The Final Update of the Codexian Saga
Reign of Blood; Moments in Time
'Everything I did, I did for my children, and their children to follow. In the belief that I was doing a greater good, I did evil knowingly and without remorse. Today, let it be said that I die as a Man without regret. My people sacrificed their all so that we could have a tomorrow that is free of prejudice, discrimination and the hatred of those who do not understand us. My folly was hubris; theirs was the trust they put in me. The only apology offered today will be to them. Those who followed and died for a worthy cause. Those who believed in something great and something beautiful. I will not apologise to you, my executioners. Your right is might. I only hope that your dreams, hopes and aspirations burn on a pyre not too far from ours. Let this be the final word on the topic of what I stood for: the betterment of All, by whatever means necessary. The only quarter I would ask is that, when you write the history books, don't paint me a two-bit villain; insane and depraved, Murderer and Terror. Trust those who will come after you to make up their own minds. Now, don't just stand there. End it, already.'
- The Final Words of the Tyrant: A Critical Interpretation, 559AU
Yes, some would say that we 'beat' the Tyrant and were all the stronger for it. Me? I look at scores of lifeless worlds, and I wonder. Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant? Did we make a desert and call it peace? The fighting in the Old Commonwealth was apocalyptic enough before the thermo-nukes were used to decide the issue once and for all on Tortica. The Newmen certainly burned, and we watched them burn with glee. We forgot that beside those monsters burned three million norms just trying to live their pathetic lives as best they could, on an inhospitable and oft treacherous world. Rest assured, our arithmetic was sound. We could not, after all, sacrifice another three precious Ground Force brigades in breaking the back of the Freedom Army on the planet. The entire Southern prong of the Great Offensive was tottering, and the Hin'in were battering the Northern prong. We had to act, that much is understood.
But we unleashed something, that fateful day. An unwritten rule from an age long past was broken; a taboo invoked. An entire planetary community was, more or less, snuffed out from above on Tortica. It was not malice that killed those people. Only the coldest of rational calculations and considerations could be so apathetic to such suffering. All moral concerns aside, why were we so surprised when the Newmen responded in kind? Why were we even more surprised when the nanites gifted to the Tyrant by that most hated psychic alien filth began gnawing at Horst and its hundred million benighted souls? Naturally, the conflict would escalate, thereafter. We produced ships by the thousand. The Hin'in and their opportunistic allies did the same. If anything, the terrible wars the Hin'in had fought over the last century had only strengthened their resolve and given their blades a keen edge.
The months and years rolled on, and the conflict swallowed a generation of humanity's finest. Desperation was the Tyrant's greatest friend and counsel in this struggle for survival and vindication. In truth, is it so difficult to understand his actions, at the time? Why abstain from mass cloning, when your worlds are threatened with a complete and utter annihilation? Why not experiment with the most horrific of cybernetic 'enhancements' and replacements on a population ready - even eager - to accept death for the sake of transcendence? The Tyrant's propaganda in those years may have become more and more laughable, as the tides of war washed away humanity's resolve; his weapons were no laughing matter, however. The great battles of that terrible time are too many to recount here at any real length. The Third Battle of Faustus (Ground Campaign) was a bloodletting barely paralleled in human history. How many died there, we will never know. Once again, we found it too difficult to beat the Freedom Army in a stand-up fight on a planetary surface, so we glassed it and moved on, instead. Strategic considerations - just strategic considerations, my sons. Slowly, ever so slowly, our Grand Strategem worked. Every once in a while, a Newmen suicide convoy would sneak through and hit one of our worlds. Gagarin died in just such a fashion, along with its millions of men and women. But it just made us angrier. We hit them back, just as hard. Increasingly, that little bit harder. In 548AU, Sand itself was subjected to a combined Space / Ground Force offensive.
In that horrifying, swirling melee - a ballet of death amongst the stars - six hundred ships met their doom. But the Tyrant had already fled deeper into Old Phyrria. He did not get to see his homeworld rendered lifeless, after two attempted landings were beaten back, and numerous ultimatums fell on deaf ears. The Hin'in took on a senior role in the Coalition, thereafter. Freedom Army troops were still their shock forces on the ground, but more and more often Hin'in ships were forming the main battle line in clashes with the Second Respublica and its Space Force. And throughout it all, we steadfastly refused to ask the Bugs for help. Santi Maria knows, we might have used it. Who can truly tell. We never asked. They certainly never offered, after what happened at Tortica, Gagarin, Sand and others. Likely, they were afraid.
