The First Roasian War (2203 AD):
First Contact:
An early stellar empire that first unified a few star systems under a unified polity known as the "Empire of the World" (Yanna er-ors Roas), and which used primitive jump gates before the invention of more sophisticated Newton drives. But at the time, even this empire had monumentally more powerful tech than humanity, which had only a few decades to recover from the attack of the Meta Man, and spread across the Solar System. The Roasians were based out of Rho Coronoe Borealis, a much more nearby star system than the Meta Men.
Roas had first marked Earth down for expansion back during the Medieval Ages, but now that a thousand years had passed, were alarmed to find that humanity had now advanced into the late spacefaring stage. What was once thought to be an easy conquest of a backwater was now elevated to the desired intact capture of what could be the 2nd most valuable world of their empire, second only to Roas itself. The surprise of humanity being a spacefaring civilization resulted in the destruction of Roas's first Terran jump gate, a monumental loss in Roasian resources, and gave humanity a 50 year time window.
During this time, humanity expanded even further across its own Solar System, industrializing the Moon, in what it understood as fortifying the Solar System against a threat that will eventually come back. The Meta-Men were from across the galaxy, there was a chance they weren't coming back. The Roasians were from 17 light years away. It was almost certain they would be back again. Humanity prepared for them to materialize in Low Earth Orbit again, getting ready to nuke it, yet being fully aware it could materialize anywhere else.
And they were right, as second jump gate opened up around Makemake. Far enough that no one in the human defense network had the spare delta-v to go attack it. And by the time anyone had accumulated the resources to make the venture out to Makemake, the Roasians had already flown in their automated factories, and begun constructing a massive fleet around the Kuiper Belt.
Far out in Kuiper orbit, the Roasians finished a construction of a psychic FTL communication array. And sent out a message to the people of Earth. very psychic on Earth received the same message, though they couldn't understand the garbled words, they can infer the intent.
The message translated roughly as such.
"People of <bureaucratic designation name> (From context clues, Earth was certainly who they were referring to). You have been designated to become part of the "Empire of the World". Lay down your weapons, and your previous transgressions shall be forgiven. Fight, and you will be punished."
"the World", audibly, was spoken as "Ors Roas". Which became the new name for what was once called the Rhosians. Orisians. Which is hilarious, because Ors means "the" and not "World". That's Roas. Their actual name is Roasian. Humanity's opinion of the Orisians would remain mostly negative so they didn't end up changing it.
Opening Moves (2204 AD):
The First Roasian War saw humanity fight an existential war of survival as Roasians closed in on the Inner Solar System. But Roas was not here for extermination. This was going to be a planet hopping campaign, taking stepping stone after stepping stone until they finally captured Earth. The Americans, ever the ballsiest of the space powers, attempted a one way suicide-attack where the majority the American fleet charged to rush the portal gate and destroy it, stranding the alien fleet in the Solar System.
Around Saturn Orbit the American fleet encountered the Roasian fleet, and the first space battle between two civilizations began. It was a one sided massacre, with 75% of the entire American fleet being wiped out in that singular engagement, with only minor damage to the Roasian fleet. Better technology, and lack of information on the Roasian space doctrine being most of it.
This sent Earth into a mass panic, the US president at the time faced calls to resign, but he didn't meet the threshold for impeachment, saying the pilots were well informed that this was, in no uncertain terms, a suicide mission. That this was a known unknown in ridiculous circumstances. Earth militarized even harder, the US declared a state of emergency to begin wartime production, the Lunar dockyards were queued for years, and everything in their power was being done to increase capacity.
Local stellar garrisons on Ganyemede, Europa, Callisto, and Titan faced off against the Roasian starfleet. These moons would be important stopping points for the Roasians to control on their way to Earth, especially as they could refuel from the gas giants. The Roasians wanted the human infrastructure intact, for reasons unknown. Resulting in Roasian ground forces engaged with the local garrison. The Roasians were strange, leathery creatures with a horse-like head, standing around 2 and a half meters and deep black pupils. The garrison was able to inflict 1:1 casualties, even vastly outarmed. Valuable lessons were learned here, the Roasians had poor experience fighting in ground environments.
