Many have said that it was the nature of the Empyraeum itself; the spirit of cooperation, inclusion, and purpose which helped the rapid advancement of technology and progress. In part, that is true. There are other factors at play, however, which were never made public knowledge for a variety of reasons.
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The most significant of these reasons is that they reveal the very origins of the Kalshodar.
According to their legends, the Dwarven race was born in Western Eiré around BE6500. They migrated across Europa, tunnelling beneath the land to escape persecution, until they arrived at Chomolungma mountain around BE1790. Homeless, distressed and without a future, the dwarves found something very interesting beneath that mountain. Find out more about that story and the race of dwarves in the Races section.
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Suffice it to say, it is the metalworking and innovative skill of the dwarves that is responsible for a great many of the Hegemony's greatest works of technology. Kalshodar armour and even their ships were built either by dwarven workers or their methods and techniques.
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Nobody knows anything about this people. They left behind no arts or writings that we can either find or decipher.
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They did, of course, leave something behind.
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On Sèlene, Earth's only natural satellite, a Kalshodar expedition discovered something incredible while testing one of humanity's first crude space-craft; a city that was older than the human race itself. An abandoned facility which had been empty for thousands if not millions of years.
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The most valuable discovery they made would revolutionise human evolution; The Pansabian Database. It took decades to decode the alien language and symbols but, in the end, a team of the greatest minds human- and dwarf-kind could produce succeeded. Enter in the materials you had available, select a template and the machine would produce complete plans for the construction of any device, any machine, any implement. It would even give you plans for the tools you might need if you didn't already possess them. Once the human and dwarven team were able to successfully activate the database/constructor device and reactivate the orbital shipyards, the stars were truly within our reach.
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First we built the Arks; fifty massive vehicles which would take our chosen colonisers into the distant reaches of our galaxy. Then we built the Kalshodar fleet. Finally we began construction on the Dragon's Crown.
Under the stewardship of Marcos Lupernikes, Próta of the Kalshodar, human industry and technology advanced at a rate never before seen. The dreams of Archimedes, Leonidas Touvinctas, and Hero were realised and, often even exceeded.
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With the help of dwarven ingenuity and matématika as well as the secrets unlocked from the Pansabian, a plethora of devices, vehicles, weapons, and marvels or every kind came to the human race. Or, at least, to the Empyraeum. Once the Empyraeum had located other nations from orbit and began sending emissaries, it was soon discovered that these other lands were nowhere near the Empyraeum’s level of advancement.
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Rather than reveal the sources of its technical dominance, it was decided by Lupernikes to institute what was to become one of the most popular and enjoyed traditions of the world, boosting the tourist trade and even the entire economy of the host nation.
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The World Symposium. Every seven years, a city would be selected at random to host the greatest single gathering of minds, engineers, inventors, and thinkers the human race can produce. At the first Symposium, Lupernikes presented Empyrean innovations in transpiration, propulsion, matématika, materials, and automation among other things .Much later, he offered chosen from other nations places on the Arks, and invited the ideas and thoughts wisest to discuss, debate, and expand upon the theories current in the Empyraeum.
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The idea was to encourage cooperation between the Empyraeum and its neighbours, for the betterment of the human race as a whole. He had tried to work with the other nations diplomatically with little to no success. It was then that the dwarven Carrig (first engineer, an honorific title signifying a sort of leader) gave him an idea; science is beyond politics, the desire to know and learn is something all beings share. It worked and the Symposial Institute in Rhodes and later, Alexandria itself, became the premiere establishment for knowledge and learning in the world; men and women from all corners of the globe travelling to research, cooperate, and create.
