The Dark Age

A few hundred years after slipstream technology sends mankind from earth to the stars came the

DARK AGE;

 a cataclysmic event that spanned the full breadth of man kinds reach among the stars. One after another, stars began emitting powerful electromagnetic pulses, disabling all electrical equipment. But there was something else embedded deep in the crust of the most heavily populated worlds that acted as a kinetic dampener. This rendered heavy powerful machines inert as well…even old ceremonial powder weapons were affected. Worlds were so long adapted to their high level of tech that almost no “old world” tech existed. Who takes a paper book with them on a space voyage to a colony world? Without the ability to use tech there was no way to maintain the infrastructures of the huge cities on the terraformed worlds. People were forced to abandon their high tech, wonderfully designed cities and flee into the tame wilderness…which on many worlds quickly became feral without human caretakers…   So many worlds had been colonized…so many new governments…only the strongest and most organized peoples were able to even keep a record or to preserve their histories. The rest…lost. Lost their knowledge as the pulses continued for generations, lost their history as they were forced to start anew, and lost their technical knowhow because they had no use for it.   On some colony worlds there were vast numbers of genetically altered peoples. Their bodies had been changed, most intended to be only temporary changes, to survive in hostile environments. But with the pulses stopping them from recovering their natural bodies these people still could not deny the urge to procreate. They would re-enter the known later having forgotten they were ever human. And genetically enhanced animals prospered in the Dark Age as well. Worlds of cetaceans and “modified” primates, dogs, cephalopods developed their own intelligent civilizations. But then the pulses stopped inexplicably. Slowly the worlds began to redevelop their technical knowledge. On worlds with different challenges, different tech was developed. Without being able to share with other worlds that only a few knew must exist out among the stars…an amazing variety of solutions to common problems arose.   Because of the time the suns stopped pulsing was synchronous, the worlds managed to re-establish their tech at similar rates. Some worlds discovered each other before they managed to reach space via radio communications because their worlds were so close. Others met in space, discovering men like themselves amongst the stars. And there of course were those that already knew. Some worlds fought hard to get to space before the others…they had managed to keep their historical records intact enough to know there were others out in the universe. They had a head start and began conquering worlds to establish system spanning empires. They remembered the time before and they saw their chance for power. Then the Cassads reached space again… …and the game changed.