|
|
In the Beginning…
There was Center One. Located in the Galactic Core near an unstable wormhole nexus, Center One was home to a variety of unique races as well as visitors who had arrived through the nexus and chose to stay rather than risk its unpredictability for a return trip. The nexus’s unstable nature had a detrimental effect on Center One’s main star, Solarus, which went nova much faster than anticipated. Many of Center One’s inhabitants fled through the nexus before this happened, and those who survived the trip established a new community on the other side of the Galactic Core. Two of the most notable civilizations in this new affiliation of empires were the Orions, who had many of the best scientists and engineers from Center One, and the Antarans, who were militant isolationists. Over time, the various members of the Center One diaspora reunited and began exchanging ideas and technologies, although the Antarans were not included. Civil War Not all of those reunions were friendly, however, and the curious Orions sought to resolve those conflicts by experimenting with primitive life forms to see if they could replicate the problems. While it’s unknown if Orions were successful, their manipulation led to such races as the Klackons and Psilons. Eventually the disputes between the various empires ignited a galaxy-wide civil war, with the Antarans and a couple handpicked allies on one side and the Orions and everyone else on the other. The Orion scientists brought the conflict to a close by creating the Trinity Project, a massive ship that entered the Antaran Sector and unleashed an energy which enveloped the entire area and transported it to another dimension. A Galaxy in Flux There was a side effect to the Trinity Project, however, in the form of a hyperspace flux that rippled through the cosmos and destabilized hyperspace travel, thus cutting off many civilizations from each other. The Orions’ allies blamed them for the problems and eventually the Orions themselves rose up and overthrew the government; the bloody conflict reduced their population to almost zero. Meanwhile, the exiled Antarans set to work on trying to breach their “prison walls” and met with limited success. They turned to genetic engineering in an attempt to breed an aggressive army, but both of their experiments, the peaceful Ichthytosians and the flighty Ethereans, failed to produce what they wanted. The Ichthytosians were abandoned on the planet Trilar and the Ethereans escaped to continue their evolution elsewhere. The hyperspace flux that plagued the Orion Sector settled down for a long period, allowing the races to travel and rediscover each other once more. The old hostilities soon broke out, despite the creation of the Orion Senate to diplomatically smooth over differences, and this time the Humans united them under the Pax Humanica banner. The Humans essentially created a police state, but they kept the peace for almost 10,000 galactic cycles (the MOO equivalent of years), until races outside the Pax Humanica discovered that the hyperspace flux was all but gone and began aggressive expansion of their empires. Matters Get Complicated This movement resulted in The Great War, which ended the Pax Humanica, although the Orion Senate continued to convene and keep diplomatic relations open between the empires even as they aggressively expanded. The Antarans complicated matters by launching sporadic raids whenever they could breach the dimensional barriers that imprisoned them. The Psilons eventually came across an ancient Orion research station and discovered the secret behind trans-dimensional travel. They shared this knowledge with the other Orion Sector races and soon the former combatants were allied against this new foe. The Orion races began attacking the Antarans in their dimensional prison and they scored what they thought was a major victory when they destroyed the fleet at the Antaran home world. What they didn’t know, however, was that the Antarans had more ships hidden elsewhere. The Orion races thought they had defeated the Antarans, who decided to play dead and regroup. When they chose to reveal themselves, though, they did so with a vengeance, smashing the Orion races and subjugating the sector. They turned the Orion Sector worlds, including Earth, into work camps and stole technology and research from every race. This was known as the Dark Age. The End of the Antarans, the Beginning of the New Orions Soon after they entered the Orion Sector, however, the Antarans lost their strangle hold on it. Their science experiments produced a virus that killed indiscriminately and spread rapidly. When it was accidentally — or perhaps purposely — released into an Antaran colony, it spread so fast that most of the population died before the government could contain it. The Antarans still in the Orion Sector realized that they didn’t have support from their trans-dimensional brethren anymore and decided to transform themselves into “enlightened leaders” before the Orion races discovered what happened. The Orion Senate, which had fallen into disuse, jumped to life once more as all the races, including the Antarans, elected representatives to the august council. The Antaran who served as President of the Senate declared that his race would now be known as the New Orions and that a new, enlightened age would come to the galaxy. Four races angrily denounced his speech, so the New Orions brought decimation to their home worlds. The point made, the New Orions and the Orion races met once again in the Senate to discuss a body of laws for the galaxy. Meanwhile, somewhere among the many planets in the sector lie five relics, the Antarans’ long-lost technology, known as the “Antaran Xs.” Popular myth says that the race which controls all five Xs will unlock an incredible source of power and control the entire sector. This is the state of the Orion Sector when you begin playing the game. 
|
 
|