The Drop

It's been a couple of centuries since we re-entered the stars from New Home; exploration and colonization have been the rule of the day. There are five other xeno races but it's heavily debated whether they are essentially still human or totally different since most have some amount of human genes... but then some don't really act too human, do they? And then twenty years ago we run into The Fringe. The Fringe is an area of space on the other side of New Home where we're finding evidence of other pre-Federacy civilizations, many that have been Slimed , and that's where things get really interesting. We've also found evidence of Xeno Civs - civilizations that aren't terrestrial in origin.
Earth was lost a time long long ago - mankind had made it to and populated the stars, then suddenly the interstellar transport systems just... broke. Hyperdrive was re-invented, but now we're nowhere near Earth or any of the other stars that were once just a step or three away. On top of that, we have two dozen worlds colonized over the past two centuries and an enemy that "could possibly" may be out there.
But we can't forget about New Home, capital of the Federacy, an engima wrapped inside of a riddle itself. The richest system in existence with 4 terraformed worlds around a gas giant; the original colony was slimed, and people are essentially being told, "move along, there's nothing to see here." But who's buying that? Now, there aren't a lot of battle stations in the Federacy - but there are two, two hanging around what's left of New Home - and it's rumored that most of the weaponry is targeted planet-ward. That's curious, but let's not be that curious. There's too much elsewhere to see.
Available technology is rather broad. Most colonies may have access to cold fusion and mag-solar technology because of their ship-colonies or if they've advanced far enough to make their own fusion plants, but anti-grav is readily available (though we are just learning to understand the technology behind grav-plates and why they work so well for us), and then there's the recently recovered Mind-Tech which allows the use of some artifacts simply by the power of the mind - highly coveted, mind you, but not easily usable. But beyond these broad "utility level devices," things are essentially at the "what's needed" level of tech. So you can find firearms and lasers in the LoE universe. Bows, battleaxes, and blasters too (of course, more lethal firearms tend to be illegal, but places like Fringeworthy? Well, you might want to have a blaster available...).