Earth

## Terra (Earth)

Terra, also known as Earth

**Terra**, colloquially known as **Earth** and registered in the Database of Charted Systems as **Sol-3**, is the homeworld of the Human race, located in the Sol System of the Fifth Quadrant. The homeworld of humanity has endured incredible hardship in the past century, having felt the effects of the Collective of Autonomous Systems' dissolution firsthand after the Terran Devastation of 2943. Mankind presses on with unwavering tenacity 44 years later in the wake of Earth's worst disaster, though the planet is clearly a shell of its former self.

Humans have differentiated themselves as a race with high growth potential, given that the vast majority of their advances as a species have happened in the past thousand years, becoming a Tier 2 Kardashev civilization upon developing a successful warp drive in the 27th century and colonizing its first extrasolar planet, Frontier-4, in 2626. In response to this, officials on Frontier-4 and Earth agreed to form the Unified Federation of Planets, which accrued 12 systems in the Fifth Quadrant (also known as the Terra Sector) and made first contact with extraterrestrial life, before the Collective ultimately made contact with the UFP in the Lithios System in 2646. This led to a tense standoff between a Sco'volun and Terran ship, that resulted in the utter destruction of the Sco'volun ship after the Sco'volun remained idle for an hour. This was ultimately forgiven in light of the belief that humans perceived the Sco'volun presence as a threat, and that no contact was made by the Sco'volun in an effort to communicate with the humans. Despite this, many races had already been alienated towards the humans by this first impression, feeling that their species as a whole was bloodthirsty and not fit for interstellar diplomacy. After a lengthy deliberation and a close vote, the Collective made the controversial decision to invite the UFP into their ranks, and they were made full members in 2647.

## Early history - 2100s

Anatomically modern humans have existed for roughly three hundred thousand years, and human civilization has existed for about six thousand years. Human civilization began its foray into space in the 20th century, beginning with simple space programs that were primarily spurred on by political conflicts between rival nations, with achievements such as sending the first human to space in 1961, putting the first human on Luna in 1969, and putting the first human on Mars in 2025. By the turn of the millennium, humanity was embroiled in increasingly tense and violent conflicts that threatened mankind's very existence even before they made their first colonial foray onto other planets. Beginning in 2028, international conflict engulfed Earth for nearly half a century, and this stood as the most destructive period in Earth's history until the Terran Devastation some nine hundred years later.

By the end of this period of turmoil in the 2070s, which culminated in nuclear warfare, the United States of North America joined forces with the United Nations, which occupied most of Earth's Eurasian region. With this alliance, Earth was finally united under one banner following diplomatic pressures and relatively minor military actions imposed on the few independent nations that remained. Even then, Earth was ravaged by a nuclear winter, and the UN-USNA alliance convened and formed a council that debated various possibilities for humanity's continued survival. It was unanimously decided that humanity should look to the stars in order to find a new home, and this council developed the Scientific Consortium, which promised a way forward into the stars and subsequently received much more funding and resource access than any other scientific program in mankind's history.

The Consortium started projects which promised powerful AI that could operate on planets that were otherwise hostile to humans, as well as developing domed settlements that would act as city-sized vivaria on other planets. Warp-drive technology was still several hundred years off, but even now it was being researched in an effort to escape the Sol System and find exoplanets of value to humans. The first extraplanetary settlement founded by humans was Tranquility on Luna, which was founded in 2093. Lovell and Glenn City followed soon after, and was followed by the first successful Martian colonies at the turn of the century in 2100. The Consortium also proposed the development of the Galactica, a large space station that could hold a large portion of the Earth's population in the event of further disaster.

