Semi-OT: The Icaran Empire Preview (the book one)

[Hunpecked]

Some more thoughts on the early Icaran society described by Starhawk:

In an era of squabbling city-states I would expect even a peaceful and intellectual state to have an army at least comparable to its neighbors'. In fact, I would say such an army would be a prerequisite for the establishment of a prosperous culture; otherwise it's too tempting a target for its poorer, more warlike neighbors. It's also more difficult to expand a peacetime army in an emergency without a significant cadre of trained, experienced soldiers and a pre-existing military infrastructure. A prosperous state could fill in with mercenaries, of course, but the money would eventually run out.

I like the idea of starting a "future" AAR far in the past. On the other hand, it's a lot of work to rewrite thousands of years of history convincingly, even as an overview. In addition, when writing the "real" story, the author constantly has to keep in mind that most of the history we take for granted probably never happened in his fictional universe.

[Starhawk]

Hunpecked you bring up several good points, however the main point of them having such a poor quality army is because the Triumverate were rather corrupt and incompitent at their jobs which is why nearly half the Icaran populace was wiped out in the war. They also did suffer famine because of how fast they needed to raise an army, which also led in large part to the rapid defeat of Icaran armies.

The main point about rewriting thousands of years of history is also very good but the Icarans must have that history going back millenia or else it wouldn't really make sense to have a culture like Icara just sort of pop up. Any tips or suggestions you might have would be more then welcome of course.

[El_Phil]

Interesting certainly and very comprehensive.

A couple of points though:
** Too many secretly built fleets. It's hard enough to hide surface ships from satellites, how are you going to hide not just one ship but a fleet load? This particularly applies to the Nazi rebellion, but also the UN Fleet. The asteroid belt isn't that dense so you can't hide much there.

** Everyone seems far too welcoming of the Icarans. I don't care how nice the laws are, or that I'm a full 'member' of the Empire. My countries being invaded damn it, I'm joining the resistance and death to the invader.! This is a fairly common response to invasion.

** Centuries long warfare and then the ESS just roll over and get lead by Icarans? Like the previous point, far too nice.

** Full marks to the Yuan, somone hands you something you've never seen (A flintlock), replicate it, mass produce it and train people to use it all ultra quickly. Amazing! Metallurgy and precision engineering just like that. The flintlock is 3rd/4th generation firearm and not simple, hell its a 1600s weapon. You aren't going to reverse engineer it easily or quickly.

One technical point, Bronze (being an alloy) was stronger and more expensive than Iron. The reason the Iron age followed the Bronze age is that with cheap Iron you could make lots of tools, etc that you wouldn't use expensive bronze for. As an example Roman officers had Bronze swords while soldiers had cheap Iron swords.

Still it's very ambitious and a fleshed out back story helps a great deal I always think. Especially if your planning a series of books.

[Starhawk]

Hey El-Phil beleive it or not it's good to hear from you

Anyway seriously on to your points

Point 1: The Nazi's are going to have had underground facilities to build their ships, remember this is early space age and starships of the era were "tiny".

And with modern stealth you can hide a surface ship from a satelite (Sea Shadow I beleive is the name of the new stealth ship) and there are plans for entire warships built around Sea Shadow tech.

Assuming the Icaranverse is a few centuries ahead of us their stealth is probobly pretty good.


Point about the UN fleet, you do realize how BIG a solar system is right? The Icarans though powerful were hardly everywhere and considering in this point in history it still took months for a ship to travel from planet to planet it would actually be pretty easy to hide a few dozen relatively small ships in the asteroid belt.

These are not the multi hundred ship kilometer+ sized ships we see later the Icaran navy was at best a hundred and fifty ships most of which were only a few hundred feet long.

Point 2: Well with secret police (I.e shadow daggers) and a government that is not above taking out entire rebellious elements and slaughtering them we are looking at a situation where it becomes a "better red then dead" situation. An iron fist hidden in a velvet glove, the Icarans would treat you as a full citizen if you complied or kill you if you didn't.

