The galaxy

The **galaxy**, also known as the **maze**, was one of the innumerable number of galaxies in the universe. The galaxy was composed of over 200 billion stars, over a billion planetary systems, and other celestial objects such as nebulae, all revolving around the galactic barycentre, within which was a supermassive black hole. The galaxy had a diameter of more than 140,000 light years, the massive space home to quadrillions of people of an array of intelligent species, the most populous of which being the humans.

Much of the galaxy was within the territory of the Ariphius Confederacy, and had been for millennia - the result of aggressive expansionism and imperialism during the First Galactic Era. Other territories in the galaxy included the unstable sectors controlled by the Tamarud Regime during the Datasea War, and Gorrf Space, an independent region in the outer reaches of the vast Edgespace region, governed by the Gorrf Empire, retaining indepedence after the Gorrfs signed the Ariphius-Imperial Concordat.

The vastness of the galaxy was subject to centuries of conflict between states, but also trade, technological expansion, and politics. Spanning the majority of the galaxy was the vast interconnected digital network the datasea, allowing instant communication across great distances.

## History

### Formation of the galaxy

Around 13 billion years before the First Galactic Era, the galaxy formed, less than a billion years after the energetic expansion of the universe - its formation entailed the violent collapse of dust clouds and gas under their own gravity, amalgamating into a revolving wheel more than 120,000 light-years across. Over many billions of years, hundreds of billions of stars, and subsequently planets, formed throughout the galaxy.

### Elder cultures

For an undetermined length of time (likely aeons) before the evolution of humans, there were extra-intellectual alien cultures that dominated the galaxy, that, from what evidence was found, were extremely advanced, their technology far beyond anything humans achieved. Several supreme cultures controlled the galaxy, over the millennia engaging in devastating wars that drove less powerful civilisations to extinction - primitive extra-intellectuals crushed in the collateral damage of whatever superweapons the Elder cultures utilised. The collapse of the cultures, based on xenoarchaeological evidence, was very sudden, around 60,000 years before the First Galactic Era, likely a result of their millennia of wars utterly and ultimately destroying all of the civilisations and their great cities and creations. Almost all evidence of their existence was completely lost, leaving the galaxy reset - a ‘clean slate’. Only artefacts such as the Telmin Beacon remained. The Telmin Beacon was a two-hundred-metre high tower atop the highest peak of the lifeless, rocky world of Telmin, dated to around -87,000 years pregalactic. Within it was a unique technology that was impossible to decode and examine, for an unknown reason, and the technology caused the tower to rise into the air during extreme weather events, a strange technological ‘aura’ emitted from the beacon sheltering the region from extreme storms, or providing water from an unknown source during droughts.

### Galactic expansion

The period of around two thousand year following humanity's 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 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 after a deep space scan, the colonists eventually 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. Nikrontri, 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 a major figure in Nikrontri’s settlement. The region on the southwestern coast flourished into a mining colony, where the great Bazaar and Gunfashi central district of Nikrobiru City would one day stand. Over several centuries, preceding the onset of the Tsenic Period, the Galactic Interior became a powerful, resource-wealthy, loose confederation of settled worlds, Nikrontri already at the helm. No longer restricted by the laws of a well-established human constitution, the Interior exploited the scattered and less successful colonists across the Median Rim and Inner Territories, enslaving them and forcing them to work in the mining networks that formed the historical basis of the Interior’s initial wealth and success. 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 in -6500 pregalactic 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. Following the days of Nikrontrav, and the mostly peaceful first three hundred years of exploration across the initial Expansion Space of the lower (pre-side) regions of the galaxy, was a period of numerous encounters with advanced alien civilisations and subsequent conflicts. The onset of the Tsenic Period (-6450 - 5200 P,G) came with the expansion of the Tsenic Empire, a formidable alien power originating on the Edgespace world of Khasta, dominated by the Khast species, evolutionary descendants of an Elder culture. Its territory, already covering a looming expanse between Naratel and Talch, rapidly expanded, likely from innovation in their strange and grotesque ultraspace-crossing bioships, advanced technology owed to the uniquely abundant artefacts left on Khast following the extinction of the ancient Elder cultures. The early efforts of the Empire resulted in the brutal massacre of countless primitive alien cultures throughout the Sunder and Periphery - wielding stone tools, developing species watched as the horror-ships of the Khast descended on their worlds, infernal bombs scorching their surface, and in the wake of the blaze, survivors were cut down by Tsenic troops. By -6100 P,G, Tsenic territory had more than doubled, their territory stretching across a band of defensive, terraformed asteroids, made controllable using cellular bio-engines, between Nahanaaj and the planet of Xolxil, less than a hundred light years from Elmyntesh, and human colonies. The violent Tsenic conquest continued further inwards, swathes of the Inner Territories falling to the might of the Empire, for the scattered worlds were, for a lack of a better word, helpless. The vast, unknown reaches of the galaxy, swathes of nebulae and millions of worlds, under the ignorant but total dominion of the ancient, and re-emerging Tsenic Empire, and humans were soon to feel such wrath. The Nikrontreens, still flourishing, supported by their infantile empire founded on slavery, were not ready for the might of the Khast, who rapidly swept across the Interior, enslaving the very humans who had made slaves of others, and cutting down the population by tens of thousands, killing those who were not able to work or could not become able.