Post by Insano-Man on Sept 24, 2018 9:40:19 GMT -5
All Things With Sacrifice
The founding of the Regentic occurred at an indeterminate point between -200 A.F. and 300 A.F., the records of which have long since been destroyed or hidden by a government long past. Since then, struggling through war after war, disaster after disaster, and what one could believe would be everything the universe could throw at them, the Verinen Permanos Regentic has not only perservered, but thrived in the face of all odds. Through courage, resolve, and sacrifice, the now-hated superpower has carved its name into the galaxy's history in the blood of its own and others.
History
No one is quite sure why the Verinen settled on Alstannes, much less why their nation's name is at odds with its own culture. Whether intentional or accidental, no historical records detailing the landing on Alstannes or the formation of the Regentic have ever been uncovered, lending much to the mystery of Verinen past. Only one fact seems to remain among the common cultural knowledge of its citizens; that, just as the Rhine's brief time on Alstannes, the beginnings on the modern homeworld of the Verinen empire were troubled and difficult. It is believed that a popular revolution against the Republic of Tervinn failed, yet the instability it introduced into the fledgling nation doomed it to collapse. The Regentic would take its place as a brief dictatorship eventually to shift to a socialist democracy.
Whether it had been a truthful democracy in the beginning, the modern Verinen government is not quite consent by the governed. In its dealings with other nations, management of the military, and most instances involving its industry or research sectors, the Regentic has maintained full control, subtle or covert, in order to guide the country to the goals it has set forth.
What the Verinen have documented well and kept readily known are the almost incessant trials their nation has been forced to push through at each turn in history. From the famine that struck Alstannes in 578 A.F. to the conquest of the Inkron colony on Gradel in 1700 A.F., records of the Verinen's dogged rise to interstellar superpower status, it is not hard to understand the modern Regentic's isolationist and vengeful actions.
The famine that found its way onto Alstannes in 578 A.F., recorded as beginning on June 9th, was the result of a combination of destructive farming methods and a lack of preparation for the planet's "Carver season", where winds brought on by heat differences during the planet's day cycle would produce sandstorms lasting upwards of six months. The result was the almost total destruction of Verinen food crops, bringing with it a wave of starvation-related illnesses and deaths for at least a year. Still only just larger than the fledgling country it had been at the Regentic's founding, the Verinen would be dealt a near-disastrous setback to their future expansion into space. The rate of growth across their home system alone would be stunted as their first colonial vessel arrived on and shortly thereafter failed to successfully establish a colony on Kelvanner four years later in 582 A.F. It would be another eighteen years before a colonial effort would finally establish a self-sustaining colony on the barren planet and another six before any returns would be seen from the endeavor.
In a belated pursuit of the Rhine, a small Ollenhall fleet of badly outdated pseudo-generation ships arrived in orbit over Alstannes in 731 A.F. and immediately began a short-lived bombardment of Tervinn's capital on May 8th. While neither difficult to fend off nor particularly damaging, the sudden and bewildering cost in life inflicted on the Verinen brought with it a further jaded and suspicious lens over their view of other nations. If the Ollenhall, whom their people had lived beside for centuries, would turn on them so quickly, so viciously, how could anyone be trusted?
Their beliefs would soon take their toll on those around them as the Verinen developed their own gluon separator matrix in 1417 A.F. and began a short colonial expansion around them. It would seem almost by pure luck that they had not been given the "gift" of faster-than-light travel by the Ollenhall in another attempted conquest or colonial blundering in the vein of the Invasion of 1340 on Anchorage or the incident on Tsarova soon to occur. In reality, the Ollenhall were unwilling to repeat the total loss of the Bombing of Dreschutts in 731, fearing that, following their failure over Anchorage, the Verinen would be more than a match for their space navy still being refitted for interstellar travel. Were that to happen, it would indeed have been a practical gift from the gods for the Verinen - or a pistol pressed against their own throat for the Ollenhall. And yet, in a likemindedness that would avail both countries and doom the first few the Verinen would encounter, the Regentic eased itself away from the thought of vengeance in its first interstellar actions as the potential casualty count rose higher and higher with each estimate. Those countries who would suffer would be the now practically unheard-of Hadrinado Cluster Alliance and Cantagra Cluster Alliance. Not unlike the Verinen and Ollenhall, these two fledgling empires were situated just three systems apart, the distance between their borders growing shorter and shorter as the centuries dragged on. With the Regentic flag planted practically between the two in 1471 A.F., on the first extrastellar Verinen colony of Fernheim, the lukewarm feelings of the two space nations would draw closer and closer to eachother as the Regentic brushed aside every demand and offer as threats and deceit. It was finally in 1499 A.F. that, fearful as Verinen expansion continued unchecked between them and border disputes continued to rise, the Hadrinado and Cantagra alliances joined together in an interstellar conflict against the Verinen. The mobility of faster-than-light travel and the vastly superior technology of the Regentic crushing down on their empires, the war would be over in 1507 A.F. with the final dissolution of the Hadrinado Cluster Alliance's coalition government just months after the Cantagra alliance's capital had been taken and their government forced into exile. The splintering remnants of the two former empires would be brought forcefully under the boot of the Verinen Permanos Regentic and assimilated into their empire within the coming years, signifying their first interstellar military victory and the first extrastellar conquest of any nation in history. While resistance would be quick to rise and cultural assimilation slow to progress, the former Hadrinado and Cantagra empires now form key components of the Regentic's shield worlds as of 2203 A.F.
Victory, however, would not be a continuous affair. As their empire spread and the Verinen encountered more and more other nations, their first true scar would be at the hands of the Celdskon Alliances in the Celdskon system. Believing the two nations to be incompatible with one another and the apparent constant state of war on their home planet - and only planet - would work to their favor, the Regentic invaded Celdskon in June 1st of 1581 A.F. only a decade prior to the Praetorian Federation's arrival, first contact with, and similarly failed conquest. With comparable technological capacity and an unpredicted level of cooperation between the Eastern and Western Celdskon Alliances, the Regentic's strike details sent to the planet would be battered into such a broken state that the war would last just two short years. Indeed, Verinen forces were no longer present planetside for the entirety of the second year, its navy focusing on an indiscriminate bombardment policy in hopes of breaking civilian and military morale. Just as their plans for conquest, this strategy would fail, adding the first of the five red jewels present on the modern Regentic banner in memoriam of the defeat, the final naval detail retreating from the Celdskon system on July 18th of 1583 A.F.
