Timeline
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Closeup of the Leif Ericsson. The reinforced wombs are clearly visible.

The following is a timeline of events leading to the current day.

Early Events

  • 2090: The UN creates the Extrasolar Jump Drive Effort, an attempt to use recently developed jump theory to develop superluminal travel.
  • 2092: Jump Drive Prototype G9 aboard the UN automated spacecraft Explorer IX operates according to plan, creating the first functional jump drive, reaching Alpha Centauri in one week.
  • 2095: EJDE develops the Leif Ericsson first-generation colony ship, carrying 2000 cold-sleep passengers and supplies, dispatching it to Centauri to set up a colony there.
  • 2099: EJDE expands efforts to Barnard's Star, ultimately futilely due to the lack of a planet to settle upon. Barnard's Star is later used as a Naval Proving Ground.
  • 2101: EJDE presents its Grand Vision for Colonization to the UN council, securing permanent funding and a greater amount of freedom in its colonization efforts.
  • 2102-2147: Phase 1 expansion, outward and primarily rimward. Thirteen colonies in Sol System's vicinity (later established as Titan Sector) are founded.
  • 2149: On the eve of announcing Phase One of the Grand Vision complete, news reaches the UN about a large-scale atmospheric infrastructure collapse on planet Jabiim, only three parsecs away from Sol. A death toll that eventually reached 92% of the colonist population on-planet led to calls to halt expansion. EJDE administrators responsible for colony site evaluation and supply are ousted by the ruling UN party, to be replaced with officials with less ambitious - but more practical - ideas for colony sites.

Road to the League

  • 2151-2167: Phase Two expansion results in almost thirty new colonies in six years, thanks to refinements of the original G9 design allowing Jump-2 capacity and an unexpected number of comfortably habitable planets outside Earth's immediate vicinity. Expansion moves antispinward and further rimward, setting up colonies in what would be Dragon, Phoenix and Thunderbird Sectors. Benevolence Colony is among these worlds. The end result is almost fifty new colonies under EDJE's responsibility.
    • 2158-2163: The Bush War. Mangrove Colony, a primarily corporate-controlled planet in Matterhorn System, Phoenix Sector, attempts to throw out EJDE administrators placed on planet. The resulting brush war lasts five years and though Mangrove's corporate security is put down by UN forces in the end, the dialogue opened about colonial rights leads directly to the creation of the Bill of Colonial Powers, which enabled planetary governments the right to self-govern.
    • 2165: The UN declares a population crisis on Earth and spearheads larger emigrations to colony worlds. The crisis will not reach its peak until the next century.
  • 2168: The Bill of Colonial Powers' introduction leads to a large shift of power among the colonies, as most - but not all - elect to take up self-representation. What ensues is the establishing of a new pecking order - with resource-rich worlds gaining considerable power and influence among their nearest neighbors. With this, a regional power system moves into place, and Earth-loyal nations begin to form.
  • 2169-2199: Phase Three of the Grand Vision pushes further out antispinward to the edge of Phoenix Sector and coreward into Hydra Sector. The introduction of the Bill leads to a method of colony siting even more careful than the result of the Jabiim colony backlash. The Bill's 2170 amendment leads to the establishment of Sectoral Authorities, EJDE-appointed administrations who oversee and support new colonies until they are able to establish self-governance.
  • 2183: Earth, and the collection of independent nations that have grown up in the time since the passing of the Bill of Colonial Powers, meet on planet Curion to sign Articles of Mutual Support and Defense, the cornerstone of the Terran Stellar League's foundation. This event dissolves the EJDE as a UN-controlled entity and brings it into its own as a multi-sector-spanning federal authority, as well as removing much of Earth's official, direct power over the rest of human space.
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Viktor Bahwas. (2165-2246)

Peace and Prosperity

  • 2204-2223: Though the Grand Vision for Colonization is officially over, plans beyond League space continue apace, with expansion moving into Manticore Sector for the first time. Hathor Colony is founded in 2204, with the sector capitol Vienna following soon after, and from there expansion proceeds through the rimward span of the soon-coined Bahwas Corridor (named for Manticore Sector pioneer Viktor Bahwas, who charted most of the worlds sustaining human settlements today).
  • 2224-2247: The League continues to expand. Expansion begins into Scylla Sector (spinward of Earth and Titan Sector), Tengu Sector (rimward from Thunderbird Sector) and Kraken Sector (spinward from Dragon Sector).
  • 2240-2246: Earth's population crunch finally bottlenecks, resulting in the deaths of countless millions. New emergency legislation is passed in the wake of the crisis, channeling the majority of the UN's funds to colonial expansion.
  • 2248-2280: Andrew van Ryan performs his seminal study of the stars of the nebula beyond Manticore System - and the astounding discovery that these young stars have livable biospheres, something not seen in any nebula before or since - and lays the groundwork for an ambitious plan to colonize it.
  • 2281-2291: Fresh from the rapid and lucrative colonization of the nebula, Van Ryan Colonial Authority makes a large push into the sector immediately coreward, called Prometheus Sector. Nine colonies are formed in ten years.

