Great Galactic War

Clockwise from top left — DFFR ships during the Defence of Schwarzschild • The Shield of Sol engaging League forces during the Battle of Earth • Allied ships prepare for Operation Broadsword • The UCS Raven Feather stands alone in the Battle of Ophiuchus

### Result:

**Stellar Alliance victory*** Hanseatic League disbanded and Hanza Republic dissolved following the assassination of Salen Dune and Bombardment of Laconia
* Amnesty and expansion of both Twin Moon and the Spacers Legion
* House Izar severs ties with the galactic powers
* Free Economic Zone is established
* Earth lies in ruins thanks to the Lesson and destruction of Luna
* Start of a cold war between the United Colonies and Herschel Nations

## Major Events

### Battles:

Defence of Schwarzschild
Battle of Earth
Battle of Ophiuchus
Battle of the Bridges
Battle of Sparta
Fall of Laconia

## Casualties

The **Great Galactic War** was an interstellar conflict that ran from 2435 to 2445. It involved all major factions in the Settled Systems at the time, forming two opposing military alliances: the Stellar Alliance and the Hanza Republic. More than a third of the human population was actively engaged in the conflict as it evolved into a state of total war, with every faction throwing their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort. It saw usage of weapons unseen before in the galaxy, including the first utilization of antimatter weapons. The death toll is entirely unknown, with some estimations ranging above 40 billion, dwarfing the death toll of any other conflict in human history.

The war had its origins in the rogue Hanseatic League, a spacer militia group controlling several outlying star systems that were united in their hatred of the United Colonies and the Herschel Nations. Under the leadership of Salen Dune, the League launched a preemptive attack, now called "The Lesson", on the U.C. that destroyed Earth's moon Luna. Subsequent League assaults on Free Republic territory sparked a treaty of military cooperation between the formerly-warring U.C. and H.N., who declared war on the League as the Stellar Alliance. Despite initial Hanza dominance of the battlefield, several crucial Alliance victories stalled their momentum and allowed the Alliance to quickly retake lost territories. Naval victory in the bridge systems opened up the allied invasion of Hanza space, resulting in the bombardment of Laconia, the League homeworld, the collapse of the Hanza and the assassination of Dune by House Izar.

The war changed the political alignment and social structure of the galaxy. Despite being allies throughout the war, the United Colonies and the Herschel Nations became enveloped in a cold war over their respective research into antimatter weapons, the design of which had been outlawed after the Herschel Wars. The political and economic toll of the war allowed a third superpower to rise, the corporatocratic Free Economic Zone, which stalled the economic recovery of the galaxy. Earth, devastated by Luna's destruction, lost its political influence, damaging the sense of unity that humanity had developed since the Herschel Wars. In the subsequent thirty years, none of the major factions were able to fully restore their pre-war influence, giving rise to independent factions including prospectors, rogue corporations and the Imperium movement.

## Background

The Herschel Wars of 2235-2242 were the deadliest conflicts in human history at the time and dramatically shaped the political and economic landscape of the Settled Systems. By the conclusion of the war, several colonies had declared themselves "Free Republics" and bound together as the Herschel Nations, while the colonies that remained loyal to the Earth government became the United Colonies; those who rejected both governments formed the Spacers Legion, which split into tens of factions. One of these factions was the Hanseatic League, an alliance of spacer extremists who believed that all of outer space belonged to spacers, not to what they saw as terran and aresian invaders. The League was commanded by spacer extremist Salen Dune, a bastard of House Izar, who despite his lack of military training developed into an exceptional and uncompromising commander that earned the loyalty of thousands of spacers.

According to Dune, the U.C. and H.N. were invading what should have been sovereign spacer territory; he aimed to build a superpower of his own, one governed by spacers and whose strength could easily overwhelm both the U.C. and H.N. This spacer superpower would be built on military strength, scientific superiority and the subjugation of all resistance. He named this spacer paradise the Hanza Republic, and its defence force would be his own army of fanatical followers, the Hanseatic League.

## Prelude

The League wished to demonstrate its strength to the galaxy through an act of destruction and defiance: something to show all mankind the determination and ferocity of spacers; in short, a "lesson" to all who might threaten the Hanza Republic. Through Dune's second-in-command, an innovative antimatter scientist named Pierre Danois, the League learned of the H.N.'s secret research into antimatter weapons on the planet Gagarin and plotted to steal plans for an antimatter bomb. With Danois' aid, the League successfully hijacked and stole the plans before disappearing into the fledging Hanza Republic; the secret nature of the research meant that the H.N. did not widely report the heist, for fear of breaking the peace treaty between the H.N. and the U.C.

