With more than five hundred years since the 2000 Crisis, humanity managed to leave the dying earth and spread across the stars. This global drive towards the new frontier, only comparable to the exploration of the wild west, ushered in a new age of peace and prosperity. There was no time for war when there were infinite opportunities to claim new worlds, there truly was space for everyone. But soon the fatigue set in, with more and more valuable planets already settled or too far from the bulk of civilization, conflicts flared up with renewed intensity. Nobody is sure how the conflict went exactly. It shows just how big this conflict was, with the version of events differing between systems, since nobody could gather all of the information from the hundreds of scattered stations. The Histle Empire emerged from the rubble and managed to survive for 200 years of its existence, if you believe the official history curriculum. New Cradle Project It was mostly due to a terraforming project called “New Cradle”, an attempt to terraform all planets in the Lima constellation to be habitable by humans, started in 2315 then abruptly ended in 2334. To facilitate such an ambitious project, a brand new station “Hera” was built in Lima-3, the most metal-rich system in the constellation, which allowed the building materials to be made mostly “on-site”. Hera, despite being in operation for barely 5 years, yielded unfathomable results in the area of genetic engineering and climate manipulation, allowing for safe modification of the human genome, completely eradicating hereditary diseases. It also created new creatures, initially with a goal to aid in terraforming, that turned out to have more lucrative uses. Like the Gem Spider, a small arachnid-like creature designed to live on the surface of the asteroids. Named after its shiny shell, those creatures absorb minerals and cosmic radiation to synthesize never seen before materials called neo-gems with multiple applications in energy grids, space drives and weaponry. This development meant that Histle Empire could dominate its region thanks to absolute monopoly over the new resource. Disaster struck when one of the worn out fusion reactors aboard Hera station went critical after the poorly maintained safety systems failed to shut down the reaction. The following explosion tore the station into a dense cloud of dangerous debris, cutting off the system for an entire generation. Desperate to survive, survivors turned to genetic engineering to adapt to the hellish conditions. Cut off from the rest of the empire and facing imminent starvation, all safety and ethical guardrails were abandoned, using the few genetic laboratories that survived the blast to conduct reckless and often deadly experiments. In a span of less than a year, those desperate measures paid off, yielding what is now called Arachnids. While genetic engineering allowed for almost limitless changes, most of them caused the recipient to become infertile. The difficulty of having children and other inconveniences, meant that human-animal hybrids stayed as a minority of the population in the wider empire. However, Arachnids weren't subject to this limitation, able to reproduce by laying eggs. Along with the ability to withstand heavy radiation and toxins, it meant they didn't require to be constantly protected by heavy, expensive shielding from the constant radiation emitted by the wreckage. No longer forced to choose between sustaining their population or slowly dying out, Arachnids thrived during the 40 year period, able to easily scavenge the wreckage of the Hera station and eat plants bio-engineered to withstand the radiation which came at the cost of making the produce radioactive, downside easily handled by the new kind of humans. Arachnids have six spider limbs sticking out of their back, black sclera, chitin growths on their skin and superior resistance to toxic and radioactive environments while sensitive to bright light. They find large, open spaces uncomfortable, preferring to live inside cramped, dark spaces. Some of the individuals are capable of producing silk like their animal counterparts. They reproduce sexually, laying fertile eggs after successful inception. These spider-people are the reason these systems are now called “Crawling Wastes”. Their quickly growing numbers, along with incompatibility with normal human habitats, resulted in them forming their own groups, separated from the main Lima community, which soon started to fight between each other for the limited resources. After the empire cleared the debris and reestablished contact, those spider pirates started raiding isolated colonies, souring relations between the arachnids and humans. While some of them re-reintegrated into imperial society, they are perceived as outsiders and second-class citizens. The catastrophe of the Hera station caused multiple fractures within the empire resulting in two separate rebellions. Blue uprising and the silver chain uprising. Blue uprising was started in 2340 by the work unions who were increasingly marginalized and ignored in the face of growing inequality and power imbalance in the workforce. It was exceedingly brutal over the 10 years that it lasted Taking over several factories, the rebels destroyed several vaults holding neo-gems and asteroid farms which supplied them, causing the empire to struggle to make replacement ships while they used out-dated designs which didn't require any neo-gems to produce. Believing in their cause, rebels genetically changed their hair to blue color, meaning even their children would carry the symbol of their fight against oppression. Silver chain is a string of white stars located in a supermassive nebulae, giving the cosmic cloud a distinctive white color. The silver chain is located on the outskirts of the empire, making containing the sudden rebellion difficult. Not suppressed in time, rebels deployed swarms of magnetic mines. This turned an already hard to traverse gas cloud into a deadly obstacle for not properly prepared ships. Origin of Gemoids Faced with a critical shortage of neo-gems, the empire was looking for a way to increase production. The gem spiders were tiny in size and took a long time to regrow their shell between harvests. Attempting to increase their size ruined the quality of resulting gems and hybridizing them with other animals didn't produce better results. In a show of insanity and desperation, scientists mixed arachnids with gem spiders, resulting in gemoids. Gemoids have most arachnids features but instead of chitin, their spider parts are made out of neo-gems. Capable of surviving for limited time in space without EVA and strong enough to rip a person apart with bare hands, they were not only an amazing source of necessary materials but showed promise as soldiers until an incident where one gemoid went berserk and wiped out entire crew of a corvette and fled deep into crawling wastes. From that point onwards, all gemoids are imprisoned in containment facilities under the guise of “protecting innocent citizens” with propaganda insisting that gemoids are mutated arachnids but even more violent and cruel, wanting nothing more than to enslave the entirety of humanity. With the new supply of neo-gems, the empire quickly put down the blue rebellion and captured their leader, whose name and appearance was scrubbed out of all public records. While not officially discriminated against, it's rumoured that slaves with natural blue hair are especially sought after. Empire Society While deeply authoritarian, the empire enforces an odd system where all positions of power are shared between multiple individuals. While in other societies it's normal to have just a single CEO of a company or captain on a ship, in the empire there are at least two with equal power and responsibility. The only exception are the instances where it's impossible or infeasible, like a small ship. Even the imperial court is made up of multiple councilors with the hereditary Emperor sharing power with his council. This doesn't mean that those councils have everyone's best interest in mind. Like in the past, rich families usually get preferential treatment while poor have to make do with what they have. Slavery while not wide-spread and relied on for economic applications, is seen as a viable punishment, especially in cases of treason. Rich and famous families usually hold slaves to display their status and wealth, making use of servants despite the wide presence of automation which rendered maids and butlers obsolete. The genetic modification collapsed any differences between male and female with gender being seen as a personal choice. It's not unusual for someone to change their gender later in life. Despite this, the horrors of the Hera’s destruction made any “non-human” modifications ostracized. Glowing golden hair is reserved for people of great wealth. While any kind of glowing hair is difficult to achieve, this color is especially popular and associated with the super wealthy. On the opposite spectrum, blue hair is frowned upon, due to its association with the brutal rebellion. Many people opt to get dark cyan hair instead of blue.
