Although the Androsien would only have a sketchy outline of the human timeline and culture (and the elf would know nothing at all), I felt it important to get everyone on the same page as we prepare to move forward.
I draw heavily on the fiction of Alastair Reynolds and his “Revelation Space Series” for much of the following.
The Timeline
2035 – Moon Resource Center Online
2051 – First Permanent Research Facility on Mars
2067 – Colonization of Mars begins
2074 – Outer Satellite Resource Project Begins
2075 – Mars colonists become Conjoiners
2083 – OSR Factories online
2087 – Conjoiner RamDrive
2090 – Deep Space Exploration Probes Launched
2096 – Alliance formed joining former Chin-American and Lunar States
2101 – Chimeric technology begins to grow in general popularity.
2111 – Alliance technology creates CFR Engines
2112 – Conjoiner Drive is created.
2116 - Epsilon Eridani Probe reports on habitable world in system
2120 – Mars Colony reaches 1 million
2121 – Alliance vessel “Plymouth” leaves for Eridani
2122 – Lighthuggers leave for nearest 100 stars, except Eridani.
2125 – Conjoiner Civil War
2129 – Civil War ends.
2131 – Conjoiner Lighthugger “Relative Legacy” leaves for Eridani based on more probe info.
2141 - “Plymouth” and “Legacy” arrive at planet, Anasaria
2142 – Lighthuggers have visited all 100 nearest systems. Palladium system not among visited because it is about 100 light years away. Emergence of Ultras. First alien race “Elves” are met near Gliese 876.
2200 – Lighthuggers become the trade ships of the expanding reaches of human colonization.
2250 – Furthest human colonies now 40 light years from earth. Divergence of human culture on a profound scale.
2262 – Conjoiners cease production of Lighthuggers.
2347 – Anasaria has grown on its own to such a size that they begin exploration star systems further out. Alliance research vessel “California” detects ruins on a desolate rocky planet in a nearby system
2455 – Archeologists learn about the demise of this ancient alien culture
2465 – Rifts successfully established to Palladium
2474 – 2500 Skedic outposts on Palladium are built.
2524 – Cataclysm
2542 – Lighthugger “Nostalgia for Infinity” stops at Anasaria for a trade run and discovers the mass destruction. Inter-System Trade Rules require that a quarantine beacon be placed until a Threat Assessment Team can be sent in.
2552 – Alliance Deep Space Listeners here quarantine beacon and assemble a task force.
2567 – Alliance TAT arrives in Anasari orbit. TAT commanders request back-up from mercenary vessels in area (“The Splendid Verschränkung”) while they observe and research the alien activity on the planet. They do establish supply drops of food and medicine for the trapped humans, although they do not travel to the surface themselves.
2575 – Return of Rifts to Palladium, “Verschränkung” arrives in orbit and assists Tar in eliminating threats.
Human settlements outside of the Solaris (Earth) system are all very isolated from each other. At best, an Alliance or Lighthugger ship will come by every dozen or so years unless, like Solaris, they are at a hub of trade. It is not uncommon for a system to remain out of direct contact with anyone else for 30, 40, 50, or more years. If you think that the midwest is a decade behind the times, then you can extrapolate how out of touch entire colonies can be. There is no over-arching interstellar government; instead each colony is highly independent and culturally utterly different from its neighbors. This is true to such an extent that humans from different colonies may seem to be only tenuously related as a species at times.
Conjoiners
A human sub-race that began augmenting the human brain by grafting on nano-neural processors. They have altered themselves to such an extent that their skulls must be modified by the addition of huge cooling fins in order to avoid overheating their gray matter. The size and style of the fins has become a symbol of which “tribe” a Conjoiner belongs to. They are extremely aloof and very bored by almost all other humans. They traverse the great divides visiting various worlds, but no one ever seems to know what they are doing. They created the technology for both the Conjoiner drives and the alliance Cold Fusion Reactor Engines. The technology inside of the Conjoiner drives is so far advanced from typical human understanding that it is totally inscrutable. Although the Conjoiners are intellectually capable of solving any human problem that is solvable, they just don't seem to care about what happens to the rest of the race.
Ultras
Ultranauts. These intrepid souls are the crew members of the intersystem ships. They spend most of their time between ports in reefersleep (hibernation); this means that most of the Ultras crewing lighthuggers today started over 400 years ago and yet they may only be in their 40's or 50's, since to their perspective only about 20 or so relative years would have passed in the last 400 or so. Despite this relative time problem, there are still Ultras who were born on ships and have never set foot on a planet. For this reason Ultras are a strange breed, often seen as sociopathic, and certainly completely out of touch with the experience of being “human” in a traditional sense. They bounce from one port to another, trading and selling goods, enjoying a few days of party and drink, and then it's back to reefersleep for another ten years until the next stop. Many Ultras are chimeric: hybrid machine and biological human, although the symbiosis is much deeper than mere cyborg implants or bionics. In chimerics, nano machines can co-opt living cells to produce a latex like skin armor, or harness mitochondrial activity to power implants, or any other number of things.
All lighthuggers are manned by Ultras. This is sort of a Chicken/Egg Paradox. Those who were suited to intersystem travel stayed on the ships to run them while those who couldn't stomach it left. When the Conjoiners stopped manufacturing ships, there was no need to recruit large numbers of crew; the crews already in service were well on their way to forming the Ultra culture we know today. And, given the lack of a grand unifying government, we can see why these ships have no political affiliation. Furthermore, given the scale of time and the relative fragility of corporate entities it should not be a surprise that, although the multi-trillion dollar price tag of the lighthuggers was originally paid for by companies, no lighthugger is currently “owned” by any corporation. Of course, there are a couple of legal battles outstanding, but it is very difficult indeed to serve a summons over the vast distances and times involved. Thus, all intersystem trade is controlled by the Ultras.
What about the Alliance? Alliance technology is vastly inferior, even the old CFR drives made by the Conjoiners are wimpy in comparison to the lighthuggers. Alliance ships also lack the integration and nano-systems built into lighthuggers, so they age and take wear and tear much more quickly. Only the Conjoiners can build CFR engines, and so the total number of Alliance ships is dwindling with no hope of replacement. In a couple of centuries all that will remain are lighthuggers and Ultras.
Earth
What the Anasari know of Earth is that it was a political mess and an environmental disaster when they left to start their own colony over 350 years ago.
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