At the request of the Plenipotentiary Council, I (Dr. Cabmel Da'Ret) have compiled a single historical volume contains the details of the rise and fall of the Tirolian people. Although we are mere immigrants to our own world, we Tirolians built an interstellar empire the likes of which have not been seen since. As new Humans come to our planet and we reacquaint ourselves with our neighbors, a debate has arisen as to what to tell them about our past. We Tirolians do not wish to dwell too much with our own demons, which is what the Invid and the Zentraedi are, but we cannot simply tear out such as important page in history. The Plenipotentiary Council has rightly commissioned this volume, of which you are reading the Executive Overview, in an attempt to present a factual and unbiased historical overview of the Tirolian people, in all its glories and failings.
By the end of this volume, or the Executive Summary if you do not have the time to read the entire 1500 page volume, I (Dr. Cabmel Da'Ret) would hope that you have come to appreciate the Tirolians as a people with a complex past and a hopeful future. We have come back from the brink and look forward with hopeful eyes. The first part of the volume, and the executive summary, deals with the description of the Valivarre Star System, but all measurements are provided in terms of the Sol Star System, the home of the Human race.
Valivarre is a bright blue-white A6 dwarf star, twice the mass of Earth's sun, Sol, and substantially hotter at the surface. Valivarre is 1.95 times the radius of Sol and puts out sixteen times the light. Analysis of the star indicates that it is a mere seven hundred and ninety million years old, and it is estimated that within thirty-five million years, Valivarre will become an orange K5 giant star, destroying all life in the system. Valivarre is located 1812 parsecs (5907 light-years) from Earth, in the direction of the constellation of the Southern Cross constellation (RA 12h4.2m, Dec -62.12), and was the center of a vast interstellar empire that, at its height, controlled fifty million cubic parsecs and more than a thousand inhabited worlds, for the Valivarre Star System contained the home world of the Tirolians, the masters of that empire.
Valivarre is home to twelve planets. The first three are rocky, hot, inhospitable worlds, ranging in size from a tenth to nearly twice Earth's mass. The next five are gas giants, the inner two being similar to the Sol system's Jupiter and Saturn, and the outer three more resembling the Sol system's Uranus and Neptune. The outermost four worlds are composed largely of a mixture of rock and water and methane ice, similar to Pluto and several moons of Uranus and Neptune.
Fantoma is the fourth planet from Valivarre, orbiting every 2066 Terran days at a distance of 3.95 AU. At this distance, it receives approximately the same amount of radioactive flux from its sun as Earth does, though the light is more in the blue and ultra-violet spectrum. Fantoma is a gas giant, somewhat smaller than Jupiter, with a total mass of 208 times that of Earth's, and a radius slightly more than ten times Earth's (64,930 km). With a rotation period of eleven hours and six minutes, the enormous coriolis forces drive the atmosphere into bands of high and low pressure zones, like on Jupiter and Saturn, and a large number of storms are visible. Most prominent is Yev'evle, a high pressure region near the Fantoman equator similar to Jupiter's Great Red Spot; this storm has persisted throughout the full extent of Tirolian recorded history. Furthermore, because of the far greater radiation coming from the nearby star than on Jupiter, the atmosphere is far more dynamic and turbulent. Fantoma's atmosphere is also composed largely of hydrogen, helium, methane, ammonia, water, and carbon dioxide, and as a whole the planet appears as varying bands of bluish-green and white.
A modest ring system encircles Fantoma, extending from 1.3 to 1.7 Fantoman radii (1 Fantoman radius is equal to the distance from the center of Fantoma to the extent of Fantoma's atmosphere), consisting mainly of rock fragments that range in size from dust to several meters in length. While clearly visible from the surface of its moons, these rings, which are inclined at most 0.2 degrees from the planet's plane of rotation, are not as spectacular as those surrounding Saturn, but are still more impressive than Jupiter's ring. The most unique aspect of the Fantoman rings is the prevalence of magnetic monopoles amidst the dust in several of the middle rings; these particles are not been found in large quantities elsewhere in the explored galaxy. It is believed that at some point in Fantoma's past, an object composed largely of monopolar matter passed too close and was torn apart by tidal gravity from Fantoma, the fragments were then incorporated into the planet's ring system. Fantoma is home to eight moons. The first two, Falcaro and Stonol, are small bodies of rock less than a couple percent of Earth's mass. Falcaro is extremely geologically active, as is Stonol to a lesser degree. This is due to the tidal pull of Tirol, the third moon, which prevents these two moons from being phase-locked with Fantoma. Tirol is very nearly the size of Earth and has an Earth-like atmosphere. Madrea, the fourth moon, is a modest size and a tenth of Earth's mass, also with an Earth-like atmosphere. The other moons, all further out than Madrea, are very small, at most 0.3% Earth's mass each.
Tirol, the third moon of Fantoma, is the traditional seat of Tirolian civilization, though the Robotech Masters and Robotech Elders abandoned the surface centuries ago to dwell in their artificial clone-societies aboard their orbital mother ships, leaving the bulk of the Tirolian population on the planet below. Tirol is a somewhat smaller planet than Earth, with only 61% of Earth's mass and has 82% of Earth's radius. Tirol is, on the whole, marginally denser than Earth thanks to a larger core relative to the planet's size and possesses a surface gravity 92% of Earth's. It orbits very close to Fantoma's equatorial plane at a distance of 2.4 Fantoman radii (157,711 km), completing a revolution every twelve hours and twenty-one minutes, creating days that are almost half as long as on Earth. Because of Fantoma's great size, and the small size of the other Fantoman moons, Tirol is phase-locked to Fantoma; that is, from Fantoma's perspective, Tirol always shows the same side to it.
