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Yeah, the Dhayut have taken a turn to evil and things are going to get worse eventually.
Meanwhile, Years Earlier
In the west the invasions, rebellions and wars in Ackdar and surrounding system dragged on for years. There would be periods of quiet and calm, periods where the Dhayut troop ships returned to Home to pick up volunteers to throw into the grinder, or advances stalled while waiting for reinforcements, but while it was dragging on the rest of the kingdom didn’t grind to a halt.
(One thing I’ve been pretty vague about is the passage of time, and that’s because I don’t like the clock on the game. Everything is so rushed, I prefer to think of this as a huge epic covering centuries but the time ticks by in the game too slowly. In my test game a human colony of 2.5 billion became a 12 planet empire with 30 billion inhabitants in 22 years, way too quick. So in my mind, I think of 1 “Dhayut Year” game time being about 5 years real time. That gets me to the century spanning epic. On that scale, the Ackdarian wars have been dragging on nearly 20 years).
While the west was in upheaval, the rest of the Kingdom was going through a golden period. The Dhayut were secure, rich, and breeding like rabbits on viagra. Being warlike and unquestioning of the Dhayut royals, the population was suffering from no war weariness, the wars in the west could drag on for ever and they’d be happy, just so long as the news coverage mentioned lots of victories. Population on the main planets was increasing at about 20% a year (Dhayut year) rate, turning small colonies into major centers and the main planets (Home and Prodigal Sons) into huge, multi-billion population powerhouses. The construction ships were busy putting mining stations on anything not populated, the scientists were making advances in the Home Space station and a couple of dedicated research stations built around the Kingdom . It was a good time to be a space spider.
One space spider not having a good time was King Oro, he went the way of his predecessor, legs pulled off and thrown down a well. King Oro was a trader, the new King (King Sawa Uktab) is Courageous and Expansionist, a wartime King really. Once more the Dhayut elite seem to have chosen a king who fits the time. So well done AI, again. The Prodigal Sons colony didn’t take it well, they rebelled for a month or two refusing to pay taxes, but everything soon returned to normal.
The expansion south had stalled due to Dhayut not having the technology required to colonize Marshy planets, and there was nothing worth the research effort to expand that direction. That changed when the exploration ships found the planet Loros. Earlier I mentioned the colony that was worth having because it had a very rare luxury resource, Ekarus meat; Loros had an even rarer resource, an extremely rare resource. Extremely rare means only 1 to 3 planets in the galaxy will have it, the kind of commodity that’s in demand so much trading it to another empire can make a friend out of an enemy. Or at least stop them attacking. The planet Loros is the galaxy’s source of Loros Fruit, a fruit containing chemicals that can increase lifespan and brings development bonuses to any colony with a supply route to it. With that as the prize the Dhayut had the incentive to research Marshy planet colonization and expand into the south. Loros was far enough away it would take a couple of colonies built along the way to reach it, so colony ships were built at Home and Dhayut expanded into the South with the colonies Keelemaar, Nispes and finally Loros.
In the North there was a new colony at Calipsa, a high quality (90%) continental planet, and another planet discovered with lots of aliens hiding in underground stasis pods from the ancient alien invasion. We let them be for the moment, but the admiral of the Dhayut Subjugation Fleet had their coordinates on his “to-do” list for after Ackdar. They’re Shandar, easy going, not very intelligent, lizard people. They could probably do with enslavement so the Dhayut can look after them.
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