Titanomachia

Humanity’s age of exploration began when deep-space science ships discovered that the dwarf planet Eris, at the edges of our solar system, was an ancient stargate.

After a research team activated the gate, probes revealed a vast network of star systems with habitable planets, some richer than Earth. To finance exploration and colonization, corporations merged into megacorps. Despite their seemingly altruistic goals, the megacorps shifted their focus to exploiting every resource beyond Eris for private gain. Soon, everyone who worked for these corporations became citizens and settled on these worlds as the first colonists.

Beyond Sol, the United Nations of Earth founded the Core Systems. The earliest megacorporations established homeworlds and prepared to expand. In the decades that followed, new star systems were colonized and came to be known as the Inner Systems.

Fueled by almost infinite resources, the megacorporations grew larger, each specializing in a specific aspect required for further expansion. From there, these megacorps built their own empires spanning multiple stars, forming what became known as the Outer Systems.

As humanity ventured into the unknown, remnants of an ancient civilization known as the Rheans began to surface. Their programmable metamaterial, rhillium, became part of human technology, enabling artificial gravity and advanced weapons and armor.

The explorers never encountered a living Rhean. Still, an influential part of Earth’s governance established the Human Intelligence and Research Agency (HIRA) to protect humanity. HIRA infiltrated every layer of civilization: megacorp leadership, research stations, and the private military sector.

Fearing for their survival, the most influential megacorps, led by Hyperion Industries and its CEO, Mithras Aethra, financed Trident Security Corporation and Dragon Armada to build the largest private army and space fleet humanity had ever seen. Trident Security deployed its own version of the mech, the Modular Exoskeletal Combat Heavyframe. With their support, Hyperion Industries began retaking planets in a long, bloody campaign.

The Liberation Army’s guerrilla tactics held off the overwhelming corporate forces for almost four years, but they couldn’t stop the Republic’s collapse. Elisea’s end came during a major battle on Arcadia, when a Rhean superweapon detonated, killing or disfiguring millions of civilians across the Elysium system.

The Republic claimed a Pyrrhic victory, thanks to the bravery of the Death Brigades, led by the young General Harris Ultor. But the civilian population no longer supported the war. As allegiance shifted, Hyperion Industries recaptured every system it had controlled before the conflict, except for two: Acheron and Eleusis.

Every ship that entered the Acheron gate never returned.

President Ades Eita led a large contingent of the Liberation Army’s remnants into the Acheron System. No other ship that entered Acheron returned, not even Dragon Armada warships that pursued Ades’s fleet. Rumors spread that an active Rhean superweapon destroyed anyone who entered the system. Both Acheron and Eleusis became known as the Underspace Systems: the place where dead souls travel and never return.

What remained of the Liberation Army across corporate space either surrendered or was destroyed by Trident Security and the Dragon Armada. The United Nations of Earth assumed governance of Elysium, making it the only UN-controlled system beyond the Core Systems. With their help, the peace agreement was signed.

Former soldiers who laid down their weapons could become citizens and work for Hyperion Industries. Yet reports of personal vendettas persisted. Ships and citizens were blacklisted, leaving them unable to work anywhere in corporate space.