Formal Name: Xhaisin’s Celestial Empire of the Planimalia, Animalia, and Plantalia People

Role in Stellima

The Raixhen Empire was not among the early Core Concert members, but through rapid expansion and mastery of the art of war, they forced themselves into the prestigious group. Basically, they were given a seat in order to get them to stop their expansionist ways. Despite their smaller size in terms of volume and planets, they are known to punch way above their weight class and are often the go to enforcer of the Core Concert’s will if other methods fail. Their militaristic ways have made them a formidable foe that makes anyone think thrice about not heeding what the Raixher want.

Key information

What the Raixher, and many of the Empire’s subjects of other species, are known for is a fervent loyalty toward the empire and people around them. The Raixher are known to do a lot of needless work for the sole purpose of displaying and affirming their loyalty to a person, people, or organisation. Thus they often perform tasks with physical labour of people over machines when they believe it warrants it. It can range from simple handmade gifts to using manual labour to transport objects instead of using vehicles.

This fervent loyalty to each other is a unique source of their disproportional military strength, in combination with their military-focused society. But this apparent extreme loyalty has fostered a view of many thinking they follow orders blindly without thinking. This, however, is far from the truth. The Raixher believe in reciprocal loyalty, where loyalty to superiors means that they expect a similar loyalty back from their superiors. A superior that make poor decisions or displays no care for their subordinates quickly loses a Raixhe’s loyalty. A saying among the Raixher is “A loyal Raixhe holds a shield, a betrayed Raixhe always holds a knife.”

Worlds

The Raixhen Empire houses many worlds, but Raixhla and Djonte are the most famous.

Raixhla

The homeworld of the Raixher themselves and the birthplace of the Empire itself. Famous for having 4 kingdoms of life, because evolution thought it’d be fun to smash two of them together into a new one. Raixhla has cyan-green flora.

Djonte

The homeworld of the Djonee, a species of plants that had business to do and started moving. A world that early on became part of the Empire in their rush to build their own empire. Some things were not meant to be. It is a world that has no polar ice and is warmer than many inhabited planets.

Government

Executive branch

The Imperial government consists of several layers. At the very top is the Xhaisin from the Imperial family. She is the ultimale in charge, and she is always an ultimale of the Imperial Raixhen Family, or Xhaisin family. She holds a lot of the power within the government but is not absolute. Underneath her sits the council of grand generals. The council does most of the executive work, but the Xhaisin partakes in it as well.

Legislative branch

The Imperial Assembly consists of elected members from all over the Empire. Each planet is assigned a number of seats that is roughly proportional to the population size of the member world. In order to become a Member of the Imperial Assembly, or MIA, one has to have served in the Imperial fleet. Similarly, voters–citizens–have had to go through Imperial Fleet service in order to be able to vote.

Legislation

The Imperial Assembly makes the laws with majority votes. Once a law has been passed in the assembly, it is moved to the Council of Generals to be revised before it is finally passed to the Xhaisin who signs it into law. Most of the time this is a rubber stamp process, but the Council and the Xhaisin are allowed to oppose legislation and send it back to be revised with their justifications for why it is required.

If only the Xhaisin opposes the bill, it can be overruled if the Assembly has a ⅔ majority along with the support of the council. If the Council of Generals are the one opposing, the assembly can bypass if they have the Xhaisin on their side and a ¾ majority in the assembly. If both the Xhaisin and the Council of Generals oppose the bill, then they need a ⅘ majority to pass it through.

Society

The society is fundamentally built around the Imperial fleet. Government and most of society is geared to supplying the Imperial Fleet in order to maintain the Empire and its standing in Known Space. As a result, people who either are currently serving or have served are granted special privileges in society, namely the right to vote and the right to run for office in the Imperial Assembly. A saying in the rest of space is “Whereas starnations have fleets, the Raixhen Fleet has a starnation.”

Society is stratified in many ways, and people are divided into 5 official classes that include people both living in and visiting the nation. First class is the lowest class, and fifth is the highest and is considered to be full citizenship in the Empire.

The first class is the non-Imperials, or nonperials in colloquial speech. They are not part of the Empire in any way and do not make it their home. They are granted standard protection by the law and healthcare that is necessary to stabilise life and get them to their home for proper treatment. They remain in the Empire for limited periods of time depending on their status as visitors, refugees, or others who remain in this category temporarily.

The second class is half-civilians. This consists of xemogrants primarily but may contain Imperials as well who have, for some reason, been downgraded. They have the right to education, healthcare, and legal representation in case of a suspected crime. These are permanent or semi-permanent residents of the star nation.

The third class is civilians. This category is usually afforded to anyone born of a half-civilian or above based on birth, hatching, sprouting, etc. They have the same rights as a half-civilians with the addition of also having the right to serve in the Fleet and thus becoming a full citizen upon completion. A group excluded from entering this class are children of Exorizzens, who remain half-civilians, although their children might be granted the class of civilian.

The fourth class is half-citizens, which usually consists of people still in their initial service in the Imperial Fleet. As long as a person is serving in the Fleet and has yet to complete it for citizenship, they are designated as half-citizens. A rare few can get demoted to this position from full citizen. They have the right to vote after their first year in the Fleet but cannot run for office.

The fifth and final class is full citizen or simply citizen. When a half-citizen finishes their service, they are allowed to leave the Fleet and have now the lifelong right to run for office and vote, allowing them to be politically active in the affairs of the empire. There are situations that would result in a reduction in class, but these are rare.

