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The Meritocratic Dictatorship of Universum Aethereum.
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REGIONAL DATABASE - LORE (NEW - WIP)
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The following lore article covers only the events of the 22nd century up to the present day, with a particular focus on the Orion Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. The history of humanity is conveyed through the eyes of the UN, with no focus on any other particular civilisation regardless of size or importance. This article is to be used as a reference for events and ground any new civilisation into the setting. |
Brief Summary
Man's destiny was never to stay in the cradle. From the moment he began to dream about the stars above, he knew they belonged to him - and soon enough, he would make it so. From man's first experiments with spaceflight to the great generation ships of the 23rd century, man's ability to conquer the stars was limited to but his own cosmological backyard; his own ambitions thwarted by the nature of space and time. The base instincts of man continued to ravage his system, and even aboard the vessels he had sent out to the cosmos, power struggles and internal conflicts were abundant and often bloody. The boundaries of Sol seemed to be unsurmountable, a permanent barrier to all man's greater ambitions and desires. The struggle to break free from the boundaries of Sol seemed futile. All of this changed in the 24th century when man's ambitions finally overcame the fabric of reality itself - when Doctors Dupont and Gellar pierced the veil and brought a new age to human spaceflight. From Sol, humanity branched across the local systems, building its web through the cosmos and colonizing hundreds of new frontiers. But man would not forget his heritage, and war would follow wherever he stepped foot. The first interstellar conflicts devastated the colonial reaches and threatened to bring the war to Sol itself. Only intervention by a newly empowered United Nations would stop the embers from cascading into a blaze. This new order imposed by the United Nations upon the sovereign nations of Earth, the independent states of Sol, and the colonies across the core worlds brought a definitive end to internal conflicts amongst the nations of man, and how fortuitously, for not even a decade later man would find himself in the crosshairs of the Katan Empire. After a painstakingly arduous conflict, the human race prevailed above their new foe, but not without great losses and suffering. The war against the Katan changed man's outlook on alien life permanently. Gone were the rose-tinted glasses of scientific discovery and peaceful cooperation, and gone were the pacifists and peaceniks. Only a deep, cold apathy remained. Man burned his way through the stars with artificial intelligence as his spear against the stars. Thousands of alien species were eradicated by the hands of these machine forces, and man's ideal natural order was left behind - imposed upon formerly inimical worlds. Von Neumann probes swept entire systems of life and eradicated countless primitive civilizations, none of these having ever even known the true face of humanity - only his callous machines. Terraformers and megaprojects reshaped the Orion Arm on an astronomical scale, collecting the output of stars upon stars for use in the excessive consumption driven by man's overreliance on technology. This was the Platinum Age of Mankind, a time when nothing was insurmountable and no boundary could not be crossed. This time lasted for centuries, and although it seemed that mankind would be undefeatable - the old foe returned. With the vast reaches of space conquered, men became covetous of their neighbours once more. It was not the hand of the alien that had ended humanity's period of hegemony, but that of his own. Conflicts over representation and resources became wars and wars became apocalypse. The UN's human peacekeeping forces found themselves too understaffed and undermanned to prevent these conflicts from sparking, their funds had been siphoned to maintain the excesses of the techno-cabal military leadership that had built legions upon legions of war machines - none of which could be used against fellow man without turning the UN into butchers of unparalleled brutality. The UN was forced to withdraw from the frontier, concluding the Golden Age. For a time, this arrangement was stable. Man's wonders and machines still functioned, and the great technologies created over the past centuries continued to feed humanity's power across the Orion. Yet worse was to come. In the hubris of Earth's greatest scientists, they had sought to gain access to the realm past the veil, to break not one but two realities. The Warp, as it was known, allowed for greater access to the sequestered portions of the Galaxy, and gaining access to it would perhaps place the UN back onto its pedestal; but alas it was not to be. Sol was consumed in an instant as humanity was beset by bizarre apparitions and ghastly tormentors. The mechanized war machine put aside so long ago would be seemingly uncontrollable, obliterating entire human worlds in their wanton purge. Solar shunts and megastructures would either fall into disuse, be destroyed, or be seized by enterprising warlords and rogue AIs. Amidst this tide of chaos and destruction, the remaining UN security forces in the most highly populated systems would dissolve, fleeing to other systems to escape from their own destruction. Although the UN's final bastion at Fulcrum received the bulk of these survivors in its fortification campaign, many would form their own successor entities, warlord armies, marauding bands, and organizations. Those states outside of the core would also suffer, their largest trading partner and home of the greatest knowledge base in history was laid to ruin over the course of but a few months - and the infrastructure left behind by the UN during their exodus would fall into greater disrepair, especially as chaos spread beyond the core. Even the great empires of the rim found themselves at war with war machines, resurgent alien forces, and their own people; a state that continues to this day. The UN spent its final hours warring with an enigmatic civilization known as the Directorate, Fulcrum eventually befalling the same fate as all others who resisted its will. From the greatest power mankind had ever known to little more than a collection of cities burned to the ground by upstarts - the UN's reign was no more. New empires and states rose from the ashes of the old, yet the threat of the tendrils extending from Sol is ever-present. |
Timeline of Events
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Archived Versions
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