Timeline

Preamble

To write about the History of the Galaxy is an act of futility itself. There would be way too much information presented in very dry articles in concrete dates that would overwhelm the prospecting reader. To cover everything from the first proto-civilization to the contemporary date would be way out of the scope of this project and fairly uninteresting for most readers.

Hence why this is not as much the timeline of the Virgo Universe, but the most closely related polity to NT and Virgo-Erigone - the Terran Commonwealth and consequently the Human Diaspora.

Even here I eschewed concrete dates, since it was ever only used by people to boast about memorizing when particular events happened - instead I opted to break up the “timeline” in different development periods with general start and end dates. These dates are more suggestive than concrete - certain events might have happened in the period before, but only were actually influential in human development after it ended.

This should give anyone a good idea how the “Universe” was and how it became, at least for the majority of NT employees, which are what we play.

Enjoy.

Climate Change Period

Going from 2030s to 2040s Earth faces a period of massive upheaval as sea levels rise and the global temperatures become much hotter. In this period many regions erupt in conflicts and resource scarcity, especially in drinkable water and food.

Scarcity of crude oil eventually leads to a cold war between industrialized countries.

Birth of the real first megacorporation out of German military industries merging and selling wares without scruples and on a grand scale, exacerbating the conflict for great profit, Hephaestus Industries.

Genetic modification with CRISPR-Cas9 or retroviruses becomes increasingly common. While not completely eradicating genetic diseases, it does help overall to fix most common birth defects. At the beginning, corporations had “copy protection” installed with hideous defects inserted in their in vivo injections that needed subsequent “booster shots” every month to not manifest. Biohackers “cracked” their codes, leading to an arms race until governments stepped in and decided that playing with genetic code like this is awful and promptly outlawed independent biohacking and GRMs.

This stopped legitimate biohackers, which down the line created an underground movement of trans-humans and biohackers, who change their bodies at whim and with extensive cosmetic biomods that are more or less a niche market.

Consolidation Period

Going from 2040s to 2060s

Instead of turning on each other, the EU vastly expands its competencies under the member nations, especially efforts to preserve and economically exploit their natural resources, making strides in climate engineering.

Through a limited conventional war within Saudi Arabia, a western-aligned Saudi Prince comes to power and accepts their mandate helping in stabilizing the highly volatile region with military and engineering support.

The USA coerces Canada to give exclusive access to their dwindling oil reserves and demands Norway to do the same, as some of their underwater deposits have not been exploited due to conservation concerns. As a response, they join the EU and the newly founded Euro Forces.

The next years follow with China and the USA going around in South Asia and the Pacific doing a whole lot of proxy wars, extending to Africa and South America, an internecine conflict.

Russia, Pakistan and India forms the Moscow-Delhi-Islamabad Pact for economic partnership, after Kashmir (or at least the parts of Pakistan and India) has been brokered out by Russia to be autonomous and mostly supported by all three states with subsidies. This quickly extends to military cooperation after China tried to rattle their sabre for Kashmir.

Alden-Saraspova Particles are discovered during experimentation in the LHC after it gets a cash injection by the renewed European Science Assembly, leading to the first “stutter” jumpdrive. Mostly theoretical, prohibitively expensive.

After some cooperation between the EU and the MDIP (Em-Dip), they devise a space program and are actually the first to set foot on the moon again, with Russia providing key intel on how to handle space in the first place due to their extensive experience with their kosmonauts.

Facilities for slingshotting ships via mag-lev cannons to Mars are built quickly and many more artificial satellites begin to litter the orbit of Earth - many dedicated to just clean up debris from decades of neglect, Zero-G labs and more. The ISS is reconfigured and expanded as the first real drydock in space.

The first Mars Mission is officially internationally spearheaded by the increasingly irrelevant UN, but in reality it’s just the extension of the Cold War, with US and Chinese colonies sabotaging each other and making life hell for Em-Dip and EU colonists.

The nations of Em-Dip fully transitioned to a post-fossil fuel energy economy, setting the international standard for it, building on the policies of Germany. Standardized fusion generators spread throughout the world and colonies.

