History

The origins of the colony of Delsun are surrounded by tragedy. The original settlers on Delsun left Earth in 2048 AD (-2450 Imperial) as part of the fleet of sub-light colony ships built by the North American Space Agency with Canadian, Australian, Japanese and Russian partners. Three vessels were tasked with colonising the Delsun system. However of the three vessels only one sucessfully reached Delsun, the "Presidio of Stars", which entered the system in 3520 AD.

The vessel had not even achieved stable orbit when further problems struck. On the voyage tensions had arisen between the various people who would make up the colony. This culminated in the murder of the vessels chief pilot Korienkin Delsun. Delsun collapsed and died at the controls while performing a decelleration burn to bring the colony ship down to the selected colony location. It has been postulated since that Korienkin Delsun had been poisoned. The colony world was named after the dead pilot.

Though Korienkin Delsun was the first person to be murdered in the system he was not the last. With Delsun lying dead at his console, the ships second pilot, Arnold Vasca attempted to continue the landing but under stress made a fatal error. The original landing spot for the ship was to have been the site where the city of Sriva would eventually stand. Instead the "Presidio of Stars" overshot its landing zone and went into the sea about one hundred kilometers west. The vessel struck the sea at an angle, pitched over and the hull ruptured. The vessel, heavily laden with supplies began to sink. Exactly one hundred minutes later the "Presidio of Stars slipped beneath the surface, two thirds of her colonists still on board. Not an auspicious start to the colony.

The dazed survivors used what ever they could find to reach shore. They numbered less than two thousand, most of the ships technical crew had not survived the landing, of those that did one was Arnold Vasca. Vasca did not last the night. A number of colonists blaming him for the disaster killed him. Over the next few days a charismatic colonist Gregor Dimitri put together a gang of thugs who lorded it over the other survivors, taking what they wanted, food, technology, women. Over the next three months Dimitri and his supporters killed three hundred, mostly male, survivors.

Gregor Dimitri and his gang remained in power for three years, squandering the little that had been salvaged from the colony ship. Finally however Gregor Dimitri's taste for other peoples wives and partners culminated in his gang turning on its self. Dimitri attempted to take the partner of his chief deputy. The result was a bloodbath, most of the gang killed in the shootout, along with yet more survivors. When the dust from the shooting had died away the remaining colonists found themselves alone, with most of the technical knowledge and personnel dead, and the majority of the colonies start-up supplies at the bottom of the sea. They had to rely entirely on their own abilities.

A few days after the destruction of Gregor Dimitri and his gang the survivors had a meeting and elected a council to provide a plan on how best to manage the few remaining resources and ensure that the colony survived. The date was 17 October 3523 AD, which became the principal holiday on Delsun, "Rebirth Day." This initial council, led by Tessa vanHowell, was fair but hard, however compared with the years under Gregor Dimitri the colonists found the changes pleasant and well though out. Slowly ovr the next few years the colony began to pull itself together. The first permanent structures were built and the town of Sriva evolved from a collection of scavenged shelters into a proper township.

The administration of Tessa vanHowell, herself a victim of Gregor Dimitri, proved so successfull that she was confirmed in her position as leader four times in the elections held every four years. Sadly she had no offspring, the injuries and lack of proper treatment inflicted by Gregor Dimitri preventing her from carrying a child to term. Even after she retired from public life she remained popular and was often consulted for advice by both the colonies council and individual colonists. When Tessa vanHowell died in 3581 at the age of 83 she was honoured with the epithet the "Mother of Delsun" and left behind a colony, though reduced to around tech level 4, which looked like it would now survive.

The township of Sriva began to grow rapidly, as is typical of low tech colonies birth rates tended to be high. Smaller settlements and farmsteads began to spread out from Sriva which slowly transformed into a market and administrative centre for the small settlements being established around the region. The culture and atmosphere was very like a frontier region of the American West of the eighteen hundreds. Each small settlement and farmstead effectively governed itself with Sriva acting as intermediary in disputes. This system lasted for nearly two centuries, during which time the population grew from around 1,200 after the death of Gregor Dimitri to more than 350,000 by 3790 when the colony again underwent a change.

