Antikythera Nova Pt. 1: History

This is the first of what will likely be three posts for my science fiction space setting Antikythera Nova, as part of my attempt to post easily digestible "micro-settings". This setting is intended to be somewhere between hard sci-fi and space opera; gritty and "realistic", but still crazy aliens and a little bit of space magic. I'd say it's more Starcraft or Mass Effect than Star Wars or Flash Gordon. I've tried to subvert the tropes of the genre, while still being true to it, so let me know what you think!

History

In the near future, the global hegemonic powers of the 20th century receded as the result of war and environmental disaster. The new world powers of the 21st century were in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Africa; nations which developed their infrastructure from the ground up around new technologies, and not the outdated institutions of the past.

After roughly a century of relative peace, prosperity, and technological advancement, the world governments united to create a generation ship, the Malik Tous, to terraform the Antikythera Sector of the Pickman Galaxy. The ship took 300 years to reach its destination, and along the way underwent many disasters and cultural upheavals. Early in its journey, nearly three quarters of the passengers either died or separated from the main ship during a period which has since been referred to as the Dark Age. Certain known, notable events which occurred during or shortly after the journey were the formation of the Kaddai Empire, and the origins of the Häksen, a class of people used as livestock during the Dark Age, who are now a free but marginalized ethnic minority.

Colonization of the Antikythera Sector took roughly 100 years. During this time, the Kaddai Empire transitioned into the Kaddai Federation of Planets (KFP), although shortly after this transition, a subset of KFP planets, moons, and orbital colonies broke off to form the Hun-Long Confederation (HLC).

For another 100 years, there was relative stability, until the Gabor Invasion. Given their extraordinary abilities (NOTE: This will be hyperlinked when I post the factions), the war was initially one-sided in favor of the gabor. However, despite their abilities, the gabor lacked the principled scientific knowledge of the human factions, and eventually the humans were able to develop counter-technologies and tactics to turn the tide of war in their favor. It eventually came to light that the gabor did not view themselves as the aggressors; they had been attacked by another faction of humans, and not realizing the difference, believed they were retaliating against their invaders.

During the 500 years since the journey of the Malik Tous, the humans of Earth, still in a golden age and with no hardships of space travel and limited resources to hold them back, continued to advance. Shortly after the Malik Tous left, Earth underwent a technological singularity. This event culminated in the dissolution of the solar system into gray goo; nanomachines coordinated in a series of virtual and augmented realities, or a set of matryoshka universes- in other words, a giant computational space. Most Earth-humans advanced into an entity or entities known as the singularities, an advanced intelligence(s) beyond the understanding of humans or other intelligent life. The remainder of humanity on Earth, while still part of the gray goo, chose to maintain enough of their human identity to preserve autonomy from the singularities, and live in symbiosis with it. The singularities is incredibly powerful, with the ability to access, manipulate, and communicate with beings in other dimensions (and possibly other universes), in addition to space-warping, faster than light travel. However, these abilities demand high resource consumption. This resource demand has created a bottleneck on the ability of the singularities to expand or exert itself. The singularities uses its faster than light capabilities to send out scouting parties of human symbiotes, which search for energy sources for the singularities to consume. It was when the symbiotes discovered the energy-rich gabor that the singularities invaded gabor space and attempted to assimilate the gabor into itself, leading to the Gabor Invasion of the Antikythera Sector.

Even after this came to light, the war had gone on too long, and too much bad blood remained between the humans and gabor, and so the war continues. However, it has since become much more muddled from when it started. The gabor have split up into multiple factions, including those desiring peace with the humans, while others wish to assimilate into the singularities. Likewise, many in the KFP wish for peace, and many in the HLC are attempting to join the singularities.