The most prominent object in the Tirolian sky is Fantoma and eclipses of Valivarre by Fantoma are almost a daily occurrence on the Fantoma-ward side of the planet. Depending upon the season, Fantoma is visible even in the middle of the day. From Tirol's perspective, Fantoma never moves in the sky, and its position in the sky is entirely determined by the observer's location on Tirol. The phase-lock also means that Tirol's rotation period, or its day, is the same as its rotation period around Fantoma, namely, 12 hours, 21 minutes. Because Tirol's orbit slightly overtakes Fantoma's rotation, Fantoma appears to rotate retrograde (from Tirol's perspective), with a period of almost 110 hours, or nearly nine Tirolian days. Tirol's higher rotation period affects its weather significantly. Weather patterns tend to be confined to smaller cells than one would expect on Earth, and much of the cloud cover and precipitation are at the lower latitudes. Tirol has no detectable intrinsic magnetic field, but even if it did, it would be dwarfed by Fantoma's. Fantoma's field is, to good approximation, a well-aligned dipole, so its magnetic field lines are seen on Tirol as being virtually parallel to the planet's rotation axis. Despite the differences, two-dimensional compasses act similarly on the surface of Tirol as on the surface of Earth. The main effect is that Tirol sees an intense aurora at all latitudes. The presence of debris from Fantoma's rings also makes meteor showers a frequent occurrence on Tirol.
Fully 32% of Tirol's surface is land, the majority of which is a single super-continent named Pae'rana centered on the sub-Fantoma point. A series of volcanic islands and several small sub-continents exist on the side of Tirol opposite Fantoma, but that half of the planet is almost entirely ocean. Tirol is somewhat tectonically active, as the other moons disturb the planet's phase-lock with Fantoma, but continental drift away from the super-continent is relatively minimal, thanks to the Fantoman tides. Finally, much of Tirol is more arid than Earth, especially toward the center of the super-continent Pae'rana, but the planet sees all the range of climes and ecological zones Earth does. Indeed, Pae'rana's ecological zones exist in large part in belts, according to latitude. At the highest latitudes are arctic and tundra zones then taiga-like forest belts. Lower in latitude are the grasslands, and below that the equatorial deserts and jungles. Most of the Tirolian population lives in the grasslands and steppes, and on the coastlines of the more temperate zones.
While Tirol's inhabited surface area is similar in size to Eurasia and Africa combined, its racial composition is dramatically more homogeneous than old-world Earth. There are only three racial types, descending from Earth's Caucasians, Dravidians, and Mongoloids. From this fact, it can be surmised that the original humans transplanted to Tirol originated in the Near East and Central Asia. In the ten millennia between the arrival of Humans on Tirol and the advent of civilization across the planet, the Tirolian people fragmented into four major language families and innumerable tribes and ethnic groups. Eventually, by a process of attrition and cultural assimilation, Tirol's people began to consolidate, first into the great empires, then later into the major industrial nation-states. By the time of the advent of space travel in 652 CE, only seven major languages were left and four of those were different dialects of the same language. Increasingly, the dominant culture on Tirol was that of the Tiresians, relative newcomers to Tirol's ethnic mix. The earliest appearance of the Tiresians in the planet's records dates back no further than 410 BCE, and they did not become prominent in world affairs until around 360 CE. By the emergence of the Robotech Empire in 1361 CE, The Tiresian culture and language had penetrated to every corner of the globe as a consequence of their political and economic dominance. By the rise of the Tirolian Mercantile Empire, most of the ancient cultures and peoples were diluted beyond recognition, and their unique facets were relegated to family and place names, and regional festival costumes. The only exception is the rugged and independent-minded mountain people of the Rilac region, who have kept their language and customs over the many centuries.
Tirol's myriad of pre-industrial cultures produced a flowering of mythic and religious literature over the millennia, though all share a common thread. All of their myths involve the Tirolian people living in some form of a paradise before they were attacked and abducted by a race of demonic dragon-like creatures, called the P'tok in the version the Tiresian culture adopted. The Tirolians were kept as slaves by the demons until one day they were rescued by hero, although the exact details of the hero vary widely from one myth to another. After the Tirolians were liberated, the P'tok fled, leaving the Tirolians trapped on their new world. From this point on, the cultures diverge, some say that an ancestor of the great hero that liberated the Tirolians came back and taught them civilization, other myths claim that a new deity came and taught them civilization, but in no myth does the P'tok every return. Eventually, the myths evolved into a number of national and sectarian religions, from which several major universal, philosophic religious systems emerged. These belief systems, however, died at the hands of the secularism of the early interstellar republics. In the following centuries, Tiresian philosophical thought, the dominant form on Tirol, dwelt more on civic duty, familial obligations, and public morals than on transcendental or theological concerns.
Tirolian culture, and Tiresian culture in particular, is very superior in its outlook on other races. After a thousand years of being an interstellar power, dominating hundreds of alien worlds and a thousand colonies of all sizes of their own, Tirolians grew to look upon themselves as the highest expression of civilization in the Galaxy. The maintenance of the ancient forms of government and the creation of monumental architecture became paramount in the Tirolians' priorities. The Robotech Elders and Masters were seen by many on Tirol as having abandoned their duties to the state and to Tirol itself, but the Tirolian citizenry had neither the resources, power, or will to challenge them.
