After reading your Troll Bus ideas, I keep thinking about how the more we make fan-constructions of what the Alternian Empire may have been like, the more it sounds like the whole thing was on the verge of horrible collapse if they ever ran across a group they couldn’t conquer and *gasp* actually started taking territory from the Trolls/liberating races that hadn’t been completely purged.

elanorpam:

There’s no way the empire would last much longer, it was held together by duct tape and bubblegum. Good thing it wasn’t expected to— it only needed to hold on until Sgrub happened…

The whole thing was literally surviving on the basis of forward momentum. Keep expanding! Keep fighting! Chop chop! The moment they paused for breath, the whole thing would collapse into itself. And the Condesce appeared blissfully unaware of how thin a knife she was dancing on the edge of…

If they ever met an enemy they couldn’t easily subjugate, they’d be fucked. The alternian military system was also incredibly sketchy and could only have lasted so long and made it so far because the Condesce primed her targets by approaching under a façade of friendliness.