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Part 5 |  |
Part 7 |  |
Feuds and Wars
After making her last prophesy, Aleosh died, and the centuries which followed were turbulent ones indeed. Hundreds of wars were fought, some small, some large. Kingdoms changed hands many times over a matter of decades, and the Hordes ran rampant, expanding Chaos lands further South than before, but driven back by power-hungry empire builders. Northern Armies marched on the East, and Southern armadas attacked the Western coast.
During this time of battle, a lost ship from the homeworld of Albia crashed in the West. It's crew were dazed and confused by this bizarre planet, and they spent months stranded on Midgard before finding the city of Jotunheim and a way home. But while they remained on Midgard, their Grendel crewmates were abducted by the more vicious Grendels of Midgard. They were put into captivity, and their descendants are the miserable Thralls that toil endlessly under the whip of the Boncrushers.
Meanwhile, in space, the Jotun Empire grew
by leaps and bounds. The new breed of Jotun warships now were
well-equipped against any boarding. As well as automated gun
systems and forcewalls that could be activated at the press of a
button, new service robots were included in the crew. Not only
did they keep the ship in running order, but could also repel any
invasion. In order to anticipate any tatics the enemy might use,
powerful nano-electronic brains adapted from stolen Ljynii
technology were installed in all the machines.
For several decades everything progressed well, until reports of
the robots conversing with crew started to filter in. According
to several ships, their robots had developed distinct
personalities and given themselves names.
In many other situations, irrational fear and prejudice would
have been rife. But the Jotun were creations themselves, albeit
organic ones. After months of discussion in the Senate, the
sentient robots were considered to be members of the Empire and
given full status as such. This move angered many non-Jotun
citizens, and since then there has been social dysfunction many
Empire worlds, and vehement cyber-segregation.
During a routine scout mission to a new
frontier world, the Jotun ship 'Thor's Will' located a perfectly
preserved Shee library. Inside were not only lists of all Shee
research worlds, but technology so far unknown to them. The
worlds listed as research worlds were cleaned of their alien
conquerors and reinstated, populated by Norns and protected by
Jotun ships. The new technology included jump gates, which
allowed instant transport to anywhere in the galaxy, self-repairing
computer biosystems and multi-spectrum holoprojectors.
But one of the most interesting things was the list of Shee
creations. Norns, Ettins, Grendels and Jotun dDNA were there, but
so were 4 other species, completely unknown. Extensive searches
of the Empire turned up no matches to the dDNA samples.
For decades, the mysterious dDNA files from the Shee library lay
untouched by the scientists of the Empire, until a bright young
Gengineer by the name of Vas Thjan decided to run another genetic
match, against all the lower lifeforms in the Empire. There was
one match, out of the countless billions. Vas Than had discovered
the fifth race of the Shee. The humble rat.
Every time the Jotun visited a new world, rats were to be found.
It was simply assumed they had stowed away about the ships, but
Vas Thjan discovered the rats had existed there for millennia
before the Jotun had even set foot there.
Two days after the discovery, Thjan was woken in the middle of
the night by a rat sitting on his bed. The rat explained how he
had been told of the discovery through the rodent intelligence
network, and that the time had come for them to reveal themselves
to the Jotun. Then he explained how the Norns of Midgard had
known about their secret for centuries.
After many meetings between Emperor Thor and the Head Rat, it was
decided that the two races should pool their resources as
creations of the Shee. The rats were given protected status, and
a new Special Ops division was set up in the Jotun Military, with
a majority of the agents being Rats.
However, no other matches to the dDNA files have been found to
this day, even though the Empire has almost doubled in size since.
Some young Sheeologists theorise that the other races were all
relocated to the new Shee homeworld, but older Sheeologists
compare Shee memories to sieves, and theorise that young
Sheeologists are stupid young whippersnappers that don't know
their place.
With the newfound technology of the jump gates, the ancient Ljynii Warp Gate was studied again, and was activated several decades later. A small scouting party of ten thousand ships entered, and set about establishing a foothold in the Ljynii galaxy. A hundred world were transformed into border outposts, but after over two years of their presence in the new galaxy, the Jotun had seen no Ljynii worlds.
Three decades later, on the other side of the galaxy, they found why. The Ljynii Linkworld was, and still is, the largest artificial structure in the two galaxies, possibly in the universe. The interlinked rings, large enough to contain a sun each, held the entire Ljynii population within. The Jotun, in a display of surprising cowardice, withdrew over 50,000 light years and stayed well away for the next thousand years.