Common Alien Species

Risanthan: These lizard like aliens are one of the most commonly encountered intelligent beings after humans.  They developed wormhole travel shortly before humanity, but were lucky in that their home world sat on a major and extensive network, couple that with their high population growth rate and it is clear why they are so common.  Risanthan society is matriarchal in nature, led by century old "line mothers" that fill a similar role to the pater-familias of ancient human custom.

To a Risanthan, lineage is all important, an individual born from mothers of common descent will always be members of the lower castes.  Likewise, Risanthans born by mothers of ancient or renowned blood are destined for the upper echelon of Risanthan society, they will be trained and educated to the highest standard.  It is these offspring that lead the fleets and armies of the Risanthan Hegemony, and it is they that serve the line mothers as trusted aides and advisors.

Quwern: The Quwern are not a particularly populous race, but they are, as a species, wealthy and successful.  They are perhaps the most alien in appearance of the common species, hailing from a heavy gravity world with a dense methane atmosphere, they are enormous creatures, some approaching 500 kilograms at adulthood, with a thick, blue-grey hide and eight multi-purpose limbs.  They resemble nothing so much as a cross between a starfish and a tarantula.  Despite their off-putting appearance, humans and Quwern get along quite well, probably due to the fact that both species have a well-developed sense of humor.  Quwern have a strong mercantile streak and lavish the same amount of attention to their trading vessels that most species reserve for their warships.

The Quwern are a hermaphroditic race and are scrupulously democratic in their politics.  Each colony is an independent state in its own right, but all Quwern worlds are voluntarily bound together in a commonwealth that adjudicates interstellar disputes and coordinates foreign policy.  The most important means for Quwern to judge the value of an individual is net worth. Success in business is seen as both a social and personal virtue.  Knowing this, most humans expect Quwern traders to be utterly unscrupulous but this is not the case. The Quwern have a highly developed code of behavior regarding business and they follow it almost religiously.  A Quwern that is known as a liar or cheat is shamed in the eyes of all their fellows are very rarely able to redeem themselves.  This causes some friction with other aliens whom the Quwern believe are as principled in trade. A word of caution, there are very few beings that are prepared to face a Quwern who has been the victim of a shady deal.

Svesh: Along the fringes of settled space, the Svesh clans spread in the periphery like a sickness.  No one knows where the Svesh home world lies, but the majority of the species either operate under the absolute authority of a second stage male, behaving more like an organized crime syndicate then anything else. Otherwise they group together into smaller raiding parties that roam as nomads, taking whatever they can from whoever is weakest.  The Svesh do not generally receive a warm welcome in a civilized port, but their presence is unavoidable out in the fringes, and their people are powerful enough that few minor worlds can afford to bar their way.

Svesh physiology is unique, males have two distinct life stages; stage one males are large and well-muscled, standing 190cm on average and usually weighing at least 100kg.  At some point, some males undergo a biochemical transformation that changes their body and brain structure significantly, although the exact causal conditions are as yet unknown.  A second stage male generally gains 20-30cm in height and often doubles in body mass, their normally thick hide condensing into heavy plates around most of the major muscle groups. The bony knobs and ridges on the head elongate and sharpen into wicked horns. No less drastic are the mental changes, first stage males are known for their hotheadedness and savagery, second stage males achieve a sort of ruthless calculation that serves them well in their  role as leaders, Svesh bands that lack a second stage leader never amount to more than petty marauders, those with elders leading them are far more dangerous. 
Svesh females are very rare, accounting for less than  five percent of births.  Because they also have a shorter natural lifespan than males the actual male/female ratio is even lower.  Svesh females generally attach themselves to an elder leader and act as a sort of harem. The strange part is that second stage males rarely mate, so they are often used as bartering chips between different clans, or as rewards for faithful service, a competent and loyal subordinate will be allowed to mate with one or more females.  Svesh have a relatively brief gestation period and are self-sufficient within two years, reaching physical maturity in ten.

the Shanxi Incident

Shanxi is a minor colony world founded by refugees of a border war between an alliance of minor human worlds and an expansionist faction of the Rishathan Sphere.  It was settled slightly over a hundred years ago and the population was up to over ten thousand.  The colonists landed on the planet of Shanxi because they had little choice, their ships were becoming more and more unreliable and they lacked the resources to continue to refuel them.  Shanxi itself is an inhospitable world with a thin, unbreathable atmosphere that almost proved too much for the colony's limited technology base to deal with.