When it came to choosing a target, the League debated whether to attack the U.C. and H.N. separately or at once, ultimately determining that the U.C. would be the most suitable victim of their plot due to its position as a superpower. The League initially considered attacking Earth directly, but ultimately decided against it due to the vast fleet shielding Earth; instead, the League chose a more fitting target, a symbol of humanity's spacefaring achievements and the beginning of spacers themselves: Luna, Earth's moon and first extraterrestrial colony.

#### The Lesson

On May 6th, a team of eight League members, all knowing that they would not survive their task, infiltrated Lovell City on Luna where they placed their bomb; the League believed that the bomb would only be enough to fracture Luna's surface, scarring it for all eternity; however, instead of fracturing the surface, the explosion blew Luna open, breaking off a piece of its Earth-facing side and sending lunar debris out into space.

Earth was completely unprepared; in a matter of minutes, the entire planet was devastated. The sudden reduction in tidal forces accelerated Earth's day; seasons came and went in a matter of minutes; the planet's axis tilted uncontrollably; earthquakes threw up mountain ranges and drowned entire coastlines; volcanic eruptions buried entire countries in ash; and pieces of the Moon the size of cities showered the planet, sending Earth into an ice age. Billions were killed in a matter of hours, undoing more than two centuries of climate engineering and repopulation. In an instant, mankind was changed forever: their home, the only thing that provided a sense of unity to a divided humanity, would never be the same.

In a widely-distributed broadcast, the Hanseatic League claimed responsability for the attack and declared it "a lesson" for all mankind: the League was not to be challenged, and the Hanza Republic was not to be threatened. They declared all of outer space as sovereign Hanza territory, and all spacefaring not endorsed by the League would be considered an invasion.

## Course of the War

### War Breaks Out (2435—2436)

> *Main Article: U.C.-Hanza War*
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Five days after the Lesson, with its capital in ruins and billions dead, the United Colonies and its corporate allies declared war on the Hanseatic League, as well as all colonies, space stations and factions that allied with the Hanza Republic. Having anticipated the declaration, the League acted quickly by deploying a fleet of bombers and raiding ships into U.C. space, attacking transports, business hubs and power generations facilities, including two antimatter production plants in orbit of the neutron star RX J1856.5−3754. Bolstered by their bold attack on Earth, the League received a surplus of new recruits, emboldened by the League's show of spacer supremacy.

### Kepler Campaign (2436—2445)

> *Main Article: Kepler Campaign*
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With the United Colonies still reeling from the social and economic damage of the Lesson, the worlds within Kepler Space were unprepared for the Hanza Republic's Kepler Campaign, the first major theatre of the war and one of the most devastating. However, it also resulted in the Herschel Nations' entry into the war and, eventually, the formation of the Stellar Alliance.

By 2436 the League had amassed the forces necessary to launch an invasion of Kepler Space - a region of the Settled Systems jointly controlled by the United Colonies and the Herschel Nations - and recruit new worlds into the Hanza Republic; Thermopylae capitulated without a struggle and became the third world within the Hanza Republic. Although threatened, the Herschel Nations were reluctant to act on this show of aggression, both to avoid a direct conflict with the League and out of hesitance to come to the aid of the U.C., their sworn enemy.

That all changed in 2437; to prevent the rangers from securing a tactical nebula, the League launched a preventive attack on *Norfolk*, a major shipyard of the Defence Force. Due to faulty intelligence, as claimed by the League, the attack came during an R&R period where many families were visiting soldiers stationed on *Norfolk*; as a result, several thousand civilains, including children, were killed in the attack. Despite warnings from the League not to retaliate, the Moot called an urgent meeting on Mars and voted to enact general mobilization and officially prepare for direct conflict.

#### Defence of Schwarzschild

General mobilization began immediately; meanwhile, the League was ready to attack and launched a bold full-scale invasion of the Kepler-22 system, home to the H.N.'s military capital Schwarzschild. The attack had been planned as an ambush; however, the League severely underestimated their enemy's preparedness and suffered a quick defeat, their first during the war. The H.N.'s victory stalled further Hanza conquest of Kepler Space, although they were ultimately unable to retake Thermopylae.

