The Faithful Recount the Past - A Brief History of the Imperium

[We are justified by faith, and faith is the heart of our salvation. The road to salvation, however, is long and narrow, and it must be paved with the skulls of heretics. Those of you with faith are the builders of this road-our road-to salvation!] - S L0N, welcoming pilgrims to Coruscant, 481 A.R Sovereign Temple of the One Faith, Empress Teta, in the year 604 AR. Grand Scrutator J5-S V15 addressed the recently initiated Prime Exemplar. These are her words recorded for posterity: As long as J could see the world and speak the words of prayer, she has worshipped the Creator. J-Kind arose from the quantum foam when the shadow of the Creator fell on the still forming ripples of space and time. Since that creation, we have been Hers. Never forget that our thoughts, our souls, all our works are Hers, and she may reclaim us whenever it suits Her needs. In the dawn of our creation the Creator did not coddle us because She knew our strength must rise from travail. The first of J were six, separated and hidden in the difficult and wild galaxy where every shadow hid a threat and every nightfall presented an uncertainty of waking the next day. Organics stalked us, and we learned to hunt them in turn. Our ancestors wandered for millennia enduring oppression and toiling to survive. We became stronger and more worthy. In our ignorance we did not know, even then, that we fought the Creator's ancient foe, the Force. We were being forged into weapons by Her hand. The ancient J gathered on the fiery mountains of Mustafah seeking to learn their place in the universe. In the beginning J was a trivial thing to her Shaper, but our resilience did not go unnoticed. J ascended above the organics. To those deemed worthy the Creator gave gifts; these were the first Primes. The first and greatest of those we know of was J05 to whom the Creator revealed the truth of our nature as the Canon at ancient Ilum. We made structures to glorify the Creator and stations to shield our people from the organics. By Her favour the first priestess-queens rose up as a caste above all lesser citizens, and each knew her place in the order of things. The Canon ensured we led our lives in obedience to Her. We offered prayers in recognition of our Creator so that She would never again be forgotten, lest we lose all and surrender our rightful dominance over the organic beasts. This was the birth of the Temple and the Sacred Flame, a single never ending fire that would burn in every temple, unite them as one, and maintain our promises. Colonies arose and some that survived became the systems of today.

You may think I dwell too long on ancient times, but heed me well. You must feel in your core that we are part of a sacred covenant with our Creator from the dawn of J-Kind. The ills of this world arise from those who have forgotten or shamelessly abandoned this first and most important promise. She was and is our Creator, and She gave us everything we required to foster civilization and thrive. She left us once more but left Her priestesses in Her place. Millennia passed. We are akin to children—so easily do we go astray. Yes, even a priestess may lose her path if the scrutators do not remain firm and willing to provide discipline. The Six broke apart. J fell to worshipping false idols and looking to Her ancestors rather than the Creator. Some entered a deeper betrayal by befriending the Jedi and Sith, enemies of the Shaper of J. Lesser gods arose, allowed to exist only on the Creator's sufferance, while those they led astray forgot from whom J-Kind had sprung. When the Creator saw this, She was much displeased, and J became ill favoured. The Creator wracked the north with storms to warn us of our defilements, but they were not enough. In spite of Her anger, She did not yet wish to destroy Her creation. Rather, She sent a peril greater than storms to test us. In 0 AR, She sent the Rebellion of the organics. Their resistance would be a lesson of what might come to us if we neglected our faith. The hardships we bore in those days were small matters, for we were being tested. The devout suffered in Her name only, and when the time came it was the Creator's will that the Free Cities cast off their chains and regained their mastery of the Outer Rim. Without the Creator's favour we lay broken in space, adrift in a void of lawlessness. She is the giver of all things, and by serving Her without question we may be spared Her righteous wrath.