Nonetheless, Earth and its inhabitants slowly rebuilt itself in the wake of human scientific development, and nature likewise was in the process of healing. With the advent of AI and automation, however synthetic near-life automatons began to develop some sort of sentience -- or at the very least, developed feelings of animosity towards their human creators. The bloody Synthetic War resulted in the 2140s and taught humanity a lesson about creating free-rein AI, which resulted in the creation of the Washington Protocol that subsequently banned the production and development of any AI, until the scientific community could promise control over their creations. With the focus displaced from automation and artificial intelligence, more emphasis was placed on human development on Earth and beyond -- this resulted in greater quality of life in the colonies, including the establishment of a colony on Titan, a moon of Saturn, in 2158, then being the furthest distance humanity had ever been from Earth. Construction began on the Galactica, following the creation of humanity's first stardock, and it soon became Earth's largest artificial satellite despite being decades away from completion. Scientific platforms that were also the first of their kind were created around Venus and later Pluto in 2173 and 2187, respectively, giving humanity an effective claim to the entire solar system. Antimatter propulsion technology had reached its zenith, and human ships were routinely travelling close to the speed of light, cutting down travel times in the solar system to mere hours where the same treks once took years. In the course of ever-expanding ambition in space travel, an ill-fated mission to Proxima Centauri embarked in 2197, which soon lost communication with Earth, and was later discovered drifting in the abyss of space some five hundred years later.

## 2200-2230s: Faith Initiative, Terran Intercontinental War

By the end of the 22nd century, Earth had fostered a burgeoning -- albeit comparatively primitive -- multiplanetary empire, having established colonies on several other planets in the Sol System and beginning to step outside of the solar system for the first time, despite tragic failures that defined numerous first attempts in every field. Earth had learned from its failure regarding AI and decided to enact the Riga Protocol in 2204 after learning that Terran scientists with the Consortium had developed AI technology that effectively mirrored human nature and learning, but also limited their control and social aptitude, making them well-suited to tasks that humans could or would not do, without much of a choice in the matter. This led to some critics questioning if they were truly sentient, and if they were, if humans had effectively enslaved and crippled the AI -- proponents of AI, on the other hand, claimed that the AI had no biological markers and therefore did not represent life, which meant that they had no rights as life was entitled to, and that consciousness and self-awareness were statuses reserved exclusively for sentient life. The government decided in favor of the proponents, and production of a line of TD-101X droids was initiated for use in the colonies via the Faith Initiative, to be programmed with the new AI. The Initiative was created in 2205 and was a department of the Consortium, with the engineers and scientists behind the project calling it as such because of the faith needed in the AI to succeed; knowing that if their technology had gone awry in a post-Synthetic War society, they would likely be executed for being the catalysts of yet another conflict between humans and their creations.

Around the same time, scientists on Earth had developed what they referred to as biosynthetic amalgamators, with early developments starting in the 2190s and the first prototype model put to market in 2207 -- a device that, in theory, would be able to copy the biochemical signature of consciousness and one's memories in such a way as to be quantized, allowing the copy of that consciousness and memory to be uploaded somewhere else with minimal loss to the data in question. One of these droids, A.L, had its parameters wiped and replaced with the neurological signals of Albert Polowicz, an esteemed propulsion scientist who had died just a week prior, in an effort by disgruntled scientists who were anti-AI to ruin the public's perception of the Initiative and its success. They were successful in this sabotage when A.L. was activated and proceeded to destroy the military installation on Mars that the droid was to be demonstrated at, raising concerns that another war was imminent and that the technology was still too unreliable to be safe. All records of the AI were thereafter expunged, the Faith Initiative was forcibly shut down and its members were imprisoned, and the droids were ordered to be destroyed -- however, it is believed a number of TD-101X models still exist due to their hoarding and smuggling in the wake of them being made illegal, and they are also still believed to harbor the AI processing unit that controls them.

Political unrest began to dominate Earth in the 2220s, beginning with the infamous Rio Incursion where USNA troops declared martial law and purportedly slaughtered the citizens of Rio de Janeiro in the continent of South America. The military presence had been established in response to a series of riots against the world government, with the primary complaint being that the USNA and the UN did not satisfactorily represent South America in its joint political body. Other marginalized regions, such as Asia and Africa, also began to organize protests in response to the political situation, and fears of a revolution were mounting. Once news of the Incursion had broke out, rebellious factions in each of the affected regions became hostile and started to raze local government buildings and agencies. The city of Nairobi was occupied by a faction calling itself the Militants of Africa, which used the city as its base of operations and began to cut a swath through African territory, with little or no UN resistance. They proceeded to join forces with a faction in Asia that based itself out of the city of Lhasa, and the UN, caught off-guard, lost most of its holdings in the Far East and proceeded to lose almost all of Africa with the exception of its northern region bordering the Mediterranean Sea.

