Historical Agorander

AutoFox · Feb 13, 2020

AGORANDER

SITE LORE

"I am Agorander, whose will the stars obey!"
_Agorander.

In the time before the Old Republic, before the organized Jedi and the peace they brought to the Galaxy, there was an age of kings and conquerors which stretches back into prehistory. In this time, empires rose and fell, bringing portions of the Galaxy under their control before taking their place on the ash-heap of history. Most of these empires - glorious and shining though they may have been at their height - are long forgotten, the domain only of niche scholars and antiquarians. Their leaders, similarly, are largely forgotten, and many are unknown even to those who seek out the legends of such figures.

But the name Agorander - Agorander, Whose Will the Stars Obey - is still one that is known, even in the present.

The story of Agorander is an old one. The founder and leader of an empire which rose and fell long before the Republic, much of what is known about his life and reign is fragmented, or has passed into the realm of legend rather than certain historical fact. He has had many titles attributed to him; Leader Agorander, Diktat Agorander, Agorander the Great, Agorander the Terrible, Agorander Automata, and others. He came from a world on what is now the Outer Rim, one of the planets colonized by prehistoric human starfarers, and then left to fall into barbarism after the fall of whatever elder civilization seeded the stars with human life before the dawn of recorded history.

RISE: RISE

"The time of the witch-kings is waning! Let my will be known; the stars shall be ruled by men, not by magic!"
_Agorander.

Though the circumstances of Agorander's birth and childhood are not known, it is known that - when he was merely a teenager - the young Agorander became the leader of a popular revolt against the sorcerer who ruled his world.

Agorander's revolt was an especially radical act at the time it was undertaken. In this dimly remembered era of history, many worlds - Agorander's included - were ruled by Force wielders of an archaic, far less altruistic vein than the modern Jedi. The dynasties of these powerful sorcerers had - in many cases - ruled unchallenged for generations. The ability to wield such power was seen as evidence of a divine right to rule, and few questioned what was apparently the will of the gods.

Agorander, it seems, came from a world ruled by one such sorcerer-king, one who was apparently far more disposed toward earning the fear and obedience of his people rather than their respect. Even so, driving such a being from power was widely believed to be an act of which the gods would not approve, and which would bring only hardship and despair upon any attempting it. And besides, the king wielded strange and frightening powers!

Agorander, whatever else he was, appeared to be adept at inspiring and leading beings, even at his apparently young age. Cutting through the misgivings and superstitions of his followers, he led them to victory against the sorcerer and his forces, deposing the evil king and ascending the throne himself. He was the first non-Force Sensitive being to rule his world in living memory, and was apparently beloved by his people.

Agorander, however, knew that his position was still tenuous; an "ordinary" man deposing one of the great Force-sensitive dynasties of the region was naturally seen as a grave threat to the monarchs of surrounding systems, and many feared similar uprisings on their own worlds would soon follow. As it turns out, they were justified in their fear. Over the next few years after Agorander's rise, several of the surrounding systems were beset by popular rebellions against their sorcerer dynasties. Many failed, but a few succeeded, many of the new governments swearing friendship and even allegiance to Agorander.

Agorander did not long sit idle on his new throne, of course. He demonstrated a streak of naked ambition few before or since have been able to match; this ambition was backed with a keen mind and iron confidence, making him a formidable opponent to any who stood against him. In the first years of his rule, he raised an army and a powerful star-fleet, justifying it as necessary to defend his world and people against the sorcerer-kings who would wish to crush the inspiration for so many rebellions before they could spread further. Agorander made no secret of supporting such uprisings, proclaiming his wish that the people of the Galaxy be allowed to rule themselves, rather than being the subjects of sorcerer-kings wielding strange powers.

Agorander's expenditures soon proved justified, when he at last faced a coalition of sorcerers and other threatened governments who had banded together to reconquer his world. Agorander's powerful fleets clashed with the cobbled-together navy of the enemy, eventually destroying it in a decisive space battle around Agorander's throne-world. This galvanized Agorander's resolve to carry out the next phase of the campaign he had long planned.

After a brief period during which the fleets were repaired and their losses replaced, Agorander ordered them back into space. They set out to punish those worlds which had sent their ships to conquer Agorander's world, swatting aside the few ships which remained to guard them; the presence of Agorander's fleet triggered latent rebellions of many of these worlds, which were openly supported with men and equipment. One by one, the members of the coalition which had attempted to overthrow Agorander were brought to submission, helmed by new governments loyal to Agorander's throne.
EMPIRE: EMPIRE

"Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
_Agorander.

The seat of Agorander's empire was Agorax, a purpose-built ecumenopolis located in a hazardous nebula near the edge of the Galaxy. From his throne-world, Agorander ran a surprisingly efficient, highly centralized bureaucracy, with the components of his growing empire organized like the sub-systems of a vast machine; like any machine, however, this one required fuel. The conquest of the coalition which had stood against Agorander was, it turned out, merely the beginning. Agorander was hailed by his people as a hero, as akin to a living god as the sorcerer he deposed had been. The planets he had "liberated" named him as their sovereign, making him the ruler now of many worlds.

Prior to Agorander, there had been a number of known interstellar empires, but by his time most had fallen or slipped into severe decline. Agorander proved adept at running his new holdings, however; from Agorax, he oversaw the consolidation and improvement of his holdings, commissioning vast infrastructure projects, programs of colonization, exploration, trade reform and technological development. In these early years of his rule, Agorander presided over a golden age of prosperity within his domain, although not one of peace.

Agorander may have been seen by many of his subjects as a benevolent leader, but his rule was tinged with darkness. He had come to power by the sword, specifically by overthrowing a powerful Force-user, and then by advocating the destruction of similar individuals on other worlds. He fostered a movement which - at its core - was profoundly hostile not just to leaders who could use the Force, but to any being who could wield such power. Worlds controlled by Agorander's empire were not a good place for anyone with such abilities to be. On many, pogroms were carried out against individuals suspected of being Force-sensitive; entire Force traditions were driven into hiding, exile, or - all too often - extinction. Jedi historians look upon this period as a great tragedy, as there is no way to tell just what knowledge was lost forever in these great purges.