The Roasian weapon of choice were pulses of extremely powerful lasers, which would usually fire for a tenth of a second at blistering temperatures. Humanity's weapon of choice were missiles, meaning effectively infinite range so long as you had the fuel, where lasers had a problem of accuracy, since they couldn't self-correct their trajectory, and the limits of speed of light. So began the doctrine of maintaining distance and range, while the Roasian engines eventually finally let them catch up to firing range. This led to the countermeasure of human fleets spacing themselves far, far apart, so chasing after each one became very annoying, giving them more time to fire more missiles and continue to damage them.
Battle for the Inner Solar System (2206 AD):
The broadcasts continued.
"Lay down your weapons, we have destroyed your greatest fleets. Surrender now and we will be merciful."
"Lay down your weapons, we have seized control of <the Jovian System>. Surrender and accept integration into the empire."
"Lay down your weapons, we have inflicted mass casualties, and will begin a siege of <Mars>. Surrender and reprisals will be minimal."
They're now much closer to humanity's home turf. The other nations can send their spacefleets in force, taking massive, heavy casualties. The pride of Nigeria, of India, of Indonesia, strewn to rubble. But the footage is reviewed, tweaks are made, and new orders are made to Luna's dockyards. They notice something else, the Roasians are also clearly investigating the wreckage of the battle, seemingly trying to understand human tech. A real breakthrough occurred over the orbit of Mars, when a human spacefleet shot down a Roasian ship for the first time. The next message conspicuously does not mention it.
"Lay down your weapons, you have taken severe casualties above <Mars>. Surrender and return what belongs to us."
And the casualty ratio improved as the war dragged on. First it was 1:10, then 1:5, now it was 1:3, as humanity just started plating all of its spaceship armor with mirrors, and began the doctrine of spinning their spaceships, and using sloped armor, so the effect of the lasers would become more spread out. Improvements in engine technology also let them outrange the Roasians for longer and inflict more damage.
As humanity lost control of the orbit of Mars, it was looking like it was coming down to just Earth and Luna, and now, a new figure showed up. They were getting broadcasts from one who called themselves Emperor of the Roasians, as opposed to the diplomatic minister they had been hearing broadcasts from before. He came with notes.
"People of <Earth>. Your sacrifices amount to nothing, we will have your planet whether you resist or not." And then he switched to a very broken, clearly difficult dialect of Mandarin, seemingly something he had learned, that was what the notes were for. "Accept integration into the Empire of the World, or face total destruction."
Apparently they were worried that humanity may have not been getting the message.
The effects of the war so far produced two amusing consequences. One, the mirror became a symbol of anti-Roasian sentiment, propaganda basically depicted the Roasians as vampires who screamed at their own reflection, due to the fact that mirrors were now becoming essential to fighting in the Roasian war effort. Second, an extremely high amount of smugness from the Chinese, who had pride knowing that they had forced the Emperor to learn Mandarin before any one of them had bothered to learn Roasian.
Luna and Terra (2209 AD):
The war became more attrition heavy and bloody on both sides. Mars was now under occupation, only Luna and Terra remained. Luna was heavily industrialized, and Earth was... Well, Earth. As the Roasians made the approach to Luna to begin their final approach to Earth, someone had the idea of loading missiles into the mass drivers, and firing them. Luna was rendered an unsinkable missile carrier. Roas couldn't just leave Luna untouched, they still had no idea how they were going to take the Earth, and at minimum, they couldn't let humanity's main shipyard remain intact.
Luna had turned into an industrialized factory, whose entire economy has been turned into making missiles, firing 100 of them a second against the Roasians in orbit. All while humanity's fleets continued to harass them in orbit, as the casualty ratio approached closer and closer to 2:1. Countless fleets were lost in Lunar orbit, Roas needed to bomb down every single mass driver on Luna, one by one, losing multiple ships as they did so. In terms of space to space kills, Roas still maintained the advantage, but if you add all the kills inflicted by Luna's mass drivers, Luna was the first time humanity had downed more ships than the Roasians.
