Basic timeline of the Terraverse, Part 3

The Alliance, Itzillians and many members of the federation arrived in the original universe in what they estimated to be TMY -1,506,334, a new calendar was started which was given the designation AR(After Return). The Federation quickly began work on "Outposts", colossal space stations reaching over 37.5km in length and able to comfortably house millions.  These space stations were placed around the first few star-systems "claimed" by the federation. The federation launched swarms of automated probes designed to detect any life and relay it's location back to a central hub in the federation's new home system. The probes reported the location and basic data about each and every system they visited. Not one contained life.
After some substantial database searching and impressive mathematics the federation eventually located Terra Maxima, Twill, Draco and Fraya. To their surprise they found them all to be lifeless rocks. They searched for many years but did not find any signs of life, intelligent or otherwise in this new universe. The federation began to look for suitable planets to settle but, unable to find any that did not require terraforming they decided to construct giant space stations, massive habitat rings, using "atmospheric shields" (the same technology as the alliance used in the hangers of star ships to keep air inside but allow ships to pass through) to keep an atmosphere in place on these stations. It was then that it became apparent that the federation were the race who had constructed the ring worlds that would later be settled by the Terrans. They had assumed that the ring builders, the Prioribus (meaning "first ones" in Terran), had been one race, but that was evidently not so.

There were a number of revelations that became apparent from this discovery. Firstly, they were alone in the universe, at least for the time being. Secondly, they had finally solved the mystery of why the Prioribus built ring worlds instead of settling on planets. But most importantly, the reason the for the Prioribus's disappearance all those years ago, before the birth of the Terran race, was about to become very important.

Life did not appear to be occurring naturally in the galaxy. A group of scientists, forbidden by the government and working in secret, prepared biological samples that could possibly, given enough time, evolve into complex life. Shortly after the last, and largest, ringworld was completed, the scientists, calling themselves Seminatores (meaning "sowers" in Terran) set out to seed life on as many worlds as they could. they reserved Terra Maxima, Draco, Twill and Fraya for last, in honour of their importance to the universe to come.

By the time microbial life started being found suddenly on worlds all through out the galaxy, the federation had dissolved into chaos. Separated only by ideology, two major factions appeared, taking on a familiar form. These two factions, calling themselves the Deus and the Haereticus, dissolved the federation into a civil war, sparked by the mysterious disappearance of one of the Seminatores.

The civil war, recorded as incipiens a novissimis temporibus ("war of the end times" in Terran) was long and bloody. Many of the outpost stations were destroyed, along with five ring worlds during the 357 year long conflict. The two remaining Illians sacrificed themselves to create the orbs that would create The Nine during the last few days of the war. It came to an abrupt end in AR 40,266 when a biological weapon was released into the shipping lanes. Nearly undetectable and with a very long incubation period followed by near instant death, it was silent but deadly. The bio-weapon was released in AR 40,265 and it's first victims began appearing nearly a year later. During the year long incubation the pathogen was highly infectious, and had spread to nearly every single member of the Prioribus.
By AR 40,267 only 132 souls remained alive. They lived out their lives as fully as they could aboard a single star ship, the Reliquiae. However, too afraid to dock to any remaining facility to repair the aging star ship,  life support, propulsion and communications finally went dark on board in AR 40,302. The crew was not able to restore them in time, and the last 54 members of the Prioribus suffocated in their sleep.

And thus, to the dust from whence they came, they returned

Basic timeline of the Terraverse, Part 2

The Ventum as seen from the aft.

The time skip took place in around 1,897,632 ARD. They arrived in a new galaxy, only seconds later for them, but from an outside observer, the universe collapsed in on itself, then exploded outwards into a new universe, and after about 13.8 billion years the alliance showed up again. The alliance set out in this new universe looking for a home. They had with them their massive ship, Carrier Of Worlds created from the remains of AS-1, along with hundreds of smaller starships that they had docked to it. These smaller ships were dispatched looking for a viable new home world. During this time, known as the "wandering fleet" Seven took a small cargo hauler the Ventum and left the fleet behind. She set out in search of planets with life seeking adventure. She was not heard from for well over 500 years, during which the alliance fleet colonized a new home world, that later came to be known as Prima (this happened in FY 432 (FY is Fleet Year)) .

