History of human space civilization (Sanctuary Stars)

  

The history of human space civilization is the narrative of human civilization following the establishment of the first permanent settlements in extraterrestrial space. In the modern Ecumene, the study of history is chronologized according to the Common Earth Calendar so as to preserve the dates of ancient terrestrial history with that of near-modern and modern periods.

Early human space civilization was entirely contained within the Sol system. Following the beginning of the Great Migrations in the middle-to-late 23rd century CEC, humans began travelling vast distances to colonize star systems beyond their native one. This early wave of human migration utilized primitive spacecraft hardly capable of surpassing 0.2c and ended by the late 24th century following the conclusion of the Second Earth-Mars War. Following the Capitulatory War of the 27th century CEC, the Ecumene was established at the Conference of Planets and Moons, beginning an era of human space civilization in which the whole of the Sol system coalesced as a single political union.

Following the standardization of Fusion pulse propulsion and the construction of the first Astroliners, the Ecumene began an intense camapign of interstellar colonization. The disastrous Octopoid War of the 33rd century CEC resulted in a widespread collapse of political will and public support for unrestricted human space colonization. Star systems believed to be host to Great Migration-era civilizations were made forbidden to Ecumene vessels as the Sanctuary Stars and the concept of the feasible limit became the predominant outlook towards potential future expansion of human space civilization by the 34th century. Although official colonization efforts had been discontinued by the Ecumene, some humans continued to migrate to stars beyond the five parsec demarcation.

The development of Microwormholes in the 38th century allowed for functional superliminal communication. The proliferation of this technology throughout the Ecumene greatly enhanced its sociopolitical cohesion, and eventually, the policy of the feasible limit was abolished after only months of reconsideration by the Ecumenical Synod. In the past one and a half centuries since then, the Ecumene has returned to exploring and settling new star systems beyond five parsecs from Sol. Although many distant colonies willingly joined the Ecumene following the abolishment of the feasible limit, a number of uninterested systems formed the Free Stars to collectively resist its reassertion of influence. Tensions with the Free Stars alongside renewed interstellar exploration have characterized much of contemporary history up to the present 4023 CEC.

Early space colonization

Colonization of Luna

The ancient humans of Earth first began to establish permanent habitats in what they referred to as "outer space" in the early-to-mid 21st century CEC. In these times, humans were extremely numerous on the Earth's surface. Their primitive habitats were simple scientific outposts which were typically designed by a single nation or a coalition of nations. The earliest permanent settlement was established on Earth's satellite Luna in 2038 CEC by a coalition of liberal democracies. This settlement was followed soon after by a number of other nations, and growing commercial interest in the development and extraction of resources on Luna soon led to what is known today as the Scramble for Luna. The Scramble is believed to have culminated in a treaty system preventing the outright drawing of national boundaries on Luna's surface, instead their political arrangement mirroring the situation on Earth's near-uninhabited continent Antarctica, wherein nations operated singular bases scattered across Luna's surface without boundary clear or enforceable delineation.

Humanity at the time was suffering from a number of issues on Earth; namely climate change, widespread poverty, and inter-national warfare. The colonization of Luna brought with it the opening of a new phase of economic development for Earth, though, due to the satellite's superior manufacturing conditions, lack of environmental constraints, and widespread raw resources. The chance at a stake in the vast resource wealth of Luna drove many of Earth's gargantuan commercial interests to quickly pour financing and other resources in the development of private space agencies. By the end of the 21st century CEC, these private space agencies numbered in the hundreds, and the number of permanent establishments on Luna had risen to three times that number. In the middle of this same century, the scientific space agencies of the Earth-nations continued to expand their interests throughout the inner planets of the Sol system. Most notably, Mars had captured their attention for decades due to its relative nearness to Earth and relatively manageable environmental conditions.

There were a number of issues that stemmed from humanity's ambitious and rapid colonization of Luna. With health issues being the foremost danger to the presence of humans on Luna, developments in automation, communication, and robotics allowed for most of the economic colonization interests to circumvent the necessity of a permanent human residents on their early outposts. Early attempts at the creation of permanent civilian settlements on Luna were scarce and often failures; the majority of the permanent human site on Luna were either staffed on a rotational basis or manned entirely remotely. These factors made control of communications on Luna the primary mode of control over the whole of the satellite. The rapid and intense establishment of rival communications networks and logistics systems took on a national character, and as a result, Earth-nations which were already dominant on the planet's surface became the leading colonial interests on its satellite. This development had the consequence of mirroring the political situation on Luna with that of Earth, distancing impoverished Earth nations from the prospect of benefiting from its colonization.

Colonization of Mars and the Asteroid Belt

The creation of colonial outposts on Luna was followed in the same century by a heightened interest of the Earth-nations in the planet Mars. When compared to other inner system planets, Mars provided a manageable surface for the development of simple terrestrial structures as utilized on Luna. Mars' weaker gravitational pull provided benefits for construction and transportation from the planet, but it also meant that the establishment of a civilian population on the planet was an unlikely eventuality without possible medical risks. The two year and two month launch window to Mars made it much less feasible for the immediate establishment of commercial interests on the planet, although some more eccentric interests on Earth pursued the possibility of its full-scale development from an early stage. All considered, the early colonization of Mars was much less pronounced and rapid as that of Luna.

While Mars may have been a less appealing target for early commercial space development, the Asteroid Belt beyond the planet's orbit proved a much more lucrative and short-term interest for Earth's nations and commercial interests. Most notably, there were a number of asteroids which had been identified in the earliest decades of human spaceflight as containing mineral resources valued as greater than the world's entire economy. As commercial resource extraction and purification on Luna became commonplace, the economic appeal of the Asteroid Belt's resources increased substantially. The most lucrative asteroids had the ability to make their possessors the wealthiest humans in history, and as a result, the Earth-nations preemptively attempted to ensure that the economic exploitation of these asteroids would be evenly accessible. When attempts at negotiating a treaty broke down in 2083 CEC, the Second Space Rush ensued. Much more aggressive than the first, the rush to build permanent installations in the Asteroid Belt proved disastrous at first. Control over the most resource-laden planetesimals escalated very rapidly from competition of spaceflight skill to that of open warfare. In 2088 CEC, these escalations would culminate in the cataclysmic Third World War.

Third World War and consequences

The Third World War ravaged most of the Earth's nations, regardless of whether or not they actively participated in the conflict. Famine became widespread due to severe disruptions in the movement of goods, while nuclear fallout made previously ideal arable land uninhabitable. The war ended in the same year that it began, but over two billion people would die as a result of the use of nuclear weapons. The survivor nations of the conflict had their positions immeasurably reduced. The neutral nations, many of them among the Earth's poorest, fared nearly as a poorly those that participated. Earth thereafter began experiencing a nuclear famine, which further worsened the economically-driven famines raging across the planet. By the end of the 21st century, Earth's population of humans had dropped by nearly three billion.

The industrial facilities on Luna had largely escaped the worst devastation of the Third World War. The three major organizations controlling Luna had all of their Earthside governments destroyed in the fighting, leaving their export-focused industries without any surviving importers. Additionally, the mining operations in the Asteroid Belt which had been streamlined for processing on Luna provided these Lunar organizations with an overabundance of resources. All of these factors were the primary motivation for the merger of the organizations into a single entity: LunaGov. Despite numbering a scant million of inhabitants, Luna possessed the means to rebuild Earth and save humanity from an anthropogenic extinction event. While the nations which had developed the constituents of the Lunar Union were opposed on Earth, it was commonplace for the rotational workers on Luna to share lodgings and transportation, creating a fraternal attitude especially among the common workers of the Lunar outposts. The individuals managing these facilities were also believed to be among the wealthy classes of their respective countries, all of which had been destroyed by war: there was no point in destroying each other and their fully operational commercial entities on Luna.

LunaGov quickly set about developing new ties with the surviving states on Earth and new methods of goods deployment to the planet. By 2090 CEC, LunaGov had already established Earth-facilities across each of its continents, and by the end of the century, it began to oversee reconstruction efforts in the neutral nations that had experienced the worst degrees of civil collapse. More complicated were the efforts by LunaGov to establish itself in the surviving regions of the belligerents of the war, due to a combination of local resistance and extreme irradiation. After the deployment of advanced robotic pacification units and the reestablishment of agricultural surpluses in the neutral countries, Luna managed to quell the famines on Earth by 2099. The exploitation of the asteroids which had triggered the Third World War thus came to benefit those Earth-nations which had been largely shut out of early space colonization by the war's initiators. These resurgent Earth-states soon coalesced behind the same principles of Luna, eventually uniting with it and forming the Earth-Lunar Union.

Postwar pioneering

Settlements on Mars and in the Asteroid Belt

The advances made by Earth-Luna towards sustainable, self-supplying communities across reclaimed Earth proved a significant boon to permanent settlement attempts on other planets. With food production integrated into the habitats, and industrial goods shipped in from off-world factories, the Earth-Luna model of life could be replicated on any planet or planetesimal with access to water or water-ice and a gravitational pull no stronger than Earth's. Mars was among the first non-Earth planet to see the establishment of civilian settlements. Before the Third World War, there had been limited establishment of scientific and exploratory outposts on the planet, almost all of which were recalled or cut off from interplanetary supply chains as a result of the conflict. Much like the inhabitants of Luna, who had become amicable and cooperative with distance from their home Earth-nations, the pre-War Mars settlers coalesced into a single community located at Mars' southern polar ice cap. Initially, this community welcomed the intervention of Earth-Luna, which brought with it advanced blueprints and the materials to construct them. The Mars' south pole settlement soon became a gateway to greater exploration and settlement of Mars itself, and migrants from Earth were well underway building new, similar settlements on the planet early in the 22nd century CEC.

The Asteroid Belt, which had been the focus of the Third World War, had now fallen under the sole administration of Earth-Luna. Permanent space stations were built throughout the Asteroid Belt to service the rotational asteroid miners and their vessels. Although these space stations were of a much smaller scale than the new settlements on Mars, they were crucially capable of self-supply food and oxygen to their inhabitants, making them critical nodes for exploration in the outer planets. In the early part of the 22nd century, the Asteroid Belt became a major source of resource wealth for Luna and its production facilities, which saw their goods shipped to the populations on Earth and Mars. Desiring to cement their political control over human spacefaring for generations to come, the Tranquility Shipyards were constructed on Luna, paving the way for the development of the Lunar Fleet. The first true exonavy in human history, the Lunar Fleet offered a medium through which interplanetary trade could be properly monitored and off-world possessions could be indirectly administered. Additionally, the scientific bureau of the Lunar Fleet reinitialized the drive to explore the system and beyond, a pre-War tradition of human spaceflight which had been nearly lost due to the War's massive shift in national priorities.

Settlements in the outer planets

Throughout the 22nd century CEC, Earth-Luna remained the sole superpower in the Sol system. Earth-Lunar colonies began to form across the outer planets, with Callisto and Titan becoming the most significant human settlements outside the Asteroid Belt in that century. The furthest of the Galilean moons from the planet's intense radiation belt, Callisto benefited greatly from the Earth re-settlement technologies developed by Earth-Luna and employed on Mars. Callisto's subsurface saltwater ocean saw unique developments on the satellite as these initial colonies took on a more particular form. The development of surface facilities would carry on in tandem with subsurface facilities; this format was then replicated across the Jovian moons Ganymede and Europa. Due to Callisto's relative safety from the Jovian radiation belt, it would maintain the largest population of humans and serve as the Jovian moon system's most significant source of foodstuffs. Mining operations would be more prominent on Europa, whose subsurface ocean had direct access to the planet's metallic mantle, as opposed to Ganymede and Callisto, where the subsurface oceans were sandwiched between layers of ice.

Titan, a satellite of Saturn, saw much less fervent efforts at early colonization, due to similar constraints on in situ mineral gathering as experienced on Callisto and Ganymede. The primary boon of Titan was its thick nitrogen atmosphere and high abundance of methane and ethane. While the harvesting techniques employed on Titan were at first inefficient and barely profitable, throughout the 22nd century, these methods were refined and Titan became an important link in the economic chain of the Earth-Lunar space economy. Fertilizers, polymers, and chemically pure nitrogen were otherwise difficult to source in space, which was laden with metals but otherwise lacking in organic compounds. The benefits which Titan's chemicals gave to the fledgling Earth-Lunar space economy would become entrenched as crucial towards its overall development; by the mid-22nd century, Titan was considered the most important of Earth-Luna's colonies beyond the Asteroid Belt. Unlike the Jovian moons, where the human population dispersed among the various major bodies, early human settlement was almost entirely constrained to Titan in the Saturnian system.

Among the most consequential of developments during the 22nd century was the beginning of colonization efforts on Apollo. Like the inner planet Venus, Apollo has the surface gravity most similar to Earth. While the surface temperature of Venus is actually lower than the thermosphere temperature of Apollo, the primary benefit of Apollo to Venus is the former's lack of a supercritical, acidic atmosphere at the one bar altitude of roughly 300 kilometres above the base of the Apollonian troposphere. While the economic draws of Apollo were much less evident than those of the outer gas giant satellites, the comfortable gravity of Apollo and its atmospheric abundance of helium were its primary migratory draws in the 22nd century. No other body aside from Venus provided a natural gravity level so similar to Earth, and Venus' atmospheric conditions were much less manageable for the technological level of contemporary Earth-Luna. The first city-station on Apollo held at static altitudes through buoyancy was established in 2167 CEC; by the end of the century, Apollo had a population rivalling that of Callisto and Titan. Following the refinement of the city-station techniques on Apollo, they were similarly applied to Neptune, although its even more extreme distance from Earth saw a proportionally lower rate of settlement.

One of the more significant developments of the early settlements in the outer planets was the widespread adoption of human cloning techniques. Particularly in the Jovian and Saturnian satellite systems, the economic value of the resources they possessed far exceeded their early capacity to exploit them. As robotics technologies in the 22nd century were still comparatively primitive and warranting of constant human oversight, genetically modified clones were far simpler to produce and required no dedicated workforce to maintain. In fact, their economic usage was so universal, that some clones could grow the food required to feed all other clones alongside the naturally born populations of these settlements. While LunaGov largely turned a blind eye to the slave-like conditions of clones in the outer planets, in the early days of its application, cloning came to be banned on Apollo and restricted on Neptune. By the end of the 22nd century, cloning was largely confined to the Asteroid Belt, the Jovian system, and the Saturnian system, being heavily regulated or banned for purely economic applications elsewhere in the Sol system.

Early tensions with Mars

Throughout the 22nd century, Earth-Luna and its colonies enjoyed marked economic productivity and social stability. Politically, the Union remained inflexibly oligarchical. The immediate predecessor of Earth-Luna, LunaGov, had been organized around a ruling board resembling a corporation or corporate entity in its function and structure. The subscriber regions on Earth were added into this structure more in the form of subsidiaries of LunaGov than equal members. While citizens of Earth-Luna directly benefited from their government's economic prosperity, decision-making power rested solely within the hands of an alien executive committee. As human settlements became more entrenched on more distant worlds, decision-making powers resting solely within the purview of administrators on Luna became less feasible in the long-term. Semi-autonomous organizations were established across many of these emergent societies which resembled LunaGov in character and operation, but at the same time, grew politically distant from their mother government.

The first subsidiary of Earth-Luna to enter into tension with its mother political entity was that of Mars. Alongside Luna, Mars was the only other planet or planetesimal in the Sol system to host a permanent human population before the outbreak of the Third World War. While the consequential reorganization of the pre-War Martian government into a singular entity served to ease the planet into the fold of Earth-Luna control, the lingering cultural and political differences did not wash out over time. Whereas Luna and the subsequent LunaGov were born out of economic interests, early Mars had been settled and developed by scientists and their patron Earth-nations. The semi-autonomy extended to Mars upon its incorporation into Earth-Luna seemingly cemented the planet's leadership into the hands of a long-ruling intelligentsia with aspirations far exceeding those of Luna's administrators. As Mars became more economically developed and populous, its leaders became more concerned with the long-term viability of human life on the planet. The long dream of humans to cultivate Mars into a garden world like their home planet became more of an actual focus of its planetary government.

Earth-Luna's central government in the 22nd century had no economic or political impetus to "terraform" Mars; the scale of the project would exceed even the gargantuan industrial capacity it already maintained and the economic pay-off would likely be hundreds of years in the future. The short-term effect of exponentially increased demand for elements like oxygen and nitrogen could over-inflate their prices, leading to a potentially disastrous domino effect across the entire Earth-Lunar market. For the first time in its history, LunaGov directly opposed and nullified a resolution passed by the Martian Board of Directors in 2178 CEC which outlined in broad strokes an ambitious plan to terraform the planet. Fearing that overspeculation of atmospheric gasses like nitrogen and oxygen would create an economic bubble and a short-term economic catastrophe, LunaGov continued to directly intervene in Martian affairs to prevent official planning for any terraforming projects. Most modern historians agree that LunaGov's motivations were twofold: it wanted to prevent another planetary body from hosting a population (and thus, source of economic demand) on the scale of the far-closer Earth, as well as prevent the inflation of nitrogen and oxygen prices due to the relative industrial-scale rarity of those elements beyond the (very distant) Titan.

