21st Century World History by Tigerstripe
Electronics and biotechnology rapidly advanced during this period of history.
The Human Genome Project was completed in 2003 after 13 years, and involved the coordination of dozens of laboratories and hundreds of geneticists, using several supercomputers. By 2018, a handheld device could fully sequence the human genome in minutes.
Understanding the genome took much longer, as each gene needed to be identified and associated with specific traits. By the dawn of 2020, genetic testing to determine risk of disease had become routine in well-developed countries.
The first practical uses of artificial intelligence became widespread by the end of 2018, though robots did not take over most jobs as feared. Manual labor continued to be necessary for most non-manufacturing and nonretail jobs.
The first self-driving vehicles finally hit the commercial market near the end of 2018, though infrastructure for electric vehicles still lagged behind, keeping them largely impractical.
Portable computing and communications devices, then known as 'smartphones' and 'tablets', had become ubiquitous around the world, even in poorly-developed regions. Wireless communications became the standard.
Advances in bio-genetics and medical tissue culturing began to yield practical applications. The first 3D-printed living organs with complicated structures, such as a complete heart and a pancreas, are transplanted. It is expected that such technologies will soon spell the end of the need for donated organs and anti-rejection drugs.
Near the end of the decade, a scandal erupted in America, where a firm in Oregon called BioLife (a subsidiary of ViridiaTech) had developed the first synthesis of human and canine DNA, creating a blueprint for the first morphs. The company was raided by the United States government, the sample embryos seized and destroyed, and the company fined for illegal genetic research. A company spokeswoman said the firm maintained a strong philosophical conviction that the laws against this research were inherently unjust and immoral.
Cybernetic transhuman augmentation begins to go mainstream in the latter half of the decade, spurred primarily by the industry's leading giant, Cybertronics (another ViridiaTech subsidiary).
Chinese geneticists, using data stolen from the BioLife incident, create the first wolf morphs to inaugurate the new decade. The Communist government, which sanctioned the research, plans to mass-produce billions of the new species as a vast slave-labor force. Chinese law decrees the morphs are sub-human, labels them as 'products', and denies them any rights, considering them legally the same as livestock.
This sparks a morph-engineering international 'arms race', as dozens of countries across Asia and Eastern Europe compete to create new morph variations, and sell them as laborers, soldiers, sex workers, and everything in-between. Huge factories create tens of thousands of newborn morphs each day. some of the more advanced ones have developed artificial wombs for this, but most of the cheaper ones use genetically-engineered farm animals as surrogate mothers.
African dictatorships are huge consumers of fennec-fox morphs, using them primarily as an expendable slave labor force to build new infrastructure and displace the human labor force as proxy-laborers, with their human owners receiving the economic benefits.
North American and European countries experience a growing ethical crisis over the sudden appearance of morphs, with a rift forming over the questions of the legality of creating morphs, owning a morph as a domestic servant, owning one as a sex slave (marketed as 'sex toys' of course), using them as unpaid laborers, using them as military cannon fodder, using them for hazardous material disposal work, and other controversial issues. They begin to allow some limited imports of morphs for use as domestic servants, and treat them a little better than other parts of the world do, but the genetic engineering to create new morph varieties remains banned.
By the end of the decade, vulpine morphs from Japan have become commonplace as domestic servants, and the BBV (Big-Breasted Vixen) stereotype had gone global within the international sex industry.
BioLife strongly objects to this 'perversion' of their creation, but governments deny them the right to patent or control morph genomes. Forbidden to pursue or patent the research at home in the USA, BioLife is screwed and powerless to stop the exploitation of morphs, and fades from public memory.
As morphs become the biggest new fad, cybernetic human augmentation fades... and with it, Cybertronics fades from being a global household name.
Western-culture nations finally allow private businesses to experiment with engineering new morph varieties. The global population of morphs now stands at nearly 4 billion: almost 1 morph for every 2 humans on the planet. Although most of them are still maturing, child labor is commonplace for morphs. They work the factories and the fields and all the menial jobs humans don't want to do, providing for all 12 billion mouths.
The intelligence of morphs begins to become an issue, as activists begin major campaigns to protest the widespread use of drugs and lobotomies to suppress that intellect and make morphs subservient and stupid. BioLife is the largest business backing such activist groups, and even continues to support them when the activists begin using terrorist tactics and arson to make their protests louder.
