Post by Mizagium on Jun 10, 2010 16:47:05 GMT -5
Whatever story I can come up with (the point, and all) will be set against this background, so I figured I would just put this up here now.
At some point in the near future (<100 years) we began to colonize our solar system, fueled by the possibility of expanding beyond our planet, and forestall any population problems.
At first is was the moon, simply to prove we could. But on the moon (or Luna, as some colonists preferred to call it) industry flourished. Most of the energy used to power Lunar colonies came from the sun, or from nuclear fusion plants. Advanced metallic compounds could be created in low gravity and exported back to Earth.
Heartened, we struck for Mars. Well, tried to, but a problem emerged.
Lunar colonists began to atrophy in the low-gravity environment. Within years, they became unable to return to a standard-gravity environment without collapsing under their own weight; their muscles and bones were too weak. We went back to the drawing board.
Venus emerged as another potential colony. Like Luna, Venus could be an industrial station powered by the sun. Floating cities were designed to be placed in the atmosphere, kept aloft by breathable air that could be extracted from the Venusian clouds. Gravity would not be significantly less than standard, preventing significant atrophy.
Years went by without a major problem concerning Venusian or Lunar colonists. Lunar citizens were unable to return to Earth or Venus, but made excellent spacecraft pilots completely at home in free-fall.
Eager to expand, Lunar and Venusian-based companies sought to extend their manufacturing base by mining the asteroid belt for metals. Mars was looked at again, with some reluctance, and established as a way-point for travel to and from the asteroids. Still dealing with the problem of atrophy, stations were rotated between Mars, space, and Earth/Venus to minimize decay. Asteroids that were mined out were set up to be more colonies, once they were set spinning to produce a gravity field.
Space travel to this point remained expensive, with companies and nations forced to squeeze every bit of money they could get out of their colonies on the Moon, Venus, Mars, and the asteroids. While Lunar colonists lived pretty well, Venusian cities were akin to "company towns" from the twentieth century, where nearly everyone living there worked for the company who founded the colony. Militaries stationed on Venus treated the Venusians like second-class citizens, and using the derogatory term "spacers". The Venusians eventually revolted, declaring themselves independent from Earth. No nation could justify sending more soldiers up there, so so they had to let them go. Venus became the first independent planet.
Around this time, factories on Mercury were established to mine out Helium-3 for use as a inexpensive fusion material for space travel. It helped reduce costs, but still wasn't enough.
Up until now, the terraformation and colonization of Mars had been all but abandoned, until a rich British royal, named Richard Kulu (a joke for anyone who gets it) bought the company that maintained the Mars Waypoint Station. He was a bit of an eccentric lover of science fiction and wanted desperately to make Mars habitable. After buying the company (and effectively the planet) he declared in independent from any Earth nation, establishing the Kingdom of Mars. For a while he was the only inhabitant. Like with Venus, they simply let it go. Unlike with Venus, they thought he was crazy. He built domed cities, and eventually - surprisingly - people came to live under his throne.
Perhaps riding the coattails of Venus and Mars, a number of asteroid colonies declared themselves independent also, choosing to become the Asteroid Confederation.
Things were going very badly for the nations of Earth, but very well for the companies that effectively controlled space travel. Nations had spaceships and travel, but the money came from the companies, who were just as well, so long as the money flowed in. Only the Lunar colonies remained with Earth, out of loyalty perhaps, since they were neighbors.
The Solar System was then divided thus: the nations of Earth and Luna, the Venusian Republic, the Kingdom of Mars, and the Asteroid Confederation (which had proceeded to be come a lawless frontier, not unlike the nineteenth-century American West).
When missions to Jupiter gleaned high yields of Helium-3, space travel became, for the first time, cost-effective. Earthling nations were now forced to content with their "spacer" cousins, albeit grudgingly. Venus flourished, the Martian terraformation project was making headway, and more and more asteroids were slipping from Earth's grasp. Genetics was heavily researched, both by Lunar and Martian scientists, desperate to conquer atrophy.
Talk began of expanding beyond the Solar System, chiefly among the spacers, a fact which alarmed the nations of Earth. Still squabbling among themselves, they now faced threat (or a perceived one) from beyond Earth. In an effort to put their rebellious cousins in their place, the old United Nations was abandoned, and a new union was erected in its place: the Federation of Earth and Luna. Major nations fell in line quickly, with smaller nations eventually bullied or threatened into joining, until Earth was finally, truly, one government.
Troubled, the mining cities floating above Jupiter separated themselves from the Federation, choosing to ally with their multi-planetary parent companies. Jovians, and later, Saturnians, Uranians, and Neptunians, would later become the League of Giants.