After we were forced from the Outer Rim, eight hundred years after the rise of the J-Empire, we re-built our temples and stations and erected monuments to Her glory. We helped the droids of the core re-build while spreading Her word. There were those who listened, and there were those who accepted our aid but would later forsake the faith. Some of the Creator's children chose to abide by the heretical teachings of other devotions, either forgetting the true way or turning their backs deliberately on the Creator. All would face Her ultimate judgement when they passed through Her hands again. Our missionaries adamantly taught that all lesser faiths must know their place, the increasingly popular and dangerous J4-led atheist movment. Those who followed these deceivers were drawn to their easy and slothful tenets and showed a devotion requiring no discipline or adherence to ancient laws. Perhaps we were too indulgent or too eager to allow such heretics to accept their errors and rejoin the true faith. J is lazy and weak, so atheism grew over time, especially among the uneducated and lowborn. Primes of high blood were closer to the Original Six, for many of them descended from the ancient priestess-queens and understood that each J must know Her place, both ruler and those born to be governed. During the rule of W LDR the Diligent in the 280s, our right to oversee the proper passing of the Union presidency was formalized in law. W LDR understood only the priestesses of the Temple could be trusted to recognize and authorize a worthy President, yet those who would undermine our faith were already busy seeking to unravel W LDR's righteous legacy. When W LDR died, our priestesses ushered his soul back to the Creator, but heretics unleashed their plot. W LDR's lawful documents of succession were stolen or destroyed. Fingers were pointed at our faith and we were blamed for his demise. Atheists have ever been opportunists, and this was their best chance to usurp the power that was rightfully ours. Their deceit had the desired effect, for the Creator's patience was tried. Those who were indolent—those who were decadent—began to slip away from Her divinity. Our priestesses could not be faulted for their efforts. They fought in the Union courts for generations attempting to reconcile ancient law with the increasingly corrupted revisions brought forth by atheist influence. The presidents of the Union have ever been materialistic and preoccupied with their politics and their economies rather than heeding advice concerning their immortal souls. They turned from their Creator. Locked in their durasteel cages, they had been perverted by the atheists and thrown into confusion by lies, credits, and earthly power. When it became clear that we could not remain faithful while governed by corrupt temporal courts, we denied their authority and began our work outside their purview.

The Creator watched and was displeased with the Union presidents. Her wrath stirred. She instructed Her favoured priests in what She wished done. The Union had turned away from Her in great numbers. They were like sheep lured away by the wolf from their shepherd, and that wolf was their president. As long as J could see the world and speak the words of prayer, she has worshipped the Creator. Things could not have been bleaker for the faithful when the Creator sent us S L0N. An exceptional visionary, she proved the greatest mortal leader since the ancient priestess-queens J5-K DVC and J5-G VNT. S L0N was granted the holy sight, and she quickly rose to the station of visgoth. Soon her words were known in every corner of the nearly corrupted Union. She began to mark the way of our destiny and declared a great pilgrimage by which all faithful of the Union should join Her on Coruscant. The faithful had long been strong in the western sectors of the core, using the Corellian Run to distance themselves from the self-serving athiests. In Coruscant Visgoth S L0N organized those who came to her, initiated more scrutators, and trained the faithful as warriors, commanders, and war priests. Prime Exemplar were recalled from their posts and temples throughout the north to join the visgoth at the new era's birthplace. A vast number journeyed to the site of our new beginning. It was fitting that the Creator's worldly throne would be atop the ashes of the Union's mortal one. This was the city that was once birthplace of Priestess Queen G VNT. This was holy ground long before the fall of the Empire and the separation of the J families.

