Universe Overview

==The Turmoil==
The Guardian Legacy Saga begins in about the mid-21st Century CE, with an Earth spiraling into chaos. Resource shortages, the end of oil, and the rise of extremism have all given rise to a planet torn by civil strife and wars over resources. The first large-scale war over resources breaks out in 2045 CE, when China, eager to seize fully the valuable resources beneath the South China Sea, goes to war against ASEAN. This period of strife, in which private military corporations become highly influential, continues with the Second Russian Civil War in 2051 CE, the Third Russian Civil War from 2068 to 2076 CE, and the Brazilian-Argentinian War of 2082 to 2087 CE.
During this period, the collapse of centralized control in Russia allowed the proliferation of nuclear weapons, which were used for the first time since World War Two in the Southeast Asia War, the second war in the region in under fifty years. A tactical nuclear blast of unknown origins destroyed the Thai capital of Bangkok, killing millions. At this point, the disjointed United Nations attempted to cull the conflict and reassert stability through the forces of United States, India, France, the United Kingdom, and the new republican Russian government.
In 2090 CE, shortly after the bombing of Bangkok, United Nations military forces from India, the United States, and France invaded the Unified Republic of the Central African Congo, a dictatorial African union containing vast resources, in order to depose the tyrannical president and install a government in compliance with UN protocols. This war signified the beginning of the rise of global administration and the beginning of the end of the turmoil.
This was followed in 2099 CE by the Rio Grande War, in which the United States, with United Nations Security Council approval, moved into northern Mexico to combat paramilitary cartels de facto ruling the northern portions of the country. The United States Armed Forces subsequently stabilized the Mexican government by 2101 CE, and for the first time, a united Security Council began to discuss further global integration. As the 2110's approached, however, a new and very different crisis threatened to paralyze the entire world.
==The Fire Fox Wars==
The terrors of the past half-century had caused many people to rethink their faiths and beliefs, and nowhere was this more evident as it was in the growth of the High Seed Movement, a pseudo-Christian cult led by the charismatic German business magnate and nobleman Baron Heinrich Bäumer. Numbering only several hundred at its official founding in 2075 CE, by 2110 CE there was an estimated 1.2 million adherents within the movement.
Bäumer's cult was characterized as millenarianist and apocalyptic. They preached unity, separatism, and sacrifice, as well as a total abandonment of the idea of self in favor of what he called the "the Seed of the Compound Being". He also called on all loyal followers to travel to north Germany to join him. This resulted in a mass migration of Seedists to the Hamburg area in northern Germany, where the German State, weakened after years of European turmoil, was in no position to deny these wealthy and well-armed newcomers. By 2112 CE, many northern counties in the Hamburg region were majority Seedist as non-Seedist citizens left the region. Amid the dynamic  and unstable situation in Germany, the United Nations convened a summit in Rotterdam on unification and integration. During the proceedings, however, U.S. President Franklin Quentin was assassinated by an agent of Heinrich Bäumer, who used adherents within the security teams to gain access to the meeting armed. Following this, the Hamburg metropolitan region declared independence as the Holy State of the Higher Seed, beginning the Fire Fox Wars.
The siege of the Holy State began almost immediately, and astoundingly the German Armed Forces were unable to achieve victory, resulting in a stalemate. UN intervention was applied for and authorized, and the UN prepared to intervene through NATO. The NATO forces soon found their hands tied due to the fact that not only were non-Seedist German civilians being used as human shields, but the Seedist military forces had managed to use Hamburg's industrial infrastructure to build upper-atmospheric battlecraft, previously only possessed by top-tier naval and air forces.
After the Seedist declaration of FasTLiT, a state of siege existed for around two years before the climactic battle of the war, in which the Seedists attempted to escape Earth as well as destroy it on the way out via a massive nuclear attack. Nato and UN forces prevented this from happening, and the alliances of the Fire Fox Wars led to the formation of the International Unified Legislatures, a United Nations Super Entity designed to coordinate human progress.
==The First Steps==
From the turmoil of the Fire Fox Wars was born the first era of relative peace in decades. Called later the First Colonial Period, this era, lasting from roughly 2120 CE to 2160 CE, saw the first large-scale colonization projects under the aegis of the International Unified Legislatures. During this period, long-postponed Martian terraformation efforts began in 2137 CE, and terraformation surveys of Venus began. Massive engineering projects on the moon gave rise to a new generation of settlers who had spent nearly their whole lives on the moon.
