A million years have come and gone
since Man first fled the place of his birth.
Countless fiefdoms, nations, and empires,
occupied by unfathomable varieties of life
have crept across the vastness of space.
Each of them conquering, rising, waning and collapsing,
as if this cycle of ruination were the heartbeat of the great void.
Man finds himself once again in the shattered ruins among the stars.
The ashes miserable, yet somehow familiar to him.
To live is to struggle. To fight is to truly live.
Even against the horrors beyond the comprehension
of Man, where he can fight, he can hope.
The Stellar Republic
The Stellar Republic is the largest and most powerful governing body in the galaxy. The Republic traces its history back many thousands of years, and began as a utopian project to unite the intelligent species of the galaxy for mutual aid, commerce, and defense. Equal representation is guaranteed to each and every member world that joins, and member worlds appoint Senators to speak on their behalf. Rights to necessities, education, work, freedom of movement and commerce are guaranteed by the Republic, and enforced by the many Republican Armies.
These lofty ideals are carved deep into the stone walls of the Grand Consensus, the meeting place of the Senate on Calainus, the seat of government for the Stellar Republic. Calainus lays North of the Galaxy’s center, and the Republic’s reach extends around the bright core of the Galaxy to the East and West, far out into frontier space, leaving only the Galactic core, and Southern quadrant of the galaxy outside the nominal control of the Republic.
With enough time and mishandling, even stone crumbles into dust. High-minded ideals quickly wilt away in the face of nature. Factions within the Republic formed not long after the Charter was laid down. Informal at first, these factions formed along biological lines. Regardless of distance, a world owned by the Thalansarii would always side with their fellow Thalansarii during disputes. Abosians would always clamor for ratification of Albosian Commerce Guild trade terms. Paguroidites demanded shorter working hours, and the other Paguroidites always agreed. Mafias at the species level became the norm in the Senate.
In practice, “mutual aid” meant promising much, contributing little, and taking from the public coin purse what you could. “Freedom of movement and commerce” became synonymous with colonization. “Education” became indoctrination and experimentation at the level of global populations. “Guaranteed necessities” meant demanding expensive luxuries.
Humans, however, remained largely idealistic. They held fast to the words carved in those stone walls, even at great expense to themselves. To this day, the Human-controlled worlds of the Republic seem to be the last bit of adhesive keeping it all together. It was only just recently that Man’s League came into being, Mankind’s own faction and advocacy group within the Republic.
Too many Men setting their minds to a task has never sit right with many of the galaxy’s cast of characters. Speaking of the Gulf of Ipra, or Leviathan’s Graveyard sends a chill down the spine of many non-humans who hear them. The major players of the Senate have a rule, spoken in hushed tones, and only when no prying eyes, scent sacs, or antennae are around: Humanity must remain fragmented.
Frontier Space
The Stellar Republic considers any region of the galaxy not under its direct control to be “frontier space,” though such a broad categorization does little to actually describe these regions. Frontier space is home to an incalculable number of settled worlds, multi-system fiefs, and sector-spanning empires. Many member and client species make their homes on worlds that fall outside the Republic.
The border worlds that lay at the very edge of Republic space were once the bleeding edge of manifesting the galactic unity which the Republic embodied. As the once grand institution has turned inward, focusing on petty squabbles to the detriment of its own survival, the borders of the Republic have receded like a tide. Ships no longer leave port to brave frontier space, and supply lines for exotic materials and complex manufactured goods have broken down. The base level of technology on the frontier has regressed dangerously, and many of those who are capable of maintaining the complex systems put in place by a government millions of parsecs away have since packed their bags and moved to the interior worlds.
These worlds are left defenseless, forced to band together as Republics-in-miniature, or be swallowed up by the warlords and their expanding domains pushing ever closer to the border of Republic space.
Corporations
Rather than completely abandon its former colonies and the developed worlds at the edge of its influence, the Senate has come up with a scheme to give up responsibility while still extracting value from these planets. Most of the worlds that were once under the direct control of the Republic are now managed by vast, interstellar conglomerates who pay taxes to the Senate’s coffers. Total control is handed over to these conglomerates, and as long as the taxes are paid, the rest of the Republic cares not one bit how the corporations treat their charges. Dignity, unity, and equality are all concepts ground to paste in the gears of industrial exploitation.
The conglomerates are not as inwardly-focused as the Republic proper. Corporations almost uniformly have private armies of soldiers willing to do unspeakable violence for a big enough payday. The Six-Star Conglomerate is rumored to posses a fleet of warships so large and powerful, it could fight the Republic’s famed Third Fleet to a draw. These armies are used to great effect managing the cantankerous populations of the worlds under their ownership, and even greater effect smashing the defenders of other worlds and adding them wholesale to the ledger. Decades-long conflicts between these conglomerates is far from unheard of on the Frontier.
Rivals for Power
As a body rots, carrion eaters come to feed on the corpse. So too have the galaxy’s minor powers seen their opportunity for plunder. Within and around the Stellar Republic hundreds of lesser kingdoms, some just single star systems and some spanning many sectors of space, have stoked the fires of war. The terms of armistice treaties are conveniently misremembered, unfriendly planetary governors are assassinated in the dead of night, and borders are subtly redrawn to take worlds from the Republic. That, of course, is only when these upstart fiefs do not commit themselves to invasion by force of arms. The soldiers of species unheard of march up the boulevards of worlds of the Frontier, and flags fly from the starships of worlds billions of miles away.
Age of Ruin 