United Hanza Fleet ships crossed over into Free Republic territory in February 2437, almost two years after the U.C. declaration of war. Unexpectedly, they faced little resistance in the bridge systems that surrounded Kepler-22 and set up a command centre on the freighter UHFS *Augusta M. Sutton*, from which the entire Kepler-22 assault would be coordinated. Two standard days later, the naval invasion force entered the Kepler-22 system in two divisions: one would attack Schwarzschild, the other the Rock, swiftly ending any retaliatory measures by the DFFR.

    Still facing no resistance, the Rock division arrived at their target only to find the station unoccupied; their report returned to the *Sutton* just as its scanners detected incoming - and accelerating - motion: a massive asteroid storm, assembled by the DFFR ahead of time and aimed directly at the *Sutton*. The meteorites within the storm were too small to clear in time; the storm scored a direct hit on the *Sutton*, shredding its kinetic barriers and penetrating the hull.

What followed was a devastating surprise attack as DFFR stealth ships emerged from within Kepler-22's asteroid belt, catching the invasion force completely off-guard; firing thermal lasers that incinerated anything they touched, the DFFR ships cleared the Rock division in less than an hour and swiftly moved on to Schwarzschild, where they attacked the invaders on all flanks.

The DFFR's swift response was textbook, and the invasion was over before it had truly begun; Hanza forces never touched down on Schwarzschild, and the planet's strong gravity meant that the underpowered UHF ships were unable to orientate themselves as quickly as the defenders, forcing them to retreat. Despite the damage to the *Sutton*, the Hanza forces prepared for a second attack from the other side of the system; this time, they were met with great resistance and were pushed out of Kepler-22 before the end of the stellar day. Although it survived the attempted invasion, the *Sutton* was deemed unrepairable and scuttled as a trap for DFFR scouts.

#### Formal DFFR Declaration

With their forces fully mobilized and public support of conflict at an all time high, the Herschel Nations formally declared war on the Hanza Republic in a statement by High Marshal Shevic Reeves; no announcement of cooperation with the United Colonies was made, however, effectively granting the Hanseatic League a divided front and a tactical upper-hand.

### Battle of the Bridges (2436—2445)

> *Main Article: Battle of the Bridges*
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At the same time that Kepler Space came under seige, a massive naval battle was commencing within the bridge systems, a campaign that came to be known as the Battle of the Bridges. The longest continuous campaign of the entire war, the Battle of the Bridges was a series of skirmishes that ultimately proved pivotal to the set-up of Operation Broadsword and the Alliance's victory.

### Home Systems Campaign (2443)

#### Battle of Earth

##### Prelude

    Earth, already ruined by the Lesson, was strategically important to both sides as a major industrial and transport hub in the Home Systems, while also serving as the capital of the United Colonies and a symbol of unity for all humanity. Controlling Earth would almost certainly ensure the League's victory in the war as it would solidify the League's belief in spacer supremacy, as well as prove a catastrophic morale loss for the Stellar Alliance.

The League's assault was led by its second-in-command, Dr. Pierre Danois of the UHFS *Olympus Mons*, and began with a surprise attack on the Combined Fleet of the Outer Planets that left the fleet completely destroyed, save for 20 ships of the United Saturn Fleet. The remnants of the U.S.F. used a stargate to return to Earth, destroying it in the process to slow the *Olympus Mons*' advance; the U.S.F.'s highest ranking surviving officer, Lieutenant Damon Snow, was granted command of the UCS *Retribution* upon return to Boreal City.

Under the command of Admiral Leon Shaw, the U.S.F. was integrated into the Earth Defence Fleet, forming an impromptu force of ships called the Shield of Sol. With Admiral Shaw directing efforts on the ground and Captain Snow leading the *Retribution*, the Shield of Sol and the United Hanza Fleet engaged in a brutal battle of attrition in Earth's orbit. The ultimate aim was to lure the *Mons* into the ring of lunar dust surrounding Earth, disrupting its comms, which would allow the Shield to launch a two-pronged assault from polar orbit.

The manoeuvre was only possible thanks to the unexpected offer of aid from Pirate King Josia Price and the *Ivan the Terrible*, who asked for full amnesty for Twin Moon's raiding of the Sol System in exchange for his aid. Admiral Shaw was forced to agree, allowing the *Ivan* to charge head-long into battle; this broke the neutrality between Twin Moon and the League that had been running since the war's early days.

