The Legacy of Eight: Psi and The First Unification

This is a setting overview for the new setting for the Hammercalled Roleplaying Game: The Legacy of Eight. Its goal is to detail the timeline of the universe and some key shaping events.

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The Stellar League continued its expansion into the systems controlled by the Seeders. Because the Seeders were pacifistic, they had no significant military power. Some factions within the Seeders resisted, but to no avail.

The Immortal Empire used this provocation to justify an alliance with the Centaurans. Together they would present a greater front against the Stellar League.

By the time they intervened the Seeders were pushed back to only a few dozen worlds. These worlds were all in systems with Imperial or Centauran presence to ward off the League. The Seeders would be on the margins of history for millennia.

The war against the Stellar League started with a devastating stalemate. Although the Empire and Centaurans were more powerful, they were not on war footing.

The Stellar League pioneered the field of psionics. Focused on augmenting and extending human consciousness, psionics reaches outside empirical reality. Psionics would become a broad field, but the League's psionics started as telepathy.

This gave the League an immense advantage. Their espionage capabilities stood unrivaled and they were able to coordinate fleets effortlessly.

At one point, the fighting reached the Centauran capitol. Selfless sacrifice by joint Centauran and Imperial forces repelled the League. Interdiction fields were set up around every major solar system. Without FTL, ships were vulnerable, but it prevented sneak attacks against key infrastructure. The Imperial and Centauran navies decimated themselves against the League's hordes. Automated drone ships harrassed the edges of interdiction zones. Some of these ships still float derelict, relics of an almost forgotten war.

The Empire and Centaurans soon acquired psi technology for themselves, and extended it. The precursors of modern integrity fields protected starships from breaking up during combat. Each drew power from a specialized psion, but it was more efficient than replacing ships.

The Empire made the first large-scale psionic weaponry. Its deployment would mark the end of the war and the Stellar League.

The most powerful psions in the Empire unleashed a precision strike against Concordia. The Eight Martyrs, as they came to be known, sent the system's star supernova. This shattered the centralized government of the League. The psions had slipped past FTL interdiction and achieved the impossible.

The League would still dominate parts of the galaxy, but it never pursued expansion again. Its remnants were sardonically referred to as "the Leagues" due to internecine conflict.

Despite their victory, the triumph hurt relationships between the Empire and the Centaurans. The Centaurans felt threatened by Imperial power.

The cold war that followed centered on Centauran expansion into unclaimed territory. The Empire feared that the Centaurans would become too powerful as they colonized more worlds.

The Centaurans were quick to point out that they had never destroyed a star system.

As the powers bickered, the remains of the Stellar League coalesced into a new form. The short-lived League had failed to leave an enduring cultural mark on many of its member worlds. The Frontier Union, consisting of hitherto unaffiliated worlds, was the result.

The Union was modeled after the Centaurans. The primary distinction was that it would never be an official great power. Because it was not partner to previous accords, it could colonize known space without restrictions. It promised protection against the League for its members. The only condition was a military tithe.

The Union had a streak of particularly charismatic leaders. Over its first century of existence, it played the two major powers against each other. Any hostile action could be viewed as a provocation by the other side.

Only once the Union had grown to a massive size was it forced to sign the same accords. By that point, it had ceased to be a frontier coalition. Instead, it had come to attract followers from all over the galaxy.

The major powers' cold war began to heat up, and the first Unification was just waiting for an excuse.