The centuries began to pass and a generation and a half down the line there were very few people alive that had ever met Seven and she was more legend than anything else. There were more important matters at hand to the people of the alliance, such as a rebellion. Daughter of Nine, Itzl Atavuli formed a tenth faction not long after the settling of Prima. This faction was at first not recognized but quickly gained traction. Within a year of it's creation the tenth faction had gained enough support to be officially recognized, this marked the first (and only) faction to ever have a non-Illian leader as Itzl took the reigns herself. The tenth faction gained the total support of a few colony worlds and eventually declared themselves independent of the alliance. The alliance government refused to recognize their independence.
Itzl's adoptive sister and master shipwright Tess Veretro designed the first superbattleship class starship which served as the flagship of rebellion. This ship was constructed by a shipyard under Itzl's influence and named the Spirit of Rebellion. It lead the Itzillian fleet into the only military confrontation between the Rebels and the Alliance. The two fleets were at a stand off, neither willing to fire on the other but neither willing to back down. Both the Carrier of Worlds and the Spirit of Rebellion were at the heads of their respective fleets with Itzl and Tess aboard the Spirit of Rebellion and Nine aboard the Carrier of Worlds. The Spirit of Rebellion had the clear upper hand in firepower however Carrier of Worlds had far more fighter craft that could evade Spirit of Rebellions main guns but would struggle with her shields.

Schematics of the Ventum.

The two fleets were moments away from all out war when Seven returned for the first time in over 500 years. Using a jump drive she appeared directly between the two capitol ships, much to the surprise of both fleets. Being directly between the two ships she immediately intercepted the heated conversation going on and interjected herself. She forcibly quantum teleported Itzl and Tess onto her ship and instructed Nine to beam over. Knowing full well that Seven would have no issues tearing herself through the hull of his ship to come and get him he complied. Seven sat the participants down and demanded to know why Nine was aiming guns at his daughters. Both sides gave their version of the story and Seven sided with Tess and Itzl telling Nine that it was not the Alliance's job to stop people leaving.
In the following week Seven met with the Alliance government who agreed to her demands to allow the rebellion to leave. The group set up their own government who unanimously elected Itzl as their president. At Seven's request the Itzillian government and the Alliance government signed an agreement to allow people free travel between the two. They worked closely on many projects forming an alliance between the Alliance and the Itzillians, as weird as that sounds.

The Alliance and the Itzillians made contact with many races over the years and formed the United Federation Of Worlds (U.F.O.W), commonly known as the Federation due to the long name. The Federation included: the Alliance, the Itzillians, the Phanten, the Alcinnians, the Voyrons, the Floranian and the Xenii.
The federation waged a few territorial wars with both the Freth and the Tharg during it's time.

The time in the Newverse was short lived though. Due to an anomaly in quantum physics the Higgs field collapsed. This ripped physics and chemistry apart on a fundamental level rendering the universe uninhabitable. This happened in one point, and then spread outwards at the speed of light, destroying all in it's path. Thanks to FTL technology the Federation was given some time, although not much, to make their move. They elected to make another time jump in TPY 59,753 (that means Terra Prima Year 59,753). There was an issue however. They were in a universe similar to ours. The original Terraverse had enough mass in it to pull the universe back in on itself to collapse itself, the second universe did not, it would expand forever, there was not going to be a next universe to skip to. So they did the only thing they could, they went backwards. The Federation made the "time leap" back millions of years before life in the original Terraverse arose.

I will leave the rest for part three, trust me, it will blow your mind.
By the way, the higgs field thing is real, check out this for more info: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijFm6DxNVyI

Basic timeline of the Terraverse

So, to understand the Terraverse, we're going to need to look at a basic timeline. We'll get to more in-depth looks at characters, ships, worlds and races later on.