##### All Or Nothing

Though rallied to defend their ancestral homeworld, the Shield of Sol was spread too thin to prevent Hanza landings in Africa, Asia and Europe. Within three days, the Hanza had nearly taken several cities in bitter street fighting. The Shield began their second counter-offensive, starting with an encirclement of Hanza forces that secured Earth's polar orbit. On the ground, Hanza forces engaged in massive tank battles with Shield divisions, most notably F Company of 303rd Armoured. By the last hours of the battle, the Hanza fleet had taken tremendous losses; League troops on the surface had been defeated, and the front-line had been pushed back beyond Mars' orbit.

Thanks to the distraction and artillery provided by the *Ivan*, the *Retribution*, carrying an antimatter payload, was able to ram the *Mons*, destroying both ships in an annihilation reaction. The debris from the explosion shredded the Hanza ships in low Earth orbit, while the Shield fleet above was left mostly unharmed. The destroyed Hanza ships burned up in the atmosphere, leaving no survivors, and the few that were left were picked off by the Stellar Alliance ships before they could retreat.

Having exhausted their weapons and manpower, the surviving Hanza soldiers were forced to surrender, marking the greatest loss for the Hanseatic League since the start of the war and a major victory for Earth's defenders. Meanwhile, the *Ivan* faced no resistance as it departed the Sol System, just as had been agreed.

### Final Hanza Campaigns

#### Scorpius-Centaurus Campaign

> *Main Article: Scorpius-Centaurus Campaign*
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*To be added...*

#### Price's War

> *Main Article: Price's War*
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Following Twin Moon's actions in aid of the Alliance during the Battle of Earth, the tensions that had been building between Twin Moon and the Hanza ruptured into open conflict, Twin Moon's first since the War of Thunder. "Price's War", as it came to be known, was primarily defensive as Twin Moon fought to shield Oppenheimer from Hanza forces and prevent their other enemies from learning the location of Libertalia.

### Operation Broadsword (2445)

> *Main Article: Operation Broadsword*
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By October 2445, events heavily favoured the Alliance forces: in the Battle of the Bridges the Alliance had secured naval superiority, while the fallout from the Scorpius-Centaurus campaign had unified the Spacers Legion into a cohesive fighting force. At this point the League had alienated every other faction in the Settled Systems, leaving them vulnerable on all fronts; their inability to secure territory via the Scorpius-Centaurus campaign had exhausted the Hanza's strategic reserve, leaving it ill-prepared to resist the final Alliance advance into their territory: Operation Broadsword.

The planning for Operation Broadsword had begun in February 2445; from the start, it was acknowledged that it would be the largest assault in human history. The combined forces of the Alliance, Spacers Legion and Twin Moon would all launch from the UCS *All Under Heaven* supercarrier to carry out two separate offensives: Operation Terra's Revenge at Sparta, the Hanza military capital, and Operation Hammer of Justice at Laconia, the civilian capital and League homeworld. It was quickly decided that SPACECOM troops, together with a ranger division and the Spartan Order, would carry out Operation Terra's Revenge while the DFRR, Twin Moon and Legion forces conducted Operation Hammer of Justice. If Laconia did not surrender, the Alliance was authorised by the Secretariat to initiate Operation Wipeout: the bombing of Laconia with antimatter.

On October 9th, the *All Under Heaven* launched from Columbia on its maiden voyage and arrived at the bounds of Hanza space on October 14th. It took two more days for the allied forces to rendezvous at the *All Under Heaven*; all combined, the fleet numbered more than 15,000 ships, the largest fleet in history. On October 16th the offensive was formally approved and the *All Under Heaven* jumped, thus commencing Operation Broadsword.

#### Fall of Laconia

The DFFR fleet commanding Operation Hammer of Justice was headed by the destroyer *Razor's Edge,* captained by Sky Marshal Travis Wick. Supplementing the fleet were 75 Legion ships, two modified merchant vessels from *Event Horizon* and a Twin Moon raiding fleet led by the *Ivan the Terrible*, captained by Josia Price.

