The Great Cataclysm

The Great Cataclysm was a major disaster of the later phases of the Jred Scourge, an event that completely reshaped the face of galactic civilization perhaps more than the Scourge itself. A psychic scream eminating from the largest and most important of the bioantennae spawned of Jred flesh upon its destruction, the Jred Scourge laid waste to the galaxy's communication and transit networks, bringing about the end of the Stellar League, and the start of an age of Techno-Barbarism, the Long Night, an era which civilization is only starting to recover.

Background

Before the Cataclysm was the Jred Scourge, a conflict spanning the Galaxy between humanity and the Jred, a superspecies possessing a gestalt conciousness. The Scourge, starting in the late 40th century after Jred interstellar bioforms became more common, more hostile and more coordinated. This previously unobserved behavior, resulted in the the start of a bloody conflict, the only known example of such a conflict between humanity and other beings. Over the course of two and half centuries the Stellar League was driven further and further back from the Rimward reaches as many of the League's most prosperous territories were overrun and consumed by the Jred.
In the late 41st century, as the Jred neared Earth, the Stellar League's finest minds scrambled for a solution to the Jred's advance and ever increasing capaiblity. Through decades of intelligence gathering, often at the cost of many scouts, surveyors, and military personnel who were caught by the Jred and destroyed. The issue remained the incredible, and quite literally inhuman coordination with which higher Jred could achieve with interstellar antennae that could collect the conciousness of Jred organisms on a galactic scale. A few attempts were made to get around this strength of the greater conciousness, but all of these early attempts failed, often with disastrous consequences. It was deemend impossible to jam the psychic link, or to undermine the smaller bioantennae, and so efforts were made to find a means of destroying the largest of them, a moon sized biological Ansible. This project in the latter decades became a race against time as the slow, but inevitable march of Jred organisms proceeded further and further into the colonies approaching the earliest and most important homes for humanity including Sol itself.
Ìn the waning days of the Jred Scourge, the Jred had finally arrived at the doorstep of humanity's cradle, and in an event known as the Scourging of Earth, a directed Jred attack, accompanied by the largest of the Jred Amplifiers, the planet's biosphere, slowly healing from the pre-Fusion era, was laid to waste, the seat of human civilization was overthrown, and tens, perhaps hundreds of billions of lives were extinguished in a matter of weeks. Plans for the poisoning of the Jred's bioantennae were rushed after this in an attempt to avenge the dead who's screams could still be heard by psychics throughout the galaxy. Within a two weeks, the Stellar League found itself engaged near one of its most important colonies. The Sol Sector Fleet, finally brought together after its abscence caused humilation on Earth fought the scourge near Gaia Cosmia in the Junction System, and it was here that the trap was sprung.

The Event

During the Battle of Junction, the Sol Sector Fleet fought viciously against the Jred's largest known contingent of spaceborne organisms. Though the fleet itself reaped a prodigious toll upon the Jred they were steadily losing ground, assets, and lives, but the fleet action was largely a distraction, an attempt to keep the great mind of the Jred distracted, while dozens of smaller craft, each with a copy of a tailor-made nanovirus on board raced towards the great bioantena. It is unknown how many survived the journey, but at least one managed to infect the great entity. The swarm of nanobots destroyed the antena in short order. But the consequences of this act were immediate and catastrophic.
In its death throes the greatest of Jred Bioantennae released a powerful psychic scream, such was its strength that the scream breached Jumpspace, a rippling wave of psionic energy amplified by other bioantennae, and the Jump Gate Network, shattering nearly all of its amplifiers in an instant and obliterating all but the most advanced ships transiting in Jump. This blast destroyed many ships of the Sol Sector Fleet, only those who had happened to be running their Black Globes survived. The blast even destroyed the Junction System, scattering its gas giants, shattering its terrestrial bodies, and damaging the star itself. Junction, a jewel of the Sol Sector was reduced to a hollow tomb of broken ships, deceased Jred, and the shattered remnants of once prosperous worlds.
As the great antena thrashed in its death throes, another series of psionic waves spread through the galaxy, disrupting Jumpspace, and making it a much more hostile, dangerous, place. These ripples would travel at ever decreasing speeds with the last wave spreading at the speed of light, the slowest recorded speed of any psionic energy. Jred throughout the galaxy would feel this scream, and nearly all Jred in space were reptured by the Cataclysm, their blood boiling, their organs bursting, and their collective minds burning as the power of the scream shredded the galactic scale conciousness, and rent the Jred again into scattered islands of conciousness, their own death wails reverberating throughout the void. Those with Psionic abilities, particularly those who were touched by the Jred felt this scream too, and billions of souls went mad. Perhaps most insidious of all, the scream scrambled countless quadrillions of electronic devices, most prominent among them, the Standard Build Template Databases that most colonies had been relying onto construct technology worthy of a starfaring society, and vast databases of historical, and cultural information were corrupted beyond repair, endless quantities data lost forever.
the communication and transit network that had made the great extent of the Stellar League possible was ruined, and thousands of myriad voidships were lost to catastrophic misjumps, with even the possibility of interstellar travel restricted only to those with advanced jump drives. the far flung colonies of humanity were left to fend for themselves as the Stellar League, reorganizing on Mars was unable to contact most human settlements, struggling to maintain communication with even its closest neighbors. Many of these scattered colonies could not survive, dying in the closing dark. Many other systems declared independence shortly thereafter, becoming masters of their own fate, some forming viable successor states over a small area. The remnant of the Stellar League retreated into itself, reoganizing into the Union of Sol to maintain control over what it could still manage. With this final admission of defeat, galactic civilization ceased to be as humanity slid into the Long Night.

