Ognar Worlds
The Ognar Worlds is an astrographic feature located in Datsatl Sector.
| Polity | Survey | Code | Type | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ognar Worlds | Pre-Imperial | OgnW | No standard code | None |
| Ognar Worlds | 1st Survey (300) | Og | 2-ltr code | None |
| Ognar Worlds | 2nd Survey (1065) | OgWo | 4-ltr code | None |
NOTES: The Ognar Worlds were unknown as such to the Imperial Interstellar Scout Service until 1104, but following standard practice (and since it appears that no one will be claiming their worlds any time soon, respecting their borders despite their demise), the above codes were retroactively added upon their discovery. The Zhodani Consulate had long before discovered that there was a dead civilization in this area, and this information filtered to the Third Imperium, but had not discovered the message pod (and with it, the name "Ognar") nor made much further investigation.
Description (Specifications)
This is the name given to the main once inhabited by the Ognarans, who exterminated themselves around -8500. By the time anyone else encountered this area of space, it was all ruins, a multi-world monument to the destructive power of any high technology civilization.
No Ognarans survived, not even in fragments large enough to clone (the hurdles of analyzing the fossils of a completely alien biology aside). Barely any of their technology survived intact. The neighboring polities - the Yaskoydri Technocracy, the Pirian Domain, and the Tijian Khaganate - have agreed that these worlds should remain uninhabited to remind future generations of the consequences of placing genocide above survival. (Further, large potions of the mainworlds of each system are still too radioactive for safe colonization, and even archaeologists prefer to visit via drones controlled from orbit.) They are effectively classified as red zones, access restricted to archaeological expeditions only. Any pirates caught trying to establish a base here are terminated with extreme prejudice.
As of 1105 the Pirian Domain is worried that the Tijian Khaganate intends to recolonize these worlds. The Khaganate has claimed worlds that border on this region, but states that it has no intentions of crossing the border.
These ruins are the primary reason why scouts exploring laterally from the First Core Expedition mistakenly believed Datsatl Sector to be completely uninhabited, and did not check much further. They found more recently abandoned worlds of the Yaskoydri Technocracy (temporarily abandoned due to the Technocracy's First Doctrinal War, not that the scouts had any way to know this), but only checked enough to confirm that a second civilization had been here and had also lost worlds. Not willing to press their luck (and with some of their members showing signs of mental trauma from exploring so much death; history does not record whether there was a psionic component to this, but IISS counselors have noted there would not need to have been one), the scouts returned with news of the "dead sector" Datsatl.
History & Background (Dossier)
Only fragmentary data has been able to be reconstructed. The biggest find was a capsule in the outer reaches of Ognar system, which was apparently their homeworld. It is a simple, solar powered device consisting of an airlock that automatically opens when heat and motion detectors register the approach of something resembling biological life, and once closed, pressurizes then plays an audio-video recording, after which it depressurizes and releases its occupant; once empty, it closes and waits for someone else to come by. The air is an oxygen-nitrogen mix matching the composition of a world in the system that could be habitable, if not for the lingering background radiation from countless craters.
The recording shows a single Ognaran in a darkened room, speaking urgently next to a projected display. Although their language has never been deciphered, the recording's pictures and motion sequences are informative enough to piece together an account of what happened - assuming one believes the speaker, but no other first hand evidence is available.
The early parts of the recording relay in pictograph form the rudiments of science, including a basic periodic table. (It appears they had only just begun synthesizing superheavy elements, having only gotten up to lawrencium.) Several pictures of their homeworld from overhead are featured, taken with progressively better visual devices; these presumably represent their refinement of spaceflight. There is a brief bit where several Ognarans move from planet to planet in their solar system, and then clips of an obviously experimental jump drive making what were probably its first jumps, followed by stylized Ognarans moving from star to star in their main, presumably representing interplanetary and then interstellar constellation.
In the background of this colonization is a shadowy icon - a seven-spoke wheel, each spoke being a different color and the wheel thus making a rainbow, the spokes being inward-pointing arrows, with spikes on the wheel between each spoke - that resolves into focus as the interstellar colonization proceeds. The number of Ognaran icons on the non-homeworld systems doubles, in some cases tripling, before this icon begins moving from system to system. Each time it reaches a colony system, the Ognarans present flash orange then crumble away. Between this and the concentration of radioactive craters in the rest of the Ognar Worlds, it would appear that someone exterminated the colonies with nuclear bombardment. On three of the worlds, a few Ognarans survive the first wave, but the icon makes a second patrol and, where it finds survivors, wipes them out. On each of these worlds with survivors, a secondary cluster of craters was found; the larger set of craters is presumed to be the initial bombardment, as there would have been less to destroy on the second pass.
Then the icon returns home, and the video zooms in on the Ognar system. The icon does the same double-pass to each inhabited non-mainworld before returning to the homeworld, where the same pattern of extermination marches from continent to continent. One of the survivor icons is notably different, and looks similar to the speaker; toward the end, only the speaker and the icon remain. There is an art shift - presumably meant to represent a cut from the speaker's present to the speaker's planned future - after which another icon, looking similar to the device, suddenly shoots free just before the wheel icon reaches the speaker's icon. Both the wheel icon and the speaker's icon flash orange and crumble, as the picture zooms back out to the system and the device icon heads for the outer solar system, in roughly the position the device was found.
The recording ends with the sound of explosions getting closer, and a shift in the speaker's expression as the speaker glances toward a suddenly-lit rectangular outline in the background, presumably a door that was being blasted in. The speaker jabs at something just off-screen - quite probably a button - and the recording ends.
The most commonly accepted hypothesis is that this recording and its device were then launched into deep space, shortly after which the speaker committed suicide with a nuclear bomb, taking out the antagonists in the explosion. If anyone survived that final assault, the planet would have been in nuclear winter; given the kind of destruction seen, the aggressors likely either had no plan for what would happen after their "victory", or held a false belief that some form of salvation or deliverance would result from their genocide; either way, anyone remaining would soon have starved to death. However, this would have left skeletons or other such remnants, and none were found even after thoroughly examining the area the speaker indicated this final action took place in, suggesting that the speaker's plan for complete retaliation may have worked.
What little physical evidence is available (mainly the radioactive craters) backs up this story. While a few crumbled pieces of unmistakably artificial construction have been found, especially on the homeworld, there has been no further evidence from which to deduce much about Ognaran civilization. Carbon dating these, comparing the amount of radioactive material in the craters to the amount known necessary to make craters of that size and calculating from their half-lives, and geological studies of soil and plants to find evidence of how long ago a nuclear winter happened, all point to this occurring around -8500, plus or minus 100 years.
Worlds & Sectors (Astrography)
This astrographic feature is primarily found in the following areas:
Charted Space:
World Member Data
The mainworld found at this astrographic feature is:
World Listing: 1105
The following systems and worlds are associated with this astrographic feature:
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References & Contributors (Sources)
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- Author & Contributor: Lord (Marquis) and Master of Sophontology Maksim-Smelchak of the Ministry of Science