Backstory: Difference between revisions

On July 6th, 1948 Earth gets its first contact with an [[xenos|alien]] civilization in the last few thousand years. It's cleverly leaked, downplayed, shuffled and muddied by government forces from across the planet until the time when the public is ready for admission of the event, almost a full century after the incident first began to encroach on public imagination. Five hundred years before Space Station 13 is built -- July 6th, 2050 -- the United Earth government provides complete and frank proof of extraterrestrial life in the universe. They also provide proof that, as far as a human mind can understand one so completely foreign to its way of thinking, this life is hostile. Mankind is no longer alone. Mankind is no longer supreme.

The Chinese-dominated United Earth forces focus the many resources of the polluted and dying Earth to flee into the cold void. The larger Dwarf Planets are colonized and generational colony ships are launched into deep space. Research is done into fringe physics, most of the secrets of the Universe being turned towards terraforming or "defense" from xenos species. Compared to most sentients human beings breed like rats and the plague of new life they bring with them everywhere they go tends to blight out that which was. In this new infinite sea religion does all but disappear and the vast distances humanity spreads sees a return to defacto autonomous feudalism. For the next two hundred years the forces of Earth spread like wildfire across the Milky Way, stretching farther down Her spiraling arms with each generation of both humanity and technology.

Nanotrasen Systems, or simply Nanotrasen, is the largest manufacturer and employer in known space, though not by much. Their business practices and fabulous wealth have garnered both power and ire from interest groups and other corporations. Their company laws are the standard by benefit of inter-corporate agreements and simple mathematics of weight. In 2541 stocks began to fall and Nanotrasen began to fear their days of dominance were nearing their end. Research teams scrambled while the supercorp invested in their military forces, sending waves of panic through both market and populace. In 2543 a Nanotrasen-UEG mining company, Silar Group, made a discovery in a sunless system -- massive gas giants of a strange purple vapor with untold properties. Rapid research revealed it to be a powerful energy source, and Nanotrasen was revitalized through secret projects surrounding the substance. Plasma, as it came to be called because of its ease of gaining incredible heat, was only found in large amounts in this one region of space and around dead or missing star systems. Nanotrasen became the largest seller and researcher and still holds this position in the current year of 2550 through a system of jealous guarding and corporate espionage of secrets.