Age of Rebirth

"What did the time after consist of?"
...
"Death."
...
"That's all that most remember. Death, for nothing at all."

The Dark Age of humanity was truly only given its name due to how the next age began. Volivala, the Journey and Polaris took to the stars from Cradle, Earth's new name for itself, screaming their awakening into the void with a blinding light: the skies had cleared, the darkness was over.

As such, the Age of Rebirth began with the reconnection of the old pre-Deluge systems. As it turned out, Cradle was not the only to have survived the cataclysm. Many others had emerged victorious against the tide, and a great number of Numen had emerged. Blink-gates were constructed, providing fast and (mostly) reliable interastral travel, creating an unprecedented amount of connection between previously isolated systems. Soon enough, interastral corporations emerged, and, most importantly, various interastral shipping corporations emerged which slowly consolidated into Interplanetary Shipping (IPS).

Lancers and Consolidation

With the creation of Interplanetary Shipping, and the advent of interastral shipping in general, space piracy emerged. Former construction workers and engineers who worked as civilian lancers and became disillusioned with their work modified their mechs for combative purposes, stealing IPS cargo and selling it on the black market. In response, Northstar, IPS' anti-piracy (eventually just military in general) division formed. Lancers now took on their primary military role in society: being weapons of war, rather than construction.

However, unbeknownst to most of humanity, this development had already happened in the mostly unknown pre-Deluge colony of Cygni-A. Cygni-A, the planet that had best survived the Deluge, had been in the midst of a brutal war against the Swarm that ended with the destruction of the aforementioned planet. The retreating Cygnans took to a massive fleet of starships, forming the Cygnan Accord. Their lancer corporation, SSC, had formed soon after, and with the Accord's arrival in IPS space the ignorant belief in a mostly peaceful universe had been shattered. News of the Swarm's existence spread, and planetary governments began to retract, taking on more defensive, provincial attitudes, fearing a Swarm outbreak would sweep across their systems.

At the revelation of a more violent universe, individual star-system governments formalized. Some stuck to the more democratic, decentralized ethics of the Dark Age while others centralized and became more authoritarian. Nonetheless, IPS emerged as the sole binding force between these governments, with each system creating their own planet-side manufacturing companies. These companies would eventually consolidate under the conglomerate General Massive Systems, however, for a time, each of these system-based companies rapidly industrialized their home planets to give their governments leverage against other systems. In the blink of an eye, the harmony of the universe shattered. Conflicts flared between system governments, scattering IPS operations while SSC began colonizing systems in the vicinity of Cygni-A.

In the ongoing conflicts, certain systems emerged as dominant forces within IPS space, those being Sol, Procyon, Tau Ceti, Alecto, and Epsilon Indi. These five emerged as mostly democratic, unifying forces, and recognized the danger of a divided humanity in the stars. Once the Swarm had been realized as less of a threat than once thought, and once unsavory reports of Cygnan Accord practices reached IPS space, it became clear that IPS systems needed to unite to survive. As such, they united under the Blueshift Confederacy, merging the doctrines of Turing, the Preservation and Xivei, the Ataraxia to create a congressional, democratic inter-astral order.

With the order settled, IPS began to expand into new systems, either creating completely artificial settlements thanks to new technology or colonizing unexplored habitable worlds. It was at this time that the Apperata were discovered by the Cygnan Accord, and soon Apperata were found across IPS space, provoking societal and cultural discourse over the place of artificial life in the cosmos.

The Brontestar Trade War

As IPS began to rapidly expand, discourse within the company emerged over the corporation's relationship with SSC. Some believed a peaceful coexistence to be the most profitable going forward, while others believed a rapid hostile takeover to be more enticing. The Sustainists, led by Gerome Farz along with two other members of the Board of Directors, believed that the SSC would either merge with or become obsolete due to the IPS, primarily thanks to their reliance on the Accord. The Protectionists, led by Zeke Cossack and another member of the board, believed that the SSC needed to be snuffed out now while they were weak and isolated.

Without a vote of the board, Zeke, along with his allies in the company, invaded SSC space, sparking both an IPS civil war and an IPS-SSC war. Thus began the Brontestar Trade War, a forty-seven years long conflict which has since been regarded as the prelude to the much more devastating Synthesis War.

The war continued in a brutal stalemate for most of its duration, primarily taking place in IPS states with a war of mercenaries and subterfuge. Eventually, once public opinion among the systems of the Confederacy had shifted strongly against the Protectionists, Zeke signed a treaty with both the Sustainists and SSC, granting the IPS control over Bronte and Astrape with Zeke's resignation offered in return. A bitter, unsatisfactory end that resolved little within the IPS and only worsened IPS-SSC relations.

For a while, the cosmos was at peace. However, the illusion of peace was as fragile as the Confederacy's planetary defense networks as it turned out, because, soon enough, the skies over Tau Ceti darkened with hundreds of Inorganic Collective starships, marking the beginning of the Synthesis War.