Sol Expansion Period

Going from 2060s to 2100s

The theory of Bluespace effects happens in the earliest months of the 2060s with a minor article in the Journal of Dimensional Physics, written by Doctor Lara Alden, a slovene theoretical physicist.. Not four years later, Dimitri Saraspova, an ukranian engineer, leads an eurasian team in CERN to produce a particle that proves the theory as fundamental, if extremely understood, natural law of the universe.

Practical applications are studied with fervor, as they show a real applicative means of FTL travel. Prototypes are developed, but the prohibitive energy requirements to actually produce the particle, named after their discoverers, Alden-Saraspova, hinders any commercial application.

Private interests begin to partake in the Mars Colonisation, as well as exploiting the Asteroid Belt. Mars quickly has all of Earth’s heavy industry and refining industry on their shoulders and suffer from tariffs of their mother countries.

Combined reasons lead to the (first) Ares Confederation and the attempt of Mars to declare independence. Mostly forming out of dissatisfaction, they are under-equipped and undertrained. Firefights and sieges often end in the favour of mother nations and lead to an expulsion of criminal elements into the asteroid belt, forming the precursors of the Kosaky Fleets. Mars loses, while corporations expand what they can get away with, especially in military capabilities, PMCs becoming an accepted part of conflict once again.

After this brief interlude, Humanity spreads out into the stars more and more as bluespace jump drives become more refined and space infrastructure more sophisticated, allowing for increasingly livable space habitats in spin gravity habitats and hydroponics.

Gene splicing and editing becomes more and more prevalent, not only to fight disease, but also to adapt to circumstances, like microgravity environments or the tough climate of Mars, which has been deemed not terribly interesting to spend effort on to terraform after all. This leads to a certain level of acceptance of baseline-divergent humans, commonly referred to as “Splicers”.

Pharmaceutical companies merge and become Mega-corporations, especially due to the extreme conditions Humanity is beset on in permanent space habitation, developing bone supplements and muscle statins to keep a healthy skeletomuscular system.

Heavy industry conglomerates into Greyson Manufacturing and Aether Atmospherics as asteroid harvesting eclipses land-side mineral extraction on both Earth and Mars, obsoleting one of the most devastating industries for the environment.

Following this, the monopoly of Rare Earth elements of China finally collapses and their economy is in shambles. The USA, however, cannot capitalize on this, as their relations in the Pacific and Asia soured considerably. Riots break out in major chinese cities until the old government is forced to abdicate as their own internal police forces join the riots mostly.

Vietnam and Korea finally stabilize the situation in Asia and form an alliance with Japan and the new Chinese government to represent their interests in space and with the other superpowers of the century - the USA and its satellite states, the Em-Dip and the European Union.

Venus is colonized and becomes a hotspot for agriculture, supplying orbital habitats and colonies with food as sunlight, nitrogen and sulphuric acid is readily available. Next to Mars and Earth, it becomes the most populated celestial body in Sol, with aerostats dotting the landscape, filled with semi-professional and professional botanists, agricultural scientists and geneticists.

Finally, the jovian planets are colonized and exploited - with the constant improvement on Stutter Drives, Humanity more and more spreads throughout the Solar System, enriching their mother nations through a new Era of Mercantilism and economic competition - solar colonies usually trade preferentially with the sponsors of their mission, while competing companies play a chess game within the Asteroid and Kuiper Belt with Kosaky pirates, preying on shipping lines and deliveries.

This all changes with the discovery of Phoron within the Oort Cloud.

Interstellar Expansion

Going from the 2100s to 2160s The discovery of Phoron, a source of naturally occurring Alden-Saraspova Particle, space travel is revolutionized - extreme distances are now possible with stutter drives without prohibitively expensive generators. Not a few weeks after, daring explorers of the Em-Dip leave the Solar System for Proxima Centauri.

Quickly, Humanity scatters throughout the local bubble, seeking and searching out planets and new homesteads, fleeing the increasingly volatile situation within the Sol System. Competing supranations divide Earth and the Solar System amongst themselves in a precarious balance, always tested with economic, informational and proxy wars.