This would later come back to haunt Agorander, but in the meantime, his hold over his empire grew tighter.

Impressive as Agorander's holdings were at the time, they were surrounded by his rivals. Though few could match his military might on their own, many of the systems bordering the empire were the domains of independent and quasi-independent princes, warlords, satraps and sorcerer-kings similar to those Agorander had fought against. The leader looked upon these worlds with interest.

Agorander at first expanded his empire as a matter of opportunity. When rebellion would break out on some sorcerer-king controlled world, the dictator would step in with his fleet and armies on behalf of the rebels, and ensure that the government which came to power was open to joining his holdings. He did not yet act preemptively, but gradually accumulated worlds, his empire growing slowly but surely. Eventually, however, the dictator did start to act more directly. His secret service orchestrated trade disputes and attacks against allies, giving Agorander the excuse to send in his military and institute regime changes, almost always resulting in a government favorable to joining the empire. Gradually, the pretenses became thinner and thinner, until they were entirely done away with.

At first, Agorander's conquests were limited to those Force-wielding dynasties Agorander's rhetoric had decried as evil. However, this rhetoric slowly began to shift as more and more systems were swallowed by Agorander's empire. The dictator wished to unite the Galaxy under the rule of one throne, of one being.

Agorander vowed that one day, the stars themselves would obey his will.
AGORANDER AUTOMATA: AGORANDER AUTOMATA

"The future is not flesh. It is protosteel, glass and plastoid. Let the leader show the way."
_Agorander.

The secret to Agorander's power, more than anything else in his arsenal, was the dictator's willingness to embrace and apply new technology. In his rebellion against his world's sorcerer-king, he had countered Force powers in part with ingenious artifice, using technology against his foes with which they were unfamiliar.

There were problems early on with this approach, however.

In Agorander's time, space travel and hyperspace were established facts, indeed they had been since prehistory, as there was no other explanation for the profusion of humans and other species on multiple worlds across the Galaxy, but they were not practiced efficiently. Knowledge of advanced technology was not evenly distributed, and indeed, the knowledge was often jealously guarded by those who held it. Few universal standards existed for anything, and many planets even kept multiple, incompatible systems of weights and measures within the same realm.

One of Agorander's first acts as the leader of his world was the imposition of a single set of standard of weights and measurement in base 10, one which would be the ancestor of the modern Standard measurements in use today. The leader also issued a requirement that all technological items produced for commercial sale have documentation of their design, available in a common archive accessible by all worlds and all peoples within his empire. He also supported the adoption of production methods such as assembly lines and standardized patterns, especially for items such as droids and ships. At the same time, he broke the monopolies held over certain technologies by artificer guilds and other groups.

As Agorander's empire grew, these reforms spread to the worlds under its control. They granted the empire an undeniable technological advantage over its rivals; Agorander's factory worlds could churn out a dozen war-rockets, for example, in the time other worlds would take to build just one, all to a consistent standard of design and quality. Research and invention was also easier within the empire than on many other worlds, granting Agorander's fleets and armies many wondrous new weapons and refinements, and his people new products and industries to improve and enrich their lives.

Agorander's enthusiasm for new technology was such that he even began to apply it to himself. As the dictator aged, he commissioned scientists and doctors to keep the years from showing, and to keep him healthy and intact. He gradually began to replace parts of himself with cyborg components; at first merely artificial replacements for failing organs, but gradually more and more synthetic materials for things like bone, skin and musculature. What he could not replace with steel or plastic, he had harvested from vat-grown clones. Reportedly, by the end of his reign, the circuitry had even spread into parts of Agorander's brain, and he was far more machine than man.

This gradual transformation is theorized as one of the factors which led to his later actions.
DISSENT: DISSENT

"To hell with our orders! All ships come about!"
_Admiral in Agorander's navy.

As Agorander's empire grew and prospered, the dictator himself began to decline.

The burdens of leadership - even to one as driven as Agorander undoubtedly was - had begun to take their toll on the leader. As he aged, he had kept his body young and vital with cybernetic enhancements and cloned tissue, but his mind - strained by the years and likely addled by grafted-on circuitry - was beginning to slip. The dictator began to become more and more paranoid. In fairness, however, just because he was paranoid did not mean there was no-one out to get him.

Agorander's early conquest had been against the Force-wielding sorcerers who ruled many worlds in his region of the Galaxy at that time. These had been popular uprisings, especially after the first few were successful, and Agorander had been hailed as a great liberator, returning leadership to the hands of beings - well, one being - who had no special powers. However, as Agorander's empire had grown, he had started to encounter other leaders, leaders similar to himself, in capability if not in ambition.

The conquest of their holdings had raised the first red flags among some of Agorander's subjects.

At least a few began to recognize Agorander for what he was, or at least what he was becoming. The dictator's interest in the ideals for which he had fought was dwindling; as his empire accumulated worlds, his craving for power grew, and it seemed only the complete conquest of the Galaxy would satisfy him, in the end.

Moreover, Agorander was become increasingly ruthless in the manner in which these conquests were achieved. Worlds had once joined his cause almost voluntarily, but now he was encountering planets and governments which resisted him far more obstinately. Brutal tactics were employed to bring these worlds in line, and as these tactics were implemented, Agorander began to run into further problems. His officers were refusing to carry out his orders. A few fleets had even mutinied en masse, joining the other side or flying for parts unknown. Some officers, it seemed, were prompted to rethink their oaths of loyalty when ordered to carpet-bomb an inhabited planet with atomic weapons, or to capture the survivors of such attacks and send them back to the empire as brainwashed slaves.

Agorander needed a solution, and as he had done many times before, he turned to science for his answers.
THE KIIRIUM LEGIONS: THE KIIRIUM LEGIONS

"HAIL TO LEA-DER A-GOR-AN-DER, WHOSE WILL THE STARS OBEY."
_Automatic Conqueror.

Agorander ultimately put his faith utterly in the hands of cold steel and artifice.

