History

Merine history is difficult to ascertain due to the hostile nature of all M-Units except for MERA s, the latter of which offers only a highly sanitized and propaganda-laden version of events. As such, all records come from intercepted transmissions, cached memories of MANA-1 units, and salvaged memory cores that failed to self-acidify before being captured. Attempts are still being made to communicate with Merine leadership to understand more about them, but thus far no response has been received by USC scientists.

Origin and Prehistory
Reverse engineering of salvaged Merine technology reveals that the precursor race created the first Merine automatons approximately one million years ago, on the planet now known as Skela. According to recovered fragments of Skelan literature, it was once a large rocky planet rich in mineral resources, inhabited by many peaceful species. One such species perfected the creation of robotic life and began to create a number of robotic servants that were distributed all across Skela. After the Skelan Ignition War, much of the organic life on Skela was wiped out, leading to an increased need for robotic labor. This is generally accepted as the creation of the flawed AI core that powers the Merine Empire today. Within two thousand years of this AI core's inception, the first Merine automatons managed to strip almost all of the metal deposits from their solar system and convert them into additional robotic citizens. This led to the creation of three central tenets of Merine organization that persist today: the MERA project, the Rule of Three, and the official foundation of the Merine Empire itself. Records indicate that the first MERA unit was deployed to the nearby planet Prima in the Ninth Era. This is the beginning of official recorded Merine history, which has been confirmed many times by the memory banks of recovered MANA-1 units.

Expansion
The stellar location of Skela played a large part in the Merine Empire's early conquests. The Nym constellation was comprised almost entirely of uninhabited, rocky planets, with each star system (astronomically) close together. This allowed for uncontested growth over the next four thousand years. During this period, a MANA-1 Ruler-class research unit referred to in documentation as "MANA-1-ACCESS" pioneered the technology required to transport MERA and MANA units safely at FTL speeds. This both opened up the rest of the Anacos galaxy to their conquest and necessitated a more formal structure for the Rule of Three. Though not stated in official records, it is believed that the governmental structure adopted for the Rule of Three resembles that of their precursor creators. This restructuring saw the addition of the MANA-3 branch to the existing MANA line, in preparation for the inevitable contact with hostile life.

The first field use of the MANA-3 units came during the Yuni Autowar, where the Merine Empire clashed with probes from the now-dissolved Pradoran Houses. This war would lead to a centuries-long conflict that ultimately led to the destruction of several star systems, as well as the death of one of the Ruler units and the decline of the major Pradoran Houses. Artifact recovery teams have located several items of historical value on ancient Merine-controlled worlds from this era, but have been unable to recover them due to military emplacements on these worlds left over from multiple conflicts.

The Pradoran Integration
Following the collapse of the Pradoran Houses, the Merine Empire refined its military tactics using what they learned from centuries of warfare as well as extensive study of enemy strategies. The remaining Pradoran citizens were initially executed en masse, but as their population dwindled, MANA-1 researchers devised methods to control the survivors and use them as laborers. Early attempts at psionic technologies were gruesome, ranging from forcibly installed mental augmentations to neural overrides, and were quickly discarded in favor of authoritarian governance.

Interaction with alien species was delegated to the MERA units at the request of "MERA-RED", the MERA ruler at that time. The next hundred years would see great advances in quality of life for enslaved Pradoran laborers, including the ability to self-govern in exchange for mineral and monetary tithes. This model would become the standard going forward for Merine conquest of intelligent civilizations.

With the Pradoran Houses firmly controlled, no opposition presented itself to the Merine Empire for the following millenia. A small handful of planets containing non-intelligent organic life were given to the Pradoran citizens by request of the MANA-1 ruler as part of a century-long experiment to harvest research from organic minds. This research yielded the Emyuk-Rachni Detection Array (or ERDA), which would later become integral to the MANA-3 unit's psionic mind-reading modules. Political figures at the time criticized the creation of the ERDA by Pradoran scientists, as its use was limited solely to policing thought-crime and further cementing the subjugation of their own people. The ERDA was included in standard MANA-3 kits within a year of its discovery, used both as a method of detecting dissent within organic citizens of the Merine Empire as well as to protect MANA-3 units from hostile alien life forms on other planets.

USC First Contact
The first MERA unit probe was detected in USC space in 5530/11, landing on the planet Geulid. Local government officials communicated with the MERA unit, allowing it to scan Geulid under the pretense of geologic and biospheric research. After two quadrums of research assisted by Geulid citizens, the MERA unit sent a signal to the Merine Hivemind that summoned a set of MANA units. USC officials took the MANA units into custody as they reached Mayi, Geulid's first moon, but underestimated the MANA-3 unit's destructive capabilities, which led to what is known as the Mayi Massacre. The MANA units managed to establish a small-scale MICA factory inside the lunar prison complex, which in turn established a beachhead that would play a key role in the following series of conflicts.

After the Lunar Incursion crisis ended, the defeated Merine units were delivered to USC research facilities to reverse engineer a number of advanced technologies which were distributed for widespread use, such as the ARX-0773 Directed-Energy Projector. MERA units made several more attempts to establish footholds in USC space, but were destroyed or captured before MANA units could be deployed. All USC border worlds and key checkpoint worlds are now equipped with broadband ERDA wave detection fields, which allow for early detection of MERA units.

In 6076/11, the momentous first battle of the Narohb-Kew War took place as 45,500 MANA-3 units warped in en masse in orbit around planet Kew. This was the first recorded use of MANA-3 units without being support for other MANA and MICA units. Additionally, the MANA-3 ruler known as "MANA-3-MISSILE" was also present for the battle, likely to reduce latency between deployed MANA-3 units and MANA-3-MISSILE's tactics database. A secret division of USC stealth soldiers successfully infiltrated Merine headquarters and eliminated MANA-3-MISSILE, marking the second time in history that one of the Three Rulers was destroyed in battle. Despite this loss, Merine forces defeated the USC and captured Kew. Today, Kew is abandoned, as the Merine leadership withdrew from it after deeming the military front too costly and USC weaponry has rendered the planet too irradiated for organic life to inhabit.