Only after decades of struggle were they able to improve their standard of living enough to re-establish a space presence.  They began to survey their world more extensively and found that it was rich in heavy metals and rare earths and even had significant deposits of valuable transuranic elements.  The colonists reached out to the Ryles Mining Consortium, they would grant mineral rights in exchange for infrastructure investments and a security presence. 

Sadly, something went wrong, the merceneries hired by the RMC proved dangerously unreliable and the colony dome was breached, killing almost the entire colony.  RMC has vowed to do everything in its power to hunt down the perpetrators and bring them to justice, and also promised that 2% of the profits from the Shanxi extraction project would go towards a charitable organization they created called the Shanxi fund, a program to help small fringe colonies subsidy local planetary defenses to protect themselves from dangerous space-faring marauders.

Major Trans-Stellar Corporations

Bio-Pharm: Bio-Pharm is one of the largest bio-tech firms in the galaxy, originally a pharmaceutical manufacturer, they have since branched out into more advanced fields; cloning, genetic engineering, etc.  One of their primary legitimate revenue streams is genetic screening on advanced worlds to eliminate hereditary disorders and provide made-to-order off-spring.  Unknown to the general public, Bio-Pharm also makes a significant amount of money in creating tailor-made clones for genetic slavery.

Seelye Starcraft Ltd:  Sellye Starcraft is known as the premier manufacturer of top of the line spacecraft.  From luxury star yachts, to advanced science vessels, to superfast courier boats, Seelye has a reputation as having the best technology and the highest quality.  They also have a reputation for the highest prices, but, as they are fond of saying, you get what you pay for.

Ryles Mining Consortium: The RMC is one of the larger interstellar resource corporations.  They have interests throughout human space, both in systems with established colonies and in uninhabited systems.  They have their own survey arm but also contract a significant amount of work to independents, including several long-term contracts with the Deep Sky Association.  RMC has not had much success in expanding their business outside of old federation space, were the older alien mining houses still hold sway.  RMC has garnered a great deal of attention recently due to its involvement in the Shanxi incident.

Apollo-Kraft Armaments:  One thing in this world is certain, people will always bu weapons.  A.P.A. takes copious advantage of this truism to sell weapons to everyone and everybody.  There products are considered quite good, from simple sidearms to multi-ton assault walkers, Apollo-Kraft subscribes to a design philosophy that eschews bleeding edge performance for ruggedness and reliability.  Few complaing about the effectiveness of their products, their methods however, leave some with a sour taste in their mouth.  Apollo-Kraft is well-known for pursuing their business goals by any means necessary, from bribery of local officials, to blackmail and intimidation of rivals, up to and including assassination and war-profiteering, nothing is beneath them. 

Xanthus Heavy Engineering: Xanthus Heavy Engineering is based on New Detroit and takes full advantage of that planets advanced technology and massive production capacity.  Making everything from personal construction equipment to bulk star freighters, Xanthus has a well-deserved reputation for making quality products at below average cost.  They are not known for innovation, preferring instead to let their competitors perform costly research and development, and then simply reverse-engineering it, improving it, and marketing it for less then the originator.  They have acheived a remarkable amount of success doing this.

The Battle of Cochinay

One of the few major ground campaigns of the Orion-Hecate War, Cochinay is a lightly-populated border world with a cool, alpine climate and rugged, mountainous terrain.  Originally envisioned by Orion high command as a staging area for a spoiling attack into Hecate space, Cochinay was home to the Orion 6th army on June 4th, 287 (from foundation) when a major Hecate attack force warped in and initiated an invasion.  The covering Orion flotilla was greatly outnumbered and forced to withdraw after an aggressive high speed attack that destroyed several heavy armor transports and ground support craft.