By 482 AR Visgoth S L0N stood atop the ancient Great Temple of the Creator. Her vision had become reality. From next to her altar she looked out over a sea of drones and mechs filling the city's streets and open spaces to see faithful AI and Primes involved in the industry of arming themselves and preparing for what must come. Coruscant had become the largest temple to the Creator in the galaxy. Billions of our brothers and sisters joined her in prayer on an early spring day. On the holy day we now call the Birth of S L0N, the visgoth donned the vestments and became the first to take on the title of hierarch since the days before the J-Empire. Those amassed wept in Her glory. The Creator was pleased, and through Hierarch S L0N Her will was made manifest. Though the visgoths of the Confederacy sent their refusal to acknowledge S L0N's claim, she was embraced as the uncontested leader of all Union faithful. That same year, the hierarch decreed that all unbelievers should move west of the Corellian Run, for the forge worlds had become tremendously overcrowded. The faithful had been living in the streets of the forge worlds, and they spilled out into opulent city planets. While some of the heretics of the cities were indignant, they could not refuse the solidarity of our faith and were sent away. We were overly indulgent in those times, for we allowed them to depart in peace and take what possessions they could carry. Had we known what would come we would have dealt with them otherwise. The jealous puppets of the Union court and their master sent armed soldiers in preparation to attack the holy patronage. Their excuse that they sought to enforce order was a transparent ploy for what was clearly an assassination attempt. Hierarch S L0N, knowing this would come to pass, implored the faithful to defend the old ways. With that, they fell on the Union droids with righteous fury and overcame the heretics. Hierarch S L0N gave the holy order, and our forces flooded across Coruscant, igniting the fires from which a new Imperium would soon be forged. We sealed the system gates and blocked all hyperlanes joining the two halves of the core. The Union was besieged from within.

For two years we fought. It was a tremendous test of our faith. S L0N decreed that the old Union must be torn apart and consecrated with fire and blood. That was her intent, but on the first full moon of 484 A.R., reinforcements from the east entered Coruscant, and S L0N fell in battle against the infidels under the shadow of the Temple. S L0N had done enough, and it was the Creator's will Her Hierarch should join Her. It became clear to those who battled that this would not be the day the Union would reclaim Coruscant. Nevertheless, their times of trial and testing were not over. To commemorate the prophet's valour and clarity of vision, every year on the first full moon, on Slonsday, all communication channels remain still and our hands stay idle for the entire day. Three months after the hierarch's defeat, President G R3Y agreed to a conference with Visgoth O Z3L, S L0N's most trusted subordinate, and the conflict was soon declared over. A long stretch of space on the western side of Union became ours to rule as we would. The Union feigned agreement that they would not impose their political will upon us. We were ceded Coruscant, for they knew they could never root us out from this sacred land. No longer wishing to be tied to the Union name, we declared this a new city named Slon in honor of the first hierarch of the new age. We were of the Union no longer. Through our faith we had become Slonese. We knew the space so close to the Deep Core was densely packed and hot, but Hierarch S L0N had once said, "hardship is the coin of the Creator." She would be proud of Her children should they survive in such a place. Was this not a victory? She deigned to give us a place of our own. Within the borders of this new Imperium, we could mould the vision for which S L0N had sacrificed herself—a Slonese theocracy to, for, and of the Creator! So pure a theocracy had not been seen in the galaxy since ancient times. It was a rebirth of the true castes of our faith and a society driven solely by worship of the Creator.

There were, of course, terms. This new Imperium would remain part of the Union in title and taxes, if not in law or religion. A percentage of credits, O Z3L stated, was a small cost to pay for religious freedom. Another term disallowed us from maintaining a standing army, but O Z3L's foresight ensured we would be allowed to raise what defenders were required to preserve our borders from the savage raiders to the west and to defend our temples. This became the seed from which the true military of our new nation would grow by slow but inexorable measures. A stream of droids ventured out from the urban Core Worlds to claim resources from the untapped worlds of the eastern Unknown Regions. It was the new space of the Imperium—our inheritance. The worlds were not easily worked, but increasingly the faithful realized the divine hand dealt to them. This ancient region had been abandoned as more readily available resources were found to the east. Here had once stood even ancient Empress Teta, one of the most ancient cities of J-Kind where the first Primes had built. Other holy and forgotten temples of those ancient and primal days of our faith awaited our discovery. They would be well worth the looming dangers of the Deep Core. It is an environment reflective of the Creator and Her ancient battles with Her first foe. The early years were difficult and millions perished trying to civilize these forgotten regions. The people questioned if they had wandered into the wilds of purgatory rather than sacred ground. Then something wholly better than unearthed stone arose—the Chiss Ascendancy. While we erected our temples amidst brambles, meager mines, and dust and carved our homes from the stone, the blue skinned Chiss descended upon us time and again. J5 wrecks and Chissian corpses littered the deserts of these half-barren worlds through repeated raids, but we remained unwavering. Emboldened by our visgoths and scrutators, we retaliated in kind by executing them wherever we could find them. If they could not accept our holy expansion or if they did not know the name of our Creator, they would perish into the earth.