While the Permanos Regentic had never officially declared war on the Celdskon Alliances, neither had it reached a formal peace agreement. War would begin again in earnest five years later on the symbolic date of July 18th, 1588 A.F. Focusing purely on a campaign of shattering the unity between the two Celdskon nations, it would be another failure to the Regentic's name as the war effort began to collapse, the strike troops previously aiding one combatant in the conflict from the sidelines now finding themselves brought under the combined fire of both parties as the Verinen presence in the system and on the planet became more and more obvious. The first jewel on the Regentic flag would be joined by a second at its bottom as the war came to a final conclusion in 1590 A.F.
The final departure of the last naval detail from Celdskon territory would never be documented, however. Trouble at home among the senior leaders of the Regentic's military would explode as the final order to retreat and cease operations went out. While the Strike and Naval Details had shown their capacity for creative battlefield manipulation under the circumstances of the Sober Effort Conflict - its name taking from the Verinen operation title for the Second War of Incursion, as it is known by Celdskon historians - both wars had been complete failures. Troop morale and support for the military had plummetted to all-time lows in the country's history, bringing with it desertion rates and resignations that shook the Regentic to its core. With its military teetering on the brink of a complete and utter morale collapse, the ruling powers once more took it into their own hands to seize control of a valuable component of their country; research in 601 A.F., industry in 734 A.F., and now the military in its most precarious state - now an organization without popular support that depended on such to remain in operation - in 1590 A.F.
It is unknown truly when, but it is this seizure of the armed forces - or, in the minds of the Regentic's population, abolishment - that is thought to have prompted the switch from volunteer soldiers in a professional army not unlike that of the modern Republican Military to that of an almost automated pseudo-black operations organization used as an unpublicized instrument of the Verinen government. The restructuring quickly retired all but the most senior leaders of the Strike Details and Naval Details, who - some with horror, others with enthusiasm - were greeted with the plan of creating a semi-autonomous military branch kept hidden from the general populace and given the authority to create soldiers which defied both ethics and the commonly-held laws of war. Whether these leaders had accepted the central government's terms or not, the plan would be put into motion very quickly after the public dissolution of the Strike and Naval Details in January 1st and February 1st of 1597 A.F., respectively. The organizations would live on, however, as grim parodies of their former selves, fielding some of the most loyal, powerful, and yet unintelligent soldiers the galaxy would ever shudder to hear the names of. Alongside them would come the Shock Details, whose legacy - and truth in the fact - of never leaving a single body behind them continues to live to this day.
The restructuring of the Regentic's armed forces would be held by the civilian population as the final military failure of the nation and as the country's greatest sin by those who knew otherwise. It would earn its place as the third red jewel underneath the Entschlossenkampf mark on the Verinen banner in recognition.
Regardless of their now supposedly perfect army, the Verinen Permanos Regentic would not continue on with a bloodlust like that of the Praetorian Federation it had drawn to Celdskon with its operations there. Both wary of another failing so early in the newly-reformed details of their military and still in the process of "recruiting" personnel to staff it, the Regentic turned its attention instead to bolstering its presence among humanity. It was through a combination of both economic offerings and bullying that the Independent Strategic Alliance would be formed around the Verinen empire from various smaller nations. From its proposal in 1615 A.F. to its founding in April 29th of 1621 A.F., the alliance's principles, crafted with care by the Regentic that founded it, were simple: its members would be involved in military cooperation to secure their collective empires and push back against potential aggressors with no requirements, obligations, or other demands made of its constituents beyond the field of strategic cooperation. Still suspicious and isolationist, these terms would suit the alliance's founder and key member well, as those few countries that refused the offer were usually those already being taken into the established competitor in the Coalition of Human Systems.
While there had been limited contact between the two, the first official diplomatic exchange between the two alliances would not occur until 1908 A.F., when a brief border dispute between the Timosi Soivetet Republic of Anchorage and the Verinen themselves nearly turned violent. With its roots in the Anchorage Colonial Authority, the Coalition was called upon to act as a third party between the two.
Before this, however, would come the second contact mankind would ever make with the Inkron. 1690 A.F. would see the sudden disappearance and reappearance of the Verinen merchant vessel Glätten Kufe, between the dates of November 8th when it had entered the Gradelsterne system and November 14th, when the ship would return to Verinen space minus half of its crew. The survivors aboard the vessel would bring with them stories of a nightmarish experience with a bewildered Inkron boarding party. The staff of the ship lost, roughly two dozen passengers and freight coordinators, remain missing to this day and have been presumed dead due to a lack of understanding of the human respiratory system on the part of the Inkron. The response was swift, excessive, and effective; on January 1st of 1700 A.F., the Verinen ruined the Inkron colony at Gradel with orbital artillery and a brief deployment of four shock troops to ensure the casualties sustained by the colonists were total. It is believed that, fearing their expansion would again run afoul of the growing influence of human space as it had with the Tharkadians more than a millenium prior, the Inkron chose to ignore the colony's ransacking. With vastly superior forces and a standardized method of faster-than-light travel, the Regentic would have had no difficulty in swatting away any possible counter-attack. In total, it is believed that approximately two hundred Inkron adults, seventy juveniles, and one hundred fourty "rejuveniles" - Inkron who had fragmented as part of their reproductive process - were killed in the bombardment and follow-up shock troop sweeps.
In 1734 A.F., owing to the concerns over the potential for a future incident at Gradel either by Inkron or other forces, a permanent naval base would be established and fortified for use as a component of the shield worlds. Even following the Timosi War in 2185 A.F. and the reorganization of the shield worlds as a result, the Gradel shipyards and planetside fortifications have remained a well-travelled stopover point for ships and equipment moving to and from Alstannes.
While the diplomatic efforts in 1908 A.F. were a success and nothing further would come of the dispute, the short provocation of the Regentic brought the Timosi's considerable colonial empire into the sights of the Alliance. Stubbornly refusing to involve themselves in the Coalition of Human Systems and thusly with their historical enemy in the Federation, it would be a non-Anchorage flag that the Timosi Republic would find itself following behind in the century to come. Beginning in 1971 A.F. after years of planning, colonial movements, and economic development, the Verinen would begin a long campaign of antagonistic movements against the Timosi empire with a single message: Join us or we might change our minds. Beaten technologically and with public dissatisfaction growing steadily, the colonial encirclings and economic deception enacted by the Regentic would eventually bring the Timosi into the Independent Strategic Alliance in 2021 A.F., their official inclusion dated at January 1st, 2025.