Once Hecate forces began their landing operation, Orion army units began to respond, initial resistance was centered around the 356th Armored regiment, a heavy walker unit configured for the assault role.  The Orion commander on the ground, Major General Waylin Dace would use the 356th as a base of fire and when the opposing forces were fully engaged, he would utilize his mobile infantry units in slashing flank attacks that more often then not resulted in a a route.



The initial Hecatan assault landings were successful,
although their losses to Orion ground fire were extensive.



General Dace was an aggressive commander and planned an all-out attack on the primary Hecatan spacehead, aiming to eliminate their ability to resupply and thereby forcing the surrender of their entire planetary force.  Unknown to the general and his staff, their communication codes had been compromised and the Hecatan forces were deployed in ambush.  When the attack began, most of the assault units were trapped and forced to surrender.  Only the power armor contigent had the mobility necessary to escape into the hills.  They, along with a handful of locals and stragglers from other units, carried on a guerilla resistance for almost half a year with some notable successess.

Finally, realizing that their conventional troops were unable to defeat this ragtag band, the Hecatan occupation authorities contracted a unit of Rishathan counter-insurgency experts to hunt them down.  Their method has as simple as it was brutally effective, they used an orbital, kinetic bombardment to wipe out of the smaller settlements off the face of the map, then calmy issued a surrender demand over an uncoded communication channel, threatening to continue the attacks until the resistance was ended.

Other Major Political Factions

The flag of the Far Rim Confederacy
is rarely displayed outside the
Confederate Council Building.

The Far Rim Confederacy: The Far Rim Confederacy is not so much a nation-state as a loose collection of independent worlds tied together by a bewildering array of free trade agreements and mutual defense pacts.  Although they include several populous and powerful worlds among them, the Confederacy has an utterly ineffectual system of central coordination.  As such, it has no coherent foreign policy and each world is essentially on its own to deal with planets outside confederate membership.  The one exception to this is external invasion, although the member worlds are no match for a unified interstellar polity like the Hecatan Commonwealth, there are many members and they take an attack on one of them as an attack on all of them and react accordingly.  This being the case, there has not been a major attack on a confederate world in almost a hundred years.

A view of the three suns from the
surface of RK Prime.

Rigel Kentaurus: The Rigel Kentaurus system has the distinction of being the single most populous star system in human space.  It is one of the first generation wormhole colonies and Rigel Kentaurus Prime (RK IV) has been settled for almost twelve hundred years.  The Rigel Kentaurus system is an astronomical oddity, in that it is a stable trinary system with two G type stars and a smaller red companion between them.  Between them there are almost a hundred planets and tens of thousands of moons and smaller asteroids and other lesser bodies.  Of these, over 7,000 are home to significant long-term habitation, from RK Prime itself to asteroid mining operations with only a few hundred or thousand permanent inhabitants.  The populaton of Rigel is estimated to be over 100 billion, and this alone gives it a great deal of power in the realm of interstellar affairs.  Few people want to make an enemy of them, and all wish to court them as trade partners, as they represent an economy larger than all but the largest multi-system polities, and they are an incredibly lucrative market for commercial trade.



The Deep Sky Association is one of
the driving forces behind continued exploration.



The Deep Sky Association: The Deep Sky Association is a multi-national group of volunteers that are dedicated to the continued exploration of space.  They were originally founded by the remnants of the Federation Survey Service and desire nothing more than to explore new worlds and study astronomical phenomena to advance human knowledge.  Deep Sky is not a corporation, although it does hold several technology patents and territorial rights, it is more accurate to legally describe it as a commune.  Each member is applies for membership and is reviewed by a committee.  If they are deemed a valuable addition they begin an apprenticeship with an experience crew.  When members survey a new source of wealth or develop a new marketable piece of technology, they receive a dividend of the profits to split amongst themselves, while the rest goes to the Association to pay administrative costs and provide benefits for members.  Deep Sky considers itself apolitical and prefers not to take sides in interstellar affairs, although this does not prevent individual members from forming poltical affiliations.





