However, Tepasi's true rise began more than two hundred years ago, with the start of the Tagge family's rule.
But the fact that the Tagge family came to rule Tepasi was an exceedingly dramatic affair—so fantastical that it was more absurd than some novels.
In 200 BBY, Tepasi, already prone to earthquakes, suffered an unprecedented superquake. This earthquake, together with countless aftershocks, nearly destroyed the entire planet. Countless people died, and even more were displaced. This enormous disaster also exposed a massive case of corruption and dereliction of duty.
During the earthquake, buildings in Tepasi's major cities were severely damaged. Many towering skyscrapers even broke apart outright! When buildings tens of thousands of meters tall disintegrated and collapsed, it was practically a rain of stones for the residents on the ground!
But such a situation should never have occurred on Tepasi, a planet with more than twenty thousand years of history and frequent earthquakes to begin with. Its civilization stretched back more than thirty thousand years—could they possibly not have known that the planet was earthquake-prone? How could there have been widespread building collapses and even structural disintegration?
Moreover, given Tepasi's extremely high political standing within the Galactic Republic, the Chancellor of the Republic at the time immediately ordered disaster relief efforts and an investigation into Tepasi's construction companies.
The thorough investigation uncovered as many as a million cases of corruption among Tepasi's construction companies, with sums so vast that the number of zeroes would have blinded anyone.
This alone showed just how thoroughly corrupt the Galactic Republic had been at every level back then.
As a result, the local construction companies were almost completely wiped out, and companies from other planets had to be brought in. It was at this time that a legendary figure appeared—Tarzan Tagge.
He had