With much of the Anchorage Colonial Authority disgusted by the turn of events and the Praetorian Federation already sharpening the sabres of war, the Tharkadian War of First Contact - the name, in actuality, coined by Verinen historians - in 2100 A.F. would have been seen as an inevitability, slowed only by the Vannik Confederation's constant diplomatic coordination and Timosi Republic's efforts to maintain peace. However, as Timosi colonial efforts continued to frustrate and encircle the Garrant Commonwealth's, these diplomatic struggles would soon be in vain. With its most significant ally no longer in the chorus of chants for peace, the Praetorian Federation would initiate a military build-up on the border colony of Port Travick in the Alven system. Hundreds of thousands of guardsmen and machines would be redeployed to the planet in preparation for upcoming operations against nearby Timosi planets, notably the planet of Tivovnik where, eighty years later in the Timosi War, the city of Glevonni would be ruined.
However, as history goes, the city would be spared those eighty years as a combined force of fourty thousand strike troops and four naval details, each twenty strong, responded with as much brutality as the Verinen could offer the Federation. On February 1st of 2100 A.F., Port Travick's capital of Drennerstadt would be shaken by orbital bombardment, jarring its citizens awake and its now-overinflated garrison into action. The war on the ground would prove to be some of the most brutal fighting the Federation had ever encountered, giving the life expectancy of the average conscript deployed on Travick just two days at best. While the fighting on the ground would kill some two hundred thousand guardsmen and only a comparative handful in the Verinen forces - roughly eight hundred strike troops - the fighting in orbit was a far different tale. As the Federal Navy's reinforcements arrived to relieve the planet, the eighty ships the Naval Details were absolutely overwhelmed; accurately counted and gauged by both planetside units and transport ships fleeing the area, a naval task group of roughly two hundred ships would arrive both drawn from nearby defense fleets and the forces under assembly for operations against the Timosi.
As forces from across the Coalition began to arrive, so, too, did the curious eyes of the Republican Military, witnessing the massive movement of ships across interstellar space to a single flashpoint. Reconnaissance drones soon brought behind them the 13th Exploratory Fleet of the Republican Navy, numbering in twenty-three ships and four hundred Republican guardsmen. Fate would not smile upon the Regentic in October of that year, as the first belligerent in the engagement to be encountered and contacted by the Tharkadians would be those of the Garrant Commonwealth's 4th Expeditionary Fleet, when the CSS Melioman made contact with the Sinistre during an offensive on Naval Detail reinforcements arriving from out of the system. It would not be longer after that the strike troops on the ground would find themselves matched and eventually bested by the comparable troops in the Republican Military and their newfound Coalition allies.
The fourth jewel would find itself made begrudgingly on the Verinen flag in January 2nd of 2102 A.F., when the Permanos Regentic was forced to sign a peace agreement or face a war in its own systems in defense of an unwilling ally.
In the intervening years before the Timosi War of 2185, the Verinen would see a reawakening in military success. With technological developments in their favor and hard experience earned against the Federal Guard in the War of First Contact, the Regentic would find itself on a brief stampede through the unaligned worlds of the Roggeford sector. Beginning with a provoked border dispute with the corporation-turned-nation-state of Klevs United in 2118 A.F. With an almost wholly superior military - technology, equipment, troops, and tactics - the Verinen military unsurprisingly set the country buckling and pleading for help. With other space nations around it fearing for their own safety and forming a strategic alliance of emergency with Klevs, the war began to push back against the Regentic.
It wouldn't be quite enough, however. And, as history describes it, it would seem almost trivial for the Strike and Naval Details to cut across the newly-formed Roggeford Sector Alliance. Swinging from Klevs United's inner worlds to the Asyriga fringe worlds, the strategic commanders of the Verinen military would solidify the lightning-fast raids and high intensity, short duration conflicts their armed forces would prove to be their best in. Their growing understanding of their practically robotic personnel and firepower-oriented fleets would spell doom for Asyriga, whose comparable level of technology would prove inadequate in the face of concrete wartime experience. Beginning in 2120 and concluding fully in 2123, the Roggeford Sector Alliance's first casualty would go on to become the staging grounds for future Regentic colonial efforts. And while Asyriga had been the only total capitulation of the Roggeford nations, it would not be the last scar to be carved into their alliance. With every successful battle and planet taken, the strike troops and their naval overseers would shift again to the nearest other nation, keeping Roggeford morale at abysmal levels as the stories of emotionless killing machines falling from the sky like thunderbolts hung over the minds of the mostly volunteer armies up against them.
The casualty count at the end of the War of Inception - Pioneer Conflict in Verinen records - would give good reason to these nightmarish stories. At least two million soldiers and fleetsmen in the Roggeford would be dead by its conclusion in late 2124, where only thirty-three thousand strike troops would be dead or unaccounted for and another eight thousand in naval personnel. With the dead and wounded tallied up, the surrender of the Roggeford Sector Alliance would almost seem long belated, but with the war at home and not abroad, capitulation had seemed an unthinkable option. It would appear mind-boggling when the Regentic - while harsh and nearly impossible to fulfill - demanded war reparations instead of the wholesale occupation of their territories.
While its military would find itself soundly capable of defeating the remaining Roggeford forces still reorganizing themselves and vainly attempting to restore morale, the Roggeford Republic, for which the sector is named, sought protection for itself and its allies under the Coalition of Human Systems. And, while the Verinen had proven themselves mostly successful in their first encounters with the Federal Guard and contrasting Commonwealth Rangers, the two primary representatives of the Coalition's collective militaries, the inclusion of the Republic of Tharkad had finally seen them matched. Finally, with the Celdskon Alliances seeking membership with the Roggeford Sector Alliance to take action against their former invaders, the chances of carrying the war to its finish grew slimmer and fainter. Soon enough, the Coalition of Human Systems would become the perfect storm the Regentic had long feared, but there would be one more military success for the Verinen before the Timosi War that would nearly send them to war with the conflict's namesake.
In 2167 A.F., the long-held rival of the Permanos Regentic, the Ollenhall Administration, laid claim to a planet in one of the few intervening systems between their respective homeworlds. Infuriated, yet unwilling to commit itself to a war with one of the single greatest human superpowers in existence, the Verinen waited and watched for three years. What they saw only drove them further into armed conflict.
While any other party may have seen - while politically questionable - an ordinary colonial effort, the two most advanced powers in human space would see the other's ploy without issue. A slow trickle of military supplies and equipment would filter into the border world of Herben as the Ollenhall readied themselves to gauge the overall effectiveness of the Verinen's colonial defense. Military vessels masquerading as civilian merchants and planetary defense forces comprised of veteran soldiers would grow in number from 2167 to 2170, their operation deadline set for the first of August in the final year.
