Humans

Humans are the dominant species inhabiting the planet Earth in the Sol System. By the late 22nd century, humanity has developed highly advanced technology (including faster-than-light space travel) and has unified all of its nations under the Human Federation, a democratic world government. The Human Federation is a member state of the Galactic Union.

Humanity's domain extends across Earth and to many other planets and moons in the Sol System. Many humans, along with inhabitants from other civilisations, also reside in the supposedly ancient Vega structure in the Vega star system. Humanity has also established colonies on planets in other neighbouring star systems.

Prehistory and ancient history
Modern homo sapiens evolved from homo erectus in Africa on Earth about 300,000 years ago. Ancient carvings in meteorite fragments discovered in the Qumran Caves in the Judaean Desert suggest that tens of thousands of years in humanity's prehistoric past, a widely observed event simply known as "the Change" took place which transported Earth and its solar system to another universe with different physical laws, where it remains today. Prehistoric drawings discovered by other intelligent civilisations that humanity has encountered suggest that the Change occurred on other planets occupied by intelligent life forms at around the same time in their history. Historians from many different extraterrestrial cultures suggest that a highly advanced race known as "the Creators" transported many different planets and star systems occupied by intelligent life forms into a single universe that they had created, possibly to save them from catastrophes that would otherwise occur in their own universes or to serve some other still to be determined purpose.

Some human historians believe that the Creators or visitors from the neighbouring Venusian Empire assisted with the development of several human civilisations during the Neolithic Revolution.

Modern history
In 1712, the British inventor Thomas Newcomen invented an atmospheric engine with a separate condenser, launching the Industrial Revolution. This was followed by the invention of the difference machine - an early mechanical computer - by Johann Helfrich von Müller later in the 18th century. Müller's difference machine was revolutionary and quickly became widely adopted in industrialised nations. In the following decades, advances in mechanical computing enabled experimentation into advanced technologies, such as spaceflight, to begin. By the beginning of the 19th century intercontinental trips on airships and the use of steam-powered cars in cities were already common in industrialised countries. Military forces were equipped with steam-powered ironclad battleships, airships, armoured fighting vehicles and advanced artillery guided by mechanical computer calculations. The rapid mechanisation of society made it economically viable for slavery to be banned in the British Empire in 1788.

During the Napoleonic Wars, the recently-formed British Interplanetary Society - the world's first space advocacy organisation - lobbied the British government to invest in rocketry for military applications. These efforts culminated in the launch of an unmanned multi-stage solid-fueled space rocket designed by Sir William Congreve from the Overberg region of Cape Colony in 1814. While the rocket failed to leave the Earth's atmosphere and crashed, the demonstration spurred the British government to continue funding the program, while competing European powers began investing in their own rocketry programs. British victory over France in the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 led to nearly a century of British dominance over world affairs. The focus of the British Empire's nascent rocketry program was shifted from military applications to civilian research.

Britain successfully launched the first human on a suborbital space flight - Captain Frederick William Beechey - in 1832. In 1835, the British engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel invented the Brunel drive, a steam propulsion system for use in long-duration flights in outer space. The Brunel drive put Luna and the nearby planets of Venus and Mars within reach of human spaceflight for the first time. In 1858, Britain made the first manned landing on Luna. This was followed by a manned landing on Mars by Britain in 1871 and a manned landing on Venus by the Russian Empire in 1873. Both of these expeditions led to the first discoveries of extraterrestrial life forms by humans (giant insects on Venus) and confirmed the past existence of advanced extraterrestrial civilisations on both planets (later revealed to be the Venusian Empire). Several European powers - as well as the United States - established colonies and research outposts on Mars and Venus to exploit the resources of both planets and to study the remnants of the advanced civilisations that once inhabited them. More than 45,000 humans lived on planets other than Earth by 1900, with the population of humans living on Mars and Venus growing tenfold to 450,000 by 1914.

In 1902, a British expedition discovered the Mons Piton site on Luna. British scientists eventually managed to enter the mysterious alien facility, discovering the bodies of surviving members of the Venusian civilisation in hibernation pods. Out of hundreds of Venusians who were hibernating in the pods, only 11 members of the species were successfully revived by British scientists. This was humanity's first contact with an advanced extraterrestrial species. The leader of the surviving Venusians, Xveca, told the human scientists that the remnants of her species had gone into hibernation after their civilisation had nearly been destroyed during the Venusian Civil War, in anticipation of the return of the Creators who the Venusians believed seeded life throughout the universe.