Look at Rome they were not forever at war with their newly added provinces, though they did deal with "minor" raids and border skirmishes throuhgout their history. No doubt Icara would deal with the same but that's not really worth mentioning with an Imperial scholar describing millenia past events.

Point 3: It was after both sides had been nuked and were getting their asses handed to them left and right (if you'll pardon my expression). It was simple survival they still did not much like or trust one another.

And after being shot into a foreign star system where the bulk of the populace landed on Icara (and were Icaran) the ESS holdouts still took a century to integrate and even afterwards we see a streak of defiance in that they have distinctly asian names and culture and also often refuse to intermarry with the "Icaran race". But sheer numbers is on the side of the Icarans as is economic strength and military power, and after heading into the stars once again they found aliens and other human empires that would be more then happy to watch them burn (or in the case of some aliens more then happy to EAT them).

So it is simple survival again, rebel against Icara maybe succeed but get eaten by an alien or absorbed by a human Empire who didn't much like your ancestors Or join Icara and live to reap the rewards.

Kind of like Russia and the US after the Soviet collapsed Russia still doesn't much LIKE us and we don't much like them but we kind of need one another for the moment.

And if you notice a little bit the Asian populace in a good part is still rather distinctive and it's own small "Empire" within the Icaran Empire. The bulk of Brandenburg, the entirety of Sparta and many other worlds are almost entirely "asiatic" in heritage. But after centuries the two cultures being forced to rely on one another have by and large merged into the single Icaran Empire.

Point 4: The Chinese have always been adept at scientific adaptation and development, hell the Japanese who were non-to bright in any comparison to the west or China figured out how to replicate firearms on their own in rather short order. The Chinese already had a basic understanding of gunpowder and rockets, and in fact were well on their way to producing firearms of their own almost in parallel to the west so if you introduce hundreds of captured Icaran weapons and I have no doubt a culture that felt threatened with it's survival would replicate it quickly.

As far as training large numbers of men the Chinese always did have the ability to raise vast armies (I beleive the Qin had over 400,000 men) and with muskets you don't much need training, which is why they were so great. Add to that the Yuan went on their own little bender of conquest and they would expand their own manpower base after a few decades.

I didn't say their replicated firearms were as good either, just copies but given Chinese population vs an invading army that had already been blooded in previous wars and overwhelming numbers of slightly inferior quality beat out Icaran tech.

Point 5: Thanks I'll fix that ASAP

[El_Phil]

Stealth is not invisible. This is a very important point, tiny RCS (Radar Cross Section) is just that. Tiny, but still there. You just have to get closer to find/track the stealthy object. For an object lesson ask the F-117 crew shot down in the Balkans. Still, clever tech (but it will bite you later)

People would notice the big convoys traipsing off into the asteriod belt, sure the solar system is big but not that big. Sure you mine asteroids but you need a crew. And lots of materials you aren't going to get from asteroids. So you need freighters, which all the clever Icaran sensors are going to pick up. (Told you it would bite you )

If your keeping ESS and Icara still not happy (or grudging but with occasional clashes) that works alot more for me.

A flintlock is complex, as in massively so. The first mass production was called 'Armoury practice' because you needed standardised parts to build and repair at any speed. The tolerances and metallurgy needed was the results of decades, even centuries, of poking and improvement of match/wheel lock rifles. It's not just gunpowder, it's not even the metal working technology, it's the skills and equipment.

Resistance to foreign occupiers is almost human nature, unless the current regime is hated, even then the occupiers aren't liked. Rome was the lightest of imperial goverments. Pay us a levy and don't attack our troops. That was about it. The fringe benefits (roads, infrastructure in general, etc) were also great. They still weren't liked. And like all empires it declined and fell to paraphrase Gibbon. So an empire lasting millenia, that didn't face major rebellions does seem odd.

Finally, because I like to end on a joke, The underground Nazi base. So they'd be the the hollow earth Nazis not the space Nazis based on the dark side of the moon? It is very sci-fi cliche you must admit.

