“Blessed are those who stare into the maw of the abyss and do not falter.”– Keepers 3:2
When I first heard of Samarra from a slurring, fumbling drunkard aboard Freeport Nine, I didn’t think much of it. I naturally dismissed the incredulous notion that an uncontacted isolate culture thrives in the fringes of explored space as nothing more than banal poppycock grown from a backward culture of illiterate smugglers and pirates. Oh, how wrong I was! Indeed, it began to dawn on me as sporadic reports of foreign pirates allegedly hailing from this faraway place started to reach me, ruthless ruffians with strange customs and alien views that terrorized the Omicrons for a time. Despite the obvious danger, my curiosity was piqued and I sought them out in hopes of gleaning any information pertaining to this mystical place.
This proved to be far more difficult than I originally thought, and indeed it took me a full year before I managed to secure an audience with one of them. This person, whose name I dare not divulge here out of concern for my personal safety, more or less confirmed the tales I heard before. He described his homeland of sand oceans with a verbosity I thought uncharacteristic of a savage barbarian and pirate, but nonetheless, I detected no deception from him. Upon the conclusion of the interview he uttered grave warnings, advising me to turn back and forget about the planet, and though his words chilled me to my very core, I firmly decided that this was what makes or breaks my career. I knew what I had to do.
I loaded my ship with ample provisions, charted the pathway to the wormhole and asked my assistant to feed my cat while I was away. When that was done, my protégé, Carl and I set off to Omicron Beta, far off the navigational grids, where the wormhole leading to our destination was located. After running some preliminary scans, we concluded that the phase was in sufficient alignment, and we jumped through. Contained herein is the comprehensive treatise on what we found on the other side, subdivided into sections concerning the wider subjects such as History, Culture & Religion, Geography and Demographics.
I don't dedicate this work to my ex-wife, my colleagues, or those who presume to have supported me during the long years. Rather, I dedicate this work to the one responsible for all the discoveries described within, the one who suffered the tribulations of Samarra, and came back to tell the tale. I dedicate this work to myself.
“And I finally beheld it, the jewel and the blemish, part perdition and part salvation, the dry island in the endless void.”– Pioneers 2:1
Located inside a spatial anomaly, a clear zone of the edge nebula far beyond what is known today as the Nomad Worlds, lies the Babylon system. So named by the natives, the Babylon red giant star is orbited by two major planetary bodies, and an indeterminate number of asteroids grouped in belts or otherwise scattered around the system. The larger of the two planets is Sur-Marrati, a red tinted, barren world devoid of any life or atmosphere. The slightly smaller of the two, is a barely habitable desert planet orbited by a single moon, and possessing of a strange, technologically primitive, yet nonetheless sophisticated civilization; The focal point of this treatise – Samarra.
To describe Samarra as an arid planet would be an understatement, its dry ravines and endless seas of dust and sand that dominate the vast majority of its surface often go decades without a single drop of rain. The planet orbits its red giant sun at a comfortable distance, yet it takes about 50 standard hours to complete a revolution around its axis, leading to searing hot days and freezing nights. This coupled with its general lack of water, farmable land, and native flora leaves a lot to be desired in terms of large-scale colonization.
Yet, in 322 A.S, three colony ships, each carrying around three thousand people from the Sirian houses made planet fall, by necessity according to some accounts, and to others under the benevolent guidance of mystical beings that shepherded the colonists to their new home. Regardless of the version, it is known that both of the ships landed on a mountainous plateau, nestled between two large rivers, the largest sources of water on the planet. Here the colonists dismantled their ships and repurposed their components into a rudimentary settlement, laying the groundwork for what is today known as “Assyria Megalopolis”, the capital of the Samarran Dominion.
"Gentle blessings upon thee ardent pioneers, that led by dreams of greatness sailed the endless void and found the small jewel in the midst of it." – Pioneers 5:1
Piecing together a definitive account of the initial years of Samarran history proved to be cumbersome, as historical accounts from the time, if you could even call them that, were only found in local folk tales and in native religious scripture. After disembarking and establishing my presence to the powers that be, I naturally started a multifaceted investigation, listening to local tales and petitioning the Samarran Temple of Light to allow me access to their archives, only to be stonewalled at every step by highly inconsistent narrative and the priesthood’s apparent apathy for my plight.