It is obvious to anyone performing a scientific examination of Tirol that life clearly did not begin naturally. Many scientists believe that Valivarre is far too young a star for life to have formed on the worlds that orbit it and similarly, DNA evidence on Tirol and Praxis clearly indicates that they share a common ancestry with the people of Earth. Also, fossil evidence of life on the planet only dates back around 115 million years ago.
Evidence is beginning to suggest that the Tirolians are the third civilized species to have inhabited the planet. The first occupation, around 114 million years ago, appears to coincide with the enormously widespread colonization of worlds by an unknown, long extinct race dubbed the 'Seeders'. This race, of which no known artifact has survived the vast eons, appears to have settled hundreds of planets in the quadrant before their demise. Due to stellar dispersion, it is almost impossible to know without surveying the entire Galaxy how large their sphere of influence once was, though estimates place it on upwards of thirty thousand inhabited planets. On some worlds, it appears they only introduced new life to pre-existing ecosystems. Others planets, such as Tirol, appear to have been completely terraformed and all their life had been transplanted from elsewhere. In the time since life was seeded on Tirol, evolution has taken its course and the planet has developed its own unique species and ecosystems. The life brought to Tirol has long since adapted to its climate and to its day, night, and eclipse cycles.
The second alien occupation appears to have been a mere 20,000 years ago, when a second race, dubbed the 'Settlers', established a small colony on Tirol. Little is known about this race as well, other than that they brought more life forms, particularly Humans, from other worlds and deposited them onto Tirol and Praxis. Few 'Settler' sites have ever been unearthed and those that have been found have revealed little; Tirol appears to have been a small backwater colony, possibly agricultural in nature. In any case, the population of 'Settlers' on Tirol seems to have never exceeded a few thousand in small, widespread settlements. The 'Settlers' apparently used cremation in their burial rites and no confirmed reports of their skeletons have ever been found, though Human remains are often associated with 'Settler' occupation sites. Many believe that the myths involving the P'tok are referring to the 'Settlers' when they brought Humans from Earth to Tirol.
Sometime around 14,000 years ago, not long after the humans were brought to Tirol, the 'Settlers' left Tirol, although there is some indication that their settlements were destroyed by violence. Afterwards, the humans transplanted to Tirol began their long reign as the unchallenged masters of this world. Even extended access to Praxis and the occasional ruins located on that planet have not shed any more light on who or what the 'Settlers' were. Although there are more discovered ruins on Praxis, indicating a much larger population, most of these ruins had been destroyed during one of the many historical purges that swept that planet.
The first of the Tirolian civilizations began to appear approximately 6500 BCE in the Dev'er and Relav river valleys, with three other complex urban cultures springing up within the next millennium. Writing appears to have been developed in the Dev'er city-states around 5800 BCE and independently again in the Relav and Tonvella cultures within five centuries of that. Much of Tirolian civilization can be traced to these earliest cultures, though all were eventually conquered by successive waves of later tribes.
Tirol's pre-industrial history is long and complex, and owing to limited translations available to Terran historians, is not as widely understood as we might like. The primary cultural continuum that led to the Tiresian culture began with Dev'eria. Although this region's political centers were conquered and destroyed by successive waves of barbarians over the millennia, similar to the ancient Roman Empire on Earth, the newcomers invariably adopted the Dev'er culture. This insured that it remained culturally intact until 1200 BCE, when it was finally destroyed by a nation of tribesmen that had also been influenced by their society, the Tettelians. In the prior centuries, however, the Forasi city-states emerged, and although they were culturally distinct from the Dev'er, many of the religious, technical, and scientific achievements of the De'ver were imported. Following on the heels of the Forasi were the Ein'liba, whose drive and martial ambition caused them to build a vast empire that reached its height by 721 BCE; the Forasi were conquered and their culture was adopted by the Ein'liba to a great extent. Waves of barbarian invasions, incessant warfare against the various dynasties ruling Tettelia, and economic problems eventually by 301 BCE toppled the Ein'liba. Northwestern Pae'rana then entered into something of a dark age, from which the modern cultures of Su'tone, the backwater southern coastal regions of the old Ein'liba Empire, eventually emerged after their long intellectual slumber. Among the nationalities that emerged in this region were the Tiresians, descendants of barbarians who had pressed upon the Ein'liba empire centuries before. By 360 CE, the Tiresians had emerged as one of the most powerful nations in the Su'tone region and were expanding their influence eastward into Orpelae.
Technology advanced at an impressive pace in Su'tone during the fifth through seventh centuries CE, fueled by population growth and economic development. During this era, the peoples of Su'tone began to aggressively expand, colonizing much of Pae'rana and displacing and dominating the indigenous peoples and cultures, similar to the expansion of the Europeans. Nevertheless, the aggressive competition between the Su'tonean nations led to several devastating world wars, the third of which ushered in nuclear weaponry. A reluctant participant in the last one, Tiresia nonetheless emerged as the sole major world power, with the might to impose its will, if necessary, on any part of the planet. This situation is again paralleled on Earth with the advent of the United States of America as the new world power in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Tiresia and the other Su'tonean nations took the lead in technology, though it was Rilac that first entered space. The space era began slowly for Tirol, but by the early 800's CE, a permanent presence was established on Fantoma's more stable moons, and after two centuries, the Tirolians had established colonies in orbit around or on the surface of many of the worlds and moons in their star system. By the discovery of Fold Drive technology, fully ten percent of the Tirolian race lived off-planet.