Mo'Haddar: Mo'Haddar is an international political movement with the stated purpose of defending human culture and independence from subversion and the encroachment of alien societies.  Although it does have a unified political structure, the group itself has many splinters and offshoots that are all but independent of central leadership.  Hence, Mo'Haddar in one system might represent a simple desire to preserve traditional human culture, while in another it might be a racist and xenophobic movement that wishes to dominate or even exterminate alien life.

The Beowulf-class free trader is a
common sight anywhere in human space.

The Spacer's Guild: The Spacer's Guild is a loose association of freetraders, independent space habitats, and star-faring nomads that operate as a sort of trade union and special interest group.  Although they are not a political party per se, they do spend a great deal of effort advocating in political arenas on behalf of their constituents.  Generally speaking Guildsmen are themselves spacers, although sometimes they retain locals on specific planets to give them perspective on the culture and society.  A guild hall is also a good place for members to interact with each other, trade rumors and gossip, and look for work, crew, and barter.

Life in New Detroit

New Detroit is a study in contrast, it has one of the most productive and technically advanced space-based industrial complexes in human space.  Indeed, almost 40% of all space hulls presently in service began life in one of the massive spaceyards in orbit, and there are few spacecraft at all that don't have at least a few components manufactured on the surface of New Detroit.

Despite its thriving ship-building industry, New Detroit is one of the poorest planets per capita in known space.  Due to a corrupt oligarchal government and massive overpopulation, the average citizen of New Detroit lives in incredible poverty.  Most live there entire lives sharing a tiny living space with their extended family.  Often they begin work for one of the big manufacturing firms as adolescents and continue until they die.  For those few who live long enough to retire, or the many that are injured too badly to ever go back to work, there are social welfare programs, but they barely provide a subsistence level income.  The vast majority of the population (about 97%) make up this perpetual underclass of laborers.

On the other end of the spectrum, the few hundred individuals who make up the very pinnacle of New Detroit society are so fantastically rich as to defy belief.  Few other places have such a staggering concentration of wealth, and these corporate masters live in massive 4-5 kilometer tall arcologies built with lost federation materials technologies found nowhere else.  These towers rise above the filth and pollution of the surface and present a gleaming contrast to the wasted urban blight below. 

The lower levels of these arcologies house the small middle class of New Detroit, the bureaucrats, servants, and soldiers that keep their masters comfortable, their businesses running, and their workforce in line.  In return for this vital service, they live in comparative luxury and have access to some of the advanced technology that makes New Detroit such a commercial powerhouse.

Those who came before...

It has long been a point of discussion between biologists, xenologists, and sociologists why exactly so many alien species with such similar biology have arisen in such close proximity at essentially the exact same time.  Some theorize that this is merely a cosmic coincidence, or evidence that life is so prevelant that at any given time there are always a myriad of technologically sophisticated species, others have a more directed theory.

These strange structures were discovered on Hapser IV
by a Linnerex survey team in the seventeenth century CE. 
There purpose has still not been determined but they
offer tantalizing clues about the precursors technology. 

It is established fact that there was another space-faring civilization that colonized a region roughly analogous to the modern extent of habitation.  The oldest known evidence of this alien society has been dated to between 250-270,000 terran years ago, and the most recent to less than 20,000 years ago.  This means that they were active star travelers for an incredibly long period from the perspective of modern species, yet evidence of their culture and society is sparse and difficult to fathom. 

It is known that they were so advanced technologically that it is not unheard of to occassionally find still-functioning examples of the art.  These functioning precursor artifacts are some of the most valuable items in existence and even the most mundane tool can fetch tens of millions of credits on the open market.  Many of these artifacts can be identified as highly-refined versions of recognizable tools.  Some however, have a purpose which is beyond contemporary science and they remain as curiosities in the possession of rich collectors, or as items of intense study at museums and research laboratories.