The Human-Skaald War

see main article at Human-Skaald War

  • 2291: Oppenheimer Colony, Oppenheimer System, is blockaded from orbit by unknown vessels. All attempts to communicate with them fail. The blockade continues for nine days, until a second wave of vessels lands on the planet and initiates a ground attack against the colonists. No known survivors from the colony of 1,083.
  • 2291-2293: Two other colonies are destroyed in Bohr System and Maxwell System. Van Ryan Colonial Authority maintains a unilateral 'no comment' policy on all rumors of fighting in Prometheus Sector.
  • 2294: Thirteen officers from six ships fleeing Newton System at the time of an attack sell their story and ship records to a Van Ryan Nebula media corporation: an alien race is destroying human colonies in the sector. Panic grips the streets, even though the VRCA maintains that the story is a fabrication. Nonetheless a detachment of League Navy ships in the area is dispatched to Prometheus Sector.
    • April 9, 2294: The Battle of Curie Colony: Twelve Navy cruisers and sixteen frigates are destroyed but the alien warfleet is repelled as they bore down on the human colony there. Five alien warships destroyed or crippled in the action, the formal casus belli of what will be known as the Human-Skaald War.
    • June 13, 2294: Xenologists working on the alien wreckage reveal the identity of their foe: the Skaald race. Primitive stelnav maps paint out the limits of their empire, which covers all of Prometheus Sector.
  • 2294-2296: VRCA-commissioned League ships fight holding actions that soon lose Curie, Gauss and Butler Colonies in the face of ever-increasing Skaald assaults.
    • August 12, 2296: The loss of Hawking System puts the Skaald warfleet on the doorstep of the Van Ryan Nebula. In reaction to this news, and because of the losses that have come before, a military coup takes place, storming VRCA facilities across the nebula and taking control. Calling themselves the Brigade of the Spartan Ideal, the coup's leaders urge the populace that destruction is imminent unless all denizens of the nebula become 'weapons of the state'. The nebula's people and industries are nationalized, put to work directly to shore up the military.
    • November 1, 2296: The Battle of Attica: The Skaald warfleet invades the Nebula but is ambushed at the jump point. The Spartan Brigade People's Navy takes grievous casualties, but forces a rout.
  • 2297-2395: Stalemate. The Spartan Brigade fights the Skaald back to take back Hawking and Butler Systems, but further gains are fleeting at most.
    • September 30, 2392: The Spartan Brigade delegates to the Terran Stellar League request a formal, full-scale intervention of the League armed forces. The motion is defeated, 112-539, in a Presidium vote, on the grounds that inroads are being made in translation and contact can be made to extend peace overtures to the Skaald.
    • May 9, 2395: The Third Battle of Butler Colony. Communication is made between the human and Skaald race for the first time via long-range laser communication in Butler System. The peace request is roundly rejected by the Skaald officer reached, and the ensuing battle is one of the worst losses in Spartan history, losing 95% of the operational forces in system and close to 80% of the surface population in the battle, which ends in retreat of the Spartan forces.
  • January 1, 2396: A new vote taken on full-scale League Navy intercession is narrowly passed, 331-320, in the face of the rejected ceasefire proposal. Presidium chairman Auguste Michele made this statement at the end of the roll call:

Senator [Massinaros, of the Spartan Brigade], you ask us to believe that because the Skaald race refused to extend a ceasefire once, that they shall never do so - that because your countrymen have died, you have the right to demand that the Presidium bring to bear the forces that can kill the Skaald. Senator, that the Presidium has voted in favor of military action breaks my heart, because it means that its members believe that there can be no understanding with the Skaald - that the human race cannot coexist with the Skaald race. This body is built on the beliefs that intelligent life can overcome their disagreements to come together and help each other flourish, and what this vote is saying is that only humans can do so.