Deteriorating social and economic conditions in the decades after the first fold-capable ships were launched led to a mass exodus of Tirolians. The first to immigrate to the new interstellar colonies were those that did not belong to the Tiresian culture, which had spread to most of the Su'tone peoples because of the vastly successful economic trade bloc the region had formed. The largest single colony was Ci'Va, initially settled by Rilacians after their homeland had been devastated by civil war and famine for nearly a century. Within two centuries, Ci'Va was the largest Tirolian colony, and a major trading and industrial center, second only to Tirol itself.
Eventually the political and economic disturbances on Tirol subsided, and under the lead of the Tiresians, Tirol unified into a more or less homogeneous republic in 1166 CE. Colonization of other worlds proceeded with great haste, aided by advances in fold technology and a huge increase in the population's growth rate. Improvements in fold-engines, though still limited by modern standards, led to a thriving interstellar trade. At first, the core of the newly formed Interstellar Republic supplied the colonies, but soon they began to develop industries and resources of their own and they began to trade among themselves and deliver agricultural goods back to Tirol.During the exploration of the quadrant, the Tirolians encountered their first civilized alien species. The most important of these new races were the Kaberrans, a race of bear-like creatures. The Kaberrans had developed a credible presence in space on their own, even without the benefit of FTL ships. However, even though Kaberra's fantastic industrial capacity dwarfed even Tirol's, pressures due to population and pollution were straining Kaberra's viability. The Tirolian Interstellar Republic and the Kaberran Hegemony concluded a comprehensive and amicable trade agreement, with Tirol providing Fold Drive technology, monopolar mining rights, and foodstuffs in exchange for Kaberran industrial expertise, biotechnology, and innumerable products, such as Sekitan ore. Relations between Kaberra and Tirol were generally favorable for the next two centuries and fusion reactors powered by Sekitan ore, a deuterium-rich ore, spread throughout the Interstellar Republic.
During this time, the Tirolians also encountered their first enemies in space. Six different minor wars were fought in the Republic era against the Perytonians, and Tirol and Kaberra fought a major war in 1274-1306 CE against the V'loxia, a dragon-like people whose borders included a hundred inhabited worlds. The conflict was costly and terrible and ended with the extinction of the V'loxia. The Kaberrans were appalled by the genocide of the V'loxia at the hands of the Tirolians and this rift began a downward spiral in the relationship between the two worlds', which led to Kaberra severing ties to Tirol proper in 1339 CE and the entire Interstellar Republic three years later. Kaberra then aligned itself with the autonomous Tirolian Republic of Ci'Vonia, which by this time controlled a dozen planets centered on Ci'Va, and stood to benefit enormously from the larger market for its foodstuffs and products. What had been a centuries-long friendship between Tirol and Kaberra quickly evolved into an armed stand off. Tirol began to suffer an energy crisis, as Kaberran Sekitan became generally unavailable. This embargo forced Tirol to return to older and more inefficient methods of acquiring nuclear fuel.
The exploration missions sent to discover new forms of energy led a new expansion into space and charted hundreds of new worlds. The culmination of these missions occurred when Zor Derelda, a young Tiresian project scientist assigned to a deep-space survey team, discovered the planet Optera and its unique life forms, the Invid. The discovery of Protoculture, as a power source and as a catalyst for cloning, produced nothing less than a revolution in Tirolian technology. The loss of Sekitan now proved advantageous to the Tirolians, as the replenishment of the first generation of Protoculture matrices required large amounts of heavy water to be extracted from Tirol's and its colonies' oceans, a technology Tirol had to revive after they lost the Kaberran ore.
However, it was not power generation that caused the most important changes to Tirolian society. Instead, Protoculture's ability to accelerate cloning and to repair cellular damage ultimately reshaped Tirolian culture. Tirolian biotechnology was already extremely advanced at this time, thanks in part to the groundbreaking research in the field pioneered by their former Kaberran allies. Soon, ambitious life-extension projects made the aristocracy virtually immortal, genetically improved grains and farm animals were spread all over the republic, custom genes introduced the entire spectrum of color into Tirolian eyes and hair. Most ominously, an entire race of clones was created, biologically and socially conditioned into servitude and used for manual labor. The race, 45' (13.7 m) tall and able to withstand extreme environments, was called the Zentraedi.
In 1355 CE, at the behest of the Tirolian Senate, Tirol's most powerful bloc of scientists, a group of ideologues calling themselves the Robotech Masters (Zorrlev'dra Gisterae) developed the Zentraedi. Founded by a set of identical triplets calling themselves the Robotech Elders (Zorrlev'dra Ertulve), and obsessed by the numerology of threes, the Robotech Masters set about using the cloning technologies to create what was, in their view, the perfect society. They created two races, the first was the Zentraedi, built for heavy labor and, secretly, for war, and the second was a race of triplets acting in concert for the good of the race, where emotional expression and individuality were forbidden.
Though the Zentraedi were nominally under the control of the Senate, the real control lay in the hands of the Robotech Elders. When word of the Robotech Elders' second race broke, the Tirolian people, especially the patrician classes, were aghast. The Elders were ordered to immediately cease their experiments by the Senate. In response, the Elders called in the Zentraedi and seized control of Tirol in 1361 CE, disbanding the Senate and quickly destroying the Tirolian military. In the Great Hall of Tiresia, the Robotech Elders declared the beginning of the Robotech Empire as the Senate, under house arrest, watched helplessly. The home world securely in their hands, the Robotech Elders set about establishing control over all the worlds in the now-defunct Interstellar Republic.
