“Jupiter omnipotens, audacibus annue cœptis.”
“Jupiter Almighty, favor my bold undertakings.”
-P. Vergilius Maro, The Aeneid
There was once a time when the daunting task of crossing the vast reaches of space was not as simple as it is now. The jump gates and jump holes of modern Sirius have made most travelers forget the days of sublight, conventionally-powered exploration when it took years to reach even the nearest solar system. In these nascent years of the Houses, many men, women, and children were lost in the gaping maw of outer space, never to be seen again, and most likely dead. There were, however, a very lucky few who did manage to survive by using the last of their resources to make it to some habitable world. One of these groups was from a Libertonian expedition that set sail in 59 AS, one of the very first of its kind. An accident onboard, some say sabotage by some demonic entity, caused the ship to lose its ability to automatically correct course, and sent it hurtling away from Sirius, eventually nearing a solar system that was nowhere near Sirian space.
It was through only the most astronomical and sheer margins of luck that they not only avoided dying en route due to a systems failure, exhaustion of resources, or some other grisly fate, but also found a lush world so full of life and beauty that most thought of it as being either an issue with the ship’s monitors, or some kind of hallucinogen pumped into the life support system. But due to the slow depletion and conservation of oxygen combined with corruption of ship databases, nearly all of the survivors suffered from memory loss, forgetting almost everything about themselves, and of where they came from. There was but one man who had not suffered their fate. His Sirian name was Alexander Anders, but the name he adopted was Gaius Latius Funditorius; Gaius of Latium, the Founder.
As both a boy and a man, Anders idolized the history of ancient Earth to the point of obsession. He modeled himself after the great figures of Ancient Greece and Rome, such as Alexander the Great and Augustus Caesar. Penniless and near-dead on the streets, he had almost realized that no one in Sirius cared for his extensive knowledge of past civilizations or for his fluency in long-dead tongues. After volunteering for that suicidal expedition to find new colonies for Liberty, he had thought it was to be his end at last. In some ways, it was the end of Alexander Anders, and the beginning of C. Latius Funditorius. He awoke to find everyone having forgotten everything except for the ability to speak, and for a brief moment, was frightened by the thought of being lost in space. But with one look of that dazzling jewel of a planet they orbited, he realized what destiny had in store for him, and that his pious study and observance of the past had finally come to bear fruit.
Helplessly lost and disoriented, the former Libertonians could not help but flock to the one man who possessed some semblance of knowledge regarding the world, and when he spoke of how he would lead them from the ship to the surface of the planet, they were in awe of how he commanded the hulking metal beast to touch down on the green fields of this new land. Revering him as some kind of divine presence, they listened in awe to his stories of a once powerful and mighty empire that dominated the known world and beyond, and of how humanity must be reunited under its banner once again. Using a mixture of both Roman and Sirian technology and culture, Funditorius guided them for eighty-six years, in which time they rebuilt the sprawling metropolis of Imperial Rome, which this new version also was founded upon seven hills and bisected by a river. In his final hours, Funditorius appointed a successor, Publius Latius, to whom he gave the cognomen “Caesar” as a sign of his authority. With all his knowledge, experience, and visions passed on, Funditorius passed away at the unbelievably old age of 107. His last command was for his people to conquer the stars, and reunite humanity under one banner, to begin anew the Pax Romana Nova; the New Roman Peace.
Under what came to be known as the Latian line of Imperatores, the Imperium Mars Fillii, or the Empire of the Sons of Mars, initially grew steadily in the first two centuries of its existence, up until 261 AS. Vibius Latius Aculeo Caesar, the last Imperator of the Latians, almost singlehandedly caused the downfall of the entire population when he cut off nearly all power and water to the capital city of Roma Nova for his extravagant palace. Already known to be nothing more than a decadent buffoon among plebeian and patrician alike, the people rose up in anger against their ruler. Aculeo summoned the legions to take care of the uprising, and citizens were slaughtered by the bushem. This soon triggered a massive divide in the military, during which twenty of the twenty-five legions began marching on the capital, with all of the rest surrendering. In order to spare the city of Roma Nova, the Praefectus Praetorio ordered Aculeo be captured and brought before the commander of the rebel forces, Tullius Marius Habitus, who had him crucified and set upon a hill facing Roma Nova to serve as a reminder to those who would abuse power for their own luxury. Soon Habitus was crowned the new Imperator, beginning the Marian Dynasty.