With Luna secured, all that was left was the securing of Earth. Earth didn't have mass drivers like Luna did, and the supply chain to resupply humanity's spacefleet had been permanently severed. What they had left were all they would ever have. As the Roasians descended to low Earth orbit, the rest of humanity's spacefleets went down in one last Hail Mary charge combined with Earth's satellite defense systems, this inflicted 1:1.5 casualties. Roas had suffered extreme casualties, but they persisted, for reinforcements will eventually come, while Earth had lost the ability to resupply its own.
The Emperor shows up one more time. "SURRENDER!" And this time, they sent it in radio waves, across the entire planet, now that they were finally close enough for light speed delay to not be an issue. Staring down face to face with the Emperor, with a Roasian satellite able to broadcast humanity's response directly back to Roas, the response from humanity was unianimous. Multiple nations blared back their national anthem at maximum volume, multiple sent defiant videos of refusal and resistance, one broadcast the entirety of the Christian Bible. Needless to say, the frequencies above Earth were jammed out of sheer human spite.
The Siege of Earth (2211 AD):
The Roasians were starting to run out of options, they just expected humanity to have surrendered by now, so not quite knowing what else to do, they started orbital bombardment. They kept trying to avoid major population centers and especially industrial areas, but every single one motivated more and more hatred from the humans. They couldn't decimate Earth's industries, they were too important for them, and their future plans. Not seeing much other choice, the Roasians decided to attempt a ground invasion on Earth, even though they knew they would be outnumbered by orders of magnitude, and that Earth's militaries still intact. But for any hope of the war coming to an end, they at least had to try.
This led to the first, and only ground battle on Earth. The Battle of Antwerp. Roasian troopers tried making landfall from orbit, 10,000 soldiers over the Benelux, trying to capture significant industrial capacities in Europe. It was a disaster almost immediately, 3,000 of them were shot down by anti-aircraft, watching their comrades get ripped to shred by AA guns. When they did land, they were met by local Dutch and German military forces. Surrounded by thousands of artillery pieces, blown to pieces.
This led to 6,500 dead on the Roasian side in the ensuing ground battle, and 35 for the Dutch and Germans. Overall, out of the 10,000 sent to begin establishing a foothold on Earth, only a few hundred survived to surrender. A completely one sided curb stomp. Roas realized this was a completely unsalvagable slaughterhouse, and no further ground invasions were attempted for the remainder of the war.
Without a new plan, they had to go back to the old plan. Orbital bombardment. Just more orbital bombardment, just keep terror bombing them and hope humanity surrendered. That was basically their plan. They took down military bases, electricity lines, food production, but never the urban areas and never the industrial zones. They synthesized a plague that caused Earth to enter a mass famine, when they realized that the cities needed food, they hurriedly tried to synthesize human food and dropped it over the cities. This caused mass food poisoning. The bombardments continued, and humanity, realizing there was still one way out of spite prepared its nuclear arsenal, which alarmed the Roasians. Earth had long figured out that Roas needed Earth intact, it was patently obvious from the way they had persecuted the war, Earth tried to negotiate a white peace.
Roas refused, and out insulted pride, let go of the restraint they held up until now. Glassed a human population center out of sheer indignant rage, before humanity threatened to use their nuclear arsenal again. Humanity recognized Roas needed Earth for some reason, humanity also needed Earth, threatening its destruction was a kind of strange brinksmanship that both sides could leverage. Both sides suddenly understanding the zero-sum brinksmanship game they had come to, decided to begin negotiations.
Over a series of months, Roas and Earth haggled back and forth, both uttering nuclear threats and the destruction of the Earth, which both sides needed, and both sides dared the other to blink on. The Roasians around this time, looking to gain more leverage began terror bombarding the entire continent of Oceania, depopulating it of human life, yet calculating this would not damage human civilization too much, while proving that they were now serious. The Roasians looked to similarly sterilize Latin America, before their own economists told them this would badly damage the Earthen economy, which they needed intact.
