Champions of the Empire
Campaign Info\Glossary

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[o]Second Frontier War (6084 to 6089): - Fought between the Outworld Coalition and the Imperium during the period of the barracks emperors. Arbellatra (6056 to 6135) was named Grand Admiral of the Marches by Cleon V and led the combined local and Imperial forces to defeat the Coalition, and then he proceeded to reestablish the central Imperial authority.

From a Zhodani perspective, "Defeat the Coalition" is a bit strong. Zhodani texts, even those our elementary school children use, admit that the Vargr were consistently the weakest partner in the Coalition, but the Consuls knew that. At best, the unprovoked attacks by Imperial allies and troops led to a stalemate along the Zhodani frontier.
[o]Second Imperium - The successor to the First Imperium, established by the Terran Confederation Navy to rule the territories conquered from the Vilani Empire by Terra.

See Rule of Man.
[o]Sector - Mapping unit in astrography equal to sixteen subsectors. Average density is 500 to 650 worlds per sector.

Sectors are named, and several synonyms are in common use, including march (or marches), region, reach (or reaches), quadrant, and matrix. The Spinward Marches, for example, is a sector.

As a rough means of comparing size, the sector counts of the large interstellar states and areas of settlement are: the Imperium: 27; the Aslan Hierate: 18; the Hive Federation: 17; the Two Thousand Worlds: 14; the Vargr Extents: 14; the Zhodani Consulate: 13; the Solomani Confederation: 11.
[o]Signal GK - Abbreviation for "Gashimeku Kaalariin," Vilani for "vessel in distress." The code signal "GK" originated on Vland as a distress signal in maritime and aviation activity, and it was one of the standard communications codes of the Vilani Imperium. When the Second Imperium succeeded it, signal GK was retained as a distress code co-equal with the Terran SOS and Mayday signals.

The Imperial Navigation Act of 103 requires all vessels, whether military or civilian, to respond to the GK, SOS, or Mayday signals, provided such response does not endanger the ship and crew of the responding vessel.
[o]Solomani Autonomous Region - Area within the Imperium granted self-government through a charter from Empress Margaret I in 6173. The charter granted control of the region of space within a radius of 50 parsecs of Terra to a Solomani governing body, hence the name "Solomani Sphere", which was given broad powers of authority.

For two hundred years, the Imperium effectively ignored the region and concentrated instead on its coreward frontiers.

By 6409, Solomani oppression of nonhuman (and non-Solomani) worlds forced Empress Margaret II to revoke the region's charter. After years of diplomatic actions proved fruitless, it was decided to forcibly reintegrate the region into the Imperium. Naturally, the Solomani resisted, and the Solomani Rim War (6459 to 6471) began.
[o]Solomani Confederation - In 6340, the government of the Solomani Autonomous Region reorganized itself as the Solomani Confederation in an attempt to strengthen its claims to the heritage of the old Terran Confederation. Although tantamount to a declaration of independence, the reorganization was officially ignored by the government of the Imperium until the increasingly belligerent and extremist policies of the Solomani caused many border worlds under Solomani rule to petition the Imperium for redress. The branches of the Solomani Confederation's government took the names of the government of the Terran Confederation, but the present institutions have little resemblance to those of the past. The chief governing body of the Solomani Confederation is the Secretariat. The Secretariat is presided over by the Secretary General, who is elected from its membership. The Secretary General is the chief administrative officer of the Solomani government, and while the office holds great power, it is fully accountable to the Secretariat.

Representatives to the Secretariat are appointed by the governments of the individual districts. The number of representatives each district may appoint is determined according to that district's contribution to the Solomani economy. A district typically consists of a single world, but low population worlds or depressed areas are combined into multiworld districts. In the case of a district such as this, an election is held to determine the representative from that district. These, however, are not elections in the normal sense; the governments vote, rather than the populace. Each government of such a district is allocated votes (again, according to its economic importance), which are used to elect a representative for that district.

All government officeholders and officials must be members of the official party, the Solomani Movement. Although once waning in power and influence, the party is gaining in popularity as a result of successful Solomani incursions on the Imperium's rimward border. Still, the real power in the Confederation is held by the government and its factions.