The change that occurred in 3790 AD began when the harvest failed for the fifth year in a row. Food stocks were very low and starvation was beginning to bite into the colony. The township of Viya located far to the north of Sriva was particularly hard hit. When it was discovered later that year that a number of officials from Sriva had been hording large quantities of food a riot erupted. The rioters seized the horders and would have killed them out of hand. At this point the town magistrate Karl Fenlon intervened. Karl Fenlon was well respected locally and under his guidance Viya had grown into what would have been a prosperous community if the harvests had not failed. The huge stocks of food discovered, which were to have been shipped to Sriva by the horders was the final straw. Karl Fenlon, using his authority as magistrate of Viya, and backed up by the populace, expelled all of the Sriva officials from Viya sending them back to Sriva with a declaration, now known as the "Fenlon Declaration", that the people were a free people, that they were entitled to fair treatment and that all should receive a just portion of the world's resources. Karl Fenlon then had the horded food stocks placed under Viyan control and arranged for distribution to the people of the region.

The authorities in Sriva did not take the expulsion of their officials from Viya kindly, nor the declaration made by magistrate Fenlon. They responded by sending a security detachment to Viya, who upon reaching the town promptly defected. As the news spread other towns threw off what they had begun to describe as "the choking collar of Sriva." The towns of Koslan and Belopol patterning themselves on the Viyan model named their chief administrator "magistrate" and managed, like Vriya to either absorb the security force sent by Sriva to "restore order" or repulse them. For the next eighty years Delsun consisted of essentially a series of small city-states. With Sriva periodically sending out forces to attempt to regain control over the "lost" territories.

By 3870 AD the northern towns had had enough, though the tech level had crawled back up to 6 nearly twenty persent of Delsuns population was in military service, something that could not be sustained. The magistrates of the cities of Viya, Koslan and Belopol met at Koslan to hammer out a plan. It took two years for the plan to take effect. The first step came to fruition in 3872 when the northern cities combined under a government led by the magistrates of each city, the Trimagisture of Delsun. With the three city forces combined the Trimagisture could take on Sriva with some chance of success. The second step was to isolate Sriva from the younger settlements of Varatov, Crazkiy and Konetz which had been established on other parts of the world. This was less successful, by 3874 only Konetz had joined the Trimagisture. The final step was a re-issue of the Declaration of Fenlon by the Trimagisture.

In what proved an almost farsical campaign the Srivan and Trimagisture forces clashed in 3875 fifty kilometers south of Viya. A naval force sent by Crazkiy and Varatov to help Sriva managed to land on the wrong beach, some two hundred kilometers north east of Viya and were promptly stuck in the swamps found in that region. The battle itself was over in less than an hour. The conscripts from Sriva, though brave had been issued with only one rifle and fifty rounds of ammunition between five men, they were far from home facing a much better equipped opponant defending their own homeland. The Srivan forces fired until they were out of ammunition and then promptly surrendered to the Trimagisture.

With the Srivan army lost, the Srivan government panicked, many fled South into the mountains. These were the lucky ones. Oppression had been high in Sriva and surrounding areas. The population rose-up and stormed the government buildings. Gaols which largely held political detainees were found to contain large numbers of starving prisoners and many emaciated corpses, there was also evidence of cannibalism amongst the inmates. The revenge taken on the government officials of Sriva was savage. Any caught were taken to one of the gaols and walled up. When the Trimagisture forces reached Sriva the populace welcomed them as liberators.

Over the next three centuries the Trimagisture evolved into the Delsun Comagistrate, while the tech level began to climb, reaching tech level 7 by around 4150 AD. For the first time in the world's history the people of Delsun had peace and prosperity. The first tentative steps back into space were made using chemical rockets, a satellite network began to grow and construction began on the world's first manned space station in 4198. This was designed to be built over a ten year period to help keep costs down.

In 4200 things fell part. The magistrate of Varatov, Morgyana Visoliy, decided that the Comagistrate system was inefficient and not in accord with her vision. With a cadre of staunch supporters a night of terror erupted across the planet, but especially in the capital Sriva. In the space of twenty-nine hours (one planetary rotation) every chief magistrate and three quarters of the deputees had been slaughtered along with their families. Any whom Morgyana Visloiy considered a threat also died or vanished without trace. Morgyana Visoliy named herself First Consul of Delsun and began placing her most trusted (and vicious) supporters in positions of power across the world.