The great conqueror had seen his fleets and armies begin to balk at his orders, and sought to put a stop to it. Agorander first accomplished this with propaganda, reeducation and brainwashing programs, but even these could not fully stamp out dissent within the ranks. He sought a more radical solution, and eventually, he found one.

Droids had been a part of the standard military equipment roster since prehistory. Automated machinery had served in specialized roles since long before Agorander, usually in capacities too dangerous or menial for organic troops and workers. Agorander, indeed, was not the first conqueror to explore the idea of droid infantry and command structures. However, as far as is known, he was the first to integrate them into a cohesive whole.

Agorander sought to replace his fleets and armies with a force that would be new, unstoppable, and crucially, totally loyal. They would not rebel, even at the most depraved orders; they would fight unto their own destruction if ordered to, in the name of their leader. The Automatic Conquest Corps of Agorander were among the first of their kind, and were arguably some of the most successful droid armies ever fielded. They employed what was - at the time - bleeding edge technology, and were mass-produced to a standard of durability and quality never seen before, or arguably since.

The design and construction program ordered by Agorander created a number of new droid weapons. The most visible of these was the Automatic Conqueror, a versatile heavy infantry droid which was to form the backbone of the ACCs' fighting power. Towering at nearly 3 meters in height, they were fitted with advanced pulse-wave blasters, cutting lasers and an interrogation mind probe, as well as a thick carapace of blast-resistant kiirium armor. While primarily meant to fight on land, they were also capable of serving as the crews of star cruisers and flying snubfighters. In personal combat, they were nearly invincible against the common opponents of their day. Other equipment developed for the ACCs included specialized command podiums, ostensibly for use by organic generals but actually containing sophisticated battle computers which could command a droid army or fleet on their own. For moving troops, and for engaging enemy fleets and orbital defenses, huge transport rockets were also built, defended by droid-piloted pursuit ships.

In hindsight, the mere act of constructing the Automatic Conquest Corps was the first nail in the coffin of Agorander's empire. Agorander insisted on replacing his entire military with new droid warriors, an undertaking as expensive as it was enormous. While the conqueror's empire had - for the most pat - entered an economic golden age, this project quickly drained the government's coffers, placing great strain on all the empire's other institutions. Each Automatic Conqueror which rolled off the assembly line was hideously costly, if very powerful, and many of Agorander's ministers begged him to scale back his plans for the sake of the treasury. Agorander ignored them, or, worse, accused them of treachery, a pronouncement which meant death for most under the dictator's power.

By the time the ACCs were complete, Agorander's once thriving empire was bankrupt, its citizens stooped under the weight of huge new tax increases meant to help the government refill its exhausted coffers.
DECLINE: DECLINE

"Force magicians. I should have blasted them all on principal."
_Agorander.

In the end, Agorander's paranoia had driven his nation to the breaking point. The dictator's massive droid army, built to ensure the loyalty of the military, had bankrupted the empire, and yet still Agorander craved more. The ACCs proved better than the word of their designers; they were unstoppable, world after world falling beneath their kiirium assault. The droids brought more territory into the empire in a few short years than decades of expansion with conventional forces had before them.

Unfortunately, this was an expansion the empire could ill afford.

The institutions of the empire, weakened by the draining of the government's coffers, had few resources with which to properly bring newly conquered worlds into the systems which kept the empire running. After being savaged by the ACCs, these new territories belonged to Agorander in name only, the empire being unable to properly integrate new peoples, help them rebuild their worlds, or even properly exploit their natural resources.

This rapid and largely unplanned expansion strained the rest of Agorander's empire to the breaking point. In the lawless new frontiers, laid low by the kiirium legions and left to fester as the ACCs moved ever deeper into the beyond, dissent began to grow, and to spill back into the core of the empire like a pathogen. Rebellions against the dictator began to erupt, first in a disorganized fashion which could easily be quelled, but later in more coherent form. Entire sectors began to throw off the yoke of the mad cyborg and his droid warriors, and though Agorander attempted to crack down, the tighter his grip became, the more worlds slipped through his fingers.

One of the main instigators of revolt within the empire were the Force-sensitive factions Agorander had risen to power fighting against. Having failed to exterminate them entirely, he later grew to rue this failure; as conditions within the empire worsened, large sections of the populace - many whose ancestors had risen up to drive out the Force-users of their worlds, chanting Agorander's name and slogans - turned back to the mysteries of the Force for security and guidance in troubled times. In turn, these Force-sensitive orders grew, and were united in common cause against the rule of Agorander, who had attempted to destroy them. Often led by resurgent Force cults and similar factions, the challengers to Agorander's rule became more and more organized and powerful. What remained of the dictator's organic fleet crews and armies mainly deserted to join them; the banners of newly independent planets and sectors marched forth to take on their one-time leader.
COLLAPSE: COLLAPSE

"Ungrateful worms! I am your leader! Obey me, or your world shall perish in rapine and atomic fire!"
_Agorander.

The end came for Agorander's empire within a few brief decades.

Even guarded by the might of the ACCs, the rebellions which mushroomed across the empire proved too numerous to defeat. The fearsome droid warriors were powerful, but they could not be everywhere at once; where one rebellious fleet or system was crushed, another exploited the absence of the ACCs somewhere else. Starting on the fringes and moving inward, the empire began to collapse, system by system. The great rebel fleets and armies too began to combine with one-another, forming vast coalitions which were even occasionally able to destroy the ACCs in direct combat, although this often resulted in horrific losses. Even so, Agorander was increasingly unable to replace his losses fast enough to counterattack, no matter how much he raged at his ministers, or how many of them he executed.

The rebels, for their part, while they were united enough to undertake a coordinated campaign, rejected much of what Agorander had brought to their worlds. Many of the genuinely beneficial aspects of the empire were toppled by rebellious populations. A kind of semi-technological barbarism swept through the splintering empire, fueled in large part by the Force cults which largely filled the power vacuums left by Agorander's absence. Even as the empire still lived, a new dark age settled over large parts of the Galaxy.

