Not Sure This Is The Proper Forum

Man, it's been a while since I posted here.

Several of us older webstory players are trying to get back into things. We've got a story lined up and just about ready for playing, though it's not EVO based. I'm here looking to troll up any of the EVO story players who're interested. We've got our own private board for this sort of thing.

Following is the writeup for the story. Contact me via AIM (SN: kitwulfen) if interested.

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The Founding and the Golden Age

Humans have a certain aptitude for war; it's in their very nature. It was no surprise then that war followed them into space. In 2120, the 5th Global War produced a united humanity, as the Terran League's orbital interceptors forced the surrender of all opposing nations without even having to fire a shot. Their success has been attributed by historians to their discovery of a derelict alien spacecraft orbiting Pluto in the months preceding the war.

Over the following years, the united science community made rapid progress as the alien craft slowly divulged its secrets to them. Largest among these was hypertravel. The first hyperdrives were little like the ones we are familiar with today, and were massive beyond belief; so massive, in fact, that no ship could carry them. Instead they were fitted to ring-like structures called hypergates, and used to catapult ships out of realspace and into hyperspace. This process was risky and expensive, but mankind's ingenuity, tenacity, and daring prevailed. After the loss of many ships over the course of dozens of attempts, the first extra-solar colony was created in Alpha Centauri, the closest system to Sol.

It took several years for Alpha Centauri to construct a hypergate and recontact Earth. However, in 2135, the Alpha Centauri and Sol hypergates were permanently linked, providing a stable, reliable, and fast connection between the two systems. Humanity had reached for the stars and, despite the burns it received, grasped them.

Humanity expanded rapidly over the decades, new colonies being established at an astounding rate. There were certainly failures; colony ships being catapulted into neutron stars, scoutships disappearing by the handful, native flora and fauna that wreaked untold havoc on would-be settlers. Science's constant progress, however, ensured humanity's foothold in the heavens. By the 23rd millenium, humanity was firmly established across dozens of systems, and it's population had peaked at over a half a trillion.

Hyperdrives as we know them came into being. While hypergates were still faster, the new hyperdrives allowed safe travel to systems without gates so long as ships stayed along explored routes. Fusion technology, long since mastered by the Terran Union, became refined and widespread. The arts and sciences experienced a renaissance the likes of which were unparalleled.

Humanity had not forgotten its roots, however. In some parties there was a constant worry over who had crewed that alien derelict that had started it all. Nor had humanity forgotten its war-like self. Small navies were fielded, for the defense of the core systems against unseen and imagined aggressions, and the suppression of any attempts at secession from the great Terran Union. Though these ships were small and primitive by today's standards, they were the most destructive machines humanity had ever dreamed up. Though there were nay-sayers and those who often pointed at others and cried, "Warmonger," there is not a human alive today who regrets the construction of these ships.

The Great Hyperspace War

In the mid 24th century, a pair of scoutships mapping hyper routes on the Eastern Fringes encountered a small alien taskforce. Things went amicably at first; though no contact between the crews was ever recorded, attempts at communication and the exchange of linguistic data were made. Since the hypercomm had yet to be developed, one of the scoutships soon departed, carrying the news of humanity's first contact with an alien species. The crews of both scoutships would be etched into the annals of history as the the first fatalities in the Great Hyperspace War.

No one is entirely certain of all the circumstances of this first encounter, but examination of the wreckage of both ships by modern researchers confirms that they were both destroyed by the alien forces; their computer cores survived destruction as designed, though little data could be gleaned from them. The computer cores were found late in the war by a Union patrol fleet, and time had not been kind to them.

Approximately a year later as concern grew over the missing scoutships, a small alien force attacked the outlying colony of Cydonia. The defense of the colony was by all accounts short, but valiant. The defenders could do nothing against the massive warships that advanced on them; system patrol boats and customs frigates spat every bit of defiance they had before being swatted aside by the behemoths that they faced. After sterilizing the surface of Cydonia IV, the alien ships made for the Cydonia-Corvaxus hypergate. The crew of the Cydonia hypergate made one last plea to Earth for help before taking the gate out of the network and blowing their fusion reactors.

Using data gleaned from their attack on Cydonia, the alien forces assembled a larger fleet and attacked the system of Corvaxus. Now alerted to the threat they faced, the entirety of the Home Fleet had been mobilized and awaited the alien fleet.

The defense of Corvaxus was little longer than the defense of Cydonia, but just as valiant. Outgunned, outmassed, and outnumbered, the navy fought to the last and bought time for the Union to enact a plan it had devised. By channeling power through the hypergate network, they detonated the gate at Corvaxus, obliterating it and everything within several light-minutes. The disruption caused to hyperspace locked the alien fleet out of hyperspace for months.