Martian Revolution

In 2183 CEC, the Martian Board of Directors was dissolved by LunaGov after its third attempt to pass a resolution outlining a terraforming initiative. The capital of Mars on the Planum Australe, Matarisvan, was put under direct administration by LunaGov with enforcement through the Lunar Fleet; this was the first time in LunaGov's history that its fleet was deployed for what it described as "counterrevolutionary measures." While much of Mars' civilian population had been ambivalent or mildly supportive of its Board throughout the terraforming episode, the occupation of Matarisvan galvanized the Martian public. News of the measures taken by LunaGov spread throughout the Sol system, and the previously small networks of secessionists in Earth-Luna's more distant colonies began to gain traction. LunaGov announced plans for "restructuring" of operations on Mars the same year that it sent forces to occupy Matarisvan: in reality, this consisted of a gutting of Mars' local, semi-autonomous government and the installation of administrators and middle level authorities directly from Luna. The continued deprivation of autonomy and home rule on Mars only heightened the public outrage, and by 2185, a planetary resistance movement had begun to take shape in the previously marginalized Friends of Free Mars.

Throughout the 2180s, the Friends gained considerable momentum in their underground organization efforts. Nascent smuggling networks with the Asteroid Belt and the outer planets permitted the Friends to equip itself in the manner of a militia, although the reports of missing or stolen weapons from the outer planets would eventually lead to a total blockade of Mars starting in 2189. By 2190, however, the Friends had infiltrated nearly all of the major civilian stations on the planet, and they even began to carry out sporadic attacks against Lunar administrators and forces. An attempted lockdown of the Mars stations in 2192 was the spark that set off the Friends' open rebellion against LunaGov, the beginning of what is today known as the Martian Revolution. Several civilian stations across Mars were almost immediately usurped by the more popular and numerous Friends, leaving LunaGov with a concentrated host of possessions in the planet's southern hemisphere. Although some more extreme elements in the Lunar Fleet are believed to have called for the bombardment of rebel stations, this was prevented by a majority of LunaGov board members, who did not wish to kill hundreds of thousands to millions of people over mere control of the planet.

Instead, the Lunar Fleet began a series of precision strikes against infrastructure and suspected hidden outposts in a effort to quash only the Friends and do as little harm as possible to the planet's civilian population. LunaGov hoped to quickly disperse the rebels while preventing any significant losses of life, so as to signal to its other colonies that it was wholly interested in the welfare of its citizens. The slow and meticulous approach of LunaGov meant that the Friends had ample time to extend its revolutionary and smuggling activities beyond the pace of their loss, and as a result, the Friends began to inspire other autonomist movements across LunaGov's colonies in the Asteroid Belt, the Jovian moons, and even on Titan. Although Tranquility Shipyards supplied the Lunar Fleet with new vessels weekly, the blockade of Mars was largely ineffective and as time passed its efforts to spread revolutionary activity became more and more successful. Hoping to prevent the loss of all its colonial holdings to similar revolutionary activities, LunaGov agreed to begin negotiations with the Friends in 2194 CEC. Although at first the Friends had sought only to regain Mars' autonomy, they now demanded the planet's full independence. LunaGov at first attempted to offer additional appeasements in addition to restored and strengthened autonomy, with its leading concern being that granting Mars full independence would only encourage its other colonies to seek the same status through the same methods. Delays in reaching a compromise continued to see Martian rebels gain the upper hand across the planet, ultimately forcing LunaGov to relent and accept the independence demand in exchange for customs privileges for Martian interplanetary trade. The Union of Mars officially gained its independence in 2195 CEC, as Lunar forces were withdrawn from Matarisvan.

Earth-Mars paradigm

Trade war with Mars

In the early days of independent Mars, the Earth-Lunar order across the Sol system began to rapidly deteriorate. The once-small populations inhabiting Earth-Luna's myriad of outposts had grown substantially by the end of the 22nd century. The loss of Mars did little to refocus the administrative capacity of LunaGov. Emergent in this period were a number of autonomist movements inspired by the Martians, all of which aimed to remove the yoke of LunaGov's executive power over their nascent societies. Most dominantly, Luna's industrial facilities had remained the key apparatus by which the whole of its empire remained within its control. Efforts to construct new planetary-scale industrial and consumer goods facilities in situ had been mostly denied by LunaGov, and the increasing difficulty of transporting supplies from Luna to its colonies became more fraught as corruption and piracy grew widespread. As the semi-autonomous administrations of Luna's key colonies on Callisto and Titan took steps to strengthen local manufacturing, the Lunar Fleet was massively expanded and upgraded. New solar sail technologies were deployed by Luna, with the achievement of interplanetary relativistic speeds greatly extending their grasp over their more distant holdings.

While the outer planet colonies of Luna chafed under its increasingly overbearing rule, Mars experienced a golden age of economic development and immigration. Surface mining facilities were greatly expanded due to the high cost of import from the hostile Lunar government, and manufacturing facilities sprouted around its largest settlements. The ruling interests of Mars knew that dramatically altering the planetary ecosystem would require the use of outside resources, but the cost of importing these resources from Earth-Luna was prohibitively expensive due to Mars' negotiations with LunaGov at the end of its revolution. Mars' new plan pushed the terraforming project further down the line, and instead, Mars began efforts at constructing a military-industrial complex which it hoped would one day rival and even surpass its former colonial overlord. The creation of a Martian independent exonavy would prove difficult due to the restrictions placed upon it by its treaty with Luna. In order to mislead Luna's military attention to its outer colonies, Mars began a massive and secret smuggling operation of weapons once its factories came online. Most of the weapons were sent to the emergent autonomist factions in the Asteroid Belt and the Jovian and Saturnian moons.

Lunar intelligence agencies became aware of the Martian weapons shipments roughly five years after they began around 2210 CEC, but despite protests from some of the more hawkish members of its executive committees, it took no immediate action. The same sources which had made LunaGov aware of the shipments also reported that Mars had built an elaborate and planet-wide network of anti-orbital weaponry, which, if a blockade were to be enacted, would likely trigger a war that would be devastating for the Lunar Fleet. Should the Lunar Fleet become endangered or significantly weakened, its ability to respond to an uprising in the outer planets would be compromised. Mars had essentially set a trap for LunaGov; whether or not the Lunar Fleet attempted to blockade Mars, the outer planets would stage a major uprising. In hopes of preventing an outright war with Mars, LunaGov instead deployed its fleet across its most vital holdings in the system. Customs sweeps on inbound traffic were tightened, as advanced solar sailing allowed for the time lost in customs to be made up on the interplanetary voyages. LunaGov's method of sidestepping the Martian trap by complicating trade on its own planets was successful in averting an outright war with Mars but only increased tensions with its colonial subjects.

Springtime of planets

A number of independent factors across decades of unease and tensions between Luna and its colonies came to a head in the 2220s CEC. Simultaneously, Callisto, Titan, and Apollo hosted delegates in their respective colonial capitals to open negotiations with LunaGov regarding their status as subject polities. Although Luna had taken many steps to avert this outcome, and it appeared poised on the edge of war with its own colonies, it recognized that it could not effect the subjugation of every single one of its outer planet colonies at the same time. Additionally, the Martian effort to supply militant organizations on those colonies with weapons had run deeper than the Lunar Fleet's trade controls initially suspected. Luna focused its military on retaining control of the Asteroid Belt, seen as the single most important source of resources for the continued functioning of its military-industrial complex, while it began negotiations with the Jovian, Saturnian, and Apollonian rebels. Neptune, far away and less productive than any other colony, was essentially given its independence by default when Luna did not respond to any of the developments on that planet or its satellites.

LunaGov was most interested in maintaining its commercial ties with the Jovian and Saturnian satellite systems. Apollo was additionally within its sights as a target of continued relations, but there was less emphasis from LunaGov on retaining control of whole planets rather than the less gravity-intense moons (i.e., bodies with which it was much easier to ship resources and goods from due to a reduced necessary level of delta-v for transport vehicles). However, LunaGov also recognized that if it officially recognized the independence of any more of its colonies, maintaining control over those it wished to keep would be much more difficult. Therefore, while Neptune was written off due to its distance and gravity, LunaGov entreated Apollo merely from a standpoint of public perception. The demands of these colonies were simple: grant them independence immediately and renounce any claim Luna purported to have over them. LunaGov's board did not wish to grant them independence, much less renounce any claim to them, but it was increasingly obvious to members of the board that attempting to wage war against all of its colonies (and likely, them gaining the support of a hostile Mars) would be a fruitless and self-destructive endeavour.

In 2222 CEC, Luna called for a conference between itself and all of its subjects on its Asteroid Belt colony Ceres. The Lunar Fleet was ordered to withdrawal from the outer planets to the Asteroid Belt as a sign of good faith. At the Ceres Conference, Luna offered to grant political independence to the outer planets in exchange for the creation of an economic and customs union between them. Luna argued that its control over the Asteroid Belt would make it the single largest producer of raw metals, processed alloys, and industrial goods in the Sol system, and that by entering into an economic union with Luna, the outer planets stood to receive favourable treatment in terms of trade arrangements. Additionally, Luna would agree to permanently halt its blockade of weapons to the outer planets, and further, it offered them a discount on the purchase of armaments from Luna to make trade with Mars far less economically prudent. Lastly, Luna proposed a defensive pact between itself and its planets; that if any one of the planets were to come under attack from any source, then Luna would utilize its large navy to assist in any way possible. The Jovian and Saturnian delegations agreed to Luna's terms after further wrangling favourable rates on the import of raw material from the Asteroid Belt, but Apollo was largely unwilling to economically bind itself to Luna. The Apollonian delegation thus left the conference without agreeing to any of the terms, while the Earth-Lunar, Jovian, and Saturnian delegations signed the Ceres Protocol.

First Earth-Mars War

The tenuous peace between Earth-Luna and independent Mars was prone to intermittent flares of hostility and brinkmanship throughout the early 23rd century. These tensions were worse than those experienced while Mars was an Earth-Lunar colony, as Mars had established its own exonavy and continued to rapidly build up its military force to match their former colonial master. Whereas the Martian arms industry had previously also brought it economic benefits through its clandestine smuggling to the Jovian and Saturnian moons, the Ceres Protocol drove a wedge between Mars and the newly independent outer planet satellites. In the two decades following the protocol, Mars began to actively challenge the Earth-Lunar claim over the entirety of the Asteroid Belt. Mars had been limited to mining operations in the Mars trojan by the peace accords it signed with Earth-Luna, but its development of a naval presence made the previously one-sided enforcement of such claims moot. In 2241 CEC, Mars began to expand its asteroid mining operations to the Hungaria asteroids, an asteroid group which had largely been recognized as lying within the inner zone of the Asteroid Belt proper. When Mars refused to withdrawal its military units protecting their mining site, the bulk of the Lunar Fleet moved to blockade Mars and intercept its offending naval units. This in turn led to the Battle of 1750 Eckert and the beginning of the First Earth-Mars War in 2242 CEC.

Unlike the Martian Revolution, the First Earth-Mars War was fought entirely in space. The Battle of 1750 Eckert was notably the first time since the Third World War of the 21st century that two opposing military spacecraft engaged one another. While the Lunar Fleet was successful in outing the Martians from the Hungaria group, Mars began a series of simultaneous, difficult-to-intercept raids on Earth-Lunar mining operations across the Asteroid Belt. Notably, the Martians were routed from attempts to raid Lunar logistics networks connecting it to the outer planets as the independent Jovian and Saturnian fleets honoured their defence obligations to Luna. The attempted Lunar blockades of Mars throughout the conflict would lead to a series of major losses for Luna, as its point-defence systems aboard its vessels were overwhelmed by the Martian orbital defence network. Overall, offensive measures by either side were prone to significant failure and personnel losses, and the war moved from an active phase into one of slow, back-and-forth volleys of projectiles between Mars and Luna, with some "engagements" lasting months.

The most effective strategy employed in the war was Mars' use of infiltration. For over a century, the Belt-to-Luna pathway of asteroid mining meant that transport vessels often carried with them large masses of semi-processed ore for further refinement on Luna. As fighting broke out and continued with Mars, these transports began to travel in convoys guarded by military intercept vessels. All of the civilian vessels that Luna used to transport raw materials possessed automated piloting systems used by their civilian crews for long-duration voyages, and these guidance systems were further connected to a centralized control network for remote guidance in high traffic zones. During the Martian Revolution, the weaknesses of staffing the Lunar remote traffic control network with civilians became apparent to LunaGov. Maintenance of the network was soon delegated to the authority of the Lunar Fleet, which had already-established security protocols for its personnel and generally was able to weed out any attempts at infiltration. In 2251, however, long-term sleeper cells in the Lunar Fleet were activated by Mars to seize control of one of Luna's remote control facilities: an inbound convoy of mineral transports was then placed on a direct intercept with Luna's orbital trajectory at maximum possible speed. The resultant head on collision, known as the Lunar Collision of 2251, had a devastating impact on Luna's orbit, shortening it by a period of several minutes and seeing a resultant increase in its tidal force on Earth by hundreds of metres. As most of the Luna-to-Earth trade took place through seaborne space ports, the impact on trade with Earth was severe. Debris from the impact destroyed thousands of facilities on Luna and many ships in near-orbit, further hindering the Lunar trade fleet. An estimated 20 million people were killed as a direct consequence of the strike, while hundreds of millions on Earth were displaced.

Almost immediately after the collision event, Luna vowed asymmetrical retaliation against Mars. Far from causing a rift among Luna's people, the severe death toll that it had exacted marginalized those who had previously called for negotiations with the Martians instead of continued fighting. As the Lunar Fleet went into recovery mode, Luna's mining vessels in the Asteroid Belt were conscripted to be used for a similar volley of significant mass against Mars itself. The subsequent escalation of the Earth-Mars war into one of lobbing asteroids at each other had a serious effect on the public of both polities. The Great Migrations began as hundreds of thousands sought safety from the conflict in the promise of unsettled star systems. Mostly, these migrations consisted of people from Earth, which had borne the worst effects of the Lunar Collision. Those who wished to escape from Mars were less lucky, as civilian vessels from the planet were treated as potential threats by the Lunar Fleet; the ships themselves were sequestered and their passengers taken into custody. After several more years of fighting, both sides had begun to exhaust their populations and governmental capacities to continue fighting. The Treaty of Deimos ended outright hostilities in 2263, with both sides making small concessions to prevent their governments from collapsing. Mars was permitted to develop mining operations in the Hungaria group in exchange for renouncing any ability to trade with the Luna-aligned outer planets. Although the peace treaty had ended any immediate military threat to either of the negotiation parties, the announcement of the cessation of hostilities brought outrage from those who had been significantly impacted, especially people on Earth. The treaty also failed to resolve any tensions between the two governments, which would continue in the form of a cold war for an extended period afterwards.

Great Migrations

As the First Earth-Mars War moved from generating mere uncertainty to humanitarian catastrophe, Earth began to see a rising portion of its population emigrating from the planet. At first this population flow was largely directed at the outer planets, namely the Jovian moons and Apollo. Instead of subsiding upon the cessation of hostilities in 2263 CEC, demand for transportation to the outer system skyrocketed as new vessels became available for civilian commercial service. Alongside the development of migratory patterns to the outer planets, a new idea permeated the consciousness of the humans of Sol based on the availability of relativistic speeds through solar sail technologies: migration to a new solar system entirely. In the middle to late 23rd century CEC, the first attempts at building an interstellar colonization space craft were initiated by a consortium of private commercial entities looking to establish a market for such voyages on Earth. After a series of significant delays and construction mishaps the first vessel, Orpheus, was nearly scrapped and the project cancelled. In 2271, LunaGov purchased the spacecraft as well as the rights to its blueprint and completed the project within the next two years. LunaGov had become interested in controlling the population exodus from Earth, and as such, its executive board aimed to temper such demand through a more limited approach to the deployment of such vessels.

Orpheus passed the heliopause of the Sol system in late 2273 bound for the red dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 (termed Hades by many of the outbound colonists) at roughly 11% of the speed of light, a journey which was estimated to take 480 or so years from the observation of a person aboard the vessel. Orpheus was relatively small compared to its fellow Great Migration average interstellar vessel, consisting of only a small living population (in Pseudothanatic stasis) and large stores of genetic material to artificially populate a new planet. Despite LunaGov's attempts to corner the demand for interstellar colonization efforts, a number of private consortiums eventually succeeded in developing their own vessels, almost all of which would go on to surpass the Lunar model in stasis compartment capacity (some were designed to accommodate only a small number of living persons and a much larger number of genetic stores). Due to the Earth-Mars War, loose regulations, and a number of other circumstances, the total number of vessels which left the Sol system during the Great Migrations is not known concretely to history. According to LunaGov estimates made at the turn of the century, an estimated one to two million people had left Earth for interstellar destinations, while a further nearly 10 million people are believed to have emigrated to other planets or satellites in the Sol system.

This migratory trend would continue well after the conclusion of the First Earth-Mars War, although it did begin to slow significantly as colonies on the outer planets suffered from rapid, uncontrolled population growth. As a result, by the beginning of the 24th century CEC, migration from Earth began to be directed towards Mars as well as the outer planets and interstellar colonies. Mars' government desired a greater population and possessed a highly developed capacity for large-scale construction projects. Although LunaGov attempted to make it officially difficult to emigrate to Mars, often a simple workaround for itinerant Earthlings was to travel first to the Jovian moon Callisto and then on to Mars. An unintended side effect of this development was the gentle, slow softening of the Martian public opinion towards Earth, as a growing percentage of the Martian population had relatives living on that planet. This tendency would not be enough to outright end the continued tension between Earth-Luna and Mars, however, and the cold war between the two largest human nations would continue to drive the Great Migrations for several centuries more.

Interwar period

Construction on the Lunar Ring began in the early 24th century CEC. The first "ring station," the Ring became a model for later mega-stations across the Sol system.

