The Decadent Era

4306-4531CE

Overview

The Decadent Era was an age where the Empire mostly turned inward in self-indulgence.  The years of Decadence correspond to the rise and fall of Earl Tafi Vendar of Adonis and his Society for Excessive Decadence.  During this period, external exploration almost stopped, and Imperial external policy concentrated on improving relations with neighboring states, include a final border adjustment with the Grand Federation of Races.  During this era, Cleon III withdrew from active leadership and a succession of Imperial Chairs dominated the politics of his later years and those of his grandson, Cleon IV.  By the time Earl Tafi threw himself off a spire, Decadence and its extreme offshoots had faded, but Sapien displeasure with the increasingly entrenched Nobilis remained, and the centuries of relative decorum that followed did little to heal the divide.

The Earl of Adonis, Tafi Vendar, founder of the Society for Excessive Decadence and spokesman for the movement, reached the height of his influence during the Imperial Exposition at Adonis in 4364CE.  Within twenty years, the New Moralist movement emerged as a Nobilis reaction to Decadent excess, prompting a war of assassination in 4393-4398CE, that ended with a muting of vocal posturing by both sides.  In the 45th century Decadence was overshadowed by its more radical offshoots, the HyperGoth movement, and the flamboyantly suicidal DeathGoth sect.

External Imperial relations in the 44th century focused on the Triangle region, where Imperial, Grand Federation and Dragon territories met.  The Imperial base at Talendir was a focus of activities.  Border disputes, smuggling, Octopod attacks and pirate raids occupied the Coreward Command and provided a platform for the noteworthy rising career of Admiral Sir Hans Crassius.

At the end of his bicentennial Jubilee in 4352CE Emperor Cleon III withdrew from active leadership of the government, appointing Sir Alfred Tufi as Chair of the Cabinet.  Tufi, a moderate reformer, held the post until 4467CE, when Cleon III dismissed him and briefly resumed an active role to successfully negotiate the Chlorine Annexation accords with the Grand Federation.  After Cleon III's death in 4471CE, his grandson Cleon IV appointed his long-time advisor Sir Harven Tschi as Imperial Chair.  Tschi successfully negotiated the customs and immigration treaties with the Grand Federation and Khald'aron Republic that formed a travel and work zone stretching from Rigel to the inner periphery of the Orion Arm.

The controversial conservative Duke Altamon Vega succeeded Tschi in 4487CE, and soon convinced Cleon IV to support legalized Rymar Stabilization and generational fatigue treatments for the Nobilis, an action that further alienated Ibrahimite and liberal Sapiens.  In the 4520s, Ibrahimite and Sapien unrest following the assassination of the Emperor's mother, Queen Sabra of Venus, led to repression and rioting and propelled Admiral Sir Hans Crassius to the post of Minister of Defense.

Years before Earl Tafi fell to his death, Decadence and its extreme offshoots had faded or burnt out, and a new civility and sophistication was beginning to dominate Imperial culture, but this superficial peace could not overcome deepening divides between the Nobilis Houses and the hundreds of billions of Sapiens.

Even with slowing expansion, the Empire of 4500CE included over 19,000 officially recognized settled worlds within the treaty-distorted settlement radius of 585 light-years.  Seven hundred thirty billion humans shared the Empire with four hundred sixty billion residents of the four dozen recognized Major, Minor and expatriate races.

Political

The 44th century represented a permanent shift in executive power from the person of the Emperor to the position of Chair of the Imperial Cabinet.  Exhausted and frustrated after two centuries of rule, Cleon III left the governing of the Empire in the hands of Sir Alfred Tufi, who ran the internal workings of the bureaucracy and managed Imperial politics quite well for over a century.  During Tufi's term of office, Edicts that established the Member status of larger Drifts and habitats and that clarified Zhretra and Tze't enumeration helped to increase integration with the Grand Federation of Races, but Tufi proved unable to settle a dispute over unclear claims on the Imperial Trailing Core border.

Cleon III stepped out of semi-retirement for just over a year in 4467CE, dismissing Tufi and negotiating Chlorine Annexation accords himself, before retiring back to Bengal and appointing Sir Egon Drellis as the new Chair.  The Emperor made noises about limiting the term of a Chair to a century, but had made no formal proposal before his death of CID in 4471CE.

The Imperial succession after Cleon III's death was clear and Cleon IV, as his eldest grandson, had been Prince of Mercury since 4392CE, but a substantial number of Great Houses favored the Emperor's younger son, Prince Garth Kamarov, a man of greater stature and intelligence, and father of Roban the Elder, King of North America.  Precedence and law overcame the arguments of the Nobilis High Councilors and Cleon IV took the throne, granting his uncle Garth the crown of Asia as a consolation.

Cleon IV predictably appointed his long-serving Delphian advisor Sir Harven Tschi as Imperial Chair and took little active role in government policy.  Tschi served ably for sixteen years before retiring from ill health, mostly the strain of dealing with obstinate Great Houses. 

In 4487CE the Emperor appointed the Martian conservative Duke Altamon Vega of Tharsis as the new Imperial Chair.  Duke Vega proved to be a divisive figure.  His relations with the Great Houses were good, but he quickly alienated the Sapiens, and particularly the Ibrahimites, by pushing though the controversial 4489CE Imperial Edict declaring CID and generational fatigue medically recognized defects, opening the way for legal Rymar Stabilization and prenatal genetic corrections for the Nobilis.  Though the prenatal treatment option was withdrawn the following year, the damage was done.

