Human Sphere

The Human Sphere is the region of space that is primarily inhabited by Humans, in both astrographcal and xenocultural terms. The homeworld of humanity, Ordis, is located within the Human Sphere, though it is now uninhabitable. Most of the oldest Human planets were former colonies established by the Ordic humans in the past. The four main states in the Human Sphere are the Unified States Commonwealth, the New Greater Empire, the Federation of Sovereign States and the Interstellar Union of Revolutionary States, with several other smaller states.

Beginnings
Prior to the development of the faster-than-light Ferran Process, human exploration and colonisation was limited by the Mukhtar Limit, the threshold of distance whereby interstellar travel would take longer than a human's lifetime. Modern usage of the term 'Mukhtar Limit' has come to define the border between the Cradle Worlds, today part of the Unified States Commonwealth, and the Southern Sphere. Humanity was thus limited to colonising the planets in the vicinity of their homeworld Ordis.

Upon the discovery of the Ferran Process about 700 years ago, humanity was able to cross the Mukhtar Limit for the first time, colonising the planet Frontera in what would become known as the Southern Frontier from 679 years ago. It was around this period that the concept of the 'Human Sphere' began to emerge, a term for burgeoning human interstellar civilisation. Over the next 240 years, the human states on Ordis began carrying out major colonisation and development projects in the Southern Frontier, colonising another 11 planets in the area and vastly expanding humanity's reach across the stars. Millions of people moved to the colonies to escape overcrowding on Ordis, and it was typically cheaper to move to the Frontier, where jobs and land were abundant, than the Cradle Worlds. This boosted the frontier's population rapidly.

However, the human countries remained in fierce competition with each other and conflicts over territories and resources continued into this era. Colonial subjects in the Southern Frontier, now termed the Southern Sphere, were often abused by national and corporate colonial interests. As multiple generations passed on the colonies, revolutionary ideologies began to emerge, and several pro-independence groups began plaguing the Southern Sphere colonies. One of the largest groups was the Democratic Republic of Free Frontera (DRFF), which had wide popular support and constantly campaigned the colonial nations and the Ordic League to grant independence for Frontera.

436 years ago, the DRFF attained a critical mass and were able to carry out massive peaceful and violent uprisings across Frontera's major cities, setting up their own government, with all of the ports on strike and colonial power troops and personnel barricaded in their bases and homes. Publishing their manifesto of independence, the Ordic League deployed warships and peacekeeper troops to restore their control of Frontera. Following a chain of events that included the Deacon Massacre, an accidental killing of over 80 civilian protestors, open fighting began between the Ordic League and the DRFF's militia.

It was at this crucial moment that the Fronteran scientist Siobhan Wakamoto discovered Cold Fusion on the planet Serenia. The Wakamoto-Grey Procedure revolutionised human science and technology, but Wakamoto herself was driven to join the DRFF following the death of her husband at the hands of peacekeepers, and she secretly returned to Frontera with her research. Recognising the vast implications of Wakamoto's discovery, the DRFF was able to use the Wakamoto-Grey Procedure as a bargaining chip to end the Mukhtar Incident once and for all. The Ordic League granted Frontera independence from the colonist powers and a seat in the Ordic League, however an Ordic League committee remained indefinitely to oversee the DRFF's 'transition to independence', particularly controlling matters of defence and foreign policy.

Extrasolar Wars
The semi-independence of Frontera was unprecedented and marked the start of what later historians have termed the "Confrontation Era". The introduction of the Wakamoto-Grey Procedure revolutionised human technology, enabling starships to become both smaller and larger, with less space dedicated to large fusion reactors. Ideological and political differences between the colonial powers were exposed by the Mukhtar Incident, and the various powers began taking steps to prevent another bid for independence in the colonies, while simultaneously settling old rivalries. 403 years ago, a major interstellar war broke out between rival blocs of Ordic colonial powers, the first of its kind, becoming known as the Third Superpower War.

Following the conclusion of the war, the Arcadis Space Treaty was promulgated by the Ordic League, limiting the amount of space warships that each nation was capable of fielding to a particular ratio. This was seen as a threat by Frontera, which had been building up their space forces and now had to decommission almost half of its space fleet. Despite signing the treaty, Frontera ignored the treaty and did not scrap their warships, while the most powerful Ordic nations also merely scrapped outdated and unwanted ships to fulfill their treaty obligations. Ordic League inspectors eventually discovered Frontera's non-compliance and began applying sanctions to Frontera amidst accusations that Frontera was supporting colonial rebels and terrorists throughout the Sphere.