Procyon and Alpha Centauri both become increasingly more relevant for outside colonies of Humanity as both of them provide vital supplies for any colonization effort - food, water and energy. Population doubles continuously, year after year, not only from new cloning techniques and medicines derived from Phoron, but also the sheer expansive space that interstellar travel offers - land values are at an all-time low and settling down is heavily subsidized, as well as… Procreation, in an effort to quickly build up a workforce at any given colony.

Cygnus, a gateway system to the spinward regions of the Orion Spur, is visited by the Skrell. The enigmatic aliens are helpful, but prove to be a devastatingly subversive element in the end - their eagerness to trade and help the more primitive human colonies of Cygnus and beyond leads to unrest and open secession. While nominally still a part of the colonial web of Earth nations, they clamour for independence and the abolition of modern mercantilism.

The careful balance in Sol falls apart as the USA collapses on their increasingly authoritarian police state, mimicking the fall of China not a century ago - however their descend hits all the harder, as a very eager, very weaponized and very angry population descends like locusts on the Federal Government, which quickly ceases to exist. However, nobody can quite agree who should replace them - the USA as ideal faded from the public consciousness long ago, with local Governors trying their own hands on building Dominion within North America.

This power vacuum is not unattended and foreign interests battle each other and local warlords over the carcass of the old Federal USA. Many former US citizens flee to the surrounding colonies as refugees, often becoming second class citizens and a cheap labour force, especially on Mars, where the mega Corporations use them as temporary workers whenever a strike appears.

This situation finally drives the already dissatisfied population of Mars to the edge. The delays in terraforming, the poor working conditions and the general exploitative nature of Earth governments over their daughter colonies, having festered since the First Independence War. What first starts as a general strike erupts into full on riots and street warfare as privatized police forces and government troops brutally try to smash through the picket lines and are met with violence in return of veterans of the First Ares Confederation and former US citizens from military and police backgrounds. Quickly, the Second Ares Confederation crystallizes and overtakes much of the surface and orbital space of Mars.

What has been projected as just another little hurdle to overcome becomes a protracted siege in both Sol and beyond as extrasolar colonies align either with their mother country, the efforts of the Ares Confederation, remain neutral or form their own independence movements. The most successful of these is the Elysian Movement, inspired by Skrellian political thought, to allow each individual planet their “right of self realization of an ideal government”.

Ultimately, the uprising of Mars fails - battered after decades of starvation by intercepting food shipments and destroying years of efforts to terraform the Red Planet, a third of the planet’s population hijack a colony fleet and flee towards the direction of the core, masking their trail with the high background radiation of the galactic center. This scars the industrial base deeply, as many skilled workers, engineers and scientists fled with the remnants of the Ares Confederation.

This bitters the victory significantly and the supranations of Earth face even worse outlooks on the fronts beyond their star systems. Many colonies are in open revolt, Venus agitates to cut ties with Earth as to not suffer the same fate as Mars and everything beyond Cygnus has become virtually unreachable for any mother nation back in Sol. Ultimately, Earth’s iron grip on Humanity has slipped away.

The Golden Age of the Commonwealth

Going from the 2160s to 2180s

Coming the turn of the 160s, every nation on Earth knew that they have to pool resources together to rein in all their respective colonial empires and find solutions to the respective problems on their own planet before the vital supplies of their colonies dries up - after years and years of climate decline, Earth hasn’t been the major producer of food for a long time, which would go to Venus, who increasingly alluded to trying to gain independence just like Mars.

The idea for an united Earth came from the most likely of power blocs - the relatively young Mesopotamia Federation, a former economic bloc of middle eastern countries, spearheaded by then Saudi Arabia. With the help of the European Union, the Asian Alliance and Em-Dip reluctantly agreed to convene together in the Council of Sol, the first attempt of an unified solar government. Initially, Venus has been scheduled to be simply an observer, although it quickly established itself as an equal partner in the first council.

From there, unification happened rapidly as resources were pooled together and more and more competencies ceded to interstellar organisations, starting from a single customs union to unified police databanks and finally, an unified military - the United Solar Defense Forces. In the end, the first, second and third Councils of Sol led to the birth of the Commonwealth of Sol, who spearheaded recovery efforts of Sol after a long time of steady decline.

