a brief history of ooranye
28: the sunnoad's navy

The Iridium Era lasted 2,103,867 Uranian days – just 85 Uranian years, equivalent to 7,200 Earth years. It is regarded as the golden age of the Sunnoad’s Navy. Though there have been many institutions in Ooranye’s long history which have borne that name or something close to it, the Sunnoad’s Navy is taken to mean the patrolling skyship fleet which kept the peace in Era 77. Its record was glorious, its personnel – especially the trouble-shooting “marksmen” who anticipated crises – unusually competent (and perhaps lucky). The result was a matchless esprit de corps.

Only towards the end did they become victims of their own success. Partially they succumbed to the danger of hubris inherent in an elite organization. None but the exceptionally able and talented were admitted to the Navy; aptitude stoked ambition and in the end there was no one to apply the brakes. Meanwhile, another eomasp occurred, when, ostensibly, no great event had taken place. Syoom had been through this before, and the people knew that the day’s rhythm never faltered without some deep reason. The Navy professed a determination to find the cause.

The Platinum Era lasted 49,993 days and 6 hours. This was little more than a mere 2 Uranian years; 171 Earth years. It ended in a crisis which was at once the shame and the glory of the Navy. Knowledge had been gradually spreading – appalling knowledge that had to be kept secret until the right time to act – knowledge of the reason for the eomasp which had ushered in Era 78. It was that the Navy’s high command, and hence Syoom, were being taken over and infiltrated by Ghepions of a kind hitherto not seen, Ghepions in human form.

Those officers in the know were faced with the question of how to act without causing the Navy’s terrible weapons to be unleashed on the people of Syoom. It occurred to one officer, Spe Dalalt, that if a Ghepion could impersonate a human, a human could just as well impersonate a Ghepion. An epic counter-deception was planned. Spe Dalalt and his team undertook the hazards of a journey to the secret headquarters of the Ghepion plot.

The successful exploit of Spe Dalalt restored the integrity of the Navy, but its honour was felt to have been irrevocably tarnished. Its own leaders now regarded it as too dangerous to be kept in being, in its present intensely elite form. Yet some institutional ideal was vital to Syoom. How could confidence be restored?

By what seemed at first to be a fortunate coincidence, Dalalt’s expedition had uncovered an amazing rumour, which might furnish an answer to the problem. After a series of secret conferences, it was agreed to release a double dose of information to the public:

First came the details of the Ghepion plot and the way in which it had been foiled. Second, the announcement of the possible real existence of… a land named Solor.

The information was released early in the morning of 49,994 Pt. Six hours into that day, an eomasp occurred.

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