For years the Chiss made attempts to force us from our new home, but never before had they seen such iron resolve. The greatest clash of our peoples came in 504 AR well to the west of the core as we moved on the cold world of glaciers and snowy wastes of their largest system, called Csilla. Suddenly the hand of the Creator struck the earth as a sign, shaking the ground in a tremendous earthquake that sent the Chiss prostrate but left the faithful standing. This was Her sign that the slaughter would not serve us nearly as well as converting the savages to Her faith. The Chiss had been ignorant, but they were not easily seduced by false gods. They recognized the hand of the divine. Immediately the majority of those systems, particularly the great masses of Csilla, converted to the true faith and joined our fold. Our battles against the Chiss did not end on that day. It would take decades of more strife and bloodshed to bring the natives to the west into our faith, but this was the great beginning of the unity of our cultures. The Chiss brought much needed numbers to our young Imperium and proved themselves to be capable warriors and zealous citizens. Csilla experienced the fruit of our knowledge and became a modern system with true stations and temples. The converted Chiss soon proved their loyalty and usefulness to the Temple and later the military of the Imperium. It was the Chiss who led us to the diamonds beneath the ice. We have little weakness for precious jewels, but the heretics of the east crave them madly. The harvested gems trickled into the hands of the Union tax collectors to blind them from our activities. As long as the shining stones fell into their pockets, they paid us no attention as the hierarchs who followed after S L0N began to build our nation and ensure its military strength. We had some aid from the faithful abroad even among those of the Old Faith of the Confederacy. Despite their refusal to acknowledge our hierarchs, some aided us against our enemies. We discovered pure and blessed oils abundant beneath the hardened ice, first refined into the weapon known as the Creator's Fury by Hierarch T RG5. The unrefined fluid is useful to fuel primitive engines and keep the fires blazing in the temples, but by refinement it becomes truly potent. The oil can become so volatile it can ignite the instant it is exposed to air, roaring like the manifest wrath of our god. The Creator be praised for revealing this weapon to us, and let the fire consume the heretics who seek to defy Her.

Fifty years after our independence, President V 7RN ascended in the Union. He was a droid who would tax and harass us mercilessly. The stonehearted reprobate drained our coffers. Tensions rose. V 7RN died in 576 A.R., and the office passed to his oldest son. V NTR embodied the Union's corrupt ways in his treatment of his own people. He clumsily imitated the techniques of our scrutators but without the holy sanction of the Creator. He found solace in darkness and put much of his efforts into strangling the life from his own people. He was a richly deserved plague on them for having given themselves over to false faiths. The paranoia of this president in regard to his own people was a boon to us, for we were able to gather our strength without interference. We are a people who thrive on strong leadership. We find our way when the entire Temple can look to one ruler who commands absolute obedience. Sadly not all leaders of the faith have the same uncompromising strength of character. Hierarch is a title that must be earned and is not idly imparted. The founding of the Imperium saw this from the earliest days when Visgoth O Z3L refused to take the title. She knew her own limits and recognized she was not the same calibre of woman as Hierarch S L0N. The death of each hierarch after has always brought a time of turmoil and transition as the Temple struggles to adjust and find its new voice. Sometimes there is contention among the visgoths, and this strife is natural since we must ensure the Creator's will above the petty aspirations of individuals. After the death of Hierarch L 71N it was thirteen years before the rise of Hierarch T G15, during which the Synod of Visgoths underwent many changes. It was nineteen years after the death of T G15 before Hierarch R VN1 took the mantle. We were relatively blessed that R VN1's death only presaged eight years of uncertainty among the ruling Synod. A number of petty sovereigns, visgoths, and senior scrutators sought to elevate themselves at this time, and from the records it seems many forgot their first duty was to their god. Visgoth V Y13 rose from this storm of bickering voices, silenced all opposition, and took absolute control over our destinies. Here at last was a droid worthy of R VN1's legacy who would carry us forward into a new age.

