First Echo

[echo_of_a_jedi]

[Video]

[A serene-looking woman sits before the camera, cross-legged on one of the tiny couch-futon-hybrids they put in these apartments. Some people might recognize her from the other night, though she's currently not wearing the big hooded brown robe, but instead a cassock-like tan garment.]

I've met some of you other "Extraterritorial Guests" already, but for those I haven't, my name is Meetra Surik. I'm a traveler here, like we all seem to be, and I seem to have gotten even more lost than I thought I was - and I was heading somewhere with no real maps in the first place.

So, my request to the network is...tell me about Earth. We seem to be on Earth, and most of the people here seem to be from different "Earths"...which I guess could mean a kind of planet, but from context, it sounds more like multiversal theory turning out to be true. At any rate, I'm new to this planet, so please, tell me all about it. In return, I'll share what I can say about the Galactic Republic, where I'm from. Deal?

Comments

[greyerrant]

Over 30,000 years.

[echo_of_a_jedi]

Well that's the Republic beat by around ten millennia, unless we're counting years differently. Tell me about your people.

[greyerrant]

What's there to tell? They have all the virtues and folly of humanity.

[echo_of_a_jedi]

What about your history? You're from an interstellar Empire, right? How did it come to be?

[greyerrant]

It was forged in war, built from the ruins of the old Dark Age of technology. Several thousand years ago, mankind was cut off from everyone by storms in the warp, which made interstellar travel impossible. Mankind grew insular, was plagued by xenos and... internal rot, and devolved to barbarism. During this time, our homeworld, Terra, was continually wracked by wars. Eventually, one man, the Emperor, stood forth, and brought peace with his genehanced warriors, first the Thunder Warriors, then men like me, the Legiones Astartes, and his 20 sons, the Primarchs, fathers to the Legions. The warp storms calmed, and we spread out from Terra, bringing light back to the places that had been surrounded in darkness by Old Night.

[echo_of_a_jedi]

Sounds terrible. I can see the benefit of a strong leader then, especially if what he was taking over really was that well collapsed.

This doesn't sound like anything I've heard in history, though. Certainly not anything since the development of hyperspace travel or the Republic. Did all this happen in the Unknown Regions without moving into Republic space, I wonder, or is it something else...?

[greyerrant]

I am unsure. I would need to see the shape of your galaxy to effectively ascertain where things were.

[echo_of_a_jedi]

And here I am without any hyperspace charts.

Still, I never expected to hear about a civilization that expansive outside the Republic. Did you say it was entirely human?

[greyerrant]

By necessity, yes.

[echo_of_a_jedi]

What necessity? Did something happen to all the aliens, or did you just not meet any sentient ones?

[greyerrant]

We met sentient aliens. They were hostile, implacably so. They could be mind-enslaving would be godlings like the Nephilimm, rapacious and destructive like the Eldar, or mindlessly violent like the orks. We pushed them back and destroyed them where we could.

[echo_of_a_jedi]

And I thought hutts were bad...it's a tragedy you only met hostile aliens, though. The Republic is made up of thousands of cooperating species.

[greyerrant]

We met a culture like that once.

They attacked us and claimed we betrayed them.

[ And then the Imperium happened to the interex. ]

[echo_of_a_jedi]

Did you?

[Trust a Jedi to ask the obvious yet wrong question.]

[greyerrant]

No loyal servant of the Emperor betrayed them.
[ His voice gets very bitter. ]

But a snake within our midst betrayed us both to his dark masters.

[echo_of_a_jedi]

And started a war for no reason other than that. That sounds familiar.

[captainofthe10th]

Oh? Explain.

[echo_of_a_jedi]

My galaxy's history is full of people who'd betray what they stood for and start a war to prove a philosophical point, or because it was the only way they saw to achieve a noble goal, or because some dead Sith's spirit clinging to material existence told them to. Even just in the past fifty years that's happened three or four times.

It's honestly getting a little old.

[greyerrant]

Betrayal is never noble. [ There is a hint of snarl in his voice. ]

[echo_of_a_jedi]

Of course not. However, if someone served a government or organization that one felt was corrupt or ineffectual, and there were no laws with which one could replace that leadership, would it not be the least evil to attempt to change that by force?

Or at least, could it not seem that way from a certain point of view?