The Imperial Guild

Originally operating under the title Kyroskia Space Guild, the Imperial Guild is the most potent political and military force in operation in the galaxy. They alone own the rights to the planet Pytheas and its vast, incalculable wealth of the mineral Eonite. Though the history surrounding the Guild has been shadowed through a deliberate process of well-placed bribes, propaganda, and records destruction, some stories and information regarding their rise to power have continued to survive. What is known, with a high degree of certainty, is that sometime in the 9th Arc of the First Turn* a cadre from the Kyroskia encountered an anomaly during FLT travel which waylaid them on the planet Pytheas for a period of a year while awaiting the arrival of their other transport ship whose FLT drive had suffered catastrophic failure shortly before.

After the rescue of the crew, of whom only seven remained alive, the business gathered every resource they possessed to acquire all rights to the forsaken rock. As it was considered of no value to anyone—being neither in the regular shipping lanes, nor possessing any known resources of use—the claim was neither contested, nor expensive. The Kyroskia Space Guild then moved its base of operations to the planet and went dark for a period of a couple years. At the close of that time, they reemerged with the same ships, and began operations in shipping once more. However, what had once been a relatively weak and unreliable freighter group, had now become something entirely other.

Their ships never broke down, never failed to deliver, and arrived earlier than all scheduled timeframes. Their business expanded until they commanded a fleet of the best ships and eventually commanded a near total monopoly on shipping. This hegemony dominance was not the end goal. In order to protect their fleets they began building an army, known as the Ring because of the manner in which they positioned themselves around the transports. Ai-Lax Pirate raids, a problem for all shipping companies, became a thing of the past. And it was this, among so many things which increased the profit margins of the Guild over its competitors further securing their stranglehold. Eventually, with near total control over the movement of goods, they began seeking other arenas of the economy to absorb under their umbrella.

At a certain juncture, the Kyroskia Space Guild became the Imperial Guild and functioned, for all intents and purposes as a galactic plutocracy. All of this, though it was not realized for some years, was from the discovery of Eonite and its properties to power stable, reliable, and even more rapid FLT propulsion. Ultimately, we arrive at the current situation where the mineral Eonite has become the center of all galactic economy. It is used to build warp drives, power ships and machinery, it is the backing for the galactic currency the EON, and even finds its way into consumables such as the fabled Onosia Liquor.

The Imperial Guild has become the hand that pulls the strings to every central trading post, shipping lane, terraforming project, and expedition in the known universe. This last push, the creation of The Refinery and the inception of the global mining process on Pytheas is seen as a method to finally and completely lock in perpetual, unassailable control over every arm of the galaxy. Some have speculated that there is a deeper motivation behind this final push to harvest Pytheas, but conspiracy theories run rampant regarding the Imperial Guild**.

*a note on galactic time: This Galaxy (Aldria) has been determined to revolve once every 120 million years. Each degree of rotation is therefore 333,333 years and every minute of every degree is 5,555 years. A short-hand for 1/3 of a degree, or 111,111 years has also come into common usage and is termed the “Arc”. Therefore, the 9th Arc of the First Turn would be approximately the year 1 million. Time is currently measured from the beginning of the Great Exodus from Hassur (the original homeworld of all known galactic inhabitants) which was annihilated when a celestial object collided with it. Since that time the original Hassurians (those who escaped) have been expanding their reach and improving their technology in a plea to discover other sentient life in the galaxy, without success.

**one of the more well known of such conspiracy theories that has circulated for centuries regarding the Guild is that the most core group of the Guild is composed of seven individuals, nicknamed the Halogens, and that they are the same seven who originally were rescued from Pytheas all those years ago. However, this seems impossible considering it has been more than 900 years since the accident. But still, the rumor persists.