should be noted that their is a distinct difference between what is just a family and what is a clan. Many Rv’Lonat families do not qualify to be a clan, as a clan implies a certain amount of military, political, and economic power. A large portion of the Rv’Lonat species belong to families instead of clans, and families tend to live under the lordship of whatever clan or sect controls that portion of space. A sect is coalition of very small clans or even a group of clanless people. Rather than being united by blood, a sect typically has some sort of overarching doctrine or charter that binds them.
Both clans and sects own large sections of Sl’Tani space, run their own businesses, and even field their own militaries. In many ways, each clan or sect is its own autonomous nation within the Sl’Tani Imperial Hegomony. What unites all of them is a senate, whose members are chosen by the heads of the most prominent clans and sects. In many ways, however, the senate is more akin to a treaty organization than an actual legislative body, as their main purpose is to settle disputes and establish and maintain a common economic system to facilitate trade.
Another important inclusion in Rv’Lonat social structure is realms. A realm is essentially a faction of many clans and sects that are subordinated to a single clan or sect. The Patriarchs that stand at the heads of a realm can easily be considered the most powerful men in the entire Sl’Tani Imperial Hegemony.
Two other important aspects of Rv’Lonat culture would be the Tyrants and the Birth Mothers. Tyrants are the lineage of an ancient warrior caste from long in the Rv’Lonat past. Centuries of selective breeding, eugenics, and gene alteration have made the average Tyrant larger, faster, stronger, and more tactically minded than the average Rv’Lonat. In modern times, Tyrants make up the bulk of Sl’Tani special forces, along with a good portion of its officer corps. While a Patriarch typically holds the political and economic power of a clan or sect, Tyrants hold the bulk of the military power.
A Birth Mother is a Rv’Lonat female who has volunteered to undergo special hormone treatment. They are the Rv’Lonat’s solution to their near 1 to 1 birth to death rate. A Birth Mother is essentially a hyper-fertile Rv’Lonat female whose expenses are completely subsidized and whose main job is to give birth to and raise many children. Despite only making up 5% of the female population of the Sl-Tani Hegemony, Birth Mothers account for nearly 45% of all children born every year. In modern times, Birth Mothers are typically found in newly established colonies in order to speed population growth. While Birth Mothers are a highly respected and even venerated part of Rv’Lonat culture, they hold no actual authority or political power.
Nation History: The Rv’Lonat developed on the temperate and largely tropical world of Kv'Lo. The clan and sect system has existed in Rv’Lonat society for as long as there has been recorded history. This tendency towards familial bonds and tribalism has made Rv’Lonat history prone to conflict, but a serious issue developed that stopped the Rv’Lonat from descending into a state of near constant total war. The Rv’Lonat have a natural birth and death rate of nearly 1 to 1. For a species that could not replenish easily from a sudden mass loss of life, total war would easily led to their extinction.
So instead the Tyrant System was developed. Each clan and sect had a small group of champions, whose name can not be translated easily into foreign tongue and are instead known by most other species as Tyrants. Tyrants were chosen from the best genetic stalk available from each clan and sect, and opposing Tyrants would routinely fight each other in gladiatorial combat. Instead of war, issues among great Rv’Lonat powers would be settled through these matches, with the tacit agreement that the outcome would always be respected. If a Rv’Lonat power refused to recognize the outcome of a match, all other Rv’Lonat powers would immediately besiege them, for fear that the disagreement could possibly escalate into mass conflict and then extinction. Such sieges typically ended in the complete annihilation of the belligerent, to the last man, women, and child
However, as is the trend, technology continued to constantly improve. Eventually the field of biology developed to the point that hormone treatment was possible, and the first Birth Mothers were created. The Rv’Lonat population exploded, as did the competition for resources. Now capable of replenishing their population, the great powers of Kv'Lo considered total war as a viable option to settle disputes and acquire the resources many of them now desperately needed. The Tyrant System was abandoned, though many Tyrants would find themselves at the heads of the newly developed Rv’Lonat armies. In what would become know as the Great Unification Wars, a few key clans and sects would rise to dominate many other clans and sects. These conglomerations of vassals and masters would become known as realms. At the end of the Great Unification Wars, the most powerful realms would have one last all out battle to decided who Kv'Lo would truly belong to.
The winning realm became known as the Hegemon. The Hegemon is a title given when one clan manages to expand their entire realm to subjugate all Rv’Lonat peoples. Hegemons are very rare in Rv’Lonat history, there having only ever been two. The First Hegemon was the one who united Kv'Lo. It would be under him that the warp drive was discovered and the Rv’Lonat would reach out into the stars. It was due to this united front the First Hegemon managed to put up that the Rv’Lonat would survive many of the beginning hurdles interstellar people face and establish a foothold in the galaxy.