  • April 22-May 5, 2396: The League Navy Second, Fifth, Eighth and Tenth Fleets arrive in Prometheus Sector and engage in the ongoing fighting, taking back Butler Colony and forcing the Skaald fleet out of Curie Colony for the first time in almost one hundred years.
  • June 2, 2397: A Skaald battlefleet of unusually small composition raids Curie System, which has been recolonized. The picket fleet is unable to stop the ships breaking through, which rush to Curie Colony to the exclusion of all other things. The lead ship fires some sort of weapon at the planet before it is destroyed; over the course of the next twenty hours, Curie tears itself apart as its molten inner core is forced out from under the tectonic plates. Curie is left a lopsided, hollow rock that ultimately crumples inside on itself.
  • 2397-2440: Over the course of the next forty years, the League Navy and the Skaald warfleets begin raiding further and further out, going from large set-piece battles to furtive fleet actions intended only to reach the enemy's planet and deploy their weapons of mass destruction. The human colonies in Prometheus Sector are all destroyed, by either tectonic disruptors or virus bombs, while any Skaald world found is purged with volleys of atomic weapons. Finally only the Skaald homeworld of Skaala, in the Eta Prometheus system, is left, and the fleets surrounding it are too thick to pierce.
  • November 9, 2441: Dr. Tag Behrwell, having developed an upscaled and reverse-engineered version of the Skaald tectonic disruptor, deploys it under League Navy guard in Eta Prometheus system. The result is the utter quenching of the Skaalan star - the gravimetric shear waves of which rip everything that remains in-system to shreds. With the Skaald race extincted, the Human-Skaald War is over.
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CSRN scrapyard in Seine System. Burnt jump drive cores can be seen orbiting each other in the foreground. In the background, drones disassemble the SLN Istanbul.

Interwar

  • 2442: The Fraternal Order of the Penitent Man adopts formal governance of seven systems in Dragon Sector, and is recognized by the Terran Stellar League as a legitimate government in a Presidium vote, 406-209, with the abstention of 36 voting members of Thunderbird and Kraken Sectors. Arguments against the admission of the Penitent Brotherhood railed against the order's theological motivation and enforced proselytism. The Spartan delegation is chief among the supporters of the admission of the Brotherhood, while Earth leads the minority opinion arguing against.
    • 2442: Scylla Sector companies, fed up with the pittances offered for their services and the ridiculous markup of their goods by Titan Sector corporations, form a tight corporate alliance and take the name of their smallest member, Kanbei Fuso Light Ground Vehicles. This corporate alliance takes rapid control of sectoral business by competitively pricing their goods and strong-arming smaller businesses in their region to cooperate. The runaway success of the Kanbei alliance makes it the 800-pound economic gorilla of Scylla Sector, to the point where the League all but formally cedes control of the Kanbei planets to the supercorporation. Further investigations down the road, after the formation of the Republic, lead to the conclusion that Kanbei's success is due mainly to its antitrust and criminal activities, and lead to its common parlance name of the Kanbei Cartel.
  • 2443-2445: Tengu Sector undergoes a widespread trade breakdown, leading to collapse of the majority of the colonies on the frontier. The cause of the breakdown is a lack of ships, and the uncoordinated, overly competitive fumbling of what ships do ply the sector. Tengu Sector Colonial Authority nationalizes the freighters in the sector, a controversial and unpopular decision which is ultimately upheld in the League High Courts. Six colonies remain viable on the frontier, while another twelve require extensive investment of manpower and resources to reconstruct.
  • 2446: The advent of CoreNet - with a giant test transmitter on planet Proteus, Alpha Centauri System, and a receiver on Curion, Pyrenees System, Phoenix Sector, the State of the League address is broadcast, live, across almost 10 parsecs. Expansion of the new system is rapid, but confined to systems in the vicinity of Earth for several years.
  • 2449: The largest of three League Armed Forces reductions-in-force is undertaken - almost three hundred thousand personnel are discharged unceremoniously, and a large number of ships are sent to a boneyard in Seine System, Manticore Sector. The Presidium vote, 442-209, is noted for the impassioned speech and sweeping promise delivered by the head of the Spartan delegation, Maj. Thenamos:

It is unconscionable that we thank the men and women of the armed forces for their sacrifices and bravery by casting them to their fates as casually as we would a handful of chaff. I would beg the representatives of this chamber, those who would even entertain this proposal seriously, to ask themselves whether they themselves would be willing to fight in the place of their discharged soldiers. I say this, now: Any soldier, any man or woman who feels they have been wronged by this act, need but come to our halls and they will be honored as warriors and given aid.