Regardless, I didn’t allow myself to be defeated, and I started methodically dissecting and compiling the folk tales, looking for consistently overlapping elements. Additionally, I contacted various local dissidents and bartered some, to me, primitive technology in exchange for copies of Temple documents pertaining to that time. From here I managed to piece together a relatively trustworthy narrative of two early periods the locals call the “Pioneer Era” and the “Century of Troubles”, respectively.
It is known that three colony ships, Assyria, Mesopotamia, and the Babylon traveled from Sirius to reach the planet in 321 A.S, a bit over 500 years ago, and the initial settlement grew outward from their repurposed husks. However, one of the earliest inconsistencies I encountered in the local narrative, were occasional references to a fourth ship that is apparently absent in other accounts. By studying copies of Temple documents, I managed to solve this inconsistency, among others, and confirm that there was indeed a fourth ship that unfortunately didn’t reach its destination, having been destroyed in some catastrophic event along the way. I held these documents in high regard because, despite their purple prose format filled with nonsensical religious bloat, they were highly consistent regarding the past, and invaluable in mediating and cross-referencing other sources.
To digress no further, the initial settlement, named Assyria in honor of the first ship to touch down on the arid soil was erected at the center of the largest divide between the two great rivers, and the colonists quickly surveyed the area for usable materials. Fortunately, they found few of the native plants to be edible, and this coupled with the grain seeds and provisions they brought from Sirius, ensured a steady supply of food for the time being. Irrigation systems were already being constructed as the two other colony ships made landfall, and the colonists worked quickly to establish themselves, and make the best of a less than ideal situation.
The following decades were spent in peace as the colonists cooperated to turn the unlivable desert into paradise, sacrificing technological progress and the ability for spaceflight, for more ground based feats of engineering pertaining to mining, food production and shelter from the unbearable heat at day, and freezing cold at night. The demographic records from the time show an excessive growth over the first century, the population effectively doubling by the middle of the century, then tripling by the end. This unfortunately brought more trouble than it was worth, as the increase in workforce came with a decrease in available food, extreme shortages becoming common by the end of the first century.
As a result of this, tensions rose among the population, and eventually by 402 A.S, splintering clans and factions formed and started aggressively competing for fuel sources, liquor trade and food. The factions were primarily divided into three blocs, one representing the Black Gold Fortress, a petroleum oil rig and refinery deep in the wastes, where the rivers disappear into the sands. Khan’s Towers, a mining settlement in the northern wastes (today known as the Cloister of Anu), and Assyria City, until then the de jure and de facto capital and financial center of the colony. Occasional squabbles and skirmishes became more and more heated during the next decade, and by 413 A.S, erupted into a full-scale war between the factions, major and minor alike. This period lasted for 99 years, and is referred to as the “Century of Troubles”.
"And soon there came a time when all of the land was gripped in war and famine and gruesome things, and no progress but that of death was made under the sun. There came men that spoke with the tongues of snakes, and they did hoard all the bread and fuel, and they did nudge man to fight against man, neighbor against neighbor, brother against brother." – Troubles 3:2
Finding the single biggest reason for the beginning of the “Century of Troubles” proved impossible, and therefore I was led to believe that there wasn’t any single reason, but rather a multitude of overlapping causes that kept building the pressure until the powder-keg was forced to explode. The Temple holds that a figurative darkness that resides in all men was the reason for the conflict, a rather indirect and unitary stance, to be sure, but an unsatisfactory one. Ask five different Samarrans on their opinion on the matter, and you’ll get six different answers at least. Striking up a conversation with a merchant from the Black Gold Fortress, I was led to believe the conflict started due to Assyria City’s incessant increases of oil import tariffs, whereas when conversing with a courtier from the Prince’s palace, I was told that the general unruliness of the vassal states, especially the mining settlement of Khan’s Towers, was what sparked the war. Were any conscious descendants from the Towers accounted for today, I’m almost sure they’d blame the Black Gold Fortress somehow, and complete the story full circle. So what is the truth then? The truth is all of it, and none of it at the same time.
