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Pre-Scream Sector History

Pre-Spike

• 2040: The first VIs are created, performing an adequate facsimile of human intelligence. Though restricted to specialized tasks, over the next few decades VI and robotics start to take over many sectors of the human economy, seriously disrupting the fabric of human society.
• 2050 - 2070: These two decades are known as the Hungry Years, as a significant percentage of the world's work force are left unemployed by the implementation of VI and robotics in not only industrial positions, but also the service industry and a percentage of higher positions formerly held by human doctors, lawyers and other professionals.
• 2050: The development of asteroid mining technology provides vast amounts of raw materials to Earth’s orbital shipyards and factories. Ship prices plunge, and numerous smaller organizations and states become capable of inter-planetary exploration.
• 2060: Anti-senescence research hits a number of significant breakthroughs, greatly increasing human lifespans and general health.
• 2067: The first true Artificial Intelligence is created.
• 2070: Coming out of the Hungry Years, most nation states have embraced some variant of a post-scarcity society, leaving the majority of humanity with a minimum guaranteed living standard.
• 2105: After decades of advances in human-machine interfaces, the first soulstones are created, allowing the backing up of human minds, and transfer to new shells. The original technology is extremely expensive and heavily regulated.

First Wave

• 2108: The spike drive is discovered by crank scientist Dr. Tiberius Crohn. Humanity moves almost overnight from a handful of science stations on the solar system’s inner worlds to all-out interstellar exploration. Numerous Terran governments seek the resources of new worlds.
• 2110: Several scout craft are lost while learning the limits of the spike drive. The dangers of excessive frequency climbing are recorded by survivors.
• 2113: The first habitable extrasolar world is discovered by the scout ship Magellan. The ship’s patrons promptly claim the world for the Europe Federation and name it Renaissance.
• 2114: Pranashakti, the first life-bearing alien world, is discovered by a Pan-Indian scout ship. The organisms consist solely of plant analogues and some primitive marine life, but a generation of xenobiologists finds work in analyzing it all.
• 2120: Grails are in widespread use, though still limited compared to those that will later be produces with psi-enhanced production.
• 2128: The ruins of an advanced alien species are discovered on Typhon, an otherwise unremarkable gas giant moon. Archaeologists date the ruins to approximately 40,000 BCE. Dubbed “the Watchers” for the eye-like circular motifs on the ruins, few details are learned about the species.
• 2133: The third generation of spike drives are perfected, reaching a level of reliability and safety which allows their use in civilian transportation, rather than just exploration, science and military vessels.
• 2135: “Metadimensional Extroversion Syndrome” begins to manifest in certain children of parents that have travelled using the spike drive. Occurring most often around puberty, the abilities exhibited by MES victims seem flatly impossible by normal scientific measure: telepathy, teleportation, precognitive flashes, and other abilities that defy understanding. The syndrome is inevitably fatal unless the victim avoids all use of their uncanny abilities.
• 2144 - 2148: The first stellar war breaks out between the Union of South American Nations and the Transpacific Alliance, drawing in the Novgorod Democratic Commune after the first year. The USAN wins the war, securing a number of the important strategic and economic colonies of the First Wave.
• 2150: Various nation begin secret research to develop methods for controlling the advance of MES, allowing its victims to use their abilities without inflicting permanent brain damage on themselves. Much of this research takes place on isolated extra-solar colonies.
• 2150: Human gengineering becomes common on some worlds as societies attempt to improve their members to better suit the local environment.
• 2165: The First Wave of human expansion reaches its peak. Most habitable planets within a year’s travel time from Earth have been successfully colonized by various nation-states.
• 2173 - 2186: The second stellar war kicks of with an incident between the United States of America and the Sino-Chinese People's State, but quickly expands to involve all extra-solar colonies. Though it is feared that the war might engulf Earth in a war with weapons of mass destruction, the doctrine of MAD keeps the war off Earth entirely, though it does bring trade to a standstill. Extra-solar combat is also somewhat subdued, seeking to avoid damage to the colonies they are fighting over. After 13 years an alliance consisting of the USA and the Trans-Pacific Coalition comes out on top.
• 2179: Among the weapons developed during the second stellar war are the refinement of the abilities of MES carrier, known commonly as “psychics”, in various ways to aid the war effort. These begin to use their abilities to assist governments and private enterprise. Numerous fields begin to benefit from the assistance of MES subjects, ranging from telepathic mental health providers to precognitive industrial managers.
• 2186: By the end of the second stellar war the world comes together, guided by the USA and the Trans-Pacific Coalition, to expand upon the ancient institution of the United Nations. The changes to the institution updates it to deal with the existence of the extra-solar colonies, and the complications that they impose on international politics.
• 2195: Soulstones have become a normal part of life, used by almost everyone, the exceptions generally being for religious or philosophical reasons. Though soulstones theoretically allow for a large variety of shells, biological Prime shells are the norm, with mechanical or non-Prime shells generally reserved for specific tasks or careers that require their unique abilities. Culturally, unnecessary use of non-Prime shells is seen as somewhat elitist or as a cry for attention.