Morph oppression continues relatively unchecked, with only a few countries doing anything to stop it. The situation strongly parallels negro slavery 200 years earlier, except it's the Eastern world that dominates this new slave trade.
Germany, a country with a lasting harsh memory of the consequences of legitimizing racial superiority, is the first to grant morphs emancipation and citizenship equality with humans... followed in short order by Iceland, then later by Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, and Norway. Russia and China crack down hard on morph-freedom activists, as their governments become extremely hostile toward the idea of morphs being equals with humans, and deny they are even sentient beings (classifying them as organic A.I. instead). The giant morph-breeding companies simply refuse to export their products to free countries, and focus on the slave countries, where the profits are.
Toward the middle of the decade, numerous nations around the globe begin to experience significant upheavals and public unrest, as the gaping rift between conservative and liberal values finally polarizes societies so strongly that it hits a critical tipping point, and people begin to violently defend their worldviews. Pervasive easy communication allows people to organize even more effectively than during the Arab Spring movement 30 years earlier, and mass protests seek to topple numerous oppressive regimes... and many protests turn into violent riots. Naturally, many regimes react by clamping down on civil rights, with martial law and mass arrests becoming the norm. In nearly every country around the world, the same liberal vs. conservative battles are erupting wherever the two sides meet. Most of the major cities have to deal with multiple riots and significant destruction of property every month.
The situation degenerates more rapidly in the most authoritarian and unstable countries, igniting multiple high-intensity civil wars across the African continent and isolated parts of Asia. The pro-morph-freedom camp remains a distinct minority at this point, but it's growing.
Global peace is rapidly falling apart...
In 2050, ultra-liberal morph-sympathizing revolutionaries seize the Hoover Dam and take the workers and some tourists hostage. The US government sends in the Army, who fight to clear out multiple snipers along the downstream canyon. The Army lays siege to the dam, and breaks into the structure after a month, slaughtering many of the revolutionaries in an assault that stirs up ugly memories of the infamous Waco Siege massacre. The last of the revolutionaries choose to be martyrs and broadcast a bold statement that they'd rather die free than live as slaves... and detonate a stolen Russian nuclear warhead they had brought with them, blasting the structure apart, and killing all the hostages and most of the attacking soldiers. This obviously also unleashes the reservoir, which surges downstream, and the flood overtops and breaks every dam downstream as it heads for the ocean, drowning tens of thousands and washing whole towns away in a major disaster.
It is a watershed moment for the United States. The revolutionaries are branded victims by the liberal states along the Pacific coast and in the New England region, but labeled terrorists by the Federal Government and the southern and mid-western states. Violent high-intensity riots erupt in dozens of major cities, and the economy quickly crumbles. Facing a nationwide economic and social collapse, states take matters into their own hands. California is the first to unilaterally declare independence, and the Feds respond by deploying troops and declaring martial law across the nation. The public reacts in a firestorm of rebellion, and the country implodes. The liberal states declare independence in rapid succession, forge their own alliance to oppose the Federal Government, and order their own National Guard units to resist the Federal forces by any means necessary, raising vast public militias to augment their defensive capabilities. A crowd of protesters assemble in Washington DC to protest the dawn of a second civil war and plead for peace, but Federal troops open fire on the crowd. The whole country ignites like a powderkeg. Every liberal-versus-conservative issue is used as an excuse for the violence, which sees whole towns burn from within or attack each other.
Other countries are shocked to see the United States so suddenly descend into a brutal second civil war, even as the same liberal-versus-conservative problems are boiling up to the surface of their own societies. America's collapse only fans the flames of discontent around the world, as their critical part in the global economy causes markets around the world to fall into a deep depression, and inflation skyrockets worldwide.
By the middle of 2052, as America's vicious civil war enters its second year, Europe is bursting at the seams with social and economic woes and civil discontent, and is a powderkeg ready to blow apart. It just needs a big enough spark...