At the last, Agorander recalled all of the ACCs from their campaigns of conquest, and formed a perimeter around the heart of his empire that - for a time - held against the rebels and barbarians outside. However, even within this bubble of civilization, Agorander's rule drove many populations to the breaking point; the dictator was obsessed with reconquering the worlds he had once controlled, and devoted much of his remaining empire's economic and industrial output to this eventual goal, with huge naval building campaigns and millions of new war droids. Agorander planned to break out and sweep across the Galaxy anew, burning all who had stood against him in nuclear fire.

And then, it ended.

No-one is entirely sure how Agorander's empire finally came to an end; mass rebellion from within seems the most likely to many archaeologists and historians, but this may have been a symptom of a more fundamental collapse. Partial records tell that during the fall of Agorander's holdings, the hyperspace beacon network that linked the worlds of the empire was shut down by a remote command, and many beacons in fact self-destructed, plunging countless systems into isolation for centuries thereafter. Agorax, the capital of the empire, vanished entirely; Agorander had been judicious about keeping the exact location of his capital hidden, and with no hyperspace beacon network to pass vessels the exact coordinates, it was now unreachable, at least with the technology of the day.

Agorax was in fact rediscovered during the Old Republic era, and proved to be an eerie mausoleum, maintained by automated systems in a pristine state but devoid of any sentient inhabitants. Agorander himself was discovered mummified on his own throne, surrounded by the ashes of his disintegrated ministers, leaving more questions than answers.

Regardless, Agorander's all-encompassing leadership had been suddenly and violently removed from his empire, and soon after, that empire fell. Those worlds not plunged into isolation by the deactivation of the empire's hyperspace beacon network were swiftly conquered by the rebels; within a few decades, the last holdouts had fallen, and Agorander's works were no more.
LEGACY: LEGACY

"Even in death, he punishes us."
_Unknown Force sage.

After Agorander's apparent death, and the collapse of his empire, the part of the Galaxy he had ruled descended into an age of lawlessness and barbarism. Eaten away by external powers, now ascendant in the power vacuum left by Agorander, and by the better organized remnants of the empire itself and the rebels who had toppled it, it gradually was divided among a number of regional powers, the ancestors of those which exist today. Of the constructions built by Agorander, little remains; although thousands of worlds were once pinned beneath his boot-heel, the march of countless millennia has ground all but the most massive and solid of his planet-bound works into dust. A handful exist, and are the subject of great interest by archaeologists, and by millions of tourists annually. More apparent in the present are genetic markers of the dictator's presence; across the Galactic southeast, planetary populations on countless worlds can trace their lineages back to pioneers who settled on planets as part of the great colonization efforts undertaken by the empire, or to the crews of the great fleets and soldiers in the armies who settled down after the fall of the empire.

However, as with Agorander himself, the legacy of this great conqueror is not without a shadow.

In his quest to create a loyal, invincible army, Agorander built the ACCs, the most perfect killing machines of their age. These droids were constructed in vast numbers, and for much of their career under Agorander, they triumphed wherever they fought. However, the ACCs were also a study in the dangers of centralization; although they could operate autonomously, only Agorander himself possessed the authority to recall the droids, a so-called fail-safe which the dictator had hard-wired into every ACC unit's command hierarchy. When Agorander died - or at least disappeared - the ACCs still in the field were left without orders. Beyond the control of any ranking imperial authority that remained, a corps the ACCs had largely replaced, the kiirium legions fell back on their default programming.

The ACCs had been built to expand the borders of the empire through conquest, an empire which no longer existed in any coherent sense. Suddenly surrounded by worlds which did not claim allegiance to their supposed leader, the ACCs began a rampage across the Galaxy, attacking any inhabited world they came across. Not programmed to occupy what they conquered, they traveled from system to system, inflicting death and destruction more or less at random. Few in the centuries after the empire's collapse could stand against them; the ACCs were built with sophisticated and durable technology, millennia ahead of their time, and could not be stopped by any but the most determined and well-equipped defenders.

The ACCs would roam for millennia, only the great size of the Galaxy and their relatively small numbers preventing them from being even more dangerous to Galactic civilization at large. It was not until the early days of the Republic, when the ACCs attacked several of their colonies and scouts in the outer rim, that the droid menace was finally hunted down and largely exterminated by the Jedi and the fledgling Republic Judiciary. By this time, the once mighty ACCs had begun to succumb to age and the relentless march of technology, and what many believed were the last of the ACCs were destroyed in hails of pulse-wave bolts and concussion missiles. Thus ended this last, terrible legacy of Agorander.

Or so it is believed...

INTENT

I wish to bring a submission from the previous timeline into the current one, with some changes to make it more up to date of course. The original intent of this submission was to create a historical figure with our little SW fanon akin to the great conquerors of real history, such as Napoleon Bonaparte, Nobunaga Oda or Alexander the Great.

Code:

[abox3=66%][size=3][center][border2=#72999A]
[gfont=Fascinate][exsize=35][color=#FF7658]AGORANDER[/color][/exsize]

[exsize=20][color=#72999A]SITE LORE[/color][/exsize][/gfont]
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[img]https://image.ibb.co/fEtH3Q/09PcXwKw.jpg[/img][/center]

[border2=#72999A][color=#72999A][center][i]"I am Agorander, whose will the stars obey!"[/i]
_Agorander.[/center]

In the time before the Old Republic, before the organized Jedi and the peace they brought to the Galaxy, there was an age of kings and conquerors which stretches back into prehistory. In this time, empires rose and fell, bringing portions of the Galaxy under their control before taking their place on the ash-heap of history. Most of these empires - glorious and shining though they may have been at their height - are long forgotten, the domain only of niche scholars and antiquarians. Their leaders, similarly, are largely forgotten, and many are unknown even to those who seek out the legends of such figures.

But the name Agorander - Agorander, Whose Will the Stars Obey - is still one that is known, even in the present.

The story of Agorander is an old one. The founder and leader of an empire which rose and fell long before the Republic, much of what is known about his life and reign is fragmented, or has passed into the realm of legend rather than certain historical fact. He has had many titles attributed to him; Leader Agorander, Diktat Agorander, Agorander the Great, Agorander the Terrible, Agorander Automata, and others. He came from a world on what is now the Outer Rim, one of the planets colonized by prehistoric human starfarers, and then left to fall into barbarism after the fall of whatever elder civilization seeded the stars with human life before the dawn of recorded history. 

