O.O;
I was thinking maybe a Jihaad. But what could spark a Jihaad? They take hundreds/thousands of years to build up their frenetic religious energy before unleashing it and destroying everything in their path... maybe...
An... anarchist... anti-tech rebellion?
Maybe a society ruled more and more by science and less and less by religion/spiritualty (which, maybe, became outlawed?) became so unfullfilling that the people just went berserk and destroyed it all?
Maybe my setting could be in a post-dystopian farfuture. ??
And wouldn't human beings, separated by billions of lightyears, huddled on their varried planets (each with different pressures and selecting factors), over the course of hundreds (tens?) of thousnads of years... eventually evolve into differing species?
The answer you're looking for is Star Wars: Episode VI.
It depends on what's possible in your setting. Are star-system-destroying superweapons feasible in this world? Gigantic unspeakable cosmic horrors from outside time and space? Hostile memetic programs that travel via culture or digital media and incubate in a host's mind for a while before making it cataonic or berserk? A supernatural apocalypse that wrecks the entire universe? If all else fails, the slow march of entropy will claim them all eventually.
If this is a setting you plan to use for other players, I'd suggest avoiding any blunt editorials (like a society that gets so depressed over the separation of church and state that everyone goes berserk.) It will just come off as absurd at best and totally alienate your players at worst. (That idea in particular sounds thoroughly ridiculous, almost as much as a society driven to suicide over the loss of slavery or 8-track tapes. At least it does to me.)
And yeah, populations would definitely speciate if left alone for long enough. It might take hundreds of thousands of years, though.
[ic=Elven Doritos]The answer you're looking for is Star Wars: Episode VI. [/ic]
That's right! I almost forgot. No interstellar empire can withstand Ewoks.
I would use something pollution based. I see futuristic societies using planets up then hopping over to a new one. Who cares about the environment when there are billions of others to enjoy?
There needs to be a somewhat flimsy infrastructure, like a poorly constructed Jenga, where the Jihaadists pull out a few lose screws and the whole thing crashes down for a few millenia.
Book One: The Jihaad (destruction of the empire)
Book Two: Ayenee.1027 (an intact Spacejumper is found!)
Book Three: Something else. But it would outline how humans on different planets evolved independently.
Eh, eh? How's that sound?
"I would use something pollution based. I see futuristic societies using planets up then hopping over to a new one. Who cares about the environment when there are billions of others to enjoy?"
You're right. What if the population never exceeded a few billion, and they just moved from world to world until suddenly their probes didn't find any more worlds and their last one was just about run out? Maybe they'd fight over it and destroy themselves.
Or maybe planets would be sparsely populated, but numerous.
So we have two scenarios.
Sparsely populated, but numerous planets.
Few planets, densely populated.
Quote from: GnomemasterI would use something pollution based. I see futuristic societies using planets up then hopping over to a new one. Who cares about the environment when there are billions of others to enjoy?
You could invent new kinds of pollution based on interstellar travel... stuff could pollute the fabric of space. Maybe the interstellar empire breaks because individual frequently jumped locations are drifting into new universes... or maybe chronology is breaking down. It does anyway thanks to gravity's effect on time (over the course of billions of years) such that even though the timeline starts at the same point no matter where you are, some parts of the universe are older or younger than others.
Just some thoughts.
YOu could just use the Civil War as an example. If these guys are being governed by a system several lightyears away, I'm sure they would eventually feel alienated and abused. And, like the civil war and the revolutionary war, war quickly comes.
If you've ever read Dune, you can sort of see the events building towards an interstellar Jihad. While it may have built for a while, as you say, due to developing mythology and the harsh conditions that made the Fremen tough enough, it would appear to most of the universe to be pretty sudden.
Another way to look at it is perhaps the fall of Rome. Spacefaring barbarians (think Klingons) use the advanced technology of the Empire against them, using commandeered ships (and whatever augmented natural abilities they might have, perhaps they were genetic experiments on the outer fringes of the Empire) to bring disease, warfare, and insurmountable odds through several decades of conflict.
