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.
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A Timeline of the Future
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2108
Invention of the Spike Drive
Technological achievement -
2110
Spike Drive Limits Found
Disaster / DestructionSeveral scout craft are lost while learning the limits of the spike drive. The dangers of excessive frequency climbing are recorded by survivors.
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2113
1st Habitable Extrasolar World Discovered
Discovery, ExplorationThe first habitable extrasolar world is discovered by the scout ship Magellan. The ship’s patrons promptly claim the world for Greater Europe and name it Renaissance.
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2120
1st Alien Life Discovered
Discovery, ScientificPranashakti, 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.
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2130
Space Infrastructure Develops
Construction beginning/endThe 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 stellar exploration.
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2150
1st Dead Civilization Discovered
Discovery, ExplorationThe 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.
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2200
The Terran Mandate is Founded
FoundingThe First Wave of human expansion reaches its peak. Most habitable planets within a year’s travel time from Earth have been successfully colonized, many by small religious or ideological groups. Terran nations begin to forbid further exploration for fear of being unable to maintain control over their offworld colonies over such distances. The Terran Mandate is organized by Earth’s superpowers in order to ensure that Terran control of the colonies continues.
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2240
M.E.S. Manifests
Metaphysical / Paranormal event“Metadimensional Extroversion Syndrome” begins to manifest in certain fifth generation spacers. 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.
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2260
Colonial Friction
Diplomatic actionSome colony worlds begin to grow restive, and there are incidents of skirmishing and piracy on the frontier. Few disputes are over resources, but ideological and religious conflicts become more common. The Terran Mandate struggles to deal with the twelve-month message delay between Earth and the farthest colony worlds.
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2275
Psionic Authority Established
FoundingResearchers on several deep-space colonies begin to develop methods for controlling the advance of MES, allowing its victims to use their abilities without inflicting permanent brain damage on themselves. The lives lost in this research are never fully numbered, but Terran governments rapidly move to control the research and training under the aegis of the “Psionic Authority”.
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2280
Psionics Enter the Mainstream
Cultural eventProperly-trained MES carriers, known commonly as “psychics”,or more casually, as “Messes”, 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. The Psionic Authority begins to experiment with more focused, industrially-useful psionic disciplines. Again, the cost in lives is undisclosed.
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2315
1st Jump Gate Constructed
Construction beginning/endThe Psionic Authority perfects the first jump gate. 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 Earth nations lift the ban on further exploration now that their effective control is enhanced
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2330
2nd Wave Begins
Era beginning/endThe Second Wave of human colonization begins. Spike drive ships become all but unknown within the core worlds as the jump gates allow cheaper system ships to travel between the older colonies.
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2350
Earth Diaspora
Cultural eventPsitech-enhanced manufactory abilities and precognitive surveyors vastly increase the rate of viable colonization. Almost two billion humans leave Earth for the wealth and freedom of the colony worlds. The Terran Mandate begins to realize that they now lack the manpower necessary to maintain control over so many colonies, even with the reduced transit time
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2400
1st Stellar Unions Form
Cultural eventObedience to Terran governments is now a polite fiction on the frontier, in those cases when it is acknowledged at all. The first stellar unions begin to form. Some neighboring worlds resort to war, but most colonists see no need for fighting with so many unexploited resources.
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2425
Terran Power Wanes
Political eventThe 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 probity among their creators.
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2450
2665
The Golden Age of Humanity
Era beginning/endThe Second Wave is at its peak; it is the Golden Age of Man. The Terran Mandate has largely given up on exerting control over the frontier colonies, and now concentrates simply on neutralizing threats to the core worlds. Every description of human civilization and ideology can be found somewhere in human space, and cultures experiment with new forms of social organization. Psitech supplements normal technology to produce enormous abundance for even the poorest worlds with access to core technology.
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2460
Human Gengineering Enters the Mainstream
Scientific achievementHuman gengineering becomes common on some worlds as societies attempt to improve their members. Advances in longevity and health spread widely, but attempts to significantly improve human capabilities invariably bring serious drawbacks from system strain and unanticipated side effects. Still, some of the more zealous cultures are willing to accept these consequences in pursuit of the “perfect human”.
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2500
Jump Gates Reach the Frontier
Population Migration / TravelMajor systems are the first to receive them, while most of the minor worlds are still reliant on spike drive ships. The furthest reaches of the frontier now extend ten years of spike drive travel from Earth. Population growth levels off and begins to decline with the increasing wealth of the colonies and their progressive self-absorption.
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2550
Transhumanism Takes off on the Fringe
Cultural eventCertain remote sectors of space have begun to embrace both gengineering and advanced AI integration to recreate humanity in ways more suitable to local ambitions. Some of these sectors continue to interact with their baseline human neighbors, while other transhumans are dangerously aggressive in their proselytization.
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2600
Stagnation
DisbandmentSpike drive ships are now somewhat antiquated, serving a vastly reduced exploratory effort and as militia ships for the defense of local systems. Almost all core systems of importance are now linked with jump gates. Psitech has permeated even very basic technology on these worlds. Large scale war between worlds is almost unknown.
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2665
The Scream
Disaster / DestructionThe 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”.
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2665
Earth Falls
ExtinctionOn Earth, the maddened arch-psions known as the Crazed annihilate the planet’s infrastructure, destroy many AI Maestros, and pervert the Highshine nanite recovery system. The solar system’s defense grid is activated and made universally hostile to all starships. Earth vanishes from all surviving records, its present condition unknown.
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2700
Worlds Die, Scavenger Fleets are Born
Disaster / DestructionCountless core worlds die as they are cut off fromvital food and technical supplies. Psitech manufactories are crippled, and only a relative handful of spike drive ships can be fabricated before the industrial base erodes. These ships band together for security while searching for resupply and become the progenitors of today’s Scavenger Fleets. -
2705
Frontier Worlds Stabilize
MiscellaneousFrontier 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.
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2710
Pre-Tech Runs Dry
Financial EventThe last easily-salvaged remnants of Mandate pretech 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. With the core worlds dead or consumed by struggle, this technology can now be found only in lost caches and Mandate ruins. Some worlds go to desperate extremes to maintain vital pretech infrastructure, utilizing dangerous methods or unstable repurposed tech.
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2900
Psionic Training Rediscovered
Metaphysical / Paranormal eventAttempts 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.
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3050
The Silence Ends
Financial EventThe Silence starts to lift. Those worlds that did not experience a terminal collapse after the Scream finally begin to perfect techniques of large-scale manufacturing that do not rely on psitech. Even the most sophisticated training programs can no longer replicate the narrow and esoteric talents of pre-Silence psychic fabricators.
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3100
Worlds Reach out to Eachother
Discovery, ExplorationSpike drive ships begin the remapping of drill courses between stars. With almost five centuries of neglect, the pre-Silence rutters have become useless. The steady shifting of dimensional layers has rendered old course soundings dangerously inaccurate. All of the drill courses must be rediscovered through trial and potentially fatal error. Few Scavenger Fleets cooperate in sharing their course data due to fears of competition.
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3150
Stellar Unions Form
Political eventStellar unions start to form around the strongest worlds. Exploration continues, often in the hands of small traders and scout crews who are willing to risk all for the chance to open a route to an unplundered tomb world. Warfare erupts between unions contesting control over lost worlds and space installations.
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3200
The Present Day
Era beginning/end
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