Rise and fall of the Imperium of Nova Terra, a story of war, triumph, decadence and collapse - a Stellaris AAR (2024)

Important announcement: please use the threadmark system to refer to the new chapters
My original old save in ironman died and nothing I tried could save it so I decided to restart again in 3.6 version of the game. I decided to leave the old chapters for those curious to see what was the original idea behind the AAR was. The new AAR will try to keep the same lore, altought some things may change. I should avoid spoiling anything else, if you would like to directly jump to the next chapters just use the threadmarks.
This time no ironman and a lot of saves and minimal mod use so things should work hopefully.

The Imperium of Nova Terra

Of five colony ships sent by the United Nations of Earth, the Hyacinth managed to find a suitable planet for life and successfully land on it. After forming many nations and city states, a man managed to conquer them in one global super power.
That man was Agrippa Domitius, God-Emperor of Imperium of Nova Terra.

The Imperium of Terra Nova was a Divine Empire, where the state religion dictates the everyday life of the common folk and the ruler is worshiped as an infallible living god. A god that shared a bit of it's consciusness into the material realm by taking a mortal form.

The colony ship only landed with less than 200 000 people, in order to quickly overcome and populate the planet a propram of artificial breeding was enacted along with an unofficial ban on any birth control. The unrestricted and uncontrolled use of this new technology soon caused problems far beyond those, who could have imagined.

Entire generations of humans were brought into a hostile world, without proper societal development or in poorer words a loving family that could produce a functional human being. Some were directly cloned and put to work, becoming slaves since a [REDACTED] age. Aso ever increaing use of growth accelerants, made sure that adult humans were directly produced and ready for work. Brain implants also made sure the uncontracted workers were quite obedient. One of the hidden powers of Agrippa was the inexplicable ability to disrupt or even completely rend unusable such devices.
Very few could benefit of having a family, this in turn degenerated in further darkness, unofficial slavery was brought back. Back then the slaver guilds were born and Agrippa had no choice but to rely on them if he wanted to achieve anything and not end just in another failed attempt to unite the planet. The Imperium was built on slavery and will die because of slavery, as some titanic figure in UNE years later mentioned. Not exactly because of it's literal practice of slavery but because the Imperium itself become slave of it's outadated backwards traditions and customs. The inability of the military officials to adapt to a new age of warfare, stuck in the past, worshipping the doctrines of old. Even worse was the governamental apparatus, it was an abbomination crawling on borrowed time, this inability of the Imperium to stop the internal fighting to plagued it since basically, always. Such behaviour was at its core even before the Imperium was created.

Uncontrolled use of robots and artificial AI, altought in development phase, made deep and catastrophic changes to enviroment, countless animals of the planet disapperead for ever, entire continents were changed and stripped of life. The endless greed of humankind was bringing the new world to total collapse and very seemed even remotely concerned about it.
It was a period of collective madness, a former imperium official in exile on Unity, turned traitor, described as such the era before the emperor. The emperor put a stop to that, but he only saw, an even worse future taking shape for the imperium so he decided to leave with many hundreds of thousands when given the possibilty by the CoM, when it [REDACTED] the Imperium. Unfortunately for them later the Imperial Purges, were extremely cruel for betrayal. Despite such measures the Imperium would slowly bleed talented individuals that hated the imposed uniformity of the Imperium and where only few could benefit of expressing themselves, only to benefit the Imperium. With the years, even the God-Emperors were tied to strict rules and customs that allowed them little freedom of action. Those few who tried to reform the Imperium were quickly [REDACTED].

When the emperor conquered everything, he outright destroyed the knowledge about these two unholy technologies. He adapted the values of the old empires of Earth that conquered and civilised the lesser neighbours. In order to keep growing the empire, he made many radical changes to the society of Nova Terra, including to change the old name of the planet to a new one, impose a [REDACTED] child policy, later the cloning technology was reintroduced, but on much smaller scale, the previous policy was somewhat ignored with the passing years and then altogheter just rescinded.
It started as an advisory propaganda campaign by the priests, then through societal and peer pressure and economic support to those who eagerly accepted. Those who opposed the narrative and state doctrine, were usually subjected to "re-education" and "spiritual suggestion". This usually had mixed results, sometimes minor offences were punished with fines, starting with monetary ones and "spiritual" ones that were public humiliations. Show the community that, the one who was found guilty of not following the state propanda and religion was an enemy of state but above most of all, an enemy of humanity itself. Such ruthless tactics worked wonders in isolating individuals and getting rid of them later. Political opponents were outright enslaved and sent into the mines, into the worse working possible conditions were lifespan was incredibly short. The Imperium, lacking in manpower, was adverse to killing it's own human population, the xeno, was another story, for this reason they prefered to send the opposition into slavery and hard labour, in this way they could gain the most, remove a great internal threat and gain resources.

