In this topic ill try to record my experiences of playing stellaris as the stargazer empire. in character of a chronicler hired by the empire to write down their victories and devastating defeats. I’ve already played a bit so the first issue is going to be a bit different than the following ones. Ill post the first report(with images!) once im home from work!
-bleeps(she/her)
14.06.2263
I have been requested by Heir Zenith Wit, Empress Talon wit’s first son to start to record our deeds, good and bad for future generations and so i shall, it is a true honour I’m given this task and hope not to disappoint Our Empress and Heir.
First i shall recall our deeds from previous years since we have been a space faring empire now for a solid 60 years and much has changed between us proudly putting a station orbiting the Dark star and now.
We where thrust into exploring beyond our star system by force. Our mining outpost set on the barren planet of Sprawl Vex was apparently hiding the vile cultists of the Imperial cult. Traitors of the empire who pray to the first emperor, Wilhelm wit, glory to his name. For some unknown reason they do this even though it has been said by Wilhelm himself and written in our laws that any type of religion, including that of the worship of the imperial house, or individual emperors is forbidden and goes strictly against our goals of peace by assimilation.
It was thought this cult was completely eradicated in the year 1997 but it seems they somehow survived. They abused the shipyard on the outpost to build highly experimental void warships. Something the ministry of scientific progress thought up but was never really planned to be used. After all at the time we thought to be alone in the galaxy and we already unified or star system under the gentle embrace of the empire.
They used these ships to seize the outpost and demanded the disbandment of the Imperial council. Our empress was disgusted with this religious zealotry and saw no other option than to produce our own warships and prepare for civil war. Our first battle in space was a costly one on both sides but we won and the cultist had to limp away, they fled the star system and so a hunt to take down this cult started.\
We expanded into other star systems with our fist galactic fleet “the Counter Crusade” as its vanguard, science vessels and construction ships following close behind, ready to discover new worlds and exploit them for materials to give us an edge against our enemy.
As we did we quickly discovered we where not alone in the galaxy, a true shock for us since we where quite certain the galaxy was dead. Our neighbour to the east, The Opal Rivers(we’ve decided to calculate N/S/W/E by using our home Nova Aern’s position from the galactic centre.) Seemed to be quite receptive to our ideas and would’ve been a fine trading partner if it wasn’t for its imperialistic expansions into areas we where already exploiting of the ongoing civil war. So eventually we had to go to war with them to reclaim our systems which has forever soured our relationship.
To the north Idiotic spiritualists formed a federation, theyre called the Selenic federation, warriors of Altair and the warriors of Farreach cove. These too encroached on our systems and war was inevitable. As this is being recorded we are in our second war with this group of fanatics, unlike the Opal rivers they prove to be quite the opponent, a great testing ground for our fledgling navy.
During the first war against the zealots we discovered more and more countries. Our scientists really have to check their theories about this “dead galaxy” thing. it is filled with life!
With so many different ideas and cultures we decided to setup the galactic community, a place where we can steer these peoples into the right direction and prepare them for eventual assimilation into our beautiful empire. It seemed only logical to our Empress that we should spread our prosperity and well working system for global peace across the galaxy, if not for the betterment of others, then for the safety of ours. We haven’t been so vulnerable to foreign invasions since the great wars of old.
There are grand plans made to secure galactic peace but first well need a solid position, both diplomatically and territory wise.
We are apparently on a crossroads between multiple empires, a curse and a blessing or navy will exploit.
Once the zealots know their place we will expand south, secure this sector of the galaxy and minimise the amount of regions possible enemies could invade us from.
For now we’ll focus on the task at hand.
Until the next report,
Minister of State of the Stellar Stargazer empire,
Aragon Pager.
-bleeps(she/her)
13.01.2264
The people of the galaxy has come together for the first time to decide on laws that would affect everyone who’s part of the galactic community. The first issue to pass is the formation of the galactic market. A rather meaningless law to us. We haven’t been using currency for ages now. There is no greater reward to labour than serving the empire and the next generation. But this capitalist motion could allow us to trade in surplus for materials we are in deficit of.
21.09.2264
Disaster struck! A set of voidworms snuck up on the Darkstar naval division, garrisoning the vital choke point of Tediss, keeping out the forces of the Warriors of Farreach cove. The division had to retreat and we lost contact with them, the famous Counter crusade fleet is deeper into the south and in no position to take that system back from these beasts.
12.01.2266
The Anti Crusade has been on a constant retreat…. further into enemy land. we’re being hounded by enemy fleet that are just a bit stronger than the Counter Crusade. So we keep up the pace and maintain at least one star system distance between us and the enemy.
