Embers over Eden
The slow unraveling of the 21st-century world order began not with war, but with entropy. By 2085, climate disruption had triggered mass migration from coastal megacities, agricultural collapse in the global south, and permanent droughts across the Eurasian interior. The original United Nations, burdened by decades of failed reform and toothless peacekeeping, became little more than a talking shop for crises no one could fix.
It was the rise of orbital infrastructure that dealt the final blow.
By 2110, megacorporations and private spacefaring ventures had become de facto nations unto themselves. Orbiting manufacturing rings, Lagrange-point trade depots, and Luna mining colonies operated outside terrestrial law. The UN’s inability to enforce anything beyond Low Earth Orbit turned it into a relic.
The Mars Colonial Charter of 2136 marked the first true fracture. A coalition of biotech, terraforming, and energy conglomerates—with support from emerging Martian settler councils—petitioned for full economic and political autonomy. Earth’s governments, desperate for Martian imports, quietly assented. Mars was no longer a colony. It was a rising sovereign.
Then came the Orbital Reformation Accords of 2152. Corporate entities and orbital cities created the OrbNet Pact, a trade and defense alliance with its own currency, fleet, and diplomatic corps. The UN lost half its budget and two-thirds of its enforcement capability overnight.
In 2171, the Yasuda Array Incident—a cascading solar flare triggered by early supernova instability—disabled 38% of Earth’s orbital comms infrastructure and exposed deep vulnerabilities in shielding systems long overdue for upgrade. Food riots followed. Stock markets collapsed. And in the chaos, twenty-seven national governments either fell or militarized.
In 2178, the Great Schism Vote saw the formal dissolution of the United Nations. Earth’s largest remaining states, along with surviving orbital authorities and megacorporate syndicates, declared a new unifying body: the United Nations of Allied Sol—UNAS. Its mission was blunt: ensure human survival through centralized authority, even if it meant abandoning democratic principles.
UNAS took control of Earth’s major orbital elevators, declared martial law over Luna, and requisitioned all jump-capable vessels under emergency doctrine. Its vision was stark and militarized—a hard pivot toward consolidation, resource rationing, and long-term survivalist planning.
But not everyone accepted this new order.
The consolidation of UNAS ignited simmering resentment across Sol.
On Mars, settlers who had spent generations in harsh, dust-choked colonies refused to let Earth dictate their lives again. The Martian Republic was formally established in 2214, grounded in technocratic governance, gene-adaptive culture, and the right to terraform without oversight.
Beyond Jupiter, scattered habitats, retrofitted mining rigs, and outlawed experiment zones began to coalesce into something more fluid—more defiant. They called themselves the Freebelt: a decentralized constellation of anarchist flotillas, exiled engineers, and rogue AI sympathizers. To them, both UNAS and the Martian Republic represented chains—whether forged by bureaucracy or ideology.
Tensions simmered beneath the surface—disputes over asteroid resource rights, AI deployment zones, and jump-lane tolls led to backdoor skirmishes. But it was the leak of Project OLYSSIA that ignited open conflict.
Originally envisioned as a secret UNAS-only contingency, OLYSSIA was an experimental, unidirectional Jump Drive Gate powered by the aggregated cores of hundreds of ships. Its target was a deep-space system known only as Anubis, centered around a massive black hole. The project was classified under the Red Sky Protocol—a final failsafe for total system collapse.
Its exposure changed everything.
The announcement of Project OLYSSIA shattered what fragile peace remained. While the public narrative painted it as a humanitarian effort, most factions understood the truth: not everyone would be allowed through.
UNAS, controlling the majority of surviving industrial infrastructure and military capacity, began securing transit priority for high-ranking officials, elite citizens, and key scientific personnel. Its fleets mobilized around the inner system, fortifying the Gate’s construction zones and enforcing strict no-fly zones.
The Martian Republic, despite its independence, demanded access. They argued that Martian innovation and sacrifice had earned them a place. Trade agreements with UNAS had soured; disputes over mining claims grew heated. A standoff at Phobos spiraled into violence—the Siege of Phobos—where UNAS forces bombarded the Martian moon to break the blockade. Thousands perished.
In retaliation, Martian operatives—though officially disavowed—released a bio-agent into UNAS high-orbit habitats. The resulting contagion killed thousands and forced the permanent abandonment of Earth’s orbital stations.
The Freebelt took a different approach: sabotage. Even within the Freebelt, ideology fractured. Some viewed the Gate as a death sentence; others saw no future in a collapsing Sol and raced to breach the jump queue by any means necessary. Operating from deep-space junkyards and mobile stealth rigs, Freebelt cells hacked comms, attacked convoys, and spiked OLYSSIA’s software with rogue AI code.
By 2241, war engulfed the system.
The Mercury Raids saw UNAS torch Freebelt research outposts suspected of post-human experimentation. Skirmishes broke out in the Jovian belts, and even Saturn's rings became battlegrounds of desperation.
Then, on August 3rd, 2248, the sun flared again.
This time, it was different.
A violent micronova ripped through the inner system, sterilizing unshielded stations, blinding observatories, and frying entire sectors of infrastructure. Luna's remaining scientists confirmed the worst: Sol was beginning final-stage collapse. Supernova was not a myth—it was imminent.
UNAS, acting on the Red Sky Protocol, accelerated the Gate’s activation. On September 12th, 2248, the Gate flared to life. Hundreds of jump drives, synchronized and overloaded, tore open spacetime and linked Sol to Anubis. The corridor was unstable, unidirectional, and time-limited. But it worked.
The first wave launched.
UNAS arks took priority, flanked by hastily allied Martian cruisers under a fragile truce. Behind them came scientific barges, terraformers, and sleeper ships. Freebelt smugglers and saboteurs, disguised as engineers or embedded in refugee pods, slipped through the lines.
Not all made it. Martian warships attempting to jump ahead of the queue were destroyed by automated Gate defenses. Some Freebelt vessels vanished mid-jump—overloaded or sabotaged. Many were simply too late.
The Gate, damaged but still functional, remains under UNAS-Martian control—guarded, recharged slowly, and opened only when conditions allow. With Sol falling into chaos and solar radiation boiling through the inner system, new waves continue: desperate, scattered, and deadly.
Each arrival brings new power struggles, new alliances, and new enemies.
And in the shadows of Anubis, something waits.