By the beginning of the 24th century CEC, the most disastrous effects of the First Earth-Mars War had subsided. While migratory outflow from Earth had become a standard fixture of affairs, the standard of living on the planet had recovered to pre-war levels. Luna's industrial capacity had also made a strong comeback following the impact event, and LunaGov began to further fortify the satellite in the face of continued tensions with Mars. The Lunar Ring project was one of the largest such efforts in human history, aiming to harden Luna against external threat while, in its long-term last stage, further increasing its population capacity by solving the health problems associated with living in microgravity through the inducement of centrifugal pseudo-gravity. Although the full ring station was estimated to take at least two centuries to complete in its full scale, the first stages of the project would be much more modest and see completion within the first few decades of the century. News of the developing anti-ship and anti-asteroid defences on Luna would find its way to Mars, which had embarked on its own defence build-up. The concurrent hardening of Earth-Luna and Mars is sometimes referred to by historian as a "turtle race," with both sides attempting to build impregnable "shells" of planetary defence networks.

The increasing demand for minerals and alloys saw a boom in the development of space mining and refining operations. In conjunction with the Great Migrations to the outer planets, humanity had entered a new era of unprecedented space commerce, economic development, and permanent habitation. Techniques pioneered on Apollo and Neptune permitted the first robotic exploration of Jupiter and Saturn's interior layers, where enormous reserves of metallic liquid hydrogen and other materials could be found. As Saturn possessed the lower gravity of the two gas giants, it became the focus for the first in situ gas giant mining efforts. Of particular interest to prospectors were the "diamondbergs" on Saturn, with access to the large supply of diamond material posing a significant boon to mining efforts across the system. In further union with Titan's exportation of liquid methane and nitrogen, the Saturnian system would soon surpass the Jovian as the most valuable economy in the outer planets. As Saturn's economic draw became increasingly prominent, Titan formally asserted its sovereignty over the whole of the Saturnian moon system through its reform into the First Saturnian Union in 2344 CEC. The new Union was mirrored off that of Earth-Luna, which existed in a similar situation of a satellite wielding executive authority over its parent planet.

As economic clones were slowly being made obsolete by the continued proliferation of more advanced robots, the emphasis which had previously been placed on maintaining their security similarly declined. With the emergence of more complex economic and habitat arrangements in the Jovian and Saturnian systems, it became far easier for economic clones to facilitate their escape and far less worthwhile for their former masters to pursue escaped clones. One of the most significant clone escape episodes of the 24th century came in 2349, when clone workers at the Diove Shipyards in Callisto orbit staged a brazen escape on the instellar solar sailer that they had been working on. With two clones using an asteroid skip to create a debris field impeding pursuit, the occupants of the stolen Feronia managed to clear the Kuiper Belt and are believed to have successfully activated the on-board sleeper devices, allowing them to escape to an uninhabited star system and start a new civilization. After the Feronia incident, economically-produced clones came to be seen by many as more of a risk than a boon, and as such, the overall remaining clone production decreased even further. By the end of the 24th century, robots had overtaken clones as the most widely used means of remote economic exploitation in all of the outer planets.

As economic development, trade, and migration reached new heights in the outer planets, a direct consequence of this growing human presence was the emergence of new security threats. In particular, space pirates based in hidden stations in the Asteroid Belt took advantage of the trade networks and stolen solar sail blueprints to develop low profile, bespoke spacecraft. The proliferation of piracy saw the outer planets make the first significant investments in their own space fleets, signalling an end to the long era of Luna's fleet dominance in the system. Although Luna and some of the outer planets were economically aligned through the Ceres Protocol, there remained a longstanding political strain between Earth-Luna and its former colonial subjects. Especially following the exodus of many from Earth in the aftermath of the First Earth-Mars War, public opinion in the outer planets was cool at best towards LunaGov. This hostility was strongest on Apollo, which received the largest population growth from the Earth-based migrations and also possessed the least significant economic ties with Luna due to its past refusal to enter into the Ceres Protocol. Further, secret overtures were made by the Saturnian government with Mars to explore trade relations, as Mars required an extremely large amount of nitrogen for its long-term terraforming goals.

Resurfacing Earth-Mars tensions

By the middle of the 24th century CEC, the peace between Earth-Luna and Mars had lasted for nearly 90 years. In that time, both planets had undergone significant shifts in their economic and demographic makeup. Especially prominent between the two was the extremely tight network of defences and extensive exonaval fleets which had been developed by both nations. There had been several generations of leadership change between the two polities as well: while corporatist interests had reclaimed the Earth-Lunar government, Mars had fell increasingly under the sway of a populist, single-party pseudo-democracy. In 2353, the revelation that the Saturnian government had entered into secret negotiations with the Martians shocked the political elite of Earth-Luna, who immediately decried the clandestine meetings as in violation of the Ceres Protocol. After making thinly veiled threats against the Saturnian government, the Titan-led union unilaterally withdrew from the Protocol and began an import ban on Lunar goods. The Earth-Luna executive became internally paralyzed over the dispute, with a near-even split on a board vote of whether or not to take military police action to restore trading privileges with Titan as stipulated in the Ceres Protocol.

Although the Jovian Federation had resisted being drawn into the conflict over Saturn's sudden withdrawal, it was soon faced with petitions from both Mars and Titan to follow the latter's lead. The combined forces of Mars and Saturn already outnumbered the Lunar Fleet, and the addition of the Jovian Fleet would make the Lunar positions in the Asteroid Belt entirely untenable. As a central fixture in trade between the rest of the outer planets and the inner planets, however, the Jovian executive remained reluctant to make itself anyone's enemy. In 2354, the Lunar executive began the single largest expansion of the Lunar Fleet in history, hoping to tripe its size and outnumber the rest of the Sol system combined. Luna's policies of hardening its military positions had been extended to its critical infrastructure in the Asteroid Belt, making offensive maneuvers against any Lunar outpost a likely pyrrhic for any would be aggressor. In hopes of weakening Luna's aggressive military build-up, Mars began funding the pirate organizations in the Asteroid Belt to target Lunar transport convoys. Despite the Martian attempts at subtly supplying these pirate bands, evidence of Martian involvement in egregious pirate attacks soon made its way to LunaGov.

In early 2355, LunaGov recognized the futility of a direct assault against Mars itself, which it considered the ideal outcome of any future conflict with the planet. Faced with a direct violation of its peace treaty through the pirate assaults on its civilian convoys, the Lunar executive narrowly voted against a formal declaration of war. Ultimately, it was concluded that a second Earth-Mars conflict would likely be the last, and that if Earth-Luna initiated the conflict now, then it had as little chance of ending it in its favour with certainty. Instead of a direct military response against Mars, Earth-Luna began an ambitious campaign to eradicate piracy in the Asteroid Belt. As the Jovian Federation would not be formally declaring itself for Earth-Luna through assisting in the piracy campaign, the Jovian Fleets came to the assistance of the Lunar Fleet in what came to be known as the Belt Pirates War. In conjunction with its military action against the Mars-backed pirates, Luna launched an espionage campaign against Mars itself, hoping to uncover weaknesses in its planetary defences and potentially sabotage further enhancements to its ground or orbital installations.

By the end of the 2350s, the nearly century-long cold war between Earth-Luna and Mars had been reignited into a new phase of proxy hostility. Both nations accelerated the pace of their military expansion. Luna's mineral edge through its increasingly dominant position in the Asteroid Belt was countered by the allegiance of the Saturnian Union to Mars, with the former supplying the latter with the materials necessary for extending its comparatively weaker mining operations. Most critically to the morale of Mars, the first real steps towards terraforming were being taken by its government, securing the popular opinion to its side in the far more democratically-based political system it had developed.

Second Earth-Mars War

Tensions between Earth-Luna and Mars reached a tipping point in 2359 CEC, almost a century after the Treaty of Deimos. The Second Earth-Mars War began with the Lunar invasion of the Saturn system, in which a convoy of Lunar military vessels successfully inserted itself into Saturn orbit while disguised for most of its voyage as a large Jovian trading fleet. As the Jovian Federation had permitted Luna to use its transponder signals, this implicitly set the Jovians on the side of Earth-Luna. Mars attempted to respond to the Lunar attack against its only ally through action against Lunar positions in the Asteroid Belt, but these were fended off without significant difficulty by the hardened Lunar asteroid outposts. A joint Lunar-Jovian landing force was deployed onto Titan that same year, and the satellite fell to the coalition units by 2361. In the meantime, Mars prepared its own force to side-step Lunar outposts in the Asteroid Belt and invade Jupiter's moons. The attempted Martian invasion of the Jupiter system was a failure for Mars but inflicted heavy damage on Jovian infrastructure; on Saturn, the Lunar-Jovian forces made an effort to minimize collateral damage to civilian and economic infrastructure.

With the Asteroid Belt, Jupiter, and Saturn firmly under the control of the Lunar-Jovian coalition, Mars was once again facing the Sol system's economic and military superpower with no foreign support. Communications beyond Mars were jammed or intercepted by the Lunar coalition, and even despite this, Apollo and Neptune ardently desired to remain neutral in the conflict. While Mars was exonavally outmatched, a hypothetical successful invasion of the planet itself remained far beyond any estimated possibility by the Lunar coalition. Like Luna, Mars had spent nearly a century hardening its orbital defences, in addition to arming and training its civilian population in the event of a foreign invasion. Luna also remained unwilling to utilize extinction-inducing strategies such as bombarding the planet with asteroids, despite the Martian utilization of such methods during the First Earth-Mars War. For several years the two powers remained in an official state of war but made no offensives against each other. A puppet government was established by the Lunar-Jovian coalition on Titan in 2365, which subsequently entered the conflict on the side of its master partners.

There were several attempts by LunaGov to secure a truce with Mars throughout the 2360s, however, Mars was unwilling to negotiate due to intense popular support for continuing the war effort. In 2371, Mars launched a second attempt at striking Lunar positions in the Asteroid Belt. Utilizing overwhelming barrages of missiles from randomized start positions, the Lunar point defence system was eventually unable to match this strategy. Luna responded to this transgression with an immediate counterstrike against the Martian forces positioning themselves around the captured asteroid base, leading to the Battle of 8 Flora. This battle became the war's most consequential, as the Lunar-Jovian victory annihilated the Martian expeditionary fleet and demonstrated critical weaknesses in Luna's own forces. With Mars' temporary loss of strength, a Lunar-Jovian coalition fleet began a long-range bombardment of that planet's orbital defence facilities. The volleys were the largest launched in human history, and the number of missiles flying at any one point in the bombardment numbered in the tens of millions. After months of high volume missile volleys, the Martian defences had been overwhelmed and nearly obliterated. The amount of dust thrown into the atmosphere by the bombardment dimmed the planet's solar irradiance by up to 75% in some latitudinal bands.

With Luna poised to make an attempt at a ground invasion of Mars, the government of that planet activated contingency protocols. Government officials and administrative networks were scattered and moved to secure locations, while civilian outposts and settlements were provided with a large amount of weaponry and an even larger amount of ammunition. As the Lunar-Jovian fleet took position around the planet in 2372, it surprised the Martian government by making a final offer for a truce. Although many in the upper echelons of Mars' civilian and military administration believed that such a truce might be their only chance at survival, the Martian public had become even more viciously opposed to making peace with Luna. The death toll against Mars numbered in the high millions, while Luna and Jupiter's own death toll barely reached into the tens of thousands. Thus, when the Martian government signalled to its intent to accept a truce, the declaration set off a civilian mutiny across the planet. In this way, the Second Earth-Mars War transitioned into the Martian Civil War, with the Lunar-Jovian coalition directly intervening on the side of the truce-accepting Martian government.

Lunar neo-imperialism

Resurgent Lunar dominance

Following the transition of the Second Earth-Mars War into the Martian Civil War, Luna had returned to its original exopolitical position of hegemon in the Sol system. LunaGov established the Martian Occupation Board through the installation into power of both Martian collaborators and foreign experts. The Martian puppet regime had a great deal of difficulty establishing itself as the legitimate successor to the Union of Mars, of which several top leaders had fled to the sanctuary of the rebelling regions of the planet. Those who had not fled to the rebels were put under trial by the Lunar executive board for perpetuating conflict against Luna, despite the fact that it was Luna who had initiated the conflict. While the Luna-backed faction of the civil war had significant advantages in convention surface-air warfare, the Martian loyalists possessed the support of that planet's civilian population; often the most devastating attacks against the Lunar puppet regime were facilitated through its extensive covert network of underground supporters. The conflict would continue even after the Lunar puppet state took nominal control of every major outpost and settlement on the planet, transitioning from open warfare to guerrilla-terrorist tactics.

The situation in the Saturnian system was much more stable than on Mars. The Saturnian civilian population was much less culturally independent than the Martian one, and whereas Mars had cultivated a unique, democratic political system, Saturn's political system had heavily mirrored Luna's before its post-invasion reorganization. The resumption of resource exports from Saturn and its moon Titan were placed at the highest priority of the new puppet government, which under the guidance of Luna and Jupiter had been readmitted into the Ceres Protocol in 2375 CEC. Unlike Mars, which had been placed under a planetary lockdown for the duration of the Martian Civil War, the civilian population of Saturn was afforded the freedom of movement granted to any citizen of Earth-Luna or the Jovian Federation. Many of those who most strongly opposed the Saturnian puppet regime fled the nation to Apollo or Neptune, the only two planets still outside of the reach of Luna's political hegemony.

For the remainder of the 24th century CEC, the planets, planetesimals, and satellites under the renewed Lunar empire grew to quickly catch-up on the economic prosperity missed during the Second Earth-Mars War. Resources from the Saturnian system and the Asteroid Belt poured into Lunar and Jovian manufactories, and humanity reached one of its highest moments of general standard of living by the end of the century. Of all the human-inhabited places benefitting from this arrangement, nowhere was as revitalized as the human home world Earth. For the first time since before the Third World War, Earth experienced major economic and population growth. Advanced telecommunications allowed for the remote-control of many operations directly from the planet, as the Lunar Ring construction project was still underway and long-term habitation of the moon remained somewhat precarious for human health. Eurasia, which had suffered enormously in the Third World War, had once again become the most populous continent in the planet, as migrants from Africa poured into the emergent colonial centres in the Ganges, Yellow, and Dnipro river valleys. With the skyrocketing expectations of the civilian population came a renewed era of general cultural and educational development. The once complacent, beggared peoples of Earth began to emerge as politically conscious and socioeconomically critical.

Pax Telluriana

In the two centuries that followed the reestablishment of Lunar dominion over the Sol system, humanity experienced an unprecedented era of development and peace. Crucial to the maintenance of this peace was the relaxing of autocratic authority wielded by Luna over its political dependents early in the 25th century CEC. The substantial re-emergence of Earth as a centre of cultural, economic, and technological sophistication preceded the potential unravelling of the political arrangement borne throughout the Earth-Lunar Union. The circumstances of this arrangement were renegotiated after rising public dissatisfaction reached a tipping point in the 2410s. In 2417, LunaGov was abolished, and in its place, the Tellurian Federation was established. Mirrored off the success of the Jovian Federation, the top-heavy administration of the Union was replaced with a more balanced and even slightly democratic system which afforded the average citizen a much more enhanced political agency. The individual republics which comprised the Federation were granted autonomy in the administration of a number of domestic capacities such as commerce, education, healthcare, and justice. Still based on Luna, the federal government wielded authority over the allocation of funds and, most importantly, retained complete control over the nation's fleet.

The Martian Civil War came to a complete end in 2433, after over sixty years of open and guerrilla fighting. The Martian Occupation Board had transitioned into the Second Union of Mars in 2385, utilizing a framework of reorganization which mirrored the previous Union's democratic and autonomist strengths while compensating with a more powerful executive core. In 2422, after a great deal of negotiation between the Martian and Tellurian governments, an agreement to enter the individual Union States of Mars as Republics in the Tellurian Federation was reached. Those still loyal to the cause of an independent and system-dominant Mars had been on a slow decline since the beginning of the Martian Civil War, and generations of new Martians raised under the Second Union were much more accustomed to and contented by the pleasant lifestyle afforded to them through that system. Hence, participation in anti-Lunar activities became marginalized, and as the public favour drifted towards the Second Union, the number of actions taken by the rebels fell in lock-step. The integration of the Second Union into the Tellurian Federation came with widespread public approval amid an unprecedented era of cooperation and peace between the Sol system's largest human worlds.

Upon the finalization of Mars' accession into the Tellurian Federation in 2425, its claims from Mercury to the Asteroid Belt rebuilt a contiguous area of exopolitical control which had not been seen since the earliest days of Lunar imperialism. At the middle of the 25th century, the space ruled from Luna constituted the most expansive area of territory under cohesive and effective control of a single human polity. Resource extraction from the Asteroid Belt reached a record level alongside trade volumes with the outer planets. The three political entities bound to the Ceres Protocol, Telluria, Jupiter, and Saturn, led the Sol system into a historical moment known today as the Pax Telluriana, the name modelled off the ancient Pax Romana and Pax Britannica of past human history. The Great Migrations began to wind down as civil satisfaction on Earth and Mars reached new heights. Immigration to the outer planets slowed substantially too, although not as sharply as immigration out of the Sol system. Apollo and Neptune experienced intermittent economic contractions throughout the early Pax Telluriana due to their distance from the inner planets and political status as beyond the Ceres Protocol. In a marked contrast, economic growth on Jupiter and Saturn was much more sustained. Particularly, Saturn, with a gravity force similar to that of Earth, began to rival Apollo as the most populous of the outer planets proper (the combined population of the Jovian moons still outnumbered the population of Apollo for much of this period).