[accordion=bcenter|100%]{slide=[color=#FF7658]RISE[/color]|left}[CENTER][EXSIZE=35][gfont=Fascinate][COLOR=#FF7658]RISE[/COLOR][/gfont][/EXSIZE]

[i]"The time of the witch-kings is waning! Let my will be known; the stars shall be ruled by men, not by magic!"[/i]
_Agorander.[/CENTER]

Though the circumstances of Agorander's birth and childhood are not known, it is known that - when he was merely a teenager - the young Agorander became the leader of a popular revolt against the sorcerer who ruled his world.

Agorander's revolt was an especially radical act at the time it was undertaken. In this dimly remembered era of history, many worlds - Agorander's included - were ruled by Force wielders of an archaic, far less altruistic vein than the modern Jedi. The dynasties of these powerful sorcerers had - in many cases - ruled unchallenged for generations. The ability to wield such power was seen as evidence of a divine right to rule, and few questioned what was apparently the will of the gods.

Agorander, it seems, came from a world ruled by one such sorcerer-king, one who was apparently far more disposed toward earning the fear and obedience of his people rather than their respect. Even so, driving such a being from power was widely believed to be an act of which the gods would not approve, and which would bring only hardship and despair upon any attempting it. And besides, the king wielded strange and frightening powers!

Agorander, whatever else he was, appeared to be adept at inspiring and leading beings, even at his apparently young age. Cutting through the misgivings and superstitions of his followers, he led them to victory against the sorcerer and his forces, deposing the evil king and ascending the throne himself. He was the first non-Force Sensitive being to rule his world in living memory, and was apparently beloved by his people.

Agorander, however, knew that his position was still tenuous; an "ordinary" man deposing one of the great Force-sensitive dynasties of the region was naturally seen as a grave threat to the monarchs of surrounding systems, and many feared similar uprisings on their own worlds would soon follow. As it turns out, they were justified in their fear. Over the next few years after Agorander's rise, several of the surrounding systems were beset by popular rebellions against their sorcerer dynasties. Many failed, but a few succeeded, many of the new governments swearing friendship and even allegiance to Agorander.

Agorander did not long sit idle on his new throne, of course. He demonstrated a streak of naked ambition few before or since have been able to match; this ambition was backed with a keen mind and iron confidence, making him a formidable opponent to any who stood against him. In the first years of his rule, he raised an army and a powerful star-fleet, justifying it as necessary to defend his world and people against the sorcerer-kings who would wish to crush the inspiration for so many rebellions before they could spread further. Agorander made no secret of supporting such uprisings, proclaiming his wish that the people of the Galaxy be allowed to rule themselves, rather than being the subjects of sorcerer-kings wielding strange powers.

Agorander's expenditures soon proved justified, when he at last faced a coalition of sorcerers and other threatened governments who had banded together to reconquer his world. Agorander's powerful fleets clashed with the cobbled-together navy of the enemy, eventually destroying it in a decisive space battle around Agorander's throne-world. This galvanized Agorander's resolve to carry out the next phase of the campaign he had long planned.

After a brief period during which the fleets were repaired and their losses replaced, Agorander ordered them back into space. They set out to punish those worlds which had sent their ships to conquer Agorander's world, swatting aside the few ships which remained to guard them; the presence of Agorander's fleet triggered latent rebellions of many of these worlds, which were openly supported with men and equipment. One by one, the members of the coalition which had attempted to overthrow Agorander were brought to submission, helmed by new governments loyal to Agorander's throne.

{/slide}{slide=[color=#FF7658]EMPIRE[/color]|left}[CENTER][EXSIZE=35][gfont=Fascinate][COLOR=#FF7658]EMPIRE[/COLOR][/gfont][/EXSIZE]

[i]"Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!"[/i]
_Agorander.[/CENTER]

The seat of Agorander's empire was Agorax, a purpose-built [url=https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Ecumenopolis]ecumenopolis[/url] located in a hazardous nebula near the edge of the Galaxy. From his throne-world, Agorander ran a surprisingly efficient, highly centralized bureaucracy, with the components of his growing empire organized like the sub-systems of a vast machine; like any machine, however, this one required fuel. The conquest of the coalition which had stood against Agorander was, it turned out, merely the beginning. Agorander was hailed by his people as a hero, as akin to a living god as the sorcerer he deposed had been. The planets he had "liberated" named him as their sovereign, making him the ruler now of many worlds.

Prior to Agorander, there had been a number of known interstellar empires, but by his time most had fallen or slipped into severe decline. Agorander proved adept at running his new holdings, however; from Agorax, he oversaw the consolidation and improvement of his holdings, commissioning vast infrastructure projects, programs of colonization, exploration, trade reform and technological development. In these early years of his rule, Agorander presided over a golden age of prosperity within his domain, although not one of peace.

Agorander may have been seen by many of his subjects as a benevolent leader, but his rule was tinged with darkness. He had come to power by the sword, specifically by overthrowing a powerful Force-user, and then by advocating the destruction of similar individuals on other worlds. He fostered a movement which - at its core - was profoundly hostile not just to leaders who could use the Force, but to any being who could wield such power. Worlds controlled by Agorander's empire were not a good place for anyone with such abilities to be. On many, pogroms were carried out against individuals suspected of being Force-sensitive; entire Force traditions were driven into hiding, exile, or - all too often - extinction. Jedi historians look upon this period as a great tragedy, as there is no way to tell just what knowledge was lost forever in these great purges.

This would later come back to haunt Agorander, but in the meantime, his hold over his empire grew tighter.

Impressive as Agorander's holdings were at the time, they were surrounded by his rivals. Though few could match his military might on their own, many of the systems bordering the empire were the domains of independent and quasi-independent princes, warlords, satraps and sorcerer-kings similar to those Agorander had fought against. The leader looked upon these worlds with interest.

