Merseia

Merseia is a fictional planet and later empire in Poul Anderson's Technic History. In internal chronology, it first appears in "Day of Burning" or "Supernova" (1967) (reprinted in The Earth Book of Stormgate), set in 2433. At this point it is technologically about a century ahead of late-20th-century humanity. The story details how Falkayn, Chee Lan, and Adzel negotiate its salvation from a supernova approximately 4 light-years away. However, the Merseians bitterly resent the methods used by Falkayn and his comrades – specifically their appointing the criminal underworld of Merseia to administer the technology the League will sell them to save them from the effects of the supernova. By the 31st century, the period of the Flandry books (begun in the 1950s), it has grown into an expansionistic interstellar empire, the Terran Empire's primary rival. The Merseians remember very well being manipulated by Terran agents and are determined to take revenge. In the novel Ensign Flandry, they are fighting Terra over the planet Starkad, near Betelgeuse.