Some of the foremost military schools in the Stellar Ring were located in Imperium space-as the Thuldans and Hatire found out to their regret. The fleets of the Imperium, while frequently outnumbered by the Thuldan Imperial Armadas, repeatedly inflicted heavy losses upon the Empire; at one point the XXIV and XVII Fleets were so shattered that they had to spend almost a year refitting and replenishing their depleted numbers.

But the Thuldans could replace their losses from their immense reserves; the Imperium had no reserves to speak of. As ground battles began to supplant space battles with the Imperial advance, the Imperium knew they could not win. Even as cadets at the Takeda Preparatory Academy repeatedly bloodied the Hatire attempts to carve out their sector in a brilliant series of “school exercises”, the General Staff of the Imperium set into motion a new plan. They would attempt to hold off the Pentad forces long enough to evacuate as many subjects as they could to the Far Reach. The coming of the catastrophic Thuldan Third Wave offense, led by the Hatire’s annihilation of all lifeforms in the vital Takeda system, destroyed the Imperium before the evacuation was more than barely begun. Less than five million Imperium subjects escaped to the colonies.

After the end of the War, the Thuldans offered the surviving members Imperial citizenship. They refused and were donated, along with many war-scarred sectors, to the Concord Sagittarius Protectorate. Many have since followed their kinfolk to the Reach, while others are enlisting with StarForce and the Concord Marines, bringing their famed tactical skill with them.

If the Middle Kingdom is about Confucius and mandarins, the Chrysanthemum Imperium is devoted to Sun Tzu and a blend of the more militant Buddhist sects with some Zen. The subjects of the Imperium are rigorously trained in the use of tactics in their preferred field: infantry, space, vehicular and medevac.