Great Garmillas Empire

For the comparable empire in the original Space Battleship Yamato and its sequels, see Gamilas Empire.

Emblem of the Great Garmillas Empire.

The Great Garmillas Empire, commonly referred to as Great Garmillas, is an intergalactic empire governing the Garmillan people. The empire has spread far from its homeworld, the planet Garmillas, to encompass the entire Large Magellanic Cloud, much of the Small Magellanic Cloud, and parts of the Milky Way Galaxy. Its expansion has been driven in part by military conquest and the absorption of other peoples into the empire.

Organization

A celebration of the founding of the empire, in the city of Baleras.

In the final year of his one hundred three-year reign, Leader Abelt Dessler holds ultimate power over all aspects of the empire ("Wish Upon a Star"). Much of his continuing authority is sustained by the Imperial Guard. Starting as a personal protection service for the Dessler family, the Guard expanded tremendously to become the ideological guardians of Dessler's regime, a secret police force with wide latitude to monitor the population and punish suspected malcontents, and a heavily armed military power capable of suppressing opposition on a planetary scale ("Wish Upon a Star", "Point of No Return"). Courtroom judges hear cases brought against suspects by the Imperial Guard, but in at least some instances they serve only to approve the Guard's actions and not to carry out fair and impartial trials ("Out of the Forest of Memory"). Dessler's policies are enacted directly through senior staff that include civilian ministers, the director of the Imperial Guard, and the highest officers in the regular military ("Point of No Return", "Over the Black Light", "The Planet That We Head For").

One of Dessler's primary goals is to unify his regime with that of the nearby planet Iscandar and its ruler, Queen Starsha Iscandar. Garmillas military and civilian personnel alike show reverence to the queen and members of the Iscandarian royal family, but the process of unification stalls in its later stages due to Dessler's increasing use of violence ("Prison Planet 17", "The Distant Promised Land").

The city of Baleras on the planet Garmillas serves as the capital of the empire ("Wish Upon a Star"). Beyond Garmillas and the star system in which it resides, the territory of the empire is divided into provinces, such as the Nord Greater Province in which the planet Alteria is located. The capital dispatches Garmillan governors to administer the provinces ("Point of No Return"). Great Garmillas continues to expand its territory by annexing other species and civilizations, sometimes through wars waged by the massive Garmillas Imperial Astro Fleet ("Messenger of Iscandar", "A World I Once Saw" "Over the Black Light"). The empire also works to colonize unpopulated places. When a world that the empire desires is not habitable, it will "Garmillasform" it, altering its environment and seeding it with various life forms from Garmillas supplied by a network of floating continents ("Messenger of Iscandar", "Escape from the Jupiter Sphere", "The Year is 2202--Raise the Space Battleship Yamato").

The people of Great Garmillas are organized into a two-tier system of citizenship. Members of the Garmillas species are placed into the first tier; most aliens occupy the second tier and enjoy far fewer legal and social rights, even as they are required to demonstrate loyalty to the empire. On rare occasions, individual members of these other species can distinguish themselves through service or some other means and be rewarded first-class citizenship ("Gravestone on a Frozen Field", "Wish Upon a Star", "The Planet That We Head For").

Following the fall of Dessler's regime, the most brutal and authoritarian aspects of the political system have been removed by a provisional government as part of its reforms, although other institutions have been left in place, including the empire's powerful military and close ties with Iscandar ("The Distant Promised Land", "The Forever War", "Tension – Reach the Embassy on the Moon").

History

Early History

The Great Garmillas Empire was declared in 1199 CE ("Wish Upon a Star"). No later than around the year 1800, the empire had discovered and taken possession of the Aquarius gate network, an ancient system of technologically advanced subspace corridors constructed and abandoned by the Aquarius civilization. With this network, the empire could easily expand its reach across intergalactic distances to the Small Magellanic Cloud and the Milky Way ("A Choice for the Future", "Out of the Forest of Memory").

The Rise and Fall of Abelt Dessler

Detail of a painting celebrating the union of the Great Garmillas Empire and Iscandar.