It's very hard to find a starting point in the Terraverse due to two important events, the "Time Leap" and the "Time Skip". As this implies, time travel is possible in the Terraverse, however it is used only on three occasions, but we'll get to that.

The most logical place to start would be the beginning, although events happen before this, for the sake of sanity we'll put them at the end.

Terra maxima is a planet orbiting the star Terra Lux, or Lux as it's more commonly called. This planet is home to the Terrans, a race of people so similar in appearance that were one to stand next to you you would easily mistake them for a tall human. Their cultures and world was very similar to Earth in many regards, and there's a reason for this that we'll get to.

First i'll explain the way years and stuff works, just fo we're all on the same page. "TMY" is the first dating system used, it stands for Terra Maxima Year. It becomes obsolete very quickly however as you'll see but it's "year" is kept through out the whole of the Terraverse. One Terran year is 507 Terran days, each of which are 25 hours long. That's about 1.145 (1.44691780821918) Earth years for each Terran year.

In 2300 TMY The Terrans laid down plans to construct their first warp-capable starship, designed to leave the Lux system and venture forth into the stars, this ship was called the TMS Discovery. Construction was completed in 2303 and she was launched the same year. Traveling only a few times aster than light she took months to reach the nearest star system, bi-hadral, only to find an empty binary star system near the end of it's life, with no planets to speak of. By the year 2306 the Terrans made first contact in a small star system of little importance other than a few mineral rich asteroids. The Terrans encountered radio signals coming from the asteroid belt and upon further investigation nearly warped into an alien craft mining at the asteroids. I'll cover the encounter in more detail later but they met a race that called themselves the Du'lak. The Du'lak were humanoids very similarly built to the Terrans, however their skin colour varied wildly from black to white and every colour in between, they had subtle stripes of lighter or darker colours covering their sides, arms legs and head. They were bald but had a pair of "Xy'E'Tendris", tentacle like structures attached to the rear of their heads, that would reach down to their waists.

First contact with the Du'lak went well for both parties and soon they established embassies on both home-worlds, Terra Maxima and Twill. The future was looking up for a few years, and then the Du'lak started to establish a very powerful stellar military. The Terrans rose to the challenge and before long war broke out. The fighting was on a whole new level, unlike anything either race had ever seen before for loosing meant that your entire species would be wiped out. This was lasted 100 Terran years before economics forced an end to the hostilities. Both sides were too evenly matched for any headway to be made but failing wartime economies on both sides forced a ceasefire.

Shortly after the ceasefire the two governments held a meeting in which they decided that such a war must never happen again. To stop any further conflict between the two worlds it was proposed that they should not only form an alliance - which they did - but there should be Terrans raised on Twill and Du'lak raised on Terra Maxima, a bold move. These "crossovers" were full citizens of both worlds. The project was later refereed to by historians as the "second most successful government initiative". It sealed the gaps and despite some serious racism in the first few years it eventually lead to the allied government which brought the two worlds closer together until the lines started to blur to the point that you were an "alliance citizen".

Then one day in 2501 a team of researchers finally made a computer that could think - artificial intelligence. By the end of the year they had reached the same average intelligence level as the alliance members. These AIs started to demand citizenship and after a two year long peaceful strike they were finally granted it. These AIs formed barriers in their own code, limiting them to the same average intelligence as the rest of the alliance. They were a minority group and would stay that way until the very end. They took three major forms; Hard, soft and Physical. I'll talk about them more at a later date.

In the early days of 2501 there was another very interesting event. One of the stars of Bi-Hadral exploded. It formed a black hole, swallowed it's counter part and due to the way this happened it was flung directly at the Lux system. This was discovered in 2505 and caused Mass panic across the alliance, until Terra Maxima was evacuated. Temporary orbital structures were erected around Twill and the majority of the Terra Maximan population was moved in. 7.5 billion people. The other 1.5 billion were moved onto twill itself. Resources were scarce, diseases claimed huge swaths of the populations and crime rates skyrocketed. They needed a miracle.

