In the year 5326 A.D. of the Novus Initium Republic’s calendar, the Royal Lykan Kingdom made contact with the Camino Star Empire who resides in the Northern Region of the star cluster. The Kingdom, thinking its destroyers and cruisers would suffice against the Imperial Navy, engaged their forces under the premise of being conquered and bringing the Caminos to the altar of the Lykans’ deity. That battle was a disaster for the Lykans as the Caminos also committed battleships to the engagement that were capable of engaging smaller vessels. While the Imperial Navy lost less than half of their fleet, the Royal Navy lost two-thirds of their fleet before being ordered to retreat. Until the First Interstellar war, there were no further engagements or interaction with the Empire after the Lykans came to an uneasy truce with the Caminos once the Slave Revolt began within the Kingdom.
Prior to the war, the Kingdom and the State did not know much information about the Empire, and the Republic was not aware of them at all. The Caminos are a cream-skinned colored amphibious bipedal race from a world they are named after that is oddly 50 percent covered in water but with a large number of swamps. The Caminos managed to develop into a society that blends nature and technology together. This is evident in the organic look of their buildings that can easily blend in with their surroundings. The Empire was originally founded in the year 3249 A.D. and brought stability for the Caminos for hundreds of years. However, in 3961 A.D., many looked towards the stars and wondered about expanding to new worlds beyond their own. The Emperor felt that expansion outside of their planet would be a threat to his regime and banned the expansion by imperial decree which held until his death. His son who took the throne afterwards was also one of those interested in expansion into space and thus dissolved the decree his father had put into place, replacing it with his own stating that there will be no further denial of going into space. From that point forward, the space program accelerated and the Caminos began to explore their solar system.
For the next two centuries, the Camino Empire had explored much of their own star system before they came across Salire Purpura Crystals among some of their moons. After some research into the odd crystals, they soon found out that they could create wormholes to other star systems with them. With the approval of the Empress at the time, they created a jump drive as well as their first construct to act as a stable conduit to the next system once they built the same construct there to link it to. After a few months and some jumps, both constructs went online and signaled the first activation of what they called the starway (their name for their version of the Republic’s star gate and the Kingdom’s/State’s jump gate). Once the first starway was open to the public, the Caminos started to explore the neighboring systems by creating more gates as their need to explore was fully ignited and within the next few centuries, they expanded to cover most of the Northern Region. By this point, the nation went through a slight rename into the Camino Star Empire.
However, by 4812 A.D., the Camino’s expansion came to a halt for two very important reasons. The first was that the emperor who began to notice the difficulties governing such a large area of space ordered the halt. This was to assist in reorganizing the government, and for the military to assess and secure their newfound assets and borders. There was also no further need to go any further than where they were at the time as they had plenty of resources to last them for thousands of years. The emperor’s decision was also based on a second important reason. Along their southern border, they began to detect alien transmissions only a couple of star systems away. Knowing they were now not alone in the star cluster and not having enough military strength initially for even border patrol, the citizens of the Empire complied with the emperor’s request. Unknown to the Caminos, these alien transmissions were from the Republic during their Expansion Era which also halted not too long after. Had either nation continued to expand, the Republic and the Empire would have met long before the First Interstellar War.
In order for the Camino Star Empire to protect their holdings, Imperial ship designers looked into what weapons and defenses were best suited for their people and opted on the development of weapons that could use the same rounds but fire them differently for long range and short range attacks. After several years, the designers went with what they called hybrid charges designed for use in railguns and blasters. The way the charges would work with blasters is that the cartridge is fed into the weapon but cyclotron inside would dissolve the protective jacket leaving the particles inside held by an electromagnetic field. The particles are fired and hit with devastating effect. However, after a certain range the field dissipates and the particles become scattered. The railgun by comparison keeps the jacket intact and fires the solid mass at supersonic speeds towards the target. Upon impact, the particles are dispersed in a concentrated spot causing damage. However, much like the guns used by the Royal Lykan Kingdom, the railguns have great long range ability but not so good tracking while the blasters are just the opposite. In order to accommodate and fight at both ranges, every Imperial ship has both types of guns equipped. The rounds were also smaller than projectile rounds used by the Kingdom which meant that they could hold the same number of rounds in a smaller space allowing more room for accommodations and ship systems.