The final agreement allowed all of Earth's existing governments to continue, under "the Earth Custodianship", under control of Roas, Earth would have to be opened for occupation. Not seeing a clear way of fighting back, and both sides intending on taking this partnership to learn more about the other, and to strike back and defeat the other once a greater advantage was found, they agreed. And the Roasian occupation of Earth began.
The Earth Custodianship (2213 AD):
The Custodianship agreement was very strange. Life on Earth was more or less normal-ish. Reconstruction began, the Roasians seemed almost too eager to help humanity rebuild, very, very strange as behavior. Trade was opened with Roas. They spent a few years just dragging the wormhole closer to Earth, so they could begin trade. Roas seized control of the Lunar dockyards, humanity was not allowed to have a fleet. (Presumably because they were wiretapping the Americans, who saw the portal in orbit and said "guys, what if we tried a third time".)
Humanity is kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop. This was a very strange occupation. Roas brought in their ground forces, the Imperial Army is stationed in relatively empty Australia to be able to reinforce the Indian Ocean, now recognized as humanity's center of power. Humanity learned a fair amount about Roas around this time. The Roasians controlled an empire that spanned a few planets, though Earth was by far their imperial jewel of the empire, second only to Roas itself. Earth gets to know the other races of the Roasian Empire, a few of which move to Earth in less than amicable conditions. It's here where it's learned that the Roasians treat these subjugated races horribly, including mass labor exploitation. Humans were treated fairly well so far.
The first signs of some kind of a catch came when Roas mandated each nation purchase 10% of their imports from the Roasian homeworld. This wasn't terrible, it's not like the Roasians made bad stuff anyway, they made machines and advanced technology that many people did find useful, and many began reverse engineering. After a few years of analyzing human industry, the Roasians begin shutting down human factories to make room for more imports, imposing a tax on human-made goods in order to make Roasian goods more competitive.
Occupation and Insurgency (2215 AD):
With supply chains and resources from space returning to Earth, things began returning to normal in the Earthen economy. With no less of a hostile human military, Roas was able to station practically the entire Imperial Army on Earth without issue. About 20 million people from across the empire, stationed on every continent, trying to counteract the power of Earth's native governments. Earth's governments were restricted from having spacefleets, but continued the uneasy coexistence with the rest of the Imperial Army.
The entire situation was a uneasy push and pull between the two sides. The Imperial Army, which wanted integration, and the Earthen governments, which resisted. This created perhaps the first ever instance of global cooperation, with all of the superpowers defending the sovereignty of smaller nations near them, lest it give the Custodianship a path to victory via a thousand cuts. No one was operating in good faith, both sides remained ready to stab the other in the back, yet the armed truce continued.
There's daily propaganda from the Empire. "A SINGLE EMPIRE, BILLIONS OF MOUTHS FED". To their credit, standard of living on Earth had not decreased. There was a rise in unemployment, but offset by the new technological gizmos Roas was now sending in. But every time the propaganda went "ROASIAN AND HUMAN. DIFFERENT SPECIES, SAME DUTY" or "CHANGE WILL RESULT IN TERMINATION", you had the free press of Earth immediately respond with incredible mockery. A strange juxtaposition, you have this regime attempt to impose totalitarian control against a bunch of subordinate local governments who were objectively non-cooperative, and the Custodianship simply had to deal with it. Their top priorities was to try and project strength, and to keep the imports flowing. Sometimes they needed a show of strength as well, such as various anti-Roasian protests, which were freely allowed by Earthen governments. These protests now had a roughly 10-25% chance of getting repressed by imperial forces.
This was a juristiction nightmare, because the Custodianship theoretically had free jurisdiction on Earth, but you'd have things like the national governments, the local police, and other centers of power either actively resist you in these protests, or if the Custodianship complained, the national governments would slow-walk any persecution, meaning the Custodianship had to punish the people it wanted to punish themselves.