The opposition on core worlds was quickly destroyed but this only led to major polarization on frontier worlds that simply despised the Imperium, where imperial doctrine had lesser reach and with time the priesthood became less and less preocupied to maintain high loyalty of imperial subjects. Infiltration of slaver guilds and imperial bureaucracy inside the IUSD compromised its most important role and the former became nothing else but a political battleground for these parties and often it translated even in planet wise military actions against each other with contracted mercenaries. All to keep a facade of decency and civilsed behaviour and not just annouce that the Imperium was in a perpetual state of quiet civil war because too many disagreed on too much and to declare on official civil war would make everyone lose too much. To put things in prospective, the Imperium was fighting the Imperium so that few in the Imperium could get richer and have more influence in...the Imperium.

Why work, the imperial propaganda went, when a great service to the emperor and humanity could be done and let the traitors, the criminals and the ungodly ones do the work in the mines, ocean floors and alloy furnaces. With the capital's encouragment a new kind of people appeared.

The empire was in great need of people to colonise the new worlds, to keep under control and defend itself against the xeno. Pioneers of new worlds began to appear, adventurers, opportunists, those seeking riches and above all people not suffering the Imperium's unflexible dogmas and not foolish enough to oppose it. They instead sought to distance themselves from the capital and explore new, often dangerous worlds... Many of them died on such dangerous journeys but those who could make it were rewarded with great riches. Slaves from the capital were sent to exploit newly found resources, capitals to create and keep a new industry on far away planets going. The pioneers that made it became local governors, some were even promoted over the entire planet, from humble begginings to become their own powerful house that could influence the course of the empire.

This mentality of dinstancing from the empire never disappread and despite all the empire's efforts to rout out political dissidents and the desire for reform, it ultimately failed. After [REDACTED], it was the greatest shift in power in the hyperlane starcluster since the end of [REDACTED] when the Fallen Empires bagan to slowly retreat into absolute isolationism and simply observe the stars around them...

Before the Imperium was formed a general lack of unity and purpouse in the population of Nova Terra was common, especially, after Agrippa managed to sabotage the mental implants. That was even before he became God-Emperor. The number of people with [REDACTED] issues started to skyrocket, violence became common place, raiding parties were roaming free in the so called "wastelands". Wars soon started, countless started to die and this further exacerbated the previous issues. In this chaotic world, the population had reached almost one hundred millions, a ridiculous number, in just five decades, after the inital colonisation of the planet, in 2100s. This exponential growth was of course a combination of unrestricted cloning and people having children at a young age that were cloned themselves. Education was often lacking if not non-existent at all, this contribuited a lot in favour of the emperor. These people were lost, without ideals of their own, without a guide and mentally unstable. The indoctrination of these masses was vital for Agrippa but also proved a sword with double edge when the priests rallied the ignorant masses to shift their focus towards a more xenophobic opinion when the aliens started to invade. It was the first sign that the priesthood was interested more and more in actual power than just spiritual one and the health of Agrippa started to suddenly deteriorate. Some UNE unverified reports suggest, that during the childhood, Agrippa himself was a [REDACTED] and was exposed to [REDACTED]. The damage he suffered by terrible enviroment and post-processing wastes made him believe to be a god and [REDACTED].

Upon victory, Agrippa, formerly known as [REDACTED], who, misteriously, rose through the military ranks at an young age and with various connections managed to conquer with his small band of men, one the most corrupt and criminally ridden nation state of Nova Terra, previously named as [REDACTED].
Little is known what happened inside those borders, as the nation became isolationist almost over night. All outside communications were cut and those who dared to cross the borders where never seen or heard anymore.