Second Wave

• 2199: The first jump gate is created. A massive ring of psitech placed at the periphery of the solar system, the gate employs a choir of over fifty master teleporters to instantly translate ships to a matching gate at Renaissance. Gate dispersal is slowed by a lack of master teleporters, but eventually the transit time between Earth and the frontier is reduced to two days. The Second Wave of human colonization begins.
• 2200: The use of psychics in industrial production is firmly established, producing new products that would be impossible without them.
• 2230: Research into the genetics behind MES has progressed to the point where gengineers can create psychic shells uniquely specialized for different psychic disciplines or even specific jobs in psychic manufacturing. Using them requires specialized training, limiting their use, but psychic manufacturing still expands by leaps and bounds.
• 2230: Jump gates connect all the core worlds. Spike drive ships have become all but unknown within the core worlds as the jump gates allow cheaper system ships to travel between the older colonies.
• 2235: Psitech-enhanced manufactory abilities and precognitive surveyors have vastly increased the rate of viable colonization. At this point almost four billion humans have left Earth for the wealth and freedom of the colony worlds. Many of the major political blocks now has as large a population outside of the solar system as they have inside Sol, making it difficult for the UN to effectively monitor and respond to crisis.
• 2238 - 2276: The spark of the third stellar war is lit when the Socialist People's Republic square off against the Islamic Nations. Other nations one by one fall in behind one of the two sides for a variety of philosophical and political considerations. However, as opposed to the second stellar war, this war is primarily philosophical rather than economic, and it burns hot. Though many historians set the end-point of the war at the formation of the Mandate, the war ends with a whimper rather than a bang, and some combat action continue after that date in various parts of the Terran sphere.
• 2251: The destruction of Naya Delhi, marking the first use of weapons of mass destruction since 1945. This opens for the use of further weapons of mass destruction during the third stellar war.
• 2271: The Orion Federation, a collection of extra-solar colonies fed up with the continued destruction of the third stellar war, uses the weakened state of their parent nations to declare their independence and become the first extra-solar colonies to have no governmental connection to the nation-states of Earth. Further extra-solar alliances spring up and follow their example. These secessions mark the start of the end of the third stellar war.

Third Wave

• 2276: A collection of Terran nation states as well as the Free Martian State come together to form The Mandate. Other Terran nation states with extra-solar colonies quickly join the new organization. The official task of The Mandate is to replace the collapsed UN, and facilitate peace and cooperation between the worlds of humanity. However, by the actions of the Mandate, it quickly becomes apparent that its primary function is to maintain Earth's hold over its remaining colonies, and return the independent colonies to the fold.
• 2290: Though the nation states of Earth still exist, through political maneuvering the Mandate has managed to render them inconsequential when it comes to the administration of the extra-solar colonies. Though many old colonies are still members of the old nation states, the Mandate governs interstellar trade, defense, colonization and exploration.
• 2303 - 2313: The Distant War. In a "policing action" that is in actuality a full-blown war the Mandate destroys the armed forces of the Orion Federation and return their colonies to the fold. Though a few colonies still exist outside the influence of the Mandate, this spells the functional end of resistance against the Mandate.
• 2320: The Third Wave is at its peak; it is the Golden Age of Man. The Mandate sponsors exploration and colonization of far-off worlds. Psitech supplements normal technology to produce enormous abundance for even the poorest worlds with access to core technology. The jump gate network regularly expands to include important frontier worlds and include them in the core. From these important worlds, the network expands to nearby smaller worlds. The furthest reaches of the frontier now extend ten years of spike drive travel from Earth.
• 2340: The Terran Mandate has become deeply corrupt and hopelessly decadent. Its Directors concern themselves exclusively with their own interests, rivalries, and ideological obsessions. Only the AI Maestros of Earth act as a check on their actions, as the Directors are unable to effectively control the Mandate without the help of their AI adjuncts. These AIs struggle to maintain a basic level of propriety among their creators.
• 2345: As the Mandate loses interest in the border worlds, certain remote sectors of space have begun to embrace both gengineering and advanced AI integration to further improve and recreate humanity. Some of these societies continue to interact amiably with their baseline human neighbors, while other transhumans are aggressive in their proselytization. Though the Mandate disapproves of these experiments, it only intervenes when the experiments threaten the peace.
• 2383 - 2385: A group of transhumans called the Supreme begin conquering neighboring worlds to forcibly elevate the inhabitants to their superior form. Stronger, faster, and above all, smarter than most Primes their neighbors cannot resist them, militarily or philosophically. The Mandate moves to intervene, but their local response is slow. Before the end of the year, the Mandate and the Supreme is engaged in a full-scale war that the Mandate is losing. By 2385 a fifth of the rim is under the control of the Supreme, and they have started entering the core worlds.

The Scream

• 2385: The Scream erupts from somewhere within the Veil Nebula. Reconstructions of the event suggest that it was some form of faster-than-light psychic emanation, the wave propagating from one end of human space to the other within seventeen minutes. The Scream inevitably rendered a psychic either dead or hopelessly insane. The Jump Gate network collapses. A period of stellar isolation and chaos begins, now commonly called “the Silence”.
• 2385 - 2420: Countless core worlds die as they are cut off from vital food and technical supplies. Frontier worlds fare better than core planets. More spike drive ships are available, and those worlds that have yet to receive Jump Gates were still devoting effort to autonomous agriculture and industry. Even so, the sudden loss of every human psychic leaves their psitech equipment and industries largely useless. Many frontier worlds devolve to survival-level subsistence.
• 2395: Normal pre-tech equipment begin to wear out or become used up. The most useful or effective tech was often explicitly designed to be irreplaceable by frontier worlds in order to maintain the Mandate core’s monopoly on the technology. Those that cannot find alternatives either die out or devolve to survival-level subsistence.

2400

• 2425: Attempts are made to recover the techniques of psychic training. The complete absence of any experienced psychic trainers hampers this effort, and the cost in psychic lives to recreate this training is enormous. A few worlds are successful in developing crude training programs, but most societies abandon the effort in the face of more immediate planetary needs.
• 2430: The last easily-salvaged remnants of pretech give up the ghost. With the core worlds dead or consumed by struggle, this technology can now be found only in lost caches and Mandate ruins, or on those few worlds that have managed to cling on to some pretech production.

2450

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2500

• 2535: The present day