Soldier on the Eastern Fringe (Rise of Empires 1)

1000 years. We've been spreading across the stars for 1000 years.

It's hard to believe we started so long ago.

We just fought the last brushfire war, or at least that's what the ancient Americans and British called it. The country I'm descended from didn't care. I descend from the country of Brazil, before it became the region of the United Southern American Nations, the second most populous region of Earth.

Now, I myself am not from Earth, nor have I ever seen that supposedly beautiful orb. I am from the world of Carian, along the eastern fringe of the United Planets of Humanity... Oh, I haven't told you what those are yet have I?

The United Planets is the political unit that represents all of Mankind. When we began our push into the stars, we started off like the ancient colonial Empires, running the worlds as colonies from Earth. This went on until Mars, our first colony, revolted, successfully winning it's independence from it's British masters. After Mars rebelled, so did all our other colonies, each declaring independence from Earth, but the wars that broke out between the newly independent worlds threatened to destroy our attempts at a galactic empire. A new solution was devised

Written up by an Martian Statesman, the Constitution of the United Planets set the guidelines for a government that represented every planet equally. Every planet was given one senator in a superparliament on Earth's moon, Luna. Every planet colonized was done so with the knowledge that it would become an independent world and given a senator in the Parliament.

With that, we once again spread, finding new species. Some, like the peaceful, deer-like Stagnorans in their refugee ships, we welcomed with open arms, while others, like the fanatical, insectoid Zel'gan Noctoru... Well... We're still at war with them today, almost two hundred years after first contact. We encountered the pacifistic, avian Avarius Psittaca, the eternal enemies of the Zel'gan, and the expansionist, reptilian Brakkians.

Now, back to me, being on the Eastern Fringe, we are constantly fighting against the Brakkians, our settlers clamoring for more worlds, which the lizards already have occupied. As such, most of us are drafted into the United Planets Military, put into planetary battalions to fight the aliens. Now, that was to make what I'm about to say a little more clear. I am a member of the Carian Gravediggers, the battalion native to my homeworld. Currently, we are engaged on the planet Jurviorn, fighting in trenches thousands of standard miles wide. Going over old holovids, we can't help but laugh at the ancient Empires fighting their 'Great War', because that would of been a breeze for us. A hundred miles of trenches? I wish. Human enemies? Never again. No tanks until the last year of fighting? How about never getting them at all?

My shoulder still hurts from the kick of my rifle

We have one thing going for us right now. While we have no armor, we are fighting along one of the nine Praetor Guard battalions from Earth. Four of them are deployed along the Western Reaches against the Zel'gan, where all our tanks are, and the other four are spread across human space, dealing with domestic threats that pop up every now and again. We're lucky to have them here, even if they are all pretentious snobs from Man's homeworld. They have our first laser rifles, setting the bar that the rest of us WILL reach.

Well, my time for this is almost up, the Lizards are coming in again. I will write again afterwards


Colonel Friaz Kadrian, 128th Carian Gravedigger Battalion






[After Action Report]
The Brakkians were driven offworld and out of the entire system after a desperate nine month siege. The author of this entry, Colonel Kadrian of the 128th Carian, perished in the last battle on Jurviorn, posthumously awarded the Terran Medal of Conspicuous Bravery, having taken on almost twenty Brakkians single handedly in an attempt to distract them long enough to evacuate the critically wounded from a field hospital, from which almost two hundred were saved before the position was overrun. Survivors chose suicide rather than being captured, all being members of the 5th Praetor Guard

Casualty Figures (Humanity)
200,451 Killed
148 Missing
0 (presumably) Captured