Nova Terra, unlike Earth, was divided in smaller continents, the future emperor firstly distinguished himself in many important naval and aerial engagements as the supercarriers or flying fortresses crossed over enemy territory, many city states simply surrendered without resisting. This was at the time when the nation was still controlled by its elected officials, or so by the rigged elections that gave the illusion of choice.

The idea of one global super power, was already in the minds of those that came before Agrippa, however none of them had the skills and capability he had and all of them failed. The future emperor, after succesfully taking control over almost the entirety of oceans, important seas and vital aerial and coastal zones, decided to turn his attention back home.
All the people who were blindly loyal to the emperor, once he achiedved total victory, were repaid in wealth and power that not even in their wildest dreams could hope to achieve. Others were purged...

Before passing away, is it said, the emperor rambled in his death bed that he had a great revelation that came before his eyes the moment toughts of doubt and defeat started to cross in his mind, during a moment of great crisis for the future emperor, when the enemies he later declared heretical, were having a clear advanatge over him. It was the most important battle of all wars and battles of unification of Nova Terra. He said, he saw a great future for humankind, only if they shall they survive the cleansing flame, the destroyers of worlds and the dreaded soulless "Devil of Metal". The emperor said, he was unsure what it was at the time of his great revelation, all he knew it was a great destiny that awaited him and he had to overcome his current burden no matter what.
When the xeno lizards and preposterous husks of iron declared their unholy wars against humanity, the emperor then understood what it all meant, or so he tought...
In reality, it was only the first part of his great revelation and he would not live to see the entirety of the prophecy become reality.

Described as a man of medium if not small stature, physically Agrippa Domitius was not an imposing figure, however the man possesed something akin to divine charisma and outstanding oratory skills. He was an excellent statesman, tactictian and strategist, Agrippa accomplished the impossible, unite Nova Terra. He would be followed by many other emperors, but few would be able to match his greatness.
Without him, some say, the Imperium would have not existed and humanity would be probably existinct, altought some other argue that what the empire did, the crimes, the unjustice, the untold billions if not trillions of dead, all in name of the Divine, was unacceptable and unforgivable...
Humanity would have survived and thrived regardless and the destruction of [REDACTED] was a crime against humanity itself.
Few outside the Imperium would forget those who fought to keep it's legacy alive.
The military aspect was not the only field of expertise in which the emperor was excelling, he also was an incredible army organiser and was a logistics genius. Agrippa had great intuition for profit and invested in new technologies and methods. This proved crucial when he set his eyes to conquer the world, as his nation's overwhelming technological advantage meant often certain victory with few casualty of human life, after all, it was a lost colony of Earth and was still scarsely populated, despite the unrestricted use of technology, later forbidden by the Imperium.

Most of the work, before the Imperium, was done by advanced automation and robots, AI breakthroughs were becoming more and more advanced with each passing year, almost reaching the point of singularity and creating sentient AI.
This all changed when Agrippa took control, he banned the AI, forbid robotic workers and enslaved all those who dared to "play" with such dangerous technology.

The Imperium of Nova Terra, when first started to explore the stars, could be considered a fanatic authoritarian empire. The cult of the emperor, was the only religion allowed. Agrippa made himself a living god, in fact, he believed genuinly to be one. To solidify his power, he relied on two important branches of his newly created global government: the priests, known also as Imperial Union of Servants of the Divine (IUSD) and the slaver guilds, diveded between private landowners, heads of wealthy families, considered nobles and the massive conglomerates of mining unions that relied heavily if not solely on slave labour. There was a third branch, in direct competition with the slaver guilds, but it was less defined legally, if not at all. It was a union between the military and the navy and some parts of the Imperial bureaucracy that wanted to acquire wealth on the shoulder of the slaver guilds, that were too rich in their opinion and had to pay for various legal practices. Also the increasingly demand of mercenary labour meant less manpower for the army/navy and more private armies. The Imperium could not afford to pay as well as the guilds, with time most skilled personel opted to become became mercenaries. This greatly worried the official Imperial branches that such unrestricted movement of manpower would embold the guilds that will become more and more powerful and might even take over the Imperium itself. The guilds were the economic powerhouse of the Imperium, despite this, the military regarded them as a mere economical power that should be worried to only extract and provide resources to the Imperium and military. This demeaning way of thinking of the military greatly outraged the guilds that wanted more direct power instead of just soft political power. Such destructive behaviour was often put aside when the Imperium was in great danger, when everyone could lose but when peace returned the old squabbles did too.