Agorander at first expanded his empire as a matter of opportunity. When rebellion would break out on some sorcerer-king controlled world, the dictator would step in with his fleet and armies on behalf of the rebels, and ensure that the government which came to power was open to joining his holdings. He did not yet act preemptively, but gradually accumulated worlds, his empire growing slowly but surely. Eventually, however, the dictator did start to act more directly. His secret service orchestrated trade disputes and attacks against allies, giving Agorander the excuse to send in his military and institute regime changes, almost always resulting in a government favorable to joining the empire. Gradually, the pretenses became thinner and thinner, until they were entirely done away with.

At first, Agorander's conquests were limited to those Force-wielding dynasties Agorander's rhetoric had decried as evil. However, this rhetoric slowly began to shift as more and more systems were swallowed by Agorander's empire. The dictator wished to unite the Galaxy under the rule of one throne, of one being.

Agorander vowed that one day, the stars themselves would obey his will.

{/slide}{slide=[color=#FF7658]AGORANDER AUTOMATA[/color]|left}[CENTER][EXSIZE=35][gfont=Fascinate][COLOR=#FF7658]AGORANDER AUTOMATA[/COLOR][/gfont][/EXSIZE]

[i]"The future is not flesh. It is protosteel, glass and plastoid. Let the leader show the way."[/i]
_Agorander.[/CENTER]

The secret to Agorander's power, more than anything else in his arsenal, was the dictator's willingness to embrace and apply new technology. In his rebellion against his world's sorcerer-king, he had countered Force powers in part with ingenious artifice, using technology against his foes with which they were unfamiliar.

There were problems early on with this approach, however.

In Agorander's time, space travel and hyperspace were established facts, indeed they had been since prehistory, as there was no other explanation for the profusion of humans and other species on multiple worlds across the Galaxy, but they were not practiced efficiently. Knowledge of advanced technology was not evenly distributed, and indeed, the knowledge was often jealously guarded by those who held it. Few universal standards existed for anything, and many planets even kept multiple, incompatible systems of weights and measures within the same realm.

One of Agorander's first acts as the leader of his world was the imposition of a single set of standard of weights and measurement in base 10, one which would be the ancestor of the modern Standard measurements in use today. The leader also issued a requirement that all technological items produced for commercial sale have documentation of their design, available in a common archive accessible by all worlds and all peoples within his empire. He also supported the adoption of production methods such as assembly lines and standardized patterns, especially for items such as droids and ships. At the same time, he broke the monopolies held over certain technologies by artificer guilds and other groups.

As Agorander's empire grew, these reforms spread to the worlds under its control. They granted the empire an undeniable technological advantage over its rivals; Agorander's factory worlds could churn out a dozen war-rockets, for example, in the time other worlds would take to build just one, all to a consistent standard of design and quality. Research and invention was also easier within the empire than on many other worlds, granting Agorander's fleets and armies many wondrous new weapons and refinements, and his people new products and industries to improve and enrich their lives.

Agorander's enthusiasm for new technology was such that he even began to apply it to himself. As the dictator aged, he commissioned scientists and doctors to keep the years from showing, and to keep him healthy and intact. He gradually began to replace parts of himself with cyborg components; at first merely artificial replacements for failing organs, but gradually more and more synthetic materials for things like bone, skin and musculature. What he could not replace with steel or plastic, he had harvested from vat-grown clones. Reportedly, by the end of his reign, the circuitry had even spread into parts of Agorander's brain, and he was far more machine than man.

This gradual transformation is theorized as one of the factors which led to his later actions.

{/slide}{slide=[color=#FF7658]DISSENT[/color]|left}[CENTER][EXSIZE=35][gfont=Fascinate][COLOR=#FF7658]DISSENT[/COLOR][/gfont][/EXSIZE]

[i]"To [/i]hell[i] with our orders! All ships come about!"[/i]
_Admiral in Agorander's navy.[/CENTER]

As Agorander's empire grew and prospered, the dictator himself began to decline.

The burdens of leadership - even to one as driven as Agorander undoubtedly was - had begun to take their toll on the leader. As he aged, he had kept his body young and vital with cybernetic enhancements and cloned tissue, but his mind - strained by the years and likely addled by grafted-on circuitry - was beginning to slip. The dictator began to become more and more paranoid. In fairness, however, just because he was paranoid did not mean there was no-one out to get him.

Agorander's early conquest had been against the Force-wielding sorcerers who ruled many worlds in his region of the Galaxy at that time. These had been popular uprisings, especially after the first few were successful, and Agorander had been hailed as a great liberator, returning leadership to the hands of beings - well, one being - who had no special powers. However, as Agorander's empire had grown, he had started to encounter other leaders, leaders similar to himself, in capability if not in ambition.

The conquest of their holdings had raised the first red flags among some of Agorander's subjects.

At least a few began to recognize Agorander for what he was, or at least what he was becoming. The dictator's interest in the ideals for which he had fought was dwindling; as his empire accumulated worlds, his craving for power grew, and it seemed only the complete conquest of the Galaxy would satisfy him, in the end.

Moreover, Agorander was become increasingly ruthless in the manner in which these conquests were achieved. Worlds had once joined his cause almost voluntarily, but now he was encountering planets and governments which resisted him far more obstinately. Brutal tactics were employed to bring these worlds in line, and as these tactics were implemented, Agorander began to run into further problems. His officers were refusing to carry out his orders. A few fleets had even mutinied en masse, joining the other side or flying for parts unknown. Some officers, it seemed, were prompted to rethink their oaths of loyalty when ordered to carpet-bomb an inhabited planet with atomic weapons, or to capture the survivors of such attacks and send them back to the empire as brainwashed slaves.

Agorander needed a solution, and as he had done many times before, he turned to science for his answers.

{/slide}{slide=[color=#FF7658]THE KIIRIUM LEGIONS[/color]|left}[CENTER][EXSIZE=35][gfont=Fascinate][COLOR=#FF7658]THE KIIRIUM LEGIONS[/COLOR][/gfont][/EXSIZE]

[i]"HAIL TO LEA-DER A-GOR-AN-DER, WHOSE WILL THE STARS OBEY."[/i]
_Automatic Conqueror.[/CENTER]

Agorander ultimately put his faith utterly in the hands of cold steel and artifice.