It was actually Federation scientists who cracked the atrophy problem. Infants could be spliced with a specific gene pattern to slow the degradation of bone and muscle in low gravity. They refused to release their secrets to the spacer worlds, until Martian spies stole it, and developed it for themselves. A interplanetary war was narrowly avoided when Venus and the Confederation sided with Mars, and Luna was forced to arbitrate.
Physicists on all worlds began working on the illusive FTL stardrive, thereby making expansion to other star systems possible. Later historians would call it the Second Space Race. Federation scientists generated a wormhole to Luna, which is still operational. Plans were quickly adapted for starships. Thanks to a provision in the Solar Treaty, written by Luna, the Federation was forced to share their discovery, but not freely. Venus and Mars were sold the technology for wormhole generation at a wholly exorbitant cost. But they couldn't afford to stray behind. The plans were faulty, and way behind were the Federation was, but they refused to complain, and scratched their way forward.
Thanks to their underhanded tactics, the Federation established the first extra-solar colony worlds. Mars and Venus followed close behind. Rather than worry about planetary colonization, the Confederation worked with the League of Giants on space-stations and habitats, eventually becoming the Frontier League, an expansion of the old Confederation to incorporate the Giants.
Federation, Republican, and Royal Martian colony worlds soon dotted the galaxy, while Frontier space stations appeared around gas giants not already claimed. Thus ended the Second Space Race, and began the First Expansion.
As the decades rolled by, the worlds flourished. Martian worlds prospered under a series of benevolent kings; Venusian worlds were systematically brought into the Venusian Congress; the Federation watched closely over their own territory, squelching any talks of breaking away; and the Frontier stations offered a alternative lifestyle to living under all of those others. They seemed to have taken the image of the American West to heart, and practiced lassez-faire policies, effectively leaving each to their own. While those born under its rule enjoyed the light government, other planets viewed the stations as lawless.
But all good things must come to an end, as so did this golden era. Tensions between the Federation and the Spacer Worlds, as they still called them, remained high throughout the Expansion, many skirmished were fought, with outright war narrowly avoided many times. It was at least three or four generations since Earth was embarrassed by the secession of Venus, Mars, and the Asteroids, something that they never really got over. Finally, those tension became too much to handle.
And the peace snapped.
A Federation vessel suffered catastrophic engine failure while stopping off in the Devress system, a Venusian system. What exactly happened is impossible to tell, but suddenly the ship exploded in a nuclear fireball. Fingers were immediately pointed at Venus, even though they could prove none of their ships were in the area at the time. Unimpressed, the Federation claimed a skilled pilot could drop into real space long enough to shoot down the ship and slip back into a wormhole without detection. They demanded restitution; Venus refused.
War broke out across inhabited space, with Venus calling on it's longtime ally, Mars to assist. Federation colonies were more numerous, and able to churn out more troops and starships than either nation separately. Worlds erupted in fire, as the Federation pushed through, eager to reclaim what it viewed as belonging rightfully to it. Luna, always the sensible voice among the Federation, lost any influence they had, finally turning to the Frontier League for help.
Frontier craft began intercepting Federation fleets in hyperspace, ensuring they never reached their destination. That seemed to turn the tide, as Venus and Mars were able to reclaim their worlds. When the Federation was pushed back to its original territory, they demanded peace. With Royal Martian, Venusian, and Frontier forces to contend with, the Federation reluctantly surrendered. With Luna acting once again as moderator, the Federation was forced to pay damages for Venus and Mars, as well as the costs of the Frontier pilots. This effectively bankrupted the Federation.
The period that followed the Great Intersolar War became known as the Great Disillusionment, as citizens of Federation, Venusian, and Martian worlds sought to escape from the perpetual tension and rivalry between their stellar nations. The Second Expansion was composed of individuals who sought to found their own worlds, free from old prejudices.
In an effort to maintain its grip on the bankrupt worlds, the Federation devolves into a totalitarian Federation (even as it continues to fund colonization programs), while the Kingdom of Mars in reorganized into the Martian Empire, in order to maintain it's own power. Only the Venusian Republic remains significantly unchanged of the Three Stellar Powers.
The Separatists, as Venus and Mars come to call them, found many independent worlds across the galaxy, although the Federation lumps them in with the Spacers, it becoming a general cuss-word among the non-Federation worlds. Eventually, a Separatist colony flight achieves what many humans believed would never happen: they made first contact.
The Bataia race was a hive-mind species, a collective consciousness shared by all of its members. Like Man, it was fictionalized, each "hive" having a different mind and personality. Fortunately, the hive-mind encountered on Falvenia was peaceful, and willing to work with the humans. Other Bataia hives were discovered, as well as several other alien races of various levels of intelligence, and technology.