Meanwhile, the decisive victory of Prussia against France during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, and the subsequent formation of the German Empire, presented a challenge to Britain's domination of the world. Over the following decades, Britain and Germany formed two opposing military alliances and deployed advanced weapons technologies, the most prominent being dreadnought orbital battle stations. International tensions culminated in the Great War breaking out between the British/French and German-led alliances in 1914. After initial skirmishes ended in a stalemate in Europe, a destructive exchange by both sides using their orbital weapons platforms in 1916 led to the devastation of Western Europe and the deaths of tens of millions of its inhabitants. The European empires mostly collapsed, leaving the United States as one of the world's major powers. Most of the European Great War combatants together with the United States formed the League of Nations in 1919, in an effort to ensure world peace.

As the world's economy gradually recovered from the Great War, the United States developed and successfully tested the gravity drive, an advanced form of spacecraft propulsion designed by inventor Nikola Tesla, in 1948. This reinvigorated interest in space exploration and the development of advanced space technologies by major world powers, including Germany, the Soviet Union and Japan. The revelation of Tesla's anti-gravity technology also quickly facilitated the development of other advanced human technologies such as flying cars and the construction of previously impossible supertall structures. The anti-gravity technology was used by humans to power electrical turbines, generating essentially limitless clean energy. Inexpensive space travel allowed many nations to establish and expand colonies on other planets, as well as establishing new settlements on distant habitable moons such as Titan and mining operations in the asteroid belt. A period of unprecedented human peace and economic prosperity followed during the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s. In 1962, an American space mission to Europa discovered an advanced civilisation of underwater creatures beneath the ice-covered surface of the moon. Reflecting the increased international cooperation and rapprochement of the era, in 1968 many Western European nations as well as Great Britain and many former colonies of the British Empire formed the United Commonwealth, which became the preeminent human political and economic power. In 1970, the Soviet Union launched humanity's first interstellar spaceflight toward the nearby Alpha Centauri system.

In 1976, a fleet of massive worldships of the Cramori Empire suddenly entered the Sol System. The Cramori, a genocidal race who believed that they were the rightful leaders of all life forms designed by the Creators, demanded that the humans and the Europans surrender and submit to their rule. Military spacecraft of the United States, the Soviet Union and Japan attacked the Cramori ships in response, beginning the long Allied-Cramori War. The American, Soviet and Japanese military space fleets were largely destroyed, and the Cramori ships launched attacks using powerful biological weapons against the human colonies on Mars as well as Europa, killing millions of humans and Europans and rendering Mars virtually uninhabitable. As the Cramori fleet landed ground forces on Mars and Europa, humanity launched a desperate attack from Earth against the remaining Cramori ships. High-speed civilian research ships were rammed into the Cramori fleet at relativistic speeds in suicide attacks, destroying most of the Cramori fleet and preventing them from immediately threatening Earth and Venus. Over the following months, human nations assembled a makeshift fleet of transport and combat ships to deploy human ground forces to evacuate survivors from Mars and to combat the Cramori on Mars and Europa. While the remaining Cramori warships in the solar system were destroyed, human ground forces that were deployed to Mars faced heavy casualties fighting against Cramori ground forces. After the remaining survivors were evacuated from Mars, the United States and the Soviet Union controversially decided to destroy the planet's surface with nuclear weapons and fusion weapons to eliminate the remaining Cramori ground forces on the planet rather than continuing to fight them in a costly ground campaign, given that the Cramori biological weapon attacks had rendered Mars uninhabitable to humans for at least several thousand years. By 1980, Europan military forces had also defeated Cramori underwater forces on Europa, eliminating Cramori forces in the solar system.

The losses of millions of lives, the abandonment of Mars, and the destruction of humanity's mining operations in the asteroid belt by the Cramori were all huge blows to the human economy. The economic prosperity that had lasted since the 1950s was brought to an abrupt end, as governments began rationing strategic materials to construct massive space battle fleets and arrays of defensive systems in anticipation of fighting the Cramori again. Taxes were raised and most goods became more expensive, forcing much of human society to abandon many luxuries that were now seen as unnecessary. Many citizens were conscripted to serve with their national space military forces, or to perform vital jobs in the construction and resource-gathering industries. Most human governments began to exercise unprecedented degrees of control over their economies.

