History of the Atarian Empire

The history of the Atarian Empire, an interplanetary monarchical federal empire, is a history of repeated military conflict and civil unification. It is the successor to the Berbaquin Empire. Currently, it's territory reaches far into outer space, but with only limited practical rule there.

Confederate Period
Around 450 years ago (Earth Year ~1600 C.E. ), several systems of government existed on the Berb Peninsula based mostly on the region the countries were located in. In the north, warring gave rise to a monarchical system, which quickly seized the land of the defeated rulers to form then the largest centralized government of the northern subcontinent in 1618: the Kingdom of Curba.

In the south, totalitarian dictatorships systems had ruled for nearly a millennium. The countries in the southern part of the continent formed a loose allyship before confederating in 1664 under the Western King Anga Berb, forming the Great Ashstonian Empire, abolishing the totalitarian crown, and becoming its emperor.

First Unification War
With great prosperity following this confederation, Emperor Berb turned his attention to Curba, building up a massive industrialized invasion force. In 1682, the Ashstonian Empire invaded the Kingdom of Curba. Large scale use of primitive aircraft allowed Berb to spring a surprise attack on the Curban capital of Ilrean.

Without a matching industrialized army and with inadequate defenses to the constant aerial bombardment, the King surrendered Ilrean to Berb in just two weeks. This marks in 1682 the founding of the Berbaquin Empire. For the first time in history, all the lands of the peninsula north of the Great River were ruled under a single centralized government. To the south lay the Tunnorian Republic and the Kingdom of Murcaus.

Instability
The society of early Berbaquin Empire was divided among the old countries. Ashstonians were xenophobic of what they perceived to be primitive, mountain savages; while the Curbans were generally vengeful of the Ashstonian-based Berbaquin government, who they perceived as barbaric military expansionists.

The empire was ravaged by rebellion, especially in the lands of the former Kingdom of Curba. Berb's forces were mostly able to subdue uprisings, but they continued, and culminated in an coup attempt in 1694 where Berb narrowly escaped assassination by confusing the rebels with a body double and escaping in an unmarked vehicle. The confusion allowed Berb's forces to take the upper hand and prevent the coup.

Murcausian invasion
Seeing the assassination attempt as a weakness in Berb's government, in 1696, Kingdom of Murcaus invaded the Berbaquin Empire along the east coast, crushing the Imperial Berbaquin Navy's (IBN) Eastern Fleet in a series of decisive battles as the superior Murcausian Royal Navy (MRN) progressed northward along the coast. The Murcausian invasion plan called for dropping ground forces at key points in order to overwhelm the Berbaquin defensive installations and strategic cities, allowing the massive MRN forces to steam past with little resistance, while a large land and air force would push west along the Enemsie River toward the Berbaquin capital. This marks the first time a unified Berbaquin Empire waged war with a foreign power.

Battle of the Isles
In 1699, Berb left Enemsie aboard the launchship IBS Horolev with the Western Fleet, taking nearly 4 months to steam around the peninsula and encounter the MRN south of the Berbaquin Isles. With the larger number of advanced capital ships and aircraft, the Western Fleet began to reduce the number of MRN ships and slowly drive them back to the south in the Battle of the Isles, the turning point of the war. Horolev was hit directly with three guided bombs in the battle and quickly sank with all 212 paws lost, including Emperor Berb. In accordance with an agreement made with Curba, the former king of Curba assumed the throne as Emperor Levok Marpan.

Strategic Bombing of Conralev
Widespread training programs instituted by Emperor Marpan produced large numbers of ground forces and skilled combat pilots. With the MRN purged from the Berbaquin Sea, these forces began pushing the Murcausian troops back into Murcaus, while in the air, Berbaquin pilots finally gained air superiority with the development of supersonic aircraft. The constant stream of ground reinforcements and air superiority, coupled with concentrated anti-air defenses, largely prevented the Murcausian ground troops from pushing west to the city of Conralev. Throughout the war, however, Conralev and Staglev were subjected to bomber raids even after anti-air defenses were put in place around the region in significant numbers. Due to its strategic location upstream from the capital, Conralev bore the brunt of the aerial bombardment.

