Ruby Empire
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The Ruby Empire is an ancient civilization of humans settled on the planet Raylicon in the Saga of the Skolian Empire books by Catherine Asaro.
Around 6000 years ago an unknown race moved a group of humans who later became known as the Raylicans from Earth to the distant planet Raylicon. Then the kidnappers disappeared, leaving their victims on their own.
The Raylicans developed star travel using the discovered remains of three ships found on their new homeworld. They reverse engineered the technology, and as such achieved spaceflight and colonized hundreds of planets. They also discovered the Locks, an ancient technology that allowed them to create the psiberweb, an interstellar network existing outside of normal space and time that transmits messages instantaneously.
However, their shallow understanding of space-faring technology, and possibly corruption led to the empire's collapse, isolating the hundreds of planets in their empire for thousands of years. Eventually, about 400 years ago, Raylicans re-achieved space flight, this time understanding the technology, and started to rebuild the empire.
In this time, however, the psions (and their genes) which had a strong enough KAB rating to power the psiberweb had been all but lost. As a result, the Rhon project was created to genetically engineer the traits necessary to create the psiberweb. It was this project that led to the divergence of the two great empires in the series, the Eubian Concord and the Skolian Empire.
[edit] Society
The Ruby Empire was a matriarchy ruled by powerful females who held the title of Ruby Pharaoh. Pharaohs were strong, mighty women who wielded enormous power, lead armies to wars and treated their husbands like property. Succession went strictly through the female line, men being seen as incapable of such responsibilities. A man could only become a Pharaoh under special circumstances, such as his royal mother had no daughters.
The ancient dynasty of Pharaohs was called the Ruby Dynasty. This is also the name for the ruling family of today's Skolian Empire, as Lahaylia Selei, the progenitor of the modern Ruby family, was cloned from the genetic material of one of the long dead warrior queens.
[edit] Raylicon
During the golden era of the Ruby Empire , Raylicon was the empire's capital and center of political power. Yet despite being the birthplace of two interstellar empires, today's Raylicon is a nearly abandoned world. The sole inhabitants are the Abaj, a group of warriors who are all clones of the original extinct Raylicans. They act as bodyguards to the Ruby Dynasty, ruling family in the Skolian Empire.