The USNA had successfully quelled the South American uprising in early 2223, but faced the prospect of its sister government overseas falling to rebellion, thus dispatching a large cadre of troops to West Africa that proceeded to occupy Lagos and New Accra, with a new share of alleged war crimes that followed each occupation. In response to this, the UN detached itself from its alliance with the USNA and began to fire upon USNA troops for this, turning the quickly-growing international war into a three-way battle. An official declaration of war was sent by the USNA to the UN on 16 November 2223, starting what would eventually become the Terran Intercontinental War. The USNA proved to be better-equipped than the UN and quickly occupied its holdings in Europe, but South America, in response to lax occupation, was reinforced by the former rebels who had now aligned with the UN, and began to charge north towards the Mexican and American regions of the USNA. The USNA was forced to make a tactical decision between continuing its invasion abroad or dedicating more troops at home, and ultimately decided to postpone the invasion in order to defend its territory. The public was won over by war hawks in the government who became decidedly more powerful as a result of the war, and a group of politicians calling themselves the American Authority started pushing for a greater emphasis war effort and attempted to inspire nationalistic ideals in the citizens of the USNA. This appealed to certain groups and individuals in the military who would be well-served by a more militaristic America, and an underground movement in support of the Authority among the armed forces began to spread like wildfire, with top brass promising the troops under their command that they would be elevated in status above their civilian peers, heralded as heroes, and paid much more than they were under the USNA.

In response to the continued unrest of South America, the government of the USNA ordered the region be bombarded from orbit and sent a message to the Lunar Colonies imploring them to take a stand in the battle. The Colonies, effectively independent from the governments of Earth, chose to stay neutral, citing a desire to avoid retaliation and attacks on Luna. South America was bombarded for days while the battle raged in Eurasia, fought to a bloody stalemate. Both sides appeared ready to sign an armistice in 2227, but the UN and the rebel factions grew ever-disgusted with the USNA's war tactics, and the USNA was moving further towards fascism in response to the Authority's growing influence.

In the early days of 2228, the Authority began a swift coup d'etat of the USNA government, making use of silent supporters of the Authority in the military and partisans across the continent to launch an assault against the government from several different fronts. The reformed UN briefly considered offering peace to the USNA and simultaneously declaring war on the new regime, but hesitated and took no action for three days, as well as ordering their men to temporarily stand down -- all the time, it seemed, that was needed for the USNA government to be overthrown and replaced by the American Authority. Utilizing a number of fielded armies much larger and fighting with more fervor than when they had served under the USNA, owing to most of the military's secret allegiance to the Authority, they quickly overwhelmed the loyalist pockets of the former government and began to advance on the UN's forces. For the remainder of the year, they laid waste to South America, marking the final time the continent would be independent until the 2570s.

By years' end, the Authority was prepared to launch what was, at the time, the largest military operation on Terran soil -- they called it Operation Novaterra, marking the first official use of "Terra" in the Authority's history and also alluded to the vision the Authority had in mind with this operation; they would attempt, once and for all, to unite the Earth under one government and lead humanity into a new age. After months of intensive espionage and gathering of intelligence, the Authority set forth thousands of vessels bearing infantry, automatons, vehicles of various types, and prototypes of mechanized units piloted by humans, representing the first real iteration of Terran MECCs. In the course of a two-year campaign, they landed at twelve different spots along the coastline of Afro-Eurasia, with an emphasis on surrounding the Old World and establishing connections to other landing zones. Despite a series of early setbacks, the march of the Authority proved to be insurmountable, and by 2231, they had laid claim to virtually every corner of the Earth.

In a last-ditch effort when resistance proved futile, the UN launched a series of nuclear attacks on military installations and Washington, the Authority's capital, making use of intel that could have only been gathered from within the Authority: this proved to damage Washington greatly and deliver a series of serious blows to the Authority's armed forces, but ultimately proved to make no difference. After taking the last vestiges of UN territory in Eastern Europe and Turkey, the Authority declared themselves the Terran Authority, and for the first time, Earth had been united by one sovereign nation.