History of the Astral Web, Part 8

This is the eighth in a series of articles covering the in-world history of the Astral Web. I originally wrote the history as 15 or so eras of history. Rather than make one long post, each era is getting its own post.

This week we go from 2 governments to over 20.

The Story so Far

The First Step: Mankind had terraformed Mars, and established settlements there.

The Departure: Mankind decided to send a million settlers to establish life around distant suns.

Left at Albuquerque: The fleet leaves Earth and is scattered far and wide by some unknown event.

The Awakening (Years 1 - 167): 20,000 humans settle on the planet Dearborn.

Expansion & Empire (Years 168 - 431): Scientists on Dearborn developed the first working Nexus drive. Dearborn makes contact with the other settlers spread out over 74 other planets. The Empire is formed, the pirates rise, and the Interstellar Sentinels are formed.

The Great Revolution (Years 432-478) The Duke of Schellenberg leads an accidental but successful rebellion against the Dearborn Empire. The Empire is split and the Schellenberg Republic is formed.

The Two Nations (Years 478-608): A period of cold war.

The Fall of Dearborn & The Interstellar League (Years 608-852)

The “temperature” of the cold war varied wildly during the 130 years. In the early 600’s it was heating up. The Empire was convinced that real war was around the corner and drastically increased defense spending to all time highs. Afraid that the Empire was rife with Schellenberg agents, Emperor Nabin II instituted a crackdown on personal freedoms.

The Empire might have survived either the economy-crushing spending or the tidal wave of popular dissent, but combination was too much. In 608, the empire was dissolved in a (mostly peaceful) political revolution.

Initially, the thirty-something planets of the former Empire were independent. A few petitioned Schellenberg for membership. About half of the worlds banded together to form the Dearborn Confederation. The rest maintained their independence.

With the Empire gone, it soon became apparent that there was a need to establish an cross-border set of laws to govern such things as trade, ship registrations, rules of navigation, etc. Out of this needs was born the Interstellar League. It was founded by all the governments in the galaxy except for the Schellenberg Republic, who feared that it was the old Empire in sheep’s clothing.

The League re-branded the old Imperial Sentinels as the new Interstellar Sentinels. The new Sentinels were an armed fleet that to counter piracy and conduct other law enforcement activities. Although Sentinel could operated in any planetary system, legally they needed permission to do so by the local government.

Retrospective

For those following along at home, at this point we have: 

• The Schellenberg Republic (36 worlds)
• The Dearborn Confederation (22 worlds)
• About 20 independent worlds

You may notice that we started with 75 planets and now have 78. One of the things lost to edits was a note that during the Two Nations period, Schellenberg had discovered a few previously undiscovered worlds. The worlds are truly outliers. Most ships don't carry enough fuel to reach them. 

This era is really just setting the stage for what comes next.