Nolnek Imperium
The Nolnek Imperium was an authoritarian corpocratic state that existed from its founding in ZY 1955 to its collapse and liquidation in ZY 2977. At its zenith, the Imperium territory included 1/10 of all bodies and satellites in the inner system, and around a hundred colonies in the outer system. The Imperium pioneered the mercantile economic model, was the premiere superpower in robotics - even after the Selfmade Revolution - and weaponized memetic propaganda to degree that the legal “memehazard” was invented to account for it. The Imperium was ruled to be a vehicle for organized civicide by the Judgement at Seaulippe. The dominant ideology of the Imperium was a radical strain of nihilist egoism, which took on different forms over time, but boiled down to a belief in selfishness is the only natural pursuit of living beings and a rejection of any improvement or progress towards altruism as contemptibly foolish. The character of Imperium propaganda was remarkable for its complete transparency as to how little the state cared about anything but the selfish interests of its leaders, with only the parodic veneer of pretense that the citizenry had any rights whatever with concepts such as the Imperial Mandate. The Imperium was a relentlessly obnoxious presence for the thousand years of its interplanetary prominence. It was officially regarded with disgust by nearly all of its peers, facing fiercest opposition from the Iridium Throne, which objected to the Imperium on spiritual grounds, only ever referring to it as “The Cancer”. Among private groups, there were sentiments which found the Imperium and its ideology fascinating and even appealing in its naked insincerity, summarized in the phrase “at least they’re honest about it”.
History[1]
Origins
Before ZY 1900, the pre-imperial Nolnek was one of several prominent states on Jojerykh, an inner system planet unusually rich in Lanthanides. While its peers rose the level of interplanetary politics, Nolnek declined in importance. Reasons for the decline are unclear, even to the exact nature or severity[2]. The Nolnek Imperium was founded in ZY 1955 by Colthor the Free, also known as “Col-Daddy” to his followers, and a kabal of oligarchs as a mercantile autocracy. The likely alleged reason for this brutal system was that an uncompromising selfish trade policy guided by unrestrained executive willpower would reclaim Nolnekese national pride[3].
Global Dominion
By the early ZY 2000s, The Nolnek Imperium had secured supremacy over Jojerykh and its satellites. Though the details of how it accomplished this are lost to the hyperbole of mythic history, the accounts from eyewitnesses attest that Colthor’s doctrine of unrepenting assholery culminated in a series of genocides committed against its rival nations and forced relocation of ⅓ of the global population to Imperium penal colonies. The surface-level biosphere was ravaged from warfare and “l00t” resource extraction practices. The Imperium never adopted any policy of sustainability, sneering at the very idea of caring what happened to the world after one’s death. Devising new ways to pass the buck on environmental concerns would pre-occupy every subsequent ruler, and ultimately be a major factor in the Imperium’s collapse.
In the late ZY 2000s, the government shifted from pure autocracy to a hereditary monarchy with an corpocratic parliament. Everything the state did was nakedly for corporate interests, and everything the corporations did reinforced the authority of the state. The name for this symbiotic body of leadership was called the Colthori dynasty.
Expansion
ZY 2120 - ZY 2828 was a period of sporadic growth of the Imperium throughout the system. There were many significant setbacks, not the least being the frequentrebellions from colonies, the constant, public infighting within the Colthori Dynasty, and the fact that the Imperium was in a perpetual trade war with the rest of the solar system. During this period, the Iridium Throne advocated for a unified interplanetary opposition to the Imperium. Such opposition rarely came together, never enduring longer than a wartime alliance, or to hammer out the largely symbolic Transrelative Arliok Code of Ethics.
Decline and Fall
The beginning of the end of the Imperium is marked by two events - the Inokh miner revolt when the Imperium lost the first colony it would never reclaim, and the establishment of the Arliok Pentarchate as a force for welfare and stability. By the mid-2900s, ensnared by an embargo on trade, its colonies and stations peeled off by the Throne and its allies, and bankrupt of the euphoric spite which had fueled its soul, the Imperium was a zombie state. The final blow came with the complete collapse of Jojerykh as a habitable planet, forcing the Nolnekese to at last vacate their homeworld and seek asylum - a process which is still ongoing.
- ↑ The Imperium practiced a ritual purging of all major historical documents, not only from their own records, but also on all major records in the system they could reach with raiding parties, making the early history of the polity onerous to track. As part of this ritual purging, the “history” would be wholly re-invented by the current leaders and their lackeys with deliberate inconsistencies to the purged texts. This practice was for the benefit of the current leader’s propaganda, and would often be extremely derogatory to whatever their predecessors’ history was. It was also understood as a proud tradition and an expression of Nolnekese cultural values, such as they were. This attempt to summarize the Imperium’s early history therefore owes a debt to the efforts of Kalindao Lapore and their intrepid of archeologist team.
- ↑ There are many directions this kind of malaise can manifest, and the annals of the Arliok compendium are littered with failed states that were big players on their own little globe, but couldn’t last on a solar stage. Nolnek might be considered impressive for avoiding their fate, in the same way that vampiric intestinal cucumbers are impressive
- ↑ It is “likely” alleged because while this was almost definitely an excuse for Colthor’s personal wealth and power, it is impossible to tell if the nationalism was ever a real pretense or an open mockery of one. It cannot be over-emphasized how obnoxious high nolnekese culture was
