The War of the Chosen was not merely a conflict of empires, but a cataclysm of ideologies, a collision between two diametrically opposed visions for the galaxy. For the ancient Providence of the Chosen, it was the "Great Apostasy," a holy war against a soulless, devouring entity. For the youthful, expansionist Endless Unity, it was a war of survival against an arrogant and ancient power that sought to impose its will through divine right. What neither civilization understood, as they marched blindly toward annihilation, was that the war itself was the design of a third, malevolent intelligence, pulling the strings of fate to orchestrate a symphony of destruction.
Seeds of Conflict: The Illusion of Choice
For centuries, the Endless Unity had expanded its reach across the galactic arm, a tide of human ambition fueled by industrial might and a doctrine of absolute unification. This period, the Chapter of Expansions, was itself the result of subtle manipulation. The "Three Spheres of Expansion," the grand strategic plan that pushed the Unity's borders ever outward, was the brainchild of a brilliant researcher named Ilest Kovendor. His mathematical models, which convincingly argued for the low risks and high rewards of rapid colonization, were in fact inspired by the psychic whispers of Ilendor, a being whose power grew with every new conflict sown in the galaxy.
By the mid-9th century AF, this expansion brought the Unity to the fringes of the Providence of the Chosen; an alien elder civilization consolidated and dominated by the @Altaran species. Initial contact was cautious, even peaceful, but founded on a bed of mutual miscalculation. The Endless, viewing the Chosen through their own materialist lens, saw a reclusive, advanced culture they believed would avoid a costly war with a peer power. They utterly failed to account for the Altaran religious psyche, their belief in prophetic destiny, and their conviction that the Unity was the "Great Devourer" of their eschatology.
The Chosen, meanwhile, observed the Unity's relentless, brutal assimilation of lesser species and saw not a driven people securing their future, but a ravenous, godless swarm. Their initial strategy was one of subtlety, leveraging their superior psionics for infiltration and subversion. They activated sleeper agents and cultivated fifth columns within the Unity's fringe systems, leading to the mass defection of the so-called @Betrayer Colonies , which swore allegiance to the Chosen.
This was the first masterstroke of the dead god's plan. He simultaneously fed the Chosen's paranoia with visions of a Unity-led apocalypse while guiding the hands of their psionic infiltrators. The defections were a trap, designed to force the Unity's hand. The Endless leadership, under the relatively peaceful Supreme Overseer Valunon Thienkor, was faced with an impossible choice: tolerate the secession of thousands of worlds and the erosion of their sovereignty, or respond with overwhelming force. Thienkor, a man who desperately sought to avoid open war, found his diplomatic options systematically eliminated by another of Ilendor's creations: the "Elder Truth" movement. This underground cult exposed high-level secrets and purged the very political and military figures who maintained back-channel communications with the Chosen, severing the last hopes for a negotiated peace.
With no other recourse, Thienkor authorized the Purge of the @Betrayer Colonies . In a display of terrifying logistical might, thousands of star systems were scoured clean in a matter of days, their worlds shattered, their stars detonated. It was a tragedy of unimaginable scale, and Ilendor ensured it was perceived by the Chosen not as a grim necessity of state, but as an act of sacrilegious genocide against their faithful.
The Inferno Ignites: A Clash of Doctrines
The Purge provided the Chosen with the perfect casus belli. The proponents of war within the Providence, their fears confirmed by the "martyrdom" of the converts, argued that the Endless were indeed the prophesied Devourers. In 857 AF, without a formal declaration of war, the great Corefleets of the Altaran Void-Watchers crossed into Unity space.
The early stages of the war were a testament to Chosen technological and psionic supremacy. Their warships, honed over millennia of theoretical warfare, cut through the Unity's frontier defenses with contemptuous ease. Endless battle fleets were outmaneuvered and obliterated by sleek, psionically-augmented vessels that seemed to anticipate their every move. This was compounded by a devastating covert campaign: across a million Unity worlds, deep-cover psionic agents were activated. They detonated psychic resonances that turned thriving ecumenopolises into barren tombs, sabotaged key infrastructure, and assassinated planetary governors, throwing the vast empire into chaos.
