The Vandyrian Empire was not vast—it was impossible. No mortal arithmetic can encompass it. Across innumerable cycles of expansion, extinction, recursion, and renewal, the Vandyrian dominion is estimated to have encompassed on the order of one hundred million star systems.
Not worlds—systems. Entire solar families reorganized to serve military, industrial, or experimental purpose. Moons carved to factory-hollows. Asteroid belts reconfigured into supply nets. Star output harnessed, redirected, or extinguished to suit imperial necessity.
And yet the paradox: almost nothing remains. In the Ran system we see Thanator’s shattered titanic civilization, Kydahn’s engineered splendor, Drael’s scarified substrata—but these are embers scraped from a fire whose heat once reached across the firmament.
Concerning identity. The peoples who now claim the Vandyrian mantle—lion, wolf, ram, bear—are local survivals, nothing more. Their pride rests on instinctual memories, genetic impulses, or the psychological residue of ancient doctrine.
Whether they derive from true Vandyrian stock or were merely designed according to a Vandyrian template no longer matters. Their self-claims are provincial echoes ringing in the husk of a cathedral too vast for modern folk to comprehend.