[Starhawk]

Point 1: Well in regards to stealth, it would be hard to know where the resources going to build the ships are actually going and what they are doing, you may SUSPECT what they are doing but you'll never know for sure until they do something.

Point 2: Well as I already said the Icarans during this time were no where near as advanced as they are later, at this point their best sensor tech was Lidar which does not have great range and is relatively easily interfered with. Plus remember the Icarans mainly held the inner most system which means they didn't do much or have many resources in the outter system so if the UN had a colony on one of the outer worlds and simply sent "colonists" they could disguise crew movements.

Point 3: Yep Asians and Icarans still have some tension, although it's less so in those Asians recruited into the armed forces and Fedsec since they are given intensive background and "purity" checks before being allowed to join. (Purity in this case does not refer to race but instead family lineage and loyalty, so basically if your family shows signs of disloyalty your not permited to join the armed forces)
One of the reasons the Spartans (though asian) are some of the toughest and most loyal defenders of the Icaran Empire is in part because they see it as their duty to protect mankind moreso then Icara it's self. Though of course as in any Empire you have your diehard absolute loyalists to the Empire (and a great many in fact).

Point 4: Resistance to foreign powers is human nature yes, but after a generation or so that resistance would either come to an end or there would be none left to resist. Remember the Icarans took nearly a thousand years to expand to control roughly 1/4 of the globe, that's actually a long "Foundation" time for an Empire the size of the British empire and more then enough time to secure provinces that may be more likely to fight.

Well the propoganda value of calling rebellions "minor" is pretty obvious I'd think Of course there were rebellions and these were brutally supressed by the Icaran armies.
I mean note during the "Minor" Nazi rebellion Whole Cities were blown to hell by Icaran forces. During it's earliest history Icara was in fact more brutal to traitors then even the Roman Empire which either scared people into being subserviant or brought those who would fight out as they rebelled or resisted.

Point 5: I probobly misworded my statement sorry. The Chinese in this timeframe (Icara's not ours) were already developing firearms in Parallel to the west, they knew how to make guns just not anything they saw fit to put into mass production or use. Just like the real Chinese they tended to be a little stuck in their ways as in "If a sword works why buy a gun?" until they got hit with Icaran guns.
They captured said guns and copied them as best they could, but they still had THOUSANDS of Icaran flintlocks after defeating even a single regiment and they decided to copy them as best they could.
I'll probobly say they had wheel or matchlocks for the most part since you are right Flintlocks are hard as all get out to make. But they still would have had enough Icaran guns to turn around on the Icarans, and a musket ball is a musket ball so that wouldn't be hard to make ammunition.
Granted they'd have a lot fewer cannons as an artillery crew is likely to spike their gun and run for it if they have to.

LOL Well since the real world Nazis loved hiding stuff underground I assume their counterparts in the Icaranverse would use pretty similar tactics for hiding their own rebellious activities And besides that controlling the dark side of the moon woulda been great till they nuked it lol

[El_Phil]

Well it all hangs together a bit more now, this is a good thing. As longs as its a nice propaganda history, or better 'Approved' history. I think that fits, a nice "Historically clarified" official history, very Icaran I think.

However, you don't know your fictional Nazis and this can be a crippling problem. There are three main types, Jungle, Hollow Earth and Space.
1. Jungle. Fleeing to Brazil/Colombia/The Amazon this group have the simple aim of cloning Hitler. Or, if they're lucky, growing a new body to implant their 'Hitler brain in a jar' they smuggled out of Berlin. Using evil genetics and much manical laughter they hide away and generally aren't much of a threat.
2. Hollow Earth. Following maps this group ran to the North Pole, found the hole and climbed inside the hollow earth. Once inside they produced a series of elaborate machines designed to make the earth appear not hollow to seismologists. With this done they settled back to control world affairs with their vast wealth. The source of this wealth is mysterious, perhaps lava mines, perhaps they found a lost world inside the hollow earth (ala Doug McClure), who knows?
3. Space. Fleeing on a V4 rocket a vast evil base was established on the dark side of the moon. This group contained most of the mad scientists who are devoted to making giant super weapons to threaten Earth with, hence why their existence was hushed up by both the US and Russia. In between building super lasers their hobbies include treaties with Aliens, conspiracies and plotting elaborate revenge on the Hollow Earth Nazis, because they got the far better deal.