The Unity was caught unprepared for the nature of this conflict. Their military doctrine, built around overwhelming firepower, fleet engagements, and tangible industrial targets, was ill-suited to an enemy that struck from the shadows as often as from the void.
Yet, the Chosen had made a critical, strategic miscalculation. They had underestimated the sheer, mind-numbing scale of the Endless Unity. The empire was so vast that it would take their fastest fleets decades to penetrate its core. This geographic reality granted the Unity a priceless commodity: time.
The Industrial Titan Awakens
Supreme Overseer Thienkor, though a reluctant warrior, now presided over the total mobilization of a civilization built for survival. The Unity’s greatest strength was not its current technology, but its limitless industrial capacity and relentless capacity for adaptation. The war economy shifted into a gear no other civilization could match. Shipyards the size of solar systems churned out new classes of warships, not in years, but in months. Every engagement with the Chosen, every loss, was a data point. Endless scientists and engineers reverse-engineered captured technology, developing improved shield harmonics to resist psionic weaponry, more powerful plasma lances to puncture Chosen void-shields, and sophisticated dampening fields to disrupt their FTL communications.
The war became a brutal war of attrition, a grinding conflict that stretched across centuries. The Chosen, for all their sophistication, were fighting a war of exhaustion against an enemy with infinitely greater resources. Their fleets, though victorious in nearly every engagement, were being worn down. For every Chosen dreadnought lost, the Unity could lose a hundred battleships and still have a thousand more on the way. Slowly, inexorably, the tide began to turn. The Unity learned to counter Chosen subterfuge with ruthless internal security and developed their own crude but effective psionic countermeasures. The blazing advance of the Corefleets stalled, then was pushed back, system by bloody system.
Decades into the conflict, his empire still reeling but now on a firm footing, the magnanimous Valunon Thienkor once again extended an offer of peace. He understood that a protracted war, even a victorious one, would cripple both civilizations. His terms were likely pragmatic: a cessation of hostilities, defined borders, and a mutual non-aggression pact.
To the Chosen, however, this was not an offer of peace, but an ultimatum from an inferior. Accepting it would mean acknowledging the Endless as equals, repudiating their own divine destiny, and admitting that their sacred crusade had been a costly miscalculation. It was an ideological surrender they were incapable of making. Convinced more than ever by the visions Ilendor fed them—visions of a resurgent, technologically-ascendant Unity eventually overwhelming them—the leadership of the Providence made the fateful decision.
They would not sue for peace. They would unleash their final, sacred weapon, built over one hundred thousand years to confront the true end of all things. They would awaken the Flotilla of Ardent.
The Holy War: The Flotilla of Ardent
Faced with this existential reversal, the leadership of the Providence made a fateful decision. They would escalate the conflict into a true holy war, unleashing their final, sacred weapon: the Flotilla of Ardent. This was not a mere fleet, but a relic of the ancient Third Providence, constructed millions of years prior and kept in dormant vigil ever since. It was a largely autonomous AI armada of incomprehensible scale, built for a single, prophesied purpose: to one day confront and annihilate the "Great Devourer," a role in which they now firmly cast the Endless Unity.
As the first reports of this awakening horror began to filter in, a simultaneous catastrophe struck at the very heart of the Unity. The capital world of @Andarus was rocked by a devastating nuclear terror attack that vaporized the central government precinct. Supreme Overseer Valunon Thienkor, along with key members of his cabinet and military high command, was killed instantly. To this day, it remains unknown who conducted the attack or how a nuclear warhead bypassed the planet's extensive radiological sensors, a failure that haunts the Unity's security services.
In the ensuing chaos, with the apocalyptic Flotilla advancing and the government decapitated, the surviving Prime Council acted with unanimous and desperate resolve. They turned to @Antarof Gorseon , Thienkor's longtime friend and protege, electing him as the new Supreme Overseer. He inherited a empire on the brink of annihilation, tasked with confronting an enemy that had just unveiled its ultimate power. The war had entered its darkest hour.