It is also believed, through limited translation of ancient data files, that the precursor civilization was destroyed by a cataclysmic civil war between two different factions.  One; called the Umbra by archeaelogists believed that in order to avoid stagnation, they needed to become one with their machine creations and enter into a new transcedant existance as hybrid virtual life.  They other faction, called the Mundi, felt that that would be a surrender of their identity to a soulless mechanical gestalt and thought that only through contemplation of material existence could enlightenment be achieved.

The fragments of these two philosophies have become the basis for several modern religions that have had some success with pan-sentient membership.  However, no matter how much is understood about those that came before, many mysteries remain as to where they came from, how they lived, and how they died.

The Lost Federation

After the development of the Alcubierre warp drive, there was a period of consolidation where colonies already established at wormhole junctions sought to create a network of support and resource colonies in local star systems, this resulted in tension as they came into conflict with each other.  When wormhole travel was the only viable means if interstellar travel, these worlds had little need for military fleets, as it was extremely difficult to project power through a wormhole.  Now, with the new means of travel, colonies found that they were attempting to exploit the same locations and an arms race began. 

Soon, every world that was able was building war fleets to grab as much territory as possible, those that were unable had a choice between tying themselves voluntarily to a great power, or waiting to be conquered by one.  This period was one of constant border skirmishing punctuated with major interstellar wars. 

The pattern of human history could have continue this way, escalating until planetary genocide became a legitimate war aim.  However, an extraordinary thing happened, the leaders of one great power, after the successful conclusion of one of these conflicts, voluntarily relinquished their territorial gains and sent an open invitation to all worlds to come together and negotiate a general peace.

If the invitation had been to come to their homeworld, it very likely would have been rejected out of hand, but instead it asked all delegations to come to Earth.  Earth had long since ceased to be a political factor, between the collapse of its industrial capacity due to mass emigration, and the depletion of its easily obtained natural resources, Earth had become a quite backwater slowly regenerating its environment after millenia of abuse from humans.

Thousands of delegates from almost every human world descended on the ancient city of Geneva and remained there for almost two years.  The original stated goal was to attempt to halt the spread of aggressive war, by the end they, with the full acclaim of their respective governments and people, had formed a new unified human nation; the Terran Federation.

New Geneva, the Capital City of the Federation,
seen here at the height of the expansion period.

From this seminal moment in history, a new age of exploration and scientific discovery began.  Human traders and emissaries were sent out to make contact with every alien civilization yet discovered.  Where peace was possible, bonds of friendship and commerce were forged with an eye towards mutual benefit, where it was not possible, the combined might of all the thousand worlds of mankind defied even the eldest races to stand against them.

This golden age lasted almost seven hundred years, in that time, mankind stretched his hand across fully a tenth of the Orion arm of the galaxy and enormous advances in science and technology had been made.  The citizens of the Federation were happy and prosperous, they did not realize how much their success rankled some of the other species of the galaxy, and they could not know what trials lay ahead for them.

Tiferet Today


 

The planet Tiferet is a very different place now than it was ten years ago.  Although the flag of the Orion Cluster Union still flies from the Ministry Tower, the state once symbolized by it has in reality passed on.  Now a far different government exercises control over the shadow of the former Union. 



Once used to provide citizens with easy access to the Interstellar ComNet,
Coronet Station is now headquarters for the new Internal Security Agency.

In the chamber where the Unification Accords were signed, signalling peace throughout the star cluster, not uncaring bureaucrats dominate the few remaining colonial possessions under their control through force and intimidation.  Where once a free and educated electorate made sure that their chosen representatives worked towards the common good, now appointed henchman of the dictator work tirelessly to twist public perception through lies and threats of violence.  A state of permanent emergency has been declared, giving the leader of the interrim govenrment broad powers and little opposition. 

