Humanity has risen and fallen twice, passed through manifold ages of barbarism. It is several thousand years into our future, but that frame of reference has stopped mattering a long time ago.
In the beginning, humanity developed jump drive. The US, Japan, the ESA, China, and a few others invested in a new spacegoing technology that allowed a starship to travel a parsec (~4.3 ly) in a week. the first jump away from earth, we contacted an advanced interstellar empire with materials and nuclear technology far superior to our own...who were, apparently, human in every respect. Of course the nutjobs with their ancient pyramit conspiracies (TM) were very excited, but the reality proved far more pressing than the metaphyscial angst.
The Vilani Imperium was a baroque autarchy, with stagnant corporations so byzantine in their power structure that Earth's political scientists could not pin down where enterprise stopped and government began (and vice versa). Innovation was strictly regulated in the Imperium, leading to software built on ROMs, almost exclusively rerun entertainment, and two thousand years of no progress. The Earth humans already had superior medicine and computers; the vilani weapons and engines had a significant edge.
Several centuries of alternate war, peace, and trade resulted. The Earthlings replaced the Vilani at the top of the empire, but the influence was two-way, like the British in India. Eventually the Imperium of Man fell, too, leading to more than a thousand years of piracy and isolationism on the planets of the former empire.
NOW...
A new empire has risen. It's really more like a federalism, to anyone that cares to look closely...but that's for the next chapter.
Polemical Advocacy, Motivation and Advice for the original meaning of the word, Role Playing Game
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