Mars’ economy has been lagging since the Exodus of the Second Ares Confederation, until the Commonwealth revived and partially recolonized the the planet, leading to the Martian Miracle, a rapid recovery to its old industrial outputs and beyond, climaxing in the largest shipyards Humanity has ever seen. However, the dreams of terraforming Mars have been all but abandoned, partially out of the worry the people of mars would once again rise up in arms and clamor for independence. However, they do achieve self-representation as constituent of the Commonwealth, as much as Venus.

With Mars and Venus under their belt, the Solar Commonwealth seemed unstoppable, until confronted with their many former colonies not appreciating a surge of reclamation of what they view as their former slave masters. The Procyon-Tau Ceti Entete, the biggest allied power bloc, started to blockade the Sol System. For exactly a week.

After this, they started to talk about accession into this new human government, as the Commonwealth was more interested in putting Humanity back under one aegis than purely exploitative relationships - at least with the colonies who could defend themselves against such aggressions. And so, the Commonwealth became what it is known for today - the Commonwealth of Sol-Procyon, an interstellar Federation of most human colonies.

Not everyone joined their efforts of re-uniting Humanity, however. Many independent colonies chafed under soft pressure and direct military intervention to “bring them back”, giving the Commonwealth a mixed view on them at best, as rising to a member state solely dependent on how powerful, influential and population rich a particular colony or union of colonies is. Furthermore, Cygnus and beyond vehemently opposed the re-unification under a “central government tyrant”, leading to a costly, protracted war between the, by now, Elysian Colonies and the Commonwealth, leading ultimately to a stalemate and a status quo ante bellum, with the Commonwealth refusing to acknowledge their independence to this date - while they are de facto totally and utterly independent, with some coin exchanges exchanging the bigger denominations of Elysian Colonies with the Solar Dollar and paperwork of them generally accepted by customs and border patrol of the Commonwealth.

All seemed well for Humanity, the Commonwealth in a cultural, technological and political renaissance, spreading further and further into space, leading a mostly peaceful Golden Age - living standards across the Orion Spur soared, diplomatic relations with other aliens truly established, such as the Tajaran and the Skrell, the Vulpkanin and ultimately the xenos which would end this brief Era of growth and consolidation.

The Unathi.

The Hegemony War

01.08.2187 - 10.12.2229

Initially, the Salthan Colonization Wave (so called after the then president of the Commonwealth Jackson J. L. L. Salthan), was one of the most well executed and peaceful expansions of the Commonwealth Sphere of Influence, with millions of enthusiastic colonists settling the frontier towards the galactic core in a scheme to exploit the heavy resources there, carried on by supernovas of ages past, especially Phoron.

The first contact with the hegemony was a confusing one - as the Rapala were the first ones to investigate the initial colonies set up in the Salthan Sector, bordering the economic development zones of the Unathi. The stark similarity between Rapala and Humans led to questions and a cordial exchange of technology and resources due to an inherent curiosity to study a species so similar to their own.

These first cordial relations were built up even further when the masters of the Rapala arrived, a noble house of the Unathi, keen to acquire a new client species which seemed to show promise. However, the initial aid of resources for the colonies to build up soon came with demands of subservience and assimilation into Unathi culture.

In the end, subjugation by sword seemed the solution the Unathi arrived to, a part of the Empire mobilizing to give the Salthan Humans a choice - bending the knee or obliteration. They chose the latter and the Commonwealth mobilized.

What followed was over forty years of bitter conflict as the vastly technologically inferior Commonwealth fully mobilized not only the military, but industry and culture as well. While the Unathi waged a war of conquest, humans went into it the same way as their great wars always go - total and utter war. Every asset that could be thrown against the Unathi tide was thrown against them.

In the end, there was a stalemate too costly for the humans to fight over and for the Unathi too annoying to deal with, so a conditional surrender of Humanity was sent and accepted - the Salthan Sector was to be decolonized and demilitarized, while the Unathi Hegemony acknowledges the sovereignty of the Commonwealth over Humanity.

However, even this falls flat as many colonists outright refuse to leave, using the mobilized industry and military assets to assemble into so called “Fyrds”, citizen militia to fend off any Unathi colonizers. Outraged, the Commonwealth declared them rogue organisations - however neither the Commonwealth nor the Unathi were willing to extend hostilities over it.