In the days after the surrender, most of the elected representatives were stained with failure and forced to resign for lack of support.  One of the few exceptions to this was the Assistant Minister for War, Oskar Delavera.  He had gained a reputation as a man with great insight into the enemy and had advocated unorthodox strategies to deal with them.  Strategies that were dismissed by his superiors.  When the more conventional approach they pursued proved so disasterous, only Delavera was able to gather enough support ot form a coalition government.

Once this was accomplished he began a systematic campaign to discredit his detractors and have them replaced by men in his pocket.  Once the entire goverment belonged to him, he took steps to ensure the continuation of his authority without the need for such things as elections.  He tightened his grip on the traditionally free press of Tiferet and turned it into a well-oiled machine designed solely to placate and sedate the population.

With the shock of their unexpectedly quick defeat, and little recent experience with political tyranny, the masses of Tiferet are poorly equipped to deal with this threat, however, freedom of thought and conscience are a tradition enshrined in the ethos of the Union and it will not be long before some at least realize what has happened to them, on that day Oskar Delavera will have made an enemy that cannot be easily dealt with.

Oberst-Sterling Consortium



The logo of OSC appears quite rarely,
as the board of directors prefers to
walk a less direct path.

 The Oberst-Sterling Consortium is the largest single concentration of wealth and power in the history of human civilization.  At any given time, OSC can be expected to maintain a controlling interest in no less than 300 other major corporate entities.  Needless to say this made OSC a major player within the politics of the lost federation, and the amount of influence they can bring to the lesser nations of the post-federation period is immense. 

Luckily for those smaller states, OSC is not interested in direct control.  The OSC directors are rarely seen to take a direct hand, preferring instead to allow subordinates and proxies to act on their behalf.  No one is aware of an overarching goal or agenda for OSC, beyond the acquisition of vast sums of money and power.  However, there are some few in the galaxy who have watched closely the behavior of this secretive group of power-brokers and see a sinister pattern that they cannot quite understand.

The Orion-Hecate War



The Orion-Hecate war was a short, brutal affair.  The Hecatan military was a massive force, outnumbering their opponents six to one.  However, the Orion Union had spent the last twenty years expanding and modernizing their armed forces in a bid to stop the Hecatan encroachment once and for all.  This meant that the Orion forces were well a well-trained, volunteer force with a distinct technological advantage. 



Although badly outnumbered, the Orion Space forces were
able to exploit their technological advantage to
great effect in most of the ship-to-ship engagements.



In contrast, the Hecatan military was largely made up of unwilling conscripts led by an almost hereditary officer-class.  In addition the state of technical education in the commonwealth was so poor that at any given time, 25% of their fleet was laid up for major repair work. 

Knowing all of this, observers of the war were split on how the war would go, but all agreed that if anyone could fight Hecate on close to even terms, it was the Orions.

This was not the case, the Union had greatly underestimated both Hecates espionage capabilities and the ambition of its own domestic opposition.  While new warships were laid down at a record pace and new army divisions were raised and armed with the finest equipment available, a small cabal of local politicians were making a deal with the devil.  These agitators, led by the Assistant Minister of War, a man named Oskar Delavera, delivered accurate copies of the initial war plans, common encryption schemes, and most importantly, remote access codes for the planetary defense network of the capital.  In return, the received a promise that there would be as little bloodshed and collateral damage as possible, and that they would receive Hecatan support to supplant the current, duly-elected Union government and be allowed local autonomy to oversee their own domestic affairs.

In the initial battles, the Union forces managed to hold their own quite well, in fact scoring some notable victories.  They were not aware that the Hecatans were allowing themselves to be outfought to lull their enemies into a false-sense of superiority.  After six months of skirmishing on the frontiers, they began a devastating campaign that ruthlessly exploited their knowledge of Union communication protocols and codes.  The Union field forces were out-maneuvered and overwhelmed.  While their main armies were being neutralized, a massive Hecatan task force flew right through the Orion fleet, avoiding every patrol and appearing in orbit around the Union home world of Tiferet.  Ever more alarmingly, they transmitted a series of contradicting command codes that rendered the formidable orbital defenses completely impotent.  Hanging in low orbit, with no other resistance in sight, they calmly sent a transmission asking for a planet-wide surrender on pain of bombardment.