One of the first things that First Consul Visoliy did was to ensure that the space station was completed regardless of cost. Given tech 7 technology this was a huge undertaking, and given the original construction timetable had set a ten year construction period, its completion in only eighteen months would have been considered remarkable. The boost to technology this entailed pushed Delsun up to tech level 8. In 4201 the station was commissioned. Visoliy considered this a great achievment, the three hundred lives lost during its construction being of no matter to the First Consul. What she was most proud of though were the forty nuclear missiles placed on the station, each missile targetted at one of Delsuns major cities. First Consul Morgyana Visoliy considered her position secure.

Morgyana Visoliy held power through a combination of overt terror and an efficient secret police for a further fifty three years, finally dying in 4254 AD, her deputy and nominated successor Pietor Zanderson announced that their beloved First Consul Morgyana Visoliy had been murdered by poison and immediately initiated a purge. In six months ten percent of the population of Sriva had been killed, and five percent of the total planetary population. Six months after this First Consul Pietor Zanderson was assassinated by a colonel in the Consular Guard, Jerome Candon, who named himself First Consul. In the next ten years Delsun went through twenty three First Consuls, none of whom died of natural causes.

By 4265 AD the people had had enough. The current First Consul Jhandemon Halick ordered a unit of the consulate guard to open fire on a demonstration led by the populist orator Giles Varananov. The unit refused and instead joined the protest, storming Halick's office and tossing the First Consul through a twelfth story window into the square below. In 4267 AD after eighteen months of military rule, elections were held across Delsun. This resulted in the re-establishment of a magistrate for each region for a restored Delsun Comagistrate. Giles Varananov was elected as first magistrate, a position he held continually for twenty three years. The positions of First Consul and Deputy Consul were abolished.

When First Magistrate Giles Varananov died in 4290 Delsun had reached a stable tech level of 8 and was beginning to nudge level 9 in some areas. The nuclear missiles on the aging space station were removed and the station decommissioned and small bases were being established on a number of other worlds within the Delsun system.

In 4355 some sixty-five years after the death of Giles Varananov, a jump capable starship misjumped into the Delsun system. The ship was a trading vessel from the Virian Belt, the "Trader's Liberty". The ship failed to respond to hails and sensors showed no sign of any power signature. The insystem merchant "Magistrate Constantine" managed to intercept the starship and successfully boarded the Trader's Liberty. They found the crew all dead as the result of a total life support failure and engineering a shambles with large parts of the drive systems badly damaged, including an incomprehensible item attached to a fast burn fusion reactor. The Trader's Liberty was taken on board a bulk in-system freighter for transport back to Delsun where she was to be examined by Comagistrate scientists. The crew of the Magistrate Constantine received massive rewards and were told to remain silent about what they had found.

With the Trader's Liberty on Delsun, Comagistrate scientists and engineers leapt to their task with joy, and began dismantling the ship, examining and re-examinging every component on the ship. The mostly destroyed engineering section proved especially bountiful, speeding up Delsuns research programs in power generation and FTL systems by a decade. In 4397 the Delsun Comagistrant tested its first jump drive vessel, "Varananov" on a short in-system giant from Delsun to the gas giant of Shalzarka. The journey almost ended in disaster with the drive being activated in high planetary orbit. The Varananov survived however and nine days later the battered ship fell back into normal space just over one hundred diameters from the gas giant.

It took a further three years of exhaustive research to work out the problems which had plagued the Varananov, but eventually in 4400 the Varananov made a totally successful jump. Again this was between Delsun and the gas giant Shalzarka. The one hundred diameter minimum safe jump distance had been discovered and the problems of fusion had been overcome. Long range in-system transport was revolutionised. But the government was ambitious and carefully planned an exploration mission to the neighbouring star system of Arana.