In 1982, the League of Nations and the Grand Council of Europa signed the Earth-Europan Treaty. Under the terms of this treaty, humanity gained access to Europan expertise in directed-energy weapons (including particle beam weapons) as well as energy shield technology. In return, human nations shared advanced spaceflight technology with the Europans. Europan energy weapon technology was essential to the construction of the Solar System Defense Initiative (SSDI), a network of defensive space battle stations and early warning systems in the Kuiper belt and around the solar system which was commenced by the League of Nations in 1984. Technology captured from Cramori forces on Mars, such as walkers and other types of directed energy weapons, was also reverse-engineered by human nations. In 1986, the world's major spacefaring powers established the League of Nations Space Command (LNSC), which would act as a unified command structure for Earth's space defence forces. The League of Nations Space Command would also control the SSDI, once it was completed and operational.

In 1987, the United States undertook humanity's first faster-than-light spaceflight using a ship powered by the revolutionary kugelblitz drive. The U.S. faced significant pressure to share the drive with other members of the League of Nations to enhance humanity's space defence force. The U.S. finally relented in 1990, providing the kugelblitz drive to all other members of the LNSC. The United States proposed a number of manned faster-than-light "Operation Starshot" interstellar missions targeted at nearby star systems, in order to locate and destroy the homeworld of the Cramori. American Starshot missions began in 1998. The second American Starshot mission, launched in 1999 to the Vega star system, discovered the massive Vega structure, which was controlled by Cramori forces. The Starshot mission to Vega escaped and returned to the Sol System by 2001, warning the LNSC of the presence of Cramori forces in that system. In 2004, the United States sent its frontline space battle fleet to Vega in an effort to destroy the Cramori forces occupying the system, despite the majority of League of Nations members warning that more time was needed to build up Earth's space battle fleet and to gather intelligence on the Cramori forces in Vega. The American space fleet arrived in the Vega system in 2005 and found that they were outmatched by newer-generation Cramori warships guarding the system, which appeared to have been refitted with more advanced faster-than-light drives. Almost the entire American frontline space fleet was destroyed. In response to the attack, Cramori forces launched massed attacks on the Sol System using unmanned faster-than-light probes in 2006 and 2011. These attacks damaged manned battle stations and sensors of the recently-deployed Solar System Defense Initiative. Unmanned Cramori probes equipped with pure fusion warheads destroyed most LNSC facilities on Pluto, while additional probes carrying biological warheads reached Titan, killing 16 million of its human inhabitants and rendering the Saturnian moon uninhabitable to humans. Despite these losses, the SSDI was successful in protecting Earth and Venus. Heavy American losses in the Vega battle and repeated Cramori attacks on the Sol System forced the cancellation of Operation Starshot missions between 2006 and 2016, as humanity prioritised the rebuilding of the Solar System Defense Initiative and its space fleet. Improvements to SSDI installations meant that a follow-up attack by Cramori probes on the Sol System in 2016 was far less successful.

In 2021, the LNSC deployed a large fleet of attack and transport ships in a second attempt to capture the Vega structure from the Cramori. Arriving at Vega in 2022, LNSC commanders found that while the Cramori fleet still had superior faster-than-light drives, the LNSC ships now had decisive firepower and protection advantages due to recent advances such as adjustable-yield particle beam cannons and force fields. While many LNSC warships were lost, the entire Cramori fleet was destroyed. LNSC ground forces were deployed to engage Cramori troops in one of the many megacities making up the surface of the Vega structure. By 2024, after a lengthy campaign of house-to-house fighting, the LNSC finally declared victory over the Cramori in Vega.

Meanwhile, an Operation Starshot mission undertaken by Japan made contact with a highly advanced civilisation on the planet Toua in 2021. Despite lacking interstellar spaceflight capabilities, the inhabitants of Toua had developed advanced computing and artificial intelligence technologies.