Resistance was fierce; forces from Sparta had been diverted to protect Laconia, and the Hanza forces, spurred on by an increasingly-desperate Salen Dune, were willing to die to protect their capital. The defensive bombardment delayed the Alliance assault by a whole day, by which time they had already lost fifteen ships. Undeterred, Sky Marshal Wick gave the order to charge on October 17th.

Outnumbered and outgunned, the Hanza forces defended Laconia with everything they had left. Commands were issued from Dune's private station, the *Morea*, which itself came under attack by Werewolves during the offensive. By October 27th, the Hanza naval forces were exhausted and the ground assault began; the desolate world was almost impossible to defend, primarily due to Dune's own hubris preventing the construction of defensive infrastructure.

On October 28th, the *Razor's Edge* gave the League a final ultimatum: surrender unconditionally, or face total destruction. On Dune's own orders, every remaining soldier was to fight to the death. Two days later, on October 30th, the League began a second defensive strike, one that, had the subsequent events not unfolded, could have driven out the exhausted Alliance forces.

On October 31st, the Secretariat authorised Operation Wipeout; cruisers from the *Razor's Edge* deployed a DFFR-designed antimatter bomb to Laconia's surface on a suicide mission. The twelve-man team landed on Laconia's volcanic plain and buried the bomb on a fault line; as it was a timed charge, the team gave their lives to defend it.

At 2.11 pm Earth standard time, the bomb detonated; the force was more than thrice that of the bomb that destroyed Luna. The destruction was instantaneous; in less than a second Laconia's surface began to collapse in on itself, forming two gargantuan pits along the equator. Planetary crust went flying off into space, wiping out the few Hanza forces remaining in orbit; magma spewed out like a bleeding wound.

Less than an hour later, as he watched Laconia's ruins break apart, Salen Dune was shot and killed by a Werewolf squad, ending his reign of terror. The few remaining League forces either surrendered or escaped to Sparta, the final League stronghold.

#### Battle of Sparta

Sparta, which had served as the military capital of the Hanza throughout the war, was invaded simultaneously with Laconia in October 2445, more than ten years after the start of the war. While the DFFR and Legion fleets concentrated on Laconia, the invasion of Sparta was spearheaded by SPACECOM forces with support from the native Spartan Order and four ranger divisions. The allied forces faced a battle of attrition; League forces were diverted from Sparta to defend Laconia, forcing the remaining Hanza troops to use any tactic to ensure victory.

Operation Terra's Revenge commenced on October 16th, followed by polar landings on the planet's two continents. A four-week ground campaign followed, during which Hanza forces destroyed their own outposts to try and slow the Alliance troops.

On November 21st, news of Laconia's defeat reached the Hanza commanders on Sparta; unwilling to surrender, the *de facto* Hanza leader, Marco Saarius, ordered his troops to fight to the death. With the collapse of the League, the Hanza troops mutinied and surrendered, bringing the battle - and the war - to an end.

## Aftermath

With the Hanza Republic effectively defunct and the League split into competing spacer supremacy movements, the Alliance began their occupation of Sparta and Thermopylae; the ruins of Laconia were blockaded but largely ignored, with only a few patrols assigned to deter prospectors and souvenir hunters. Sparta lay under U.C. administration for the next four years until mining rights were granted to their ally House Izar; the Spartan Order never returned to their homeworld, viewing its surrender to the League in 2433 as an everlasting betrayal. Thermopylae, on the other hand, came under direct DFFR rule and became their military headquarters in that region of space. League hold-outs within the bridge systems started the Imperium movement, a guerilla campaign that sought to keep Dune's dream of a spacer empire alive despite the Hanza's defeat.

At the third Triton Conference in January 2446, the Stellar Alliance formally disbanded and its members drew up an economic framework for the post-war galaxy. The agreement created the Interstellar Forum of Economic Entities (IFE), a neutral body that would oversee trade and cooperation between the galaxy's major powers. Despite this new forum for cooperation, however, the rival factions continued with contingency plans for future conflicts over territory and resources.

While it retained its superpower status, the U.C. was depleted politically, economically and socially by the end of the war. The Herschel Nations, by comparison, emerged stronger than ever thanks to new gains in the bridge systems, elevating them to the position of superpower. This newfound status reignited the Cold War between the Herschel Nations and the U.C., despite hopes during the Alliance period that such tensions would have been erased by their camaraderie. These renewed tensions were especially contentious over antimatter weapons, the development of which had been outlawed after the Herschel Wars; in the elections following the war, the Constellation Party, a far-right party in the General Assembly, gained ground by putting the blame for Luna's destruction on the Herschel Nations, arguing that the attack would never have happened if the DFFR had not been secretly developing antimatter explosives.

