Aeonites
The Aeonites are an alien people whose homeworld is Gamma Eona Primus, and the Lukyr Empire's adversaries in the secret frontier war fought by the Frontier Recovery Mission. They are implied to be the only sapient alien species the Empire had ever known prior to its accidental displacement through the Rift. Their very existence is concealed from the general Lukyrian populace — including by official histories that recast them as a breakaway human colony rather than a non-human civilisation.
Overview
Though characterised in Imperial assessments as "primitive," the Aeonites wield kyrants as weapons with extraordinary skill, and their proficiency has made Lukyrian engagements against them consistently unsuccessful. They hold a strongly religious view of this power, believing it to be of divine origin — a conviction Imperial strategists hoped might predispose them to strategic errors (see the Frontier Strategic Report (8041)).
Propaganda Cover
The Empire keeps the very existence of the Aeonites hidden from the general Lukyrian population; maintaining that secrecy is treated as essential to the war effort. Official histories such as The Complete History of the Frontier Worlds - 8012 Edition go further, fabricating a cover story: they present Gamma Eona Primus as a Lukyrian kyrant-mining colony founded in 7728 whose settlers staged a militarized revolt in 7913, recasting an alien homeworld as a breakaway human one. None of this is true — there were never Lukyrian colonists on Gamma Eona Primus. (Genuine Lukyrian frontier colonization did begin in 7728, but elsewhere; the propaganda merely borrows the real date and program.)
The Wreck Field
When the Frontier Recovery Mission reached Gamma Eona, it found no Aeonite fleet, base, blockade, or orbital infrastructure of any kind — only the debris of tens of thousands of destroyed Lukyrian warships, with not a single enemy vessel, operational or wrecked, anywhere in sight. How the Aeonites have inflicted such losses without a detectable navy is unknown, and it is unclear whether they possess spacecraft at all. Gamma Eona Primus itself, by contrast, was found thriving — a beautiful world of thousands of cities, seemingly untouched by a century of war-driven occupation.
King Covian Warpine holds that the Aeonites have slaughtered countless Lukyrians and "defiled" Imperial armadas, and on reaching Gamma Eona he resolved to destroy their homeworld outright.
Open Questions
- What are the Aeonites' true origins, biology, and society?
- How do they destroy Lukyrian fleets without any visible ships or weapons platforms?
- What is the nature of their religion and their belief in the divinity of kyrant power?
- When and how did the Empire first encounter them, and why is the war — and their very existence — kept secret?
- What does the Empire actually want at Gamma Eona, given that the colonial-resource pretext is fabricated?