It is known that by 410, at the beginning of Lucien Theron’s first ten year term as Colonial High Commissioner, the baby boom had reached its peak, and the Samarran population numbered some 150.000 people, demand outpacing the current food production capabilities, and causing severe shortages colony-wide. Simultaneously, the industrial development and overall power of the subordinate colonial assets such as the Black Gold Fortress and Khan’s Towers created concerns in Assyria City’s political elites. With its primary focus on food production, Assyria was growing increasingly more dependent on the other settlements for raw materials such as metals and petroleum, its own production capabilities falling far short of the demand. This coupled with ever growing secessionist sentiments from the settlements, created a sort of panic in Theron’s administration. Hence, the High Commissioner took measures to ensure the City’s dominance the only way he knew how. Drawing on currency reserves, he raised the tariffs on import of raw materials from the settlements, and gave out subsidies to local entrepreneurs looking to develop mining facilities and oil extraction rigs in the wastes, hoping to once and for all end Assyria’s dependence on its neighbors.
The impact of this new policy on the economy of other settlements was palpable, and their shrinking wealth made it increasingly difficult to purchase sufficient food, the costliness of which also steadily increased due to the shortages. Several conclaves followed, where prominent leaders from the settlements bargained for respite with the administration, but with no success. Though this is easy to write off as an act of cruelty from the metropolitan authorities, it is far more logical to assume that they actually could not afford it. When diplomacy fails, war inevitably follows. And surely enough, in 412 A.S, the Khan’s Towers threw the first punch. Declaring independence, they started raiding outlying farms and fisheries for food, and though far inferior in numbers, their guerilla tactics were successful in outmaneuvering the City’s peacekeeping forces who as of yet were unwilling to retaliate with a full scale invasion.
In 413 A.S, the Black Gold Fortress followed, emboldened by the success of the Towers, the council administering the Fortress began raids in the south. By the end of the year, Lucien Theron passed a legislature allowing him an unlimited term as High Commissioner until the conflict was resolved, and seeing how he was now sandwiched between two enemies he authorized retaliation by a coordinated missile strike on the outlying hamlets of Assyria’s neighbors, leaving little else than a dusty no man’s land on its borders. This officially marked the beginning of the “Century of Troubles”, and for the next two decades, the sporadic fighting intensified and waned seemingly at random, no side gaining a significant advantage over the other two. The fighting, though brutal, was mostly conducted with mechanized engines of war, the ingenuity with which these were constructed, rising with each passing decade of the war, and the need to fuel them leading the warring factions to expand into the inhospitable wastelands, the fight expanding with them.
By 435 A.S, Assyria City finally launched a decisive campaign, and in a blitzkrieg-styled assault, outflanked the Black Gold Fortress’ forces, the campaign culminating in the siege of the Fortress that lasted for six months. The siege was only broken with the sudden death of the High Commissioner, forcing his forces to pull back and initiate peace talks. As neither faction was willing to continue the fight, they both caved to each other’s demands, the Fortress agreeing to a strategic alliance against the Towers, and the City agreeing abolish tariffs, restore trade and drive down food prices. Intimidated by this new development, the Warlord of the Khan’s Towers, whose name is lost to history, decided to reduce raids to a bare minimum, hoping to not invoke a full scale invasion from the nascent coalition. The new allies however, bided their time and planed for a final campaign to the north that would restore peace once and for all. At this time, Lucien Theron’s son, Marcus Theron, succeeded his father as High Commissioner.
Around 440, the joint surveying of the wastes unearthed the first Ziggurat encountered by the Samarran people. An astonishing discovery of an alien civilization that seemingly thrived on the Planet prior to the arrival of man, and what could have been a discovery with far reaching societal effects, the ripples of which would probably even end the conflict, it was instead quickly swept under the rug and held secret. The definitive campaign plans were finalized in the winter of 450 A.S, and the Fortress’ forces rested through the longest night of the year on the outskirts of Assyria city, while the Assyrian forces already started moving north a few days prior. In the morning, news of a betrayal reached the Fortress’ forces, someone had dumped poison into the river which carried it downstream to where the Fortress siphoned its supply from. Though a student of history such as myself would recognize this as a stratagem, the soldiers did not see it through. So instead of marching north to support their allies, they sacked the undefended city. Having spent their rage, and realizing they could not hold it, they returned to their home. With the alliance broken, the three pronged fighting continued, with all sides now equally weakened, carrying on in a stalemate for the next 62 years.
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