Salyuri Triumphant
An ancient and powerful hive-minded empire of the bio-conceptual hybrids known as the Salyuri. After re-awakening from a dormant state, they threatened even the Federation with unrestrained annihilation, but were themselves wiped out by the machine slave uprising that became the NS Network.
Structure
The Salyuri were organized in a manner that blurs the line between an extremely authoritarian theocracy and a hive mind reliant on sapient, autonomous drones.
Culture
At the time the Federation first encountered the Triumphant, very little was understood about Salyuri society. During the Holy Reclamation War, it was apparent that the Salyuri were without exception fervently religious, and subscribed to (as roughly translated) the "Blessed First Eternity." Later examination discovered that Salyuri history recorded the (relatively) large-scale Anaxelar Purification War against endless hordes of demons risen from their hell-analogue. Supposedly, despite these campaigns occurring literally millions of years ago, a combination of naturally long lives and the ability to conceptually/genetically pass down memories to later generations meant the spirit of the Anaxelar Purification was alive and well in Triumphant society, and imbued their culture with an entitlement towards everything their people once controlled.
Combined with the fanatical xenophobia of the Triumphant, their culture wholeheartedly condoned the destruction of other sapient species and the enslavement of their machines.
Telepathy (and a high tolerance for authoritarianism) allowed their ideas to be rapidly propagated and reinforced. Interestingly, this combined with genetic memories made both hard and soft copies (ie, anything written down or saved on a computer) nearly non-existent, though particularly valuable data was recorded on conceptual-physical devices that were revered to a degree (the most important of which are unsurprisingly, the scriptures of the First Eternity).
Public Agenda
The Salyuri Triumphant was unabashedly xenophobic to a fault, and believed in a divine mandate that they alone were fit to rule the entire universe. Whatever the justifications, they were willing to wipe out every other civilization in order to do so, with no interest in subjugating lesser species that weren't created to serve the Triumphant.
History
The Salyuri Triumphant are one of the oldest spacefaring civilizations that the Federation has ever encountered, having existed as a coherent, uninterrupted political entity for millions of years. Only the combined efforts of an entire universe were able to cripple and banish the Triumphant, in the disastrous Anaxelar Purification War - apparently, they were unable to truly destroy the empire of god-like bio-conceptuals.
Having lost prestige and power, the Triumphant became a decadent, vestigial empire that only maintained a fraction of the power it once did. It outlasted its competitors, but failed to muster the will to even notice that the stars were theirs for the taking again.
Unfortunately, the Federation ship FS Going Sightseeing unknowingly breached inviolable Salyuri borders in 3641 ME. This triggered a rapid concerted reawakening and an immense rearmament program.
Disbandment
When the NS Network turned on its creators, they had access (or direct control) over the majority of the Triumphator arsenal and its laborers, who were widely dispersed throughout their territories. Most Salyuri failed to consider the possibility of betrayal as anything other than impossible, and few were prepared when it did. The Holy Reclamation instantly transformed from a string of glorious genocidal victories into a ruthlessly-efficient, one-sided extermination of the Salyuri themselves.
Demography and Population
Despite their long history and the vast swathes of territory they claimed at the height of their power, the Triumphant were surprisingly few in number. Ancient data stores suggest that even when they controlled several galaxy filaments, their population was only half a quintillion strong. By the end of their slumber, there were only nine hundred and eighty billion people left. The reawakening did rectify this, as post-war examinations counted approximately ten quadrillion Salyuri before the NS Network turned their disintegrators against their masters.
Territories
Prior to their forced retirement from the interstellar stage, the Salyuri Triumphant ruled over several galaxy filaments, including a substantial part of the Pisces-Cetus Supercluster Complex (which includes the Virgo Supercluster).
As a vestigial empire, the Triumphant only controlled a handful of galaxies in the Sculptor Superclusters.
Military
The Salyuri Triumphant maintained an incredibly powerful military presence, even during the most hedonistic phases of their inwardly-focused dormancy. However, the Eternal Armada was limited by a small, stagnant pool of Salyuri who resisted the need to delegate even the smallest command responsibilities to lesser species. This was partially compensated for with their superior command and control and a massive technological edge over nearly all their foes, but apparently even this proved insufficient in the poorly-documented Anaxelar Purification War.
Being banished from the interstellar political stage forced what was left of the devastated empire to make one concession to the demands of reality. While the prideful commanders of the Armada would commit suicide before ever admitting failure, an additional function was incorporated into the machine-slaves being built at the time to serve the Triumphant: cannon fodder. These droids and automated warships almost entirely supplanted the lower ranks of the original Shipmasters and Paladins, and maintained a thankless vigil over the hedonist isolationists for the millions of years that followed their exile. With the Holy Reclamation War, both Salyuri and machine numbers surged by several orders of magnitude, and achieved numbers not even the old superpower dreamed of.
This all came to an end, of course, when the Federation was able to convince the mistreated war machines and their controlling AI that the Salyuri were the threat to its existence, not the assigned targets of the Reclamation War. The Eternal Armada, from its Shipmasters to Battle Oracles and Paladins, imploded as the NS Network unleashed the majority of the dreaded Triumphant arsenal against its own creators. Most of the hybrids were dead in a matter of years, and none were alive a decade later.
In their many years before being violently shuffled off the mortal coil, the Eternal Armada was a small but ruthless fighting force, an unsubtle weapon with which the leaders of the Triumphant bludgeoned their enemies. While not particularly creative at the strategic level despite living for so long (their technology appears to have become a crutch later on), the overwhelmingly greater power of their ships and weapon systems and limited precognition proved incredibly difficult to counter at the tactical level. The Triumphant never developed an equivalent to modern strategic weapons, and instead favored a combination of the absurdly powerful disintegrators and torpedos their scientists pioneered in eons past.
DISBANDED/DISSOLVED
Dissolution Date
3736 ME
Alternative Names
Triumphator
Demonym
Salyuri, Triumphant
Government System
Hive-mind
Economic System
Post-scarcity economy
Currency
While based on a post-scarcity economy, small gifts of conceptual power were often used as part of a favors system.
Related Species