For you see all three groups dislike each other and want to destroy the other two. Should they ever work together we area all surely doomed. Doomed do you here? Doomed!

[Hunpecked]

Very interesting discussion between El_Phil and Starhawk. Some more comments:

The "weak" Icaran army: Ah, now I get it. The army was a basically sound institution in temporary decline because of neglect and mismanagement. The resulting opportunity was just too good for the Spartans to pass up.

Firearms: I agree with El_Phil on the difficulty of adopting a new weapons technology. The whole process should go a lot faster, however, if the importer can capture/bribe the needed experts and/or buy sufficient weapons from smugglers or neutral parties while building up its own infrastructure.

Easy conquests: I can think of one way an enemy state could seemingly collapse after a long resistance. Suppose the Icarans developed extensive and sophisticated subversion, propaganda, and "black ops" capabilities. When the effects of propaganda, bribes, blackmail, assassination, sabotage, etc. reach the "tipping point", resistance could collapse in a relatively short time. Of course the Icarans would also have to develop effective assimilation techniques or, as El_Phil points out, their new "assets" would be more like ticking time bombs.

Decline and fall: El_Phil also has a good point about the long span of the Icaran Empire; such an empire is unique in human history. Egypt, Macedon, Rome, Mongolia, Spain, Turkey, and England built great empires, but in the end they were all temporary. Various combinations of internal decay, rebellion, and outside pressure brought them all down eventually. The Icaran empire has to have a character not found in these other states, a character that's flexible enough to adapt to changing circumstances but durable enough to last millenia. As I recall, Starhawk has written about advanced education/indoctrination techniques and the option of "removing" an ineffective Praetor in the "modern" Icaran empire, which is a fair start.

Iron: I browsed around the web a bit, and found sites confirming El_Phil's data on iron's drawbacks compared to bronze. There is speculation that iron finally supplanted bronze in the Med mainly because of some kind of disruption of the tin trade, making bronze almost unobtainable.

The story might make sense if the Icarans had developed steel, but that would require substantial advances in smelting and metalworking. Perhaps the inventive Icarans had been playing with steel for some years as a curiosity (its military potential overlooked by the Triumvirate), and only turned to it in earnest out of desperation.

Alternatively, maybe the Icarans' armor advance was in design rather than material. I know little about armor, but I understand the Romans wore mail instead of the Greek hoplite breastplate. I gather mail is lighter than plate armor, so perhaps that would give the Icaran infantry the edge on their opponents. However, as I recall one disadvantage of mail is the labor required to make it.

Any armor experts on the forum?

[El_Phil]

Hunpecked said:
The story might make sense if the Icarans had developed steel, but that would require substantial advances in smelting and metalworking. Perhaps the inventive Icarans had been playing with steel for some years as a curiosity (its military potential overlooked by the Triumvirate), and only turned to it in earnest out of desperation.

Alternatively, maybe the Icarans' armor advance was in design rather than material. I know little about armor, but I understand the Romans wore mail instead of the Greek hoplite breastplate. I gather mail is lighter than plate armor, so perhaps that would give the Icaran infantry the edge on their opponents. However, as I recall one disadvantage of mail is the labor required to make it.

Any armor experts on the forum?

Useable steel is clever metalurgy, far beyond anything involved in Bronze. The main clever factor is the carbon level, get that wrong and you get horribly brittle steel, or no real advantage. You reforge iron several times and it gets stronger though, but not massively so.

In short the irons you'd be producing are going to be horrible to work with as well as being much more expensive in both fuel and labour.