The Middle East is already on fire, as Iran takes advantage of the American distraction to go after their old bogeyman: Israel. Iran invades Syria and annexes the crippled war-torn country that never recovered from their decades-long civil war. Israel responds to the Iranian invasion with airstrikes, and Iran uses ballistic missiles, and Israel nukes Iranian cities. 20 million Iranians are killed, but this turns the whole Muslim world against Israel. Seeing the opportunity to annihilate the Jewish thorn in their side, and grab that land, they all attack. Israel fights fiercely and gallantly, but without their American ally to help, and Europe unwilling to get embroiled, the odds are against them. Israel fights for nearly a year, before resorting to their Sampson Option and nuking the major cities of everyone attacking them, as well as enemy armies on their own soil. Israel finally collapses, but the Arab victory is pyrrhic, because they are now so weak that they cannot defend themselves or even restart their crushed economies. Another Arab-spring uprising topples regime after regime, dumping the whole region into anarchy. Jihadist factions flourish in the power vacuum, vying for dominance, and the cycle of violence spreads and intensifies until the whole region looks like Syria during the 2010s.
China and Russia move in to subjugate & annex the crippled Middle East, to stop the jihadists from spreading, and secure vital resources and land.
Pakistan and India start fighting too, resulting in the largest nuclear exchange seen yet, laying waste to both countries... though Pakistan gets it much worse, and nearly ceases to exist. Afghanistan chooses to join Pakistan to preserve their common interests and resist India, while India absorbs Bangladesh and Nepal, and solidifies their grasp on their half of Kashmir. Pakistan (now including former Afghanistan territory) retains the other half of Kashmir. Little changes in this part of the world, aside from many millions killed, economies crippled and reduced to scavenging, all the major cities being left in ruins, and the farmlands tainted with toxic chemical spills (long-lasting) and nuclear fallout (short-lasting). Famine on a Biblical scale will soon strike the region, killing off more than 2/3rds of the surviving population in both countries.
North Korea opportunistically attacks the South in a bid to conquer it, correctly calculating the busy Americans won't interfere. The South suffers severe civilian causalities as Seoul is blasted to rubble by heavy artillery bombardment, but later halts the DPRK's main assault with superior technology. The North uses nukes to break through and devastate the South, and the South collapses. Furious at the DPRK for breaking the peace, China invades from the north, sweeping through the DPRK with little resistance, and captures and executes the entire Kim family, while their air forces smash the DPRK's armies in South Korea. The entire peninsula is then annexed by China, though there isn't a lot left. To prevent a refugee swarm across the border, they impose harsh martial law and close the border, demanding all Koreans stay on the ruined peninsula... though they do send in aid and try to organize the survivors into collective farms and industrial work camps.
Japan counters this new Chinese threat by rewriting their constitution to remove Article 9, and then forging an alliance with Taiwan. China attacks Japan and Taiwan in 2053 over the Taiwan issue... but the American rump state (the Feds) unexpectedly manages to send two major fleets to defend Japan and Taiwan, forcing China to respond to the Americans. China first targets the American satellite network, then things turn really hot, as ballistic missiles streak across the Pacific in both directions.
Both sides of America are devastated by the nuclear exchange with China, which largely has the effect of ending the second American civil war. China gets the worse end of this, suffering a devastating blow from the accurate and very powerful American arsenal, and loses most of their population centers and industrial capacity overnight. Over 100 million are killed in America, while more than 600 million die in China.
Russia takes advantage of the situation, declares themselves the sole surviving superpower, claims to be peacekeepers, and marches into China to "stabilize" the area. China doesn't trust Russia though, and fights back, leading to a limited nuclear war, and China counter-invading Siberia.
Japan annexes the far east Siberia when that region requests Japanese protection, as it has decided that joining even their old Japanese adversary is preferable to being dragged into a major attrition war between China and Russia.
Russia loots & abandons the Middle East to focus on fighting China. China, too busy with fighting Russia, loses interest in Taiwan and Japan, which seem content to sit back and watch the fireworks. Both China and Russia develop morph variations with superior size, strength, and aggression, creating the first war beasts and centauroids, which are employed as cannon fodder & shock troops to support their war effort.
The first wolftaurs and bear-based war beasts come from Russia, while China responds with the first tiger-taurs.
Under extreme inflation and nearing economic collapse from the disintegration of the world's economy around them, and suffering severe fuel shortages from the loss of Russian and Middle-East exports, Europe teeters on the brink of anarchy. Riots and civil discontent occur with increasing frequency and violence, leading to many countries declaring martial law to try and get control of the chaos. Numerous reforms are passed to try and appease the liberals or the conservatives, but that angers the socialists and fascists, and violence erupts anyway. Towns burn and turn against each other in an eerie echo of what happened in America, as European governments try desperately to stop it from escalating further.