The first military crisis facing the Robotech Empire was on Kaberra. In 1378 CE, the Kaberrans tested a new type of starship-mounted weapon: the Reflex Cannon. Combining the power of a nuclear weapon with the advantages of an area-affect beam gun, and impervious to anti-missile defenses, this weapon's test was meant as a signal to Tirol that the Elders should not threaten it. Nevertheless, the Elders rightly perceived that this technology, if given the time to develop, would upset the balance of power in the quadrant away from their empire. The Zentraedi were mustered and dispatched to Kaberra, which was soon conquered with minimal collateral damage and loss of Kaberran life; its great industrial capacity was then turned to Imperial needs. The Kaberrans were forced to hand over the secrets to the Reflex Cannon, which was perfected by the new Tirolian science triumvirates. Soon, new classes of Zentraedi ships began to appear, which were built around the terribly effective split-boom beam gun.
The Imperial Governors assigned to Kaberra treated the Kaberrans with the utmost respect and charity, and even though they were resentful of the conquest, they never rose in revolt against the Empire. Indeed, Kaberra saw its greatest economic boom in three centuries when Tirolian merchants began to return. Ci'Vonia, on the other hand, immediately objected to the loss of its trading partner, but was mollified by assurances of autonomy and free trade with Tirol. Soon after, the Zentraedi were used to conquer race after race in both the Local Group and the surrounding area. With the help of their Zentraedi warriors, the Robotech Elders quickly succeeded in regaining control of all Tirolian colonies except one, Ci'Va, whose former treaties with the Empire were honored, at least as long as Ci'Va gave token deference to the Robtoech Elders. By 1450 CE, the new triumvirate clones were perfected and the Robotech Elders retired to their great mother ships in Tirolian orbit with their triplet minions.
At about the same time, the Invid began to appear, decimating outlying colony worlds and folding out before Imperial forces could catch them. The Zentraedi easily forced the Invid to flee Optera, but the harassment continued after the Invid adopted a new world outside the Tirolians' sphere of influence as their base of operations. This harassment, though unsettling to inhabitants of the outlying colonies, was not a serious threat to the empire, but it did require the establishment of a vast defensive fleet of Zentraedi.
At this point, only one weakness was apparent in the Imperial armor: though the Robotech Elders had a monopoly on Protoculture, they could not produce it without help and increasingly they grew completely dependent on this energy source whose production they ultimately could not control. The Flowers of Life under the control of the Robotech Elders would produce seeds that could release energy, but those seeds would be completely sterile. Eventually, the plants would mature and cease producing seeds, becoming worthless to the Empire. Zor, the scientist who initially discovered the Flower of Life, held the secret of fertile seeds and he used it as his trump card. Zor destroyed all records of the Flower's biology, committing them to memory beforehand. Though cajoled into providing fertile seeds for the Empire, Zor did so only when the lives and liberties of the colonists and citizens of the Empire were respected. The Elders had no choice but to grant Zor's demands, so long as subversive elements did not threaten their power. What the Elders did not learn was that Zor, seeing what the Elders had done to Optera following their rise to power, had genetically modified all of the Flowers of Life in the Elders control, which he oversaw. When forced to, Zor would plant fertile seeds of his modified flowers, which would grow once, but would be completely unable to produce fertile seeds. But Zor had hidden a huge store of seeds of unaltered Flowers of Life, waiting for the day when the Robotech Elders would hopefully fall.
In 1481 CE, Zor was given permission to relocate to Ci'Va, to continue his researches and collaborate with his Ci'Vonian colleagues. During this period, a number of breakthroughs were made in the area of genetic engineering, though only a few of these were forwarded back to the Elders. While there, increasingly disenchanted with the Empire and its continual wars of expansion, Zor pseudonymously wrote a series of political and philosophical tracts favoring a federalist republican system of government over the current Imperial government, he also lambasting the triumvirate as an unnatural abomination. When word of these essays reached Tirol in 1502 CE, the Elders recalled Zor and severe restrictions were placed on his movement and activities. Nevertheless, his writings struck a chord in the Ci'Vonian people and in the old patrician families on Tirol and elsewhere in the Empire. Ci'Vonian nationalism, long kept silent for fear of Imperial reprisal, was awakened and anti-Imperial messages began to appear on every world in the Empire, forcing the Elders to act swiftly and decisively.
In 1519 CE, with their prestige and power on the line, the Robotech Elders ordered Ci'Va to surrender its sovereignty and receive an Imperial Governor Triumvirate. The Ci'Vonian replied by destroying the Governors' shuttle as it attempted to land on Ci'Va. The crisis escalated, and the Robotech Elders were forced to send a fleet of a thousand Zentraedi warships to Ci'Va. Unwilling to assault Ci'Va because of its formidable defenses and enormous economic and strategic value, the Elders hoped that a credible threat would cause the Ci'Vonians to bow to their will without violence. Unprepared for the situation, and utterly naive of the pleasures of culture, the Zentraedi commanders accepted talks on Ci'Va, and came, along with a significant contingent of their troops, to the planet's surface. As the Zentraedi commanders discussed the situation with the Ci'Vonian government, a surprisingly fearless and hospitable Ci'Vonian people entertained their soldiers. In almost no time, the Zentraedi began to request amnesty on Ci'Va and were happily adopted by the Ci'Vonian people. A larger fleet of 200,000 vessels, known as the "Inspection Army," was immediately dispatched to restore discipline, but the soldiers of the relief fleet refused to fire upon their own and in six months, the cultural contamination of the enormous Zentraedi presence above the planet was virtually complete.
