What could bring down an Interstellar Empire?

[Sacred.Stone]

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?

[Elven Doritos]

The answer you're looking for is Star Wars: Episode VI.

[Bill Volk]

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.

[Bill Volk]

[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.

[Gnomemaster]

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?

[Sacred.Stone]

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?

[Sacred.Stone]

"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.

[beejazz]

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 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.

[Stargate525]

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.

[Matt Larkin (author)]

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.

[Elven Doritos]

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.

[Raelifin]

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 .

[XXsiriusXX]

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.
 

[Epic Meepo]

Spacefaring barbarians... use the advanced technology of the Empire against them...

Jurassic Park[/i].

[Wensleydale]

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?