If the Icarans can pull a blast furnace out of somewhere (just a really huge and very hot bellows forge) and kick out some cast iron, take part of that, heat it in air a great deal to get wrought iron and then mix the cast and wrough together they might get steel. Or a horrible mess.

I can't think of any other possible way to get decent steels that early though. Of course just because its possible, doesn't mean it's plausible.

[Starhawk]

Hunpecked said:
Very interesting discussion between El_Phil and Starhawk. Some more comments:

The "weak" Icaran army: Ah, now I get it. The army was a basically sound institution in temporary decline because of neglect and mismanagement. The resulting opportunity was just too good for the Spartans to pass up.

Firearms: I agree with El_Phil on the difficulty of adopting a new weapons technology. The whole process should go a lot faster, however, if the importer can capture/bribe the needed experts and/or buy sufficient weapons from smugglers or neutral parties while building up its own infrastructure.

Easy conquests: I can think of one way an enemy state could seemingly collapse after a long resistance. Suppose the Icarans developed extensive and sophisticated subversion, propaganda, and "black ops" capabilities. When the effects of propaganda, bribes, blackmail, assassination, sabotage, etc. reach the "tipping point", resistance could collapse in a relatively short time. Of course the Icarans would also have to develop effective assimilation techniques or, as El_Phil points out, their new "assets" would be more like ticking time bombs.

Decline and fall: El_Phil also has a good point about the long span of the Icaran Empire; such an empire is unique in human history. Egypt, Macedon, Rome, Mongolia, Spain, Turkey, and England built great empires, but in the end they were all temporary. Various combinations of internal decay, rebellion, and outside pressure brought them all down eventually. The Icaran empire has to have a character not found in these other states, a character that's flexible enough to adapt to changing circumstances but durable enough to last millenia. As I recall, Starhawk has written about advanced education/indoctrination techniques and the option of "removing" an ineffective Praetor in the "modern" Icaran empire, which is a fair start.

Iron: I browsed around the web a bit, and found sites confirming El_Phil's data on iron's drawbacks compared to bronze. There is speculation that iron finally supplanted bronze in the Med mainly because of some kind of disruption of the tin trade, making bronze almost unobtainable.

The story might make sense if the Icarans had developed steel, but that would require substantial advances in smelting and metalworking. Perhaps the inventive Icarans had been playing with steel for some years as a curiosity (its military potential overlooked by the Triumvirate), and only turned to it in earnest out of desperation.

Alternatively, maybe the Icarans' armor advance was in design rather than material. I know little about armor, but I understand the Romans wore mail instead of the Greek hoplite breastplate. I gather mail is lighter than plate armor, so perhaps that would give the Icaran infantry the edge on their opponents. However, as I recall one disadvantage of mail is the labor required to make it.

Any armor experts on the forum?

Regarding the army: Yeah you've got it now The army was essentially a sound force except for that it was neglected by a poor government.

Re: Firearms, like I said I will change it so that the Yuan basically just kept the guns from any Icaran soldiers they killed. Then replicated older more primitive firearms and relied on their massed numbers to win the war for them.

Re: Easy conquests, you pretty much got the Idea Hunpecked, Icara used its military might to conquer a territory and then its political might to secure it. Enough bribes/assassinations and purifications and after a while the resistance fades into nothingness.

RE: Rise and Fall, well the main reason Macedon fell is lack of an heir, Rome fell because of its own grotesque decadance and the careless spending of massive ammounts of hard cash that could only be replaced via conquest added to political corruption.

Icara is different from these Empires in many ways:

1. They consider their Praetor a living saint chosen by God himself, and unlike Romans they do not consider the Praetor something replaceable in the political sense (Basically the Praetor's family has no competition for the position).
The Praetorian family is not inbred and is in fact strictly monitored by family historians to ensure that this never becomes an issue, the good thing here is also that since the females can not ever become Praetor and only the eldest daughter or sister of the Praetor can give birth to an heir if the Praetanii (Praetor's wife) can not, none of his male relatives count as heirs unless they are eldest Nephew or Eldest grandson.
There are very few cases in history of corrupt Praetors and their degenerate eldest heirs running into "accidents" within a short period of time, however there is always a clear line of succession.