At this point, with the defection of a fifth of their Zentraedi forces, the Robotech Elders were forced into action. The Grand Fleet, then comprising 800,000 Zentraedi warships, was dispatched with orders to annihilate Ci'Va and the rebel Zentraedi. Without a clear-cut defense, and hopelessly outnumbered, the rogue Zentraedi landed their ships on Ci'Va's surface and engineered a hurried evacuation. By the time the Grand Fleet folded to Ci'Va, one quarter of Ci'Va's population, five hundred million people, and all of their Zentraedi allies had disappeared into the vastness of space. Ci'Va's remaining population fought valiantly and succeeded in delaying the Grand Fleet long enough for their evacuees and their Zentraedi allies to make good their escape. Nevertheless, the Grand Fleet disabled Ci'Va's defenses and bombarded the surface of the planet until its oceans and atmosphere had boiled away, killing everything on the surface of the planet.
The crisis, however, had only just begun. Using fold-guerrilla tactics that the Invid had proved were successful, the Ci'Vonians, those Tirolian patrician allies and sympathizers who had been exiled because of their vocal support of Ci'Va, and Ci'Va's vast allied Zentraedi armada launched a terrible war against the Robotech Empire. Forced to dramatically increase the numbers of loyal Zentraedi, the Elders found themselves fighting a defensive struggle against a relentless and spirited enemy. With the Imperial defenses spread out over so many systems, the "Disciples of Zor," as the Elders came to call them, were able to concentrate their forces on every single target they chose to attack. They handily won almost every military engagement, always folding away before Imperial reinforcements could arrive. In just over two centuries, the Empire had fallen to tatters, caught between the Ci'Vonian Zentraedi and the plundering Invid, who took full advantage of the confusion to pursue their own vendetta. The crisis came to a head in 1792 CE when the rebel armada threw caution to the wind and attempted to win the war in one final stroke. The entire rebel fleet folded into Tirol-space and quickly shattered the defensive Zentraedi units in orbit around the planet, and began to surround and attack the Masters' Mother Ships. The Ci'Vonian fleet was supported on Tirol's surface by a large fraction of Tirol's patricians, who saw this as an opportunity to rid themselves of the Elders. For the first time since the Zentraedi were created, the Elders and Masters were forced to send their own people, especially their triumvirate clones, into battle. Though losses were heavy on all sides, the Elders' clone armies held the line long enough for Zentraedi reinforcements to arrive. The Grand Fleet was assembled and folded to Tirol-space, quickly crushing the Ci'Vonian fleet. With half their ships lost, the Ci'Vonian fleet was forced to retreat again into the inky blackness of space. Never again did the Disciples of Zor pose a serious threat to the Empire, though the damage was already done. As an aftereffect, due to of the consequences of the cultural contamination by the Ci'Vonians, the Zentraedi "domillans," or advisors, were cautioned to never allow close contact with cultured peoples.
Frustrated by the poor handling of the Ci'Vonian war by the Robotech Elders, the leading triumvirate of the Robotech Masters, with the assent of virtually all the other Robotech Masters, seized control of the government in 1800 CE, keeping the Elders on as mere figureheads. With the Ci'Vonians effectively out of the way, and the Zentraedi fleets burgeoning, the renamed Tirolian Mercantile Empire began to rebuild from the terrible fighting that had brought it to the brink of annihilation. An Imperial renaissance began, though the reformed empire of the Masters was only a small fraction of the Elders' empire at its height. Most of the outlying colonies, especially the small ones, had been utterly eradicated by the Invid's ruthless advance and the Ci'Vonians and the Elders had devastated many of the larger colonies in their war. But with the consolidation of the Zentraedi around the remaining colonies, the Invid threat was contained and would not seriously trouble the Empire for two more centuries. Still, the long war had given Dolza, the Zentraedi supreme commander, significant autonomy over the Zentraedi fleet and its operations. Communications between the Masters and their Zentraedi slaves began to break down and Dolza's interpretations of his orders became troublingly distant from the Masters' intent.
By now, the problems with the dwindling supplies of protoculture had begun to approach a crisis level. Up until the rise of the Robotech Masters, the empire had been relying on an ever dwindling supply of seeds of the Flower of Life that Zor would slowly increase, but by the mid 1800's, Zor became the sole source of the Protoculture in the Tirolian Mercantile Empire. Every few decades, Zor would be released from his house arrest and sent to seed a host of new worlds with the Flower of Life. Around 1970 CE, Zor was once again dispatched in the newly designed Tirolian monitor ship Macross for that purpose. The Masters had long accepted that Zor would never divulge the secrets of the Flower of Life to them, but they also found that he was tired of fighting them. His demands became increasingly irrelevant and the Masters were more than happy to satiate him.
At this time, the Invid tactics began to undergo a bit of a revolution. As the Invid began to capture the Tirolian colony worlds, they began to build up a stockpile of the seeds of the Flower of Life. To their dismay, the Invid discovered that the strain Zor had been seeding was a mutant variety that they could not use to produce fertile seeds. The Invid began to employ new tactics and new mecha, but they were still not a credible threat against the Zentraedi fleet over six million ships. Still, it became painfully clear that the balance of power was shifting away from the weakened and devastated Empire towards the Invid.