Historical overview

Much of the history of the Raixhen Empire mirrors that of other starnations in their early days. Confined to Raixhla, the people grew and divided and warred and made peace in the movements familiar to anyone who studies history. Their unification story, however, sets them apart, and laid the groundwork for who they are today.

Unification

The unification that led to the Raixhen Empire occurred on Raixhla. Decades after their initial space exploration, when satellites had become commonplace as they continued to scour the sky and catalogue their own solar system, some of the scientists made a discovery that changed the course of history forever. An asteroid of over 50 km in size hurtled toward Raixhla. Countless calculations showed the same conclusion: the asteroid would impact Raixhla with absolute certainty in less than 10 years.

The asteroid was given the name of Tshatlimo, and initially the governments of the world united in their “Assembly of Nations” to discuss the issue. This cooperation broke down quickly as they started bickering about costs, who would be affected, who would bear the burden, and many other concerns. Two years went by with little to no progress being made, at which time Xhetlo, a primale general from one of the larger nations, along with several other generals from the many large nations of Raixhla, decided that enough was enough and staged military coups in the major governments across the world in a coordinated effort known as the Iron Thorn Coups. Xhetlo and the generals then worked together to deal with the threat of the asteroids and progress was quickly made as every nation started putting their strength into the effort. 

A large spacecraft was constructed in orbit of Raixhla with a specifically selected crew to destroy the asteroid, or at least get it into sufficiently small fragments that the atmosphere could take care of the rest. One member of the crew was Xhetlo himself because he had realised, and kept secret, that due to unusual properties of the asteroid, someone would have to remain behind to ensure its destruction. He had privately chosen himself as the candidate to die. The mission was ultimately a success, and Raixhla was saved with only fragments of Tshatlimo remaining to burn up in the atmosphere.

Major figures/events

Although Raixhen history is filled with heroic figures, usually Xhaisins who have accomplished great deeds, the Kunen Trio stand out as the key figures that all within the Raixher nation know and respect.

Xhetlo

Xhetlo is the most famous historical person in the Empire and the most venerated. He is the primale who, through strength of will and mind, united the Raixhen people as their Supreme Grand General after orchestrating the Iron Thorn Coups worldwide in order to save their world from cataclysmic extinction: the Tshatlimo asteroid. He arranged the mission to deal with the asteroid as it hurtled towards Raixhla and, in the end, sacrificed his own life in order to save everyone. To this day, his sacrifice is sung and praised in the Empire, and his ideals of equality, loyalty, and honour echo through the culture as people debate the true meaning of the many things Xhetlo said. After the dust of the asteroid’s destruction and Xhetlo’s death settled, he was posthumously given the title of Xhaiser.

Fwutla

Fwutla was the ultives, or ultimale partner, of Xhetlo. After Xhetlo died and the Raixhle came to terms with what had happened, she was elected by the Council of Generals to become the new and first Xhaisin of the united Raixhen Empire. Her reign co-ruling with the Council of Generals was marred by internal catastrophes threatening to tear the burgeoning Empire apart at the seams. Old tensions between former nationalities remained and had to be dealt with as the world tried to become truly one. Despite the odds, she held everything together and was even able to maintain power within the Kunen family as she passed the title of Xhaisir to her and Xhetlo’s daughter, Xhindra.

Xhindra

If Xhetlo sprouted the Empire and Fwutla maintained it, Xhindra made it bloom. Xhindra, with her persuasive and optimistic personality, managed to finish the task of uniting the people and reconstructing the world as truly one people. Old issues lost their meaning under her reign, and she helped rebuild the world such that every place became connected as one world. People were able to understand and know each other as she also implemented a universal language that would become known as Raixhlan. She is often considered second only to her prither, or primale parent, Xhetlo.

Ori incident

Despite the work of Xhindra and subsequent Xhaisins of the Imperial line, some dissent was growing underneath the surface. A group that would come to call themselves the Ori started to resent the government and its efforts at unifying all of the people, not all of whom they believed were worthy of equality. The Ori originated from the continent on which the Raixher evolved and where the Industrial Revolution had started, and as such, considered themselves part of the original people and culture of the world.

With those regions pulling the bulk of the effort during the Tsatlimo catastrophe and the aftermath, involving lots of investment into the less developed regions, many Ori came to feel it was unfair that they would contribute so much and gain so little in the name of unification.  These feelings, in combination with bigoted views held toward non-Ori, eventually erupted into the Ori Rebellion where many of the higher up Orir escaped from Raixhla in a relativistic rocket that had been built around Raixhla’s second moon. 

However, before they left, they unleashed a rain of thermonuclear warheads launched from their first moon in order to sterilise Raixhla of all non-Ori. The Empire quickly launched countless rockets and crafts to stop the warheads in a desperate attempt to save the planet. The cost was high, as many had to sacrifice their lives in order to stop the weapons. In the end, the vast majority of missiles were stopped, with only a few entering the atmosphere and detonating. By that time, the Ori rocket was already gaining speed too fast and was too far away to be captured. The Ori thought that at least they would not have to deal with the “mongrels” once they reached their target system; however, fate would not be quite that kind to them. 

In the end, they found themselves in a prison of their own making with the prison guards being the very Raixher they fled from as they now live out their hateful existence in isolation from the greater universe on their new world in a foreign solar system.

Interesting facts

The Raixhen Empire is peculiar in that their region of space has evolved more sapient species from plants or planimal-like creatures than any other known region. The reason for this peculiar distribution of what should be a rare phenomenon eludes scientists to this day. This has made it so that within the Empire, family structures are highly varied when compared to more animal-focused starnations, which tend to be focused on variants of two central individuals for reproduction, usually one male and one female.