Frontera responded by walking out of the Ordis League, abandoning their embassy on Ordis and declaring full independence from Ordis. All non-Fronterans on Frontera were given one Ordic month to either vacate Frontera or become Fronteran citizens, after which the DRFF began imprisoning the remaining foreigners. The Ordic League collectively declared this a hostile act, and deployed a peacekeeping force to invade Frontera, beginning the First Extrasolar War. Three months after the Ordic League forces invade Frontera, they were pushed back by the unexpectedly powerful and determined Fronteran Military. The Ordic League forces were forced to retreat from the planet, abandoning several thousand troops on Frontera who continued a guerilla war on the surface for months to years to come.

Meanwhile, the Fronteran government chose to retaliate against the Ordic League for this invasion, launching an interstellar attack on the rich, picturesque planet Serenia, widely considered the crown jewel of the Southern Sphere colonies. Within four months, the Fronterans had seized parts of the planet and several major settlements, forcing the Ordic League to sign a peace treaty that granted Frontera full independence from Ordis as well as control over the half of Serenia that they had conquered.

The Democratic Republic of Free Frontera reorganised itself into the Democratic Republic of the Free Colonies (DRFC) with the admission of the Serenian territories, becoming the first human state completely independent from Ordis 396 years ago. In response to this, many of the colonial powers began increasing security and tightening their control over the colonies, as many pro-independence factions began emerging across the Southern Sphere with the covert support of the DRFC.

Around this period, the Northern Sphere was first colonised by the Ordic colonial powers, opening the gateway to the much more hospitable and resource-rich northern frontier. Interest in the Southern Sphere began to die out, particularly in the face of constant pro-independence campaigning and opposition from the increasingly militarised DRFC. However, interest in the Southern Sphere suddenly spiked when the inhabitable planet Humanity's Edge was discovered, and drones photographs settlements already on the planet's surface.

Humanity first encountered an intelligent alien species when human explorers met Nangka colonists who had already settled on Humanity's Edge, known as Sw to the Nangka. The first meeting between human researcher Konstantin Wong and the Nangka scientist Pa’rahl ‘Yk W 320 years ago sent shockwaves across the entire Human Sphere, setting off various movements both for and against contact with the aliens, leading to chaos in various religions and communities, and sending the human scientific community into overdrive.

Cross-cultural efforts were carried out in the peaceful first years of Human-Nangka contact, though doubters on both sides advocated for military buildup. Some of the Nangka were particularly threatened when they discovered how advanced humanity was compared to their own civilisation, and weapons of mass destruction were secretly brought onto Humanity's Edge in preparation for a war with the humans. On the humans' end, corporations and colonists began arriving in earnest on the resource-rich world.

However, though the situation with the Nangka distracted all of the Human Sphere for a time, the reality was that the Southern Sphere was still increasingly ready to revolt against Ordis. Various political lobbies and corporate groups began agitating for greater independence, further agitated by the Neo-Cultural Movements, which were dominated by the Yashiman Cultural Lobby and the Neo-Amphia Forum. Rebel militias and protest groups also attained major traction, supported by covert weapons and funding from the DRFC. Simultaneously, elements in the Ordic colonial nations were increasingly intolerant of the Southern Colonies, particularly those that wished to destroy the DRFC once and for all due to prejudice and historical grudges.

308 years ago, the Toland House Bombing occurred at the eponymous Ordic League headquarters on Serenia. Blamed on the DRFC and pro-independence terrorists, later investigations proved that the bombing was carried out by a colonial power as a false-flag attack to begin deporting DRFC citizens from the Ordic side of Serenia. An international crisis ensued, culminating in the outbreak of the Second Extrasolar War when DRFC troops invaded the Ordic side of Serenia to secure the safety of their citizens still residing there. Somewhat simultaneously to this, various rebel groups throughout the Southern Sphere also began a general uprising. Observing the humans fighting amongst themselves, and the weapons humanity had access to in total war, Nangka leaders began to have second thoughts about dealing with the humans, and human scientists note that the ongoing cross-cultural exchanges in this period became slightly strained.

After several months of fighting, the front lines on Serenia had become stalemated. Ordic League forces invaded the heart of DRFC territory on the continent of Renxing, while DRFC forces also seized the key colonial city of Kipling. Suddenly, the Serenian Terracide was carried out, when a strategic thermonuclear weapon was used for the first time. Though unclear to this day which side fired first, the battle over Serenia devolved into a nuclear conflict, and within weeks the planet was utterly devastated. Both sides rushed to withdraw their forces and rescue as many civilians as possible, while fighting in space intensified as both sides blamed each other. The Ordic League attempted to strike at Frontera itself, but the attack fleet was intercepted by the DRFC Navy, though a single strategic warhead destroyed the city of Agridulce on Frontera.

