Galactic expansion

The **galactic expansion**, also called the **expansion era** or the **Great Expansion**, was a period of approximately 600 years between circa. -600 p,g and 1GE 0, following Antiquity, an epoch which ended when humans migrated away from their hypothetical homeworld and system. The galactic expansion entailed humanity's migration throughout much of Edgespace, the Middle Territories, and the Interior of the galaxy on generation ships. By posterity, the expansion was regarded as a period of exploration, prospecting and adventure, with many famous folk heroes such as Nikrontrav and his associated Prathax fleet, and the Nujakta colonists, who were the first to chart Edgespace. Humanity's dispersion across thousands of light years of space meant that the separate colonist fleets fell out of contact, and humanity were set for extinction, until the establishment of the Regime, and the expansion of the clans of Nikrontri. Much of the recorded knowledge from Antiquity was lost due to the isolation of humans and the centuries they were stranded in space.

The period of around six centuries following Antiquity was known as the Galactic expansion. Groups of human colonists spread out across the galaxy, their separation and the vastness of space yet again causing the disappearance of libraries of historic knowledge. The Galactic expansion was a time of prospect and exploration, humanity’s new generation ships and state-of-the-art (at the time) technology opening the gates to the barely comprehensible frontier of the galaxy, the Great Maze. Even millennia later, stories were told of this time, folk legends of heroes of the stars who conquered the sprawled and dusty worlds with the possibility of everything and the reality of nothing, but also the founding of great colonies where strange creatures dwelt. Thousands of colonies were founded on remote worlds, many a last resort when generation ships had charted for far too long (centuries); colonies which would be forgotten, taken under the dominating wing of future galactic powers but left to develop alone. These lost colonies fell out of contact with the rest of the galaxy, and many fell behind technologically, creating great, planet-sized time capsules. Rare specimens on remote worlds² were rediscovered millennia later, entire colonies having suffered a phenomenon where they had lost all working technology and mechanics, seemingly having reverted to primal states reflecting humans in the Tempoantique era. This time dilation between colonies was mostly a result of humanity’s now sprawled population, dispersed across great stretches of space, the distance too great to transmit messages, for they would not be received for many years. There was no communication, and the once compact, tight-knit species was lost, humanity now an explorer race doomed to be driven extinct by the blackest sea of the universe. The last chance for salvation were the small pockets of unified colonies; generation ships that had travelled within a specific range to ensure their position within somewhat reasonable communication distance. These were also those that had travelled the furthest; the Prathax colonists, a group of several ships, led by the primary generation ship, The Prathax, alongside multiple others

²A notable specimen was an offshoot sub-group of the renowned Nujakta colonists, who carted much of Edgespace, who were discovered on the planet NC-140.2 by spacers in 2GE 2009 - at the time they were engaging in some sort of religious crusade, wielding iron weaponry and clad in crude armour.

charted the internal region of the galaxy, the yolk, if you will, which would one day be named the Galactic Interior. The journey took more than five centuries, but eventually, after a deep space scan, the colonists identified a fitting, almost perfect planet to settle. It was named ‘Nikrontri’, in honour of a nearly-forgotten man named Nikrontrav, a hero of the expansion, who was the first captain of the Prathax fleet. Nikrontru, being a world rich in valuable minerals, crude oil, and, as discovered in the future, refrigerants and molecules important to the development of the synthofuels present in crysgas, was colonised rapidly with the excited spacers who had, after generations, found a suitable planet to settle. The Prathax Fleet made landfall on the southwestern coast of Continent Prime, a supercontinent, which was eventually colloquially known and later officially named Y’nati, meaning ‘His Continent’ in Archaic Nikrontreen, a language developed among the fleets, first recorded in 1GE 350. The Y’ (his) in the name is agreed by most to address Intelligence, but the name’s development before the creation of the datasea suggests it probably originally addressed Nikrontrav or another major figure in Nikrontri’s settlement. The region on the southwestern coast flourished into a mining colony, in the place where the great Bazaar and Gunfashi central district of Nikrobiru City would one day stand. Elsewhere in the galaxy, the renowned Nujakta colonists, a large group of several fleets, began to chart the incomprehensibly vast region of Edgespace, rumoured to be rife with opportunities for riches and prospects. Some of the earliest to be colonised were Naratel and other worlds in what would later be Gorrf Space, including Julabi and Proelyun - in spite of their great distance from the human homeworld; historians attempting to pinpoint humanity’s origin marked it as a distance of, potentially, around 60,000 light-years between Naratel and humanity’s homeworld. Proelyun, originally named Proelium, was colonised by a Nujakta group who intentionally exiled themselves from other fleets, becoming independent, using the useful resources present on Proelium’s mostly limestone and granite surface covered with dark regolith and ice-age glaciers to construct and then use a large mining plant. Eventually, in their solitude, the posterity of the group, known post-expansion as the Proelic Nujakta, developed advanced but aggressive AI through trade with Naratese and Julab - AI which started the infamous robot gladiatorial arena that gained popularity among criminals in the First Galactic Era. Thus, the colonies of Edgespace began to grow, early colonists thriving on the resources and minerals present in the web of nebulae, asteroid fields, and uncharted worlds of Edgespace.