Takamo Universe - The Five Galaxies

Illina     The Illina empire's dominant species was avian. Originating on a bucolic homeworld that became a nature preserve, the Ave (meaning "people" in the native tongue of the Aquilan caste) achieved spaceflight early.    Ave in the Illina empire were classed into castes. The Aquilan caste was the ruling class, the Raptori serve as the military might of the empire, and the Passerine castes--of which there were hundreds of variants--made up the civilian and mercantile castes.  Aquilans    Aquilans were very selective in breeding and inheritance--complicated practices and protocols went into creating an heir to the powers of each of the ruling families, with lesser heirs, and vassals interweaved to form the bloodline's power structure. Raptori     Raptori bred their stock mostly from Aquilan families--lesser branches were designated for military service--but also counted among their ranks many Passeri...

Conquest of the Okwa    Over the next half-century, the original Brunswickers and their progeny, the New Brunswickers fought the indigenous race of humanoid aliens, the Okwa, for control of Neu Deutschland-4. They also continued to serve the Precursors as military muscle off-world in exchange for supplies and new equipment. However, the Precursor visits became noticeably fewer in the mid-nineteenth century and in 1865, they stopped altogether. The Precursors had shared the majority of their technology with one glaring exception; the knowledge of spacefaring and interstellar navigation and the accompanying technology. This had not been a concern for the New Brunswickers until the Precursors ceased their visits. The only jump capable vessels in Brunswicker possession was an old assault shuttle nicknamed the ‘Billie Goat’ and a mothballed freighter in high orbit. It took a year to repair the shuttle and train a pilot, using cobbled equipment and some helpful pointers fro...

Quatre Bras (Black Watch at Bay) by William Barnes Wollen in the collection of Black Watch Museum, Sol-3 Terran Republic. Myth or Truth?    The Duchy of Brunswick was an empire of Terran humans who claimed to be descendants of former soldiers of the Duchy of Brunswick, French, English and the other German States armies from the Battle of Quatre Bras, a portion of the Battle of Waterloo on Sol-3 in 1815 TSD.  Their mythology tells of an intervention by an alien race they call the 'Precursors,' who forced the evacuation of many of the combatants, and transported them to a starsystem in a region of space situated to the galactic southeast of Terran space. Coincidentally, ancient Rhatsibahn records relate a botched smuggling operation by Muto smugglers in cycle 13.3456 at a world designated as Artha, which would roughly coincide with the Terran year 1814. Some academics postulated that a Muto Rhat smuggling center had been compromised through some careless act and th...

Lotharia     Lotharia was a vast Terran human region, nicknamed the "Badlands" that lay along nearly the entire eastern frontier of the Terran Empire. It was technically a colonial subject of Terra, but it was a vast and lawless waste in all but name. The Terran Republic initially claimed the region during a massive eastward expansion begun in 2465 by Terran President Dominic Anders, a populist demagogue who dreamt of a glorious extension of Terran power with him as its defacto dictator. In truth, his government was so corrupt and his cabinet so incompetent that the initiative they began soon spiraled out of control. Colonial Era     In 2465, the Anders government declared the Lothar Badlands a Terran colonial territory and opened it to settlement. The best worlds in the Lotharian provinces were settled by the Terran government during the late 2400's and into the mid-2500's. A robust Ammanian contingent also left Terra to settle in southern Lotharia...

Z'ETTA     F or most of the galaxy, Z'etta was a name synonymous with treachery.     The Z'etta Empire was located in the middle of the southwest quadrant of the Estra Galaxy. The Z'etta was a unique energy-based lifeform., meaning that they were made up of a unique form of radiant energy. So far as Terrans are concerned, that energy, Dunstal radiant energy, was discovered by Akko Dunstal in 2509. It was an unusual form of electromagnetic energy that was visible to humans as luminous energy. The luminous energy was so intense that humans had to wear eye protection and maintain a safe distance when in contact with a Z'ettan. Z'ettas could maintain a corporeal form for a maximum of ten hours. After that, they would dissipate, and their energy would flow underground to a subsurface level of the soil that human explorers named the "aquifer" or the "elake," a mass of Dunstal energy coursing through the substrate of the world.  Con...

   Although the majority of the world's stealthships are military, there are some civilian stealthboats which are used for tourism, exploration, orbital facility inspections, and sensitive surveys. Some are also used in smuggling operations.    A Terran stealthship ride opened at Croma’s Amusement World in 2659, but although it ran under cloak, it was not a true stealthship, because it stayed in low orbit and used a multichannel alert signal to warn approaching vessels. The first Terran tourist stealthship was the Gammel, which went into service in 2664 at TerraExpo64 in the Fredricks star system. By 2698 four million tourist stealthships were operating around the galaxy. Stealthships with a range of 4-5 parsecs were operated in several areas, typically with a carrying capacity of 500 to 1,000 passengers.    In a typical operation, a passenger vessel carried passengers to an off-world operating area and loaded them into the stealthship. Th...

TSS Samara, a converted scout attack stealthship on its way to the breaking yards in 2674. The Emperor’s War The Terran Campaign 2678-3275    The first Terran launch of a serjaum based hyper-jump ballistic missile (SSM-N-17 Roma) from a stealthship occurred in July 2677, from the TSS Tawny, a Second Consular War era stealth boat modified to carry the missile. Tawny and its sister boat, Basra, were the Terran’s first ballistic missile patrol stealthships. Development of fusion generators improved boat power supply. Equipment was also developed to extract oxygen from atmosphere skimmers. These two innovations gave stealthships the ability to remain on station for extended periods. Most of the naval stealthboats built since that time in Terra, Reittia, the Briddarri Kingdom, and the Rutak empire were powered by nuclear fusion generators. In 2689–2690, the first ballistic missile stealthships were put into service by both the Terran (Sturgeon class) and the Reittia...