Origin

Although he never met his mother, Queen N’Yami, T’Challa had made himself well acquainted with her work. She had been searching the stars for the origin of the meteor that brought them vibranium. T’Challa finished that research and sent an expedition to The Vega System in search of more. This expedition would encounter a temporal anomaly and sent back two thousand years. These Wakandans would settle at the far reaches of space with no other choice. They were peaceful, but after a series of invasions, they came to believe that self-defense was not enough. They made a series of preventive strikes, each one bringing new knowledge and technology. From the Rigellians, the empire learned to navigate the cosmos, and from the Shadow People, they learned to govern and establish hierarchy. From the Teku-Maza, they stole literature and song, and from the Kronan, they tested the true strength of their vibranium. This evolved their preventive strikes into preventive occupation until they grew into an imperial force.

Creation

The Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda technically first appeared in Marvel Legacy, an issue by Jason Aaron, teasing upcoming stories. The empire was created for Black Panther (2018) #1 by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Daniel Acuña (who did the art for the empire's specific pages in Marvel Legacy).

Imperial Structure

Pre-Revolution Class System

• The Imperials: The highest class, said to be direct descendants of the founders of the Intergalactic Empire
• The Askari: A militarized police force made up of deputies of other races conquered by the empire. They are responsible for keeping the Nameless slaves in line.
• The Between: A sect of Imperial Wakandans that practice "transcorporealism," transmitting their self into machines, considered heretics by the true blood Imperials.
• The Nameless: The Nameless are called such because their memories are wiped, leaving nothing of their identity. This is done in an effort to make them more obedient miners.
• The Maroons: A rebel force of escaped Nameless.

The Five Galaxies of The Empire

1. The Benhazin System: Home to the throne world Bast and an asteroid belt comprising of vibranium. After the mines were depleted the Wakandans began looking outwards.

2. T'Chaka's Reach: Closest to Benhazin System and first conquest. Once home to a great interplanetary empire ruled by Rigellians which were defeated and made nomads in their home galaxy.
3. The S'Yaan Expanse: A rich network of star systems supporting planets in the Goldilocks Zone. The S'Yaan arguably the most beautiful galaxy in the empire and second conquest. S'Yaan proved to crucial in population boom facilitated further conquest. Nothing is recorded about its indigenous races as they were dealt with mercilessly.
4. The Matrix of Mamadou: Once home to warring races, the MoM was colonised by Wakandans at considerable cost. The Kronans were once based here, as well as a colony of Symbiotes and mysterious Shadow People. The Kronans have been enslaved while the Shadow People accept Wakandan rule and was integrated into every level of society. The Symbiotes colony remains elusive.
5. Nehanda's Lattice: Geographically it is the most distant from the Benhazin System. It contains within it Zanj Region, home base of the Maroons, the most sustained and successful rebellion against the empire. Originally inhabited by aquatic Teku-Maza until the Wakandans enslaved and forced them into mines.

Major Story Arcs

The Arrival of Black Panther

With the help of his fellow Avenger, Manifold, Black Panther went in search of the lost Wakandan expedition. What he found was the two-thousand-year-old civilization based on Wakandan culture. He was greeted by war hero turned emperor, N’Jadaka. N’Jadaka had rejected Bast’s power and increased his strength by bonding to a symbiote. He was afraid that T’Challa would overthrow him, so he had his memory wiped and thrown into the mines with the rest of The Nameless. The rebel group, The Maroons, got word about a possible great warrior, so they tracked him down and broke him out. They would work together to sabotage the empire and collect resources.

One such resource was N’Jadaka’s own daughter Zenzi, who was temporarily possessed by Bast after her seeming demise at the hands of N’Jadaka. She uses what is left of her magic to return T’Challa’s memories, making the Maroons very dangerous. N’Jadaka led an assault on the planet of Agwé to get his daughter back, but the Maroons had already left, priming the core of the planet to explode. N’Jadaka’s physical body was destroyed, but the symbiote he was bonded to survived, possessed by his soul.

With the dust settled, T’Challa returned home, along with Manifold and a group of Maroons. Unfortunately, the symbiote possessed by N’Jadaka followed them. He allied himself with rivals of the Panther and hoped to resurrect himself with the dead body of Erik Killmonger, his namesake. Using the Maroon’s galactic gate, N’Jadaka took leadership back of his loyal troops to attack Wakanda Prime on Earth. The combined might of the Maroons, Wakanda’s forces, and a team of Panther’s superhuman allies was too much for N’Jadaka’s forces. He was slain and his troops defeated for good this time. The Intergalactic Empire willfully joined Wakanda under T’Challa’s reign.

The Last Annihilation

Dormammu, ruler of the Dark Dimension, manifested in the living realm by possessing the sentient planet, Ego. He led an army of Mindless Ones across space, linking the homeworlds of five empires in a pentagram shape for a final spell. All of space’s peacekeepers were fighting back including S.W.O.R.D., the space faring peacekeepers of the mutant nation of Krakoa. SWORD director, Abigail Brand, requested aid from Black Panther, who asked the most skilled and trusted Maroon, M’Baku (named for Panther’s own rival, Man-Ape), to head to space and lead Wakanda’s intergalactic forces as backup.

They were sent to Aerie, part of the Shi’ar Empire. The Mindless Ones were turning its Moon into a fellow Mindless One to scare the residents of the planet and make them more susceptible to the magic. With the reputation of the empire still negative, M’Baku agreed to focus his team on the moon while the Imperial guard actively fend off the golems. M’Baku believed the moon was too far gone. He had Manifold teleport him to Bast, homeworld of the empire, so that he could borrow the Koukou Array, a satellite system that N’Jadaka used to shake and heat planets as a threat. Shuri would reprogram it as a shield against the Mindless Moon. Because vibranium is unstable with magic, they bonded mysterium, a gift from Krakoa, to the array.

This success led to T’Challa naming M’Baku his regent to the intergalactic empire, so that he no longer had to split time between Wakanda Prime and the empire.

Imperial War

The major empires of the Galactic Council have decided to attack the Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda after a series of assassinations pointed toward them. Of course, they were framed, and two different coups took advantage of the chaos. During the attack, Skrull separatists rebelled against the Kree-Skrull Alliance, and Shi'ar separatists rebelled against Xandra and her Imperial Guard. Part of the Shi'ar's rebellion was to sabotage the galactic gate, stranding the major militaries of the empires in Wakandan space. Only the trio of Star-Lord, Nova, and Shuri escaped before the gate was destroyed, working on their independent investigation to clear Wakanda and find the real conspirator.

The trio were using Quill's ship, Milano III, to seek out a super-intelligence, per Shuri's suggestion, to calculate the statistical probability of all this chaos being random. Nova decided to bring them to the ruins of Xandar to re-activate the Worldmind. Unfortunately, if they do that, Worldmind wouldn't be able to be de-activated and would require a costly amount of energy to run. Shuri and Quill needed to promise resources from their respective empires for them to move forward. It determined that the masterminds were the Inhumans.

Shuri and the others attempted to broadcast their findings to all channels and stop the war, but it failed. The Shi'ar separatists retreated to their own region of space, but the Skrulls continued to fight. They joined other heroes, including Black Panther and Wakandan forces, putting down the Skrull aggression, and after the dust settles, a new galactic union (without either the Skrulls or the Shi'ar) was instituted. Black Panther re-established himself as the monarch of the Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda, and much to Nova's chagrin, all the empires decided to ignore the Inhumans responsibility in starting the war.