Worlds of the Nether: Tellus

My name is Baka Mizarus Erdogium, and I am the dracon represenatitve to the Gnadra Accords. Today it will be my pleasure to tell you about the history of the Dracon Imperium, and our homeworld, Tellus. It is a great honor, for we are relatively new among the interstellar community and yet we were rewarded with the lucrative position of a senior partner under the Accords. Nobody can deny our influence in certain sectors of space, and our military power. Many a pirate was lulled into a false sense of security when they found a lone dracon settlement and expected a few backwards farmers but instead found a society where every member had military training, and everyone knew what really mattered when it comes to building a society: discipline. We may still be few in number or not have many conquered or assimilated worlds, but every dracon is worth ten of other races. Statistically, of course.

To start from the beginning, we came to be on a world now known as Tellus. It’s one of the two rocky worlds orbiting the star Astrum, our sun. In many ways, it is a rather average world. Its mass and size are similar to most important, inhabited worlds. We have just over two thirds of the surface covered in seas and oceans. We have no permanent ice caps because no landmass sits at the poles. There are four large continents, all linked together with isthmuses or island chains. It’s impossible to show where our race started, because our society was united from early civilizations on all continents, joined in early wars and unions. The capital lies now, since three hundred years ago, at the great city of Palatin. There lies the Senate, our government – a body of 147 representatives from all provinces and colonies, headed by two consuls, the most experienced citizens in the whole Imperium.

We lived in peace with each other and with our client races, such as drakonids, dragonmen, drakkarlings or lizardfolk, for a long time. However, our entire solar system is relatively poor in metals, and therefore, we started running out of materials for our military and technology nearly a century ago. The shortages meant unrest brewing in the provinces and among the clients. When we realized there were hardly any resources left on Tellus, we feared our society was about to collapse. Our mages and other magic users began reaching out into the stars with desperate plans to find other, more fortunate worlds and mine them out.

The first target of our portals was the neighboring world of Stiriacus, the other habitable world in our system. Unfortunately, what we found on the other end was very unpleasant. We are a warm-loving race, and Stiriacus is a world of snow and ice. The unbearably cold temperatures were barely warded off when we discovered many dangerous, savage animals populating the world. The giant, furry mammals stalked our explorers at every move and many perished to those creatures. If that wasn’t enough, we discovered a sentient race of yetis inhabiting Stiriacus – a savage race that at the time refused all attempts to communicate. To top it all off, we found the minerals of Stiriacus were depleted even further, by a past, fallen civilization the yetis used to have there, as we would later discover.

When the only habitable world in our system proved to be a dead end, we became desperate. The following twenty years were spent making portals to random destinations as Tellus was slowly destabilizing and various client states threatened secession. Most of the destinations were incapable of supporting life, being frozen orbs or arid, barren, airless rocks. Some were actively hostile to life, including a “pressure cooker” world we found early on. Those that could potentially support life, were still barren and bereft of useful resources. Finally, 72 years ago, we made a portal to a Tellus-like world. Our explorers reported wide, green pastures filled with docile animals and copper-bearing rocks lying out in the open. We sent a military team to claim it… only to find it inhabited.

We found a town inhabited by dwarves, halflings, gnomes and Yotvian humans. Our military unit met with an immediate, aggressive response of a dwarven unit stationed at the town. After most of the dwarves were killed and we occupied what we thought to be the major settlement of the planet, we quickly found out it was merely a backwater town. Soon, a major dwarven unit arrived from the world’s main colony town and eliminated most of our troops. Those who survived and fled back to Tellus, reported a world inhabited by fierce, mammalian creatures but one worth taking by force. A month later, in the middle of our preparations for war, a dwarven fleet tracked our portal and arrived at Tellus, making us realizing the world we found wasn’t even their main world. Thankfully, our consuls negotiated a settlement with the Irden Reichs, as we found out they were called, and in the time since our races bonded over similar militaristic ideologies and disciplined societies.

The Irden opened our eyes on many new technologies and a whole galactic society. With these new gifts, we spread out of our solar system and easily found worlds capable of supporting our colonists. Many members of many races of Tellus gleefully colonized other worlds, letting us quickly rival the other galactic powers in size and power. We built a large fleet of spacejamming ships, which patrol the Imperium’s length. Although many of our colonies are still very young and not particularly populous, our people practice the Course of Honor. Every citizen had military training. Every public official is a citizen. Every leader was a public official. Every senator had to be a leader before. Our consuls are the most experienced and honored members of our society who served the Imperium on many worlds and many fronts.

In time, we even returned to Stiriacus. Although it is still as inhospitable as it used to be, we learned new magic that let us survive there. Some of the yetis were coerced or talked into allying with us, and thousands of dohwar clients settled many cities on the world’s surface, working for us to bring a better future for the Imperium. We placed science posts on many moons of the four gas giants of our system, and even on the satellites of Viator. The brown dwarf Viator was to us what large moons are to many worlds. Its peculiar, magenta glow was the brightest object on our night sky and it always fascinated us and inspired our poets. When we reached it and were able to bask in its light in person, we knew we had truly reached the stars.