In 1701, Berbaquin pilots patrolling over Conralev spotted and quickly shot down a formation of three heavy bombers, their escorts proving ineffective against the Imperial Air Force's high speed interceptors. Berbaquin ground troops quickly secured the crash sites and discovered the significance of the pilots actions: the bombers were loaded with large weapons on their way to destroy the Berbaquin capital. The Berbaquin forces then turned to occupying the Murcauian capital.

End of the war
The weapons from the crashed bombers were taken by Berbaquin intelligence agents to Enemsie where they where they were quickly analyzed and determined to be atomic bombs, the first ever of their kind on Atar. Marpan attempted to have them copied, but the empire lacked the infrastructure to produce the fissile materials. Faced with the threat of nuclear bombardment, Marpan considered his options: either continue the war and face the certain nuclear destruction of the empire, surrender to the Murcausian crown, or bluff in an attempt to convince the king to sign a truce; Marpan opted for the latter.

To leverage the king into peace, he had one of the weapons detonated over the battlefield as a show of force. He transmitted messages to the king, declaring he had copied the captured weapons, and sent footage showing an armory filled with hundreds of empty bomb casings. The footage also showed the casings being loaded into bombers. The gamble proved to be a success, as this presented a potential stalemate, threatening heavy damage upon the kingdom, just as their capital was coming under attack from Berbaquin forces. Moreover, in 1702, the neutral Tunnorians announced that they would declare war on the Kingdom of Murcaus if Royal combat formations continued to fly through Tunnorian territory, which was the only air route to the Berbaquin capital that wasn't heavily defended.

The king met with Marpan in Tunnora, Tunnorian Republic, where they signed the Treaty of Tunnora, formally ending hostilities between the two countries. The Tunnorians, Murcausians, and three other countries joined together to form the Consolidated East Atarinian Republics, which has been a close ally of the Berbaquin Empire since the republic's founding.

First Interwar period
After the war, a new sense of national unity among the citizens of the empire saw the rebellions virtually disappear. As work on rebuilding the nation began, a population shift of Curbans to the southern part of the empire emerged, causing the populations in the cities there to swell. Emperor Marpan wrote in a release:"The war has cost Our nation very much, so many innocent lives, loyal solders, and Our wise and brave founder. Our proud and great cities are in ruin. The Eastern Fleet, the jewel of Our military might, now lies at the bottom of the ocean. The very capacity with which Our nation is fed is left in ash and poison. It is now time to cast down the tools of destruction and wield the tools of the prosperity We aspire to rebuild."He further emphasized that:"What We take away is, for the first time, Ashstonians and Curbans threw aside differentness(sic) and old hatreds, and fought together in brotherhood on the battlefield, and with Our national pride, and in triumph, We purged the southern invaders from Our lands. For the first time in Our history, the two nationalities of which Our great Empire was founded upon, are fully assimilating into one indivisible nation. It is this unity, and not a crown or machine or bomb, that makes Us powerful as a nation. We may also be grateful to Our Tunnorian allies and take solace in the most just treaty which ensures no southern republic will ever again take up arms against the Empire."The technological spoils of the war were high, and included nuclear sciences (power, medicine, weapons), rocketry, supersonic passenger travel, and an increasing complexity of digital computer networking technology. The free economy of the empire grew for decades, and the living standards of its citizens increased. Remote military airfields were converted to civilian airports, great highways replaced convoy trails across the country, and rail increased; this connected every region on the peninsula with modern transport, and allowed distant cultures to further meet and mix.

In 1719, Emperor Marpan passed away from a heart complication (possibly from radiation exposure), and as per the forementioned treaty, Berb's successor, Miori Ulra, took the throne.