Because of the greater degree of local autonomy that exists in the Solomani Confederation, interworld factionalism exists to a much greater degree than had been allowed in the Imperium. Coalitions of worlds exist within the Confederation, which sometimes is controlled by their regional interests.

For example, the Near Bootes cluster, in the Capella subsector, dominates large portions of the adjacent subsectors both economically and politically. Bootean mercantile interests have traditionally favored peaceful trade with the Imperium, and their influence has been held to be largely responsible for many peace negotiations between the Imperium and the Solomani Confederation.

Another example of this factionalism is the ongoing trade war (in Solomani Rim/Kukulcan) between Kukulcan and the coalition of Thetis and Laputa. The war has been causing severe damage to the economy of Kukulcan, but the Thetis-Laputa coalition has thus far been able to muster enough power to prevent effective intervention by the Confederation government.
[o]Solomani Hypothesis - When the Solomani discovered jump drive in 3038, they also discovered that more than a dozen human races had already colonized the worlds surrounding Earth. At the time, there was no satisfactory explanation for the more than 40 genetically identical human races. The Solomani Hypothesis, first proposed by Magis Sergei haut-Devroe (5533 to 5610), theorized that all of the many widely scattered human races of the galaxy originated on Terra, and he thought that they were transported to their current homeworlds by an alien race, called "the Ancients", for purposes which even today remain unclear. The approximate date of the scattering has been established as -300,000.

When Terra was incorporated in the Imperium in 6057, a small historical mission verified much of haut-Devroe's work. The hypothesis was already generally accepted by the majority of the human population in the Imperium. More than 40 known human races have been located (and several more of them failed to adapt to their new worlds and are now extinct); only three of these human races have reached widespread prominence: they are the Vilani, the Zhodani, and the Solomani.

Most other human races accept the hypothesis, but lend it no special importance. The hypothesis is used by the Solomani Movement as a basis for its claims of Solomani racial superiority. A generally accepted theory is that all Humaniti originated on Terra, and that all other native human races arise from stock transported from there by the Ancients. The theory explains the large number of independent human races within the Imperium without requiring a far-fetched concept of "parallel evolution".
[o]Solomani Movement - An organization devoted to the doctrine that humans of Solomani descent are superior to all others and are most fit to rule the galaxy.
[o]Solomani Rim War (6451-6479) - War between the Third Imperium and the Solomani Confederation during which a large portion of the Solomani Rim sector was returned to Imperial control.

This conflict was culmination of centuries of disagreement between the Imperium and the Solomani Sphere. Following rifts at court, the Imperium established the Solomani Autonomous Region (Solomani Sphere) in 6173, and then ignored the region, allowing it to develop independently while the central government paid closer attention to the Spinward Marches and the Gateway. By 6369, reports that the Solomani rule of many client-worlds within the sphere was over-bearing and heavy-handed forced Empress Margaret to reassess the situation, and she, by proclamation in 6409, dissolved the Solomani Sphere and reintegrated it into the Imperium, but the Solomani resisted.

Hoping to profit from Imperial preoccupation with the Third Frontier War and the disorganization which followed upon the abdication of Styryx in 6458, the Solomani reasserted their control over the complete Solomani Sphere, including those portions reabsorbed into the Imperium (see "Solomani Autonomous Region"). The Imperium declared war in 6459. The initial phase of the war went very well for the Solomani. Although the Imperium maintained sizable fleets along the border, they were inferior in strength to the massed naval elements of the Solomani Confederation. In most areas, the Solomani regained the border worlds lost to the Imperium in the last half century and even occupied a number of worlds that had never been part of the Solomani Sphere.

However, Solomani fortunes were checked in 6462 when the large invasion force attempted to regain the worlds in the Old Expanses sector; it encountered near-fanatical resistance and was repulsed with heavy losses. The period from 6452 to 6457 was one of stalemate. The Solomani abandoned their plans for further expansion in order to rebuild their forces. However, their policy of inflexibly defending every border world was a constant drain on their resources, and the Solomani were not able to regain the initiative. By 6467, the Imperial Navy had achieved strategic dominance as the greater industrial base of the Imperium made its power felt. The last phase of the war, 6467 to 6471, consisted of a near-continual advance by Imperial forces into the heart of the Solomani Sphere. The basic Imperial strategy was to attack along two parallel axes of advance, with lesser task forces spreading out to create a huge pocket of Solomani Territory.