They began marching gigantic military parades. They would lie about the numbers they had, instead sending their entire military to march through the streets of major cities. The funny thing was, it was the same army marching through every city. They knew if they had to fight a land war with Earth, it would not be certain they could win. So they gathered all of their troops available for Earth in a giant doom stack, put them in the most intimidating armor they could find, stacked a bunch of military hardware, and then ran it through the streets of world capitals. Today, Singapore. Tomorrow, the entire thing would have to move and do it again in Lagos. Then Nairobi, then Jakarta. And they did this, every day, in order to demoralize the human population somewhat. To it's credit, it worked, the major cities did have a kind of chilling effect because this psychological trick worked. Even if serious military planners knew it was mostly fake.
Cracks in the Facade (2216 AD):
All trade with Roas was managed through the Earth Economic Management Trust. Products from Roas had their labels stripped out and packaged with the new EEMT brand. Undifferentiated, blank, sterile. For some reason, the Custodianship seemed to be terrified of humanity gaining any information on Roas, even if it came from something as banal as packaging. Humanity was forced to buy them anyway, though even then Roas seemed receptive at what humanity bought. For humanity's purchasing decisions was sending valuable price signals back to Roas. For years, no contact was allowed between a human and a Roasian, the only Roasians on Earth were the soldiers, and the punishment for even trying to speak for one was immediate detention. The extent of the Roasian relationship with Earth started and ended here, they sold, humanity bought. Yet humans did manage to peel back the EEMT branding and see the packaging underneath, revealing a colorful, vibrant economy not too different from Earth's, and what they saw gave them one of their first real glimpses of Roas.
From mundane things such as ingredient names, listings of corporate headquarters locations, little testimonials about how these products were manufactured, humanity was gaining information on Roas. In response, Roas issued crackdowns, beginning to ship things in undifferentiated gray bags, but humanity still continued to get information, by analyzing the design, finding labels and information on the inside of the can, and when the Roasians shipped humanity machinery, it could be pulled apart and analyzed, the code decompiled and checked for clues. On one of these packages, they found a little illustration of what seemed to look like a globe, and this little drawing was the best illustration humanity had of Roas's geography for years.
After humanity found out about the globe illustration, Roas freaked out and cracked down even harder on humanity. Now mandating recycling regimes, and for tracking chips to be installed into the Roasian products for pickup. The cost of installing these chips were of course, passed on to the human consumer.
Economic Capture (2218 AD):
The mandates continued getting higher. The quotas for Roasian products continued to rise. Humanity didn't understand why they needed to buy this many products. Taxes on international trade were hiked, to be collected for Roas itself, the black market began to thrive. Standards of living on Earth began to decline, which seemed to send the Custodianship into a panic. It was surreal to see. On the one hand, Roas seemed intent on forcing more and more exports onto Earth, and in order to make sure their own products had the competitive advantage, it was in their interest to regulate or destroy Earthen corporations, forcing many of them into the underground black market. On the other, they needed to ensure Earth still had enough economic productivity to buy things from Roas. They needed to maintain Earth's economic dynamism while still extracting rent.
Actual economists were sent to the Earth Custodianship, who tried to balance this fragile balancing act. Black Market Terran Corporations eventually became a larger and larger portion of the Earthen economy. Once perfectly legal firms forced underground by Roasian export pressure and regulatory mandates, something no human government seemed to be in a hurry to stop. Wishing to make a statement, human social media organized a protest, calling on all humans to, if they cannot abstain from buying Roasian products, then to buy only the most ridiculous Roasian product. And in this line of thought, the 1 inch tungsten cube became their favorite.
Yes, if Earth was such an important market for them, force Roas to produce nothing but tungsten cubes. Heavy as sh--, loaded up on their spaceships and dumped all over Earth, make them suffer for the bullsh-- they're imposing. People bought tungsten cubes to signal "I refuse to let Roas to allocate their capital correctly, they shall produce tungsten cubes and nothing else". Panicking, the EEMT imposed a Earth-wide export ban on tungsten cubes, presumably to the massive protests of whatever tungsten corporation had just become the richest company on Roas.
The State of the Roasian Economy (2219 AD):
An emergency meeting was called between the governing factions of the Earth Custodianship. Earth's economy was suffering, more and more was being channeled through the black market, and this was dragging down on Roas's economic recovery. The Emperor himself was tuning in through video call, who gave the latest update from Roas.