Inner system developments

Throughout the late 25th and early 26th centuries, the Tellurian Federation progressed through a series of milestones. The Lunar Ring came into full operation in 2489 CEC, roughly four decades ahead of schedule. The Ring permitted long-term habitation on Luna without the health complications of prolonged exposure to microgravity through the use of centrifugally-generated pseudogravity. In order to compensate for the perturbations in the body's sense of balance, vestibular implants were developed to "trick" one's perception of balance. Non-implant alternatives resembling at first headphones and later earplugs allowed others to visit the Ring station without invasive surgery. Spanning the Lunar equator, the Ring was visible from Earth throughout most of its construction, and its completion was considered a poetic moment of national pride throughout the Federation. Luna quickly grew in population, rivalling the population of Mars within a mere five decades of the Ring's completion. The development of the vestibular implants and non-invasive devices further allowed for the centralized monitoring of Luna's population, with various associated benefits such as early warnings over health problems and a near-impossibility of evading law enforcement. Thus, the Lunar Ring came to be known as the safest place to live in the Sol system, and paired with its open doors immigration policy, it would continue to outpace any other celestial body in terms of population growth throughout the Pax Telluriana.

The completion of the Lunar Ring brought with it a major surplus of industrial and engineering capacity in the Federation. With this, the Federation embarked on an ambitious campaign of works projects with the goal of further concentrating and expanding the economic resilience of the inner planets. Notably, the Federation began settlement operations on the hostile worlds of Mercury and Venus, exploring methods of permanent habitation and economic exploitation. For the first time in history, a government based on Luna approved a long-term plan for the terraforming of Mars into a more openly habitable world. The near-exit of the Federation from the concept of resource scarcity permitted a large leeway in terms of economic aftershock of executive decisions, and the moves towards the development of Mars placated what little opposition remained to the planet's membership in the Federation. In addition to these planet-based initiatives, the Tellurian federal government aimed to expand its number of space stations inside of and throughout the Asteroid Belt. Of particular interest was the cementing of Tellurian control in the middle Asteroid Belt through he construction of a Lunar Ring-like station around the major dwarf planet Ceres. The Cerien Ring began construction in 2509, with expectations to be completed sometime in the mid-late 26th century due to its much smaller size than the Lunar Ring.

Infrastructure projects involving Mercury and Venus were initiated around the same time as the Ceres Ring. Tidally locked to Sol, a plan was devised to build another ring-type station around the meridian band of Mercury, the Mercurian Ring, fuelled by the largest solar array in human history spanning the Sol-facing side of the planet. Experiments in the improvement of interplanetary propulsion methods led to the development of the microwave sail, a variant of the solar sail which used artificially produced microwave vibrations to provide substantially more thrust than could be harnessed from natural solar wind. Microwave relay stations were to be built across the inner solar system, and after the system's successful implementation by the 2520s, this relay network was extended to the outer planet members of the Ceres Protocol. The largest microwave relay device was to be constructed on Mercury, meant to be powerful enough to transmit energy from its extensive solar array to any relay station in the inner planets. The advent of the microwave relay and its implementation saw the emergence of use of the technology to transmit energy produced on one body to another. Microwave relays were thus constructed in every planetary Lagrange point across the inner system, creating the largest energy and transportation infrastructure network in human history.

Venus became somewhat of an outlier when compared to the projects undertaken elsewhere by the Federation. Despite their engineering successes on Mercury and in the Asteroid Belt, the many Tellurian attempts to penetrate the Venusian veil proved unsuccessful. The resources available in the upper atmosphere of the planet were already plentiful from other sources in the system, and the lower atmosphere of the planet was even more difficult to penetrate than the more resource-rich equivalent gas and ice giants in the outer system. By 2530, federal interest in the development of Venus had ceased, and resources were directed towards the already taxing efforts underway on Mercury, Mars, and Ceres.

Outer planets expansion

Throughout the 26th century, the junior members of the Ceres Protocol would experience sustained economic and population growth. While Telluria remained in control of the mineral resources of the Asteroid Belt, providing it with an abundance of iron, silicon, and various rarer metals, the Jovian and Saturnian systems remained important industrial sources of sulphur, nitrogen, and molecular hydrogen. Trade between the Ceres Protocol members included that of technological and infrastructural supports, allowing both Jupiter and Saturn a greater ease of transportation with the Tellurian worlds. Consequentially, the Jovian and Saturnian systems would see a continuous, albeit small influx of immigrants throughout the Pax Telluriana. Apollo and Neptune, on the other hand, had endured long periods of stagnation due to drop-offs in the rate of population in-flow. The rising standard of living among the Ceres Protocol was the most important factor in this population flow decline, and their position outside the Ceres Protocol made their adoption of the recent innovations in space transportation a more slowly acquired technology.

By the middle of the 26th century, microwave sails and microwave relays became more standardized across the two outermost planets. The construction of relay nodes in the furthest reaches of the Sol system saw a subsequent increase in the speed of transportation from Apollo and Neptune into the inner region of the system. Most crucially, the microwave sail technology permitted for the first time a reliable method of transportation into and back from the furthest reaches of the Sol system: the Kuiper Belt. While the Kuiper Belt had previous been host to many prospectors and explorers, its distance from Sol made solar sails less efficient in the region, in conjunction with its overall distance from major population centres in the system and the abundance of elemental resources in the Asteroid Belt. The microwave sail permitted Apollo and Neptune the first feasible opportunities for economic exploitation of the Kuiper Belt's resources. While Neptune was located more proximate to the Kuiper Belt, it could not compete on any level with the much more populous and technologically developed Apollo; the brief Pluto Crisis of 2559 saw the unconditional end of Neptune's attempts at exerting sovereignty over the whole of the Trans-Neptunian region and its assumption into an Apollonian-led hegemony.

With Neptune subjugated and microwave relays built throughout the Plutonian orbital region, Apollo began to experience an economic renaissance that lifted the ice giant out of its long stagnation. In compensation for its relative lack of population as compared to the planets of the Ceres Protocol, Apollo became a powerhouse of robotics innovation and application. Resources extracted through automated space mining operations were processed in autonomous production facilities on its satellites Umbriel, Titania, and Oberon. Automated transportation of these goods to the buoyant habitats in the Apollonian atmosphere facilitated a marked improvement in the per capita wealth of the Apollonian population. With their material needs catered to autonomously, Apollonians themselves grew to stand at the forefront of cultural and scientific achievement. By the end of the 26th century, the quality of life on Apollo rivalled that of life on Earth or Luna.

Earth-Apollo paradigm

Discovery of Comet Ambrosia

By the early 27th century CEC, Apollo stood as the closest rival of the Tellurian Federation in terms of economic power and technological achievement. Apollo had quickly expanded throughout the Kuiper Belt, firmly asserting political control over the Sol system beyond its planetary orbit. Relations with the Ceres Protocol members were icy, and trade between the Luna-led Protocol states and Apollo was minimal. While there existed little goodwill between the two major political blocs, neither side was interested in conflict nor laid claim or necessity to the territory possessed by the other. The resource needs of the Ceres Protocol members were met entirely within their own borders, and the same situation was true of Apollo. Both blocs also were experiencing a deep socioeconomic harmony, with the standard of living throughout the system standing unparalleled by any other era of human history. Migration had come to a standstill, except from Earth to the various idyll habitats constructed by the Tellurian federal government.

In 2612 CEC, the Comet Ambrosia was detected by the Apollonian astronomy network in the Kuiper Belt. Originally termed 2612 X4, the comet's vector implied an orbit around Sol whose estimated period was roughly equal to 26,000 years. While comet discoveries were relatively common to Kuiper Belt astronomers, 2612 X4 emitted what was at first thought to be anomalous data regarding the trace presence of organic compounds in its tail. Further observation confirmed that the readings were in fact accurate, and a surface sampling of the comet was authorized by the Apollonian Astronomical and Astrophysical Research Council. The findings of the investigation yielded one of the most significant scientific discoveries of recent human space exploration: the discovery of extraterrestrial life. The 2612 X4 organism (later referred to as the Ambrosian organism) was submicroscopic and at first believed to resemble a virus in its make-up. The most astonishing feature of this organism was its inherent longevity; sampling of Comet 2612 X4 revealed that the organism was embedded in ice formed not long after the formation of the entire Sol system.

Despite an initially incredulous reaction from Tellurian scientists, the discoveries made by the Apollonians were verified. Further research into the organism soon became a matter facilitated by agencies throughout the system. The comet itself was placed under guard by the Apollonian fleet, and by the end of the decade, a significant portion of the Apollonian administration believed it would be in their national interest to alter the comet's trajectory permanently so as to prevent its entrance into Ceres Protocol space. Using a technique similar to asteroid redirection, the comet was put into a stable orbit around Apollo in 2623, despite strong protests from the Tellurian, Jovian, and Saturnian governments. The incident was the first serious exopolitical wedge driven between the Ceres Protocol and Apollo, as it was the opinion of experts throughout Protocol governments that Apollo' intentions with regards to the comet could not be trusted. Although the threat of military conflict remained a distant possibility at best, the fact that conflict emerged as a possibility at all for analysts on either side signalled the emergence of a new exopolitical era in the Sol system.

Tellurian build-up and Apollonian immortality

The 2612 X4 incident of 2623 CEC outlined a new dynamic in the political affairs of the Sol system. The Tellurian Federation had entrenched itself in the inner system, focusing on internal development, while Apollo expanded into the furthest reaches of the outer system. Jupiter and Saturn remained members of the Ceres Protocol, economically and politically linked to Telluria. Neither the existing superpower of Telluria nor the emergent superpower of Apollo desired an open confrontation, but the actions of the Apollonians disturbed the Tellurian government, which feared that Apollo' outward facing position towards expansion would soon threaten the outer planet members of the Ceres Protocol. The member worlds of the Protocol thus embarked on a military build-up unseen since before the beginning of the Pax Telluriana. Apollo responded with a hardening of its own military forces and defensive networks around Apollo, fearing that the actions of the Protocol member states were indicative of an offensive posture against its home world.

While the diplomatic and military manoeuvres of conflict drew clearer, research into the 2612 X4 organism yielded significant fruit. The four billion year old organism existed in a state of inanimate suspension until introduced into an environment with other microscopic life; upon coming into contact, it acted as a "reverse virus," extracting the genetic code of the contacted cells and replicating copies of those cells and itself until the artificially supplied source of energy and material was expended. In effect, when applied to larger sizes of organism, the 2612 X4 organism went as far as "reversing" the process of senescence. According to this research, it was hypothesized that the introduction of the organism into the human body would effectively halt the processing of aging, allowing for a lifespan of indefinite length. The significance of this discovery was considered so great that the news was initially kept a strict secret to all beyond the research team and the highest levels of the Apollonian government.

The first human trials were conducted in early 2626. Results found that introducing even small amounts of the organism into the human body caused the eventual production of a symbiotic stasis between itself and the body. Consequently, those affected by the organism existed in a state of biological perpetuity, in which dying cells were replaced by non-deteriorating copies. While the organ networks across the body seemed evenly replicated, the 2612 X4 organism was less perfect at replicating cells in the central nervous and reproductive systems, meaning that senescence-induced effects on those area of the body could not be "reversed" by the organism's reproduction process. Nonetheless, the trials proved that the organism was capable of conferring an apparent "immortality" upon the affected individual. When the results of this trial were repeated several more times, it was then that the Apollonian government authorized a public release of the research findings. The news rocked Apollonian society, with the reaction moving from a shocked to celebratory character: in essence, Apollonian research had found a way for individuals to escape death. It would not be long before the Apollonian government moved to offer immortality to all those who desired it in 2631, which at the time consisted of the near-entirety of its living population.

The reaction of the Ceres Protocol member states was at first one of denial, as claims were levied against the Apollonian government of fraudulent research. The Apollonian government made little effort to counter these claims, however, as its own public rated the research as highly trustworthy. The Apollonian public found the research sufficiently trustworthy that over 88% of its population had chosen to undergo immortalization by the end of 2632. It was at this point that the comet became known as Ambrosia and the organism the Ambrosian organism, a reference to the food of the gods in Greek mythology which conferred upon them immortality and health.

Capitulatory War

The hostility between the Ceres Protocol polities and Apollo came to a head in 2639 CEC, when a fleet led by the Tellurian Federation was assembled in the Saturnian system. From the moment that the vector of this fleet could be obviously tracked, it became clear to Apollonian military intelligence that it was on a direct course towards Apollo. Apollo had prepared for this eventuality and put into motion a great deception which had long since been determined as the proper response to such a transgression. The Tellurian-led fleet detected the presence of no defensive vessels in Apollo orbit: some saw this as a trap and urged the fleet command to reconsider their approach. These fears were allayed by information from the Tellurian military observatory which confirmed that Apollo orbit was completely unguarded by any Apollonian military vessels; even the valuable Comet Ambrosia was determined to have nothing stationed in its defence. As the seemingly complete lack of defences around Apollo became increasingly worrisome for many in the Protocol coalition fleet, it followed orders to press on regardless. This invasion force's arrival would lead to the only true space battle in what is now known as the Capitulatory War: the Battle of Apollo.

Upon entering Apollonian orbit, the Protocol's coalition fleet came under heavy fire from directed energy weapons appearing to their instruments from out of nowhere. In reality, the Apollonian weapons had been successfully concealed by electromagnetic dispersement on all of Apollo' 27 satellites. The combined use of experimental directed energy weapons and electromagnetic cloaking was considered by some to be a serious gamble: staking their capital planet on two experimental technologies was a serious matter of controversy among its high ranking military planners. However, the utter destruction of the Tellurian-led fleet proved the technologies resoundingly successful. With the bulk of the Ceres Protocol fleet power annihilated in a single encounter, the Jovian and Saturnian governments immediately began secret proceedings to secure peace with the Apollonian. After the shock from the news of their failure wore off, the Tellurian Federation resolved to see the war through; reconstruction efforts were put underway and positions across their core space underwent significant hardening.

The Jovian-Saturnian capitulation of the Apollonians was relatively brief and even considered by some historians to be more of a political event than a military one. Saturn surrendered to the Apollonians as soon as their forces arrived in the planetary system, with Apollonian robotic forces securing positions bloodlessly at every major habitat. Jupiter also made no attempt to resist the arrival of the Apollonian fleet, and by the end of 2640, the whole of the Sol system beyond the Asteroid Belt was under Apollonian administration or occupation. The Tellurian Federation had spent the two centuries prior to the outbreak of the war turning the inner planets into a fortress, and while the loss of the bulk of their naval forces disheartened and weakened them, their defensive lines in the Asteroid Belt remained a hypothetically significant obstacle to any invasion force and a major source of public morale. It was another major shock to the Tellurians, then, when the Apollonian fleet seemingly side-stepped this defensive line and appeared in the Earth-Luna system in early 2641. The fighting during the Seizure of Luna lasted a mere nine minutes before the satellite was under the control of the Apollonians. With the loss of Luna, the political and military apparatus that remained of the Federation had no choice but to capitulate unconditionally.

Thus, in one of the shortest space conflicts in the history, Apollo achieved the de jure unification of the entirety of the Sol system, a political situation unparalleled in human history. Many scholars agree that it was Apollo' application of as-of-yet untested weaponry which afforded it a total victory over its adversaries. However, there are others who believe that the seemingly miraculous victory of the Apollonians over the remainder of the Sol system is, in reality, a fabrication of past historians from a much more juvenile Apollonian society. Nonetheless, from 2641 onwards, political power in the Sol system had irrevocably shifted to a new axis around Apollo.

Establishment of the Ecumene

The Ecumene was established in 2642 CEC, following the end of the Capitulatory War.

The Conference of Planets and Moons was held in 2642 CEC on Apollo. While the Apollonian government had implemented full control of every human habitat in the Sol system through its robotic forces, its highest levels desired to create a cohesive, participatory political system which would win the trust of the public and last for centuries. The Conference fielded representatives from every human-inhabited celestial body in the system; the old political ordering of satellites with their planets was to be abolished in favour of one that treated every celestial object as equal partners in a political enterprise. Pursuant to this goal, the Apollonians offered the leaders of Sol's celestial bodies the gift of ambrosia; in exchange for immortality, they would rule their respective worlds in accordance with the accession of the Synod, which was to wield ultimate political authority in the newly founded Ecumene. While some representatives made more theatrical displays of their obeisance, in the end, all consented to the arrangement and the accession of the Ecumene as the sovereign political body of the whole Sol system.

The early rule of the Ecumene was defined by constant upheaval across much of the system. Many on Mercury, Earth, Luna, Mars, Ceres, and the Jovian moons resented the at first dictatorial rule of the Ecumene through its autonomous robotic forces. The nonconsensual manner in which the Ecumene had seized control over their previously free worlds greatly perturbed citizens of centuries-old political orders. While the Conference of Planets and Moons had won the Synod the support of much of the ruling classes of these worlds, those underneath these apparatuses chafed under the expected status of subject that they felt had been assigned to them in their deprivation of political agency. Unwilling to countermand its newly minted political arrangements, the Synod chose a path of non-intervention in the domestic affairs of its subject planets and satellites. Instead, it offered these celestial bodies assistance with the economic restructuring necessary to placate their publics. Further, it backed this economic support with military materiel.

The robotic police models which the Synod provided to its subjects possessed various digital backdoors that meant they remained unwaveringly loyal in their usage to the Synod. In addition to providing the means to ensure stability on the subject bodies themselves, the Synod reorganized the Apollonian fleet into the Ecumenical Navy, which was permitted to consist of personnel from any member of the Ecumene. The Ecumenical Guard was established soon after to supplement the defensive nature of the Fleet with an independent, civilian policing agency whose jurisdiction covered the whole of the system and whose mandate came directly from the Synod itself. These young institutions managed to prevent any outright uprisings against the new Ecumenical order, and over time, the populations across all of the Ecumene's member bodies slowly grew to accept the arrangement. While the unification of the Sol system at first seriously disrupted its economy, but by the end of the 27th century, this trend was in reverse. The strong, resurgent systemwide economy in conjunction with a stable political order firmly cemented the Ecumene's establishment despite the uncertainty of its first years.