There wouldn't quite be an operation, however. Just two months prior, on June 1st, another pre-emptive assault would send the Regentic's military into full swing as the defense fleets and strike troops of Alstannes were sent straight to Herben. While far bloodier and seeing thousands of casualties on both sides, the Inattention Conflict would be as quick and decisive as the Verinen actions at Gradel in 1700. With a far more experienced military and troops truly ready for a war of conflict rather than a war of propaganda, it would seem, as it had been with the Pioneer Conflict over fourty years prior, that the Regentic's military had simply toppled another anthill. The action in space would last just a few short weeks as Ollenhall ships slowly began to withdraw, while the conquest of the planet would be over in two months as Verinen troops strode forward under orbital supremacy.
With their doubts confirmed, the conquest of Herben would once again turn Ollenhall attention sharply from vengeance. They would instead shift focus to the looming possibility of a war between the rival that had so effortlessly defeated their experimental maneuver and the Coalition of Human Systems.
2182 A.F. would once again see a flare in tensions between the Timosi Republic and Garrant Commonwealth as their colonial movements continued to run in antagonism towards eachother. With their empires growing more and more intertwined and difficult to expand, border disputes and military warning shots began to climb. Neither deaf nor purposely ignorant of the potential for conflict, the Verinen Permanos Regentic broke its ordinary spiteful silence and came to the negotiating table in an effort to secure peace - if only for its own future in face of the entire Coalition bearing down on them and the Timosi that had failed to support them in the War of First Contact. It would, however, be one of their first diplomatic failures, as Coalition nations scoffed at their short-lived proposals and continued to side with the Commonwealth. Even with the war inevitable, there would be little the Verinen could do to delay the conflict to help prepare their own forces and their Timosi allies. 2184 would see several brief skirmishes between the Armed Forces and Central Military which would only solidify the concept of a coming war between the Independent Strategic Alliance and Coalition of Human Systems.
It would be a bold action from Garran politicians - though little more than strong words than true intentions - that would plunge human space into one of its most significant armed conflicts in centuries. With a threat of war delivered to the Timosi Republic on February 9th of 2185 A.F., the Verinen withdrew from the negotiating table once more. And, with another pre-emptive strike on the Commonwealth border world of Tsirvana just two weeks later on February 23rd, the Timosi War would begin.
Fighting in the Timosi War would prove itself to be representative of the military doctrines and colonial maneuvering of the belligerents in the conflict. With the inflexible Timosi military flailing to fight back against the Commonwealth's ever-changing tactical and strategic maneuvers, while the Federal Guard of the Praetorian Federation once more met casualties in the millions against the lightning raids of the Regentic military, the war would find itself either a revolution or confirmation in the armed forces involved. The arrangement of the Garran and Timosi empires would prove difficult to defend for both sides and see planets exchange hands upwards of six times or more in the most contested of systems.
The ruthlessness and raw strength of the Verinen military would shine in the early years of the conflict, but as the war dragged on and the Ollenhall Administration's sabotage of Coalition intelligence networks became clear, their own inflexibility would nearly cost them their empire. While their seniors' handling of them had proved applaudable, the various patterns and routines of the strike troops and naval details slowly began to become more apparent to their pure of mind counterparts in the Coalition. Surprise insertions would be met with complex defensive actions that would baffle the strike troops composing them, whose lack of creative thought would stand out as a glaring Achilles' heel as they floundered to react to the situations entrapping them.
With their own tactics turned against them by the Republic of Tharkad and the more mobile militaries of Anchorage nations outflanking and outmaneuvering their efforts, the Alliance would soon began to crack at the seams. The Timosi Republic would soon prove to be a defensive burden as the war dragged on and its empire continued to be picked apart by its historical rivals from their homeworld. It would prove to be so frustrating to the Verinen that tensions between the two wartime allies would reach their highest point ever, even after the Timosi inclusion into the Coalition of Human Systems. The prospect of siding the Alliance against the country that had pulled it into yet another conflict - and one it stood little chance of succeeding in - became a serious topic of discussion in the military and political leaders of the Regentic. Incidents involving lower-level officers engaging with Timosi garrisons would not be uncommon as the war entered its final stages in 2192 A.F. With the space nations of the Alliance capitulating around them and the Timosi already in negotiations with the Coalition, the final frustration and blow to military pride would strike the Regentic between the one gap their shield worlds had failed to close; the inner colony of Endgüllendung, six systems from their unoccupied border with the Ollenhall which had previously been covered by the bordering Timosi. A small joint force would arrive unannounced at the planet flying the flags of the Garrant Commonwealth, Republic of Tharkad, and the Konnese and Kravenn Reliants. While the attack would be repulsed, the losses to the defense fleet and their reinforcements would be severe, owing not to any new weapon or technology, but a simple and final refinement to the naval tactics the Republic and Commonwealth had developed in concert.
It would be this final straw that would break the resolve of the Verinen Permanos Regentic's military and finally return them to the negotiating table. With long talks made and threats on either side, the Verinen would scrape by with minimal war reparations with a final peace in 2193 A.F. The fifth and final jewel would be forever placed above the Entschlossenkampf mark on the same day.
With the Timosi War concluded and the second largest power now a member of the Coalition of Human Systems, the Independent Strategic Alliance began to fray at its edges. Nations worn down by the conflict began to drift away from their Verinen leaders and towards the seemingly unstoppable Coalition. Smaller countries that had either kept clear from the war or contributed only minorly broke in a wave of withdrawals and applied for Coalition membership. Others still brought to the table the concept of dual membership, pledging faith to their Alliance allies and economic cooperation with their former Coalition enemies.
While this would not be the end of the Independent Strategic Alliance, the decline would be harsh and significant. Frustrated and now hateful of the "allies" it had surrounded itself with, the Verinen once more began to close up and shut off the concept of outside influences.
As of 2203 A.F., the Verinen Permanos Regentic is isolationist still. Its little external contact is with the few space nations it still calls close allies, but even this interaction is minimal at best. Its primary movements are primarily those of small raids and hired pirate attacks on the border worlds of the Coalition, most significantly the Timosi Soivetet Republic. With its reparations paid and its economy recovering from the war, the nation has gone to concentrating on rebuilding its armed forces and improving its existing colonial holdings. With the Inkron Governance Sphere expanding on one side, the Ollenhall bordering them on another, and the Coalition of Human Systems forming the last barrier against their expansion, there is little else the Verinen can do. With a war between mankind and the Inkron growing more and more possible, their involvement in the conflict remains in doubt much like the neighboring Ollenhall, but it remains safe to assume that the Regentic will have a part to play - for better or for worse.
