The Chiruq Imperium is a militant, expansionist empire, ruled by a small cadre of force-sensitive elites, located in an isolated portion of the Galaxy. While their own history is unclear, even to them, it is apparent that the Imperium’s elite are descended from a small Sith group, based on evidence of their relics and their teachings. How this group emerged so far from any mainstream Sith culture remains a mystery, however, although evidence suggests that they were refugees from some prior conflict.
Over the centuries since its foundation, the Imperium has grown to become a relative superpower within its own geographically isolated stellar region. This growth has been primarily achieved through military conquest of neighbouring star systems in a series of wars. While they maintain a large army to their size, the Chiruq, as with much of their neighbours, possess relatively low technology.
While the Imperium goes to great lengths to recruit and train Force users from within its own population, they do appear to be unaware of the existence of other Force-using traditions known to the grater Galaxy. Instead, their background with the Force seems to be derived from an archaic version of the Sith code that has not only drifted form its origins, but also intermixed and combined with local traditions.
History[]
Foundation[]
The exact origin of the Imperium is unclear, even to its leaders. While it is possible that there may have been a degree of historical self-censoring that lead to this ambiguity, a few key facts can be established. At some point after 5000 BBY, a vessel known as the Dark Sun crashed on a then-nameless world, inhabited by primitive, pre-spaceflight humans. The surviving crew and passengers of the Dark Sun included a number of Force users, apparently members of some form of Sith order. Their leader was a warlord identified only as Chiruq in the few surviving texts from the era.
While technologically superior to the natives, the survivors of the Dark Sun were still massively outnumbered by the native population. Unable to leave (the vessel having been irreparably damaged), their leaders took a different course of action in order to ensure their survival. Explorers made contact with the World Core Trabe, one of the dominant native groups. They found the World Core to be somewhat amenable, given that they were in essence a theocracy ruled by a core of force-sensitive Shamans.
The nameless planet
These two groups formed an alliance, combining the superior technology of the survivors and their greater numbers of force users with the sheer weight of numbers of the World Core. Key to this alliance was the goal of unifying the world under the one flag. The survivors cemented the alliance with the most basic of lures; power. Not just did they promise the World Core tribe domination over their rivals, but they greatly expanded their knowledge of the force, especially in the ways of the Dark Side. The World Core, or their part, gladly embraced these new teachings, reveling in the new found power it bought them.
While the survivors did hold a considerable technological edge, their campaign was still slow simply due to the lack of infrastructure available. Save for a few shuttles, the survivors had no way to move large numbers of men or supplies. Added to that, many of the high-tech weapons they possessed were in short supply with no way to immediately replace them. Despite these shortcomings, the Alliance were able to take control of the continent they had settled upon, conquering the other tribes. Rather then put them to the sword, however, they were added to their own armies. This became especially true of the force users, whose teaching and knowledge was added to the survivors’ own, as had been done with the World Core.
Chiruq declared themselves emperor of a newly formed Imperium, the ruins of the Dark Sun their throne. However, there was still much to be done to build their future.
The first step was an arranged marriage between Chiruq and Lavella, the daughter of the World Core's chieftain. The purpose of this union was two-fold. The first and most obvious was to establish a dynasty that would rule over the unified culture and, eventually, the world. The second was more personal in nature; in their early meetings, Chiruq had discovered that she was Force-Sensitive, and sought to develop her talents while teaching her in the ways of the Sith. Lavella in turn proved to be a capable student, synthesising Sith learning with their own traditional Shamanistic practices. Her own techniques would become the basis for the Imperium's teachings for centuries to come.
Having secured a future lineage, Chiruq turned to the future of their new world. While the Imperium had conquered a single continent, there was still much more to be done in order to make the world their own.
Unification[]
We began this war with blasters and shuttles. We ended it with swords and spears
—Chiruq
While their advanced technology and superior mastery of the Force had served Sith survivors so far, they were also fighting an uphill battle against their own limitations. Key among them was the dwindling supply of advanced technology available to their forces. The Dark Sun was primarily a warship; while it had some facilities to support he maintenance of sophisticated equipment such as Blaster weapons and spacecraft, the construction of new equipment was largely beyond their means. Scavenging and careful preservation of existing stores might extend the life of their remaining equipment, but the facts were clear. They could not rely on their advanced technology forever.
Keenly aware of this limitation, Chiruq had their forces reorganised to make the most of their remaining technology. Their surviving Sith-trained soldiers were concentrated into several commands and given exclusive access to their remaining stocks of such advanced technologies as Blasters and Battle Armour. The bulk of the army's strength would come from the native forces that they now controlled, which were still equipped with primitive weapons. While those units built from the World Core trabe were considered to be reliably loyal, other conscripted trabes were 'supervised' by Sith who were given broad authority to do whatever they needed to ensure the loyalty of their troops.
At the same time, Chiruq ordered the surviving technical and scientific personnel of the Dark Sun to transcribe as much of the ship's data and documentation as possible. This act was performed against the acceptance that the irreparably damaged vessel's remaining power systems would not last forever, and that once they failed, any information left on the ship's computers would become inaccessible (if not lost forever). At the same time, they also documented all technological items that the ship's crew had bought with them, from blasters to noteputers and even Lightsabres. This was all done against the acknowledgement that most of this technology was irreplaceable, and that technological decline would be inevitable. The hope was that through preservation of such records it could one day be reversed when the Imperium had better developed its infrastructure and advanced the world beyond its pre-industrial state.