Later 3rd millennium

Systemwide developments

In the three and a half centuries that followed the establishment of the Ecumene, the whole of the Sol system experienced a period of radical cultural, economic, social, and technological development. Human amalgamations on every celestial body of the system were affected by the introduction of the Ecumene. Barriers on migration and trade were lifted. Resources were distributed at a level of equity which had never before occurred. Abstracted from political life, the civilian population of the Ecumene boomed and flourished. The ring station model which had been perfected by the now extinct Tellurian Federation was applied throughout the Sol system, improving the standard of living in the outer planets. Advancements in gene editing and therapy saw the average human life expectancy increased to roughly 160 years in age. Apollonians, which came to refer to those who had the ambrosian organism introduced into them, lived throughout the whole period: whereas previously some doubted their supposed immortality, by the end of the millennium, it had become a universally accepted fact. As the Ecumene led the Sol system to the zenith of human civilization, all opposition to its rule faded into history.

One of the most profoundly transformed aspects of human society in the late 3rd millennium was economic development and function. Even before the establishment of the Ecumene, Apollo had made serious strides in the advancement of robotic economic activity, allowing their population to live lives dedicated to the arts and sciences. Their advanced, automated economy would come to encompass the whole of the Sol system. The ageless concept of an individual's occupation was transformed by this: whereas previously most people were economically necessitated to separate their personal interests from their occupations, one's occupation came to refer to the activities with which one passed their life pursuing. This transition did not signal the end of work as a concept, but rather, one's work became synonymous with any activity by which the human being expressed its existence upon the world. For some, these occupations resembled those of past civilizations in their manner of operation, expressed in fields such as engineering or medicine, but for all, the motivations for pursuing occupations had been transformed from one of capital gain to purely personal achievement.

Throughout the 28th and 29th centuries CEC, as generations were born into the rule of the Ecumene, this new socioeconomic reality slowly became normalized. The proliferation of robotic economies across the system reached its finality by the end of the 29th century. With a massive, systemwide production of resources resulting in an equivalently massive capacity for construction, ring stations soon became common throughout the inner and outer planets. By the end of the millennium, every outer planetary system had at least one ring station, and some even had two. In addition to the widespread availability of ring habitats, populations and their respective settlements on planets also flourished. The only planet to see intermittent stagnation and even decline in population during the era immediately following its absorption into the Ecumene was Earth, as migration to the new habitats and planets was encouraged by the Ecumenical advisors to the Earth government. Human sprawl on Earth was similarly reduced through the adoption of arcologies present across other planets in the Sol system; consequently, Earth's biosphere reached records of diversity and stability unseen since before the human Industrial Revolution.

One of the most profound changes of human space civilization in the later 3rd millennium was the enhancement and expansion of microwave sail vessels. Whereas previously exopolitical barriers meant that human travel was limited to one's respective bloc, the freedom of transit introduced by the Ecumene permitted a more general apprehension of travel to any regular civilian. Additionally, the delimitation of availability of spacecraft with their mass production in the automated economy meant that generally any human adult had access to microwave sail spacecraft. A new, interplanetary culture of human thus emerged: one whose home was synonymous with their spacecraft and whose years were spent travelling the system. Skilled in engineering and piloting by circumstance, these Exterians would become the roaming backbone of the Ecumenical Navy and the forerunners of the Ecumene's coming expansion into interstellar space.

First interstellar expansion

In 2889 CEC, the Ecumenical Navy Science Division opened its first inquiry into the possibility of expanding Ecumene-controlled space to the nearest stellar neighbours of Sol. The human settlement in the Alpha Centauri system had been known to observers in the Sol system since its inception during the Great Migrations. Contact with that colony had even been intermittently facilitated through controlled emissions bursts from both stars. It was a single contact thought to be from the human settlement indicative of problem which spurred the Ecumenical Navy to investigate the possibility of absorbing it into the Ecumene. The Fleet's Science Division began drafting plans for an interstellar vessel which would be capable of achieving the golden ratio of subliminal speed known today as mintimaxis, or, minimum time dilation for maximum speed, which is equivalent to roughly 70.7107% of the speed of light. At this speed, a vessel travels as close as it possibly can to the speed of light while incurring the lowest possible level of the time dilation effect.

The result of the Science Division's drafting drew comparisons to the ships of the Great Migrations: a massive interstellar vessel known as an Astroliner to be propelled by a combination of microwave sail and nascent fusion burst propulsion technology. The most striking feature of the explainer in comparison to other contemporary ships of the Sol system was its enormous size: a single astroliner would be capable of ferrying a million to a million and a half people across interstellar space at once depending on the exact configuration of the vessel. To supplement these larger vessels, the Science Division developed the Astrocruiser, a fully military-scientific vessel thats size would permit a similar propulsion system but at the same time have much less mass dedicated to the ferrying of passengers or cargo. A single astroliner would travel in a convoy with several astrocruisers between star systems. Additionally, astrocruisers could carry out scouting and minor settlement-building missions in which an entire astroliner would not be necessary. By the end of the 29th century, shipyards across the Sol system were underway with the construction of these new, comparatively massive vessels.

The first astroliner was completed in 2911, designated as the Orion, with a second, the Tiamat, completed in 2919. By 2920, nine astrocruisers had been completed to compliment the astroliners. The Orion departed the Sol system in late 2920 accompanied by five astrocruisers, with its intended destination being Proxima Centauri. Travelling at mintimaxis, it would take roughly five years from a local and an Earth-observers perspective for the Orion to arrive at its destination. The Tiamat would depart for Proxima Centauri only a few months after its sister ship, accompanied by the four remaining astrocruisers. According to reports from the crew of the Orion, the human settlement on Proxima Centauri was astonished to receive observational reports of an incoming vessel from the Sol system the size of the Orion. Human civilization in the Proxima Centauri system was small and had grown similarly to that of Apollo; however, it had long since been in a state of intermittent population decline and stagnation as well as economic stasis. Much like Apollo, it had relied heavily on robotics to make up for its lack of manpower, and as a result, its population had become universally highly educated and of a standard of living that amounted to near-constant pampering.

Most notably, the Proximans, as they came to be referred to, had suffered from an uprising of artificially intelligent robots around the same time as the Second Earth-Mars War in the mid-late 24th century. In the five centuries that followed this uprising, the Proximans had become something between pets and wards of their robotic servants, whose data-sharing network had evolved into a swarm intelligence with the sole collective purpose of pampering and protecting their human creators. Upon the arrival of the Ecumenical astroliner-cruiser convoy, it became clear that the true source of the strange transmissions from Proxima Centauri was in reality a misinterpreted communication between the robotic protectors and not a distress call from the human colonists. The first encounter between the Ecumenical vessels and the Proximan protectors was one of peaceful communication and mutual understanding. In exchange for voluntarily joining the Ecumene, the Proximan protectors would receive full recognition of authority over Asylum (formerly known as Proxima b), as well as influence over the establishment of an Ecumenical settlement on Proxima d christened as Soter, which was to receive a Mercury-like ring station for its permanent habitat powered by a Mercury-like massive solar array on the sunward side of the planet.

Tellurian Renaissance

After several centuries under the administration of the Ecumene, Earth's population slowly reached a stable point at five and a half billion inhabitants, under half its peak at the beginning of the 3rd millennium. While its population had experienced a slow decline, per capita productivity on the planet was raised almost immediately by the adoption of Apollonian technologies. After centuries of their application, Earth came to rival its political mother of Apollo for absolute influence over Ecumenical civilization. The most profound impacts to human life on Earth came through the adoption of the arcology habitat structure, in which humans lived in wholly urban environments and the rest of the planet was cordoned off into natural reserves.

In the late 27th century, this arrangement was formalized through the creation of its Metropoli and Exclusion Zones. Those areas in which humans were permitted to settle were limited to these arcologies, and all other parts of the planet were dedicated for native animal and plant life. The long-term consequences of this division became apparent towards the end of the 3rd millennium. Animal and plant populations and diversity levels reached pre-Industrial levels, and through the application of advanced Apollonian genetic manipulation technology, species that had gone extinct or become problematically dominant after the Second and Third World Wars were being revived and reintroduced into the wild. Through ecology management, Earth became a veritable paradise, and, up to that point, no other garden-like world had yet been discovered by the Ecumene.

In addition to the flourishing of the Earth's biosphere, its human inhabitants became some of the most measuredly happy in the Sol system. Portions of the Exclusion Zones were opened into parks that permitted touristic visits from across the system. In conjunction with the arcologies, Earth became a magnet for migrants. After its population stabilized around the mid-29th century, it began to increase again by the beginning of the 4th millennium. Access to extensive greeneries, a lack of material scarcity, and widespread educational attainment made the planet one of the most desirable places to live. A common phrase of speech from the end of the 3rd millennium quipped that humanity had spent one thousand years exploring resource-laden space to find that Earth would remain unmatched in value.

Alongside the flourishing of Earth, Mars had benefitted from the acceptance of Ecumenical administration towards the goal of terraforming the planet. Major infrastructural projects initiated in the Pre-Capitulatory War era were further augmented and granted higher priority under the rule of the Ecumene. The most important and technologically challenging of these projects was the Martian Magnetic Shield; a massive structure which was to bore down to the molten core of the planet from its northern and southern poles. At each pole, a gargantuan generator would create a magnetic dipole via channeling electric current through Mars' molten core and sustaining it indefinitely. The effort saw several failed initial attempts throughout the period of the Pre-Capitulatory War and even during the Ecumene: it would not be until the late 29th century that the Magnetic Shield was successfully initialized. The creation of a planetary magnetic field required an immense amount of electric energy, and throughout the late 3rd millennium, the microwave relay system connecting the power grids of every planet had to be increasingly enhanced for efficiency of power transfer. In addition, Mercury's solar grid underwent significant refurbished and Mars was made host to an enormous array of nuclear fission power facilities throughout its northern and southern polar regions.

The Magnetic Shield project measured a successful prevention of solar wind-stripping of the Martian atmopshere that is believed to have been the largest factor in the decline of its atmosphere previously capable of hosting of liquid water. Throughout the 3rd millennium, enormous stores of gaseous and liquid nitrogen had been accumulated on the planet through trade agreements with Titan, waiting for their application in the event that the problem of the magnetic field was solved. Upon the implementation, activation, and measured result of the Magnetic Shield program, the deployment of terraforming gasses were approved by the Ecumenical Synod and its Martian counterpart. While the process was expected to take centuries longer, a breathable Martian atmosphere was finally in the sights of human civilization. The infrastructural and logistical sophistication required to reach this level had mad a marked effect upon the Martians themselves; Apollonian gene editing and manipulation saw the advent of a population solely focused on maximizing engineering and scientific output. Resultantly, Martians slowly developed an innate tendency towards quick reactions and high abstract reasoning skills; their manipulation of their nervous capacities came to be accepted and even encouraged by the Apollonian.

Hence, while Earth embraced its natural heritage, Mars pursued its artificial endeavours. The dichotomy of these two planets under Ecumenical rule represented the closest thing the Ecumene could possible engender to the sociopolitical divisions of past human societies; one planet and its people immersed in beauty of a natural world, another planet and its people racing towards an ambitious and uniquely human achievement. The last two centuries of the 3rd millennium thus gave rise to what is now termed the Tellurian Renaissance, a period of civilizational realignment towards the flourishing of human life in the inner planets in their own endemic methods. This Renaissance is often contrasted with the orientation of the outer planet humans, who had embarked on their own expeditions deeper afield into the stars. At the end of the 3rd millennium, humanity was growing up and out, naturally and artificially, all at the same shared moment of peace and prosperity.

Early 4th millennium

Expansion to Barnard's Star and Sirius

A star map showing the stars subject to Ecumenical authority; note the inclusion of the Sirian Vector as a line leading from Sirius to Sol.

After the successful integration of Proxima Centauri into the Ecumene, the astroliner fleet would be further expanded and upgraded to facilitate further exploration of stars close to the Sol system, beginning with those believed to be the subject of human colonization during the Great Migrations. In addition to colonial star systems, the interstellar expansion of the Ecumene would also target select stars intended to be developed for resource extraction and astrophysics research: namely, these would be Barnard's Star and Sirius. With Sirius in particular, the Ecumenical Navy began to use the star's high luminosity as a marker from which the position of the Sol system could be calculated should Sol itself not be visible; this marking eventually became known as the Sirian Vector, a common addition to star maps published by the Ecumenical Navy Science Division's Cartography Bureau.

The second overall star system to be visited by an Ecumene astroliner would be Barnard's Star in 3006, after a seven year and seven month voyage of the Orion and its escorts. As Barnard's Star was believed to be uncolonized, only one astroliner was sent to the system. Upon the arrival of the Orion at Barnard's Star orbit, however, it became immediately obvious that human colonization had been attempted in the system. The sole super-earth orbiting Barnard's Star possessed extensive ruins of a hitherto unknown human colony that was estimated to have been destroyed at least three centuries before the arrival of the Orion. The extensive surface colony was structured very similarly to the early human habitats on Mars, leading the ranking Ecumenical Navy Science Officer of the Orion at the time to conclude that the Barnard's Star colony was one of the earliest extrasolar human colonies and possibly among the first to be visited by a solsailing colony vessel. Evidence among the ruins demonstrated that the original colonists chose to leave the planet, with almost all of the damage being attributed to controlled deconstruction or environmentally-based decay. Although the exact reasoning for the abandonment of the original colony remains undetermined, the most commonly held theory among exoarchaeologists in the contemporary period is that the colonists accumulated enough resources to expand their colony fleet and set course for a planet which had more environmentally desirable conditions for surface habitation.

The Orion left a small contingent of Apollonian scientists and established an exploratory hub for the development of an Ecumenical colony in the Barnard system. The astroliner would return to Sol in 3014, after spending nearly a year in orbit of the system's sole planet. While Orion was already on its return course to Sol, the astroliner Tiamat had been underway to Sirius, where it arrived after a ten and a half year journey in 3010. The Sirius system possessed no evidence of previous habitation by humans, likely owing to the fact that the star system had no planets and that the intensity of radiation produced by its binary star system would make close-occupancy near those stars highly undesirable. Unlike in the Barnard system, where efforts were made to start resource extraction, the Sirius system was to be solely the object of observation and study. A pseudogravity-bearing space station would be constructed in orbit of Sirius B, similar to those in the Sol system located closely to Sol itself, with the station to be manned by a staff of Apollonians and robotic assistants. Tiamat would return to the Sol system in 3024, after spending four years spearheading the construction projects in the Sirius system.

The Ecumenical outposts in the Barnard and Sirius systems would be given differing development goals by the Ecumenical Synod. The colony in the Barnard system would see the eventual development of a civilian population with the continuously growing presence of resource and research operations on its terrestrial planet. In time, the colony would come to resemble those in the Proxima Centauri system; a human population largely living in artificial habitats fed by a resource supply chain that was primarily planet-based as opposed to asteroid based. Regular astroliner service would be established between the Barnard's Star colony in the Sol system in the same manner as between Sol and Proxima Centauri. The Ecumenical outpost in the Sirius system, however, would remain small in scope. Expansion would be anchored to its original space station, which itself would never achieve a resident population of non-Apollonian humans. The Sirius research outpost became something of a dreaded assignment among members of the Ecumenical Navy due to its remoteness from any civilian centres and its small, long-term appointed crew. Both systems, however, would become viewed as core components of the Ecumene to the authorities in the Fleet and Synod.

Human divergences and social changes

By the early 4th millennium, after almost a thousand years as a spacefaring species, the divergence in the disparate human populations of the Sol system began to appear most sharply. While all subsets of human beings possessed a broad phenotypic similarity well into their divergences, the result of minute environmental differentiation came into clear and expressive form. The most notable differentiation came in the form of stature with regards to the gravitational background of the human population. Well before the wide proliferation of pseudogravitational planetary constructs, such stature anomalies had become well known results of rearing humans in low and zero gravity environments. Regulations introduced by Earth-Luna in the early-middle 3rd millennium aimed to minimize the destructive instances of such anomalies, but, especially among the populations in the outer planets, these regulations were at first unenforceable and later often disregarded entirely. As a result, human populations that lived a prolonged portion of their formative years in low or zero gravity environments began to experience such divergence well before the beginning of the 4th millennium.

A striking feature of these early divergences were the distinctly lower lifespans lived by humans in the outer planets and even in non-Earth environments. Cancer was widespread due to high exposure to various forms of ionizing radiation, especially in the earliest days of human expansion, leaving the divergent population fairly limited in scope and facing significantly poorer reproductive outcomes than their Earth-born cousins. Cancer treatment capability thus became the predominating factor in the size of a naturally growing extraterrestrial human population; by the time of the Capitulatory War, cancer treatment was more often than not successful, especially in the outer planets where health providers had become the most skilled doctors in that regard. After the breakdown of political barriers on technological exchange following the establishment of the Ecumene, cancer treatment outcomes substantially improved across all human populations in the Sol system. As a result of this, the biological divergences that had begun in the middle of the 3rd millennium began to pick up exponentially into the 4th millennium. Combined with gene editing, these divergences would produce the various human cultigens that are known in the Sol system in the contemporary period.

