History

Humanity received the first hints to a larger galactic society when its first primitive FTL ships ventured beyond the local cluster. There, they began picking up the equivalent to FTL slow band communications, the contents of which were undecipherable.

As humanity explored outwards, they began finding the smallest traces of extraterrestrial life, leftover outposts, discarded trash at landing sites, and other detritus.

Where they could, colonies and outposts sprung to life to meet the needs of a burgeoning interstellar civilization. This culminated in a landmark event in Sol history, the meeting of the alien refugee fleet.

Having fled from aggressors, they were stranded and running out of supplies. Having been on the run for decades, the aliens were wary when the unidentified human ships approached bearing none of the markings of any known galactic civilization, but also saw an opportunity.

A deal was struck, the details of which lost to time, but what is known is that the population of the fleet was eventually allowed to settle on Earth and its colonies, in exchange, Humanity confiscated most of the ships, technologies, and information present in the fleet.

This influx of people and cultures jump started the fledgling empire, but it was not without problems. Decades of xenophobia, political and cultural unrest, wracked the combined populations. As generations passed, some species began to see these worlds as their home too, and desired a place within. The struggle was difficult, but many eventually won a position in society, government, and other institutions. But it would take much more to make them equal.

As this new society dealt with those issues, scientific progress raced on. Humanity had gained access to a treasure trove of technology. New or scavenged advances in energy production, weaponry, materials, waste management, entertainment, all fields of science and commerce benefited. However, the most influential finding was also the least extraordinary, they discovered the primary economical method of FTL for the galactic community, the exoshift.

It opened up a new world of space exploration and travel, no longer was space travel limited to large government or corporate funded expeditions. Instead, a well off person could buy his own ship to find his place in the stars.

In the rush to expand, new colonies boomed and new civilizations were discovered. Sol began its first forays into becoming an space empire.

However, the people of Sol were not the only ones expanding. The activity began attracting attention from forces from beyond Sol’s reach. It began with raids and piracy from unknown aggressors, each attack becoming more brazen than the last. Each attack also spreading word among the galactic community of a new people’s rise, ripe for the picking. It was then that the criminal known as The Warlord knew the next target for his conquest.

In the wake of The Old Order’s collapse, The Warlord was the epitome of the kind of dangerous regimes that had formed. Driven from his home sector, he now commanded a massive fleet of powerful warships, and an army capable of taking an entire solar systems. Gathering other opportunistic groups in his wake, his armies dove towards the fledgling Sol empire.

The Warlord attacked Sol Space with a ferocity unseen to Humanity, using superior tech, numbers, and playing upon Sol’s societal unrest, he conquered much of Earth and its colonies after a short, but brutal war. For a time, Sol is an occupied nation. All felt the heel of oppression, and in this crucible its people bound together in suffering, and waited.

As the years passed, the people of Sol began to believe that their civilization was doomed, that was until until the first stirrings of rebellion became a liberation. Secret agreements were made with distant civilizations, and long silent Sol colonies, having gone dark during the invasion, returned to activity, their new factories producing weapons and warships to take back their homes.

In a massive uprising, coordinated attacks from outside and within Sol Space broke the back of The Warlord’s forces, killing most outright, and forcing many others to flee. The Warlord himself is killed in the fighting, but at a terrible cost.

In victory, the people Sol are left to wonder at their smashed homeworlds. Nations had been erased, entire species extinct. The people of Sol, and Humanity with it, had discovered the hard way that the galaxy is a dangerous place.

With the fervor of any society rebounding after war, the first draft of a new constitution was written, and a new government is formed. All were to be given citizenship, all would work towards a common goal of the security they so desperately desired.

The Republic of Sol was formed. Its capitol city, formed on Earth, stands in the heart of a crater. A crater left by the antimatter bomb The Warlord unleashed upon his death. It stands as a beacon of hope for a better future, and a reminder of the dangers of complacency.

The Sol of today is an integrated multi-species civilization that, culturally, is almost unrivaled in galactic society. Their emergence after the Warlord’s occupation has thrown the local politics into a stir, a state that Sol has exploited to secure its borders as best it can. With the looming threat of the Combine Worlds to its Spinward reaches, where the most dangerous fugitives from the Warlord’s armies fled, to the vast and powerful political juggernaut of The Remnant Order Coreward; The people of Sol know their position is as precarious as it is a precious, shining beacon in a dark and cold galaxy, and they will fight to protect it.