History of the Chorus of Angels

22762 AD - Emperor Heideran is elected. Khanid heir secedes from Amarr Empire. The remaining heirs commit suicide according to Imperial law. (579 years Before Current Day)

22763 AD - Arkon Ardishapur is chosen to be the next heir of House Ardishapur.

22809 AD - The Imperial Armaments Corporation is commissioned by House Ardishapur to build a magnificent vessel befitting a Royal Heir. Engineers quickly decide upon a promising new prototype for the most powerful and devastating projector of Amarr power the Empire had birthed to date: The Apocalypse class battleship, as the basic framework for the vessel. (532 years BCD)

22820 AD - Imperial Armaments completes a ten-year labour: the complete internal re-design of the Apocalypse blueprint to Imperial Issue standard.

22823 AD - The keel of the battleship is laid at the Imperial Armaments shipyards orbiting Amarr Prime, and anointed by priests of the Imperial faith. Since House Ardishapur mandates that every single one of the five hundred million components and seven million moving parts must be blessed in such fashion, the process of ‘component sanctification’ takes no less than seven years. (518 years BCD)

22826 AD - Large-scale component assembly begins.

22840 AD - Arkon Ardishapur personally oversees first space trials of the vessel. It is said he spends fully a week in the vessel’s cathedral, fasting and praying; and that he is so smitten with its opulent design, lavish arching marble-and-tungsten hallways and palace-like officers’ quarters, that he insists on moving up the christening ceremony to well before the final shakedown. Inspired by the ecclesiastic theme of the warship’s interior, he dubs it the Chorus of Angels.

22848 AD - After thirty-nine years in the making, Imperial Armaments Corporation finally deems the Chorus of Angels war-worthy. She has, in the eyes of Imperial commoners, replaced the Amarr Titans as the pride of the Imperial space forces. Artisans have toiled for centuries to cram every inch of her with handcrafted artworks and elaborate engraving. She is armed with the Imperial space forces’ most murderous weapons of conquest and oppression, tachyon siege lasers - unfocused and indiscriminate particle weapons capable of razing and flaying solid matter as though sandblasted away at the atomic level. Realizing that the lessons learned in her construction can be applied to shorten the construction of similar vessels considerably, the Emperor Family and other houses vie for similarly resplendent flagships to carry their most exalted leaders into space. The resulting influx of contract funds catapults Imperial Armaments to the forefront of war manufacture - to this day, they remain New Eden’s largest weapons and ships builder. (493 years BCD)

22942 AD - Arkon Ardishapur embarks on a tour of the Empire aboard the Chorus of Angels. Her last assignment under her original moniker takes her to Starkman Prime, homeworld of the Starkmanir tribe and Arkon Ardishapur’s temporary seat of power. Her presence is intended to be a deterrent against what is believed to be a minor insurgency.

22946 AD - Arkon Ardishapur is slain by Drupar of the Starkmanir, sparking the uprising of Starkman Prime. Idonis Ardishapur succeeds him, and orders the annihilation of the Starkmanir homeworld. He elects to oversee the orbital bombardment from the Chorus of Angels, left vacant in orbit after Arkon’s death - in a gesture of poetic vengeance he re-christens her to the Hammer of Starkmanir, and applies similar re-dubbings to key ships in the siege fleet. Starkman Prime burns under the Hammer of Starkmanir’s tachyon siege lasers. (395 years BCD)

23009 AD - The Hammer of Starkmanir participates in a fleet action during the Quelling of Orkashu, when the system’s planetary governor stood against House Ardishapur to protest rising tithes. The governor, Salaan Birantin, proclaiming himself ‘the Tyrant of Orkashu’, amassed a fleet of ten Armageddon class battleships to defend the system. As he observed from his frozen mountain citadel at Orkashu lll, Birantin earned the dubious honour of being only the second fleet commander in recorded history to suffer complete defeat with ten-to-one odds in his favour: The Hammer of Starkmanir under Idonis Ardishapur elected to engage his fleet from far beyond their striking range, and bound by Amarr naval doctrine that frowned upon retreat of any sort, Birantin was forced to commit his fleet to a slaughter. He surrendered in disgrace soon afterward.