When the First Hegemon died, a great civil war wracked Rv’Lonat space. Ancient grudges were brought up once again now that fealty to the Hegemon did not stay their hand's. Many outside powers would take advantage of this civil war to annex and destroy many Rv’Lonat clans and sects at the fringes of Sl'Tani space. Few cared, however, as they simply saw it as one less rival to contend with.
This state of civil war continued for 90 years after the First Hegemon's death. An invasion by a major galactic power would force the Rv’Lonat to unite once again, this time behind the Second Hegemon. The Second Hegemon would beat back the invaders, and upon his death he established the Kv'Lo senate. He also introduced the idea of "Base Blood" to Rv’Lonat society. Base Blood is the idea that all Rv’Lonat can be seen as one big family. Of course, the Rv’Lonat would always see their true family as far more important, but Base Blood has more to do with the idea that Rv’Lonat have more in common with each other than they do with aliens. No longer should the Rv’Lonat be complacent when alien powers threaten their kind, even if those being threatened are from a different clan or sect. It was under both this idea of Base Blood and the Kv'Lo senate that the Sl'Tani Imperial Hegemony was born.
What followed the creation of the Hegemony was the Great Outward Crusade, where the Rv’Lonat declared retroactive grudges against the foreign powers who took advantage of the Rv’Lonat civil war for their own gain, despite not many of them caring at the time. Despite the Second Hegemon having already died, the Rv’Lonat continued to put up a united front during the Crusade and it was the many victories Sl'Tani managed to gain during the Crusade that elevated them from a "tribal group of backwater savages" to a legitimate galactic player in the eyes of many.
230 years have passed since the Great Outward Crusade, and although the Sl'Tani Imperial Hegemony remains immensely decentralized, it is the common front the Rv’Lonat people show to the rest of the galaxy, in the name of the Base Blood.
There has yet to be a Third Hegemon in Rv’Lonat history, however, in the modern day the Rvat Realm of the Rvat Clan is currently considered a sort of quasi-hegemon. They can not completely dominate all other clans and sects in the way a hegemon must, but they can exert great pressure on nearly all of them. They can not pass anything they want in the senate, but they can block anything they want. They make up over a fifth of Sl'Tani space and hold nearly a fourth of its total military power.
Unique Technologies:
Multi-Layered Shielding: Sl'Tani ships tend to not have one strong shield, but rather a series of weaker shields in several different layers. The key to this is that each layer of shield has its own system and power generator. This allows each to be fixed and recharged independently of each other in the heat battle. It is definitely possible that the first layer of a Sl'Tani shield system will come back online before the enemy breaks through the last layer. And as the enemy whittles down the first layer, the second layer can come back on line, and so on and so forth.
Ricort Stimulants: With a long history of genetic engineering and hormone manipulation, Ricort Stimulants are the epitome of centuries of Rv’Lonat biological sciences. They are battle stimulants, a slew of drugs made to heighten reaction time, numb pain, heighten perception, increase stamina, strength, and speed, and offer many other improvements. What separates Ricort Stimulants from stimulants offered by many other species and civilizations is not only the statistically proven superior quality, but also the complete lack of side effects, such as withdrawal, heavy exhaustion immediately after use, disproportionate gains following each use, etc. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that a number of drugs inside Ricort Stimulants exist to cure the side effects the moment they manifest. Ricort Stimulants are very rare outside Sl'Tani space, do in large part to the Rv’Lonat's dismissive view of aliens and a lack of trading with foreign powers.
Military Size: 7.85 Billion
Military Description: Each clan and sect holds its own military and doctrine, but there are several commonalities that tend to be true of all them. The Rv’Lonat mainly use plasma weaponry. On the ground they have a focus on artillery and heavy weaponry, which makes their infantry slow to advance but difficult to stop. They prefer to keep their targets at range, as they can not use their large amounts of artillery or orbital bombardment in close quarters combat. Tyrants are the only members of the Sl'Tani military that can be said to have extensively trained in cqc, although all soldiers are at least somewhat adept at it. In space, Rv’Lonat ships tend to be of sleek design, making them very maneuverable and quick to react. They sacrifice a decent amount of armor to make use of this agility, and so rely more heavily on their advanced shielding for defense.
Soldier appearance:
InfantryRobotic Infantry Standard Ship Appearance:
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