The economic recovery of the galaxy was stalled by a number of factors, chief among them being the formation of the Free Economic Zone and the independence of the most powerful megacorporations in history. Now free from government oversight, the corporations were free to make their own labour laws, forge their own trade pacts and charge their own prices with impunity. This ultimately, however, led to conflict between the corporations themselves, such as the Fifth Corporate War that ran from 2467-2469. Other factors included resource depletion, population loss and the growth of once-minor factions.

Immediately after the war's end, several outlying U.C. colonies attempted to seceede amidst the post-war chaos. Having already conceeded several significant losses, the U.C. was unwilling to lose any more territory, especially given the expansion of the Herschel Nations. Thus began the Insurrection, a brief conflict that only ended thanks to the aid of the Free Economic Zone, thus restoring the megacorps' influence in the galaxy's leading superpower.

    After years of efforts, Earth was determined to be unrecoverable after the Lesson, forcing the U.C. federal government to permanently remain on Asgard and its capital Arcadia. The Earth Directorate was left scrambling to maintain order as society collapsed and power fled to the colonies; its only solace came from the corporations. One in particular, the Nemesis Group, provided substantial aid: climate technology, infrastructure repair, medical treatment, augmentations, crop repair and other services that saved Earth's dwindling population. The Nemesis Group asked for just one thing in return: its own piece of sovereign land. The Directorate accepted, and the Nemesis Group chose the northeast shore of Tranquility Bay to build a megametropolis housing most of North America's population: Nemesis City.

    As promised in 2444, Twin Moon was granted total amnesty, clearing the criminal records of every active member of the pirate fleet. Newly energised, they began establishing permanent outposts outside of Oppenheimer for the first time in their history, including on *Event Horizon*; this ultimately led to a conflict with the Herschel Nations called the Filthy War. Josia Price would continue to rule as Pirate King until his death from natural causes in 2455, making him the longest-reigning Pirate King in Twin Moon's history.

Another faction that emerged stronger was the Spacers Legion, which had expanded massively during the war as rebellious spacer factions fled both the Hanza and the Alliance. The largest of these factions was *Event Horizon*, which had maintained neutrality until the closing stages of the war. The influx of soldiers, resources and territory finally made the Legion a competitor in the galactic power struggle and a potential fourth superpower.

## Impact

### Casualties & War Crimes

Estimates for the total number of casualties in the war vary as many deaths went unrecorded. Most suggest that some 40 billion people died in the war, including hundreds of millions of military personnel and 35 billion civilians. Many of the civilians died because of deliberate genocide, massacres, mass bombings, disease, and starvation. The Lesson alone killed five billion people over the course of two years.

### Home Fronts & Production

Before the outbreak of the war, the Alliance had significant advantages in both population and economics. In 2435, the United Colonies and Herschel Nations had a 30 percent larger population and a 75 percent higher gross domestic product than the Hanza. The Herschel Nations produced about two-thirds of all the munitions used by the Alliance during the war, including warships, transports, warplanes, artillery, tanks, trucks, and ammunition.

Though the Alliance's economic and population advantages were largely mitigated during the initial rapid Hanza advances, they became the decisive factor by 2442 as the war largely settled into one of attrition.

### Technology

    Post-war advances were accomplished thanks to new territorial gains, particularly for the Herschel Nations, the Spacers Legion and the spacefaring corporations. With new territory came new resources; with new resources came new technologies.

The DFFR's victory in the Battle of the Bridges opened up new planetoids, asteroids and mining worlds from which the H.N. could harvest resources for their expanding military. Among the new advances was the mass production of black rock, creating a surplus that the DFFR began integrating into larger battleships for the first time. This created a whole new breed of stealth fighter, the *Umbra*-class dreadnought.

### Environmental

The Great Galactic War drove a vast increase in production, militarized the production and transportation of commodities, and introduced many new environmental consequences, which can still be seen across the Settled Systems. The war was wide-ranging in its destruction of humans, animals, and materials.

During the war, aircraft were used to transport resources both to and from different military bases and drop bombs on enemy, neutral, and friendly targets alike; these activities damaged habitats via noise, toxins and pollution.