06.07.2266
The Darkstar naval division has reported for duty once more! We’ll have to reinforce and repair what managed to survive their retreat before we can send them back into battle. We’ll hope that they can fight off the enemy alone since the Counter Crusade is still on its offensive… retreat. we still haven’t found a great name for this “tactic”
21.04.2269
The empress has died! I fear the stress of this war has gotten to her. Between this and the previous log we had our navies pull manoeuvres never seen before to stay on fighting strength. The people of the Empire gave a grand parade across our entire world. Her daughter Zenith Wit will ascend the throne soon. She has been directly involved with the war so far, Our late empress had to hold her back from directly commanding a fleet. I feel we can expect no surrender nor white peace, something our Empress was thinking about a year or two back.
11.08.2269
Our new empress zenith’s first action was a surprise to be sure. She opened up the communication channels once more with the Opal rivers and managed to mend our relations with them. Even guaranteeing their independence if need be. A surprise move to be sure but very intelligent, now with our southern and eastern borders secure by deals and pacts we only have to focus on those we are already at war with.
13.02.2271
Somehow vile criminal xenos from across the galaxy managed to start some kind of crime ring on our capital. This goes against the whole idea of our working together for the empire. Those who felt tempted by these criminals shall be executed for their betrayal against the empire and those xenos who named themselves the Gapra family can expect war. Their members on our homeworld will be executed and put on display and the moment we manage to get over there their organisation will be disbanded. There is no space in this galaxy for parasites.
how did they even manage to get over here?!
08.06.2272
The viorics south of us pledged fealty to us in secrecy, a great opportunity to further weaken our rivals north. since they are a protectorate under the warriors of Altair. And if we manage to get them to our side publicly it would expand our reach massively
03.07.2272
Empress’ Zenith second great action is about to start! Together with our minister of defence Halo Whisper She has been planning a great offensive to end the war with one violent thrust. We had to keep it secret until both fleet in the navy where re-united at the capital and ready to move in, which has now happened. They are both fully refitted with the latest tech and completely refilled up on combat strength. Now we push north once more. seize territories along the way and lay siege upon their capital world.
-bleeps(she/her)
12.03.2273
The great battle commences! Its our full navy versus the combined navies of our three rivals. Whoever comes out of this victorious will be the victor of the war. While the total ships we fielded is significantly fewer, our weapons are a lot more advanced. all together it could swing either way, we rely upon our brave warriors upon our ships to make the empire proud!
12.11.2273
Victory! it was an incredible long battle but in the end we scraped out a victory. Most of our navy has been completely destroyed but we now have free reign to push as far in as we can. And minister of defence Halo whisper intend to do so, ordering our weakened forces to get as far as possible but to retreat immediately if they meet any type of resistance.
17.03.2276
The enemy managed to raise another fleet at their capital world. Our navy has been ordered to retreat back to our lines, luckily we’ve been raising a third fleet ourselves so that one at full strength will be able to continue the push. We keep up the pressure and bring this war to an end! if this push fails the war could be considered lost.
01.09.2277
We have reached the capital with the emergency fleet! We started the first orbital bombardment in the history of our empire, a tactic the alien commander Xondar proposed to us. He joined the empire not long ago, seeking a strong empire he could serve in war. After he went through our assimilation process Xondar has been officially made a fellow stargazer and given control over the emergenct fleet. And Empress be great he has shown us his mettle!
The first bombardment!
Admiral Xondar
27.01.2279
Victory! The enemy relented after the continuos bombardment of their capital world and the upcoming threat of a ground invasion as we brought or land armies in position to secure whatever was left between the rubble. In the treaty we demanded their borders to be pushed back to a favourable position for our defences, most of their navy to be scrapped and their fortresses to be mothballed to make sure a war of this scale cannot happen again between us. Peace in our time!
25.07.2279
We have started to return to normal civilian live, reorganising the fleet and focusing on internal issues, like the decline in population this war has caused. The Counter crusade will be renamed to the Aern defence fleet, the emergency fleet being the newest type of ships we have right now shall be rebranded to the Northern division and the remaining fleet will be mothballed and scrapped for material.
18.06.2282
Aragon Pager has sadly died and was no longer to continue the chronicles of our empire My name’s Halo Whisper. Minister of Defence and since recent war hero.