The founding of the Regentic occurred at an indeterminate point between -200 A.F. and 300 A.F., the records of which have long since been destroyed or hidden by a government long past. Since then, struggling through war after war, disaster after disaster, and what one could believe would be everything the universe could throw at them, the Verinen Permanos Regentic has not only perservered, but thrived in the face of all odds. Through courage, resolve, and sacrifice, the now-hated superpower has carved its name into the galaxy's history in the blood of its own and others.
History
No one is quite sure why the Verinen settled on Alstannes, much less why their nation's name is at odds with its own culture. Whether intentional or accidental, no historical records detailing the landing on Alstannes or the formation of the Regentic have ever been uncovered, lending much to the mystery of Verinen past. Only one fact seems to remain among the common cultural knowledge of its citizens; that, just as the Rhine's brief time on Alstannes, the beginnings on the modern homeworld of the Verinen empire were troubled and difficult. It is believed that a popular revolution against the Republic of Tervinn failed, yet the instability it introduced into the fledgling nation doomed it to collapse. The Regentic would take its place as a brief dictatorship eventually to shift to a socialist democracy.
Whether it had been a truthful democracy in the beginning, the modern Verinen government is not quite consent by the governed. In its dealings with other nations, management of the military, and most instances involving its industry or research sectors, the Regentic has maintained full control, subtle or covert, in order to guide the country to the goals it has set forth.
What the Verinen have documented well and kept readily known are the almost incessant trials their nation has been forced to push through at each turn in history. From the famine that struck Alstannes in 578 A.F. to the conquest of the Inkron colony on Gradel in 1700 A.F., records of the Verinen's dogged rise to interstellar superpower status, it is not hard to understand the modern Regentic's isolationist and vengeful actions.
The famine that found its way onto Alstannes in 578 A.F., recorded as beginning on June 9th, was the result of a combination of destructive farming methods and a lack of preparation for the planet's "Carver season", where winds brought on by heat differences during the planet's day cycle would produce sandstorms lasting upwards of six months. The result was the almost total destruction of Verinen food crops, bringing with it a wave of starvation-related illnesses and deaths for at least a year. Still only just larger than the fledgling country it had been at the Regentic's founding, the Verinen would be dealt a near-disastrous setback to their future expansion into space. The rate of growth across their home system alone would be stunted as their first colonial vessel arrived on and shortly thereafter failed to successfully establish a colony on Kelvanner four years later in 582 A.F. It would be another eighteen years before a colonial effort would finally establish a self-sustaining colony on the barren planet and another six before any returns would be seen from the endeavor.
In a belated pursuit of the Rhine, a small Ollenhall fleet of badly outdated pseudo-generation ships arrived in orbit over Alstannes in 731 A.F. and immediately began a short-lived bombardment of Tervinn's capital on May 8th. While neither difficult to fend off nor particularly damaging, the sudden and bewildering cost in life inflicted on the Verinen brought with it a further jaded and suspicious lens over their view of other nations. If the Ollenhall, whom their people had lived beside for centuries, would turn on them so quickly, so viciously, how could anyone be trusted?
Their beliefs would soon take their toll on those around them as the Verinen developed their own gluon separator matrix in 1417 A.F. and began a short colonial expansion around them. It would seem almost by pure luck that they had not been given the "gift" of faster-than-light travel by the Ollenhall in another attempted conquest or colonial blundering in the vein of the Invasion of 1340 on Anchorage or the incident on Tsarova soon to occur. In reality, the Ollenhall were unwilling to repeat the total loss of the Bombing of Dreschutts in 731, fearing that, following their failure over Anchorage, the Verinen would be more than a match for their space navy still being refitted for interstellar travel. Were that to happen, it would indeed have been a practical gift from the gods for the Verinen - or a pistol pressed against their own throat for the Ollenhall. And yet, in a likemindedness that would avail both countries and doom the first few the Verinen would encounter, the Regentic eased itself away from the thought of vengeance in its first interstellar actions as the potential casualty count rose higher and higher with each estimate. Those countries who would suffer would be the now practically unheard-of Hadrinado Cluster Alliance and Cantagra Cluster Alliance. Not unlike the Verinen and Ollenhall, these two fledgling empires were situated just three systems apart, the distance between their borders growing shorter and shorter as the centuries dragged on. With the Regentic flag planted practically between the two in 1471 A.F., on the first extrastellar Verinen colony of Fernheim, the lukewarm feelings of the two space nations would draw closer and closer to eachother as the Regentic brushed aside every demand and offer as threats and deceit. It was finally in 1499 A.F. that, fearful as Verinen expansion continued unchecked between them and border disputes continued to rise, the Hadrinado and Cantagra alliances joined together in an interstellar conflict against the Verinen. The mobility of faster-than-light travel and the vastly superior technology of the Regentic crushing down on their empires, the war would be over in 1507 A.F. with the final dissolution of the Hadrinado Cluster Alliance's coalition government just months after the Cantagra alliance's capital had been taken and their government forced into exile. The splintering remnants of the two former empires would be brought forcefully under the boot of the Verinen Permanos Regentic and assimilated into their empire within the coming years, signifying their first interstellar military victory and the first extrastellar conquest of any nation in history. While resistance would be quick to rise and cultural assimilation slow to progress, the former Hadrinado and Cantagra empires now form key components of the Regentic's shield worlds as of 2203 A.F.
Victory, however, would not be a continuous affair. As their empire spread and the Verinen encountered more and more other nations, their first true scar would be at the hands of the Celdskon Alliances in the Celdskon system. Believing the two nations to be incompatible with one another and the apparent constant state of war on their home planet - and only planet - would work to their favor, the Regentic invaded Celdskon in June 1st of 1581 A.F. only a decade prior to the Praetorian Federation's arrival, first contact with, and similarly failed conquest. With comparable technological capacity and an unpredicted level of cooperation between the Eastern and Western Celdskon Alliances, the Regentic's strike details sent to the planet would be battered into such a broken state that the war would last just two short years. Indeed, Verinen forces were no longer present planetside for the entirety of the second year, its navy focusing on an indiscriminate bombardment policy in hopes of breaking civilian and military morale. Just as their plans for conquest, this strategy would fail, adding the first of the five red jewels present on the modern Regentic banner in memoriam of the defeat, the final naval detail retreating from the Celdskon system on July 18th of 1583 A.F.