The IUSD was most essential, in fact the priests were the only ones allowed by imperial decree to spread the imperial faith and hunt down anyone who opposed the regime. Crime, even smaller ones, debt, blasphemy, indecent behaviour or even just abduction, could result in one's imprisonment and sequentially most certain punishment by becoming a slave even if it was all a mock process.
Mostly hit was the poorer strata that had fewer means to defend itself, however even nobles or corporate competitors could end up in slavery after being destroyed by their rivals. Mutilated beyond recognition and sold away to a fate worse than death to them, the ultimate humiliation and loss of prestige, altough it was kept secret in most cases, since it could spark as well an imperial investigation that would end badly for both parts involved and usually such high interest conflicts were kept on the down low side.
The Imperium needed resources and needed them quickly. Slave labour was the answer to its issues in the short run while in the long run would only mean trouble...

The emperor's Imperial branch lost most support, only 24% of free subjects, according to official stimes, were supporting the Peace and Order Movement, it was mainly comprised by imperial officials, the military/navy and some slaver guilds representatives. The Human Purity Front had a staggering amount of 27%, expected to grow further to 44%, it was the common folk, who, easily influenced by state propaganda, in this case, rival factions, inside the same state propaganda, could easily change their minds on a whim.

The Council of Traditional Values, was the faction of the priests, led by the Pontifex Maximus, the head priest. The emperor himself was considered a divine being, while the priests were considered his servants, servants of the divine. Thus the high priest himself, could not hold any temporal power and he had to dedicate to only religious duty. This was of course far from the truth, but officially, Numerius Didius, one of three of the Triumvirate of Research and Advance, a newly created branch of the government specifically dedicated to solely technological advancements, was the official leader of the faction with the Pontifex Maxiumus being a mere councillor. In reality Numerius was far too busy with supervising his own department of research to be able to deal with the faction he was supposed to lead. The real leader was the Pontifex Maximus that with his generous donations funded Numerius. He was head scientist of the physics branch.
Tullus Centenius had under his command the societal advancement, a very prestigious one. Developing societal theories to better control the population was of outmost importance and this branch was funded at their hearts content by the Imperium.
Gnaeus Rufius, was head scientist of the engineering branch. After all the empire required weapons of war to survive and more efficient techniques to obtain as many resources as possible to survive.

The priests were servants of the divine, subordinated to the emperor, so the authoritarianism would always prevail over the spiritualism. As the emperor himself, a temporal entity and not only spiritual was always there, a commanding presence. Such presence was undiscussed autority itself. The priests, with the passing of decades, came to resent this, especially the Pontifex Maximus, that was merely a spiritual guide and overseer of all priests, tasked to guide the flok on the right path. They wanted power other than wealth, in the end wealth was only merely a step to acquire power. Over the years they started to become more and more corrupted morally, corrupted according to official state doctrine. Many on Earth or Unity simply outright considered it amoral and fanatic by itself already without the need for additional excesses. Of course the excesses the priests themselves allowed to fall into was just a simptom of an already spreading sickness inside the empire...

To the credit of the Imperial system, the adopted brother of the emperor, Saint Gaius, when he, himself became God-Emperor, he wrote in his later years detailed guidances and teachings as aswell as very strict codes of conduct that would define the empire for the next centuries. In this way, he was able to strike the excesses of the elites, be it priests, nobles or slave owners, almost stop the inevitable decadence of the empire and create the foundations for an interstellar super power.

The emperor would die childless and his younger brother, Saint Gaius would follow him. A firm believer in the military doctrine of static defence he was the one to advise the emperor to focus on making first the starbases unimpregnable fortresses and only later focus on the fleet as a mean for offence and power projection, the Imperium had to survive in first place and then only later expand. His ruthless nature convinced Agrippa. This proved to be the most important advice the emperor has ever decided to listen. Two powerful starbases will prove important in these wars against the xeno.

