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 that have borne that name or something close to
it, the Sunnoad's Navy is taken to mean the one which patroled
the skies and 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), developing
a matchless esprit de corps
.
Only right towards the end did they become victims of
their own success, partially succumbing to the danger of hubris inherent
in an elite organization. For only the exceptionally able and
talented were admitted to the Navy.
When the next eomasp occurred,
the Navy professed a determination to find the cause. Ostensibly,
no great event had occurred; but Syoom had been through this before, and
knew that the day's rhythm never faltered without some deep
reason.
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 the 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 that had ushered in
era 78. It was that the Navy's high command, and hence Syoom, were
being infltrated and taken over by Ghepions in human form.
Those officers in the know were faced with the question
of how to act without causing the Ghepions to unleash the Navy's
terrible weapons on the people of Syoom. It occurred to one of
them, Spe Dalalt, that if a Ghepion could impersonate a human, a
human could impersonate a Ghepion. An epic counter-deception was
planned and carried out, in which 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 felt to be vital to Syoom. By what seemed
at first to be a fortunate coincidence, however, Dalalt's expedition had
uncovered an amazing rumour that 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: firstly the details
of the Ghepion plot and the way it had been foiled; secondly the
possible real existence of what we can call the Uranian equivalent of
Eden - a land named Solor.
The information was released early in the morning of
49,994 Pt. Six hours into that day, an
eomasp occurred.
>> The Quest for Solor
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