While the Permanos Regentic had never officially declared war on the Celdskon Alliances, neither had it reached a formal peace agreement. War would begin again in earnest five years later on the symbolic date of July 18th, 1588 A.F. Focusing purely on a campaign of shattering the unity between the two Celdskon nations, it would be another failure to the Regentic's name as the war effort began to collapse, the strike troops previously aiding one combatant in the conflict from the sidelines now finding themselves brought under the combined fire of both parties as the Verinen presence in the system and on the planet became more and more obvious. The first jewel on the Regentic flag would be joined by a second at its bottom as the war came to a final conclusion in 1590 A.F.
The final departure of the last naval detail from Celdskon territory would never be documented, however. Trouble at home among the senior leaders of the Regentic's military would explode as the final order to retreat and cease operations went out. While the Strike and Naval Details had shown their capacity for creative battlefield manipulation under the circumstances of the Sober Effort Conflict - its name taking from the Verinen operation title for the Second War of Incursion, as it is known by Celdskon historians - both wars had been complete failures. Troop morale and support for the military had plummetted to all-time lows in the country's history, bringing with it desertion rates and resignations that shook the Regentic to its core. With its military teetering on the brink of a complete and utter morale collapse, the ruling powers once more took it into their own hands to seize control of a valuable component of their country; research in 601 A.F., industry in 734 A.F., and now the military in its most precarious state - now an organization without popular support that depended on such to remain in operation - in 1590 A.F.
It is unknown truly when, but it is this seizure of the armed forces - or, in the minds of the Regentic's population, abolishment - that is thought to have prompted the switch from volunteer soldiers in a professional army not unlike that of the modern Republican Military to that of an almost automated pseudo-black operations organization used as an unpublicized instrument of the Verinen government. The restructuring quickly retired all but the most senior leaders of the Strike Details and Naval Details, who - some with horror, others with enthusiasm - were greeted with the plan of creating a semi-autonomous military branch kept hidden from the general populace and given the authority to create soldiers which defied both ethics and the commonly-held laws of war. Whether these leaders had accepted the central government's terms or not, the plan would be put into motion very quickly after the public dissolution of the Strike and Naval Details in January 1st and February 1st of 1597 A.F., respectively. The organizations would live on, however, as grim parodies of their former selves, fielding some of the most loyal, powerful, and yet unintelligent soldiers the galaxy would ever shudder to hear the names of. Alongside them would come the Shock Details, whose legacy - and truth in the fact - of never leaving a single body behind them continues to live to this day.
The restructuring of the Regentic's armed forces would be held by the civilian population as the final military failure of the nation and as the country's greatest sin by those who knew otherwise. It would earn its place as the third red jewel underneath the Entschlossenkampf mark on the Verinen banner in recognition.
Regardless of their now supposedly perfect army, the Verinen Permanos Regentic would not continue on with a bloodlust like that of the Praetorian Federation it had drawn to Celdskon with its operations there. Both wary of another failing so early in the newly-reformed details of their military and still in the process of "recruiting" personnel to staff it, the Regentic turned its attention instead to bolstering its presence among humanity. It was through a combination of both economic offerings and bullying that the Independent Strategic Alliance would be formed around the Verinen empire from various smaller nations. From its proposal in 1615 A.F. to its founding in April 29th of 1621 A.F., the alliance's principles, crafted with care by the Regentic that founded it, were simple: its members would be involved in military cooperation to secure their collective empires and push back against potential aggressors with no requirements, obligations, or other demands made of its constituents beyond the field of strategic cooperation. Still suspicious and isolationist, these terms would suit the alliance's founder and key member well, as those few countries that refused the offer were usually those already being taken into the established competitor in the Coalition of Human Systems.
While there had been limited contact between the two, the first official diplomatic exchange between the two alliances would not occur until 1908 A.F., when a brief border dispute between the Timosi Soivetet Republic of Anchorage and the Verinen themselves nearly turned violent. With its roots in the Anchorage Colonial Authority, the Coalition was called upon to act as a third party between the two.
Before this, however, would come the second contact mankind would ever make with the Inkron. 1690 A.F. would see the sudden disappearance and reappearance of the Verinen merchant vessel Glätten Kufe, between the dates of November 8th when it had entered the Gradelsterne system and November 14th, when the ship would return to Verinen space minus half of its crew. The survivors aboard the vessel would bring with them stories of a nightmarish experience with a bewildered Inkron boarding party. The staff of the ship lost, roughly two dozen passengers and freight coordinators, remain missing to this day and have been presumed dead due to a lack of understanding of the human respiratory system on the part of the Inkron. The response was swift, excessive, and effective; on January 1st of 1700 A.F., the Verinen ruined the Inkron colony at Gradel with orbital artillery and a brief deployment of four shock troops to ensure the casualties sustained by the colonists were total. It is believed that, fearing their expansion would again run afoul of the growing influence of human space as it had with the Tharkadians more than a millenium prior, the Inkron chose to ignore the colony's ransacking. With vastly superior forces and a standardized method of faster-than-light travel, the Regentic would have had no difficulty in swatting away any possible counter-attack. In total, it is believed that approximately two hundred Inkron adults, seventy juveniles, and one hundred fourty "rejuveniles" - Inkron who had fragmented as part of their reproductive process - were killed in the bombardment and follow-up shock troop sweeps.
In 1734 A.F., owing to the concerns over the potential for a future incident at Gradel either by Inkron or other forces, a permanent naval base would be established and fortified for use as a component of the shield worlds. Even following the Timosi War in 2185 A.F. and the reorganization of the shield worlds as a result, the Gradel shipyards and planetside fortifications have remained a well-travelled stopover point for ships and equipment moving to and from Alstannes.
While the diplomatic efforts in 1908 A.F. were a success and nothing further would come of the dispute, the short provocation of the Regentic brought the Timosi's considerable colonial empire into the sights of the Alliance. Stubbornly refusing to involve themselves in the Coalition of Human Systems and thusly with their historical enemy in the Federation, it would be a non-Anchorage flag that the Timosi Republic would find itself following behind in the century to come. Beginning in 1971 A.F. after years of planning, colonial movements, and economic development, the Verinen would begin a long campaign of antagonistic movements against the Timosi empire with a single message: Join us or we might change our minds. Beaten technologically and with public dissatisfaction growing steadily, the colonial encirclings and economic deception enacted by the Regentic would eventually bring the Timosi into the Independent Strategic Alliance in 2021 A.F., their official inclusion dated at January 1st, 2025.