2. The Icaran Empire is a much more "friendly" appearing Empire in that they did not ever take human slaves, and in fact liberated tens of thousands of slaves from other Empires as they conquered their way across the globe which allows them to potray themselves somewhat saintly even in a primitive society.

3. Any traitor to the Empire is not simply seen as a traitor by the people but as a Heretic because they betrayed not simply a man made Empire, but they betrayed the God given Rule of the Praetor. This added fire of hatred toward traitors is a good tool to keep people loyal because heretics suffer very unpleasent deaths as do any of their family that show the same inclination. (This is early Empire by time we reach the space age and beyond though traitors are still seen as heretics they are generally either executed alone (I.e their entire family isn't killed) or banished to the frontiers. Though banishment is in and of its self a near death sentence depending on what the current "frontier" happens to be.

4. The Icarans have in fact evolved slowly on a "visible" level for most of their traditions remain the same as they were for millenia, however they do adapt and modernize and though by our standards the modern Empire is "harsh" it is a varitable pussycat compared to Early Imperial history. Hell the First Icaran Crusade led to more people being executed after the fighting then died during, and though this Crusade is seen as the first step towards Empire it is also seen as a tragic period for Icara.

5. Icaran children are raised in a rather militarized education system that raises them to respect and idealize not "The State" but instead "The Community", self denial for the good of all and a level of community awareness we only wish modern citizens of the modern world had. Don't take this to assume Icarans are drones because overall they are actually proudly individualistic, it is just that they are raised by their parents and their school system to beleive that the good of others is more important then themselves.


Add to this Icara forbade all forms of wellfare back in the early 1590s IY and instead instituted a forced work ethic where if you can't find a job by time you reach a certain age the government gives you one. (And you don't get to pick and choose) In turn however you do receive fair pay and labor hours. This plus the fact that Icara gives enough technology only ot enhance human workers ability to produce goods (and not to replace humans themselves) and you have virtually zero unemployment.
Those who are unemployed out of any reason beyond mental or physical inability are seen as "draggers" and looked down upon by virtually all Icarans.

6. Icara has actually "fallen" twice and had to completely reform it's society, The Icaran Principality was replaced by the Icaran Empire after the Triumverate was overthrown. And the second time after the UN (Later to be known as Sol Coalition) drove Icara and the ESS out of Sol the Icaran Empire was replaced by the Icaran Royal Empire with the merged ESS populace and culture influencing Icaran development.
The Icarans however are remarkably stubborn people and very traditionalist which helped greatly in ensuring that some form of Icara survived long enough to grow again.

7. The final Major difference in Icaran society is that the nobility is as answerable to the law as an average citizen, Nobles don't get "privilage" in any way except the fact that they are usually pretty wealthy and the amount of authority they have within their province.
Politically corrupt or cruel nobles have been removed by the Military on more then one occasion throughout history and many more have been executed for causing needless Icaran deaths.

Even if a Noble decided they would rebel it would be incredibly difficult for them to gain any support, much less from the military. And if they did manage to gain enough support to pull for independence the full might of Icara's available forces will be dropped on their heads shortly there after.

The only noble who ever got close to killing the Praetor led an army of some 25,000 people in the year 1150 IY but this army was butchered to the last man and woman by the "Praetor's Own" and local army regiments, even average citizens swarmed over the traitors and almost 8,000 Icaran civilians died on the blades of the traitor's army. Not only was this noble executed but every single male in his family was drawn and quartered and every woman and girl rendered baron. (As I said Early Imperial history was Brutal and is not often discussed by modern Icarans)

Icara managed to ride out these rough times and eventually became a society that learned moderation in it's responses, though of course by modern US standards they are still brutal and harsh.