Aragon very much kept to the propaganda of the empire, telling our greatest achievements and lowest lows but not writing about the issues we face on a daily basis. So let me explain what was not told. our energy grid is on a downwards spiral, the war took out many men and women of the empire and left places on the work floor open that can not be filled back up. Our navy even after scrapping an entire division is still costing a lot of materials, more than we can handle. the alloy forges creating most of the materials we need to keep the navy running is spending more material than they can produce and the war against crime on the planet’s surface is taking a toll. We hope nurturing our newly gained star systems will be able to fix our economy but if not possible im planning a plan B. I’m raising another navy but this one will not be under direct control of the empire. A private navy we can rely on when needed but besides that it manages itself. Ill discuss with the empress if they would be allowed to be hired in peace time by other countries out there which could give us a nice income of materials and plunder from wars we are not involved with.
01.09.2283
Vior decided that today is the day they rise up against their opressors, without informing us. We are now once again at war at one of our most vulnerable moments. I do not like it one bit but we shall help were we can. Having Vior on our side is vital to the prosperity of the empire.
02.06.2289
Our relations with the opal rivers have once again soured, they closed the borders and declared us their rival after they sided with the First council, a cult of undead beings just out of our region of control. While this is a shame i dont think itll cause many issues. They can say whatever they want they wont invade us anytime soon, their new overlord is far out of reach and they know our navy has utterly destroyed theirs in a very short time last time we clashed. All bark. no bite.
13.06.2290
The war for Vior has ended with a resounding victory for us. The warriors of Alfair where forced to surrender Vior to us and we made them an automonous state under the empire. Something we haven’t done since pre-unification of our world. The Viorics get their own governing body for now and well inform them of our ways. Once they are considered proper stargazers we’ll integrate them properly into the empire.
The Viorics shared their information of the galaxy with us and it was quite the shock. Our position in this part of the galaxy is more tenuous than expected. The alliance of these religious zealots is a lot larger than expected.
We are currently in no position to take them on again. This discovery is a worrying development.
-bleeps(she/her)
13.10.2290
The Chinorr combine seeing our powerbase grow decided to join the empire similarly to the Viorics. We don’t have much documentation about them since they where initially just out of our reach and have been considered quite harmless. We are happy they joined on their own. They will not regret this.
14.01.2293
We finally managed to wipe out the Gapra family from our world. We found their final safe house and utterly destroyed it. Those who survived our attack where caught and publicly hanged for their crimes against our empire. With that we’ll be finally able to focus more on production and hopefully get out of this material deficit we still have.
We also found a potential planet to colonise, we are preparing to secure the area and send a ship that way to settle it. With this colonisation attempt we could double our production!
25.05.2294
Sage Blake, head of Research has always been obsessed with something he calls “kilo structures” buildings at least the size of a moon. He had some blueprints ready to construct a gigantic archive for all our trophies and grand history. The empress had no plans to actually construct this massive building, the archives below the palace suffice more than enough at the moment but with Sage’s new kilo structure idea, a Dyson swarm, the plan was put into action to use the archive as practice for building structures of that size.
If the archive is a success we shall immediately build a dyson swarm, the energy output this swarm could get from a sun could instantly fix our economy.
04.11.2298
Sage has come up with another plan to solve the many problems of our empire, our population is still quite small and needs to bolstered to further up the productivity required to get the empire to a desired state. So if our people do not grow fast enough, why not supplement them with machines? He proposed to the empress a plan to create Stargazer like automatons who can take over menial tasks and fill gaps within the army this way we can focus on more important things.
19.12.2301
Our empress died at the age of 87. May she rest in peace. She has carried us through our roughest times since we left our planet and left us with a platform to jump off into greatness from. Let us hope her daughter, and new empress Azur wit will take the opportunities left behind by her mother and bring us closer to galactic peace.
23.03.2304
We have settled a new world! In honour of our late empress it has been named Zenith in the Wimar Drift nebula. Now with owning two worlds our empress decided to rename our empire to the Interstellar Stargazer Empire. May these brave colonists stay safe and warm.
-bleeps(she/her)
09.12.2305
Our new world Zenith turns out to be biosynthetic. Nothing on this world has naturally evolved according to our scientist who went along during the settlement phase. It’s very impressive and i’m sure our scientists will have a great time discovering how this was made and hopefully are able to later down the line implement it on the many dead and useless planets that float through our controlled space.
01.01.2308
The grand archive was a resounding success! With this practice under our belt we immediately asked Sage to start producing these dyson swarms and finally save or economy once and for all.
26.01.2309
The situation on Zenith turns grim, an illness seems to be spreading that turns our people extremely aggressive. We have reports of fights in the streets, the breaking of windows in depots etc. It seems to be violence for the sake of violence. The empress asked if i could send in the army but i fear that they might get infected as well and that would cause only larger problems. For now ill send down some of these experimental automatons to see if they can maintain peace in some way.