During this period, IUL researchers continued to tirelessly experiment with Friedrich Spitzeck's FasTLiT technology. Their work was hampered by Spitzeck's untimely death in an aerial accident in 2123 CE. The initial breakthrough came in 2142 CE, when researchers at Taoudenni International Laboratories succeeded in using a small-scale Spitzeck Device to transmit a piece of matter into a higher dimension. Research over the next 20 years led to experiments in lunar orbit that succeeded in sending and retrieving probes from this plane, dubbed Prolight.
This initial era of colonization came to an end in around 2160 CE, with the first growing pains wracking humanity's new colonies. What happened next would lay the foundations of humanity's space combat tradition and serve as the proving ground of the untested International Military Administration.
==Martian Frontier War==
Ever since colonization efforts on Mars had begun large-scale in 2067 CE, Martian settlers had chafed under the highly centralized policies enacted by many of the colonizing governments and corporations. In the Chinese colonies, revolutionary socialist movements became influential, whereas in the Euro-American colonies, there was a rise in protectionist, xenophobic groups. These groups sought autonomy or even outright independence in economic control, and by 2159 CE, groups within the American colony the Republic of Tharsis launched a coup to overthrow the American colonial government.
At the same time, groups with widely varying goals and beliefs used the chaos to launch their own uprisings. Soon, over half of Mars had fallen under the control of revolutionary and secessionist groups. It was at this point that the UN and the IUL voted to deploy the IMA for the first time in order to restore order.
Up until this point, the IMA had mostly been thought of as the various militaries of the chief UN member nations, and as such were currently only present on Earth's surface. Colonial security had been maintained by a hodgepodge of various colonial police forces and private security companies. As colony after colony on Mars fell to various rebel groups, the IUL for the first time called for a supranational military force to be built, with members from all nations but standardized equipment and a centralized command structure.
This did not happen overnight, however, and a little over a year passed before the first wave of IMA troops could be set to make the long journey to Mars. During this period, the various groups on Mars warred against each other for resource and territorial control, and especially over control of the various IUL Mars Terraforming Project stations. Nevertheless, by June of 2160 CE, the first divisions of IMA Infantry troops arrived in orbit above Mars and prepared to launch a campaign to retake the rebellious colonies.
After landing in the sparsely populated region of Ashfields, the IMA Infantry began a slow and steady campaign across the partially-terraformed Martian surface. IMA forces were subsequently bolstered by additional troop arrivals in late 2161 and early 2163, and by the middle of 2165 CE, IMA Infantry units were poised to seize Tharsis City, the original birthplace of rebellion.
In November of 2165 CE, the last rebel group surrendered in Algrete, thus officially ending the Martian Frontier War. Though scattered guerilla actions continued until the end of the next year, lack of supplies meant that soon the remaining rebels had given up their fight. With the IMA now a fully-functional space-capable fighting and security force, the UN and the IUL were ready to step even further from Earth, and doors were soon to be opened to them.
==Second Colonial Period==
The 2170's saw the dawn of the second period of peaceful colonization, beginning with the continuing IUL-sponsored projects on Venus, Mars, the Galilean moons, and Titan. From the 2170's until roughly 2255 CE, the Sol System was the sight of a massive dispersal of colonists, and by this point many Terraformation targets, having undergone work for roughly 130 years, were reaching advanced stages. On Mars, only minor breathing masks were required when walking outside. By the end of the 23rd Century, the Mars, Venus, and outer moons projects were all considered finished, and an additional terraforming project on Earth's moon had begun in 2224 CE.
The focus soon shifted, however, with large-scale Spitzeck Device technology becoming available, after decades of probe testing and experimentation, in 2243 CE. With the dawn of this new technology, the IUL began a furious program of interstellar colonization, which continued on from that point. By the end of the 23rd Century, humanity inhabited a number of systems in the local region with IUL terraformation projects underway in many locales.