The Aftermath

With galactic communication severed, vast quantities of knowledge lost, and travel rendered dangerous, if not outright impossible for the vast majority of humanity, the interconnected systems that made galactic scale civilization possible buckled and collapsed. With this came an age of technobarbarism, many of the outer colonies, which had dependent on Standard Build Templates and perhaps more importantly the automated factories that used them, for their advanced machinery found that their databases had been completely corrupted. Unable to recreate them, many worlds went into a state of deep technological regress, trying to make do with what could be produced with the bodies and minds of citizens to varying degrees. For some worlds this adaptation was quick, and relatively painless, for most, technical capacity slipped to a pre-interstellar, often even pre-spaceflight state. Many would not survive this transition, dying of asphixiation, starvation, disease, or falling victims to bands of maruaders, often the remnants of former Stellar League military units. The only solace for the survivors of the Cataclysm was that the Jred appeared to be affected more severely, their galactic overmind destroyed completely, and all but a scattered few of their spaceborne organisms killed in the event, the Jred returning from an existential danger to a localized force.
In the Long Night, many turned to faith, seeking solace in the supernatural in ways that had been in steady decline throughout the Age of Unity. Some turned to traditional religion, often adapted for the new reality of a galaxy with a dangerous Earth. Others changed their traditional beliefs more radically, Castrists, formerly known as Nova-Calvanists, became increasingly militant, and their influence spread rapidly throughout the Christian galaxy. Still others turned to entirely new religion, such as the various cargo cults most famously embodied by Opus Dei, or into delusion such as with Thursdayism. Religion had made a major comeback in the face of multiple apocalypses.
It was only through the efforts of new organizations such as the Galactic Surveyor's Guild that communication was slowly re-established. As they built out the foundations Jumpgate Network and took on the duty of contacting the various surviving colonies of humanity, they also began to rechart the galaxy, replacing outdated star charts with more fitting ones. With this, human civilization, shattered into tiny fragments, began to regain contact with one another. Trade soon followed. Although it was clear that the Age of Unity would not be returning in the near term, the era of isolated islands relying nearly completely upon themselves was slowly coming to an end, and the Long Night had given way to a coming dawn.

Legacy

Despite the end of the Long Night, the slower waves of the psionic sceam still impact charted space, resulting in larger numbers of Jumpspace Anomalies than is the norm. This effect is more pronounced in areas with a greater Jred presence, as the various worldminds have the final call of the overmind encoded in themselves, incidentally amplifying it over a local area, and preserving its effects, often centuries after the last of the waves had passed. In further reaches of the Far Frontier the last of the waves, traveling at the speed of light still impacts them as it makes its way through the galaxy. The sheer force of the Cataclysm reshaped the galaxy in other ways, as the waves of energy blew away many nebulae, and altered the lifecycle of stars. It is believed that that Cataclysm has shortened the lifespan of the charted areas of the galaxy by as much as a hundred million years.
Culturally, the Cataclysm was such an extreme event that some calendars have been created turning the events of the Cataclysm into a new year zero as it fundamentally reshaped human civilization, even in the Earth Centric calendar, the events of the Cataclysm have fundementally created a new era, one where humanity must pick up the ruined pieces of the Stellar League and try to create something new. A new era of disunity unseen since the Emergency Mandate of the United Nations nearly two and a half millenia ago has risen. For some, this presents an opportunity, liberated from the shackles of the League, they can experiment with new methods of organization. For others, particularly those that benefited from the Old Order, a sense of disenchantment and loss has arisen or given way to delusion or revanchism.
For the Jred, the results were equally apocalyptic, the collapse of their unified conciousness and the echoing psychic damage largely brought an end to their spread, and many Psions believe that the echoes of the Cataclysm still ring, stunting the ability of the Jred to ever unify to the same extent again. This has likely condemned the Jred to a process of slow extinction as the superspecies is systemically destroyed or forced to adapt, losing its ability to connect with one another and reducing the gestalt conciousness to nothingness.

Type

Metaphysical, Psychic

by Nightcafe

The only surviving recording of the Cataclysm at its epicenter.

by Nightcafe

A scene of technobarbarians wandering through a ruined settlement in the Long Night