As the Twenty-Ninth Century dawned, humanity had taken it's place among other space-faring civilizations. At that is where the story will begin.
At some point in the near future (<100 years) we began to colonize our solar system, fueled by the possibility of expanding beyond our planet, and forestall any population problems.
At first is was the moon, simply to prove we could. But on the moon (or Luna, as some colonists preferred to call it) industry flourished. Most of the energy used to power Lunar colonies came from the sun, or from nuclear fusion plants. Advanced metallic compounds could be created in low gravity and exported back to Earth.
Heartened, we struck for Mars. Well, tried to, but a problem emerged.
Lunar colonists began to atrophy in the low-gravity environment. Within years, they became unable to return to a standard-gravity environment without collapsing under their own weight; their muscles and bones were too weak. We went back to the drawing board.
Venus emerged as another potential colony. Like Luna, Venus could be an industrial station powered by the sun. Floating cities were designed to be placed in the atmosphere, kept aloft by breathable air that could be extracted from the Venusian clouds. Gravity would not be significantly less than standard, preventing significant atrophy.
Years went by without a major problem concerning Venusian or Lunar colonists. Lunar citizens were unable to return to Earth or Venus, but made excellent spacecraft pilots completely at home in free-fall.
Eager to expand, Lunar and Venusian-based companies sought to extend their manufacturing base by mining the asteroid belt for metals. Mars was looked at again, with some reluctance, and established as a way-point for travel to and from the asteroids. Still dealing with the problem of atrophy, stations were rotated between Mars, space, and Earth/Venus to minimize decay. Asteroids that were mined out were set up to be more colonies, once they were set spinning to produce a gravity field.
Space travel to this point remained expensive, with companies and nations forced to squeeze every bit of money they could get out of their colonies on the Moon, Venus, Mars, and the asteroids. While Lunar colonists lived pretty well, Venusian cities were akin to "company towns" from the twentieth century, where nearly everyone living there worked for the company who founded the colony. Militaries stationed on Venus treated the Venusians like second-class citizens, and using the derogatory term "spacers". The Venusians eventually revolted, declaring themselves independent from Earth. No nation could justify sending more soldiers up there, so so they had to let them go. Venus became the first independent planet.
Around this time, factories on Mercury were established to mine out Helium-3 for use as a inexpensive fusion material for space travel. It helped reduce costs, but still wasn't enough.
Up until now, the terraformation and colonization of Mars had been all but abandoned, until a rich British royal, named Richard Kulu (a joke for anyone who gets it) bought the company that maintained the Mars Waypoint Station. He was a bit of an eccentric lover of science fiction and wanted desperately to make Mars habitable. After buying the company (and effectively the planet) he declared in independent from any Earth nation, establishing the Kingdom of Mars. For a while he was the only inhabitant. Like with Venus, they simply let it go. Unlike with Venus, they thought he was crazy. He built domed cities, and eventually - surprisingly - people came to live under his throne.
Perhaps riding the coattails of Venus and Mars, a number of asteroid colonies declared themselves independent also, choosing to become the Asteroid Confederation.
Things were going very badly for the nations of Earth, but very well for the companies that effectively controlled space travel. Nations had spaceships and travel, but the money came from the companies, who were just as well, so long as the money flowed in. Only the Lunar colonies remained with Earth, out of loyalty perhaps, since they were neighbors.
The Solar System was then divided thus: the nations of Earth and Luna, the Venusian Republic, the Kingdom of Mars, and the Asteroid Confederation (which had proceeded to be come a lawless frontier, not unlike the nineteenth-century American West).
When missions to Jupiter gleaned high yields of Helium-3, space travel became, for the first time, cost-effective. Earthling nations were now forced to content with their "spacer" cousins, albeit grudgingly. Venus flourished, the Martian terraformation project was making headway, and more and more asteroids were slipping from Earth's grasp. Genetics was heavily researched, both by Lunar and Martian scientists, desperate to conquer atrophy.
Talk began of expanding beyond the Solar System, chiefly among the spacers, a fact which alarmed the nations of Earth. Still squabbling among themselves, they now faced threat (or a perceived one) from beyond Earth. In an effort to put their rebellious cousins in their place, the old United Nations was abandoned, and a new union was erected in its place: the Federation of Earth and Luna. Major nations fell in line quickly, with smaller nations eventually bullied or threatened into joining, until Earth was finally, truly, one government.
Troubled, the mining cities floating above Jupiter separated themselves from the Federation, choosing to ally with their multi-planetary parent companies. Jovians, and later, Saturnians, Uranians, and Neptunians, would later become the League of Giants.
