Oneiromany
Viniculum member. Proto-Human Uplift
Overview
Among the countless ruins scattered across Estra, few inspire the bittersweet awe reserved for the Onieromany — the "Dark Dreamers" of the galaxy. Born from a human lineage that prized visions over pragmatism, the Onieromany’s history unfolded in turbulent cycles of incandescent glory and heart-wrenching collapse. At their zenith, their dominion spanned hundreds of thousands of worlds across the Five Galaxies. Yet, as swiftly as they rose, the sinews binding their empire would decay, leaving broken principalities adrift like shattered dreams.
Unlike the Radnian Empire, whose decline was a slow, imperial rot, the Onieromany disintegrated with the fevered violence of a mind waking from a nightmare. A grand civilization of unexploited wonders and abandoned marvels, they remain a parable of the peril of untempered ambition — a warning lost on those who followed.
A poem found in the ruins of Mydras-Centhos, their former capital, reads:
"We dreamt of eternity and awoke in dust. We sang to the stars and heard only the empty echo of our own folly."
Legacy
The Onieromany legacy is one of heartbreak and unfulfilled destiny. Their influence seeded artistic, scientific, and even spiritual traditions across the galaxy — yet their name is invoked as a cautionary tale against the excesses of vision unmoored from discipline.
During the Cybernetic Rebellion, many surviving Onieromany colonies resisted the cyber forces not with arms, but with acts of self-obliteration, preferring to vanish into myth rather than endure assimilation.
To this day, a saying persists among Estra's historians:
"Radnia built the gates, Naplia broke them, and the Onieromany dreamed of walking beyond them — but never returned."
And somewhere, drifting between forgotten stars, the last Dream Engines whisper the Onieromany’s broken prayers into the void.
Civil Structure
The political life of the Onieromany defied reason. At times, whole planetary clusters would worship charismatic visionaries who claimed divine dreams. In other epochs, governance degenerated into anarchic communes where decision-making crumbled into incomprehensible rituals.
Most enduring were the Communal Councils, vast assemblies where gifted dreamers and oracles presided. Yet even these institutions fell victim to coups, betrayals, and mass apathy. Entire sectors would pivot overnight — from fanatical unity to hopeless entropy.
During the Fourth Convergence, an ambassador from the Briddarri Kingdom is said to have remarked, "To negotiate with the Onieromany is to play chess with a sleeping mind: one moment brilliant, the next utterly inert."
This political instability, paradoxically, bred unmatched creativity — and exposed the empire to relentless predation, as stronger, more organized powers like Naplia and Borthan carved away at its fractured fringes.
Military
The Onieromany navy embodied their ethos: breathtaking to behold, but often operationally hollow. Ships like the Nightshade-class dreadnoughts and the White Lotus Fleet stand as haunting examples — beautifully sculpted vessels adrift as derelicts in deep space, their crews long perished.
During periods of ambition, their fleets surged like tides of silver flame across the stars, only to dissipate into phantom flotillas once political will evaporated. It is said that during the Fall of Atheris-Tor, twenty-five Nightshade dreadnoughts were found adrift, locked in silent orbit around a dead sun — their systems active, their halls eerily deserted.
An old Wulf ballad about the Onieromany ghost fleets ends with the line:
"They made ships to carry dreams, and dreams do not need fuel."
Special Technologies
The Onieromany were the harbingers of untamed innovation. Their thinkers, unfettered by the shackles of orderly development, achieved terrifying leaps ahead of their contemporaries — only to abandon these triumphs like forgotten dreams.
Fold-weaving, quantum artistry, and partial psionic interfaces were all said to have flowered first in their forgotten labs. Rumors persist of entire worlds lost to malfunctioning "Dream Engines," devices that blurred the lines between subjective thought and physical reality.
A shard of recovered text from the ruins of Celaurin Prime reads:
"We dared to fold the veil between dream and matter. It tore. We forgot. We bled stars."
Many explorers and cybernetic salvage teams (especially in the wake of the Stelltron-fueled cybernetic rebellion) now scour the ruined Onieromany facilities, seeking technologies that could either heal or doom what remains of galactic civilization.
Oneiromany Judicial Marshal
Motto:
Flag & Roundel
Capital system Mydras Starsystem
Capital city Mydras-Centhos
Largest system Oredi Starsystem
Official
languages
Bort, Wulf, Common Tradespeak
Species groups
Human-Briddarri
Religion Deism, Animism
Government
Tribal
Legislature
Communal Council
Number of
Starsystems
2,347,912
Currency
Alent, Oku, Librat, Tetrak, Dena, Radma, Paprita Contract