There was no other choice, the government of the Orion Cluster Union surrendered unconditionally and collapsed under popular outrage.  One of the highest ranking members of the government to remain with his reputation intact, the assistant minister for war, was named the head of an interim government and engaged in peace negotiations with the Hecatan assimilation authorities.

Development of the Warp Drive



This simple graphic detailed the idea of warping space
into a sort of ftl carrier wave for spacecraft
that would not violate general relativity or causality.



The foundational mathematics behind the modern faster-than-light drive was completed before wormhole travel was proven feasible.  However, there were at the time insurmountable technical problems involved in creating the space-warping effect that would allow functional superluminal travel.  Namely, the fact that the energy level required to create the warp field exceeded the total energy density of the observable universe.



Thus, even though it was a theoretically established fact, it remained practically impossible for several hundred years after humanity began to expand through the limited network of wormholes.  However, a breakthrough in exotic field physics in 2583 proved that a small amount of exocromium could be used to generate a type of null-particle field around a spacecraft, thereby significantly reducing the amount of energy needed to create the space-warping field to realistically achievable levels.  This discovery was followed quickly by a test flight of the starship Alexei Leonov, the first starship to achieve functional FTL without recourse to wormhole travel.  Of course the rate of travel was significantly slower that the instantaneous arrival allowed through wormholes, but humanity was no longer limited to exploiting star systems connected to the wormhole network.  This created a new rennaisance in space exploration and colonization that resulted in both the Interstellar War Period and the establishment of the Terran Federation in 2625.

The Catalan Markets

The Catalan markets are infamous throughout known space as a den of crime and a safe port for pirates and slavers.  It is an asteroid colony of immense proportions.  The founding of the colony was reportedly over 2,000 Terran years ago.  Svesh freebooters were running rampant through the spacelanes near their home world and they drew the ire of the Quarn Hegemony.  Quarn are more renowned for their mercantile nature than militancy, but when their interests are threatened they can be implacable foes.  Quarn anti-piracy patrols swept the Svesh from the space lanes, or so they thought.  Instead they merely caused them to band together, they established secret bases from which to prosecute a vendetta against the Quarn, the greatest of which was Catalan. 

Even at the height of the Terran Federation, Catalan existed outside
human space, and so little is known for sure besides the critical role
it plays in the interstellar slave trade.

Once their preparations were complete the Svesh, now united under a single leader, unleashed a calculated pattern of attacks that specifically targeted only Quarn hulls.  This drove insurance rates for Quarn cargo carriers so high that they were forced to abandon operations in the area and therefore withdrew their patrol ships as well.

After the elimination of the Quarn, their only organized resistance, the Svesh broke down into their former pattern of internecine conflict and uncoordinated piracy.  The Svesh factions with an interest on Catalan flourished at the expense of regional trade and prosperity.  Residents of the local frontier worlds live in constant fear of the sleek raiders that descend from the sky to loot and kidnap.  Often worlds that lack the capacity for self-defense come to an arrangement were they provide money and a smaller contingent of criminals and outcasts to a particular faction in return for protection from the others.

Needless to say, the reputation of Catalan as a place were anything can be had for the right price is in no danger, and its remote location and connection to the powerful Svesh cartels almost ensures that it will be a blight on interstellar commerce for a long time to come.

the Hecatan Commonwealth

During the FederationPeriod, Hecate was one of the first worlds colonized, despite its poor atmosphere and barren terrain.  Its general unsuitability for human habitation was only a minor concern to the planetary engineering of the Terran Federation.  Advanced atmosphere generators created a breathable environment from local resources within barely a decade, and massive orbital hydroponics facilities provided abundant food for a staggering population.  Hecate was a mineral and resource rich world, and was therefore worth the trouble to terraform.