The Camino Star Empire had developed a shield system not too long after they went into space in order to protect ships and equipment from threats both natural and artificial. The shields for military ships however are further strengthened in order to provide the first line of defense against attacks. However, the Caminos have understood through science about biology and how it heals itself. This knowledge gave the Caminos the motivation to come up with a second defensive system: the nanocell armor repair system (their name for a similar system used by the Republic ships). This system along with thick armored hulls allow for the Camino ships to withstand great amounts of punishment before the ship’s structural integrity starts to get compromised. It was also decided to develop the means to observe any possible threats without detection in order to reduce the need to use such offensive and defensive capabilities. To that end, the Empire developed cloaking devices for their ships in order to observe and determine the threat level of any opponents. This has allowed the Imperial Navy to observe the Royal Navy forces on their border without being detected. However, while engaged, the weapons and shields are offline due to the power requirements of the cloaking device.
Lastly, while the Caminos are not ones to back down from a fight, it was decided that the ships would allow for more automation on board and keep any possible loss of life down to a minimum. They further allowed for less of a crew by cybernetics having a lone Camino hook into the ship’s major systems. This allowed for greater control and quick reactions within the ship’s limitations. The “pilot” does have to unhook from the system every once in a while and thus will either activate autopilot or there will be one or two other Caminos that will take their place in shifts. This reduced the crew down to half of what was needed to operate between the “pilot” and the automated systems. Should the ship be lost, the "pilot's" consciousness would be stored and transmitted instantly to a clone of themselves in a safe location. The spare pilots would also have their minds transferred provided they are wearing the needed equipment at the time.
Going on the natural look and design like their buildings and structures on their home planet, the ships of the Empire retain as much of an organic look as possible with smooth organic lines and curves over much of the ship when possible. The designs look a lot like the aquatic creatures found in the oceans of their home world. At the same time, to have some level of elegance as Imperial ships, much of the hulls are armored with polished steel plates that can be repaired thanks to the nanocall armor repair system so the hulls have both form and function. Indeed, these hulls were what increased their chances of surviving the fight against the Royal Navy when they stumbled across into Imperial territory.
In the advent of the attack by Kingdom forces, the Empire decided to develop a new line of ships to better protect their borders. However, upon further inspection of the alien transmissions that were first discovered along their southern border and knowing they are not from Royal Navy forces, the Empire made itself ready for when they may have other “visitors” to their space. This occurred when the Lykans used a Human clone to hijack a Republic Destroyer and jumped it into Imperial space trying to force the Empire to fight the Republic. When the plan failed, the Empire joined the Republic and the State in the First Interstellar War against the Kingdom. After the war, while the Empire has ambassadors in each nation, the Empire has returned to a pseudo-isolation, trying to handle its own affairs while keeping an eye on the other nations.
After their initial encounter with the Lykans, Imperial engineers designed and put into production the Taranis-class Destroyers and Deimos-class Cruisers to better bolster their defenses. While the Lykan's Thrasher Battleship was never in the battle between Imperial and Kingdom forces decades ago, the Empire did hear of the Thrasher Battleship’s capabilities and the fact of what that ship is capable of in combat. Knowing that the boast the Kingdom has about how combat effective their battleships would be actually having merit, the Imperial ship designers looked into ways to bolster the defenses of their latest battleship design they called the Kronos-class Battleship. After initial trials, it was decided to equip the new battleship with a nanocell armor repair accelerator to increase the speed of repairs to the armor by double, thus allowing the armor to last twice as long in combat once the shields, which have also been strengthened, are down. In order to manage these defenses along with the Kronos’ offensive capabilities, the cybernetic interlink which allows one person to assume control of half of the ship’s systems and capabilities became necessary. The “pilot” would have the ability to respond to threats all around the ship quickly and effectively including the management of the battleship’s defenses and knowing when to manage their power needs. This also includes the ship’s cloaking device when it comes to more covert operations and deployment. The pilot also has full control of the weapons systems in order to effectively engage enemy targets. The Kronos Battleship's offenses are capable of engaging a wide array of ships from destroyers to battleships. Among the anti-destroyer weapons, the Kronos is equipped with 16 dual light railguns for long range engagements and 32 light blasters for short to medium range engagements. For anti-cruiser combat, the Kronos is equipped with 16 dual medium railguns for long range engagements and 26 medium blasters for short to medium range engagements. Finally, the Kronos’ anti-battleship weapons consist of 8 dual heavy railguns for long range and 8 heavy blasters for short to medium range. This puts the weaponry on par with the Thrasher. The Kronos’ main role was to serve as the flagship of a given fleet including the border defense between the Empire and other nations.
After the First Interstellar War, the Empire would later review the design leading to a complete remodel into the Kronos II Battleship.