23151 AD - The recently formed Minmatar Republic publishes a list of Amarr captains and vessels they view as having participated in the greatest atrocities of the rebellion war. High among them are the key battleships that participated in the siege of Starkman Prime: The Red and Silver Hand, the Scythe of Starkmanir, and finally, the Hammer of Starkmanir. A death edict accompanies the list, making it obligatory for all Matari to do harm to these men and vessels if they are able. (190 years BCD)

23180 AD - First contact between the Amarr Empire and the Gallente Federation.

23188 AD - Idonis Ardishapur attends the first official ceremonies between the new neighbours aboard the Hammer of Starkmanir - it is noted that he takes great satisfaction in the shocking disparities in mass and crew complement between his flagship and the comparably impotent Gallente Apteryx and Dominix class battleships chosen to represent the Federation. (153 years BCD)

23216 AD - The Amarr-Jove war erupts. The Hammer of Starkmanir avoids most of the conflict, being too far from Vak’Atioth to participate, then being re-routed to suppress rebellions throughout Ardishapur space.

23263 AD - Elite Republic Fleet black ops ships hunt down the Scythe of Starkmanir, under captain Zoriac Ardishapur. Fending off ferocious attacks she flees across four systems through the Domain region, until a suicide attack cripples her drives in the Valmu system and she is overwhelmed by a dogged mass of light strike craft. All hands are lost.

23289 AD - The tachyon siege laser, by now approaching obsolescence due to advances in city shielding technology, is mated with a new generation of laser focusing crystals capable of channelling tachyon particles as effectively as photons. The tachyon beam laser is born.

23298 AD - Istvaan Shogaatsu is born on New Caldari. (43 years BCD)

23319 AD - The Red and Silver Hand is lost in a claim dispute over planet Konrakas in the Shintaht system, when harsh words between renowned Amarr Admiral Stalikh Ardishapur and a Caldari guard fleet protecting State mining operations escalate, and the Admiral elects to intimidate the Caldari commodore by acquiring target lock on his command ship. Acting in perceived self-defence, the Caldari commodore disabled the Red and Silver Hand’s targeting systems with electronic warfare. Unbeknownst to either party, a small pack of Minmatar raiders had been shadowing the Red and Silver Hand, hoping to catch her at a moment when she strayed from her battle group. Instead, they seized their chance when they detected the electronic warfare attack by the Caldari, and threw themselves at the Red and Silver Hand. Although their task force was relatively small, they managed to disable all three of the Red and Silver Hand’s reactors, causing her to de-orbit and crash into the surface of Konrakas. The incident strained relations between Caldari and Amarr to the breaking point, until it came to light that the Caldari commodore first disengaged his electronic warfare arrays when he saw the Amarr battleship come under attack by the opportunist Minmatar; and that he then turned his fleet’s weapons and jammers against the raiders themselves when the Red and Silver Hand’s doom appeared imminent, in an attempt to save six thousand lives who moments ago were ready to open fire upon his vessels.

23331 AD - Istvaan Shogaatsu establishes close relations to the Amarr Empire, chiefly with House Sarum through their satellite corporation, Sabaoth Incorporated, when it allies itself with Shogaatsu’s Endless Corporation. Shogaatsu provides advanced weapon systems and Caldari technological assets to Sabaoth, earning him as good a standing in the Empire as an outsider can hope to attain.

Although he is atheist, it is believed that Istvaan Shogaatsu’s fondness and respect for Amarr culture, and the considerable length of time he spent living in the Empire, contributed to his acquaintance with the aging Idonis Ardishapur. The specific moment of contact is believed to be a state dinner attended by members of House Sarum who had dealt with Shogaatsu directly, as well as Idonis Ardishapur himself. Many of Idonis’ aides have come forward and revealed that in the months and years before Emperor Heideran’s death, the Caldari power-broker and the Royal Heir enjoyed discourse behind closed doors, the former capable of matching Idonis wit for considerable wit in discussions of theology and conquest, and the latter apparently infinitely fascinated by this brash and youthful outlander who understood more of Amarr than many Amarr - especially at a time when the popular trend was to express overt dislike toward the Empire.

23339 AD - Emperor Heideran VII passes away after five and a half centuries of rule, and Doriam Kor-Azor succeeds him. According to Imperial law, Idonis Ardishapur commits suicide. The Hammer of Starkmanir, until that moment kept in mothballs and under extremely heavy guard at a clandestine berth deep in Ardishapur space, is inexplicably ordered to move out upon Idonis’ death, to a location that remains undisclosed to this day. It is at this point the last surviving vessel to have participated in the siege of Starkman Prime.

23341 AD - Doriam Kor-Azor is assassinated. An impromptu vigil is held in Amarr Prime, where chiefly Amarr captains and a number of foreign pilots converged to pay their respects. An Imperial Issue Apocalypse broadcasting the long-forgotten identifier “Chorus of Angels” is present, captained by Istvaan Shogaatsu. It is believed Shogaatsu himself reverted her IFF to her original name in order to conceal the mighty warship from Republic Fleet captains still keeping a sharp eye out for the Hammer of Starkmanir.