#but the zhodani are probably my fav human polity despite the whole... thing... thats clearly going on with them

[foxgirlchorix]

Salesmen

The most important resource for a budding star empire is, of course, buy-in. Many will quantify and qualify, noting hard resources like material and materiel, but if anything a star empire needs social resources. The hammer of a warfleet cannot be swung if the arm that moves it is atrophied, after all. Thus, if a star-state wishes to become a contender on the local stage (I refuse to call it galactic, it's too small for that!); it must have a dedicated cadre of explorers, traders, and salesmen.

Ask someone from Terra, and they'll say it was a sad story of bureaucratic mismanagement. Ask someone from Vland, and they'll blame the Terran upstarts. Ask someone from Zhdant, and they'll tell you about the interplay of stabilizing desires and the need to temper violent insurrection- though they're not really an expert, they just have a passing interest and you should really ask someone more knowledgeable. Regardless of the truth, the Rule of Man- the initially Terra-based successor to the rapidly-corroding Vilani Grand Empire of the Stars- quietly slumped into what is referred to by Imperial-era scholars as the Long Night in a shower of tiny successor states and claimants.

Anyone not from what is now Imperial-Solomani space will look at the claim of a vast and nigh-unending dark age with a look of suspicion. For nearly two thousand years, from the Rule of Man beginning its slow splinter up until- well, we'll get to it, the region from Deneb to Antares to Spica to Canopus was full of the sort of sea of miniature empires common everywhere a larger star-state has not established itself. In that span of time the four other vastest empires of Charted Space, each spanning several of what the Imperium would call Domains, were either already established or rapidly expanding (don't tell the person from Zhdant this generalization, they'll go on a long tirade about the kiloyears of stability of the Zhodani Consulate and how even their erstwhile and utterly infuriating counterparts in the Hive Federation had only been sector-spanning barely a millenium before even that earliest mark).

One is driven to ask, then- what was so special about Sylea? One of over a dozen worlds with direct claim to the collapsed Rule of Man, and not even one with a particularly impressive trade network or political philosophy. Interstellar travel, despite the moniker of "Long Night", boomed to the degree that one can point to three separate Terran interstellar expeditions that made journeys across mainless space dozens of sectors long. The Sylean Federation, newly reinventing itself or not, was not unique. To answer our question, then, we turn again to the salesmen.

A star-state needs buy-in, but with the right carrot it might be easier to get than one might anticipate. After over a thousand years of war between tiny empires, with vast and terrifying rumors of carnivorous centaurs, manipulative plants, and raiding fleets of lions and wolves; the populace of many of the small star-states of the Long Night wished for some return to the glory days of true, domain-spanning Empire. Meanwhile, the rulers of those worlds wished for some return to the days of constant and uninterrupted trade income- nevermind the overbearing and inefficient Imperial governments of those times. The Sylean Federation managed to stake its claim as the Third Imperium of Man simply because, and only because, it had good marketing.