17.06.2309
We found out the cause of this illness, a certain mushroom that grows upon this world. The robots have been ordered to eradicate all this mushrooms… and take some back for the scientists in case these could be used as biological weapons or supplements to our army.
15.01.2312
Ive decided to retire from my position as minister of defence and focus on other prospects. I’ve decided to give the honour of chronicling our progress to someone who ive considered to be friend, head of research Sage. Without him we would not have come this far.
-bleeps(she/her)
20.09.2319
Our new minister of war, Dixie Noir convinced the council now is the time for a third strike against the selenec federation and its allies. This third strike is not meant to utterly dismantle the federation but might be a possible outcome. The plan is to fully annex the selenec part of the federation. Most likely a new leader of the federation gets picked but it will remove one of our enemies and would be a major blow against that little club of religious idiots.
-bleeps(she/her)
30.10.2329
Our head of research, sage has regrettably died she died at a nice old age, never tiring on her job. For her inventions she will go down in history. Ufu up Khnu takes her place as head of research. A human by nature. We recently gained an influx of human migrants who were more than happy to fully assimilate into the empire and are now officially considered fellow Stargazers. I am the Minister of state, who proudly adapted our old assimilation systems to extra terrestrial beings like the humans. My name is Ell Monsoon.
16.11.2330
Our Empress died, leaving our country still embroiled in one of the largest wars we have seen so far. It seems we constantly get into bigger and bigger fights…
14.01.2331
The war has ended in a resounding victory of the empire! we annexed multiple countries and cause the collapse of their federation. The survivors of the war however quickly set up a new one, the pan galactic science assembly.
The fall of their homeworlds, now in our control caused a lot of empty space to appear, places we didnt lay claim on or had no control over during the military occupation. It’ll be a race with or neighbours to grab as much of this as possible.
-bleeps(she/her)
03.09.2331
We are barely recovering from the war and our agents tell us that supernova is preparing a war against us. Those anarchists probably want revenge against us from annexing their friends. Talking about their friends, their worlds are surprisingly unruly and quite a bit for the council to handle directly. We are possibly looking for a commander or some kind of officer to take control of the area until further notice.
17.06.2332
An unknown hostile fleet is cleaving a path of destruction through our newly gained systems! utterly destroying our outposts and leaving nothing in its wake. While still far away we fear it might aim for our home world. The empress ordered for all available fleets to ready for battle, these must be stopped at all costs!
04.11.2332
Praise be to the private armies we setup. One of their fleets was apparently just a system away and easily dispatched the Unknown hostile fleet. It’s great to see our plans pay off.
05.11.2335
Supernova declared the war they where preparing for a couple years now. It’s unknown if we’re truly prepared for this but we have grand plans. We shall not fight until they are tired and give up. We fight until this successor federation is utterly destroyed. We will finally get rid of our rivals.
We also have prepared a new type of ship to bolster our navy. their production is going to be delayed thanks to the sudden war.
03.06.2336
News of the war has reached our newest planets in the Selenia sector. They consider the invaders their “liberators” and the people have upped their resistance against their rule. If they think they are diverting resources required for the war with these useless actions they are sorely mistaken. Thanks to our production in automatons the peacekeepers we send only cost a couple of minerals, no man or woman that should be on the frontlines is lost.
???
i quit the game before recording… the war just ended
-bleeps(she/her)
26.02.2350
The war ended once again in a victory for our side!
-bleeps(she/her)
It didn’t take long for the remnants to immediately seek refuge by another empire. This time the Afrilon. Which is fine for now, the afrilon are our allies for now but their foolish religious ways will have to eventually be changed. For now we’ll show our displeasure with this move by removing our federation affiliation we had.
We also decided to indirectly control some of our newly gained land since these people are rather mad at us right now and two new worlds was already enough of a hassle for the direct control(and budget) of the empire.
-bleeps(she/her)
04.10.2357
The economy is saved! finally we can really get shit done. The worlds in the Selenia Sector are finally stable, people have calmed down and accepted our benevolent rule. Not that they had much to complain anyway they all had social welfare. none of them would ever live on the streets but guess being “free” under the rule of those religious idiots known for slavery was better.
Now well use this brand new and strong economy to bolster our navy and prepare for our mission, the pacification of the galaxy.
First by listening to psychologists and getting back to research, we need better ways to maintain a good eye on our population
-bleeps(she/her)