Around the year 2096, Abelt Dessler emerged from his Garmillan noble family to assume the throne of the empire ("Wish Upon a Star"). He traveled to the planet Iscandar--a long-time object of reverence among the people of Garmillas--and personally appealed to Queen Starsha to build a relationship between his empire and the dying remains of her own. Starsha accepted his proposal, and Dessler pledged himself to the Iscandarian philosophy of spreading life and peace throughout the universe. However, Leader Dessler used military means to serve this goal. The empire's campaign of conquest expanded to an immense scale that enjoyed victories against other powers such as the Gatlantis Empire, but began to severely stretch its resources ("Prison Planet 17"). Within Garmillan territory, Dessler tightened his grip on the population by permitting prejudice against non-Garmillan citizens of the empire to persist, marginalizing the old aristocracy, and instituting the feared Imperial Guard. He also took advantage of Iscandar's technological superiority by beginning development of wave motion energy systems and weapons ("The Planet That We Head For", "The Distant Promised Land").

The Imperial Guard moves to obliterate insurrection on one of its subject worlds.

Dessler's increasingly autocratic rule generated resentment and acts of opposition that ultimately doomed his regime. Herm Zoellik, chief inspector of the armed forces, conspired to assassinate Dessler in 2199 in an attempt to take leadership of the empire for himself and re-establish the aristocracy. Dessler learned of the conspiracy, enabling him to escape death and trick Zoellik into revealing his intentions--but by doing so, leading to the destruction of the Aquarius gate network and a large portion of the empire's military assets in a surprise alien attack ("Point of No Return", "Out of the Forest of Memory", "Over the Black Light"). However, a much greater threat was posed by a growing rebel movement among citizens of the empire ("Point of No Return", "The Planet That We Head For"), and by a decision on the part of Queen Starsha to secretly supply the distant planet Earth with plans for a wave motion engine after it had been bombed to the brink of extinction by Great Garmillas ("Toward a Sea of Stars"). Equipped with the new technology, the human space battleship Yamato began a long journey to Iscandar to save Earth, defeating the Garmillas military in battle after battle and inspiring further uprisings ("The Sun Sets on Pluto", "Point of No Return", "Under a Rainbow Sun"). The ship's crew eventually made direct contact with rebel leaders and pledged to coordinate future actions ("The Planet That We Head For").

Soon afterward, Yamato directly fought against Dessler and Garmillan forces on and near Garmillas itself. The ship and its crew twice stopped Dessler from using weapons that would have annihilated much of the population of Garmillas. At the end of the battle, an armored space fortress being built by Dessler as the new capital of a unified Garmillas and Iscandar was completely destroyed, and it was assumed that Abelt Dessler had been killed in the blast. Vice Leader Redof Hiss quickly moved into the power vacuum to declare a provisional government that included leaders of the rebellion, and to unilaterally end the war with the Earth Federation ("One Man's War", "The Distant Promised Land", "The Forever War").

Alliance Against Gatlantis

Uneasy allies.

With a state of peace existing between Garmillas and Earth, a new alliance was built. The Garmillas provisional government and the commanding officer of Yamato signed a treaty with Iscandar to formally ban wave motion weapons. One month into Yamato's voyage back to Earth, it fought alongside a Garmillan carrier group to defeat an expeditionary force of the Gatlantis Empire ("The Distant Promised Land", Space Battleship Yamato 2199: Odyssey of the Celestial Ark. The Garmillas Empire established full diplomatic relations with the Earth Federation by the year 2202. Both powers assembled a massive task force to drive back a newly empowered Gatlantis, which had gained an unprecedented technological advantage in recent years. Behind the scenes, elements of the Garmillan government collaborated with Earth leaders to construct a new fleet of warships armed with wave motion guns, violating the Iscandar treaty ("AD 2202 - Revive, Space Battleship Yamato", "Tension – Reach the Embassy on the Moon", "Shock – Legacy of the Cosmo Reverse").

Japanese language information

大ガミラス帝国 Dai gamirasu teikoku