As news of the Serenian Terracide spread across the Sphere, pro-independence movements intensified their rhetoric and attacks, appearing even in the Cradle Worlds and Ordis itself, even as anger against the same groups soared. The full destruction of an entire planet divided all of human society entirely for the first time in centuries, and protestors clashed with each other even on Ordis. What followed the Serenian Terracide was a period of three years often termed the "Quiet War", where both sides rarely committed to major fleet battles but continued committing terror, guerilla, and special operations attacks against each other. Some of these attacks reached as far as Ordis and the Northern Frontier, where pro-Southern Independence activists sabotaged colonial state infrastructure to send a message.

Faced with increasing internal issues and the mounting cost of pacifying the southern colonies, in contrast to the wealthy and productive Northern Frontier, the most powerful Ordic colonial nations came to an agreement and finally agreed to vacate the Southern Sphere. In the landmark Lunar Accords, held 303 years ago, the Southern Sphere colonies were granted full independence. Of the 22 colonies, only 6 were against this, four on Mnemosynia, one on Khadivor, and one on Prospekt, which would remain a part of their colonial nations for several years to come. One of the stipulations of the Lunar Accords was that the Ordic states would continue to have access to the research surrounding the Nangka Race, which the colonies agreed to.

With independence achieved, the newly-formed Southern Sphere states formed the Federation of Southern States 303 years ago, or 3 AT, according to the calendar used in the South. Meanwhile, a coalition of lesser Ordic colonial states which had been forced to abide by the Lunar Accords began agitating against the traditional superpowers on Ordis, increasing turmoil as these nations were further weakened by the loss of their southern colonies. Some countries even began moving parts of all of their government apparatus off Ordis itself, laying the foundations for the collapse of Ordis to come.

Divided Sphere
As instability began north of the Mukhtar Limit, the newly-formed Federation began a period of rebuilding and transition of power,


 * The rise of the Federation
 * The fall of Ordis and the beginning of the Great Purge
 * The first Federation Civil War and the rise of the Union
 * The rise of the Systems Confederacy
 * 165 years ago, The Extinctions War began in the North with the Tesseran Incident
 * The First Hyperpower War between the Federation and the Union
 * The Second Federation Civil War and the rise of the Greater Empire

The Conflict Period

 * The Imperial Era and the contact with the Katouku and the Hierarchy
 * The end of the Extinction Wars and the rise of the Commonwealth
 * The Empire-Federation War and the fall of the Empire
 * The Honourable Resistance Era, the decline of the Federation, the rise of the Union, and the rise of the Interstellar Treaty Organisation
 * 120 years ago, The Chorus War, where the Union invaded the planet Chorus for 9 years, also low-key fighting with the Commonwealth quite a bit
 * The War of Imperial Reunification

Neo-Confrontation Age

 * Formation of the New Greater Empire
 * Yucheng Independence War, and the formation of the Chunmin Revolutionary People's Republic
 * The Third War of Mnemosynia, the Empire's Vietnam
 * Colonisation of Tazawa/Amanecer, and the Empire-Union War
 * The Empire-Alvia War
 * Modern day

Astrography
The Human Sphere is divided into two main portions, the North and South. Dating back to colonial times, the division is almost entirely arbitrary and exists due to post-colonial politics, but lies roughly along a linear area of space known as the Mukhtar Limit. In colonial times, this border was once the southernmost edge of Human expansion, prior to the Second Wave of Colonisation.

Southern Sphere
The Southern Sphere comprises all of the systems to the galactic south of the Mukhtar Limit, stretching into the Yeji Arm and into the Galactic Outer Core due to ongoing Imperial expansion. Colonised in the Second Wave of Colonisation, the Southern Sphere has seen major conflicts in its history. It is governed by the Federation of Sovereign States, New Greater Empire, and Interstellar Union of Revolutionary States, and currently includes 29 or 31 planets, depending on if the two Katouku Overpod-disputed planets are included in the definition.

