This is the second 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.
The Story so Far
In The First Step, mankind had terraformed Mars, and established settlements there.
The Departure
Scarred by eons of human abuse, Earth was on the brink of ecological collapse.1 Encouraged by their success on Mars, UNICO began work on two new projects. Firstly, the long, difficult task of terraforming Venus was initiated. Secondly, work was started on a much more ambitious project: interstellar colonization.
A caravan of one-thousand sleeper ships was built, designed to carry one million colonists2 across the universe at slower-than-light speeds. Along with the colonists, the vessels carried the terraforming and settlement equipment needed to tame almost any hostile world.
The ships were programmed with powerful computers and sophisticated sensors. The equally sophisticated auto-pilot was programmed on a course that would take the flotilla past at least a dozen systems. The computers were programmed to awaken the terraforming crew when the sensors detected a prospective planet.3
The construction of a thousand vessels was by no means an easy task. While there were problems and issues, none were severe and the flotilla was completed merely three years behind schedule.4 Three weeks5 after lift-off the command crew of each vessel switched on the auto-pilot, and entered the freeze tubes.
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In the original version, this was just “To further alleviate Earth’s overcrowding…”↩
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I picked a million because I’m always afraid that too small of a number will lead to inbreeding issues.↩
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In my old notes this section ended here, and the next paragraph was part of the next epoch. That’s clearly wrong, however, as the next paragraph is clearly the departure itself.↩
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Originally I had the ships being built on Earth and launched into space. I think it’s more logical to imagine that the ships would have been assembled in space. Also, the ships were originally built “without a hitch.” It seems any project this large will have it’s share of issues, so I updated the text to reflect that.↩
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This was originally “three days,” but that seemed too short.↩
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