This era was later looked upon as a golden era in Human expansion, with largely peaceful expansion and remarkable increases in wealth and knowledge across all of Human space. The IUL and the IMA during this time served as sturdy anchors of Human progress and were seen as the best of Humanity and protectors of Human ideals as more and more space was tamed. The Sol System became incredibly wealthy, as the economic endeavors of Sol-based corporations yielded vast successes.
This was not to last, however, as a number of issues began to arise between the United Nations on Earth and the IUL, which was becoming more and more separate from the UN's oversight. Foremost among these was the continued operations of domestic military forces on Earth that were outside the control of the IMA Central Command. Around 2315 CE, the IUL soon began to demand that all military forces be subsumed into the IMA, and IMA military taxes be levied on all constituent nations, whether on Earth or in the colonies. It was this dispute that soon lead to the great upheaval that ended the Second Colonial Period.
==The End of the IUL==
The IMA Dispute, as it became known, brought at end to the preceding period of peace. On the outer fringes of colonized space, scattered colonies and outposts welcomed the IUL's military centralization efforts, seeing them as a means to improve and coordinate security out on the frontiers. The Sol System and the Inner Colonies, however, resented these demands and saw the IUL as having overstepped its authority. They were unwilling to give up their domestic forces, and in response the IUL in 2328 CE, after almost ten years of growing disputes, moved their headquarters from London on Earth to New Roma, the capital of Sistine, an IUL-friendly outer colony.
Around this time, the IMA was increasingly composed primarily of soldiers hailing from the outer regions, as more and more inner colonials resigned from the IMA Infantry and the IMA Fleet. This led to a dichotomy of views where the IUL Secretariat heavily supported centralization and outer colonial improvement projects whereas the Inner Colonial Bloc within the legislatures supported planetary federalism.
The breaking point came in 2332 CE, when the IUL, in a dispute with the Martian Murray United State over Niobium protectionism, ordered the IMA Infantry to detain and disarm the Murray United State military. When the IMA Infantry moved in, the MUS Army fought back, and soon nearly every country within the Sol System had declared support for the MUS. As the IMA demanded that Sol System militaries stand down, soon nearly two dozen inner colonies had declared support for the National Earth Federated System Government, the Sol System political authority.
For the first year and a half of the war, it appeared that the IUL would find victory, as the IMA Fleet was the only meaningful space-based combat force. Three events in 2334, however, began to change the momentum and turn it in favor of Sol and its allies.
The first was the IMA beginning forced conscription in the outer colonies to bolster its shrinking ranks, as well as the seizure of assets in the outer colonies to support the war effort, both of which led to heavy backlash even in solid IUL-supporting regions. The massive population and industrial capacity imbalance between the inner and outer colonies began to become apparent as the IMA began to find losses difficult to replace. This gave rise to a parallel conflict known as the Outer Colonial Revolution, in which outer colonial rebel groups began to fight against the IUL and IMA's suspensions of many legal rights during wartime.
The second was Doctor Gerald Decker's defection to the Sol side of the conflict. A genius space warship designer, he brought with him detailed plans on the construction of space-based war vessels and was considered the father of the fledgeling NEFS Navy, founded in the Sol System with support from the Inner Colonies. This new force allowed Sol and its allies to challenge the IMA Fleet's hegemony in space control, and it soon subsumed the myriad of planetary naval forces operated by the inner colonial forces.
The third was the Business and Liberty Group declaring support for the Sol side in the conflict. A coalition of ten of the largest corporations operating in human space, these entities resented IUL quota bills and tariffs, and as such threw their resources into supporting the NEFS side of the conflict.
Together these factors inevitably turned the tide of the war in favor of the Sol System government and its allies, and eventually resulted in the collapse of the IUL in July of 2336 CE, when the Secretariat ordered the Legislature dissolved permanently. The IUL had largely been powerless for some time by this point, as the IMA High Command has suspended the legislature and declared a state of emergency shortly after the beginning of the conflict. Parts of the IMA refused to accept IUL authority, and resisted for another three months before the last units surrendered in late October. Following this, the Writ of Rotterdam was heavily amended and the National Earth Federated System Government was reorganized as the National Earth Federated Systems, the new overarching authority of humanity, though with a much more decentralized structure and a relatively weak military.