However, while the Vega campaign was already underway, an American ship on an Operation Starshot mission to the Gliese 176 system failed to return from its mission in 2021 as scheduled. A Soviet ship on an Operation Starshot mission to the 61 Virginis system also failed to return from its mission in 2022. Once the LNSC fleet returned from Vega in 2025, the fleet was dispatched first to Gliese 176, arriving there by 2027. In the Gliese 176 system, the LNSC fleet discovered that Cramori forces were not present in that system - rather, the missing American Starshot astronauts had been held prisoner by an oppressive regime on a planet in the system named Gidoria for the past seven years, whose civilisation had largely been destroyed in a nuclear conflict. LNSC ground forces quickly overwhelmed the regime's military and freed the astronauts from captivity. Leaving behind a small occupation force, the LNSC fleet then proceeded to investigate 61 Virginis, arriving in that system by 2029. However, at 61 Virginis the LNSC fleet was ambushed and mostly destroyed by the massive and powerful Cramori Grand Fleet. The Cramori Grand Fleet then proceeded to the Sol System, arriving by 2030. The SSDI installations and defending LNSC ships were surprised and quickly overwhelmed by the Grand Fleet's vast numbers. While planetary force fields surrounding Earth, Venus and Europa were successful in deflecting Cramori biological projectile attacks, Cramori ships then towed huge asteroids into the Sol System and threatened to launch them at relativistic speeds toward Earth, Venus and Europa unless their inhabitants agreed to surrender and submit to their control. A desperate attempt by human and Europan pilots to ram the ships of the Cramori fleet at relativistic speeds with a fleet of civilian ships, similar to how humanity thwarted the first Cramori attack in 1976, was also anticipated by the Cramori and foiled. Facing complete destruction, the League of Nations and Europa agreed to surrender to the Cramori Empire. Millions of Cramori occupation troops began to land on planets and moons throughout the Sol System to enforce their control, while most of the Cramori Grand Fleet was dispatched to Vega to retake it from the League of Nations. The Cramori retook the Vega structure from human occupation forces in 2033.

The Cramori occupation of the Sol System was harsh and oppressive. Millions of humans and Europans were enslaved and forced to construct starships, weapons and equipment to aid in the Cramori Empire's expansion throughout the galaxy. Others were made to build temples and monuments to the Cramori and the Creators. However, the LNSC had constructed a secret military base on Proxima Centauri Beta in the nearby Proxima Centauri star system during the 2010s to give elements of humanity a fighting chance to escape and rebuild in the event that the Sol System fell to the Cramori. Some LNSC ships and many personnel managed to escape to Proxima Centauri when the Cramori Grand Fleet conquered the Sol System in 2030. Additional LNSC personnel and resources were also recovered from the planet Gidoria in 2032, which had been under LNSC occupation since 2027. In 2031, the LNSC sent emissaries from Proxima Centauri to Toua, which a Japanese Operation Starshot mission had previously visited between 2021 and 2023. After negotiations, Toua agreed to assist the remnants of the LNSC in the war against the Cramori Empire using its advanced computer science and artificial intelligence technology. In return, the LNSC provided advanced spaceflight and weapons technology to Toua. Automated production facilities were established on Proxima Centauri Beta with Touahn assistance. These production facilities were used to construct armies of automated worker droids, who went on to help build a fleet of highly-automated next-generation warships. These warships incorporated more advanced faster-than-light drives, which humans had reverse engineers from spaceships found during the period in which humanity had occupied the Vega structure. The remnants of the LNSC, aided by the Touahn, quietly rebuilt a large and advanced space fleet in Proxima Centauri, before launching a surprise attack on Cramori forces in the Sol System in 2057. However, the LNSC/Touahn ships were still outnumbered by the Cramori fleet, and they took losses during the initial stages of the battle. In response, the Allies unleashed the black hole bomb - a powerful weapon of mass destruction which had been developed decades ago but never tested due to fears that it could not be controlled. The remaining Cramori warships were decisively defeated, and humans and Europans on Earth and Europa quickly rose up against the Cramori occupation forces. By 2061, Earth and Europa had been liberated from the forces of the Cramori Empire. It took until 2063 to liberate Venus, eliminating the presence of the Cramori in the Sol System. The League of Nations and Europa signed formal alliance agreements with Toua in 2065. In the same year, human governments allowed human entities to trade with the Touahn, giving much of humanity access to highly advanced Touahn computer technology and nanotechnology. In 2066 the rebuilt human/Touahn fleet - now operating under the auspices of Allied Fleet Command - was dispatched to the Cramori base at 61 Virginis, and destroyed the entire star system using black hole bombs to prevent another attack on the Sol System. However, it took more than a decade of recovery from the disastrous Cramori occupation of the Sol System before the allies were in a position to strike again. In 2077, another Allied Fleet Command fleet - this time including Europan ships - was dispatched to Vega. By 2082, they had retaken the huge Vega structure from Cramori occupation forces, and rescued a few surviving humans who the Cramori had captured in Vega when they had last taken the system 49 years earlier.

