Second Konabian Empire

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The Second Konabian Empire is a vast interstellar empire ruled by a rarely-seen Emperor. It's called the SKE for short—or simply "The Empire", when there's no potential for ambiguity, which there usually isn't. Spanning multiple planets in several galaxies, the Empire is home to many races and peoples, and different parts of the Empire may have significantly different cultures, though all kept in line by the Emperor's efficient, if occasionally eccentric, rulership.

History

The origins of the Empire have been lost to time, and even the source of its name remains something of a mystery. If there was ever a First Konabian Empire, no one now remembers it. For that matter, it's not at all certain what the word "Konabian" (pronounced /kɵˈneɪbiən/) means; while the fact that the empire's capital is on a planet called Conabia is unlikely to be a coincidence, it's not clear whether the planet was named after the empire or the empire after the planet, or both after some third thing now forgotten. (Nor has anyone convincingly explained why the planet's name is conventionally spelled with a C and the empire's with a K.)

Cosmography

The Empire spans not only multiple planets, but several galaxies, though most of it lies within a galaxy called the Milky Way. (The name seems to predate the Empire, and its origins are somewhat unclear.) Most of the parts of other large galaxies that it lays claim to are connected to the Milky Way through artificial wormholes called warp tunnels, but the group of galaxies collectively known as Eridax is an exception; the Empire has some footholds there, but there is no rapid way between them and the rest of the Empire. (Some small galaxies such as the LMC and Sagittarius also have no tunnels connecting to them, but are close enough to the Milky Way and unpopulated enough that this poses little inconvenience.)

Government

The Emperor is the ultimate ruler of the Empire, and what he says goes. However, the Emperor doesn't personally create every edict the government passes down. A number of ministers exist to preside over various functions and aspects of the government, and smaller divisions of the Empire are adminstered by regional proconsuls.

Inhabitants

The most common race in the Empire is the human. In fact, humans seem to crop up in enough odd places—such as worlds previously unknown to the Empire, where they have no business being—that many people think they must have been spread there deliberately by the Empire's predecessors or founders—or even to be the Empire's founders. In fact, there's enough evidence toward the latter view that many scholars believe that the human Homeworld and the Empire's homeworld may be one and the same—though there's still no consensus on where that world is, or even if it's been discovered yet.

But humans are very far from being the only intelligent species in the Empire, even discounting artificial organisms such as seins. Many other species exist, such as the seven-way-symmetrical seith and the furred, somewhat spiderlike gach. For the most part, crossbreeding between different races is, of course, impossible by conventional means; the species are far too different genetically to allow any such thing. One race, however, called vectors, are an exception; somehow, they seem able to mate with anything, but the result offspring are always vectors. Also, some hybrids of other races have been created through complex artificial means.