The Lesson

## Casualties

**The Lesson** is the colloquial name for the **Bombardment of Earth** or the **Fall of Earth**, a major terrorist attack in 2435 that saw the Hanseatic League detonate an antimatter weapon on the surface of Luna, breaking apart its surface and hurtling lunar debris across Earth, causing widespread environmental destruction and the death of billions. After claiming responsiblity for the attack, calling it a "lesson" for the galaxy's many factions, the Hanseatic League presented demands for spacer sovereignty that were soundly rejected, thus triggering the Great Galactic War, the largest and deadliest conflict in human history.

## Background

### Hanseatic League

Founded in 2431 by a cabal of spacer supremacists, the Hanseatic League was a militia group founded with the aim of building a "spacer empire" free from the influence of terrans and aresians, whom the League believed oppressed spacers via technology such as anchors.

After taking over their homeworld Laconia, the League made contact with the warrior people of Sparta and absorbed them into the "Hanza Republic", the League's template for their future empire. Seeking both recognition and retribution, the League began planning an attack against the galaxy's ruling powers: the United Colonies and the Herschel Nations. Knowing that such an attack would inevitably lead to war, the League began recruiting spacers to build an army, one that could fight both powers and still have a chance of victory.

#### Salen Dune

Although he was the leader of the League and supreme commander of the Hanza's forces, Salen Dune was not the mastermind behind the Lesson, although he was certainly the driving force. Even before planning for the attack was underway, Dune was actively recruiting an army that could challenge the superpowers, primarily by conducting raids in the bridge systems on SPACECOM and DFFR stations to acquire weapons, ships and intelligence, which ultimately resulted in the League recovering a bomb from the DFFR neutron star station that housed their antimatter research facility.

#### Pierre Danois

A disgraced physicist, translator and expert on antimatter, Dr. Pierre Danois, the League's second-in-command, was the chief mastermind and ringleader of the Lesson, and one of Dune's most trusted acolytes. It was Danois who suggested an antimatter weapon as the form of attack, followed by the selection of Lovell City, capital of the United Colonies, as the target; in Danois' mind, attacking the most powerful government in the galaxy would more than prove the League's capabilities, or at least damage them economically so as to give the Hanza an edge in the war that would inevitably follow. Further, Danois believed that attacking Luna - long viewed as the spacer "homeworld" - would highlight the Hanza Republic as the new home of all spacers.

#### Marco Saarius

A black market arms dealer, Saarius was a Spartan warrior and early follower of Dune that was responsible for procuring the antimatter bomb from the DFFR's antimatter research station, as well as arming and training the United Hanza Fleet for the war that was to come.

## Aftermath

### Environmental Impact

The lunar asteroid impacts were immensely destructive, obliterating the impact regions and causing profound seismic effects and tsunamis on a global scale. The sudden reduction in tidal forces, combined with the tsunamis and earthquakes, rose sea levels permanetly by 70 metres, drowning large portions of the world.

Buildings were leveled hundreds of kilometers away from the impact regions, and enormous masses of ash and debris were ejected into orbit or the upper atmosphere. The dust and ejecta then proceeded to block out more and more the Sun's light, gradually cooling down the planet and putting it into a deep freeze.

The low light levels affected plant growth and would cause further deaths due to low food levels and resources.

### Political Impact

Earth, the capital planet of the United Colonies, was reduced to a backwater following the Lesson. The General Assembly, headquartered on Lovell City, was forced to relocate to Asgard and its capital, Arcadia; both the planet and the city became the new capital of the U.C. The U.C. SPACECOM declared martial law and formed a temporary military administration, effectively a stratocracy, until new elections could be held.

On the morning of May 7th, less than 18 hours after the first impact, Chancellor Xander Comstock, with authorization from the Secretary-General, issued a declaration of war on the Hanseatic League and Hanza Republic; the subsequent conflict would come to be known as the Great Galactic War, the largest and deadliest conflict in human history.

The immense destruction forced the Earth Directorate to turn to their former foes, the corporations for aid; one such megacorp, the Nemesis Group, appeared seemingly out of nowhere to offer its services: flood defence, crop recovery, weather control and infrastructure repair were all carried out by the Nemesis Group, repairing some of the damage from the Lesson within thirty years. In exchange for its aid, the Nemesis Group demanded sovereign rights over a portion of land of their chosing; the Directorate agreed, and the Nemesis Group began construction of Nemesis City on the shores of Tranquility Bay.