(Lore) The Emergence

* First Tab Title
* Second Tab Title
* Third Tab Title

First tab sample text.

Second tab content goes here.

Third tab content goes here.

* Tabber One
* Tabber Two

* 1
* 2
* 3

Content one

Content two

Et cetera.

* 4
* 5
* 6

Content 4

Content 5

Content 6

## **[-2258-] Adrift IV**

A lone exploration ship lands on a strange, barren world, at the time dubbed only XM-384-3a, occupied only by small, red, flower-like fungi. Its crew are never heard from again, but send several distress signals. Several ships follow up to investigate, bringing back samples of the fungi for study at more advanced facilities. Once again, the ships arrive with no crew, but ship cameras and logs reveal a horrifying scene as the crew begin to be taken over by the alien lifeforms, randomly one by one after a few weeks on board, turned to a breeding hive that eats away everything until, in most cases, the fungi run out of food and dry up, crumbling to dust. By the time the true danger is realized, the fungi have escaped quarantine already, and within months, will be killing thousands. Victims feel fine for usually almost three weeks, making it difficult to track without advanced tests that most systems aren't equipped to apply wide-scale. The pandemic is named the First-Contact Xenovirus, and while treatment is possible after infection, and relatively cheap, it takes the better part of a decade for quarantine to no longer be necessary in larger hubs of civilization, and society is left hollowed, stripped of a considerable portion of its citizens.

## **[-2273-] Adrift V**

With the F-Xe virus contained to laboratories and populations recovering, a landmark 30th star system is successfully colonized. The SCC, reported to have be slowly building a sizeable fleet for some time, suddenly cuts off all contact and traffic into or out of the system without any warning. Once again, political outrage surges, but little can be done with military forces all but nonexistent. Concerns are raised about the threats made almost 30 years prior, but most consider the internal stability of the SCC to be more at fault.

## **[-2275-] Adrift VI**

Exploration ships land on the surface of a planet that would later be named Giothia. This planet was a gaia world; relatively large, with huge water oceans, oxygen-rich atmosphere, 10% land mass coverage, and more importantly, it contained carbon-based fauna and flora, although incredibly exotic. Several factions and systems send colony ships, and in an attempt to avert a coming political disaster, more diplomatic voices suggest making the system neutral, as a center of the newly-forming galactic civilization. It could be a trade hub, be a center for arts and sciences, host representatives for political work, and support a massive farming sector. This was, in light of the F-Xe virus, received both relatively positively in the spirit of unity against the void, and with hesitation, for such a world would surely be vulnerable. It would need police with significant strength, a governing body capable of keeping tensions between groups low, and top-of-the-line medical facilities. Debate would continue for years as the colonies slowly grew, making no real headway.

## **[-2281-] Adrift VII**

After nearly a decade of near-complete silence from the SCC, they re-open political channels. Learning of the talks of a hub world on Giothia, SCC representatives immediately begin making demands to be made head of the project, or otherwise in a controlling position over the planet. When their demands were unsurprisingly met with ridicule, they threaten consequences for the disrespect, before going silent. Six months later, a fleet of 50 bomber-type spacecraft, 10 dropships, 10 support ships, and 30 cargo ships, bearing SCC identification, drop out of hyperspace at the edge of the Sol system, on a course for the inner system. The galactic community is thrown into a panic, but the short and simple answer is that there is no force capable of meeting them in combat, as it would take months to even produce ships, train pilots, and months more to send them to Sol.

## **[-2305-] Colony Wars IV**

Nearing the end of her first term, with another looking pretty likely, President Yensen had done things no one could have expected. Mining production was up so much, they say a billion tons of ore were mined in a single day for the first time. Her Fleet of The Alliance was some 10,000 of the 15,000+ she promised, but it was still a significant portion and few were keen to criticize. In top secret labs, the first trials were coming back successful on a synthetic virus that can give a soldier immunity to any known kind of gene weapon employed by the SCC, but causes large-scale cell breakdown, crippling users within about five years. At first, only volunteers, these were to be the front line offensive in a surgical strike that would occur at the start of her second term.

One by one, however, the pieces on the board changed. An Alliance spy that never returns from their mission. A lone vial of the gene-immunity virus, stolen from a case of thirty out of a vault that was never opened. The main reactor of a major SCC shipyard going critical with no warning, rending the structure in half. President Yensen... Falling ill? She was otherwise in excellent health at the comfortable age of 51, but a very slow, deadly contagion was taking hold of her. Doctors described it as a sort of parasitic cancerous cell mutation, spreading without regard for tissue variation through the body. A year before she was to be re-elected, she became bedridden, and her vice-president stepped in, vowing to continue on the plans that had been laid. Vice president would become president, and now ex-president would continue to get weaker, only a shadow of her former self. In another two years, she would be dead, potential gone like dust in the wind. No other cases of the illness are ever reported, and conspiracy is abound on the cause, the majority pointing to the SCC. Nothing is ever confirmed.

