Yue

 20th January

20:01 GMT -5

I look around at the eager-. At the faces of my team mates. And at Mr Hol, who is lurking in the background having said that he's interested in getting an alien's perspective on his society. Ah, my first lecture. Kaldur did say he wanted senior team members to take a greater role in teaching, and after he saw the amount of time I was spending on reviewing information on Thanagar I suppose that it's only natural that I was volunteered. At least they look a little more attentive than they did when Major Adams gave his lecture back when we first started. I don't.. think that Thanagarian culture will ever become an important part of a team mission, but I suppose that you never know.

Kara's come along as well, and I only had to niggle her a little. Zatanna hasn't, which...

Yeah.

I dim the lights with a thought, and use the lecture room's hologram projector to bring up an image of the Milky Way galaxy.

"Thanagar."

A green line points to it. And -given the scale- about fifty other systems which are sort of nearby. I open a new window and bring up a slowly rotating image of the world itself.

"Population four point eight billion sophonts. Leading exports: farming equipment and computer equipment. Leading imports: agricultural products and art. Government type: military oligarchy. Politically unified, and the capital world of the Thanagarian Empire. Perhaps most relevant to us, it's the homeworld of Hawkman, Hawkwoman and.. Hawkgirl, in her original incarnation. It's also the largest and most powerful stellar nation in our region of space, having six colonies with populations of over half a billion as well as twenty smaller colonies, and a total military strength greater than any other stellar nation until you reach the Crown Imperium near Vega."

A blue line appears, pointing to Kranaltine. At this scale they look like they're pretty much next door to each other, though the distance is actually much greater than that. Thanagar quite pointedly isn't expanding in their direction, though whether that's because of the Crown Imperium or because they don't want anything to do with Vega I have no idea.

"That's pretty important, because it means that they're the largest major stellar nation near to us."

A yellow line, again almost right next to the other two.

"According to the testimony of Nylor Truggs, they end up conquering the Earth some time in the next five hundred years. They're expansionist, militant, and not exactly shy about conquering nearby systems and settling worlds that already have someone living on them."

Given that the idea the Blades of Alstair had of working as mercenaries for training purposes wasn't exactly novel, it's a little hard to tell exactly how big the Thanagarian military actually is. There's essentially no dividing line between private military companies that get conscripted in times of war, and state military groups which sometimes take external contracts. That's why I gave short shrift to Ms Hol's complaints last year when I did an assessment of the League's ability to fight Thanagarian 'corporate security'.

"Thanagar's population is split between two species, with no other group having statistically significant representation. The largest group are the dominant-" I gesture to Mr Hol with my right hand. "-bird-winged humanoids, commonly referred to as 'thanagarians'. The word 'Thanagar' itself comes from an older form of their most widely used language, Quarish, and means something along the lines of 'defensible home base'. They make up about two thirds of the population, and virtually the entirety of the government is drawn from their species."

"The remaining third is comprised of lizarkons."

I generate a construct image of what looks like a standard issue dinosaur man.

"The name sounding like the English word 'lizard' is a coincidence. The actual etymology of the word indicates that it come from an old Quarish word meaning 'from the ground' or 'restricted to the ground'. As you can see, they don't have wings, which put them at a fairly major disadvantage when competing with the thanagarians."

Though it's more than that. Without Nth metal throughout their bodies, they're actually weaker and -despite the scales- less resilient. They also were far slower in developing Nth metal based technologies. Early fights between the two groups were painfully one-sided. Never let it be said that diabolism doesn't pay.

Raquel frowns. "Quarish is a bird-thanagarian language, right?"

"It's spoken by pretty much everyone on the planet these days, but it was originally a small 't' thanagarian language."

"So it's not what they call themselves."

"It is these days. Standardised compulsory education, all government communications and all official records are in Quarish, and in some cases it's actually illegal to put them in other languages. Plekesh -the second most common language- only really survives because it's common in the older colonies, but again, their populations are virtually all small 't' thanagarian."

"So the.. government is stamping out their culture?"

"Oh yes, quite deliberately. Since the current form of government seized power, there's been a deliberate effort at social engineering. The lionisation of the military, universal national service, standardised everything, the requirement for at least ten years in the military for anyone who wants a senior government position and the generous grants given to demobbed soldiers who want to move to a colony. Part of that comes from how they came to power in the first place, and the rest is from the sheer social trauma the Equality Plague caused. Essentially, they want near total social unity and they feel the best way to get that is to force a monoculture."

Raquel realises that all eyes that aren't on me are on her. "What's the Equality Plague?"

"The Equality Plague is… The historical significance it has in their culture is roughly equal to the scope of the First and Second World Wars on Earth. Essentially, the plague itself was… Probably an engineered disease which eroded a sufferer's sense of self as well as creating a low level telepathic field between all sufferers. Thanagarians and lizarkons alike had no resistance to it, and it infected the entire planet about… Seventy years ago. Sufferers lost all personality, all personal drive and gained the ability to transfer skills and memories between them. The result was near total societal collapse, as people literally couldn't know who they were or which of the memories in their heads were their own."

"As a result, there were a massive number of deaths and the world was taken over by an individual calling himself the Lord High Equaliser. He ruled for about nine years, before being killed by a strike force of uninfected thanagarians from one of the colonies." Probably. Commander Andar told me that Queen Hyathis led the attack herself, and while that's possible -the colonies were in negotiations with her at the time- I haven't been able to find evidence from the colonial side that she was involved. Which doesn't mean that she wasn't. "Of course, that didn't cure the disease, it just removed the one man the infected instinctively obeyed. The colonies were trying to find a cure, but they weren't having much luck and people started dying again."

"That's when Queen Hyathis of Alstair enters the story. At this point the situation on Thanagar was pretty desperate and the colonial authorities were looking for help anywhere they could get it. Hyathis claimed that she could cure it, but in return she wanted Thanagar's territory to be added to what she already controlled. The colonial authorities agreed, and she got to work. Alstair's sophont life forms are plant-based, and Hyathis is very good at floramancy. Everyone on Thanagar got a injection of cultured algae, and she used that to remove the disease from their bodies. The total time from the first cases of the disease to the cure was about eleven years."

"In the aftermath… A substantial number of thanagarians weren't all that happy to find themselves part of the Alstair Empire. While the exact proportion is.. pretty much impossible to find out now… As in, if you question the official line on Thanagar you will get arrested. What is agreed upon is that Hyathis took possession of the Lord High Equaliser's fleet, crewed it with thanagarians who were definitely loyal to her, and then returned to her home system with the intent of conquering her immediate neighbours. While she was away, there was a revolt -again, it's hard to get reliable numbers on exactly how big it was- which resulted in a military junta coming to power. Every Zaredian in Thanagarian space was killed -along with a lot of loyalist Thanagarians- and the new government was able to build up their defences enough that Hyathis couldn't recapture Thanagar. They're still technically at war, though there hasn't been any direct armed conflict recently."

"Ah…" Wallace glances back at Mr Hol. "You get arrested for… What's the official version?"

"That only a tiny coterie of traitors ever supported Hyathis and that she probably created the plague herself to extort Thanagar's compliance."

"And… Is that true?"

I shrug. "At this point, it's rather difficult to say."