  • December 28-30, 2450: Presidium Bill 3106, the Disposition of League Navy Assets Act of 2450, comes before the Presidium after months of behind-the-scenes horsetrading and stalling on both sides. Chief on the list of proposed changes is the forced disarmament of League installations and vessels in the Van Ryan Nebula. The faction led by the Spartan Brigade - including the Penitent Brotherhood, the Kanbei Cartel, and other marginal powers - cannot muster the votes to force a 'nay' - but they have enough, and enough influence among neutrals, to abstain and cheat the Earth faction of a quorum, preventing the bill from passing through lack of votes. Outraged League officials trade vociferous arguments with their supporters and enemies for seventy hours, until a League representative for Proteus insulted the virtue of Major Thenamos' mother - an insult answered in gunfire as the three-man Spartan delegation drew their ceremonial weapons and opened fire in the Presidium dome. In retribution, once the bodies were carried out (seventeen League and the three Spartans), the Earth faction forced a vote to evict the worlds of the Spartan Brigade from the League. The vote was carried 308-10, a bare quorum. In an outcry, the worlds of the Penitent Brotherhood, Kanbei Cartel, and some eighteen other single-system powers repudiated the vote and the Terran Stellar League, and seceded from the League.
  • 2451-2460: Upheavals in the League's political structure lead to its slow reorganization. The Presidium by and large is phased out by massive revisions of the League constitution, to be convened only in times of national import, such as the declaration of war and other political treaties. Instead a Board of Sectoral Regents is empaneled, to be staffed by elected officials from new Sectoral Congresses. Law enforcement and contraband material classification is deferred back to the planetary authorities (except in cases of very hazardous items), as is trade and tariff enforcement.
  • April 9, 2460: The revised League Presidium meets to formally rename the nation, and decrees themselves to be the Core Systems Free Republic.

The CS-Spartan War

see main article at Core Systems-Spartan War

  • 2460-2462: Ratcheting tensions between the new CSFR and the Spartan Brigade lead to rapid armament of the colonies along the Manticore-Van Ryan border. Both sides accuse the other of brinksmanship, and political leaders use the tension as excuses for greater and greater liberties in building defenses.
  • 13 June 2462: The Battle of Strymon System. The Spartan People's Navy attacks the border outpost at Strymon in great force. The only Jump-1 into Spartan space, Strymon is heavily guarded - but not heavily enough to push the Spartans back into the nebula. The battle is concluded in a CSRN retreat, and the Republic votes to declare war on the Spartan Brigade shortly thereafter.
  • 2463-2470: The Spartan Brigade makes a dramatically large push into CS territory. The People's Navy advances spinward and coreward from Strymon System. The spinward prong advances to Lethe System before being snubbed at the Lethe-Amur for about six months, while the coreward prong takes advantage of the underprovisioned CSRN forces there and forces routs all the way to Brahmaputra System.
    • February 26, 2470: Garrison Alvarez, a machine worker from Jessica, assassinates Rep. Aaron Brunnerman, sparking the beginning of open conflict between the Republic and the Bolívar League. The conflict goes on mostly unknown to the majority of citizens in distant sectors.
    • October 2470: The First Battle of Amur System. Two Spartan battlegroups advance on a Republic naval fortress in-system defended by the best the RN has to offer. The battle is a grinding affair, but the turning point is the Spartans' use of their previously-unseen Marathon-class battleships - superheavy capitol ships the Republic Navy has no ready answer for. Amur System is lost, but at a heavy price to the Spartans - a sacrificial rearguard led by Navy Captain Arthur K. Ramsgott and Core Systems Republic Marine Corps Major Don Butler does the improbable and destroys the Spartan flag officer's Marathon. Captain Ramsgott is awarded a posthumous Presidium Order of Merit and the captured Major (later Marine Commandant) Butler is awarded the RMC Valor Nova. Both later lend their names to Navy capitol ships, the Ramsgott-class dreadnought and the Butler-class marine assault ship.
  • 2470-2484: The Rimward Campaign. The Spartan People's Navy continues through the Bahwas Corridor's rimward section, advancing slowly but inexorably through CSRN defenses in Volga and Rhine Systems. Ganges System is also taken, but as little more than a refugee colony, Mumbai is left under CS humanitarian jurisdiction.
    • March 2476: The Battle of Hudson. Three Marathons and a group of smaller Spartan warships jump into Hudson System with the intent of making a fast jump into Reading to attack the Military Academies there, but they are ambushed - six of the CSRN's new Kyrie-class battleships are waiting at the Hudson-Ganges jump point, and make short work of the surprised Spartan battlegroup. Generally recognized as the turning point of the rimward war.
    • October 2480: Second Battle of Amur System. The Spartan People's Navy armada in place is pushed back in a tremendous show of force by the RN.
  • 2480-2493: The Coreward Campaign. To the unpleasant surprise of CSRN war planners, the Spartan Brigade proves it has Jump-2 capability after all following a brutal attack from Brahmaputra System into Seine System. The coreward campaign was stymied there, though, as the Navy put forth several Kyrie-class battleships and several wings of the new F3 Hotspur-class fighters to defend the sector capitol of Vienna and recapture Seine System, pushing from there into Spartan-held space.
    • January 2481: The Battle of Danube System. The deMarquis-class cruiser CSRS Rackham captained by Andreas Markova single-handedly defended the capitol system of Manticore Sector while Republic Navy assets redeploy into the system. Rackham's kill count is at least fifteen Attican-class frigates, three Phalanx-class destroyers, and a crippled Marathon-class battleship, but also accounted for innumerable fighters.
    • June-July 2490: The Battle of Kal'Dassa. Navy and Marine units counterattacked Amritsar Colony in Brahmaputra System, but ground units emplaced on the moon of Kal'Dassa were too tightly nestled into the civilian populace there to take out from orbit. A protracted and controversial ground battle commenced, with the Navy in particular accused of being too free and careless with its bombing runs of enemy buildings and causing heavy civilian casualties.
    • May 2491: The Battle of Veda III. Spartan military units emplaced on an uncolonized world attempt to secure xenoarcheological artifacts, but are combated by Republic Marines. The Spartans are repelled.
  • October 2487: Republic scouts in Hydra Sector are approached by an unknown ship which turns out to belong to another alien race. To the relief of everyone, the race turns out to be the Jensai, a peaceful and nonaggressive species, which overcomes the language barrier after several months and establishes a diplomatic dialogue with the CSFR.
  • 2493-2495: Endgame: The Spartan Brigade threatens the use of nuclear weapons against CS colonies and ships if they attempt to take back the nebula, and CS officials take the threat seriously enough to scale back the campaign. The last few years wind down in relative peace, with only a few large-scale conflicts.
  • March 18, 2495: Spartan diplomats and Republic officials meet on planet Harbin, Amur System, to sign a peace treaty. The CSFR agrees to recognize the Spartan Brigade as a legitimate government and allow them limited access to CS markets, but very little in the way of system claims is resolved - leading to some bitter arguments in the days to come.
  • 2496-2498: Armistice Coup: After more than three decades of war, the abuses of power at the highest levels of the Republic become evident. The ruling party of Earth refuses to step down, sending the political process into chaos. Riots sweep across Earth and Titan Sector. A coup within the Presidium leads to the installation of a collective council temporarily named the Armistice Party. The new government manages to maintain legitimacy for eight months before succumbing to the financial and military pressure of the party-in-exile. In the wake of the riots, concessions are made and a new jointly-ruled Presidium is created. The more moderate blocs of the Armistice Party reform as the Foundation Party.