The great conqueror had seen his fleets and armies begin to balk at his orders, and sought to put a stop to it. Agorander first accomplished this with propaganda, reeducation and brainwashing programs, but even these could not fully stamp out dissent within the ranks. He sought a more radical solution, and eventually, he found one.

Droids had been a part of the standard military equipment roster since prehistory. Automated machinery had served in specialized roles since long before Agorander, usually in capacities too dangerous or menial for organic troops and workers. Agorander, indeed, was not the first conqueror to explore the idea of droid infantry and command structures. However, as far as is known, he was the first to integrate them into a cohesive whole.

Agorander sought to replace his fleets and armies with a force that would be new, unstoppable, and crucially, totally loyal. They would not rebel, even at the most depraved orders; they would fight unto their own destruction if ordered to, in the name of their leader. The Automatic Conquest Corps of Agorander were among the first of their kind, and were arguably some of the most successful droid armies ever fielded. They employed what was - at the time - bleeding edge technology, and were mass-produced to a standard of durability and quality never seen before, or arguably since.

The design and construction program ordered by Agorander created a number of new droid weapons. The most visible of these was the Automatic Conqueror, a versatile heavy infantry droid which was to form the backbone of the ACCs' fighting power. Towering at nearly 3 meters in height, they were fitted with advanced pulse-wave blasters, cutting lasers and an interrogation mind probe, as well as a thick carapace of blast-resistant [url=https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Kiirium]kiirium[/url] armor. While primarily meant to fight on land, they were also capable of serving as the crews of star cruisers and flying snubfighters. In personal combat, they were nearly invincible against the common opponents of their day. Other equipment developed for the ACCs included specialized command podiums, ostensibly for use by organic generals but actually containing sophisticated battle computers which could command a droid army or fleet on their own. For moving troops, and for engaging enemy fleets and orbital defenses, huge transport rockets were also built, defended by droid-piloted pursuit ships.

In hindsight, the mere act of constructing the Automatic Conquest Corps was the first nail in the coffin of Agorander's empire. Agorander insisted on replacing his entire military with new droid warriors, an undertaking as expensive as it was enormous. While the conqueror's empire had - for the most pat - entered an economic golden age, this project quickly drained the government's coffers, placing great strain on all the empire's other institutions. Each Automatic Conqueror which rolled off the assembly line was hideously costly, if very powerful, and many of Agorander's ministers begged him to scale back his plans for the sake of the treasury. Agorander ignored them, or, worse, accused them of treachery, a pronouncement which meant death for most under the dictator's power.

By the time the ACCs were complete, Agorander's once thriving empire was bankrupt, its citizens stooped under the weight of huge new tax increases meant to help the government refill its exhausted coffers.

{/slide}{slide=[color=#FF7658]DECLINE[/color]|left}[CENTER][EXSIZE=35][gfont=Fascinate][COLOR=#FF7658]DECLINE[/COLOR][/gfont][/EXSIZE]

[i]"Force magicians. I should have blasted them all on [/i]principal[i]."[/i]
_Agorander.[/CENTER]

In the end, Agorander's paranoia had driven his nation to the breaking point. The dictator's massive droid army, built to ensure the loyalty of the military, had bankrupted the empire, and yet still Agorander craved more. The ACCs proved better than the word of their designers; they were unstoppable, world after world falling beneath their kiirium assault. The droids brought more territory into the empire in a few short years than decades of expansion with conventional forces had before them.

Unfortunately, this was an expansion the empire could ill afford.

The institutions of the empire, weakened by the draining of the government's coffers, had few resources with which to properly bring newly conquered worlds into the systems which kept the empire running. After being savaged by the ACCs, these new territories belonged to Agorander in name only, the empire being unable to properly integrate new peoples, help them rebuild their worlds, or even properly exploit their natural resources.

This rapid and largely unplanned expansion strained the rest of Agorander's empire to the breaking point. In the lawless new frontiers, laid low by the kiirium legions and left to fester as the ACCs moved ever deeper into the beyond, dissent began to grow, and to spill back into the core of the empire like a pathogen. Rebellions against the dictator began to erupt, first in a disorganized fashion which could easily be quelled, but later in more coherent form. Entire sectors began to throw off the yoke of the mad cyborg and his droid warriors, and though Agorander attempted to crack down, the tighter his grip became, the more worlds slipped through his fingers.

One of the main instigators of revolt within the empire were the Force-sensitive factions Agorander had risen to power fighting against. Having failed to exterminate them entirely, he later grew to rue this failure; as conditions within the empire worsened, large sections of the populace - many whose ancestors had risen up to drive out the Force-users of their worlds, chanting Agorander's name and slogans - turned back to the mysteries of the Force for security and guidance in troubled times. In turn, these Force-sensitive orders grew, and were united in common cause against the rule of Agorander, who had attempted to destroy them. Often led by resurgent Force cults and similar factions, the challengers to Agorander's rule became more and more organized and powerful. What remained of the dictator's organic fleet crews and armies mainly deserted to join them; the banners of newly independent planets and sectors marched forth to take on their one-time leader.

{/slide}{slide=[color=#FF7658]COLLAPSE[/color]|left}[CENTER][EXSIZE=35][gfont=Fascinate][COLOR=#FF7658]COLLAPSE[/COLOR][/gfont][/EXSIZE]

[i]"Ungrateful worms! I am your [/i]leader[i]! Obey me, or your world shall perish in rapine and atomic fire!"[/i]
_Agorander.[/CENTER]

The end came for Agorander's empire within a few brief decades.

Even guarded by the might of the ACCs, the rebellions which mushroomed across the empire proved too numerous to defeat. The fearsome droid warriors were powerful, but they could not be everywhere at once; where one rebellious fleet or system was crushed, another exploited the absence of the ACCs somewhere else. Starting on the fringes and moving inward, the empire began to collapse, system by system. The great rebel fleets and armies too began to combine with one-another, forming vast coalitions which were even occasionally able to destroy the ACCs in direct combat, although this often resulted in horrific losses. Even so, Agorander was increasingly unable to replace his losses fast enough to counterattack, no matter how much he raged at his ministers, or how many of them he executed.

