Makuran against the Dread Lords - a middle game DAR (_during_ action report)
It had been four or five centuries since the Shah-n-Shah had united the great clans, when the Boyars' armies had filled the skies of Makuran with arrows fired by the warrior caste from the backs of their Tarns. Now with rare exception the only Tarns were seen on the entertainment networks where they had not been replaced by machines used in the zero-gravity combat sports, now replaced in their turn by virtual Tarns. But how the Makuraners still love to watch the warriors perform their aerial acrobatics dodging the bowfire of their enemies. Millenia of selective breeding in the warrior castes with their heightened situational awareness in the fast archery combat of their skies had served them well when they first ventured into the realm of space travel.
And space had served the Makuraners so well. The barbarian races around the periphery of the empire, Drengin, Iconian, Yor, Korx, Terran, Altarian, Krynn, and the Torians and earlier Thalans in its midst, never seemed to have the Makuraners drive to colonize and fill the rare habitable worlds across the gigantic galaxy. Now most of the galaxy is in the hands of the Shah, and with only one meaningful exception the only victims of the Makuraner warrior caste remain one another as they duel for honor or for the pleasure of the masses in the games.
Most of the current generation of Makurani warriors are too young to have served in the Thalan war, a desultory one-year affair caused by the assasination of the Thalan head of state at a diplomatic function on Makuran, which ended the existence of that barbarian race. Thala is now, a half-generation later, remembered not for that war but for being the gemstone of the Shah's empire. And the warriors old enough to have served then are now the cream of the Makuraner officer corps.
Except for the occasional squabbles among the barbarians in which little seems to actually happen, the galaxy has largely been at peace, with only the occasional barbarian tribute offer. This had been exacerbated first by the Great Galactic Plague which the Makuraners had cured in a manner of weeks but had never seen fit to offer the cure to the barbarian races which had seen their homeworlds and few colonies slowly depopulated with many smaller worlds in revolt turning to the Makurani culture. Then more recently had come the Galactic Virus, also cured on Makuran (again, only) within a few dreadful weeks, which left those few barbarians resistant to the plague simply lethargic with the strain of fighting the virus.
Few noticed at first when the Iconians began to change, and the change occured so slowly that it might have passed un-noticed over the years, but there has surely been some kind of evolution. Nevertheless this has not progressed so far that the Iconians can rival the Makurani empire and the Iconians remain something for the Makuraners to toy with. But now, on the other side of the empire altogether and beyond the realms taken from the Thalans, has come a report that the Dread Lords, precursors to the Iconian civilization, have returned to the galaxy to claim it as their own. The Dread Lords are not unheard of on Makuran, where there is a precursor mine, or in the empire, where there a couple precursor libraries scattered about, but an actual Dread Lord, in the flesh...
So the new generation of Makurani warriors is readying the fleet, the same hulls on the outside but vastly superior technologically (Blackhole Eruptors replacing Particle Beams, superior Hyperwarp Drives replacing, well, nothing) to the ships their elders used to exterminate the Thalans, and preparing to move on the Dread Lord world - hoping for a suitable nemesis with which to do battle. And the few new capital ships produced on Makuran are also hoping to get their chance for combat.