As a ruler, Habitus did not hesitate in his employment of damnatio memoriae, the destruction of someone from memory, against Aculeo with the destruction of any works of art or writing featuring his name, and also that of his own palaces. Idolizing the more disciplined and austere lifestyle of a military man, Habitus began imposing strict laws and punishments, but also made great use of the army to construct public works projects and provide help to any area that was falling behind in production. He is often referred to as “Habitus the Builder” due to his industrialization of urban areas and his development of many resources such as natural gases and metals. His reign was almost as long as that of Funditarius, stretching well over sixty years according to some. Few emperors improved the Imperium like he did, as the entirety of Mundus Nostrum was settled and explored under his reign.
After countless centuries and power struggles, the Fillii finally began launching spacecraft into orbit and beyond their solar system, leaving their world of Mundus Nostrum for the great beyond. One such expedition discovered an odd rift in space that looked similar to the theoretical jumpholes described in many scientific articles preserved from the original exploration vessel. The tiny spacecraft, manned only by a ten-man contubernium, was ordered by the decanus onboard to jump. Fortuna Redux smiled upon them, and miraculously, they came through unscathed, and found even more of these holes around them in the next system. Leaving a trail of nav buoys as breadcrumbs and cartographing everything they saw, the little ship eventually made its way to the modern-day system of Inverness, their first time setting foot in Sirius. Seeing the space around them, the crew could not help but gaze in awe as they wandered further into the system, making way to Inverness.
Upon arriving in Cortez, random Sirian ships began to pass by. With such alien designs floating in their presence, the contubernium was frozen with awesome terror, drifting amongst a local debris cloud. Believing the appearance of the ship to be that of a floating hulk, rather than the product of shoddy construction, the Sirians ignored it. As soon as they left, the Fillii ship fled from the area through the route they had come through, bringing home news of a powerful and expansive civilization of humans that even Funditorius himself would not have expected to see.
It was immediately after this event, in 739 AS, that Imperial power shifted hands so unanimously and rapidly in the centuries-old history of the empire. The Imperator at the time, Decimus Aurelius Crassipes Caesar, was hesitant to expand further, due to the belief that it would be the downfall of the Fillii Empire. As such, he ordered that no word be spoken of the existence of Sirius, save for within his personal circle of advisors. This, however, did not bode well with them, in particular his magister militum, the leader of the armies, Marcus Flavius Triarius. A pious man, Triarius believed wholeheartedly in the ideal of the Pax Romana Novum, and as such, was the first to openly defy Crassipes’ wishes to isolate the Empire from its divine mission. He came to the public with news of what waited in the great beyond, inciting a total rebellion against the Aurelian Dynasty. Few supported the Imperator, and even fewer came to protect him. After being dragged out in front of the Aula Palatina, the seat of imperial power, Crassipes was stabbed in the back, and thrown down the steps to be torn apart by the raging mob below. Triarius gave a speech to the crowd that the divine mandate set before them would be fulfilled, and that efforts to understand Sirius, known as “Barbaricum” to the Fillii, would be undertaken immediately, so as to be prepared for the coming conquest.
Crowned Imperator and renamed to Marcus Flavius Triarius Caesar, he set about expanding the spacefaring capability of his empire, and introducing domestic reform that would help educate and prepare the masses for the new technologies and ideas that would both be needed for Sirius, but also for anything that may come that was Sirian in origin. The original system they inhabited, named Italia in Fillii star charts, underwent rapid development, with primitive space stations slowly undergoing modernization and expansion to support a larger space fleet. Commonly regarded as the true founder of the Filii Interstellar Empire, he eventually passed away in 780 AS, after a long reign of forty-one years. His son, Marcus Flavius Maximus Caesar, was to succeed him and rule for thirty years, building upon the same efforts his father had started, and sending Speculatores, military scouts, to clandestinely survey Sirius and observe its peoples. He finally passed away in 810 AS, with his thirty-year reign being succeeded by the present Imperator Gaius Flavius Aquila Caesar. After the death of his older brother, Marcus Flavius Bibaculus, due to alcohol poisoning, he was next in line to become emperor at only nineteen years old.
It is now roughly ten years into the reign of Aquila. Whilst he has been greatly improving the domestic lives of the Fillii people, many in the aristocracy are concerned that he has been negligent towards the progress of the Pax Romana Novum. Their doubts have so far been preoccupied by his mention of a grand plan in store for Sirius. Not even the military know for sure what he has in store, but some say that he is looking to establish diplomatic ties with various factions, and preparing the sector for Filii arrival with underhanded methods employed by his Frumentarii, such as assassination and espionage. The only thing that the Fillii people may do now is simply pray to the gods that their day of triumph may arrive soon, and that Mars may guide Aquila well in his deliberations. For it has been foretold in the prophecies of the seers, that the eagle of Jupiter shall deliver the Fillii to even greater heights and glory.