Tregonian War
The Republic of Tregonia and the Berbaquin Empire both lay territorial claim to the Berbaquin Isles in the Sea of Berb. This lead to armed conflict between the two countries in 1722. At first, there was conventional, mostly naval battle, but it soon escalated into a small nuclear exchange, where every weapon shot by the empire was matched with a Tregonian detonation. After the third pair of weapons were exchanged, both countries agreed it was suicide, and signed an armistice which ended the battle and ceded some of the Isles to Tregonia. After being extended twice, the two countries agreed to replace the armistice with a full peace treaty.

Second Interwar Period
Under Empress Ulra's rule, rocketry advanced significantly, and in 1728, The Berbaquins launched the first object into space, 230 years before the Eartians. Being 240 lightyears from Earth, evidence of this leap would have been viewable from Earth in the late 1960s around the time man first landed on the moon, albeit with impossibly powerful telescopes. In 1775, When America on Earth was in their revolutionary war, construction began on the protulene-based Imperial Tower, the tallest structure of any kind on Atar for the past three centuries. By law, no other structure may exceed it in height.

By 1800, the Berbaquins had made contact with the Sfendians and were making regular trips between the two worlds.

In 1812, Empress Ulra passed away in her sleep. She ruled the empire for 93 earth years; the longest rule of any emperor in Berbaquin history. She was succeeded by Marpan's successor, Tochiga Iverot. Emperor Iverot established a "make love, not war" diplomatic policy for the empire, denouncing military expansion, and helping broker peace between warring nations.

After Emperor Iverot's death 1886, after alternating bloodlines between the original two kingdoms for centuries, one from each bloodline married and ruled together as Emperor and Empress Iscardathia (I), beginning the current Iscardathian Dynasty. Warp drive technology came to the empire at the turn of the century, and contact was made with Smogg in 1906 and with Earth in 1952.

Thudonian abductions
During the rule of Empress Beva Iscardathia (II), the Thudonian government began a campaign to annex lands in C.E.A.R. for their agricultural value to help bolster their then fledgling socialist economy. They calculated since the boarder region of Western Tunnoria was mostly rural farmland and no formal border wall or fence existed apart from property fences along the border line, border crossing guard stations could be taken with very little resistance, and abduct the farmers and their families under the guise of a Cearian government ordered evacuation to minimize citizen reporting. They would then be taken back into Thudo for forced labor. Thudonian communes would then be established to work the land to its maximum capacity. In anticipation of armed resistance, anti-tank barriers were put up along roadways to block the occupied area from the rest of CEAR, and artillery, anti-aircraft guns, vehicles, and fuel, ammunition, and supplies were hidden in houses, barns, bridges, barrels, fields, orchards, under piles of hay, or buried in soft earth. By the time the Cearian government discovered the annexation and mounted an armed resistance a large armed concrete border wall was under construction to block the area from the rest of CEAR as Thudonian territory.

Armed conflict
The Thudonians put up a heavy defense and quickly defeated the Cearian Guard. In response to an unprovoked attack on an ally's sovereignty, Empress Beva declared war on Thudo. Berbaquin troops, aircraft, and artillery began to flood into the region to support the Cearian campaign. The combined forces pushed the invaders back into Thudo. When the allied forces reached the jungles, they found the forest almost impenetrable. When they tried to push into the jungle, they also encountered booby traps left behind by the retreating Thudonian army. In response, the Berbaquins began to prepare a massive amphibious invasion force to land on the north coast on Thudo near the capital, bypassing the jungles.

End of the war
Before the invasion could take place, a spy had learned of the invasion plan and relayed the information of an "unstoppable force" to the Thudonian capital. Rather than trying to defend the capital with its relatively small army and with most of its artillery destroyed on the Cearian front, the Thudonians surrendered. In reparation, a large tract of northeast Thudo was ceded to CEAR, the wall through Cearian territory was removed by the Thudonian government, and most of the abductees were repatriated. Many of the abductees, perticulary well skilled laborers and engineers, were among those reported as having "passed, escaped, or [went] missing". It is suspected that these "deaths" and "escapes" were actually retained as prison laborers in Thudo in violation of the instrument of surrender.