South America smolders with protests turning into riots on a daily basis, and some governments just seem to dissolve and disintegrate, mostly imploding under their rampant corruption problems. Many national leaders just rob the countries they rule and run for it. Nations go bankrupt, annex each other, and alliances form and are broken and shift around, while the whole continent struggles to find some stability that will last more than a few months.
Africa suffers a potent domino-effect economic collapse without the western powers or China to support them. As currencies become worthless and governments collapse into anarchy, most of the continent descends into the darkest period of tribal warfare it has ever known. Genocide and ethnic purging becomes commonplace, as whole villages and cities are subjected to "rape, pillage, and burn" tactics. Algeria, Niger, Chad, and Nigeria band together to form the new Kingdom of Sahara, desperately trying to avoid falling into anarchy like everyone else around them. Within a decade, South Africa's government is one of the last survivors: their forces push north, gradually annexing territories as far north as Congo and Tanzania, mostly bringing stability and peace as they go, becoming one of the few humanitarian heroes of this conflict. The rest of Africa falls into a chaotic mess of local warlords and lawless jihadists fighting each other for dominance. Decades of warfare trigger famine on a massive scale, killing millions more, and crippling (but not halting) the war efforts.
Malaysia and Indonesia suffer economic and political collapse, and most of the Pacific islands also fail and succumb to mass starvation as the vital supply ships stop coming. Damage from typhoons cannot be repaired with the world economy in ruins, and no humanitarian aid is available. Alliances are forgotten as the troubles elsewhere divert resources and attention. The forgotten island nations starve and suffer a population crash, until they reach a subsistence level that the land and sea can support. In some cases where deforestation and overfishing has ruined this chance before the crash, the entire population goes the way of Easter Island.
Australia and New Zealand largely escape the troubles of the wars, and end up annexing some of the nearby islands to bring in humanitarian relief, but can't over-extend themselves. Without the global economy, life is very tough, and they have to make a lot of hard decisions and ration their limited supplies. Australia ultimately absorbs Java, Sumatra, the other islands in the chain down to Timor, Singapore, the mainland peninsula portion of Malaysia, and Papua New Guinea and the Solomon islands. New Zealand takes in New Caledonia, Fiji, Vanuatu, and most of the smaller scattered islands as far out as the now-abandoned French Polynesia. Most of these areas see the new management as a glimmer of hope, and soon apply to Canberra or Wellington to formally join as official states or territories of Australia or New Zealand, respectively. Most of these requests will be approved, as these two governments do their best to support their new provinces and maintain stability during these difficult times.
Hawaii and Guam later choose to join New Zealand's alliance too, as they have been left to wither on the vine while the mainland states take the brunt of the war's destruction. Both do get nuked by the Chinese though, smashing the air bases on Guam and destroying most of Pearl Harbor, but the civilian areas are pretty much ignored as a non-threat without those bases.
The rest of the core of the Pacific tries to restore some order by banding together to form the new Malaysia Federate States, centered about the remains of Malaysia and Indonesia (minus the territories absorbed by Australia & New Zealand) and the Philippines.
To prevent Russia from gaining the advantage with conquest again, and crush the jihadists, China hits the Middle East with cobalt bombs, salting the Earth with deadly radiation fields that turn the whole region into a giant exclusion zone as bad as Chernobyl, that'll be uninhabitable for at least 400 years... though this does yank the carpet out from under the jihadists' feet. The few survivors migrate to the newly re-formed Malaysia Federated States, which is the last surviving Muslim country with a functioning government.
Toward the later stages of the wars, in the late 2070s and early 2080s, most of the world's governments have vanished or been combined to form about a dozen super-state conglomerates, about a third of the world's population has been killed, and more than 70% of all infrastructure is in ruins.
Europe and North America have largely stabilized, though Quebec is now independent from Canada, and the fragmented former United States is long gone forever. The many Caribbean states and Puerto Rico have joined to form the new Caribbean Confederacy... and except for a large neutral country called Amazonia that covers much of northern Brazil, South America has started to stabilize and has formed an EU-style union of their own. Russia has lost a lot of Siberian territory north of China, but has gained Kazakhstan as a dependency, and China & Russia have reached a stalemate, with World War I-style trenches separating them in some hot-spots. China has conquered Mongolia, and gained dependencies in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Myanmar, and Thailand. Japan continues to hold onto the Kamchatka peninsula, the eastern half of Magadan province, Chukotka Okrug, and Sakhalin island, handling them as protectorates, and is winning hearts there as benevolent protectors.