Or we could just get a Mothership with a singularity generator and condense the hub of the galaxy.
What is the setup behind the question? Why do you need to destroy the empire? What technologies are in existence?
I mean, from my logic, an interstellar empire is impossible to have without faster-than-light.
Pollution is unlikely, due to the costs of terraforming and the rarity of a Class M (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_M_planet) .
There is never a single reason why a government or society collapses. It is generally do to small factors, when added up, cause the fall. The small factors could include: plague, natural disaster, invasion, civil war, religious conversion, famine, corruption, economic down turn, or any of a million other reasons.
Iâ,¬,,¢ll give you a very simplistic example: a natural disaster occurs on a vital agriculture planet, cutting the empires food supply in half. The corrupt government begins hording the food for them and releases very little, if any food for the common people. This generates a great deal of tension between the two sides. When the common people begin raiding food warehouses, the government violently stops the raiding, and civil war breaks out. The common people gain more and more support and oust the current leaders topping their government and creating a new one.
Quote from: beejazzQuote from: Elven DoritosSpacefaring barbarians... use the advanced technology of the Empire against them...
Jurassic Park[/i].
It depends on your level of space-travel. With travel advanced to the limits of possibility as it is currently, it might take hundreds of years to travel from one end of the empire to another, even if it was small. Imagine how stagnant they would be?
Quote from: WensleydaleIt depends on your level of space-travel. With travel advanced to the limits of possibility as it is currently, it might take hundreds of years to travel from one end of the empire to another, even if it was small. Imagine how stagnant they would be?
That would be a very loose-- and difficult to maintain-- Empire.
I am very suprised no one has mentioned the obvious*: Black hole
*this only works you are okay with the destruction happening by chance, or if a super-powerful alien race that self-destructed already by now has the power to control black holes.
What could bring down an empire?
Its been said in bits and pieces, but for a high tech empire the most crippling thing would be the loss of quick communication, transport, or trade.
What would happen to the US if suddenly all the cell phones stopped working?
How about if we couldn't fly but had to drive everywhere?
What would happen if we only had access to food grown in our local region?
The strong and independent (food, construction, knowledge) communities would survive, the dependent ones crumble.
The trick is to determining how to bring about these catastrophes.
The "space pollution" idea could create this dilemma. Most regions of space become unstable for FTL and communication. So now you have brash, young, and foolhardy new adventurers out there plotting new courses to keep society limping along. But the disturbances constantly shift, and other societies may just want to see everything crumble (ultimate independence).
Quote from: Uranium-238I am very suprised no one has mentioned the obvious*: Black hole
Quote from: SingularityAstrophysics. A point in space-time at which gravitational forces cause matter to have infinite density and infinitesimal volume, and space and time to become infinitely distorted. (a.k.a. Black Hole)
oops, musta not read that, i was only skimming through the posts btw. i musta skipped those two.
Interestingly enough, all of these things are present in Warhammer 40,000 (warp storms making planets into hellscapes, a galaxy spanning empire with parts all but cut off from the rest, etc.)
Nobody has stated the most obvious thing that can bring down an empire.
The Schwartz.
Quote from: RavenspathNobody has stated the most obvious thing that can bring down an empire.
The Schwartz.
lol nice reference.
Quote from: KeshFerrarWhat could bring down an empire?
Its been said in bits and pieces, but for a high tech empire the most crippling thing would be the loss of quick communication, transport, or trade.
What would happen to the US if suddenly all the cell phones stopped working?
How about if we couldn't fly but had to drive everywhere?
What would happen if we only had access to food grown in our local region?
The strong and independent (food, construction, knowledge) communities would survive, the dependent ones crumble.
The trick is to determining how to bring about these catastrophes.
The "space pollution" idea could create this dilemma. Most regions of space become unstable for FTL and communication. So now you have brash, young, and foolhardy new adventurers out there plotting new courses to keep society limping along. But the disturbances constantly shift, and other societies may just want to see everything crumble (ultimate independence).