Although the Solomani occasionally achieved a tactical success against a task force (such as in the Battle of Kagukhasaggan in early 6471), they were unable to halt the main advances. With the liberation of the Vegan district in 6470, the Imperium gained the secure base envisioned in the reign of Styryx. The loss of the Vegan district prompted the Solomani to embark on a desperate gamble. Recalling the time when the outnumbered Terran Confederation was able to defeat the Vilani Imperium, the Solomani consolidated their remaining naval forces into a single fleet and struck at the Imperial fleet that was advancing out of the Vegan district. At the Battle of Dingir, in early 6471, the Solomani Grand Fleet was scattered and substantially destroyed. The remnants of the Solomani fleet fell back deeper into the Sphere, and the Imperial forces firmly established themselves in Terra's own subsector.


The Imperial high command decided that Terra would have to be invaded in order to forever end all claims of Solomani superiority and thus the use of Terra as a rallying standard elsewhere in the Sphere. In order to invade Terra, a sizable fraction of the Imperial forces in the Solomani Sphere were assembled into an assault force, which effectively ended the pursuit of the defeated Solomani fleet. The invasion began in the second quarter of 6471, and the hard-fought campaign lasted until nearly the end of the year. In the end, the Imperium conquered the planet. However, the battle for Terra had consumed so much of the Imperial military's resources that the Imperial high command felt they lacked sufficient strength to resume their advance into the rest of the Solomani Sphere. Accordingly, they negotiated a temporary armistice with the Solomani military commanders, who were glad to gain a respite to regroup their remaining forces.

The war ended on this basis as both the Imperial and Solomani civilian governments, who were concerned with the strain placed on their economies by the protracted war, informally agreed to extend the armistice indefinitely. Although scholars have debated the wisdom of invading Terra, some claim that the battle was a marginal, if not a Pyrrhic, victory for the Imperium. Although, the general consensus has been that the war as a whole was a victory for the Imperium. A substantial amount of the Solomani Sphere was reabsorbed by the Imperium, and a vigorous Vegan Autonomous District was set up to oversee Imperial interests along the new border.

However, much of this territory has been lost once again to the Solomani because of the turmoil following Strephon's assassination.
[o]Solomani Sphere - The territory governed by the Solomani as the Solomani Autonomous Region.
[o]Solomani - Strictly, a member of that human race which developed on Terra from the original human stock (H. sapiens). The term "Solomani" is often used to refer to members of the Solomani race, or, more palatably to some, to members of the human race of Solomani descent, or to members of the Solomani political movement. Its original meaning is obscure, but the word seems to have originally meant either "men of Sol" or "sole men."

After the Solomani developed jump drives in 3038, Solomani humans scattered to the stars in several waves. Early colonization efforts first settled the worlds closest to Terra; the later conquest of the First Imperium and the establishment of the Rule of Man sent out more Solomani humans, primarily to occupy the former Vilani-controlled regions.
[o]Spinward Marches, The - The Imperium's farthest frontier sector, containing 437 star systems divided along a coreward/rimward line by the Imperial border. The region is dominated by two major powers: the Imperial Spinward Marches sector and the frontier provinces of the Zhodani Consulate. In the independent territory between the two powers lie four small territories: the Federation of Arden, the Sword Worlds Confederation, and the Darrian Confederation. Each follows its own diplomatic line designed to maintain independence from both the Zhodani and the Imperium.

The Spinward Marches has been settled since the 5400's and is still a frontier sector. High-tech worlds are scattered among empty, fallow worlds; there is potential for exploration, exploitation, and development for centuries to come.

Open document to download the attached map. Note that you must have the CC2 viewer to read the map.
[o]Subsector - Mapping unit in astrography with an average density of 30 to 40 worlds per subsector.

Subsectors are noted within a sector by their position using the first sixteen letters of the alphabet (A-P). In addition, they are named and a variety of other terms may be used, including "province", "cluster", or "district." Imperial convention is to assign numbers to districts (for example, District 268) which are under Imperial protection because they are pending integration into the Imperium.