By the late 2070s, some areas have mostly stabilized... but the issue of morph rights is growing to become the most contentious unresolved issue, threatening renewed conflicts. In many countries, the liberal-conservative split still remains about the same... but overall, the liberals are emerging on top, mostly because they are the youngest generation, and getting weary of war.
In retaliation for the loss of their homelands, displaced Arab survivors in Malaysia secretly develop new biological weapons, unleashing them in China, Europe, South America, North America, and Africa. They spread to all continents and all countries, infecting and killing billions. Genetically-engineered humans and morphs called "Saurons" are also created: as living virus-factories, they carry and spread plagues like thousands of Typhoid Marys, sowing paranoia and terror.
Disease and death on a massive scale changes the face of this world, depopulating vast regions in a few years. As the population crashes, the wars become unsustainable, resulting in many much-needed ceasefire agreements... but at a terrible cost of life. Billions upon billions die, many of them young. Whole new generations are wiped out again and again. Whole species phenotypes of morphs go extinct in a few short years.
Around the world, most of the remaining countries are forced to admit that human civilization is pretty badly screwed... and if they are to have any hope of recovering and rebuilding within the next few centuries, they will need help. Pushed to the brink, human society has a revelation, and most of the survivors admit that they will need the help of the morphs to rebuild; not as slaves, but as free citizens and equals. Almost every remaining country now agrees that morph emancipation and equal rights for all is in the best interest of everyone, and international solidarity also rises as people everywhere begin to realize they can't keep fighting like this anymore; this sort of war cannot be permitted to happen again.
What would later become known as the "Gene Wars" officially comes to an end in 2090 with a global ceasefire signed by all surviving governments, followed rapidly by a string of peace treaties to end the violence for good, and a string of new alliances and free trade agreements to build feelings of safety and try to reboot the global economy. The damage has been done, but these are some good first steps.
A few non-state actors (tribes, jihadists, and rebel groups) will continue to fight on for the next couple of decades, but peacekeeper forces will gradually take them down systematically.
In the end, the global human population has fallen from over 9 billion, to just a little less than 700 million. The morph population grew enormously during the war because of forced breeding programs to make soldiers, but the plagues also hit them just as hard, dropping their population down to about 600 million. In total, since 2050, an estimated 20 billion human and morph lives have been lost.
The global destruction has affected everyone on the planet, no matter how remote or isolated. Ecosystems are in tatters, very few governments are left, most small towns have been erased from existence completely, and nearly every major city is in ruins. Hundreds of iconic animal species that were endangered before the war are now extinct.
At the end of the war, the most advanced and still-functional surviving governments are those of Australia and New Zealand, who become the legal model and new seat of world government with the foundation of the UNTWG (United Nations of Terra World Government).
Japan's government is also in good shape, though the Japanese population was decimated by the many plagues the Saurons spread. They are skeptical the UNTWG will be successful, but give it an honest effort and sign on as the third member. Their infrastructure is starting to suffer without the manpower needed to maintain it, and a lot of places are being allowed to fall into disrepair and be reclaimed by nature. Their territories are renamed Nippon-koku.
United Europe is fourth to join the UNTWG, followed by the Caribbean Confederacy, then the South American Union, and then the African Republic (created by South Africa) and Quebec. UNTWG peacekeepers and mediators then deploy around the world to put an end to smoldering conflicts and negotiate settlements, promoting peace through either diplomacy or removing the warlords. Most people submit to the UNTWG soldiers, and resume their normal lives after the soldiers move on. China and the Russian Alliance also join, though somewhat reluctantly and with reservations to maintain high degrees of political & legal autonomy. Crippled, India and Pakistan see little choice but to join the UNTWG, to stave off total collapse. Amazonia joins as well. The Malaysian Federated States and the HCKNA are the most resistant, refusing to surrender their armed forces, and continuing to be highly discriminatory toward morphs... but they do at least try to stay out of the UNTWG's way and keep a low profile.
UNTWG rules well – fair but not oppressive. With political borders shattered around the world, only the smallest attempts are made to restore the status quo ante-bellum. In most situations, locals are granted considerable autonomy under UNTWG sovereignty, which suits the many factions quite well. Mediation through the UNTWG becomes the new favored method of resolving regional disputes, and the UNTWG does their best to be accommodating for everyone.