With much of the Anchorage Colonial Authority disgusted by the turn of events and the Praetorian Federation already sharpening the sabres of war, the Tharkadian War of First Contact - the name, in actuality, coined by Verinen historians - in 2100 A.F. would have been seen as an inevitability, slowed only by the Vannik Confederation's constant diplomatic coordination and Timosi Republic's efforts to maintain peace. However, as Timosi colonial efforts continued to frustrate and encircle the Garrant Commonwealth's, these diplomatic struggles would soon be in vain. With its most significant ally no longer in the chorus of chants for peace, the Praetorian Federation would initiate a military build-up on the border colony of Port Travick in the Alven system. Hundreds of thousands of guardsmen and machines would be redeployed to the planet in preparation for upcoming operations against nearby Timosi planets, notably the planet of Tivovnik where, eighty years later in the Timosi War, the city of Glevonni would be ruined.
However, as history goes, the city would be spared those eighty years as a combined force of fourty thousand strike troops and four naval details, each twenty strong, responded with as much brutality as the Verinen could offer the Federation. On February 1st of 2100 A.F., Port Travick's capital of Drennerstadt would be shaken by orbital bombardment, jarring its citizens awake and its now-overinflated garrison into action. The war on the ground would prove to be some of the most brutal fighting the Federation had ever encountered, giving the life expectancy of the average conscript deployed on Travick just two days at best. While the fighting on the ground would kill some two hundred thousand guardsmen and only a comparative handful in the Verinen forces - roughly eight hundred strike troops - the fighting in orbit was a far different tale. As the Federal Navy's reinforcements arrived to relieve the planet, the eighty ships the Naval Details were absolutely overwhelmed; accurately counted and gauged by both planetside units and transport ships fleeing the area, a naval task group of roughly two hundred ships would arrive both drawn from nearby defense fleets and the forces under assembly for operations against the Timosi.
As forces from across the Coalition began to arrive, so, too, did the curious eyes of the Republican Military, witnessing the massive movement of ships across interstellar space to a single flashpoint. Reconnaissance drones soon brought behind them the 13th Exploratory Fleet of the Republican Navy, numbering in twenty-three ships and four hundred Republican guardsmen. Fate would not smile upon the Regentic in October of that year, as the first belligerent in the engagement to be encountered and contacted by the Tharkadians would be those of the Garrant Commonwealth's 4th Expeditionary Fleet, when the CSS Melioman made contact with the Sinistre during an offensive on Naval Detail reinforcements arriving from out of the system. It would not be longer after that the strike troops on the ground would find themselves matched and eventually bested by the comparable troops in the Republican Military and their newfound Coalition allies.
The fourth jewel would find itself made begrudgingly on the Verinen flag in January 2nd of 2102 A.F., when the Permanos Regentic was forced to sign a peace agreement or face a war in its own systems in defense of an unwilling ally.
In the intervening years before the Timosi War of 2185, the Verinen would see a reawakening in military success. With technological developments in their favor and hard experience earned against the Federal Guard in the War of First Contact, the Regentic would find itself on a brief stampede through the unaligned worlds of the Roggeford sector. Beginning with a provoked border dispute with the corporation-turned-nation-state of Klevs United in 2118 A.F. With an almost wholly superior military - technology, equipment, troops, and tactics - the Verinen military unsurprisingly set the country buckling and pleading for help. With other space nations around it fearing for their own safety and forming a strategic alliance of emergency with Klevs, the war began to push back against the Regentic.
It wouldn't be quite enough, however. And, as history describes it, it would seem almost trivial for the Strike and Naval Details to cut across the newly-formed Roggeford Sector Alliance. Swinging from Klevs United's inner worlds to the Asyriga fringe worlds, the strategic commanders of the Verinen military would solidify the lightning-fast raids and high intensity, short duration conflicts their armed forces would prove to be their best in. Their growing understanding of their practically robotic personnel and firepower-oriented fleets would spell doom for Asyriga, whose comparable level of technology would prove inadequate in the face of concrete wartime experience. Beginning in 2120 and concluding fully in 2123, the Roggeford Sector Alliance's first casualty would go on to become the staging grounds for future Regentic colonial efforts. And while Asyriga had been the only total capitulation of the Roggeford nations, it would not be the last scar to be carved into their alliance. With every successful battle and planet taken, the strike troops and their naval overseers would shift again to the nearest other nation, keeping Roggeford morale at abysmal levels as the stories of emotionless killing machines falling from the sky like thunderbolts hung over the minds of the mostly volunteer armies up against them.
The casualty count at the end of the War of Inception - Pioneer Conflict in Verinen records - would give good reason to these nightmarish stories. At least two million soldiers and fleetsmen in the Roggeford would be dead by its conclusion in late 2124, where only thirty-three thousand strike troops would be dead or unaccounted for and another eight thousand in naval personnel. With the dead and wounded tallied up, the surrender of the Roggeford Sector Alliance would almost seem long belated, but with the war at home and not abroad, capitulation had seemed an unthinkable option. It would appear mind-boggling when the Regentic - while harsh and nearly impossible to fulfill - demanded war reparations instead of the wholesale occupation of their territories.
While its military would find itself soundly capable of defeating the remaining Roggeford forces still reorganizing themselves and vainly attempting to restore morale, the Roggeford Republic, for which the sector is named, sought protection for itself and its allies under the Coalition of Human Systems. And, while the Verinen had proven themselves mostly successful in their first encounters with the Federal Guard and contrasting Commonwealth Rangers, the two primary representatives of the Coalition's collective militaries, the inclusion of the Republic of Tharkad had finally seen them matched. Finally, with the Celdskon Alliances seeking membership with the Roggeford Sector Alliance to take action against their former invaders, the chances of carrying the war to its finish grew slimmer and fainter. Soon enough, the Coalition of Human Systems would become the perfect storm the Regentic had long feared, but there would be one more military success for the Verinen before the Timosi War that would nearly send them to war with the conflict's namesake.
In 2167 A.F., the long-held rival of the Permanos Regentic, the Ollenhall Administration, laid claim to a planet in one of the few intervening systems between their respective homeworlds. Infuriated, yet unwilling to commit itself to a war with one of the single greatest human superpowers in existence, the Verinen waited and watched for three years. What they saw only drove them further into armed conflict.
While any other party may have seen - while politically questionable - an ordinary colonial effort, the two most advanced powers in human space would see the other's ploy without issue. A slow trickle of military supplies and equipment would filter into the border world of Herben as the Ollenhall readied themselves to gauge the overall effectiveness of the Verinen's colonial defense. Military vessels masquerading as civilian merchants and planetary defense forces comprised of veteran soldiers would grow in number from 2167 to 2170, their operation deadline set for the first of August in the final year.