In 4405 after years of testing Delsun launched a jump-capable scout on its interstellar voyage to the Arana system. The drive performed flawlessly and after spending a month in the system the scout successfully returned to the Delsun system with news of a world with an extensive biosphere and an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere. The Comagistrate responded by ordering the conversion of a number of in-system bulk carriers to take the new jump drive. The conversions took five years, but finally, in 4410 a small fleet of twelve transports made the jump from Delsun to Arana. The Delsun Comagistrate had become a multi-system state.

Over the next few centuries the Delsun Comagistrate explored the region around the system, establishing colonies throughout the subsector. In 4710 AD a Delsun Comagistrate scout was exploring in the Helebore system in the neighbouring subsector, when a vessel of unknown configuration was detected. The unidentified vessel did not answer hails and fired a missile at the Delsun scout, the detonation of which killed a number of the scouts crew. The captain of the scout returned fire and managed to disable what was identified as a Trade Confederation pirate ship "Lyonesse." The scout crew traced the vessel back through its computer logs to the Marchon system. The scouts captain, using great daring retraced the course of the Lyonesse through a number of deep space jumps, using the damaged Lyonesse, hastily repaired as a tanker. Upon reaching the Marchon system the scout fired several nuclear detonation missiles at what was identified as the pirate base from which the Lyonesse had left.

The result of the incident with the Lyonesse resulted in a long drawn out war with the Trade Confederation. This war dragged on for ten years, and was characterised by hit and run raids on each others population centers. Losses were immense on both sides, both in terms of loss of people and in the monetary losses. Finally the war came to an end, no armistice or cease fire, both sides had simply run out of combatants. The war was particularly hard on the Delsun Comagistrant, the Delsun Comagistrant was reduced to four systems, none with an A class starport. Battles just stopped occurring. Delsun was unaware that the Trade Confederation had collapsed.

In 5110 contacts from the Third Imperium reach the Delsun Comagistrant. They found a state that had largely rebuilt itself and some of its colonies, and which was again beginning to build warships. Delsun offered facilities, repairs, fuel and recreational facilities. This was accepted and in return Delsun received some technical assistance which helped the Delsun Comagistrate raise its tech level to 12.

Delsun interests again began to suffer as the result of clashes with ships from Alston. The most significant of which occured in 5538 AD when a small squadron of four corvettes was ambushed by an Alston cruiser The corvette captains put up a masterful defence and where able to out maneuver their larger opponent and bring news of the hostile back to Delsun with only minimal losses to the Delsun squadron. After much deliberation the Delsun Comagistrant decided to avoid future contact with the obviously hostile Alston forces.

News of the assassination of emperor Strephon reached Delsun via an independent trader looking for a safer haven, the trader also bringing news of the outbreak of civil war and the Solomani incursions into Imperial space. The main effect of this was that a number of vessels ordered by Delsun were now not going to be delivered until the Civil War was decided. Not wishing to wait an indefinate period Delsun increased the rate of local contruction.

Delsun's long run of misfortune continued however, in 5649 an Imperial Fleet Courier entered the system. The courier was part of the same squadron as the battle-cruiser Imperic Star which brought virus to the Alston system. The fleet courier responded to hails, and requested emergency docking at the Delsun Highport. This was granted, but instead of docking the courier accelerated towards the highport impacting near the ports main engineering plant. The high port was torn apart, totally destroying the port and the orbital contruction facilities. Portions of the high port rained down on the world beneath, one large section hitting in the central business district of the city of Sriva with massive loss of life. Virus had arrived in the system.

Delsun like other worlds began to fight back against the virus. Luckily the number of vectors was relatively small. The system lost its A class ports but managed to repair sufficiently so that by 5690 a B class facility was in full cry. One of the surviving magistrates, Pietor Llanden, later Czar Pietor I, took control of the government and principally as a result of his leadership Delsun is now less than a decade from returning to A class. A significant portion of the pre-virus fleet also survived leaving Delsun in a good position to regrow. When Pietor I died in 5710 he was succeeded as Czar by his son Pietor II. By 5717 Delsun had regained all its former territories, some not occupied since the Delsun-Trade Confederation war. Czar Pietor II is now looking at expanding the Czarate of Delsun. In his ambitions he is helped by the large fleet which survived the virus, but hampered by the relatively low population, a little over one billion, compared with Alstons over ten billion.