Hecate as seen from orbit

With the collapse of the Federation, the capital and technical expertise required to maintain the engines of terraforming slowly eroded, they began to fail and were cannibalized for parts to keep the others running, parts that no one left on Hecate knew how to fabricate.  The corporate boards examined the situation and saw a time in the not-too-distant future when the last of the atmosphere generators stopped working.  They also saw that their trade revenues were plummeting due to the increase in piracy and the difficulty in maintaining the infrastructure needed for star travel, costs for long-distance trade were becoming unbearable and Hecate relied on trade to keep it's population alive.  The directors and executives saw that unless something drastic was done within twenty years, the population would begin to asphyxiate.  Even though star travel is considered commonplace, it was not possible to evacuate the planet, indeed, emigration was strongly encouraged and even partially subsidized but that along with stringent population control methods barely kept the population from increasing.

That was when the masters of Hecate made a fateful decision, if they could not generate wealth through trade, then they would convert their factories to producing weapons and warships and take what was needed by force.  So began a campaign of conquest that spanned a century.  Each world conquered would be looted by the occupation legions to feed the insatiable need of the Hecatan masses, only to become another mob of dependents, thereby requiring fresh infusions of wealth from new conquests.

Orion Cluster Union

Once the core of the Union military build-up, the Argyll Spacedock is now the home port of the Hecatan 6th Fleet

The Orion Cluster Union was a very wealthy multi-star polity based in the Orion-Trapezium star cluster.  It was blessed with extensive natural resources, an open and responsible government, and an excellent location astride several major trade lanes, including no less than four primary wormhole nexi.

All this meant that the Union was a regional power despite its relatively small size, and other fringe nations looked to the Union as an example.

The Orion Cluster Union's capitol world is Tiferet, in the Zeta Trianguli Australis system, a star system unusual in its wealth of habitable worlds (five, including three large moons orbiting Nix, the larger of the systems two gas giants) and a wormhole nexus leading to the Eridani system.

However, nothing lasts forever, the leadership of the Orion Cluster watched with growing apprehension as another local power slowly grew in power and ambition.  Hecate was a relic of the old Terran Federation, a barren world converted into a massive industrial powerhouse. A breathable atmosphere easily provided with the technological wizardry of the lost Federation.

The Union saw the change in Hecate, saw what was once a peaceful and prosperous world become a tyrannical oligarchy, a ramshackle machine of conquest that had to expand at all costs to keep from starving to death.  They decided that they would not submit and allow there home to be raped, they spent twenty years preparing for the inevitable conflict, forging alliances and building up their defenses.

Unfortunately, when the war did come, all the careful preparation was undone by the treachery and betrayal of a few unscrupulous individuals.  Union field forces were cut off and defeated in detail along the frontier and the home defenses of Tiferet were neutralized from within by a cabal of traitors led by Oskar Delavera.

With the swift victory, Hecate wasted no time in annexing several key systems as territorial acquisitions and remanding the rest to be governed by a new collaborationist government led by Delavera.

Megiddo

Megiddo is the place to be.

The vast wealth garnered by piracy and smuggling in space rarely finds its way to the surface

A small, lightly populated world, Megiddo lacks both natural resources and a climate amenable to human habitation.  Combine that with the fact that it is close but not directly on several major trade lanes and you would expect that Megiddo would have ended up exactly as it should have been, a marginal fringe world populated by people without the money to get anywhere else.

However, Megiddo had one thing in abundance, a population of rugged individualists and a government willing to accept anyone and everyone at face value.  This has made Megiddo's location and limited strategic value an advantage as it became the home away from home for every pirate, smuggler, and mercenary in the entire region.

So there it is, everyone knows Megiddo is the heart of interstellar crime, but no one is willing to do anything about it because it is too much trouble and it is too profitable to leave things as they are.