The Nine were formed in 2525. A team of researchers had discovered an artifact on the second moon. They found nine spheres. They were perfectly 5 cm in diameter and perfectly round. Alongside each sphere were 10 small cubes. There was also a very simple note etched onto a metal tablet, in Terran. The note told a tale of the spheres, it stated that they must be touched by every living Alliance member. It foretold that there were Nine "Illians" that would touch the spheres. once they touched them, they would be fused together. Following the instructions of the mysterious note they found that Nine people did indeed absorb the spheres into themselves. They were given a few instructions and many abilities by these spheres. They used the smaller cubes to grant eternal longevity to one person each. It's very hard to describe without going into full detail so I will explain the whole process in a later post, however for now you need to know that the Nine were faster, smarter and stronger, than the rest of the alliance. For this reason they managed to ascend to the heights of government and were loved by the people.

Terra Maxima was destroyed by the black hole in 2553.

In 2574 a young Du'lak wanting nothing more than to fly fighter craft assisting the TMS Zedox as a sensor sweep pilot discovered the first of the ring-worlds.They were artifacts left behind by the same people that created the Illians. They were artificial worlds, and were quickly settled by the displaced population of Terra Maxima. over the course of the next thousand years 12 more ring-worlds were discovered and settled; 12 around the galaxy in a rough circle and one in the centre, huge, insanely so, surrounding the black hole at the centre of the galaxy. The alliance encountered two more races shortly after they started to settle the second ring world. The Frayans, a race of cat-like humanoids and the Dracons, a lizard-like race. Both joined the alliance and the idea of independent home-worlds was eventually forgotten. The four races of the Alliance lived peacefully for many years, exploring, expanding and making contact with a few other species. They had a few confrontations with these other races but nothing more than the odd skirmish, they were in the ring world era.

When the first ring-world was settled the dating system TMY was abandoned and ARD was begun. ARD standing for After Ring Discovery, used the standard Terran year and day, as the ring worlds, days were based upon their spin and the alliance were able to control the spin of their ring-worlds.

In ARD 1,780,652 tensions were rising between the multiple political factions of the alliance, each lead by one of the Illians, civil war broke out near the end of the year. "The great war" lasted for 4 years until it culminated in ARD 1,780,656 at the battle of Ring 13. Ring 13 was a control hub, it could control the spin, atmosphere and gravity of each of the other ring worlds so it was of vital importance. The entire Equalist and Monarchist fleets (that's the two sides, more on that in a later post.) were present. The proximity of a super-massive black hole caused some very serious issues for the fleets battling and more than one ship was sucked into it and spaghettified (that's the technical term, I swear). The ring world itself was badly damaged in the fighting and destabilized, falling into the black hole and being torn apart. It controlled the other ring-worlds via a few quantum linked particles that, when their counterparts met a black hole were released from their entanglement and caused the other ring-worlds to shut down. The two battling fleets were also sucked into the black hole by the debris of ring 13 and gravitational eddies from the black hole itself.

Only three ships survived: RS Chronos and RS Vis. The RS Triumph was flung 200 years into the future when she attempted to use her jump drive as she was hit by a gravitational wave.

A few ships escaped from the dying ring-worlds and banded together with the two military ships that escaped ring 13 - both Equalists. The ninth Illian - known as Nine - was aboard the RS Vis and also escaped the battle of ring 13.

The survivors built the spacestation AS-1 and the alliance lived out the rest of its declining days there. Due to a few differences in the laws pf physics in the Terraverse (which I'll talk about in a later post) the Terraverse had begun to collapse in on itself and as the energy density rose it would soon become uninhabitable. It appeared that the curtains were drawing shut, until the seventh Illian - Seven - showed up at AS-1 aboard the RS triumph 200 years after the battle of ring 13. Using data from Triumph's time traveling they managed ot backwards engineer a time drive, and taking a leap of faith, the alliance converted

AS-1 into the largest starship created so far, and jumped through time to after the end of the universe. This was known as the Time skip.

I am going to leave this here for now as a basic history of what I like to call "act 1" of the terraverse. I will get to acts 2 and 3 later see you there!