In the end, the Fyrds united under a military government, a stellar stratocracy of the United Salthan Fyrds, vowing to perpetually fend off the Unathi and do as much harm as possible to them. Officially, the Commonwealth has cut ties. Unofficially, they are funded by many individuals and corporations within the Commonwealth and even beyond - Skrell especially were very happy to put a blocker on the expansionist nature of the Unathi.

The Decline and Silver Age of the Commonwealth

Going from the 2230s to 2270s

After the brutal war with the Unathi and the rebellion of the Salthan Fyrds, the Commonwealth and Humanity started a long, rocky road to recovery as many colonies were once again clamouring for increased independence and autonomy - many young colonists have been ground up, killed or captured during the fights and the largely uninvolved Elysian Colonies picked up piracy deep within the Commonwealth territory for wealth and slaves.

Ultimately, in this chaotic period, the true winners were the mega corporations, who capitalized on their contracts of the military industrial complex, ultimately carving their own, private fiefdoms in the former colonization sectors of the Commonwealth, which have been all but abandoned by the government and left to lawlessness. Even today, the Rimward Colonies are held in a strangle grip by the Big Seven TSCs.

But recovery came after the old war hawks and “industrial interests” slowly filtered out of the positions of power within the Commonwealth, leading to limited reform and even a certain amount of monopoly busting - hardwon with many colonies gaining more and more increased autonomy and self-determination. In the end, the Commonwealth would never be the same again as its Golden Age seemed to be the first and last - at least for the appreciable amount of time of the median lifetime of Humanity. Up to 200 years.

However, with the struggle came a calm. The great conflicts, the wars of subjugation, they faded away. Diplomatic relations solidified, hostilities thawed. The wildly ambitious aims of Humanity to spread over the Orion Spur and claim their place among the stars was achieved with more or less success - and with that, trade blossomed, not just simply goods and resources, but also ideas, people and technology.

The Commonwealth ultimately recovered to a state beyond their situation during their formation, but not to the jubilant years of the Golden Age. While it paved the way for a second interstellar expansion, it was slower, wearier and stifled by bureaucracy and lobbyism. But, with several upgrades on the range and speed of bluespace drives, another region rich in Phoron was ultimately opened - the Coreward Periphery.

Second Interstellar Expansion or the Contemporary Period

Going from the 2270s to today

Due to the thermodynamic environment and the heavy background gravitation of the Galactic Core, much of the territory of the Unathi Hegemony was actually off-limits for conventional human technology - however a limited trade with them after the war enabled several upgrades to Bluespace skimming, leading to the exploration and exploitation of Coreward worlds, rich in Phoron - the Coreward Periphery.

Since the 2280s, this Periphery has been the most economically active region, due to the relative richness in Phoron and heavy metals resultant of previous supernovas who scattered the materials, as well as the discovery of not one, but several precursor ruins in the general region, close to the Unathi.

This led to a very industry heavy economic profile of the Coreward Periphery, primarily extracting mineral wealth, Phoron and precursor artifacts to ship them to the various trading partners of the Commonwealth or under each other in a relatively laissez-faire free-for-all, much like the quasi-legendary “Wild West” of Anglo-American culture.

However, the most shocking revelation of the Coreward Periphery was not the discovery of Precursor societies - these are, while rare, not unheard of - but rather the renewed contact with the Ares Confederation, who has successfully settled several worlds before any exploration by the Commonwealth - through sheer luck and independent tinkering they have managed to achieve the same results of Unathi-derived drive updates, although in a vastly inferior form.

Although relations are frosty at best, several more independent minded colonies have bartered with the Confederation before, who decided that the best way of integrating best with human society is to cooperate with the more like minded colonies and aiding them economically and militarily.

Everyone knows that it can’t hold forever, that hostilities or revolt will eventually happen - any Periphery goes this way until either reintegrated into the Commonwealth or managing to throw off its diplomatic and economic ties - and with the Confederation fostering the grassroots of rebellion, this might happen sooner rather than later.

But beyond that, the Second Interstellar Expansion has been relatively peaceful, relatively prosperous - the human diaspora scrapes by.