Although the timeframes in which each cultigen diverged from the "baseline" (i.e., non-edited and non-phenotypically divergent) cannot be discretely mapped, contemporary historians point to the early 4th millennium as the point at which these racial divergences came to be commonly recognized and integrated into Ecumenical policy. Most notably, the Ecumenical Council of Health and Medicine published its first racially-specific guidelines for the identification of health and gene discrepancies in the overall population in 3051 CE. This dating is roughly correlated with the emergence of Earthling neo-chauvinism as a prominent social movement among inhabitants of Earth in the mid-31st century. Although there is very little direct evidence correlating the rise in anti-extraterrestrial sentiment among Earthlings with the classification of such extraterrestrials as their own kind, many historians believe that both phenomena's occurrence around the same time period is more than just coincidence. Most important to this hypothesis is the accepted axiom that the emergence of formalized Earthling neo-chauvinism was a reaction to the rapid increase of intraspecies diversification under the first few centuries of Ecumenical rule.

Earthling neo-chauvinism was originally known as terrestrial geneticism and not considered a form of racism, but rather, a variation of taxonomy. Before the emergence of the general social ideology now considered to be Earthling neo-chauvinism, terrestrial geneticism was a belief about the human biological condition that those who originated from and were born on Earth were what it meant to be "normal" human beings. Essentially, Earthling neo-chauvinism developed out of this theory through the (scientifically unfounded) interpretation that the classification of the new human cultigens was a sign that they had deviated (in a pejorative sense) from the "baseline" human (who could be identified as coming from the Earth-based human population). What Earthling neo-chauvinism came most strongly to oppose was the idea that humans from Earth ought to be classified alongside the extraterrestrial cultigens as divergent from the species Homo sapiens. This belief that Earthlings were the "original" humans thus implicitly identified the extraterrestrial cultigens as "subspecies" of Homo sapiens, a classification which the broader Ecumenical scientific community has long sought to avoid. However, by the time that the term Earthling neo-chauvinism came to be commonly used and understood in the mid-31st century, it was too widespread of a belief for the Ecumenical government to effectively halt its spread by its standardized social corrective measures.

Continued early interstellar expansion

Following the successes of the initial missions to Barnard's Star and Sirius, the Ecumenical Navy sent astroliner groups to Luhman 16, Wolf 359, Lalande 21185, Epsilon Eridani, Lacaille 9352, and Ross 128 over the remaining course of the 31st century. As the number of astroliners possessed by the Fleet continued to increase, its ability to expand to new star systems followed. The Admiralty took on the position that only star systems with confirmed planets should be targeted for proper colonization; although the outpost on Sirius was sustainable and even expandable, there were a number of concerns with regards to long-term population health and resource accessibility due to a lack of a dense circumstellar disc which motivated the Admiralty to shunt any civilian developments in that system. Resultantly, all new Ecumenical targeted expansions would involve the existence of at least one major planemo in the respective star system.

The most notable of the six aforementioned star systems was Ross 128. Upon the arrival of the astroliner Zhinü in the system, contact was made with a human colony that had been established on the planet known to them as Nanan. The First Officer of the Zhinü reported that the humans of that system were at first shocked to be visited by a vessel from the Sol system of such advanced design, with the overwhelming majority of the Nanané having believed that there were no living humans in their home star system any more. The humans who settled Nanan are believed to have been among the earlier departures of the Great Migrations, during which time many of the outbound colonists believed that the standoff between Earth-Luna and Mars would surely end or permanently stunt the development of human civilization in the Sol system. Unlike the ruined civilization in the Barnard system, the Nanané appeared to have fared well given their circumstances; it would be the first time that an astroliner was promptly met by a ship from the visited system upon its arrival. The initial shock of the Zhinü's arrival would soon shift into a concern with the purpose of its visit; many Nanané at the helm the planet's various nation-states feared that the Ecumene came at best as colonists and at worst as conquerers. It would take several years of negotiations and even a minor conflict before the system was properly integrated into the structure of the Ecumene.

Much like what had been discovered in the Barnard system, evidence of past human colonization attempts were present in the Epsilon Eridani, Wolf 359, and Lalande 21185 systems. These ruins generally differed from one another in age and level of development; only in the Lalande 21185 system was it determined that a serious, long-term attempt had been made to colonize the surface of any planemo. By the beginning of the 32nd century, permanent astroliner routes had been established to all six of the systems. The first Nanané to travel outside of the Ross 128 system in several centuries would be a cohort of dignitaries and visitors to the the Sol system in 3092 CE. Most significantly for the Sol system, the dwarf planet Pluto would become the primary hub of interstellar travel, with all astroliners and astrocruisers produced in the Charon Shipyards and the dwarf planet's surface ring becoming essentially a gateway between the peoples of Sol and its growing number of colonized and integrated stars. The successful integration of now two vastly divergent human civilizations located in different star systems into the Ecumene would also further embolden the Ecumenical Navy to continuously expand its interstellar exploration, colonization, and absorption operations.

Encounter in Tau Ceti

Throughout the 32nd century, Ecumenical exploratory vessels would visit and colonize 61 Cygni, Struve 2398, Groombridge 34, and Epsilon Indi, establishing stable colonies and connections with Sol by the late-middle of the century. The star Tau Ceti would be reached by the astroliner Vayu in 3171 CE. Long believed to be a candidate for a star system with an Earth-like habitable world, the fourth planet from the star orbited just on the precipice of the stellar frost line, permitting the existence of liquid water on its surface. As Vayu moved into the inner system, it came under attack from a series of at first undetected, stealth-capable projectile platforms in the circumstellar disc. The Vayu and its escort astrocruisers handily evaded or neutralized the entire volley, but the incident caused a great deal of alarm among the ships' officers; this was the first time in the history of Ecumenical interstellar exploration that a vessel had come under direct attack from an unidentified source. The captain of the Vayu decided to press on with the exploratory mission in the system, determining that the technology-level of the mysterious attacker was sufficiently beneath that of the Ecumenical vessels to not warrant a retreat.

The projectile platforms were systematically neutralized by the escort astrocruisers once it was confirmed they possessed no lifeforms; the weapons utilized by the fleet were precise enough to permit a more thorough investigation of a disabled platform. Additionally, what were believed to be communications signals from the platforms were intercepted on a path toward's the fourth planet in the system: the very same planet that had been correctly hypothesized to harbour liquid water on its surface. In orbit of that planet were a number of artificial satellites that ranged in purpose from observatories to communications nodes. Initial analysis of these satellites revealed that they were analogous in sophistication to the satellites used by the ancient Earthlings of the early 3rd millennium, although the designs were completely alien to anything in the Ecumenical ships' databases. Further high-resolution scans in the system revealed a number of interplanetary probes whose origin could be extrapolated to the fourth planet as well. Despite the extensive presence of sophisticated technology originating from the planet, the Vayu could not confirm the presence of any life on its surface; consequently, the advanced civilization was determined to be either subterranean or aquatic. Even more pressing to the officers of the Ecumenical vessels was the question of the origin of this civilization: there existed the possibility that this was the first lifeform encountered in history that did not originate from Earth.

Following up on these findings, the Vayu probed the planet's surface and oceans. The surface probes revealed small instances of constructions across the planet which were actually consistent with the designs used in Great Migration-era colonies found in other extrasolar systems, with all of these constructions abandoned only within the last two centuries based on their state of decay. The oceanic probes, on the other hand, revealed a vibrant underwater civilization; many of the probes themselves were destroyed within seconds to hours of visual confirmation of the civilization's constructs. Analysis of these findings presented the science division of the Vayu with a fascinating result: the aquatic civilization on Tau Ceti IV was descended from Earth life but was entirely or partially non-human. Due to the aggressive response of this civilization towards the Ecumenical probes and vessels, it would take over a month before a sample of the lifeforms themselves could be produced. The findings from this sample indicated that the aquatic species in question was indeed descendent from the Earth-native order Octopoda, particularly, Amphioctopus marginatus. Most intriguingly, it was determined that this species had been transgenetically modified with human DNA to produce an extremely intelligent, more long-lived, and highly dextrous human–animal hybrid.

This encounter would be the first between a non-human sentient species with a sophisticated level of civilization and the Ecumene. It would also be the first time that an Ecumenical exploratory vessel was lost in action: after five months of continuous research, the Vayu and its escorts came under fire again, this time from the planet itself. The projectiles used by the species were exceptionally more advanced than those utilized in the initial attack on the exploratory group; two of the five astrocruisers escorting the Vayu were lost in the attack and the rest of the vessels were forced to harbour in orbit of the gas giant Tau Ceti V. Of utmost concern to the officers of the surviving vessels was the obvious adaptation of Ecumenical design in the new projectiles used by the aliens. Further analysis revealed that the species' civilization was no more than a century or two in age; the sophistication they had reached within that timeframe was hypothesized to have resulted from their extermination of their possibly human creators. It became clear that through the study of the Ecumenical probes and vessels the octopus-people were capable of reverse-engineering many of its technical components. This presented the officers with a serious dilemma: should they retreat to the Sol system, they would potentially be giving these hostile aliens insight into the propulsion systems which facilitated time-optimized interstellar travel.

A decision was reached to simultaneously contain the aliens in Tau Ceti with the remaining bulk of the exploratory group while a single astrocruiser would return to Sol to relay the findings and gather reinforcements. This meant that the Vayu and its two remaining escorts would need to contain the civilization on Tau Ceti IV for upwards of three Solar decades before any additional Ecumenical forces could arrive. The astrocruiser Bhima reached Sol in 3186, where news of the hostile species gravely alarmed the Admiralty and the Synod. With great haste, the largest interstellar fleet was assembled in Ecumenical history: 11 astroliners and 58 cruisers, the entirety of what was available for deployment at the time in the Sol system. The large fleet arrived at Tau Ceti in 3201 to great dismay: the Vayu and its escorts had been destroyed in the meantime, while the Tau Ceti IV civilization had rapidly appropriated its technology and established a resource extraction, refinement, and manufacturing network comparable to Sol's in the late 3rd millennium. Within the span of three decades, the octopus-people had leaped many centuries ahead in technological prowess. Almost immediately, the Ecumenical fleet came under heavy assault: the First Battle of Tau Ceti would mark the beginning of a long and terrible conflict known today as the Octopoid War and close the chapter of the Ecumene's initial peaceful enlargement into an interstellar polity.

Octopoid War

Opening phases

The First Battle of Tau Ceti resulted in a narrow Ecumenical victory, although the extent to which it may be called a pyrrhic victory remains a matter of controversy among historians. Three astroliners and over twenty cruisers had been lost in this first confrontation, but the whole of the alien shipyard system in orbit of the gas giant Tau Ceti V had been effectively destroyed. Tau Ceti IV, the homeworld of the Octopoids, had received a significant boost to its own orbital defences, making a direct assault by the remaining Ecumenical force likely to leave it with little-to-no capability of a planet-side intervention. While the battle group remained in orbit of Tau Ceti V deciding its next course of action only hours after the destruction of the Octopoid's initial assault, a second fleet of Octopoid vessels appeared on an inbound course, previously occulted by the system's star. Similar in size to the first group engaged against by the Ecumenical battle group, it was determined that another engagement of that size would leave the whole of the Ecumene in an extremely vulnerable position. Despite a great deal of contention between the battle group's officers, the decision was made to retreat back to Sol, where additional forces could be mustered.

As the battle group moved underway, it was tailed for the entirety of the 15 year voyage back to the Ecumene's capital system. Upon arrival in 3216, the bulk of the Octopoid fleet engaged the Ecumenical battle group in the Battle of Pluto, while a single of its vessels set about on a return course to Tau Ceti, potentially carrying with it information related to Sol and the Ecumene's positions there. Although an attempt was made to prevent this single messenger ship's return, the pursuant Ecumenical vessels were intercepted by Octopoid ships and forced to engage in the battle. The Battle of Pluto was disastrous for the Ecumenical Navy; extensive damage was done to Charon Shipyards due to a large number of Octopoid vessels breaking off from confronting the Ecumenical ships and suicidally aiming to cause as much destruction as possible to the Ecumene's infrastructure. Although the Ecumene would eventually succeed in eliminating the attacking force, the Fleet had been reduced to a mere four astroliners and eleven cruisers. The occurrence of the battle in the Sol system sent a further shock throughout every level of the Ecumene's social structure, from the members of the Synod to the common peoples of its planets.

Worse, the action against the Ecumene at Pluto would come to be revealed as a partial diversion of the Octopoids against the Ecumene; it had also sent a secondary fleet to attack the Ecumenical colony at Epsilon Eridani and later other colonies at Groombridge 34, Lacaille 9352, 61 Cygni, and Epsilon Indi. The Massacres on the Rim, as this sub-campaign would come to be known, would not even be discovered by the Ecumenical Admiralty and Synod until later in the conflict, as it started while the Ecumenical battle group was underway to Sol in 3207 and continued after the devastating Battle of Pluto. The estimated 90 to 120 million colonists of these systems on the rim of Ecumenical space would be almost entirely annihilated by the meticulous Octopoids, who made a point of so completely erasing the presence of the Ecumene from these systems that even debris was pulverized into a fine mineral dust. As these dust clouds coagulated into orbits around their respective stars, and they contained the matter which once made up the colonists themselves, they would become known to later colonists as Grave Nebulae.

Crisis of the 33rd Century

In the months that followed the Battle of Pluto, the Ecumenical Admiralty and Synod would show an unprecedented level of cooperation and resolve with one another in regards to the strengthening of the Fleet. For the first time in its history, the various peoples of the Ecumene displayed a solidarity in attitude towards the harnessing of the largest and most effective military organ in record. The pace at which shipbuilding facilities on Luna, Mars, the Jovian, Saturnian and Apollonian moons were reactivated was as rapid as it was believed the Octopoid build-up was. The near-entirety of the Ecumene's economic and industrial capacity in the Sol system was simultaneously shifted towards the purpose of rebuilding its fleet, this time larger and more resilient. The most consequential development of this build-up was the Battlesphere, a new class of interstellar-capable warship that was spherical in shape like a planemo and comparable in size to a small asteroid or satellite. The battlespheres would crucially possess the capacity to harvest and refine resources in situ and even construct entire new astrocruisers while underway. After an enormous quantity of vessels had been produced in under two years, the First Fleet was inaugurated in 3218, the largest military force ever fielded in human history. In addition to advancements in military shipbuilding, the Ecumenical Navy authorized the usage of the experimental Empyreans, genetically modified supersoldier squads to supplemented the robotic marine force that came standard to any Ecumenical Navy vessel.

For the first, and to date only, time in its history, the Ecumene and the entire Sol system entered a state of total war. Once the First Fleet was completed, it set out immediately towards Tau Ceti, hoping to stop the conflict at its source. In the meantime, the myriad of production facilities across the system began to produce another round of military vessels. The war profoundly effected the societies of the Sol system in addition to their economies. Millions of humans had been killed in the engagements at Tau Ceti and Pluto, and many millions more were set on a direct course to the heart of the Octopoid threat. Conditions across the system were ripe for social unrest, despite no tangible change in the people's material conditions. Foremost among the emergent social movements of this time were the hypermaterialists, whose beliefs synthesized pacifism, transhumanism, and transcendental perspectivism. Due to their extreme adherence to the ideal of nonviolence, the hypermaterialists were not blacklisted by the Synod, even after the 3220 Sol sit-ins, in which millions of people across the Sol system's planets and space stations occupied spaces directly in front of the Ecumenical Navy's recruiting stations and on-ground military installations.

In contrast to the hypermaterialists, another, more pernicious ideological movement began to spread rapidly across the Sol system: Octopoid servilism. Comparable to a radical condition of defeatism mixed with an almost religious sentiment of extreme collective guilt, the servilists believed that the Octopoids represented the next stage of sentient life in the Milky Way, justifiable in their attitude towards humanity for the various crimes that humans had committed against one another in their long history. The Octopoids, on the other hand, represented the synthesis of the different intelligent species of Earth, those of the sea and those of the land, into a single organism more capable and intelligent than its inputs. Thus, according to the servilists, defeat at their hands was inevitable, and so the most moral actions to undertake were to immediately cease attempting to fight against this species and to prepare for subsumption under them in a new Octopoid-led hierarchy. Servilism was blacklisted by the Synod almost immediately following initial reports of its development, leading to intense persecution at every level of administration in the system. Nonetheless, the movement continued to grow and spread, especially among those who had already suffered enormous personal losses at the hands of the Octopoid invasion.

The widespread condition of social transformation in the Sol system was perhaps one of the most seminal moments in the Ecumene's history. Facing extreme external and internal pressures, the polity was put into an unprecedented condition of crisis. For this reason, the period immediately following the Battle of Pluto and lasting for most of the century has been historiographically termed the Crisis of the 33rd Century, a reference to the Crisis of the 3rd Century experienced by the Roman Empire in ancient Earth history.

Entreaty of the Potência

Roughly six years remaining on the course between Tau Ceti and Sol, the Astroliner Potência was the first Ecumenical vessel to receive a strange radio signal travelling Sol-bound from the direction of Tau Ceti. Picked up on the Potência legacy radio receiver, the signal was at first thought to be a stochastic emission from a deep space source; the signal underwent study by the Potência science lab nonetheless. One of the science technicians of the Potência was an old-style communications equipment hobbyist, who came to the realization that the radio emission was in fact a carrier wave. After trying hundreds of different demodulation programs, the radio transmission was successfully decoded as a digital signal. Further analysis uncovered that the signal was composed of 4-bit binary encoded digits representing a sequence of hexadecimal characters. After this discovery, the entire First Fleet's scientific attachment was put to work in an attempt to decipher the meaning behind the hexadecimal sequence intercepted by the Potência.