Conquest of the world's Western Continent began with a straightforward "shock and awe" campaign that made the most of their remaining technology. Shuttles carried loads of Sith and Troopers to the few large cities on the continent. Blaster fire rained down from the skies, shattering fortifications and spreading terror before the ships landed and unloaded their deadly cargoes. Using their combination of Force techniques and advanced technologies, the Sith and trooper forces were able to overwhelm the demoralised and weakened defenders, allowing them to take the targeted cities. The surviving leaders were forced to swear fealty to the Chiruq throne.
While Chiruq now controlled those cities, their command of the continent was far from complete. Much of its population were scattered and tribal, spread across small villages and other communities. Even allowing for those that swore fealty to the now-conquered city-states, most of the continent's population were unaffected by the devastation that the Sith had unleashed. To this end, Chiruq launched their second campaign, one that used the forces of the World Core and their subjects. Fleets of sea-going vessels traveled to the Western Continent's shores, carrying armies of tribal warriors under the leadership of Sith or World Core shamans.
These armies slowly advanced across the continent, conquering whatever communities they found along the way. For the most part, the Chiruq and their allies relied on a combination of overwhelming numbers and their mastery of the Force to subdue their opponents, but this process did not guarantee victories. There were those cases where opponents had various advantages that they used to hold off their attackers. Some of the worst came when the defenders counted their own Force users among their ranks, which often produced unexpected opposition and considerable losses. In such cases, the Chiruq would be forced to intervene with their troopers, shuttles or even just sheer numbers of Sith, all of which were resources they could ill-afford to squander.
None the less, the Imperium were eventually able to bring the entire Western Continent under their control. The process was long and laborious, taking years before the last major holdouts were subdued. While the campaign had been long and bloody, the Chiruq had also done their best to try and minimise losses among their conquered peoples. This was not driven out of any desire to prevent suffering, but rather to preserve resources while making good their own losses. Most importantly, the Imperium did their best to capture enemy Force users so that they could be indoctrinated into their own growing ranks.
Discovery[]
With the Western Continent now subdued, the Chiruq turned towards the Eastern Continent. Far less populated then its counterparts, the Eastern Continent consisted of vast swathes of empty and uninhabited terrain. For the most part, the natives knew very little about it, with most information coming in the form of legends and hearsay. Ultimately, shuttle overflights were needed to establish the locations of targets and key locations for their planned invasion. One of the shuttles involved in these flights was lost due to a mechanical failure caused by excessive wear, a sign of the problems that they were facing.
None the less, the invasion of the Eastern Continent followed the same pattern as the Western one. High-value targets, like the few cities on the continent, were targeted with shuttle-based assaults by Sith and troopers. The rest of the continent was to be handled by a conventional sea-borne invasion by their conscripted armies. With much of the Eastern Continent's thin population concentrated on the coast, the result was that the conquest of the continent went off far faster then it had with the western continent. However, that still left much of the interior of the continent unexplored.
While shuttle flights had mapped the continent on a broad scale, the Imperium had very little actual on the ground knowledge of what lay within. With the failure of their advanced technology now becoming a reality, Chiruq wanted to know as much about this world that would be their home as possible while they still had the means. Expeditions were launched to scour the continent's interior and learn more about it and its secrets. Key among them was one simple question as to why it was so sparsely inhabited. What they found would profoundly shape their future.
The explorers had discovered the ruins of a city, one that had been clearly built by a technologically advanced, space-faring civilisation. Among other things, the Imperium's researchers located examples of various devices among the ruins, including computers, droids, weapons and even spacecraft. While most of these were completely inoperative, analysis revealed that they were of a broadly comparable technological level to their own. These relics were carefully studied and preserved alongside the Sith's own so that they could also be kept for the future.
However, there was also a lack of records to indicate who had built the city and, more to the point, what had happened to them. The best that could be summarised was that its inhabitants were human, and that they were not native to the world. Rather, the city had been built as a part of a colonisation effort. They concluded that the human inhabitants of the world were descendants of these colonists who had technologically regressed while losing track of their own history. However, that also beggared further questions of where these colonists had come from and how it was that they had fallen so far.
While the Imperium's scientists were studying these ruins, their military was advancing through the continent, conquering those communities that it could find. This campaign became a long, drawn-out affair due to two factors. The first was the often isolated nature of these communities, with long stretches of jungle and other rugged terrain between them. The second was the Imperium's failing technological base. Their few shuttles were becoming increasingly unreliable, and were short on fuel. Blasters were running out of power, with no way to recharge them. Attrition and a lack of maintenance had claimed most of their Battle Droids. And these were just some of the technological hurdles they were facing.
After several more years, the Impireum had bought the entire planet under their control. As they had with their initial conquests, Chiruq sought to integrate their conquered peoples, drawing on their cultures and teachings while integrating them with the others in order to create a synthesis, one that would form into a new society. Their goal was to create something that would last and endure what he saw as a looming darkness. By the best reckoning of the Imperium's scientists, the last of their advanced technologies would fail within the next generation. After that, it would take centuries to recover. Chiruq's goal was to create the stability that would allow that process to occur.
Dark Age[]
The scientists' projections proved to be accurate; within thirty years, the last of the technology that the Sith had bought with them on the Distant Land had failed. Only a few items remained functional, most notably their Lightsabers, the surviving examples of which were preserved so that they could be passed down to future generations. Otherwise, the Chiruq Imperium was quickly regressing to a pre-industrial technological base, one that represented the world as they had found it.
Chiruq would rule for many more decades before old age claimed them; by that point they were the last survivor from the Distant Land. Like their fellows, they were interned within the ship, a portion of which had become a tomb for the Sith who had survived the crash. They were succeed by his oldest child from his marriage to Lavella, thus propagating the legacy that he had established.