The fate of North America:
North America has been hit especially hard, and was largely depopulated and left in ruins, with few surviving governments left. The whole continent will need to be rebuilt and re-colonized.
Except for many survivalist retreats and small enclaves of very isolated little towns, nothing official remains of the former United States. The survivors number fewer than 4 million, and very gradually begin to band together and rebuild... but the scars are permanent, and the USA will never rise from these ashes. Much of North America regains a "wild west" reputation, where people can disappear.
Those in the Bible Belt of the south will eventually band together and emerge as two large states: Ozarkia (Virginia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida) and Texas (Texas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma), which will later join to form the Holy Christian Kingdom of North America (HCKNA). Unfortunately, conservative anti-morph sentiments will simmer in this region for generations, with some areas resorting to segregation and laws reminiscent of the Jim Crow laws of history, becoming something of a continuous thorn in the UNTWG's side. They play nice when UNTWG officials arrive, but liberal reforms always seem to degrade. Although the HCKNA is by no means the only country to struggle with morph/human equality (the east is generally pretty bad), they are one of the most stubborn and defiant about the issue.
The rest of remnant America evolves into five other large territories: Oregon (Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and the western half of Montana), California (California, Nevada, Arizona, and Utah), Dakota (North & South Dakota, the eastern half of Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, and Kansas), Michigan (Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota), New England (Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine).
Alaska is an independent territory, and Hawaii has joined New Zealand's alliance of Pacific islands.
Canada remains mostly intact, but badly depopulated from disease. Quebec has broken off to become independent, and the northern arctic islands are totally depopulated or abandoned.
Except for the independent HCKNA and Quebec, the remaining American territories will be organized together with Alaska, Canada, and Mexico to form Greater North America (GNA) by the UNTWG during the Reconstruction.
The Great Reconstruction takes most of a century, as territories are consolidated and the remaining governments stabilized and reinforced. International warfare is outlawed, and all regular military forces around the world (except for the MFS and HCKNA, who disband their armies instead) are combined and placed under a single command structure, under control of the UNTWG, to try and make any future international wars too difficult to get started. The world's military forces become a giant peacekeeping force, enforcing peace treaties between old enemies and distributing aid.
Large areas of the planet (especially a huge swath across the former Muslim countries of the Middle East) are heavily irradiated from cobalt-enhanced bombs and chemical warfare and toxic spills, and will be uninhabitable for centuries. The UNTWG closes off these areas as quarantine zones (basically, giant exclusion zones like the one around Chernobyl). A number of smaller zones are established around toxic ruins in eastern Michigan (the former state, not the new territory) and scattered portions of former-America's "rust belt".
With most of the infrastructure ruined in the wars, and nowhere near enough people to maintain what little remains, much of the rest of the world is allowed to return to nature.
Some of the African warlords refuse to accept the peace of 2090, and fight on for decades, before the UNTWG puts a stop to it with peacekeepers.
Saurons are identified and rounded up, and forcibly interned in squalid conditions.
Centuries after the cataclysmic Gene Wars, the planet remains scarred. Although the global population never fully recovered from the Gene Wars, it has risen to approximately 3 billion by the dawn of the 24th century.
Practical FTL led to early interstellar exploration, and Earthlings make peaceful First Contact with their first alien race in 2135 – the Caitians. The Voxxans are encountered in mid-2141. Together, these three societies establish a new interstellar alliance: the Stellar Federation.
Some years later, the Federation encounters the Rakshani. War is closely averted in early 2158, and the Rakshani eventually join the Federation as a core member.
The Saurons are forcibly relocated to a quarantined penal colony planet in 2173, dubbed “New Mordor”. This world is later subjected to a massive Federation blockade starting in 2215 over fears the Saurons might escape and spread disease once again... ending with a genocidal planet-sterilizing orbital bombardment in 2230 to end the threat forever (one of the Federation's least public and most morally controversial acts). New Mordor is omitted from official history books, and this ugly piece of history is quietly swept under the rug.
By the dawn of the 24th century, the Federation is engaged in a golden age of colonization across a sphere of space nearly 200 light-years wide, and hundreds of newly-settled worlds form the frontier.
This article is the work of Tigerstripe © 2023, and edited by Goldfur.
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