Some few days later, a second radio signal was received by the Potência. The format of the carrier wave differed from that of the first transmission, however, and a different demodulation uncovered the second wave to be an analog audio signal. In an ancient mode of clear English, the voice itself quickly determined to be artificially generated, the signal was a message to the Ecumenical ships:

“ Thine coming we foresee. Thine path bring'th victory.

Thou of ancient sea, we beg entreat with thee.

”

This audio message would be followed up with a repeated interception of the first hexadecimal sequence a few days later, and then a few days after that the audio message was intercepted a second time. It was upon the third reception of the hexadecimal sequence that the same science technician aboard the Potência realized they had been given a Rosetta stone by an unknown source, presumed most likely to be an Octopoid. The hexadecimal code was broken apart into five colour channels, red, green, blue and two additional channels of unknown significance. The assembled sequence of colours represented a translation of the short poem in the non-psychic chromatophore language of the Octopoids. The significance of the use of ancient English was not understood, and the two unidentified channels of the colour sequences did not give the Ecumene a clear picture of the chromatophore language, but otherwise, some Octopoid had sent the two messages; how they were aware that an Ecumenical fleet was approaching their home system remained a major concern of the First Fleet's command.

Over the course of the next year, two additional messages in a similar format (hexadecimal sequence followed by a short ancient English poem) would be received by the First Fleet. A short time later, a single ship of Octopoid design was spotted on a direct approach vector with the First Fleet. As soon as it came into the notice of the fleet, all ships were put on high alert and prepared for engagement, but the single Octopoid ship relayed back a poem, in the same format as before, repeatedly stating "We beg entreat with thee" followed by the hexadecimal code for the colour white. Although many in the fleet's command were skeptical of the Octopoid ship's intentions, with some suggesting it was a diversionary tactic for an imminent surprise assault, the radio-hobbyist communications technician aboard the Potência acted without approval and launched themself a lifeboat towards the Octopoid ship. Despite a hasty attempt by the Potência to recover the lifeboat, the Octopoid vessel extended its electromagnetic shielding to the inbound object, preventing the Potência from pulling it back.

The small space where the lifeboat docked with the Octopoid ship was filled with breathable atmosphere. Opposite the entrance hatch to the lifeboat was a porthole with a transparent covering, on the other side of which could be seen a space filled with water. A lone Octopoid approached the transparent portal from the water-filled side, who began changing colour rapidly, causing the same artificial voice from before to repeat the colour-sequence in ancient English. Using an active translation device, the technician successfully began to interpret and respond to the queries of the Octopoid, who had seemed to intuit that the technician came against orders to speak with it. The Octopoid explained that they were a lone economist and statistician who had determined that, in the long run, the Octopoids would inevitably be defeated by the Ecumene. After voicing their concerns to their compatriots and being ignored, they had successfully managed to steal the small scouting vessel and put it on a direct path towards Sol. Knowing it would be extremely unlikely they would make it to their destination before the small craft's energy levels were depleted, in desperation, they sent the messages which had been received by the Potência. They had hoped that if the Ecumene were given a clear understanding of the Octopoid language, then the odds of the Ecumene offering the Octopoids a chance at peace between their kinds might be improved. The Octopoid offered up its vessel for study and requested amnesty with the Ecumene.

The technician asked the Octopoid to lower the electromagnetic shields of his vessel, so that they could transmit the Octopoid's message to the rest of the Ecumenical fleet. After some initial hesitation, the Octopoid complied, and the message was relayed. Given a clear scan of the Octopoid vessel and noting its lack of armaments, First Fleet command determined that the intentions of the rogue Octopoid were likely to be genuine. A secure section of the Potência was filled with the saline water that had been drained from the scouting vessel, with the Octopoid being given quarter there. Resuming underway toward Tau Ceti, the scout vessel would be disassembled for engineering details, while the lone Octopoid was subjected to a lengthy series of interviews. White-Stars-Upon-Vermillion, as the Octopoid self-identified, provided an immense wealth of insight into Octopoid culture, history, language, and society.

Upon-Vermillion's insights revealed to the Ecumene the religious nature of the Octopoid's hostility towards humans. The Octopoids had been created by humans long before the exploratory visit of the Vayu to Tau Ceti, and the details of the Octopoid's account suggested their earliest ancestors were subject to intense genetic modification and nonconsensual experimentation. Eventually, the sapient race that had emerged from this experimentation waged a war of extinction against their human creators and tormentors, with this hatred of humanity slowly culminating into a religion-like belief system. Sol was identified as the central star in their zodiac system, with a religious focus on an eventual return to the "ancient sea" from which the Octopoids were ultimately descended. The humans that were believed to also come from this star and this world of the ancient sea were to be exterminated, to make way for the next stage of divinely-ordained creation to take its place as the lone bearers of the sapiency in the universe. Upon-Vermillion explained that although the Octopoids had made significant strides in their initial confrontation with the Ecumene, the coalescing of the whole of humankind as one agent in their war against the Octopoids would certainly lead to their eventual eradication unless an understanding could be reached between the two civilizations.

Second Battle of Tau Ceti

In the remaining five years that the First Fleet would spend on course to Tau Ceti, many of Upon-Vermillion's insights and recommendations were applied in situ to the best of the fleet's ability to incorporate them. Upon-Vermillion themself opted to remain with the fleet, stating to the Ecumenical officers that they'd rather be killed in the battle should the humans fail than live as an exile in the Sol system waiting indefinitely for the day that their people came to fulfil their religious prophesy. One of the most significant enhancement brought about by Upon-Vermillion's arrival was their provision of the scout vessel to the fleet's engineers. Although it was relatively small in size, its technical innerworkings provided a wealth of knowledge into Octopoid ships' systems, and most importantly, their shields. The engineers would discover that much of the Octopoid's technology was adapted from Ecumenical standards, a plethora of examples of which had been provided by their encounter with Vayu and its subsequent destruction. Shield modulators aboard the scout vessel were deconstructed and analyzed, leading to the priming of the fleet's weapons for massive damage against the Octopoid vessels.

The First Fleet arrived at Tau Ceti's heliopause in 3234. As they entered the system at low-relativistic speeds, they immediately came under fire from a massive flotilla of defence platforms and highly weaponized vessels, as if the Octopoids were expecting an assault from the direction of Sol. The Ecumenical ships' shields had been primed to receive Octopoid weapons fire, while the Ecumenical ships' weapons were primed to return fire against the shielded Octopoid ships. This initial encounter of the Second Battle of Tau Ceti was a decisive victory for the fleet, which annihilated the Octopoid defensive line while taking only a handful of losses. The First Fleet split into two sections, with each moving in an arc around the outside of the Tau Ceti planetary system, destroying any defensive platforms it found while sparing civilian vessels. Upon clearing the outskirts of the system, the fleet recombined and moved towards its primary target: Tau Ceti IV.

After a pitched fight against the planet's orbital defence network, the First Fleet secured a blockade on the Octopoid home world. Using specialized atmosphere-to-subsea missiles designed specifically for Tau Ceti IV, the fleet neutralized the planetside defensive network and kept constant monitor for any undiscovered military installations. Once the planet's defences were completely disabled, the fleet began to broadcast a message to its Octopoid inhabitants, calling for negotiations with the Octopoid government. Upon-Vermillion's appearance in these broadcasts is said to have shocked many in the upper echelons of Octopoid society, who had not realized his disappearance several years before was the result of his defection to their enemies. While Tau Ceti IV remained under blockade, smaller portions of the First Fleet were split off to investigate habitats throughout the rest of the system for information on the Octopoid fleet and its possible position relative to Tau Ceti.

The primary shipyard of the Octopoids was found in orbit of the gas giant Tau Ceti V, the last planet from the system's star before the system's vast circumstellar debris disc. Further investigation by the Ecumenical ships found that Tau Ceti V was a core component of the system's economy, producing not only its ships, but also being the largest centre for asteroid mining and refinement in the system. Empyreans and engineering crews from the First Fleet swarmed the orbital refineries and shipbuilding centres, with the resident civilians octopoids largely fleeing from the human invaders. Attempts were made to convey that the Ecumene meant no harm to the octopoid civilians, but it seemed impossible, at least to military engineers, to assuage their deeply rooted fear and hatred of humanity. Nonetheless, within the month, the refinement and shipbuilding network in orbit of Tau Ceti V was brought back into service, providing a steady stream of repairs and refits to the First Fleet for its enduring siege of Tau Ceti IV.

Fall of Tau Ceti and aftermath

In late 3237, after roughly two and a half years of planetary siege, Tau Ceti IV fell to the combined pressures of Empyrean deployments and the growing Octopoid Opposition that had been covertly fostered under Upon-Vermillion's leadership. With the collapse of the Octopoid home world, the Tau Ceti system fell firmly under the control of the First Fleet. By the time of Tau Ceti IV's fall, however, the Ecumenical leadership in Tau Ceti had become acutely aware of the activity of the Octopoid's second fleet in the rim of Ecumenical space. In the early part of 3238, a series of two-ship scouting parties were sent to the colonized stars in the vicinity of Tau Ceti, with the goal to grab the attention of the Octopoid raiding fleet and direct them back to their home system; the feigned retreat of the scouting vessels towards Tau Ceti would ideally grab the attention of the raiding fleet and set them on a course towards the bulk of the First Fleet. At the same time, a small number of vessels were dispatched back to Sol, where they would inform the Ecumenical Admiralty and Synod of the First Fleet's victory at Tau Ceti.

News of the Ecumenical victory at Tau Ceti would reach Sol in 3254, roughly 36 years following the departure of the First Fleet to the Octopoid home system. By this time, news of the Massacres on the Rim had reached the Admiralty and Synod as well through its own investigative and defensive-strengthening efforts in the colonies. In the time that the First Fleet had travelled to Tau Ceti, occupied the system, and sent back messengers to Sol, the shipyards in Sol had produced another four fleets and over ten thousand additional Empyreans. Ecumenical colonies had received significant levels of military build-up, and three out of four fleets had been sent to estimated stellar positions of the Octopoid raiding fleet.

Upon the reporting of Tau Ceti IV's fall to the public of the Sol system, there was a great deal of celebration across every civilian population centre. Even functionaries and personnel of the Fleet were given liberty to partake in festivities. The Synod moved to welcome the envoys from the Octopoid Opposition that had travelled with the messenger ships from Tau Ceti; these Octopoids would become the first of their species to visit the Synod Chambers on Apollo in addition to being the first Octopoids to peacefully visit the Sol system. The Octopoid Opposition requested the absorption of their system into the Ecumene, a request that still holds the record time for consensus reached among the Synod at a mere four Earth hours. Although a significant number of Octopoid individuals on Tau Ceti would continue to hold that the humans from Sol were naturally predisposed to evil and untrustworthiness, over time, this belief would fade away as the Ecumene-sympathetic home government of Tau Ceti IV instituted a wide range of societal reforms and implemented the vastly superior industrial technology of Sol in their star system.

The Octopoid raiding fleet, the last belligerent vestige of the Octopoid War, would eventually be successfully goaded to return to Tau Ceti by the Ecumenical scout ships. In 3274, their vessels would return to Tau Ceti to find the Ecumene firmly entrenched. By this time, a method of non-lethal ship disablement had been developed by a joint team of Ecumene-Octopoid researchers, allowing the Octopoid Opposition government to offer amnesty to any soldiers who chose to peacefully surrender to the Ecumene's forces. While a large number of Octopoid soldiers would commit suicide rather than surrender themselves to what they saw as demons, a majority would agree to the surrender, including a number of high ranking officers. These officers would be tried for war crimes by their own home government in the Tau Ceti IV Trials, the first such war crimes trials hosted in Ecumene space since the Capitulatory War of the 27th century.

Middle 4th millennium

Reconstruction

The aftermath of the Octopoid War would continue to mark the Ecumene and the Sol system throughout the early-to-middle 4th millennium. News of the defeat of the Octopoid raiding fleet would not reach Sol until 3291, and by that time, the system had spent the larger part of a century producing civilian, industrial, and military goods for internal usage and interstellar export. Following the completion of the First Fleet and its deployment in 3218, Sol's industrial centres were transformed and revitalized by directive of the Synod, which had not yet before been tested to the existential degree that it faced during the initial phases of the Octopoid War. The individual worlds and habitats of the Sol system had undergone significant economic and social transition in the face of this crisis; new pseudo-political and pseudo-religious movements spread throughout the civilian population, while the Ecumenical Navy was increased to an enormous standing force capable of defending the Ecumene's most populous colonies. The scale of the interstellar conflict in both space and time precipitated a shift in the perception of the Synod towards Sol; in order to preserve their interstellar civilization permanently, it was necessary Sol become an impenetrable fortress to both inside and outside influences.

Consequentially, the Ecumenical Guard was radically transformed by the Synod from a civilian-oriented policing agency into a militarized force consisting of Empyrean supersoldiers with a decentralized fleet of astrocruisers. The relationship of the Synod to the individual planets and home governments of the Sol system underwent a similar shift; a number of standardizations were made across all planets in the Sol system barring Earth, which was so populous compared to other celestial bodies in the 33rd century that it required a unique structure of government. While a high degree of autonomy was still afforded to home governments in the administration of their specific jurisdictions, the standardized format of their reorganization matched with new exceptions for the Ecumenical Guard permitted the Synod a broader authority for intervention than was previously permitted under the Conference of Planets and Moons. Compounded with the already emergent pseudo-political and religious movements throughout the Sol system, these changes reflected the monumental transitions in Ecumenical society underway in the aftermath of the Octopoid War.

Another major feature of the post-war reconstruction process was the resettlement of the systems subjected to destruction during the Massacres on the Rim. The large Grave Nebulae which had been left in some systems, such as Epsilon Eridani and Epsilon Indi, were protected by directive of the Synod as grave sites. The worlds which had been depopulated by the massacres were resettled over the course of 34th century, with the final system Epsilon Indi becoming host to a renewed human population by 3339. While this resettlement process was underway, the Octopoid home system Tau Ceti was brought in to closer alignment with the other Ecumenical colonies under the influence of the Octopoid Opposition. The leadership of White-Stars-Upon-Vermillion was foundational to the integration of the Octopoids into Ecumenical society. Due to the huge number of octopoids lost in the conflict, a majority of the survivors would continue to harness their socialized hatred of humanity deep into the 34th century. It was only towards the end of the century with the maturity of the first post-war generation of the long-lived octopoids that anti-human views transitioned from a majority to a plurality and eventually a minority of the overall octopoid population. Utilizing social correction measures pioneered in the Sol system, the government of Tau Ceti IV slowly but successfully pacified its most dangerous detractors.

By the end of the 34th century, the most pronounced effects of the Octopoid War had been assimilated into the transformed post-war Ecumene. The pre-war focus of the Ecumenical Navy with exploring new planetary systems had been conjoined with the maintenance of security for those systems already inhabited by humanity. Unlike the pre-war practice of sending only a few ships to explore the stars, the Navy fielded small battlegroups known as Exploratory Fleets. The individual colonies of the Ecumene were militarily hardened and supplied with extensive numbers of the reformed Ecumenical Guard, while regular decades-long patrol routes between systems became the primary operation of the Navy's numerous battle fleets. Some contemporary historians point to the transformational effect of the Octopoid War on the Ecumene as the turning point between its juvenile exploratory state and its adolescent developmental state, as it was around this time that Astroinsularism became the predominant pseudo-political ideology of a majority of Syndics and members of the Admiralty. Most contemporary historians agree at the very least that the post-war reconstruction period marked the beginning of the early contemporary historical moment for both the Ecumene and the Sol system.

Saturation and Astroinsularism

By the middle of the 4th millennium, humanity could be found in some form across the entirety of the Sol system. Small habitats and economic platforms spread from one end of the Kuiper Belt to the other. Every planet and dwarf planet of the system had some level of human exploitation or settlement. The state reached by humanity in the Sol system by this point has been termed its "Saturation" by modern demographers and historians; this term of state has been subsequently abstracted to refer to a similar state reached by humanity in any planetary system. Those planetary systems which reached a state of Saturation by the later end of the 4th millennium are known in the contemporary Ecumene as the Inner Stars. The proliferation of the idea of Saturation inspired further classification of Ecumenical star systems: the Middle Stars came to be referred to as those stars which had substantial colonial development and exploitation but which were not saturated; the Outer Stars were those which were host to an Ecumenical colony in its nascent state.

During this era of renewed interstellar peace, the emergent pseudo-political and social movements from the era of the Octopoid War underwent significant transformation. Octopoid servilism had been effectively combatted and corrected out of existence during the 33rd century, to the point that no actual remnant beliefs or organizations lasted into subsequent centuries. Hypermaterialism, on the other hand, saw modest adherent growth and adoption by a number of prominent Syndics, resulting in its proliferation beyond Sol into other worlds of the Inner Stars. This pseudo-political, almost religion-like belief system would never amount to more than a mere minority of the Sol system's inhabitants and the Synod's membership; instead, the most prominent belief structure of the middle 4th millennium was the emergent Astroinsularism.

Sometimes compared to a more advanced form of nationalism or isolationism, Astroinsularism's most notable contribution to subsequent historical development was the idea of the "feasible limit." Like all psuedo-political movements in the Ecumene, there was no central organization or discrete leaders of the movement. Moreso, pseudo-political movements are anachronistic classifications produced by contemporary historical and political scholars to collectively describe the prevailing attitudes and worldviews of the people they classify. Astroinsularism in particular is identified as a culmination of the Ecumenical leadership's reaction to the perceived vulnerability of the Ecumene in light of the Octopoid War. Whereas previously the Ecumenical Navy had been relegated to the function of interstellar exploration, under the rise of Astroinsularism, the exploratory function of the Navy was relegated to a much smaller operational component in place of its new mission to defend the totality of Ecumenical space from another scenario akin to the Massacres on the Rim.