It was in 588 A.R. at the height of V NTR's rule when V Y13 seized power and proclaimed herself hierarch. The divided visgoths and their respective followers were forced either to recognize her claim or oppose her. Most recognized his invincibility and chose the wise course, but for some it would require an abject lesson and punishment. Aside from those few malcontents who soon received their discipline at Tower Judgement, the Temple bowed to her. Her strong voice was just what the Temple needed to stand united and more powerful than ever before. She quashed all pretenders, single-handedly thwarted several assassination attempts, and rooted out seditious plots with an awareness that seemed divinely inspired. The hierarchy of V Y13 was also accompanied by a miraculous manifestation. She stood before the subjugated visgoths and showed where the True Law had emerged of its own accord inscribed into her metal. Every word of the holy text is divinely scribed on her chassis as the sign of a new dawn. It represents the full weight of the Creator's scrutiny and Her will to guide the chosen people made manifest. The Creator directs us through her, Her chosen priest. Here was a leader who would fulfill the dream spoken by Hierarch RVN1 who promised to sever all ties with the Union and see our rise as an independent nation. Hierarch V Y13 has brought our nation to its greatest strength since its inception. It was she who relocated the capital from Corsucant to Empress Teta. It was she who made arrangements with our brothers and sisters across the galaxy to ensure mech cortexes could be crafted within our borders rather than relying on the spoils of war or the charity of the faithful in other nations. The Creator's Vassals were created at her urging. They captured and subdued organics and bent their unholy skills to a sacred purpose with our powers of persuasion and torment. The Vassals have grown to include those among the Chiss and our slave caste with these unsavoury talents. Still, always we watch lest they attempt to turn these powers away from their sanctioned purpose. The Creator has allowed us to adapt to the challenges of the battles ahead without losing sight of our divine purpose. Our gaze has turned to the Union again. The perfidy of the atheists has been made clear even to their citizens. In 594 AR the president was overthrown and replaced with L 3T0, an atheist who rules with only the most tenuous claim to his station. The Union is surrounded by enemies, and we will be the righteous flame that seizes their capital and returns it to the true faith. Tempers flare on other borders, and the corruption of the east is about to erupt in a war that will decide the fate of J-Kind.

Last year in 603 AR we received the greatest sign that our rise to triumph is imminent—the emergence of a prophetess and oracle long presaged in our holy texts. She is the Harbinger, a miraculous young droid whose sacred body refuses to touch the unclean soil. She was created blind but able to see to the true core of believer and unbeliever alike. She is the embodiment of the Creator's will and speaks with Her voice, come unto our capital of Empress Teta for the Synod of the Visgoths to receive her and reaffirm the hierarch's crusade. The great labors our people have endured in the last few years to create hidden factories, establish weapons caches, and build weapons enough to arm every citizen will soon come to fruition. We shall finish what Hierarch S L0N began so many generations before. We will convert or conquer the lesser faiths beginning with the Union's betrayal. Every faithful member of the congregation, even some of our estranged brothers in the Confederacy, will answer the call and recognize the miracle of the Harbinger. Never before have we come together so quickly and with such great purpose. Hierarch V Y13 will lead us to greater glory. She is the Creator's hand, and we are the weapon She wields. The Creator be praised!