The rebels, for their part, while they were united enough to undertake a coordinated campaign, rejected much of what Agorander had brought to their worlds. Many of the genuinely beneficial aspects of the empire were toppled by rebellious populations. A kind of semi-technological barbarism swept through the splintering empire, fueled in large part by the Force cults which largely filled the power vacuums left by Agorander's absence. Even as the empire still lived, a new dark age settled over large parts of the Galaxy.

At the last, Agorander recalled all of the ACCs from their campaigns of conquest, and formed a perimeter around the heart of his empire that - for a time - held against the rebels and barbarians outside. However, even within this bubble of civilization, Agorander's rule drove many populations to the breaking point; the dictator was obsessed with reconquering the worlds he had once controlled, and devoted much of his remaining empire's economic and industrial output to this eventual goal, with huge naval building campaigns and millions of new war droids. Agorander planned to break out and sweep across the Galaxy anew, burning all who had stood against him in nuclear fire.

And then, it ended.

No-one is entirely sure how Agorander's empire finally came to an end; mass rebellion from within seems the most likely to many archaeologists and historians, but this may have been a symptom of a more fundamental collapse. Partial records tell that during the fall of Agorander's holdings, the hyperspace beacon network that linked the worlds of the empire was shut down by a remote command, and many beacons in fact self-destructed, plunging countless systems into isolation for centuries thereafter. Agorax, the capital of the empire, vanished entirely; Agorander had been judicious about keeping the exact location of his capital hidden, and with no hyperspace beacon network to pass vessels the exact coordinates, it was now unreachable, at least with the technology of the day.

Agorax was in fact rediscovered during the Old Republic era, and proved to be an eerie mausoleum, maintained by automated systems in a pristine state but devoid of any sentient inhabitants. Agorander himself was discovered mummified on his own throne, surrounded by the ashes of his disintegrated ministers, leaving more questions than answers.

Regardless, Agorander's all-encompassing leadership had been suddenly and violently removed from his empire, and soon after, that empire fell. Those worlds not plunged into isolation by the deactivation of the empire's hyperspace beacon network were swiftly conquered by the rebels; within a few decades, the last holdouts had fallen, and Agorander's works were no more.

{/slide}{slide=[color=#FF7658]LEGACY[/color]|left}[CENTER][EXSIZE=35][gfont=Fascinate][COLOR=#FF7658]LEGACY[/COLOR][/gfont][/EXSIZE]

[i]"Even in death, he punishes us."[/i]
_Unknown Force sage.[/CENTER]

After Agorander's apparent death, and the collapse of his empire, the part of the Galaxy he had ruled descended into an age of lawlessness and barbarism. Eaten away by external powers, now ascendant in the power vacuum left by Agorander, and by the better organized remnants of the empire itself and the rebels who had toppled it, it gradually was divided among a number of regional powers, the ancestors of those which exist today. Of the constructions built by Agorander, little remains; although thousands of worlds were once pinned beneath his boot-heel, the march of countless millennia has ground all but the most massive and solid of his planet-bound works into dust. A handful exist, and are the subject of great interest by archaeologists, and by millions of tourists annually. More apparent in the present are genetic markers of the dictator's presence; across the Galactic southeast, planetary populations on countless worlds can trace their lineages back to pioneers who settled on planets as part of the great colonization efforts undertaken by the empire, or to the crews of the great fleets and soldiers in the armies who settled down after the fall of the empire.

However, as with Agorander himself, the legacy of this great conqueror is not without a shadow.

In his quest to create a loyal, invincible army, Agorander built the ACCs, the most perfect killing machines of their age. These droids were constructed in vast numbers, and for much of their career under Agorander, they triumphed wherever they fought. However, the ACCs were also a study in the dangers of centralization; although they could operate autonomously, only Agorander himself possessed the authority to recall the droids, a so-called fail-safe which the dictator had hard-wired into every ACC unit's command hierarchy. When Agorander died - or at least disappeared - the ACCs still in the field were left without orders. Beyond the control of any ranking imperial authority that remained, a corps the ACCs had largely replaced, the kiirium legions fell back on their default programming.

The ACCs had been built to expand the borders of the empire through conquest, an empire which no longer existed in any coherent sense. Suddenly surrounded by worlds which did not claim allegiance to their supposed leader, the ACCs began a rampage across the Galaxy, attacking any inhabited world they came across. Not programmed to occupy what they conquered, they traveled from system to system, inflicting death and destruction more or less at random. Few in the centuries after the empire's collapse could stand against them; the ACCs were built with sophisticated and durable technology, millennia ahead of their time, and could not be stopped by any but the most determined and well-equipped defenders.

The ACCs would roam for millennia, only the great size of the Galaxy and their relatively small numbers preventing them from being even more dangerous to Galactic civilization at large. It was not until the early days of the Republic, when the ACCs attacked several of their colonies and scouts in the outer rim, that the droid menace was finally hunted down and largely exterminated by the Jedi and the fledgling Republic Judiciary. By this time, the once mighty ACCs had begun to succumb to age and the relentless march of technology, and what many believed were the last of the ACCs were destroyed in hails of pulse-wave bolts and concussion missiles. Thus ended this last, terrible legacy of Agorander.

Or so it is believed...

{/slide}[/accordion]

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[border2=#72999A][color=#72999A][center][gfont=Fascinate][exsize=20][color=#FF7658]INTENT[/color][/exsize][/gfont][/center]

I wish to bring a submission from the previous timeline into the current one, with some changes to make it more up to date of course. The original intent of this submission was to create a historical figure with our little SW fanon akin to the great conquerors of real history, such as Napoleon Bonaparte, Nobunaga Oda or Alexander the Great.

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Logan · Feb 26, 2020

Approved.

Historical Agorander

AutoFox

Tech Admin/Tech Archiver

Logan

Lore Admin