==The Corporate Era==
As the IUL was succeeded in 2336 CE by the NEFS as humanity's ruling authority, the new government found itself confronted by a whole array of new problems. Among these were the widespread destruction caused by the wars, the relatively weak control the NEFS now held over many outlying systems, and most importantly, the ascendance of interstellar super-corporations, and the inherent decentralized nature of NEFS authority.
Due to the assistance that many of these massive corporate entities had given to the NEFS during the war, they were given after the war large amounts of leeway in their dealings, special tax status, and soon they controlled territory (ostensibly under NEFS mandate), orchestrated the markets, and even operated private armies and navies. The most visible of these sovereign corporate entities was the Business and Liberty Group, an NEFS congressional lobby composed by now of the twelve most influential super-corporations operating in NEFS space.
The next 40 years saw a period in which colonization, trade, and expansion continued, led largely by the efforts of private individuals and groups, especially the Business and Liberty Group and associated corporsate entities. Still cautious due to memories of the pro-military centralization efforts of the IUL, the NEFS was hesitant to operate any meaningful military forces, and the corporations discouraged them from trying by passing embargoes on sales of weaponry to the government and the NEFS military. Public opinion in human space also remained largely opposed to a strong executive throughout the period. Other than an initial military build-up in the decade directly after the Core Colonial Revolution, NEFS military technology during this period remained relatively stagnated, with ex-IMA vessels and materiel forming a majority of the NEFSDF supply. The Business and Liberty Group, on the other hand, operated powerful and efficient military forces to police and monitor their sovereign holdings, which were further supported by in-house weapons and ship design.
The jury is still out on the pros and cons of Corporate Government. On one hand, the corporations that made up the Business and Liberty Group did exactly what they professed, they sought profit for their employees, executives, and shareholders, while at the same time providing high-quality and effective security for many remote regions. They guaranteed employment for thousands, and orchestrated orderly, efficient, and centralized colonization and expansion efforts, as well as advancing human influence and prestige at a time when the relatively impotent NEFS government was unwilling to. Nevertheless, they also dominated markets, pressured legal governments, enforced their own trade policies outside their territories, and sought obedience through the use of internally-raised military forces.
It became clear to observers that the current state of passive corporate dominance was untenable for much longer. Those living outside the sovereign territories of the Business and Liberty Group resented the power these private interests held over public affairs, while corporate officials and shareholders looked warily on a new generation of NEFS political reformers attempting to consolidate power and enforce politcal supremacy over the corporations. By 2375 CE, the NEFS was attempting to set up a universal tariff system for interplanetary trade, and was subtly building up their own emaciated military forces. In response, the Business and Liberty Group reformed itself in 2376 CE into the Business Liberties Association, a pseudo-governmental organization promoting a corporatist democratic system for governance. By 2382 CE, decades of corporate dominance coupled with mutual distrust had reached a near-breaking point. That point was finally reached in March of 2383 CE, when the NEFS Parliament demanded that corporate sovereign territories on Earth align their legal and taxation systems to comply with United Nations Corporate responsibilities standards. The Business Liberties Association refused to do this, citing extraterritoriality and the fact that under existing mandate agreements, the NEFS legal system had no jusidiction within BLA-owned territories. In response, the NEFSDF moved to occupy the corporate territories, thus beginning the Corporate-Statist War.
==Corporate-Statist War==
In immediate response to the actions of the NEFSDF, the Business Liberties Association, officially and openly declared itself the sole governing authority for all corporate territories and passed a resolution stating that the actions of the NEFS were imperialistic, illegal and were to be resisted with all available measures. The BLA Security Service Forces were officially activated (they had been formed in 2376) in 2383 CE from the combined private armies of the constituent corporate entities and were soon augmented by personnel recruited from BLA-governed space.
This corporate unification was not without issues, however. In response to the formation of the BLA, the National Earth Parliament passed the Anti-Insurrection Bill of 2383, which declared all corporate entities in rebellion to be illegal entities devoid of all NEFS-accorded legal rights. It also stipulated that any BLA member corporations that allied with the government would be allowed to continue operations uninhibited, as long as NEFS Parliamentary guidelines were obeyed. The passage of this ultimatum bill caused six of the twelve BLA corporations to defect and back out of the imminent rebellion.
