CONTROLLED BURN: a Battlegroup campaign [ EDIT ]

The Dawnline Incident
The Dawnline Shore: An expansion zone of densely-packed, habitable worlds. A rich prize coveted by the Karrakin Trade Baronies and Harrison Armory – two rival interstellar powers nominally subject to Union’s hegemony. And, under Union’s Third Committee, a region of peaceful development and colonization.

However, as terrestrial states have grown over the centuries, local power struggles have fed into galactic appetites and ambitions. Just as Union prepares to activate the Dawnline Shore’s first blink gate, 500 year-old local conflicts boil over, costing Harrison and Baronic lives alike. The death toll climbs. Retaliatory measures escalate. Diplomatic channels are closed, and the galaxy is drawn into its first war between major powers…

Following a contentious, narrow vote by a coalition opposed to CentComm’s non-interventionist wing, the Union Navy has been deployed. Union ground, air, and orbital elements in the Dawnline Shore engage Armory and Baronic targets. Union’s mandate – to be the "good" tyrant, the kind hegemony – is chipped away with each bullet fired. Every lance across the void, a nail in the coffin of the great utopian project.

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It is 5019u, and the galaxy is home to trillions.
At the core of humanity’s territory there is a golden age, but outside of this newly won utopia the revolutionary project continues.
Far now from our humble beginnings, humanity has spread out among and between the stars for thousands of years. We have set empty worlds and barren moons alight with civilization, tamed asteroids and gas giants – even built lives in the hard vacuum of space itself. We have taken root in our arm of the Milky Way; life – in its infinite diversity – thrives and expands.

For some, life in this time is as a river – forever moving, with the land and time of their birth left somewhere far behind. For most, life is spent on their home world, moon, or station, linked to the rest of humanity via fantastic technologies, or isolated to the politics, stories, and histories of their own lands. The trillions that make up humanity live, for the most part, as you or I do now.

But wonders tie the galaxy together in this age.

Wonders of the Age
Connecting all worlds is blinkspace – an unknowably vast and strange plane parallel to the one in which we live, pierced by blink gates that allow us to travel with speed and safety. Thanks to these massive, starbound doors, every corner of space is open to the daring. These portals are common wonders: thousands of ships travel through them every day seeking trade, migration, travel, war, and myriad other aims.

Filling the lonely void is the omninet, a data-sharing network built off the blink that connects every computer, every server – everything – to everything else. The omninet is much more than a way to send messages or a means for people on far-flung worlds to read the galaxy’s news; it overlays all human communications, facilitating government, industry, culture, and realms more esoteric still. Data is the new wealth, and the omninet means that all wealth can be shared.

The form of that wealth is manna. Uniting the disparate nations of the human diaspora outside the Core, manna is the universal currency accepted by every market on every planet. When a galaxy’s wealth of raw resources are available for exploitation, a community’s wealth comes from both its past and its potential.

Union
The vast mass of humanity is administered by a single sprawling government: Union, the galactic hegemony. Luna and Mars, Mercury and Venus. Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune, and Uranus. Phobos and Deimos. Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. Titan and Enceladus. These worlds strung in their orbit around Sol are the diadem atop which Cradle rests, the seat of Union’s power and humanity’s ancient heart. From Cradle, Union controls the three levers of the galaxy: the blink gates, the omninet, and manna. Without these levers, and without Union, the galaxy would fall into chaos.

Union is a new kind of utopia. A new state – communal and post-capital – for a New Humanity. Union was born from the ashes and ice of the Fall: the collapse that felled Old Humanity, boiling Cradle and withering her colonies entirely. Though it has been thousands of years since Union was founded – and thousands more since the Fall – New Humanity knows only one truth among ten thousand unknowns: if we are to survive, then we must come together in solidarity and mutual aid.

Beyond the Core
Despite Union’s conviction – and despite its successes so far – the sheer size of this collective project is daunting. Union is distant to most people: fictionalized in omninet dramas and novels; dreamed about by children and wanderers; hailed as the promised kingdom or damned as the pit by religions across the galaxy. For all its authority, Union prefers to rule from a distance. Few have ever seen one of Union’s administrators, let alone suffered one of its naval campaigns. For those who have never seen its flag, Union is all but a myth; for those whose skies have been darkened by Union’s ships, the hegemony may have brought liberty – but it brought death first.

The galaxy remains a dangerous place outside the Core. Rebellions, insurrections, piracy, wars – civil and interplanetary – continue to flare and burn their way through space, though only the most desperate conflicts require Union’s intervention. Disputes between Union’s subject states are common enough that there is still a need for militaries, militias, and mercenaries. Five major suppliers offer arms and armor to states and entities outside the Core that desire them. These manufacturers exist in delicate balance with Union: though the administrators regulate and the suppliers comply, these two philosophies – one of post-capital utopia and the other of permanent and wild growth – rush toward an irreconcilable end.

You
You are one person, alive in this time of tumult and peace – a time of promise that was built on the sacrifice of those who came before and is threatened still by the heirs of old adversaries. You are one whose life is lived in the great river, where lives cross stars and time; where one person in the right place at the right time can divert the course of history; where the collective action of comrades can save worlds, lives, and better define Union’s utopian dream.