Athad Irias'keior
Arana'Aethi Athad Irias'keior
Where there were desperate bunkers and hollow cities, he built proud citadels.Athad Irias'keior was an Aethi man born into the vestigial royal family of the then-Republic of Isaana, during a period when the family was seeking to exert greater political influence after nearly three and a half centuries of practical irrelevance. He rose to prominence during the Esonar invasion, helping to lead some of the first major victories in the defense of Aethis. As the Esonar were forced to pull their forces back to their homeworlds to prevent their own annihilation in the face of a mysterious alien threat, Irias'keior made a grand show of driving them off, personally pursuing their straggling ships with a fleet of repurposed mining craft, picking them off one by one with missiles and harvester beams until all were destroyed or had left the Aethi solar system. He returned triumphantly, and was hailed as a hero.
Where there was twisted ruin and dust, he raised shining towers.
Where there was only defeat punctuated by a few brief and hard-fought gains, he at last created true victory.
Where there was once a shattered Aethis, he forged an Aethi Imperium.
—Unknown
The Great Rebuilder
Having barely survived a large-scale alien invasion, Aethis, though relieved, was devastated. Once again, the Isaani prince stepped in, organizing the efforts to rebuild, and helping to ensure that the planet would stand ready should an alien force threaten it again. Backed by the wealth of the ancient clan of Irias and still-rising popular support, Irias'keior went above and beyond what any expected, constructing beautiful parks and places of learning, great sea-ports, air-ports and space-ports, houses of government and archives of knowledge, styling his grandiose new constructions all over the globe with brilliant interpretations of local as well as Isaani architecture and bringing beauty to areas of Aethis that had been bleak even before the war. He also fortified the planet against attacks from the great beyond, establishing a large defensive network of missile and kinetic weaponry capable of fending off alien invasions. By the time ten years had passed, there was scarcely a city or town on all of Aethis which did not bear some mark of Irias'keior's reconstruction efforts, whether in new buildings and roads, or the freshly-printed emblem of a repaired and modernized municipal utility service.Imperium
Eventually, he was able to win the support of both many governments and common people of the desperate and ravaged world, and then, through cunning statecraft and clever use of his unique position and resources, gradually took direct control of the entire planet. By the time his ultimate motives were clear, his new position as Arana - Emperor of Aethis - was welcomed by most of his world with open arms. The signing of the Daiun'areni - the Imperial Charter which bound all existing nations as territories within the governance of the new Imperium - in the great hall of Alemir was met with genuine applause from billions from all over Aethis.Onward
From his de-facto planetary administrative center in Alemir, the newly-crowned Emperor Athad Irias'keior oversaw one final great construction project for the planet: a new shining capital, risen from the sea like some ancient city of legend returned to the living world: Viarai, crown jewel of the new Imperium. He then turned his eyes skyward, establishing the Sky-fleet Directorate and the Starship Alliance, with the goal of creating a space navy that would eventually become the Aethi Star Navy. This organization acquired the greatest engineering and scientific talent available at the time, and managed to reverse-engineer the technology found aboard destroyed and captured Esonar vessels, combining it with existing Aethi scientific theory to engineer the first faster-than-light Aethi starships. The Directorate was also given the directive to establish the Veth program, an initiative to locate new habitable worlds outside the Aethi star system and develop the technologies needed to colonize them on a large scale.Legacy
Athad Irias'keior managed to not only lead Aethis's restoration from its darkest hour, but raise Aethi civilization to the stars in the process, beginning a new era for all Aethi-kind. The first Arana did not live to see the Veth program come to fruition, or the first peaceful contact between Aethi and aliens, or to see the Sky-fleet Directorate win their first space conflict, but eventually, all of these things did come to pass thanks to his actions. Veth-1, later named Auan Taara, was a gas-giant moon covered in a great ocean, orbiting a dim red star. Under the personal oversight of Athad's daughter, Arana Nariaen Irias'keior, terrestrial and floating colonies grew around the moon's many island chains, and just as on Aethis, undersea bunkers and massive weapons were set in place, prepared for the worst. The second and third Veth worlds followed not long after, with the massive Veth-2 system (nicknamed Ai Idri) becoming a major mining hub for the burgeoning Imperium, and the beautiful, lush Veth-3 (Kaelien) becoming a prominent scientific base and tourist destination. The Aethi Imperium continues to grow to this day, building upon the foundations Irias'keior set down.Reign
Emperor Athad reigned from AY 1 to AY 89, when he abdicated the throne and transferred power to his then 29-year-old daughter Nariaen Irias'keior.
Species
Ethnicity
Previously Held Ranks & Titles
Life
27 PU
110 AY
137 years old
Children
Gender
Male
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