Since the end of Olav I's reign, the unspoken compromise between the Nobilis Emperor and the Sapien majority was to allow the Nobilis to continue to dominate Imperial politics in their current genetic state, understanding that limitations on the long term viability of the Nobilis genome would eventual dilute their power.  In an era that remembered the Dark Age and that had expectations of millennial life spans, the prospect of a distant devolution of Nobilis power was accepted by most prominent Sapiens.  But Rymar Stabilization, like artificial reproduction before it, threatened this long-term trend.  If the Nobilis remained viable indefinitely and if the viable Nobilis female reproductive period doubled, then Nobilis strength would not wane and Sapiens would remain second class citizens in their own Empire forever.  Duke Vega's motives were not lost on people like Ibrahim or prominent Sapien Imperial military and civilian leaders and the resentment only continued to grow through the centuries that followed.

Technological

The Empire continued to enjoy the fruits of Worm/Stasis culture through the 44th and 45th centuries.  Technological progress was slow, with only incremental improvements coming to market.  The Alimeen developed the Class E worm drive engine in the 4320s, but its adoption was slowed by its marginal speed improvement, allowing 41.68 light-years per day.  The scourge of telesuit assassins effectively ended after the perfection of low power teleport shielding in the 4330s, but later technological progress was near nonexistent and most scientists concentrated on applications of existing technologies in art and architecture.

The ban on Psi genetic modifications in the 4330s, the failure of the Khald'aron interstellar gate experiment in 4383CE and the continuing problems with the Venusian ecology pointed to the limits of Imperial science.  Only the IAK conducted pure research, and as the Ministry of Science began a steep decline in budget, only the IAK explored much beyond the Imperial border, establishing a set of outposts in the Trailing region and eventually settling Hortense in 4529CE.

The perfection of the full biomorphosis Rymar Stabilization by Calderan scientists in 4435CE represents the only breakthrough of the 45th century and the Rymar process had more political effect than it had technical impact on established inferior genetic transformation techniques.

Cultural

The growth of Decadence was perhaps an inevitable result of idle prosperity and a perverse reaction to extreme reality activities of earlier eras.  While Decadence was most flamboyant among the Nobilis, where wealth and privilege allowed the satisfaction of every imaginable vice, no matter how perverse, most adherents of Decadence and its increasingly destructive HyperGothic and DeathGothic offshoots were Sapiens.  Among the general populace, subtler forms of decadence and depravity pervaded popular culture, with the rise to Olympic respectability of blood sports like Goblin Bowl, Death Race and Pain Ball and with the popularity of virtual decadent entertainment like Ultimate Decay and its sequels. 

The New Moralist reaction, led by the venerable King Karl of Atlantis, was also inevitable, but after the war of assassination between the Decadent and New Moralist elite, both movements fractured into more subdued and more radical elements. 

In the 45th century, the emerging HyperGoth movement emphasized the darker morbid and depraved side of Decadence and soon gained Queen Helena of Australia as its chief proponent.  But even the excesses and depravities of the HyperGoths were outdone by the DeathGoths, a Palmerist sect that practiced a completely self-destructive form of Decadence, often ending their lives in violently spectacular public displays.  The Decadents and Goths paraded in flamboyant, dark and often tasteless parodies of Jenan style, engaging in bizarre cosmetic alterations and scandalizing tamer segments of society.  In 4515CE, Queen Helena of Australia and dozens of her retinue committed suicide at the culmination of her hundredth Jubilee festival in an orgy of violence that generated growing reaction against Decadent excess.

The Moralist reaction grew over time, with allied Ibrahimites often leading the way.  Cleon IV and Sir Harven Tschi appointed the Moralist Lady Tricia Leung as Minister of Culture in 4472CE, and her assassination eleven years later by DeathGoth Lord Alistair Tramble hardened mainstream Nobilis opposition to Decadence.  The Emperor's eldest grandson, Prince Rogar, a former moderate Decadent, rejected his idle lifestyle and joined the Imperial Navy in 4502CE, beginning a decorated century-long career that served as a model for many service-minded young Nobilis.

The Ibrahimite church continued to gain strength in reaction to Decadent excesses.  The future Khalif Ishmahil Mustafa was born in 4341CE, and upon adulthood, he began preaching a conservative purist form of his father's religion.  Ishmahil's older nephew, Hammed Mustafa preached a more tolerant form of Ibrahimism, accepting Nobilis and Variant coexistence and forming the congregation that became the Hammedian sect in 4506CE.  Extremists encouraged by Ishmahil's preaching often formed more interventionist sects, and a member of one such sect assassinated Queen Sabra on Venus in 4520CE, beginning two years of suppression and insurrection that further strained Ibrahimite-Nobilis relations.

The Mechanist religion gained stature after the Incarnation of Jon Gades from his Backup in 4369CE.  Dedicating his third life as the first Salvor of the Mechanist Church, he succeeded Van Turin as Mechanist Primal in 4438CE and began a recruitment and standardization drive that led to the publishing of the Mechanist Credo in 4525CE.

Technologism continued to divide into factions, with the Altara Mystery sect gaining later promise with the relationship between Prince Roban the Younger and the Futaris priestess Chamelia Vladimos.  Also during the 44th century, the Khruzi philosopher Brashadar Fzuki published the Fzuki Way, which would become a major force in Mendam society in future centuries.

By the end of the Decadent Era, outward displays of depravity had faded from vogue, and new styles of grace and decorum emerged, starting with Concordia architecture and the return of subtle color to fashion dominated by black, red and metallics for over a century.  When Earl Tafi Vendar jumped, few mourned his death.

Chronology Table

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