In 1940 CE, the Zentraedi rooted out the last Ci'Vonian stronghold and destroyed it. Though the Robotech Masters long feared the return in force of the "Disciples of Zor," this fear was never realized and the Ci'Vonians were never heard from again. The Invid had become the sole remaining enemy. Still, though its worlds were mostly protected, the Empire's collapse was imminent. Power supplies were scarce and to maintain order, a fair degree of autonomy had to be returned to the worlds inhabited by non-Tirolian races, like Kaberra, though none of these worlds desired independence, as that would leave them open to Invid attack. The Imperial renaissance foundered and rot began to set into the long-stagnant society.
The beginning of the end of the dying Tirolian Mercantile Empire came in 1974 CE when Zor was killed in an Invid ambush during a seeding mission in deep space, and the secrets of the production of fertile seeds of the Flower of Life died with him. To make matters worse, just as the Masters learned of the remaining store of fully fertile seeds, which was hidden aboard the Macross, the ship was launched on automatic pilot during the ambush that killed Zor and it folded into parts unknown. Desperate for the remaining fertile seeds, the Robotech Masters, perhaps foolishly, authorized Dolza to use any means necessary to recover the Macross.
In July 1999, the Macross crash-landed on Earth, followed ten years later by a Zentraedi taskforce under the command of Breetai. In a virtual repeat of the circumstances that began the Ci'Vonian War, Breetai's fleet, at the time totaling a fifth of the Zentraedi's entire armada, defected to the side of the cultured Humans. This time, the rogue Zentraedi did not have time to even contemplate running. Dolza, acting on his own initiative to remove the contaminated Zentraedi near Earth, marshaled all the Zentraedi ships that still had sufficient power to make the fold to Earth, leaving the Empire's core systems dangerously vulnerable to the Invid. Earth was bombarded, but the combined force of the Earth's Grand Cannon, the Macross, and Breetai's rebel fleet retaliated and the Zentraedi armada was destroyed, but so was Breetai's fleet. Of the nearly six million ships that took part in the battle, only a few thousand remained operational, but even they were dangerously low on power. After a single battle, the Tirolian Mercantile Empire had lost its main line of defense and was ripe for the taking.
Even with the sudden disappearance of the Zentraedi, it took the Invid several years to full realize what had occurred. In the decade prior to the destruction of the Zentraedi fleet, they had suffered terribly in massed engagements with the Zentraedi and were as desperate for protoculture as the Masters were. But quickly they realized just how defenseless the Tirolian Mercantile Empire was and the advanced quickly, taking Optera and sweeping over the remnants of the Empire, bringing their forces to bear against the core systems in the empire by the mid 2010's.
With the destruction of the Zentraedi and their Protoculture reserves nearly exhausted, the Robotech Masters saw no other option but to follow the Zentraedi to Earth and attempt to recover the seeds of the Flower of Life themselves. Unfortunately, the Robotech Masters did not have the power to make the fold jump to Earth and were forced to stop several light-years away. Traveling at sublight speed, the Robotech Masters began their final voyage towards Earth. More importantly for Tirol, except for a paltry reserve of Bioroids, its last line of defense had been taken removed. The world's citizens, long left to themselves by the Masters and their orbiting Triumvirate clone societies, were left as easy prey for the Invid.
It would not take long before the Invid Regent and Regis, the rulers of the Invid race, realzied that their hated enemy was defenseless, although they did not know why. Beginning slowly along the outskirts of the Tirolian Mercantile Empire, the Invid advanced over the once defended worlds, growing more confident with each new victory. As the conquest continued to approach the heart of the empire, the Invid Regent directed his troops to not only take control of the planets, but to destroy all Tirolians they encountered. Although most other races were spared this genocide, there were many races that were simply exterminated as the Invid advanced. The Invid did encounter some ships, especially from the thin-spread Tirolian Border Fleet, but these ships were easily destroyed or avoided and within a decade of the destruction of the Zentraedi armada, the Invid had approached the Local Group and had occupied Optera, their ancient home.
At the same time the Robotech Expeditionary Force was dedicated to locating Tirol, the Invid began their invasion of the Local Group by attacking Haydon IV. Heavily defended, Haydon IV did not fall to the Invid easily, but without the defending Zentraedi fleets, the planet's defeat was inevitable. Following the defeat of Haydon IV, the Invid moved against Garuda, Spheris, Peryton, and all other colonies and star systems in the Local Group with the exception of Praxis, Kaberra, and Tirol. Although it had taken the Invid five years to reduce the Tirolian Mercantile Empire to only two star systems, the Invid Regent remained convinced that his hated enemies, the Robotech Elders and the Robotech Masters remained on Tirol where they were helplessly watching their empire crumble. But the Invid Regis was beginning to have serious doubts about the presence of the Robotech Elders and Masters, as they had done nothing while their entire empire had been wiped out. Although with some reservations, the Regis continued to support her husband's actions when he invaded both Kaberra and Praxis, encountering the heaviest resistance in the protracted invasion. Unfortunately, like all of the other battles, the Invid defeated the defenders and conquered the planets. Now convinced that the Robotech Elders and Masters were dead or absent, the Invid Regis grew tired of war and settled on Praxis to conduct hideous experiments on the local population.