There wouldn't quite be an operation, however. Just two months prior, on June 1st, another pre-emptive assault would send the Regentic's military into full swing as the defense fleets and strike troops of Alstannes were sent straight to Herben. While far bloodier and seeing thousands of casualties on both sides, the Inattention Conflict would be as quick and decisive as the Verinen actions at Gradel in 1700. With a far more experienced military and troops truly ready for a war of conflict rather than a war of propaganda, it would seem, as it had been with the Pioneer Conflict over fourty years prior, that the Regentic's military had simply toppled another anthill. The action in space would last just a few short weeks as Ollenhall ships slowly began to withdraw, while the conquest of the planet would be over in two months as Verinen troops strode forward under orbital supremacy.
With their doubts confirmed, the conquest of Herben would once again turn Ollenhall attention sharply from vengeance. They would instead shift focus to the looming possibility of a war between the rival that had so effortlessly defeated their experimental maneuver and the Coalition of Human Systems.
2182 A.F. would once again see a flare in tensions between the Timosi Republic and Garrant Commonwealth as their colonial movements continued to run in antagonism towards eachother. With their empires growing more and more intertwined and difficult to expand, border disputes and military warning shots began to climb. Neither deaf nor purposely ignorant of the potential for conflict, the Verinen Permanos Regentic broke its ordinary spiteful silence and came to the negotiating table in an effort to secure peace - if only for its own future in face of the entire Coalition bearing down on them and the Timosi that had failed to support them in the War of First Contact. It would, however, be one of their first diplomatic failures, as Coalition nations scoffed at their short-lived proposals and continued to side with the Commonwealth. Even with the war inevitable, there would be little the Verinen could do to delay the conflict to help prepare their own forces and their Timosi allies. 2184 would see several brief skirmishes between the Armed Forces and Central Military which would only solidify the concept of a coming war between the Independent Strategic Alliance and Coalition of Human Systems.
It would be a bold action from Garran politicians - though little more than strong words than true intentions - that would plunge human space into one of its most significant armed conflicts in centuries. With a threat of war delivered to the Timosi Republic on February 9th of 2185 A.F., the Verinen withdrew from the negotiating table once more. And, with another pre-emptive strike on the Commonwealth border world of Tsirvana just two weeks later on February 23rd, the Timosi War would begin.
Fighting in the Timosi War would prove itself to be representative of the military doctrines and colonial maneuvering of the belligerents in the conflict. With the inflexible Timosi military flailing to fight back against the Commonwealth's ever-changing tactical and strategic maneuvers, while the Federal Guard of the Praetorian Federation once more met casualties in the millions against the lightning raids of the Regentic military, the war would find itself either a revolution or confirmation in the armed forces involved. The arrangement of the Garran and Timosi empires would prove difficult to defend for both sides and see planets exchange hands upwards of six times or more in the most contested of systems.
The ruthlessness and raw strength of the Verinen military would shine in the early years of the conflict, but as the war dragged on and the Ollenhall Administration's sabotage of Coalition intelligence networks became clear, their own inflexibility would nearly cost them their empire. While their seniors' handling of them had proved applaudable, the various patterns and routines of the strike troops and naval details slowly began to become more apparent to their pure of mind counterparts in the Coalition. Surprise insertions would be met with complex defensive actions that would baffle the strike troops composing them, whose lack of creative thought would stand out as a glaring Achilles' heel as they floundered to react to the situations entrapping them.
With their own tactics turned against them by the Republic of Tharkad and the more mobile militaries of Anchorage nations outflanking and outmaneuvering their efforts, the Alliance would soon began to crack at the seams. The Timosi Republic would soon prove to be a defensive burden as the war dragged on and its empire continued to be picked apart by its historical rivals from their homeworld. It would prove to be so frustrating to the Verinen that tensions between the two wartime allies would reach their highest point ever, even after the Timosi inclusion into the Coalition of Human Systems. The prospect of siding the Alliance against the country that had pulled it into yet another conflict - and one it stood little chance of succeeding in - became a serious topic of discussion in the military and political leaders of the Regentic. Incidents involving lower-level officers engaging with Timosi garrisons would not be uncommon as the war entered its final stages in 2192 A.F. With the space nations of the Alliance capitulating around them and the Timosi already in negotiations with the Coalition, the final frustration and blow to military pride would strike the Regentic between the one gap their shield worlds had failed to close; the inner colony of Endgüllendung, six systems from their unoccupied border with the Ollenhall which had previously been covered by the bordering Timosi. A small joint force would arrive unannounced at the planet flying the flags of the Garrant Commonwealth, Republic of Tharkad, and the Konnese and Kravenn Reliants. While the attack would be repulsed, the losses to the defense fleet and their reinforcements would be severe, owing not to any new weapon or technology, but a simple and final refinement to the naval tactics the Republic and Commonwealth had developed in concert.
It would be this final straw that would break the resolve of the Verinen Permanos Regentic's military and finally return them to the negotiating table. With long talks made and threats on either side, the Verinen would scrape by with minimal war reparations with a final peace in 2193 A.F. The fifth and final jewel would be forever placed above the Entschlossenkampf mark on the same day.
With the Timosi War concluded and the second largest power now a member of the Coalition of Human Systems, the Independent Strategic Alliance began to fray at its edges. Nations worn down by the conflict began to drift away from their Verinen leaders and towards the seemingly unstoppable Coalition. Smaller countries that had either kept clear from the war or contributed only minorly broke in a wave of withdrawals and applied for Coalition membership. Others still brought to the table the concept of dual membership, pledging faith to their Alliance allies and economic cooperation with their former Coalition enemies.
While this would not be the end of the Independent Strategic Alliance, the decline would be harsh and significant. Frustrated and now hateful of the "allies" it had surrounded itself with, the Verinen once more began to close up and shut off the concept of outside influences.
As of 2203 A.F., the Verinen Permanos Regentic is isolationist still. Its little external contact is with the few space nations it still calls close allies, but even this interaction is minimal at best. Its primary movements are primarily those of small raids and hired pirate attacks on the border worlds of the Coalition, most significantly the Timosi Soivetet Republic. With its reparations paid and its economy recovering from the war, the nation has gone to concentrating on rebuilding its armed forces and improving its existing colonial holdings. With the Inkron Governance Sphere expanding on one side, the Ollenhall bordering them on another, and the Coalition of Human Systems forming the last barrier against their expansion, there is little else the Verinen can do. With a war between mankind and the Inkron growing more and more possible, their involvement in the conflict remains in doubt much like the neighboring Ollenhall, but it remains safe to assume that the Regentic will have a part to play - for better or for worse.
