Introduction to the setting

It was the year 2050. Three things happened that would change Humanity forever. Firstly, the Martian Colony of Olympus declared to all that it had achieved self sufficiency. Within days the Martians had announced to Terra that they were an independent polity, formally severing ties with the chaos on Earth. Belters, Luna, Ceres, Enceladus and Europa would follow within the next decade.

Earths response was more terrorism. More violence. More chaos. And more people trying to escape.

The second thing was the wealthiest man in the solar system, Paris Janeskowsi announced that his latest start up had perfected the neural extension jack, and proceeded to 'port' his consciousness into a new body - effectively achieving a form of immortality.

The third development of that storied year was the invention of the McMillan-Broussard Jump drive. A vessel equipped with this machine could transition to a different form of space time via an Einstein-Rosen bridge called Null Space, which would allow it to cover the distance of a light year in a week.

Thus began the Era of Expansion.

Over the next century humanity would spread out to anyplace with water; densely populated within 25 light years of earth, more spread out to roughly 100 light years.

Humanity would also begin to uplift their fellow species with higher intelligence from the home world to join them on their voyages. But out in space? Lichen. Protazoa. Diatoms. Some plant life. But nothing intelligent.

Until the Transom system, 140 ly from earth.

A survey ship owned by a private exploration firm operating out of Beta Hydri jumped into a system that was... teeming with space traffic. Within moments of their arrival they were bathed in EM transmissions. Within minutes they were fired on by hyper velocity missiles.

They did the only sane thing possible - they jumped away.

Repeated attempts were made, with similar results.

Eventually it was decided by the Eridani government to send an official delegation to the Transom system. The diplomatic ship was destroyed with all hands, without us able to understand the aliens communications.

What followed was typically human: reconnaissance in force. Hit and runs. A the smashing of the Transomites orbital infrastructure by not engaging them on their terms.

Once the dust settled and everyone finally started talking, we finally discovered the problem. According to the aliens humanity was impossible. For you see, the Transomites were an 'uplifted' client species of the Ul-thari. They had not discovered space flight, let alone interstellar travel, on their own. Worse, as far as the general consensus of galactic civilization, interstellar travel outside of grav-lanes was impossible, due to the fact that attempts to do so causes madness in all known sentient species.

So this brings us today. Humans have begun to interact with the various Galactics, but they have no sponsor. Our technology is 'primitive' and yet we have access to abilities and tactics unavailable to the galaxy at large. And worst of all (from their perspective) humanities home is unassailable - unconnected to the galactic grav-lane network. As far as anyone knows

So now we are past our first contact. Terra is an utter mess thanks to massive industuralization and ideological confilict, with pockets of civilization here and there. Much of the planet overrun by ideological fanaitcs such as mujaheddin, luddite fundamentalists, anti-technologists, and other problems following various fallouts, bio-genetic plagues and all of the rest of it as a result of constant conflict. There are still Megacities in North America, Japan, China and Europe, but much of the planet has shifted back to a neo-techno barbarism - 20th century Somalia writ large except whith cybernets, genetic enhancement and who knows what else. It is from this maelstrom that humanity has begun to bump into the rest of Galactic Civilizations - with all of the danger and adventure that implies.