As the Imperial 4th and 18th Battle Fleets methodically crushed Confederation resistance in Anise subsector, the Imperial 9th Fleet moved directly into Voyager to harry the Dootchen Estates, a Solomani interstellar polity with origins in the Long Night.
As the Rule of Man collapsed and technology levels crashed, the population of the garden world Tralp/Voyager (Magyar 1913) exploded. Soon Tralp began preying on neighboring systems, seizing technological resources and laying claim to entire worlds.
The first worlds to fall were located in the Girii Cluster, nine systems centered on the high-population world of Girii, now known as Ownes/Voyager (Magyar 1917). The Cluster had been settled by Vilani dissidents during the Ziru Sirka, forcefully absorbed into the First Imperium, and then later incorporated into the Terran Confederation and then the Rule of Man.
The worlds of the Girii Cluster were ripe for plunder, and by -1400 the Tralpean occupiers had stripped the Vilani inhabitants of their property and then instituted a cruel racially-based class structure that grew only more stratified as the Long Night deepened. As Girii lay on the Aslan Route, a sprawling J-2 path that connected Terra (Solomani Rim 1827) and Kusyu (Dark Nebula 1226), the system soon became an important Aslan outpost. By -1200 the mainworld, renamed Ouoarl, was claimed by the Tearlauih, an Aslan clan that had embraced Solomani culture. The Tearlauih grew very prosperous during the first Aslan Age of Discovery and controlled several key worlds on the Aslan Route.
By -500 Tralp and its subject worlds formed the Greater Tralpryk, a pocket empire that proved strong enough to push back against the Aslan and the neighboring Neoslavic Bloc. By 101 the Tearlauih had become so weakened by the Aslan Cultural Purge that the Tralpryk was able to seize control of all Aslan-dominated worlds in Voyager subsector. At its height the Tralpryk claimed 32 systems, including most of Voyager subsector as well as choice worlds in Clown and New Town. While never a true naval power, the Tralpryk maintained formidable ground armies to seize and hold new worlds. The fabled Aazlantrope were elite armored units said to have been specifically created to combat Aslan raiders.
The entrance of the Third Imperium into the region represented a significant threat to Tralpean ambitions: surrounding worlds clamored for Imperial protection from the Tralpryk. The case for intervention was strengthened by the Tralpryk’s brazen use of chattel slavery, outlawed by Article VI of the Warrant of Restoration and anathema to Imperial sensibilities. The Tralpryk itself was repulsed by thoughts of joining the Imperium, which would have required the Tralpryk to be dissolved and each world admitted individually. In 400 most of Clown, Anise, Kline, and New Mars subsectors joined the Imperium while the Tralpryk defiantly stood alone.
The Tralpryk was therefore relieved by the creation of the Autonomous Sphere in 704 and became a strong advocate for the formation of Solomani Confederation in 871. This new government welcomed multiworld polities such as the Tralpryk, which joined the Confederation as a powerful member-state. In 924 the Tralpryk itself was reorganized into the Dootchen Estates, a federation that gave member worlds additional rights and authorities while curtailing the influence of Tralp.
The new Dootchen government promoted a romanticized identity that cast the Estates as stalwart defenders of Solomani worlds against alien invaders. Their unsavory racial politics and enthusiasm for military intervention soon made the Estates the darling of more radical elements within the Solomani Party. The Estates therefore enjoyed an unusual degree of influence at the highest levels of the Confederation.
On the other hand, the Estates were distrusted and resented by neighboring Confederation worlds and member-states. And outside the Confederation the Dootchen caste system was frequently held up as a deplorable example of Solomani racial policies. All of this made the Estates an irresistible symbolic target for Kemper’s forces.
So while Anise subsector was besieged by the Imperial 4th and 18th fleets, the 9th Fleet was hopping through lightly populated systems en route to Tralp, the capital of the Dootchen Estates.
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