History
At the closing of Era-1, religious fervor was at a fever pitch on the outskirts of the Planetary League. The League had grown corrupt, and contact had just been made with an ancient alien empire,(The Empire of 1,000,000 Suns), which many had heretofore considered to be a story traded among the aliens to frighten the humans. The time was ripe for a change.
General Potus Clark, commander of the garrison on Gabriel, in concert with the Church of God, was ready to supply it. Crowned Emperor of Mankind in GSC 12506 by the supreme leaders of the Church (the Ayatollah-Maximus, the Uberpope, and the Supreme Rabbi), General Clark set out to show the galaxy what real power was. Setting up a capitol on Gabriel, the Holy Empire of Man took form.
The Emperor, and the Church of God were also joined in their war, known as the Great Reckoning, by a number of military contractors. Even the megacorporations Gazillion, which had its own network of colonies and holdings, and Klon-Tek which supplied legions of cloned soldiers.
The Great Reckoning saw the Planetary League crumble, and the Holy Empire of Man rise to power. Dedicated to gaining and concentrating power as quickly as possible, the Empire was constantly at war with anyone unfortunate enough to be in the way. The Empire did form alliances of convenience for the purposes of defeating mutual enemies, but these were always short-lived. The Great Reckoning continued until the Planetary League was utterly crushed, and the Imperial Army reached Earth. Upon his victorious landing on Earth (in the city holiest to the three branches of the Church of God, Jerusalem), The Emperor was proclaimed to be the Messiah by the Supreme Rabbi, anointed as the Second Coming by the Uberpope, and hailed as the Mahdi by the Ayatollah-maximus.
As time marched on, the Emperor aged, and was gradually augmented with more and more technology, until one day he disappeared from public view, and went into the Imperial Hospital for an extended stay. The population prayed and cried as the surgeons worked. Then the Emperor Emerged in his new form, fully robotic, at least in appearance, (exact details were NOT forthcoming), and announced himself to have "Ascended from the Flesh". Blasphemous rumors abounded after this blessed event that the Emperor had died, and been replaced by a robot. (Those caught spreading such rumors were not heard from again.)
After a period of consolidating power, and numerous small wars, the Holy Empire of Man embarked on what was to be its greatest military campaign, the War of the Empires. This galaxy-spanning conflict was the culmination of the very reason the Emperor rose to power in the first place. It was a long, punishing war, but in the end, The Holy Empire of Man shattered and defeated the Empire of 1,000,000 Suns. At the end of this war, the supreme leaders of the Church of God proclaimed that the Emperor had ascended to Godhood, and the people of the Empire began worshiping him directly.
There was another long period of relative quiet, filled with all kinds of small conflicts after the War of the Empires. The Holy Empire of Man was in its prime when Troniac returned to the galaxy, and the War of the Gods began. Troniac was leading a substantial force, and Troniac's followers in the galaxy were staggeringly numerous. After a long, grinding war, the Holy Empire of Man emerged victorious, but its decline and collapse were now inevitable.
Further centuries of warfare continued. The Empire even had some non-trivial victories, but low-ranking nobles were carving out their own states, multiple local rebellions had ignited, and on the fringes of the galaxy, the Galactic Republic was gaining strength.
Due to the enormous size of the Holy Empire of Man, the eventual War of Galactic Unification that would establish the Galactic Republic was a long one. Even though the Galactic Republic had a huge technological edge and was very popular among the numerous enemies of the Empire, the sheer scale of the conflict was gargantuan. The War of Galactic Unification ended with a climactic battle in which the Emperor was personally defeated.
