Galactic Havoc: Introduction/Basic Overview

Galactic Havoc: Introduction/Basic Overview

Every setting needs an introduction, something that gives you a basic idea of what it is about. It can include a short historical overview and must describe the current situation to give the readers/players a chance to see if the idea interests them or not. Even when you're looking for some article, you're probably just reading the abstracts to see if the article is something you're looking for or not, right? Writing a good introduction/abstract is an important skill, something I do not have, but everyone has to start somewhere. So, here's an introduction to Galactic Havoc - something that I wrote to have a base, something to graft the details on. All the classical cliches are included.

The Milky Way galaxy is but one of infinite galaxies in the universe. One might ponder the scale of it and think that there is no way a conflict can arise when there is so much space and so many resources, but the reality shows that war is inevitable. When interstellar civilizations grow to truly immense scales, it becomes impossible to govern them efficiently. You cannot wall yourself off, you are always in the open; and the galaxy is full of hostile entities that would love nothing more than to attack a poorly protected world, drain it of resources, enslave or exterminate the population, or do something worse.

When humanity in its expansionist drive spread across the stars using FTL hyperdrives, it formed the Solar Federation – a loose association of human worlds. In the 39th century, the earthlings contacted an alien civilization whose name could be loosely translated into English as Cherk Collective. The aliens were behaving peacefully at first, but as soon as they found out where the human homeworld lies, they sent a space fleet to Earth and turned its surface into a radioactive, lifeless wasteland to intimidate the humans into submission. The Solar Federation was not yet a threat to these aliens at that point in time, but they were a potential threat that had to be eliminated. And they would have been eliminated if not for the interference of yet another alien civilization, the Utaran Conglomerate that deemed the Cherk Collective a threat and began a systematic extermination of the latter.

This incident caused an ideological shift in the Solar Federation. Some worlds seceded from the federation and adopted an isolationist policy. The remaining humans became a militaristic, xenophobic society. The focus on military power, expansionism, and mistrust of non-humans allowed the Solar Federation to colonize countless star systems. Over thousands of years, the Solar Federation grew to a titanic size, exterminated many alien civilizations, and, of course, had a few setbacks in the form of aliens who were too powerful to be purged completely, and many rebellions. What most galactic species learned the hard way is that one should be very careful with AI, and even the Solar Federation had rejected all AI technologies after one particularly nasty robot rebellion. They have also found that many things that were believed to be superstitions by the skeptic humans did exist in the universe. Among the alien civilizations, there have been psychics, telepaths, and even creatures wielding powers that humans could only call magic. Clearly supernatural beings populated the galaxy and even some dimensions beyond that were unreachable to the explorers and scientists of the Solar Federation.

Then, in the 51th century, came a period of time called the Era of Silence. A hyperspace flux (some believed it to be of artificial nature) has blocked all FTL travel in the galaxy. While there were years of seeming stability, the flux always returned. During this time, many colonies that depended on interstellar trade to survive simple ceased to exist. Most of the remaining colonies formed their own slower-than-light polities. When three thousand years later the flux finally abated, the remnants of the Solar Federation finally managed to reconnect with the lost worlds. However, many worlds have gotten used to their independence and resisted the reclamation. Many humans have changed either due to ideological shifts, alien influence, supernatural or genetic tampering, or for some other reason. What the Solar Federation found the most abhorrent is that some humans coexisted with aliens peacefully.

Now, in the 87th century, the Solar Federation is knee-deep in constant war. Countless armies fight nonconformist humans who resist reunification with the Federation, rogue artificial intelligences, and a multitude of alien factions that see the Federation as prey or a threat. During the Era of Silence, many other horrors were unleased upon the galaxy. Demons from Hell were released upon the world in a teleportation experiment mishap, cyber-liches lead undead armies that turn every enemy slain into a loyal warrior, the four Elemental Lords chose the galaxy as their new battleground, and many hostile forces have not yet been discovered. While in the core worlds, for some people life might even seem peaceful, their survival depends on the brave soldiers and skilled commanders that protect the Federation from external and internal threat.