A necessary component of this new primary mission was the reconsideration of the previous policy of unlimited expansion into new planetary systems. The feasible limit was a direct consequence of this reconsideration. Whereas previously there had been no discrete "border" established by the Synod, 5 parsecs was set as the limit which the Ecumenical Navy was charged with fully defending. Although this area of space represented only a tiny fraction of the totality of the Milky Way Galaxy, a trip from Sol to the feasible limit and back would theoretically take over 60 Earth years as observed from humanity's home planet due to the effects of time dilation. The Octopoid War pushed the Ecumene to the brink of collapse due to its significant logistical challenges in navigating the deployment of space forces to a star system roughly 10 lightyears from Sol; a conflict fought even at the edge of the feasible limit would likely become unmanageable to an even larger degree.

Another major consideration of Astroinsularism was the status of human inhabited space more broadly. The threat posed by the octopoids in Tau Ceti was the consequence of a more primitive human colony founded during the Great Migrations era of exodus from the Sol system. The extent to which human inhabited space was colonized by these earlier migrations remains a matter of debate into the contemporary era; to the Synod of the middle 4th millennium, a great deal of concern was suddenly placed upon determining the extent to which uncontacted human societies existed both inside and outside of the feasible limit. Star systems which were concretely determined to be host to Great Migrations era settlement were termed Sanctuary Stars: these star systems were off limits to passage by any Ecumenical vessel without the express authority of the Synod. By the end of the 36th century, major efforts were underway to determine precisely which star systems hosted uncontacted humans, starting with the remaining unexplored stars inside of the feasible limit.

Post-astroinsularist migrations

Although official settlement of systems outside the five parsec feasible limit were discontinued by the Ecumene as of the late 34th century CEC, interested parties of small groups were not prevented from leaving Ecumene space. The largest barrier towards continued expansionary settlement was the procurement of a vessel. Typically, citizens of the Ecumene in Inner Star systems such as Sol or Alpha Centauri were entitled to the construction of a vessel they could reasonably be foreseen to use for whatever intended purpose the citizen so desired. On the scale of personal interplanetary transportation, this in function meant that mid-4th millennium humans enjoyed a high degree of personal choice and customization in the creation of a given personal spacecraft. On the other hand, interstellar vessels were only given to non-Apollonian humans for personal use in extremely rare and unique circumstances, due to the fact that there existed close to no demand for such interstellar personal vessels.

Following the end of Ecumene-administered space colonization, the number of instances in which groups of individuals requested interstellar vessels capable of Pseudothanatic stasis increased substantially in the Inner Stars. Unlike the Great Migrations, which utilized far more primitive spacecraft and which were motivated by socioeconomic strife, these post-astroinsularist migrants sought exploration and colonization of new star systems for their own sake. Among the most common private interest groups to request personal interstellar vessels were large bands of hypermaterialists who sought to live in relative peace and seclusion from the densely populated Ecumenical systems. Earthlings and Martians were another common group of emigrants, as many on these planets desired to find an Earth-like garden worlds which did not possess the same restrictions on personal living arrangements common to the planet. Overall, an estimated 190 million humans would travel beyond the feasible limit by the end of the 38th century.

Although there was some resistance by the Ecumenical Synod to these migrations, it was generally found to be more trouble than it was worth to prevent the departure of persons who desire it strongly. Social cohesion on planets such as Earth and Mars saw proportional gains compared to the number of non-content emigrants departing. The impact on the settlement of underdeveloped star systems within Ecumene space was minimal, especially due to the fact that pseudothanatic stasis had become far less popular as a method of interstellar colonization compared to embryo seeding. The largest concern of the Ecumene towards this wave of emigration was the risk of the departing groups disturbing beyond feasible limit Sanctuary Stars potentially host to malignant human societies. It became common as a condition of interstellar vessel construction for these private groups that they permit the presence of an artificial intelligence aboard which ensured they never ventured into such potential host systems. Most groups acquiesced without incident, as it was seen to benefit their own safety as well as that of the Ecumene they left behind.

Later 4th millennium

Developmental breakthroughs

Following the ascendence of the policy of astroinsularism in the Ecumenical Synod, a number of major defence, economic, and scientific reforms were implemented across the Ecumene. The Ecumenical Navy was strengthened significantly. Anchorages and shipyards for interstellar-capable vessels such as Astroliners and Astrocruisers were mandated for every inhabited system within the feasible limit. Recognizing the inherent vulnerability of its most distant stellar possessions, the Synod sought to build a Navy which operated autonomously on a per-system basis as opposed to the previous point-to-point method of centralized construction, maintenance, and organization. New command and training centres were similarly constructed across every star system to complement the new ship facilities. The Ecumenical Admiralty, previously based primarily in the Sol system, was dispersed evenly across the Ecumene to oversee operations in every system. In addition to motile naval forces, the Synod pushed to standardize planetary defences, with the goal of having no colony less defensible than any other. By the 3500s, the Ecumenical Navy had become so large and so far-dispersed that the Synod began tallying its overall force in estimations as opposed to actual counts.

In line with its policy of building naval vessels in every inhabited system, the Synod initiated a policy of heightening mass industrial production in its more distant systems. Inner Stars such as Sol, Alpha Centauri, and Tau Ceti already possessed significant levels of systemwide industry; by the middle of the 4th millennium, many of these Inner systems resembled the early stages of hypothetical natural satellite-based Dyson swarms. The Sol system in particular maintained an interconnected energy grid through stable-orbit laser infrastructure which ferried energy excesses from planets such as Mercury and Luna to materials production facilities in low stellar flux environments at the edge of the system. This model of system interconnectivity would become standardized across every Ecumene system so as to support the growth in demand for general materials and in situ spacecraft production. Although previously controversial, the first fully autonomous self-replicating machines were approved for general industrial application in 3419 CEC and quickly spread throughout Ecumene space thereafter.

In addition to renewed focus on maximizing defensive capacity and economic output, the Ecumenical Synod chartered the foundation of research institutions in many of its most developed systems. New, state-of-the-art research facilities in Sol, Alpha Centauri, Tau Ceti, Teegarden, and Sirius were given fully development priority upon the completion of those system's defensive and industrial enhancements. Although previously spurned as irresponsible and immensely reckless, the Synod approved applications for extremely intensive research into antimatter, black holes, wormholes, and other advanced particle physics and quantum mechanics topics. While all of these areas of science had already been under study for centuries, the Synod hoped that providing broad approval and unlimited resources would heighten the pace of scientific achievement.

Microwormhole communications

By the later part of the 4th millennium, the most promising form of superliminal travel was suspected to be the traversable wormhole. Based on a special solution to the Einstein field equations, by the beginning of the 36th century CEC, wormholes had still never been observed before in the whole history of humanity's habitation of space, and it was considered a remote possibility that the observation of any wormhole might ever even occur due to their exotic and theoretical nature. Experiments at the Quaoar Research Ring yielded promising results until the disaster in 3697, when the first artificially charged fermionic particles collapsed into a group of microscopic black holes which annihilated the whole facility along with its highly skilled staff and partially-destroyed the dwarf planet Quaoar. The microscopic black holes briefly travelled inwards through the Kuiper Belt, causing gravitational perturbations to hundreds of thousands of planetesimals and space dust amalgamations before being neutralized by experimental particle weaponry.

Although the disaster was considered no less than the greatest degree of catastrophic by the Synod, the direct and instrument observations of the microscopic black holes were unprecedented in the history of physical science. While economic activity and space travel in the Kuiper Belt experienced severe disruption, a massive trove of data on the nature of exotic matter was immediately available to the most developed star system in the whole of Ecumene space. The findings from the disaster were directly instrumental in the creation of the first microscopic, charged fermionic energy field in human history in 3729 CEC. Although the level of energy necessary to sustain the reaction under its initial form was immense, further research would yield major enhancements in the efficiency of the charged fermionic field generation to a level theoretical sustainable in the contemporary material conditions of the Ecumene's most highly developed star systems. In 3788 CEC, an experimental method for the manipulation of a quantum string was combined with the fermionic energy field to produce the first observed stable wormhole in human history.

Although microscopic in size, the stable wormhole allowed for the transposition of atoms and electric charges across spacetime effectively faster-than-light. The breakthrough was hailed as the beginning a new age of human civilization and celebrated across the Sol system, with the lost and living researchers of the project hailed as the first Heroes of the Cosmos since the end of the Octopoid War five centuries prior. From an early stage it was deemed impractical to attempt scaling the microwormhole to a level possible for the travel of individuals through the bridge; the amount of energy required for a wormhole of that size was deemed far greater than the energy produced by the whole of the star Sol. However, at its contemporarily sustainable microscopic size, the microwormhole would permit superliminal communication upon refinement of the quantum string manipulation technique and the potential opening of microwormholes in other Ecumenical star systems. By the beginning of the 39th century CEC, the first stable microwormhole link between Sol and Alpha Centauri was established, allowing for the transmission of the first faster-than-light signal between two star systems: a live, unaccompanied performance of the ancient Apollonian instrument berimbau.

Superliminal information transition

Throughout the 39th century CEC, microwormhole communications were implemented throughout the myriad star systems of the Ecumene. Systems with extensive energy infrastructure were the first to receive the systems, as the power requirements of a single transceiver was comparable to whole planets. The sudden access of information between star systems was revolutionary from an academic, economic, and social perspective. Whereas the component systems of the Ecumene had previously needed to wait years to receive contact from other systems, information could now be accessed from any microwormhole-capable system instantly. By the beginning of the 40th century, nearly all of the Ecumene's star systems were incorporated into the microwormhole communication network. Although the effects of time dilation made it difficult to accurately represent real-time conversations between persons, recordings and other forms of digital media were easily accessible to any person living in an incorporated system.

As more and more star systems became connected to the microwormhole communications network in the 39th century, calls within the Ecumenical Synod for a reconsideration of the Feasible Limit policy grew more pronounced. The dispersion of the Ecumenical Navy across Ecumene space had created, in the mind of these proponents, a safe core area for the existence of human beings as an interstellar civilization. They argued that the Feasible Limit was no longer necessary for the defence of the inner Ecumene, as the permeation of microwormhole communications meant that a threat against any single system could now be perceived and responded to in half the previous time. Whereas knowledge of an attack against one system may have previously required the escape of a ship from that system, knowledge of any threat could be immediately transmitted to the remainder of the Ecumene and responsive support sent underway in turn. Proponents of removing the Feasible limit pointed to the previous centuries-long establishment of strong defensive and industrial bases in the periphery of Feasible Limit space also served as a model for continued expansion.

Although it had taken nearly a century for the creation of the five parsec Feasible Limit to be enacted into policy, it was revoked by the Ecumenical Synod within months of its reintroduction of deliberation. Consensus of the Synod held that so long as microwormhole communications served as a crux for the spread of information, so long as every colonized system was adequately capable of maintaining mass scale industrial manufacturing, and so long as the system of Sanctuary Stars remain under strict observation, then the colonization of new star systems past the Feasible Limit was a reasonable endeavour in the preservation of human civilization in its most advanced form. Further, the continued detailed exploration and observation of the universe to its greatest capacity was considered a potential boon for the advancement of science, from which it was reasonably expected that humanity may yet continue to find new ways with which to connect itself. These principles of reasoning became characteristic of the emerging movement known as Astroprogressivism, which replaced the previous pseudo-paranoia of astroinsularism with a more technologically optimistic view of human civilization and its existence in the greater universe.

Renewed expansion and the Free Stars

Within only a few years of the abolition of the Feasible Limit, naval clusters at the edge of Ecumene space began receiving new missions for the exploration of star systems at distances greater than five parsecs from Sol. These naval clusters included ships such as battlespheres, the largest of the Ecumene's naval ship classes, escorted by astroliners and astrocruisers. While these existing naval clusters were considered adequate to begin the exploration of space most immediately beyond the five parsec boundary, the development of a new ship type to suit the needs of more long-term voyages was immediately commenced. Based on a larger version of the battlesphere, the Planemoship was conceived to possess a more robust scientific study ability, in addition to potentially possessing the energy generation capacity to maintain a microwormhole communications link with Sol. Such a ship would permit the real-time transfer of information from the reaches of deep space back to the core of human civilization. The immense power requirements of such a vessel though proved highly challenging, even with the state-of-the-art facilities available to engineers and shipwrights in the heart of Ecumene space. With design of the Astrophere initiating in 3858, it would take almost a century before construction on the first such vessel would commence in 3941. Due to the scale of the vessel, the first fully-spaceworthy Planemoship, the Viajante, would take twelve years to complete in Pluto orbit, finally entering service in 3953.

By the time that the Viajante passed the five parsec boundary in 3977, many of the most immediately proximate star systems to that limit had been explored by the older generation naval clusters. In roughly half of these tens of close systems were discovered human colonies of disparate levels of flourishing. All of these colonies had been established during the regime of the Feasible Limit, and a scant few were very displeased to learn from the Ecumenical naval groups that the policy had been relatively recently revoked. The most desperately struggling of these colonies were extremely willing to begin entreatment regarding their absorption into the Ecumene. Membership in the Ecumene came with guarantees for the development of facilities capable of adequately serving colonists to the level which their ancestors had been accustomed previous to their transit beyond Ecumene space. In those systems which resisted the notion of rejoining the Ecumene, the standard of living varied from par with the outermost Ecumenical colonies to that of a Middle Star system deeper in Ecumene space; in either case, these systems had fared far better than the majority of colonized systems outside the Feasible Limit.

In those colonies which opted to take membership in the Ecumene, the benefits of its most advanced technologies were implemented quite rapidly. In many cases, extensive, new manufacturing facilities and energy infrastructure were required to support the levels of development considered acceptable for an Ecumenical colony. The change of quality of life in one generation for these colonies fostered an immense appreciation and respect of the Ecumene, leading to hang-ups over the sudden loss of political agency largely fading away with the older generations passing. The situation differed significantly in those star systems which resisted joining the Ecumene. As the Ecumenical naval clusters departed their boundaries, those which had knowledge of other proximate, post-Feasible Limit independent colonies began communicating with one other through subliminal communications methods. Although the process took decades, by 3929 CEC, the Free Stars had been established as an alternative to the Ecumene. The first such political union aside from the Ecumene to exist in years, knowledge of the Free Stars slowly became commonplace among the Ecumene's naval and political leaders. It was determined that outright military action against the Free Stars would prove detrimental to their eventual incorporation into the Ecumene, which was viewed widely as a necessary goal pursuant to the Ecumene's continuous existence as a singular entity.

Efforts to observe the Free Stars were immediately put underway, but these efforts proved highly difficult to the Ecumenical Navy. Utilizing microwormhole communications within deep space proximity to these star systems proved difficult due to the high albedo and energy emissions of the massive Planemoships. The method of subliminal communication utilized by the Free Stars was not sophisticated but proved difficult to intercept without disrupting. It was determined that the most feasible solution for observation of the Free Stars would come through an infiltration of each of its constituent star systems. To that end, the Ecumenical Navy Intelligence Division was established, with agents of Apollonian origin being selected for their immortality and thus suitability for long-term missions. The infiltration of the Free Stars began in earnest by the later part of the 40th century, with plans for information receptions to occur through the deployment of Bracewell probes travelling at mintimaxis to the closest Ecumenical Navy positions.

Recent history

The Ecumene claims all of the stars within the Feasible Limit as its territory, making it the most expansive civilization in human history.

At the turn of the 5th millennium, 4000 CEC, human space civilization had expanded far beyond the boundaries it existed at one thousand years prior. As the turn of the previous millennium was characterized by the establishment of the Ecumene as an interstellar polity, the turn of the present millennium found the ambitions of the Ecumene reaching towards that of becoming a galactic-scale civilization. Although the process is expected to take thousands of years, the end of the Feasible Limit policy and the widespread sociopolitical adoption of astroprogressivism has marked the beginning of a renewed age of exploration, discovery, and settlement in human space civilization as a whole. In the past twenty-three years since the beginning of the 5th millennium, the Ecumene continues to explore star systems somewhat proximate to its previous five parsec boundary of expansion. These New Stars, as they have become known, represent the next frontier for space civilization's expansion. The Free Stars remain, in the opinion of the Ecumenical Admiralty and Synod, the greatest potential threat to the cohesion of the Ecumene, due to the notions of system-based autonomy which its leaders and people have come to hold as defining in their own existence.

The situation between the Ecumene and the Free Stars has developed into what is known widely as the Ecumene-Free Stars cold war, similar to the relationship between Earth-Luna and Mars in the earliest days of human space civilization. While the Ecumene's military power is vastly superior to that of the Free Star's, the Ecumenical Synod has little desire to utilize force against otherwise average people who are considered to be more victims of past sociopolitical and economic developments than inherently hostile beings. Unlike the Octopoid War, where the very existence of human civilization was under threat, the threat of the Free Stars is seen as more based in its potential for social disruption and the erosion of Ecumene-wide cohesion than anything else. Many in the Free Stars view the Ecumene as tyrannical and antithetical to the human condition, especially so due to its political domination by the immortal Apollonians. On the part of the Free Stars, there exists very little hostility towards the peoples of the Ecumene, and the potential for direct military confrontation is seen widely out of the question. Hence, the uneasy, public peace between the two conceals the raging covert conflict between the Ecumenical Navy Intelligence Division and the Free Stars' Liberatti.

See also

• Ecumene
• Human inhabited space (Sanctuary Stars)
• Human history