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The Nyglum made contact with other interstellar cultures in 2059 when Bintari scouts first made their way into the territories of the Overmind. The Nyglum were ever isolationist in their views, and it took all the tenacity of the Bintari diplomatic machine to even get the Nyglum to affirm a border treaty. With that, the Bintari left the Nyglum be.
However, shortly after contact with outsiders were made, a faction of zealots lead by prominent religious leaders began a campaign of terror intended to oust the persecutory monarchy which had, in the last hundred years, attempted vigorously to curb religious expression and suppress new forms of belief.
The fighting was intense. Former friends fell upon one another and the entire political structure caved in. The fighting was not restricted to just homeworld, either. On all the Nyglum outposts, a war between the monarchists and the zealots raged. In the chaos, those who served within the Nyglum navy declared themselves neutral of the action, simply trying to protect themselves from terrorist strikes aimed at crippling the opposition. They were caught in the middle and found neutrality to be the only way out.
The turbulence on Nyglumar and its colonies was not going unnoticed by the other races. The K'Thonn, the newly implemented government was still stinging from the wounds of repaying its war debts to the Bintari and was looking for a way to redeem themselves some how. They saw the Nyglum as a campaign with which to invigorate the ailing nation. And so the war began.
The first world struck by the K'Thonn was a colony in the Iolor System which they had long had an interest in claiming for their own. On the asteroid of Qozor and other surrounding sites, a large deposit of Quantium 40 had been found and was being excavated by the Nyglum. This strategically important source of Quantium 40 was enough to justify the war for the K'Thonn anyway, and with civil strife having spread like wildfire within the Nyglum it would make its capture even easier. Qozor fell without a naval engagement, the Nyglum defenders fleeing to homeworld. The ground battle, however, proved costly for both sides.
The Nyglum had more to worry about in this great time of chaos than just their civil war and the impending slaughter of the K'Thonn Hierarchy. Another race, the Kanten, were just making their fledgling appearance on the interstellar scene. In a deal to secure them valuable ship hulls, the Kanten agreed to attack the western borders of the Nyglum Overmind (the K'Thonn were invading from the north). Within two days of the K'Thonn attack at Qozar, a small Kanten fleet made up of mostly converted freighters strikes the J'Kai system, capturing several merchantmen and destroying the only defenders in the system. Another system had fallen.
Realizing too late that their squabbling had cost them too much already, the religious faction lessens its commitment to the planetary war against the monarchists. However, the religious zealots would not submit to the rule of the monarchy, instead forming a counter coalition called the Holy Worldly Alliance to coordinate their efforts to protect Nyglumar.
In a last ditch effort--with both the K'Thonn and Kanten one jump away from homeworld itself--the monarchists and naval authorities meet to discuss retaliation. Believing that they will not be able to survive unless they can shift the war away from homeworld, both sides agree to a single plan of action. One of the few Nyglum jump-capable craft with a handful of other vessels, equipped with monarchist troops and supplies, was to make a strike into the Iolor system and retake Qozor, shifting the war back to that point (as they believed the K'Thonn would fall back and attempt to keep the territory it had already taken).
There plan might have worked. The K'Thonn would have had to split their forces even if they did not commit everything to the retaking of Qozor. Fate, however, was not on the Nyglum's side. The main K'Thonn fleet had already made the jump to Nyglumar, and they were only two days out.
The Battle of Nyglumar could be better called a slaughter. The Nyglum had few combat-worthy craft, but everything they had stood against the K'Thonn force in orbit of their homeworld. The orbital satellite network was the Nyglum's last hope for redemption, but in the end everything would fall. Only a few Nyglum ships managed to escape destruction, jumping out at the last second, admitting defeat. They and the strike fleet dispatched only days before were all that were left of the Nyglum navy and its independent presence among the stars. Starting the day of the invasion and lasting the next week and a half, the K'Thonn pummeled Nyglumar with mass drivers and plasma weapons, leveling almost everything and leaving the planet it total ruins. The Nyglum had fallen.
The Nyglum military technologies are almost all electromagnetic-based. Their ships tend to be light and under-structured with little to no armor, their electromagnetic (EM) shielding taking up the slack.
Their exotic weaponry, too, is all electromagnetic based and is weaker than the weapons used by other races, but is designed more to deter and disable than to destroy.
Because of their weaknesses, the Nyglum were almost wholly unable to fight the K'Thonn with any chance of winning. Though the Nyglum lightning rods could strip the hellbore cannons from the ship's hull, the first wave of fire would almost certainly eliminate the Nyglum ship that was doing the firing. It is no wonder that these ships were unable to withstand the might of the K'Thonn military machine.
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Questions, comments, or suggestions? Please contact
Tyrel Lohr at contact@tyrellohr.com.
All original content © 2024, Tyrel Lohr.
All other materials are owned by their respective authors.
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