The Invid Regent, however, had not had enough and was still convinced that the Robotech Elders and Masters were waiting for him on Tirol. His final invasion began in January 2030, but the fleets of Zentraedi and Tirolian ships the Regent expected to encounter in the Valivarre Star System were absent. Instead, the Regent discovered a group of aging and almost powerless ships, which fell easily to the hordes of Invid mecha. Even the final conquest of Tirol lacked the satisfaction that the Invid Regent demanded. The Robotech Elders and Masters were missing and no one on Tirol seemed to know where they had gone, only that they had left almost twenty years earlier. With nothing remaining for him on Tirol, the Regent withdrew to the new Invid facilities on Optera and ordered the deliberate destruction of all Tirolians on Tirol.
While on Optera, the Invid Regent decided on a plan of action to win back his wife, the Invid Regis. The Regent reenergized the Eicass, a Sian Macross Class Battle Fortress that had crashed on Kaberra during the invasion of that planet, and converted it into a mobile zoo, populated by people from the Local Group. The ship was first sent to all of the planets in the Local Group with indigenous life and was then sent to Haydon IV, where the Regis had relocated, and presented to her as a gift. The ship's controller, a highly intelligent Invid scientist named Tesla, was also given to the Regis as a gift. Initially, the Regis enjoyed her new gift and filled it with even more races and specimens that Tesla had originally overlooked, but the Regis soon grew tired of Tesla's arrogance and constant praise of the Regent, so she sent both back to Optera. Unfortunately, all contact was lost with the ship soon afterwards, but the Regis was not too concerned and failed to inform her husband. Soon afterwards, the REF arrived in the Valivarre system, which drew all of the Regent's attention away from his wife and from Tesla.
The Invid's campaign of conquest concluded in 2030 CE, when Tirol itself fell to their forces. Though the fighting over Tiresia was fierce, most of the planet gave up without a fight. The Invid were not mollified by the easy victory, and set about the extermination of the Tirolian race. Their plans were interrupted the same year, when the REF, on a mission to prevent another war with the Robotech Masters or their armies, arrived on Tirol and were forced to attack the Regent's occupation force. Within three months, the spent and overextended Invid were driven from Tirol, and the REF became the custodians and inheritors of the world. In 2034, this relationship was formalized at Tirol's request, and the Plenipotentiary Council attached to the REF became Tirol's highest political body.
The long wars had left Tirol in shambles. Off-world food and industrial production had been completely wiped out with the loss of the colonies and the only thing saving the Tirolians from famine was the fact that the population of Tirol had shrunk so dramatically. Though the brief Invid occupation killed many Tirolians, the simple fact is that Tirol had already become a lonely place. The extremely high standard of living had led to a very low birth rate for centuries. Furthermore, mass emigration occurred in the latter years of the Empire in hopes of reestablishing a number of the colonies. When the Invid were driven from Tirol, the planet's population was a mere two hundred and eighty million. But one major difference was clear: the centuries of the very low birth rate, combined with a very long life span, even for the lowest classes, had led to the graying of the population. When the REF arrived, the average Tirolian was over sixty and people fewer than thirty-five made up only seventeen percent of the population.
Though the situation on Tirol was bad, the colonies fared far worse. At the height of the Elders' empire, almost a hundred billion Tirolians lived off world. This number was cut in half by the bloody Ci'Vonian War, but it seems the Invid were completely successful in eradicating all the former Tirolian colonies for not a single Tirolian colonist has been found alive.
The Tirolian people had long forgotten how to take care of themselves. Virtually the entire urban population was made up of artisans and philosophers. The rural areas had largely become enormous estates, managed by automated machines. Science and engineering had long been the purview of the triumvirate clones and the Masters made sure that the citizens of their home world were kept fed and indolent, as much to avoid further trouble from them as anything else. Nevertheless, the Tirolians have always been a proud and resourceful people, and the shock at seeing the Invid plunder their home world awakened the population from its long sleep. When the REF arrived and liberated Tirol, the Humans were received as heroes. The cities were rebuilt and technical schools, based upon the very successful ones created for the Zentraedi assimilated into human society on Earth, were established for the local population. In 2038, one hundred and seventy thousand triumvirate clones returned to Tirol with the assistance of Dana Sterling. The clones were repatriated with only minimal uproar from the Tirolian citizenry. These clones proved to be extremely valuable in Tirol's recovery because of their substantially larger technical background and their relative youth. Since that time the Tirolians have been slowly rebuilding their world and have only just begun to look outwards at the old colonies they once claimed.
In the years between the arrival of the REF and the departure of more than half its number in the attempt to liberate Earth, the Humans began to adopt Tirolian culture as their own. Intermarriage between REF officers and Tirolian citizens is now relatively common. Though the military organization of the REF has served to keep human and Tirolian cultures separate, the REF is now beginning to integrate into Tirolian society. By the time of the missions to Earth, many of the Humans saw Tirol, and not Earth, as their home.
It is with great hope that the Tirolians look to the future. With great cooperation with the REF and a new understanding developing between the Tirolians and the other aliens of the Local Group, the Tirolian people look forward to the day when they can once again go into space and establish new colonies. However, there is a great distrust among the remaining Tirolian population towards building their own military, they know what our people have done in the past and they are reluctant to start down the road that could lead them to create a new generation of Robotech Masters. This is a dark future, but with the help of the REF, it is one that is unlikely to occur.