This is the sixth 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
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)
One of the problems that Empire faced was a large “east-west” separation. The eastern half, consisting primarily of the Dearborn Constellation1 was the cultural and political heart of the Empire, whilst larger western half (which consisted of the Schellenberg and Phoenix Constellations)2 endured heavy taxation that supported Eastern improvement projects. The matter came to a head in 432 when the estranged Duke of Schellenberg declared the west to be free from Dearborn taxation.
Schellenberg had hoped the Dearborn would either lighten the tax burden on the west or increase spending there, but what resulted was a civil war. The 46 year war was brutal, but in the end, Schellenberg was somehow victorious and found themselves independent.
Retrospective
Last week’s “Expansion & Empire” was playable era about exploring strange new worlds. This era—The Great Revolution—is about “a period of civil war” where rebel spaceships strike from hidden bases to win their first victory against the evil empire.
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I struggled with this word for a while. Even today I flip-flop between “constellation” and “cluster.” This idea is a group of star systems that are located near each other on the Web. Kind of like large land masses are continents. Or maybe more like if there were no continents, but only archipelagos. Great—a third word I can use!↩
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This sentence hints at what the lost map looked like. There’s three constellations (or clusters or archipelagos). There’s also a small bunch “unattached” stars like islands off the coast. All told there’s 75 star systems. The Dearborn Constellation is less than half of the total—maybe 30 or so systems—and is on the eastern part of the map. The western half is further split into two constellations—Schellenberg and Phoenix. From what we’ll see in the future posts Phoenix is to the north, which is weird because I distinctly remember the Milthrani coming from the south. Anyway, with this information I think I can recreate a suitable facsimile. ↩