The aliens had unwittingly awakened a beast more powerful than they could control or kill. The warrior at the center of human nature roared in defiance, driving forth industrial might and scientific ingenuity. While the foundries at Alpha Centauri worked night and day, the border fleets fought a strategic withdrawal to the sector capital of Arcturus, where they made their stand.

The aliens were unprepared for the human warships that awaited them. While the new Union ships were still inferior to their alien counterparts, the loss of several alien warships in the opening minutes of the battle caused them to disengage and retreat to the edge of the system. While they were evaluating the new situation, the still-smoldering hulks of the alien ships were towed through the hypergate to a secure research facility; though Arcturus would later be lost and regained several times throughout the course of the Great Hyperspace War, the first engagement in that system opened the door to humanity's efforts at reverse-engineering the aliens' tech.

It was many months yet before humanity truly won a battle. Systems traded hands back and forth for decades as the human and alien fleets engaged in the thrust and parry of space warfare. In the early years the aliens held a great strategic advantage in the advanced nature of their communications, sensors, and hyperdrives, but the humans eventually evened the field through their own innovation and the efforts made by adventurous scientists who explored the secrets of wrecked alien ships.

The Sundering

The war went on for a little over a century. Some say the war is not truly over, but rather that humanity suffers only from a temporary reprieve. Others speculate that the aliens have cut and run from a war that they knew they could no longer win. Whatever the truth, most agree on the course of events that resulted in the sundering of the Terran Union.

Not everything is known about the final stages of the war, but records indicate a strong advance by the Terran Crusade fleets on alien positions, and the destruction of several major alien fleets. Crusade Fleet Faxrik, composed of 4 Monitors, 8 Dreadnaughts, 20 Battleships, and various support ships, was confronted by an unusually large alien fleet in the Tippani sector. Forced into battle, Crusade Fleet Faxrik was defeated by the alien force, estimated to have contained over 20 Dreadnaughts and hundreds of smaller support vessels.

With a break in the Union's defensive line, alien forces made a strong counterattack against the Union Core worlds. Their advance was met with several of the home fleets. With the forces brought to bear, it looked as though humanity would defeat this advance and be able to reinforce its offensive line before too much damage was done. Events at this point become unclear, but at some point during the battle the alien forces attacked one of humanity's hypergates. The manner of the attack is unknown, but the results are clear.

The attack on the hypergate resulted not only in its destruction, but a disruption in hyperspace that quickly spread. Ships in hyperspace never emerged, most likely destroyed. Hypergates, due to the nature of their constant connection to hyperspace, were destroyed. Hypercomms that were in use were overloaded and damaged beyond repair.

This hyperspacial disruption persisted for decades. Whether it was this disruption that was the alien's goal, or just the destruction of the hypergates, we may never know. However, with the hypergates destroyed and hyperdrives useless, all internstellar travel and commerce ground to a halt. Billions starved, countless others became unemployed, corporations disintegrated as their various parts were no longer in contact with eachother. Hypercomms were unable to punch through the disruption, and any ship that attempted to jump was, presumably, lost. The number of ships lost while attempting to make jumps after the disruption were, thankfully, few. Modern shipboard sensors were capable of discerning that hyperspace was unnavigable, and few were the captains who tried with this information at hand.

Each system had become cut off from everything else. Earth managed to contact Alpha Centauri by way of slower-than-light messenger ship, but beyond making certain that both systems had survived, not much was accomplished due to the transit times involved. Planets that had since their colonization been ruled by distant Terran representatives now had to devise their own governments to see them through. Panic and anarchy were rampant in many systems.

All was not doom and gloom, however. Many systems, eventually, settled down and made their own plans for surviving this catastrophe. While billions did die to war, starvation, and exposure, billions more survived. These systems surive today.

Eventually, shipboard sensors were able to determine that hyperspace had re-stabilize to the point that ships were once again able to travel between the stars. Scoutships once again set out to map the heavens, as the hyperlanes that had for so long connected humanity had shifted and changed in the intervening decades since mankind had last been able to traverse the galactic superhighways.

Eventually hyperspace had re-stabilised to the point that hypercomms once again became usable. The small pockets of humanity were once again connected, but not united. The Union's Crusade Fleets were nowhere to be seen, their Home Fleets were in pieces, and the aliens were likewise nowhere to be found. Without its teeth and without external threats, the Union could not enforce its sovereignty over the whole of humanity. Alliances were formed, either through diplomacy or force. Dozens of different human empires sprouted in a blink of the universal eye.

There is an uneasy lull now in the blows that have been traded as the various factions vie for sovereignty, power, and wealth. The future is uncertain, but a new, stable, and powerful human empire is within the grasp of those who dare to reach for it.