Exactly what I was meaning (although I was looking at it from a perspective of them conquering, but not being capable of holding it together properly).
Pick up Azimov's "Foundation" series.
You have a single world (Trantor) which is specialized for administration. It's one big city - as the business of government becomes bigger and more complicated, the capitol world becomes more and more specialized in doing just that. It takes hundreds of agricultural worlds just to maintain this one administrative hub, essentially a planet-wide office building. This specialization, however, leads to stagnation, as the bureaucrats are increasingly isolated and disconnected from the rest of the empire. Furthermore, the specialization of the capitol is a weakness - as with Rome, if the exterior granaries and support worlds fall, the capitol is unsustainable. As corruption, inefficiency, and bureaucratic bloat grow, faraway worlds see the empire as more and more irrelevant to them, and eventually a contagious separatism spreads, which cripples the ability of the capitol to sustain itself. Without an empire to sustain it and give it relevance, the capitol dies and the Empire breathes its last.
Bad monetary policy :p
Quote from: MinaBad monetary policy :p
you can take down ANYTHING with bad money policy.*
*see also Enron, Roman Empire, the Spanish Main in the 16th-17th century.
Honestly, I have always thought that the idea of 'agricultural worlds' sustaining the populations of worlds that couldn't survive without imports was unrealistic. It would make sense if FTL transit were easy to do in bulk, but not much. I mean, you've got a *planet* and the technology to get there from a different one. You would have a hard time convincing me that you wouldn't also have the climate control and population management techniques to make the planet involved self-sustaining.
But of course that leads to an idea - what if the technique used to make the bulk food - grain, say - was almost universal, like a single genegeneering prion used to adapt the grain to its local environment. Now what if a virus adapted to eating not the prion itself but certain organic compounds associated with it? If this virus were to spread before it was identified, the entire empires food supply would abruptly start to dwindle. And if it was identified before it was universal, that would open up the prospect of the occasional shooting war as one world after another strove to enforce a quarantine of their own planet.
So - you got famine, disease and war all hitting a space empire of whatever size you find dramatically convenient.
Another idea is that the universe changes. What if, in the course of time, the laws of physics changed such that electricity altered in its propogation through non-organic conductors? Neurons and living creatures would be virtually unaffected while everyone within the region of effect - eventually everywhere - would have to relearn how to do everything from build a functioning light bulb to construct a computer...
Or, if you really want to harken back to the old fun sci-fi movies - Space Herpes.
Well, how have real empires gone the way of all things?
Going back the foundation comments, an Empire rarely gets destroyed or obliviated, it just dissolves and downsizes. This generally can be traced to the lack of investment in infrastructure, mainy administrative.
In an interstellar-variation, the large population, given time, has less and less people actually learning how things are done, and less and less people investing time and capitol in the Empire, and more people making money and enjoying what they feel is rightfully theirs. After all, they have all these stories from the distant past when the Empire was being forged, and the Empire has ben around so long, it will always be there.
Rome was supposed brought down by barbarians sacking the city, and by the cruel and strange behavior of her twisted citizens. But we all know Rome was really brought down by Emperors who didn't want to rule and no one with the understandthing of keeping up the governmental and physical infrastructure.
We also all hear constantly how 'darkness fell' in terms of science, at least in Eurpoe, afterwards. That infrastructure we speak of also is an educational one.
Now, armed with this, I can easily see an interstellar society doing the same thing, a populace gone soft assuming the Empire will always be there, a beuocracy trying to run not just many countries, or many worlds, but tryig to keep track of whole systems, and making sure the housing prices on none of them get to high, etc. If the people stop learning how to do things, and depend on the mechanized government to do it for them, all it will take then is a little war, a bit of the aformentioned jihad, to overstress the government and administrative mechanisms. Then everything comes tumbling down, entire systems are left to fend for themselves without understanding how to replicate the items of everyday conveniece...
and darkness falls agin.
LordVreeg, nicely done. Eloquent and poignant. Beats space herpes.