## **[-2325-] Emergence**

In 2522, an un-imaginable fleet, at the time at least, of 40,000 Alliance ships drop out of hyperspace in Sol. The aim is to push as far into the system as possible, establishing a foothold at the forwardmost reachable defensive point. The husks of the old Convergence stations at the outer solar system, already nearly empty when the SCC showed up, were almost entirely gone, scrapped for resources. Battlegroups of 50 gunships patrolled the asteroid belt, forming a very loose net around the inner system, at least if invaders were looking for cover. The Alliance ships tear through SCC defenses, noting that the crews of the ships seemed to be suffering heavily from gene-degeneration, and were un-equipped for the jobs. The SCC gunships, firing their standard variety of gene canon, were no match against more advanced and versatile mass-driver turrets employed by Alliance destroyers. It seemed truly too good to be true. And it was.

The gene-weapon immunity virus, refined to a far less harmful and more efficient form known as the SymBio Gene-Cure, was a marvel of bioengineering and medical science. Completely non-transmissible, it provided massive protection against all matter of cell-attacking contagions. Including the modified strains of the F-Xe virus, intended as a last-ditch effort, that had been on the ancient weapons of the SCC in Sol. Lying very dormant thanks to the SymBio, which kept it invisible to medical scans, it was very slowly spread around unknowingly to the front-line soldiers. Eventually, however, the troops arrived home. What should have been a 1 month period before hive formation turned into years, until the first case. Patient Zero. The modified F-Xe virus had found a way to absorb the SymBio and evolve, beginning to spread in the host, becoming transmissible, and then suddenly, the Alliance is in chaos.

The new strain of the virus was unlike anything medical protocols had been prepared for. Intelligently designed by SCC scientists in a culmination of every bit of lethal science their engines of war could devise, it had multiple stages of life; a non-invasive phase were it simply spread through a host, becoming invisibly transmissible for a short period. After a month, it suddenly takes off, taking the victim over and flooding hormone and adrenaline levels, causing aggression and unstable tendencies. They are fully contagious this whole time, and usually take about four hours to die. At this point, feeding off the remaining tissue, the virus becomes mature, turning the body into a spore-cloud producing factory that can carry along the wind, in air vents, or through water, for upwards of a week. They called it simply the Emergence Xenovirus, and it was unstoppable.

## **[-2342-] The Fall I**

After a decade of fighting, the Alliance can't support their fleet with the Emergence striking down colonies left and right, and Sol is lost again. The SymBio is the only line of defense, capable of buying a victim time to sort out their affairs before the inevitable. With exposure to more and more lifeforms and genetic sequences, the Emergence rapidly mutates and grows ever more deadly, and eventually the Alliance bomber fleet is repurposed for razing infected areas on planets. Civilization continues to crumble, and in 2342, the first SCC fleets begin arriving in Alliance systems. SCC ships are still inferior, but overall the war is a slaughter. The initial SCC attack fleet alone is reported as responsible for the ends of almost 10 billion lives.

## **[-2356-] The Fall III**

As the tremendously-unpopular process of burning to a fine ash every city and colony that the Emergence takes hold in chips away morale, and a billion humanitarian crisis' rage across the fragments of what remains, riots fill the streets of Exarus. Many liken it to the evens of 2127, when the UGC fell. It was assumed that the final days of the Alliance, whatever that even meant anymore, were at the doorstep. But hope was not gone. For years, the Alliance had been constructing the largest ship ever; a mobile hospital, refinery, database, and passenger ship, for use in helping the remains of the colonies start to recover. There was more than that, however. Scientists at the Medical University of Exarus had found a way to modify some of the genetic material of a crustacean-like creature found on a far-off world and splice it into the SymBio, making it capable of fully repelling the Emergence; a true cure. This new ship would be used to save as many survivors as possible, even if the city collapses.

## **[-2392-] Silence II**

As if by some, great, unseen signal, one by one colonies stop using official transmitter channels. Connections continue to fade, and pockets of the galaxy, tied together by close range travel, form into small interstellar communities. Travel between pockets is rare, and most think the universe has been giving signs: keep to yourselves. Innovations are made in mining, agriculture, and other colony trades, as worlds are finally taken and used for their full values for the first time. Chromus, a staple gaseous trade commodity in modern life, is refined for the first time, and cities, as they rebuild, as awash with glowing neon-style signs and bright lights of every colour, creating a somewhat ironic aesthetic movement for many years.

This would also be the year that the last flickering light of The Alliance went out. After nearly 40 years holding the galaxy together as best it could, The Alliance sent a single distress beacon from the middle of a long hyperspace jump, citing an extreme and unstable gravitational anomaly, and was never seen or heard from again. Not a single fragment was recovered, or any trace detected along its path of anything unusual. There was a brief period of respectful mourning by many of the worlds it was able to save, but so many others had never seen aid, and had nothing but bitterness to add.