Defence Union
The Zagar people of Aerior were nearly globally unified when the Arkan bioships attacked.
The Arkan space animals which have been ravaging the Arkan galaxy have also come for Aerior, looking to eat any lifeforms they could see.
The zagar had technology advanced enough for space travel; they could reach and visit almost any planet in their system, the Hiragas system, which is located very far from Beta Targos. Though they have not developed FTL travel yet, they have launched a number of probes with very rudimentary FTL drives. They were not safe enough to travel in and indeed very few returned. They fought the bioships with their own starships, but much of their space industry was annihilated. Each of their planets were forced to develop self-sufficiency at the hands of the bioship attacks, and most could not and thus collapsed. The rest could not effectively hold the space animal assaults back effectively, and were also destroyed. Pushed back to Aerior, they could pool most of their resources into a single world. They constructed a number of massive defence platforms by upgrading the several space elevators on their home planet. These space elevators could vent a massive amount of heat and mount very large weapons which were more than powerful enough to harm the animals if they got close. They managed to desperately hold off a large number of attacks, with many losses. The constant attacks meant they could not easily build new space elevators but they could upgrade the 4 elevators they already had. This desperation has forced them to finally unify under a hypermilitarist culture and regime where every individual is expected to contribute to collective survival. Workers became paid less in order to pool more resources into space and planetary defence. The Defence Union was the result of this unification, and held a tight grip over their planet.
Many killed animals fell from orbit into Aerior. The Defence Union studied these corpses in great detail, learning about potential weak points or other ways to penetrate their skin or carapace. This gave them a much greater edge in combat, with larger space elevator counterweight stations. Aerior's orbit changed noticeably due to the massive center of mass shift and the planet began to spin slightly faster as well. As the animals spread ever further through the galaxy, and established their own presence in Hiragas, the invasions increased in intensity. Ultimately, it became far too strong to handle and the Defence Union fell along with its people. Aerior became a planet that creatures would retreat to in order to hide from predators, and much, much later, the HF would discover the ruins of Aerior. They knew that the space animals were not always present; they were created after the Harkas, and it was these animals that destroyed many civilizations. Though their exact society has been lost to time, much could be determined via the structures that littered many underground layers. The space animals also destroyed the biosphere and established a new one.
The zagar are a species that ran a minor faction which would never make contact with aliens (outside of the Arkanian animals). They looked to exploit and trade with others and tended to be even more obsessed with earning money than most species Despite this, it would be the Arkan animals that would make them unify and establish a hypermilitarist, authoritarian regime. They also made for excellent engineers since inventing the printing press as they became quite fascinated with that technology as well as others that came after it.
Aerior is a fairly cold planet in the Hiragas system, though still habitable.
It was inhabited by a civilization called the Defence Union before it fell. Its atmosphere was fairly thick and thus retained much heat within it, allowing life despite the larger orbital radius. It is the 4th planet in the system. It also has a high geological activity as a result of its strong magnetosphere and a rapidly changing mantle. Despite this it still has many intact wreckages underground and HF archaeologists still scan them to this day in order to determine more about civilizations that fell due to the Arkan space animal incursions. The largest known wreckage is a part of a space elevator counterweight station which was one of the Union's greatest hopes of fighting off the animals.
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