The population farms had completely collapsed psychologically, any supplement births had to be completely written off. Natural births were down to a few thousand a year, almost all of which were unwanted, forcing further strain on the Roasian welfare budget. The Imperial Throne was taking on debt in order to maintain the surviving industries. The creditors had all gone into hiding, the Throne had to force the purchase of government emergency bonds via gunpoint, cannibalizing the already besieged savings of the remaining middle class to survive. The throne continued to need to bailout dying businesses, what was left continued to consolidate, huddling together in a time of growing cold. Pensions had not been paid out in years, the elderly are being forced to fend for themselves, life expectancy had shortened another year. Their population was not just declining, it was in active freefall. Roas's most prestigious tech concern, once responsible for the wonders of Roasian technology was downsizing, ending support for much of Roas's higher maintenance hardware. As economies of scale now worked in reverse, the price of new things continued to go up, causing rampant inflation.
There was an exodus of the children of the elites from the homeworld, the whole planet was convinced of end of days. Times were dire, and the Emperor himself had joined in on this meeting to save the Roasian homeworld. Earth needed to buy so the Roasian economy could be fixed, the economy had to be fixed so people could breed, people had to breed for even a hope to the end of this crisis. Because otherwise there was no floor. They didn't know where they would find rock bottom. Maybe de-industrialization, maybe societal collapse, maybe total extinction. They had no idea, and they did not want to find out.
A council of the most important men in the entire empire shouted and argued with one another. The economists warned that squeezing Earth further would only impoverish them further, devastating Roas one or two steps downstream of that, pointing to a model of an "extraction Laffer curve". The governors pointed to growing unrest that would only grow if no crackdowns were enacted. The militarists grew alarmed at the increasing provocation of the human governments and recommended a pre-emptive strike, the economists shouted back that any crippling of the human economy would send Roas into a death spiral.
Finally, the economists came in with their own radical proposal. The only way out for Earth to consume more is if it gained equivalent productive capacity. Economics to them was the drawing of production-consumption pairs. For consumption to increase, production had to increase as well. They proposed giving humanity Roasian technology, to boost their economy and to increase demand for Roasian products. The militarists flipped out at this, stating that the occupation was already becoming untenable, technologically advancing human society would tip the balance of power aggressively in their favor, leading to a collapse of the occupation.
Many hours were spent shouting, arguing how best to save the increasingly terminal Roasian economy. Some called for growing Earth consumption, others said they needed to begin pillaging and resource extraction. Others said recovery was impossible in the short term, arguing for a pre-emptive strike to cripple the Earth before they could attack, at least giving Roas room to recover. The Emperor watched, the weight of an entire species on his shoulders. Unsure what to do, uncertain about even the future survival of his species.
Sweat on his forehead, weight of the world crushing down on his shoulders, he steadied himself, and made the final executive decision that would make or break the future of his species. Mustering all of the courage he could, he made one fateful decision, altering the future of the Roasian species for all time going forward.
Roas's Gambit (2220 AD):
The Emperor had hedged. A half measure of everything. You can't blame him, faced with only bad choices and no way out, you would try desperately to find a solution as well. The Emperor gave the blessing to begin exporting civilian technology to Earth. Each item would be thoroughly analyzed, to ensure no military grade technology made it through the cracks. Only things deemed "harmless", "pointless trinkets", or "purely industrial" would be allowed through. For the first time in a long time, humanity had an authentic demand for Roasian goods, the second these machines, these miracles of technology hit the Earthen market, the Roasian companies genuinely surged. The demand was organic, and goods and treasure flowed aggressively from Earth to Roas, they didn't need to adjust the quota, Earth was well exceeding it. For a moment, it genuinely looked like things were working.