The Coreward Crisis

  • July 22-August 2, 2498: The Schuh Crisis: Industrial unions on the planet Schuh protest factory owners' personal estates for better pay and benefits, when private military contractors in the employ of executive Jens Sedgwick open fire on the crowd, inciting widespread violence across the city. The Core Systems Republic Marine Corps is quickly dispatched to intervene in the violence, but it is discovered in the aftermath of the Marines' combat drop that one of the PMC combat groups had been holding a Jensai Seeker hostage and her ship impounded in one of the underground warehouses beneath the city center. The revelation leads to increased tensions on the Core Systems-Jensai border and desperate conferences between the Jensai's Ambassador Shelanna and Republic diplomats.
  • September 7, 2498: The Battle of Beacon: Jensai warships attack the pirate-run Beacon Station in Hessian System, Hydra Sector. They board the station and capture notorious criminal Chao Sidh and members of his organization. The fight is believed to be the first time a Jensai vessel has ever fired in anger on human targets.
  • September 15-29, 2498: Republic observers stationed on Jensaara observe a large-scale deployment of Jensai military and auxilliary ships. The first warning of this deployment reaches the Hydra Sector Congress on September 24, but no Jensai ships enter Republic space. The Republic's dispatch is followed soon after by one from the Jensai embassy, informing the Republic that a large scale mercy mission was being conducted to rescue the descendants of Jensai explorers from a survey vessel thought lost hundreds of years past. This is backed up by the return of the Jensai task force roughly one week later and the large-scale shuttling of individuals to medical facilities on Jensaara.
  • October 5, 2498: Oryx Riots. Large-scale riots erupt across several population centers on the Tengu Sector planet, following years of building tension between homesteaders and the Navy.
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