Coreward Frontier
Main article: Coreward Frontier

Northern Sphere
Comprising all the systems to the north of the Mukhtar Limit, the Northern Sphere is dominated between the Unified States Commonwealth and the Heavenly Kingdom, with the Twin Systems Confederation, the New Chorus Republic, and the Free Colonies of Cibola being minor entities in the Northern Sphere. It currently includes 23 inhabitable bodies. Historically, the Northern Sphere was divided into the Cradle Worlds - planets first colonised by Humanity during the First Wave as well as Ordis - and the Northern Frontiers, which were expanded to in the Third Wave of Colonisation. In the modern day, these distinctions largely no longer exist.

Races
Despite being popularly known within and without as the Human Sphere, the Sphere is also home to three other sapient species. The largest race is naturally the humans, followed in population size by the Katoku, Nangka, and the Kamin. While human supremacist ideas are held by some of the human states, societies, and communities, the major human powers largely no longer hold racist views.

Faster than light travel
Like most other spacefaring civilisations, the spacefaring human nations are capable of faster-than-light (FTL) travel. Humanity generally utilises the Ferran Process for FTL travel and communications, developed during the Old Ordis era by the revered scientist Ferran da Silva. The action of beginning FTL transportation is commonly referred to as a "jump", while Southern Sphere states additionally often refer to exiting FTL as a "drop". The Ferran Process requires massive amounts of computational power to carry out FTL jumps with any degree of accuracy and safety, with human ships relying heavily on computers with superconducting quantronic circuitry to carry out these calculations.

Generally, the longer the distance of an FTL jump, the more computational power is required, limiting human ships' ranges to the physical capabilities of their navigational systems. Extremely short-distance jumps such as those between a planet and its moon can be calculated easily by even personal computers and suTabs, while short jumps within a single star system are easily calculated by commercial navigational computers. Jumps between star systems often require far more computational power, often assisted by automated beacons placed within star systems that the ships' navigational computers can home in on.

Due to the immense distances involved, it is almost impossible to calculate jumps more than 10 light years away with modern human technology, though experiments have been carried out that have pushed this boundary. In order to travel between inhabited systems, ships jump between uninhabited dark systems along "highways" of navigational beacons. The process of jumping takes only several seconds to a minute to complete, and ships typically spend only seconds within each dark system, but the vast distances involved can cause travel between systems to take from hours to days. Some dark systems even have rest stops for travelers to rest and recharge their systems.

Theoretically, starships using the Ferran Process can carry out an FTL jump to any location without proper calculations, but the probability of arriving at the correct destination is so infinitesimally small and the risk to human life so great that all FTL Drives are by design unable to operate without a navigational computer of some kind.

Communications and Networks
The Ferran Process is also used for communication throughout the Human Sphere, with signals and information streams boosted along Hanwavic Particle beams that are boosted by quantronic deflectors to faster than light speeds. These are several orders of magnitude faster than space vessels, and communications between inhabited planets can take place with only a few seconds delay. However, the longer the distances involved the more delay there is, with a full five-hour delay between Cibola and Tiantang on opposite sides of the Human Sphere. Despite this, however, the power required for such interstellar communications is still extremely vast, and thus such communications are often limited to government and military applications, or those parties who can afford it.

For mundane communications between planets, InfoCourier services are used. These services operate specialised starships which receive signals and messages from a planet and physically carry them between star systems, meaning most communications between planets typically has a delay of hours to days. In the Southern Sphere, InfoCourier ships operate continuously, making up a full 38% of regional space traffic at all times in order to keep the networks updated and interstellar communications alive.

The two main electronic networks used in the Human Sphere are the Internet, used in the Northern Sphere, and the Exonet, which is mainly used in the Southern Sphere. These networks are often colloquially known as "nets" or the "web". Both are highly important for interconnections between the various human communities, and provide various functions such as Netsites, electronic mail, communications, file sharing and more. Due to the sheer amount of information on these networks far surpassing the capability of Hanwavic Beams to transmit them, InfoCourier services are utilised by corporations or invested parties to continuously update the localised network systems within each star system, accounting for almost 75% of all information carried by InfoCouriers. This also means that the information stored on the networks often differ between star systems due to the time delay.

In the Southern Sphere, the sheer importance of the Exonet is such that its maintenance is one of the few things that transcends political boundaries, and the three hyperpowers jointly contribute to the non-governmental NetView organisation that maintains the Exonet's functionality across the entire region. The Internet and Exonet are not connected with each other, though transferring data between both systems is simple and is often done by dedicated courier services.

Another network is the Saranet, used mainly on Mnemosynia. There also exist various private networks and little-known "dark nets" operated by extra-governmental groups.

Transportation
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