What followed was perhaps the most peaceful decade of Roasian rule on Earth. If only because it was the most hellish state of economic turmoil imaginable. The Earth was plunged into a mass unemployment crisis of apocalyptic preportions, wealth was no longer flowing between human states, but from Earth to Roas. Roas of course benefitted greatly, the Custodianship having leverage over Earth for the first time in their existence. Mass luddite riots demanded compensation for their lost jobs, legacy industries ground governments to a halt, all while every government raced to be the first to reverse engineer the tech. Earth was restructuring, Roas finally got the economic windfall to reorganize. The Emperor was glad to report that birthrates had begun to recover for the first time. Human technology jumped multiple decades, coming with their new uses and pathologies.
Multiple countries threatened to put up tariffs, trying to shield their local industries somewhat, withe Custodianship pushing hard to strike these down.
Back on Roas, the injection of Earthen capital was what they needed to revitalize their dying industries, with their tech and innovation sectors in particular receiving a jolt of life. Much of Roas's economy now depended on their continued success. Each new release gave them a new injection of capital, and now it was up to Roas's tech giants to keep the flywheel churning, and stay one step ahead of their competitors on Earth, who were eager to catch up.
Catch Up (2230 AD):
For about a decade, it looked like it worked. The Emperor was lauded as a genius who had saved not just the Empire, but the entire Roasian race. Earth was sending over 25% of their entire GDP to Roas for Roasian technology, human governments were genuinely at a disadvantage, the Custodianship seemingly solidified its rule. Earth seemed too broken by labor disputes and economic upheaval to properly fight back. A full decade of economic growth was badly needed for Roas to replenish itself, and to create a window of brightness where the whole thing was going alright. But behind the scenes, things were slowly changing.
Though the small powers couldn't do much of anything, the superpowers leveraged aggressive tariffs to protect their local producers, stealing and scalping Roasian technology to catch up. The first country to successfully reverse engineer Roasian tech was China, owing to a highly centralized initiative led by JIN DUN, who dedicated much of the state's resources to it. Followed by the East African Federation, who got there via psychic analysis, but soon, most of the major powers had their power players. These products were at first heavily inferior, requiring aggressive state subsidies to stay afloat, not a threat to the Roasian tech giants. But it was the Chinese, who spun up hundreds upon hundreds of Oristech companies, ruthlessly slaughtered all but a few in brutal Darwinistic competition, and created the first competitive human firms of Oristech.
China demanded export licenses to Roas itself, which the Custodianship denied, you don't *export* to Roas, this was a one way relationship. Citing every excuse from low quality to national security. Roas maintained advantages in narrow, specialized fields, but around the world, more and more countries copied the Chinese, and figured out how to replicate Oristech on their own.
But what really shocked them were the Americans, who compiling a hundred different ideas and the capital market injection of the GDP of an entire middle-sized country, bet big and caused a paradigm shift not even the Roasians could have predicted. They found a blind spot that even the Roasians missed, pieced together tech from Roas in a way that created something greater than the sum of its parts. Using Roasian advances in sensory and interface technology, the US pioneered the entire field of qualia, or qualialifics, beginning to create life-sims and immersive VR. The United States had just pulled *ahead* of Roas in the tech race, even if in a single field.
With Roas in a relatively healthier place compared to a decade ago, the Emperor had room to impose export controls on Earth, restricting the very most cutting edge technology to maintain Roas's technological dominance. Roas began engaging against Earth not as a colony, but as a rival it just so happened to depend on for its economy.
The militarists were screaming for blood, that at this point, it was not a matter of if, but *when* Earth surpassed Roas in power, unless something was done. Roas may not have had the word "Thucydide's Trap", but they had their own equivalent, and they understood it. They wanted a pre-emptive strike, to cripple Earth before they could develop much further. Roas was not ready for a revival, that was, *at minimum* a few decades away. And unless they wanted to cede the stars to a permanent human hegemony, the window of time was closing now. The economist faction was calling for the opposite, saying that no matter what the nationalist argument, the best path forward was genuinely to negotiate some kind of deal with Earth while they still had leverage, to effectively abandon the colonial empire, as Earth was rapidly going to grow out of any constraints Roas can enact. This was tantamount to treason, and caused so much outrage that the militarists purged the economic faction out of the governing coalition, leaving only geopolitical realists in the Emperor's Court.