Death, death and more death. The Newmen were more fanatical and intransigent than the greatest Soldier Saints of the First Respublica. Prisoners? We took so few after the first year that not one new prisoner-of-war or detention camp needed to be opened to accommodate them. Large stretches of human space were nothing but a mortuary. Old Phyrria was suffering yet another cleansing; this time norm humans were cleansing terraformed worlds of near-humans and modified humans alike with fire and sword. No one questioned this atrocity. No one who dared make an issue of it, anyway. We were winning, after all. Slowly, yes - but surely. The ancient philosopher, Thomas Hobbes said it best: "To speak impartially, both sayings are very true; That Man to Man is a kind of God; and that Man to Man is an arrant Wolfe. The first is true, if we compare Citizens amongst themselves; and the second, if we compare Cities." The City of Norms and the City of Newmen were locked in a death grapple; two ravenous Wolves in a mortal combat.
Yes, in the end, it can be said that we did 'win'. Some years after Sand, we had killed enough of them that they quit, and then we killed a few more for good measure. The sweetest of victories? Reader, I tell you, one more such victory will be the ruin of us.
Fin.
***
'In the end, the Second Respublica beat the upstart Tyrant and the hated Hin'in. A heavy-handed puritan reaction against all forms of human modification once again followed a crisis of faith, and human history see-sawed yet again. Eventually, the war weariness subsided, and humanity flexed its muscles anew. The Raumeni were absorbed into the expanding human domain with little trouble. Their weakness, after all, was well known. Neither particularly advanced, numerous nor nuanced, the Clans fell easily and quickly. Many did so without a fight. There had been enough war in their lifetimes.
After that, a final, brutal war against the Hin'in saw those beasts subdued once and for all. What survived of their population was placed in strict quarantine - stripped of technology and know-how within a generation. The destruction of the Hin'in was totalitarian in its scope. Perhaps it was all that they deserved. Perhaps, instead, we saw too much of ourselves in this ambitious, opportunistic and clever race. It was not to be tolerated. Decades passed, and Old Phyrria was re-developed. With some difficulty, even a few of the heavily damaged worlds from the Tyrant War were rehabilitated. Sand, the much maligned home of John Newman, became a tourist attraction for millions of the faithful and the curious. More decades passed. The Bron were crushed, after they attempted to stall human colonisation of the Pegrean Expanse. Little quarter was given - or, in truth, asked for. Humanity continued to reach out in just about every direction. Lesser peoples made way, submitted or died fighting. The Second Respublica became the Third Respublica in 830AU. Then the Fourth in 890AU. At some point around 1051AU, the human population in the known worlds surpassed five hundred billion.
Great men and women came and went. They led, and thought and did, and then died - becoming blurbs in a glorious, increasingly complex history of the galaxy's most feared power. More wars rocked the frontiers in the 1100s, but they were shortlived and victorious. The Gul'dar were the primary foe of the 1200s; a plague upon the seemingly inexorable human advance. They fought like savages and died well, taking many brave Men with them. In 1288AU, the Fifth Respublica was born. It would be the last. Almost a trillion humans populated the known worlds at the turn of the fourteenth century AU. The Human Sphere was too large to govern effectively any more by a central authority. Decentralisation efforts proved to little avail, and brutal civil wars followed. Many millions died in countless conflicts, large and small, fighting for a thousand different creeds, ideals and principles.
Eventually, a number of powers emerged, coalesced and shattered again between 1300AU and 1900AU. Conflict was interminable, and the humans were fabled warriors, technicians and scientists. Their feuds could unravel the very stars. Eventually, the foolhardiest were certain that the Turanei themselves could not challenge humanity. The Great War, as it would come to be known, unravelled many a star, indeed. It was a cataclysm beyond compare. But the foolhardy were ultimately right, and even the Turanei could not withstand human ingenuity for more than a blink of a galactic eye. An age passed. Then another. Then another. 'Home' (or Codexia Prime, as it was once known) would be forgotten by most - it was no longer very important.
By the 3200s, that was true for much of the old ways. Another galactic giant arose in the northern arms a little while later, around the 3500s. Humanity, always searching for a new challenge, soon attacked the newcomers with wild abandon and a healthy enthusiasm for energetic struggle. It was a time of great dying and great glory. Human ships, many the size of small moons, indulged in an increasingly elemental battle with a prodigious and highly capable foe. Their triumph was complete a few short centuries later. Soon thereafter, however... something... happened. The historical record goes silent for almost fifteen thousand years. It is astounding that, so far, we have found nothing but the most ambiguous of hints regarding what, exactly, happened. Filling in this blank space between our own era and that of our most ancient ancestors' remains the greatest socio-archaeological and anthropological concern of our time. Progress, sadly, is slow.'
- From 'A New History of the Most Ancient Proto-humans, 19th Edition', 21,207AU / 6,119NE (New Era)
***
The Barbarian hopes you have enjoyed our circlejerk, friends and allies.
Treave, Black Bart, laclonquan, many thanks for your kindness and camaraderie.