Decades after his death a former UNE president in his book would describe the Imperium's mentality and way of existing and compared it to the Commonwealth of Man as a superficial wound that stained the reputation of humanity while the Imperium of Nova Terra was a growing cancer that had to be destroyed at any cost...as they viewed themselves as an innocent nation, devoid of any wrong and the neighbouring states were nothing but backwards savages deserving of annihilation or a lifetime of servitude towards a greater purpouse.

The Imperium, at the time of the invasion, was composed of five worlds: the capital Nova Terra, then Nova Roma, the first world to be colonised, or second if the capital world would be considered a colony itself. A continental world of almost equal size to Nova Terra. It was poorly suited to agriculture because of the scarce quality of the terrain and to make things worse dangerous apex predators were still roaming the surface and countless colonists perished to such creatures. The planet, was even less suitable for mining and energy generation. The climate was mild, so mild in fact that winds were rarely a threat and tornadoes and tsunamis were practically inexistent. What this world was suited for were massive industrial districts to fuel the military-complex. It was the Imperium's first forge world and the only world to be protected besides Nova Terra by the space fortresses.

Olympia, the third wolrd to be colonised, a continental world, slighty bigger in mass than the former, was better suited for mining and energy extraction as it was similar to Earth. However in the end it was decided to make it and industrial world, meaning, both alloys and consumer goods would be shipped from it. Also Olympia was outside Limes Britannicus, the northern fortress starbase, and one of the three worlds to be directly menaced by the xeno.

Further away, Colonia Pacifica was the fourth planet, an ocean world, scans indicated poor deposits of minerals. The planet was similar to Nova Roma, meaning the ocean corrents were very weak aswell as the winds. Only geothermal energy could be reliably exploited, to a certain degree, since most of it was deep under the oceans and it required titanic and costly operations to set up only the infrastructure to allow to build the means to extract it, let alone everything else. The sky however was incredibly clear and the many thousands of major islands and hundreds of thousands of smaller ones could be used to build entire research deparments. Colonia Pacifica was designated mainly for research purpouses.

The last planet the Imperium had colonised was Favonius. It was already inhabited by primitive xeno, so it had to be pacified first and then safely settled. It was a specie of alien humanoids who roughly called themselves Yldar. The priests immediatly excommunicated the primitive xenos, denoucing them as primitive barbarians that could not be integrated into society nor be used as slaves. It was the second primitve xeno specie the Imperium was exterminating, the first one was situated in the [REDACTED] system, renamed to Italica, the alpine world of Italica II, had an avian specie of xeno, sentient aliens capable of natural flight. Most of the information regarding these aliens was completely wiped out. The aliens called themselves [REDACTED]. The priests immediatly denounced them as mere animals that had to be eradicated to make space for humankind. The only way to save their damned souls was to redempt themselves through hard labour, in order to repent. Only then the divine power of the God-Emperor shall save their damned souls. It went in clear contradiction with the concept of these aliens being animals, animals were not able to judge what was wrong and not, it did not matter much, the words of the priests were law and those who opposed the law ended with a tragic fate. The guilds through generous donation managed to convice the IUSD that end the lifes of the aliens directly would be a waste. They could expire and bring obscene amounts of wealth to the interested parties.

During the exploration era, before the Wars for Survival, many interesting discoveries were made including lost alien artifacts and technology. Soon the black markets of Nova Terra would be flooded by an influx of such forbidden technology. The Imperium was clear in regard to possessing or using it, it was illegal. The allure of such exotic and fascinating technology was simply too much and the Imperium failed to control the influx. Even high ranked officials, it is rumoured, were using or in posses of such artifacts and even the God-Emperor himself had something akin to alien technology in his private collection. Not everything discovered was deemed bad by the Imperium, in fact alien weaponry and space vessels were something the Imperium was very eager to discover and retro engineer.

Agrippa was not a pacifist or xeno lover but he neither wanted to kill every single sentient life he encountered. However his hand has been forced, he had to choose between the interests of few that held the empire togheter and the xeno and he chose the former. The future of humanity weighted too much on his shoulders and he decided to ignore dark realities in the favour of the collective, deep down he knew it maybe was not the right path, as he once was himself a [REDACTED], however every dream required sacrifices and such a big dream as his required many sacrifices, pheraphs too many.