The remaining six corporations that formally incorporated the BLA and claimed full sovereignty over all territories owned by the six corporations. Additionally, they also claimed the territories owned by the six corporations that had defected, arguing that their defection, under BLA regulations and mutual support clauses, forfeited them control over these planets. One such planet was Hipoliya, a company world previously administered by the Berlin-based World Purchase Conglomerate. The inhabitants of this planet were a Franco-Germanic ethnic group called the Hipolytes, named for Saint Hippolytus, whose historical opposition to authority resonated with the rising ethnic nationalism of this new people group. When World Purchase defected from the BLA, Abramovich Logistics, one of the remaining BLA members, quickly seized control of Hipoliya and began to use it to produce arms.
The battles of the Corporate-Statist War began almost immediately. As most of the National Earth Navy, weak as it was, was stationed in the Sol System, the BLA was in no position to contest its holdings within the system, as it woud have left the BLA SSF overextended and vulnerable to  supply issues. Instead, they ordered loyalists there to hold out as long as possible in order to distract the NEFSDF from what was happening further out in the colonies. The entirety of the BLA's holdings on Earth, Venus, and Mars were thus overwhelmed in about four months. The focus of the NEFSDF on Sol, however, led to misfortune in the colonies.
By the time all BLA holdings in the Sol System and the immediate inner colonies had been retaken, the BLA SSF had had ample time to heavily fortify the systems further out that they controlled, and abopted a battle strategy of attempting to grind down the NEFS in a war of attrition. By the end of 2383 CE, the Defense Forces were preparing to launch comprehensive efforts to overcome BLA military forces and retake BLA holdings. The National Earth Navy had used its limited resources to launch the first large-scale naval building project in the organization's history since the fall of the IMA, as entire industrial cities were hastily repurposed to quickly launch ships capable of meeting the BLA SSF fleet on anything near equal terms.
By March of 2384 CE, initial preparations had been completed, and the NEFSDF launched the "Embargo Plan", a comprehensive effort of military action, blockade, boycotts, and bounties to encourage defection from corporate armies. The Plan began with the invasion of the Kellmann system, a Canis-Vulcan owned territory. Subsequent battles included actions at the colonies of Beta Causiae, Distance, Abednego, Tarvden, and Remus. Though successful in some actions, the NEFSDF lost as many battles as it won, and soon NEFSDF Command realized something decisive needed to be done.
The secretive Combined Operations Executive Act of 2385, drafted by the NEFSDF Command and signed by Prime Minister Martin Lapointe and Chairman Sokol Ivanenkov, created the National Earth Army Special Forces out of a number of constituent special forces, and the new unit was tasked with striking a decisive and crippling blow to the BLA SSF and its capacity to continue fighting.
WIth the success of the famed Operation Trojan, the fortunes of the BLA SSF reversed rapidly, and soon the NEFSDF was making quick gains. By the end of 2383 CE it was clear that the NEFS was gaining the upper hand, and that it was only a matter of time. By the middle of 2386 CE, it was over. The remaining BLA SSF units surrendered in the face of extreme pressure, and the remains of the six corporations were nationalized or sold off to loyal companies. The reign of the corporations was over. The vacuum of power, however, gave rise almost immediately to a new dynamic struggle that would stretch for nearly fifteen years.
==The Hipolytes and the Peaceful Tension==
The wartime efforts of the Hipolyte people did not go unnoticed by NEFS Military Command. Even after Hipoliya was liberated from Abramovich and BLA control, hundreds of thousands of Hipolyte men and women continued to serve in the NEFSDF for the remainder of the conflict. It was this new martial tradition and fledling national identity that gave rise to the beginnings of Hipolyte nationalism. In fact, Hipolyte soldiers represented their planet in a higher proportion than any other world in the course of the conflict.
This service, however, gave rise almost immediately to discontent and anger. After the Corporate-Statist War ended, the NEFS found itself with large amounts of formerly corporate-administered colonies directly under its control; colonies that were often devastated due to warfare. Hipoliya itself had suffered major damage during the war, with most infrastructure purposefully destroyed by retreating BLA forces as part of a scorched earth policy. New crops of nationalist Hipolyte politicians demanded that the NEFS help rebuild Hipoliya first and foremost, as recompense for Hipolyte service during the war. The NEFS on the other hand, initially focused its efforts on maintaining their newly revamped military and rebuilding crucial inner colonial infrastructure.