It was actually Federation scientists who cracked the atrophy problem. Infants could be spliced with a specific gene pattern to slow the degradation of bone and muscle in low gravity. They refused to release their secrets to the spacer worlds, until Martian spies stole it, and developed it for themselves. A interplanetary war was narrowly avoided when Venus and the Confederation sided with Mars, and Luna was forced to arbitrate.
Physicists on all worlds began working on the illusive FTL stardrive, thereby making expansion to other star systems possible. Later historians would call it the Second Space Race. Federation scientists generated a wormhole to Luna, which is still operational. Plans were quickly adapted for starships. Thanks to a provision in the Solar Treaty, written by Luna, the Federation was forced to share their discovery, but not freely. Venus and Mars were sold the technology for wormhole generation at a wholly exorbitant cost. But they couldn't afford to stray behind. The plans were faulty, and way behind were the Federation was, but they refused to complain, and scratched their way forward.
Thanks to their underhanded tactics, the Federation established the first extra-solar colony worlds. Mars and Venus followed close behind. Rather than worry about planetary colonization, the Confederation worked with the League of Giants on space-stations and habitats, eventually becoming the Frontier League, an expansion of the old Confederation to incorporate the Giants.
Federation, Republican, and Royal Martian colony worlds soon dotted the galaxy, while Frontier space stations appeared around gas giants not already claimed. Thus ended the Second Space Race, and began the First Expansion.
As the decades rolled by, the worlds flourished. Martian worlds prospered under a series of benevolent kings; Venusian worlds were systematically brought into the Venusian Congress; the Federation watched closely over their own territory, squelching any talks of breaking away; and the Frontier stations offered a alternative lifestyle to living under all of those others. They seemed to have taken the image of the American West to heart, and practiced lassez-faire policies, effectively leaving each to their own. While those born under its rule enjoyed the light government, other planets viewed the stations as lawless.
But all good things must come to an end, as so did this golden era. Tensions between the Federation and the Spacer Worlds, as they still called them, remained high throughout the Expansion, many skirmished were fought, with outright war narrowly avoided many times. It was at least three or four generations since Earth was embarrassed by the secession of Venus, Mars, and the Asteroids, something that they never really got over. Finally, those tension became too much to handle.
And the peace snapped.
A Federation vessel suffered catastrophic engine failure while stopping off in the Devress system, a Venusian system. What exactly happened is impossible to tell, but suddenly the ship exploded in a nuclear fireball. Fingers were immediately pointed at Venus, even though they could prove none of their ships were in the area at the time. Unimpressed, the Federation claimed a skilled pilot could drop into real space long enough to shoot down the ship and slip back into a wormhole without detection. They demanded restitution; Venus refused.
War broke out across inhabited space, with Venus calling on it's longtime ally, Mars to assist. Federation colonies were more numerous, and able to churn out more troops and starships than either nation separately. Worlds erupted in fire, as the Federation pushed through, eager to reclaim what it viewed as belonging rightfully to it. Luna, always the sensible voice among the Federation, lost any influence they had, finally turning to the Frontier League for help.
Frontier craft began intercepting Federation fleets in hyperspace, ensuring they never reached their destination. That seemed to turn the tide, as Venus and Mars were able to reclaim their worlds. When the Federation was pushed back to its original territory, they demanded peace. With Royal Martian, Venusian, and Frontier forces to contend with, the Federation reluctantly surrendered. With Luna acting once again as moderator, the Federation was forced to pay damages for Venus and Mars, as well as the costs of the Frontier pilots. This effectively bankrupted the Federation.
The period that followed the Great Intersolar War became known as the Great Disillusionment, as citizens of Federation, Venusian, and Martian worlds sought to escape from the perpetual tension and rivalry between their stellar nations. The Second Expansion was composed of individuals who sought to found their own worlds, free from old prejudices.
In an effort to maintain its grip on the bankrupt worlds, the Federation devolves into a totalitarian Federation (even as it continues to fund colonization programs), while the Kingdom of Mars in reorganized into the Martian Empire, in order to maintain it's own power. Only the Venusian Republic remains significantly unchanged of the Three Stellar Powers.
The Separatists, as Venus and Mars come to call them, found many independent worlds across the galaxy, although the Federation lumps them in with the Spacers, it becoming a general cuss-word among the non-Federation worlds. Eventually, a Separatist colony flight achieves what many humans believed would never happen: they made first contact.
The Bataia race was a hive-mind species, a collective consciousness shared by all of its members. Like Man, it was fictionalized, each "hive" having a different mind and personality. Fortunately, the hive-mind encountered on Falvenia was peaceful, and willing to work with the humans. Other Bataia hives were discovered, as well as several other alien races of various levels of intelligence, and technology.
As the Twenty-Ninth Century dawned, humanity had taken it's place among other space-faring civilizations. At that is where the story will begin.