From 2089 the Allies began dispatching advanced AI-controlled faster-than-light space probes to more distant star systems in a series of missions known as "Starshot II". These replaced the original manned "Starshot I" missions, the last of which had been launched by humanity in 2022, and had the objective of locating additional systems occupied by the Cramori Empire so that they could be destroyed. In 2091, a routine LNSC patrol mission to Veoria in the TRAPPIST star system - which a manned Starshot mission had first visited in 2023 - found that the TRAPPIST system had been invaded by Cramori forces. The human ship was able to escape back to Earth to warn commanders of the threat. In 2095, a force of starships assembled by Allied Fleet Command attacked Cramori forces in the TRAPPIST system. The Cramori space fleet was defeated relatively easily by the powerful Allied fleet, however the ground war to liberate the three planets in the TRAPPIST system from Cramori control was far longer and bloodier. The Allies finally eliminated the last Cramori ground forces on the planets in the TRAPPIST system in 2107.

In 2120, an Allied probe brought back intelligence of a Cramori-controlled planet in the Kepler-62 system. Experts strongly believed this planet to be Cramorane, the home planet of their species. Most Allied military commanders and political leaders initially favoured simply destroying the entire Kepler-62 system using black hole weapons to eliminate the Cramori once and for all. However, additional reconnaissance probe flights to Cramorane over the following years revealed that the planet was also home to billions of non-Cramori inhabitants, including human captives, who were thought to be the descendants of slaves captured as a result of Cramori conquests throughout the galaxy. Opinion shifted to producing a huge number of unmanned battle droids to form the bulk of an invasion force, in order to limit human, Europan and Touahn casualties as much as possible.

In 2133 another Allied Starshot II probe returned to Earth with evidence of an advanced alien satellite orbiting the Antares star system. Photographs of inscriptions in the satellite showed what appeared to be instructions on how to access an interstellar transport system comprised of a network of wormholes, which could be used to reach a distant location in the galaxy. Rather than launching a long and costly invasion of Cramorane immediately, Allied governments eventually decided to dispatch a human, Touahn and Europan-crewed interstellar ship in an attempt to access the interstellar transport system node at Antares, hoping to make contact with the advanced civilization that constructed the system and seek their aid in defeating the Cramori. The Allied exploration ship Destiny reached Antares by 2142, and the crew was successful in accessing the wormhole entrance located at the system. In a matter of months, wormholes had transported Destiny to the star system of Prime, located tens of thousands of light years from Earth. Prime contained the vast capital of a large and powerful alliance of species known as the Galactic Union. The members of the Galactic Union agreed to assist Allied Fleet Command in its campaign to defeat the Cramori Empire and free the various species throughout the galaxy that it had enslaved. However, in return the Allies would need to agree to join the Galactic Union and provide manpower, ships and resources to help combat an impeding invasion from an extragalactic force known only as Threat X. The crew of Destiny returned from Antares by 2149 to convey this information to Allied Fleet Command leaders. Most human, Touahn and Europan leaders eventually agreed that joining the Galactic Union would be in the Allies' best interests. To be eligible for admission into the Galactic Union, a species was required to have its entire population unified under a single participatory public governmental structure. In 2155, after a global referendum, all human governments became united under a single democratic leadership structure known as the Human Federation. The government of the Human Federation effectively replaced former human national governments as well as the League of Nations. The newly-formed Human Federation was formally admitted into the Galactic Union in 2162, along with Europa and Toua. In 2166 the Galactic Union, including the military forces of the Human Federation and its allies, invaded Cramorane. The advanced technology possessed by members of the Galactic Union meant that the remnants of the Cramori Empire's military forces were quickly defeated, however it took several years for the entire population of Cramorane to be effectively subjugated. The Human Federation finally declared victory over the Cramori Empire in 2184, after more than two centuries of intermittent warfare. War crimes trials for surviving Cramori leaders began on Venus in 2191.

By the end of the 22nd century, humanity has begun to receive transfers of highly-advanced spacecraft and military technology from the other member states of the Galactic Union to equip human military forces for the impeding campaign to protect the galaxy from Threat X. The Galactic Union is also in the process of extending the interstellar transport system and an associated superluminal communications network from the Galactic capital of Prime to the Sol System and Toua. Once operational, the transport system will reduce round-trip travel time between Earth and Prime from more than a decade to around one year, while also vastly reducing round-trip communication times. Human Federation military starships, operating under Galactic Union command, now regularly patrol distant areas of the galaxy to ensure that less-advanced species remain free from exploitation by the remnants of the Cramori Empire and other genocidal civilizations. While it was hoped that humanity's hard-won victory against the Cramori would launch human civilization into a new golden age of peace and prosperity, human leaders feel that they have no choice but to contribute as much as possible to the impending fight for galactic survival against Threat X.