A compromise was reached in 2388, when NEFS representatives gifted all seized BLA assets on Hipoliya, particularly former Abramovich facilities and manufacturing plants to the new independent Hipolyte planetary government. This included former weapons factories, shipyards, heavy industry facilities, and massive agricultural complexes. This did not, however, stop thousands of Hipolytes from migrating to the inner colonies in search of better pay and work opportunities.
Within the inner colonies, the Hipolytes often faced derision, hostility, and even racism, as inner colonial citizens often viewed them as bloodthirsty, war-happy, freeloaders intent on taking advantage of inner colonial economic prosperity. An oft-repeated phrase at the time was that the Hipolytes ought to "get their own planet in order before they try to take ours". This led to rising anger and discontent among Hipolyte immigrant communities, especially as new radical nationalist "political clubs" insinuated that Hipolytes deserved more from the government, and even should be independent.
This anger boiled over in 2389, when the arrest of a prominent nationalist Hipolyte politician on Octavian for incitement led to intense rioting across several NEFS inner colonial worlds. One of the most prominent players in these riots was the League for Hipolyte Ascendance, a multi-planet political front sponsored by the New Trinitist Party of Free Hipoliya, an ultranationalist opposition party on Hipoliya proper. Espousing racism, nationalism, seperatism, and preaching a "betrayal" narrative, the League quickly became the most notorious Hipolyte political organization outised of Hipoliya itself.
The NEFSDF and the government responded strongly, calling in the Police Corps, the Army, and even the Navy to put down the riots. Top leaders of the League were arrested, fled to Hipoliya, or went into hiding, and the League itself was declared a terrorist organization and was outlawed. All Hipolytes who had been official members of the League were put on the government list of "potential subversives demanding close surveillance," and many more were detained, jailed, or fined.
Following the end of what became known as the "Hipolyte Insurrection," many Hipolytes living across the NEFS began to move back to Hipoliya, bringing their firsthand experiences of the Insurrection with them. In the Hipoliya planetwide elections of 2391, an electoral coalition of the New Trinitist Party and several other right-wing radical parties gained power, riding the wave of anger, discontent, and anti-NEFS feeling swelling there. It was at this point that the new Hipolyte right-wing government began to prepare for its new goal.
==The Buildup==
The buildup period, from 2391 CE to 2399 CE, saw the rise of reactionary extremist groups across NEFS space, often in response to repressive measures adopted by NEFS executives and the parliament in an attempt to eradicate any potential secessionist/rebel movements. On Hipoliya and a number of other Hipolyte-majority planets in the local region, the International Trinitist Party, originally split from the New Trinitist Party of Free Hipoliya over issues of philosophy and led jointly by Chairman Sigmund Välder and First Secretary Frederik Roche-Einhorn, gained a plurality in the colonial assembly elections of 2393, in defiance of electoral sanctions against Trinitist Parties that had been in place since the Insurrection several years earlier.
Federal attempts to delegitimize the seats one by the ITP and exclude ITP MP's from performing their duties during Planetary Parliament sessions in New York City only succeeded in further driving Hipolytes into the arms of the ITP, which was quickly surpassing other nationalist and trinitist parties as the chief standard-bearer of Hipolyte nationalist  sentiment. In 2394, Välder called for a return of all Hipolytes throughout human space to the Hipoliya system or other Hipolyte majority, which began a mass exodus of Hipolytes from the Inner Colonies back to the"Hipolyte Sector," as that particular Colonial Jurisdiction Authority sector was quickly becoming known.
A breaking point was reached in 2396 CE, when the National Conservatives of Hipoliya, a previously centrist party and the Hipolyte regional affiliate of the Federally-chartered Federate Republican Party, announced its defection from the FRP and declared itself to be in accord with the ITP on issues of governance and policy. This subsumation of the NCH allowed the ITP to take full control of the Hipolyte colonial legislature through snap elections, with Chairman Välder becoming Minister-President of the Hipolyte System goverment and First Secretary Roche-Einhorn taking office as chancellor. The preceding Minister-President, Dr. Johann Strausbourg, initially contested the defections and subsequent election as illegal and petitioned the NEFSDF to intervene, but was assassinated several weeks after losing office in what was largely seen as an ITP-sponsored targeted killing.