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The Intersolar Commonwealth, the United Government of Humanity founded in 2018, rose from the unification of the British Empire and her colonial nations once they were invited to sign a unification agreement in London. This was following the discovery of the an alien structure (later know as the Protheans Archives) on Mars when the crew of the first manned mission to the Red Planet led by the Imperial Prince of Britian accompanied by representatives from supporting colonial administrations; the United States of North America,the Indian Republic, and the Australian Confederacy. Upon the crews return to Earth after discovering and accidentally activating the facility they clarified to the British Government further as to why the mission was aborted.

The crew discovered that Humanity was not alone in the Universe, they encountered the mummified remains of the base's occupants initially thought to have been killed by a virus either intentionally released or an accidental release. Future research teams would discover the cause of death was starvation, and due to the facilities impressive technology the air was so sterile, decomposition of the bodies was slowed to a near stop. This caused the bodies to mummify leaving behind near perfect specimens for dissection and study by human scientists.

The Emperor and the Prime Minister of the British Empire called for the findings of the Mars mission to be made available to the leaders of the world, (Excluding the Nations of Russia and her few Allies, at the time) so that they would all understand the severity of the discovery and understand the need for a united government after the discovery of an alien races' base on one of the closest neighbouring celestial bodies.

Most of the Imperial administrations agreed for the unification outright without incident, however, there was strong opposition from the Asian continent, which after some considerable negotiations agreed to the unifying movement, which caused major uproar from the Russian Tsardom who, after discovering the purpose of the meeting which most of the world leaders had attended, openly accused the Empire of betraying the fellow nations of the world by withholding information from non-affiliated countries that was lawfully information all humans should have knowledge of.

The Tsardom was the only independent super power nation left that was not affiliated or part of the British Colonial Republic (BCR). China had, until ten years previously, been closely linked to the Tsardom until it decided to side with the Republic, though only recently being admitted to the Republic as a protectorate nation, they were the source of unsettlement in the Asian continent following the unification proposal. Once China and the rest of the continent agreed to the terms negotiated, the Empire and its supportive Colonial Republic signed the Unification Act (UA) in 2019, effectively removing all control of military and scientific operations from individual countries hands, assigning both departments to the newly founded Human Military-Scientific Division (HMSD), which would form the basis for the Intersolar Commonwealth.

The declaration of the UA made Russian leadership outraged, not only had their alliance with the Chinese Democratic State (CDS) fallen through but they were now, more than ever, isolated from international, now, global community. The following year of increasingly aggressive diplomatic meetings to gain Russian support for the fledgeling world government led to the Russian diplomat in London declaring negotiations with a tyrannical government was futile and only strength would show the world its folly. The following day the Russian embassy was closed, and no communication with Russia was made until six months later when a shotgun video was broadcast over all digital antennas declaring war on the British Empire and the BCR.

The ensuing war would see the capitulation of the Tsardom with bloody losses on both sides with some European territories being completely devastated by near continual munition bombardment. As such for punishment and reparations Russia was forced to make were the concession of most of the Russian homeland to the CDS, Middle Eurasian Coalition (MEC) and the old eastern European states (many of which were direct puppets of Britain, but bore the brunt of the fighting.) The lands that would remain, in Russian control, had its government made up of citizens sympathetic to the ideals of the UA and its Tsar was forced to abdicate and his daughter would become the Tsarina of the Free Russian State (FRS) and would marry the Imperial Prince of Britain to form a union between the two powers. The FRS would also become part of the BCR ensuring that the old Earth old state would remain loyal to Britain and under control of the region until it was deemed necessary for the country of Russia to be reform.

Though it would not be officially called as such for many years, the Anglo-Russo Pacifica War would eventually get the name of the Unification War for Humanity. Unsurprisingly after the population and resources of the Russian provincial territories became available to the rest of the global markets once more, the HMSD would receive a substantial increase in its budget and concede of more state powers to the Division essentially making it the super-state the founders had wished to be.

The increased resources and funding the landless state wielded enabled it to invest in extensive, prolonged research of the newly named Mars Archives (MA), which would produce technological, sociological, economic, geological, historical, and medical innovations that seemed to endlessly fall out of the Archives online database. It appeared to many scientists that even 1 Terabyte of data would equal 1 years' worth of advancement and the data stream was endless. Subsequently, after 5 years' constant study it is estimated that Humanity had advanced its society by 50 years in all areas of discovery, yet none of this advancement compared in the light of the decryption of faster than light travel.

2025 saw Humanities first prototype FTL engine manufactured then installed into the HMS Britannia where it would be rechristened the HSS Explorer, upon receiving its orders to complete a full orbital survey of every planet and moon in the Sol system post a run-in flight from Earth to Mars and back. Not only did FTL mean Humanity could strive forward into the stars it also meant that the completion of the global state was required, thus the HMSD would receive it last state powers that enabled it to form its own Senate and laws but also the ability to operate independently of the direction from the Empire, whose power had been willingly divulged to grant the global state autonomy and governance of all of Earth apart from removing the national governments of the old states to maintain cultural heritage of Earth as well as the continuation of the countries which founded the new representative for the Human species having finally achieved autonomy, it was renamed the Intersolar Commonwealth.

In 2055 after continuous exploration of the Sol system minus the five-yearly resupply missions required for the Explorer, it was agreed that no other Prothean base or facilities existed in the system, so the decision was made to dispatch a single extra-solar capable ship to Alpha Centauri to determine if there was Prothean presence and as hoped, habitable worlds for Humanity to colonise. The technology of FTL engines had been extensively analysed and reversed engineered following assistance from advanced computer analysis software which was the predecessors to the Gen-1 Virtual Intelligence programs, which allowed for the new generation of FTL ships to make a Pluto to Earth round trip in less then a month.

They also required fewer amounts of the newly discovered Element Zero which at the time was in very limited supply, the only accessible source was what remained within the MA in storage containers though other sources had been identified on several of the Jovian moons and Pluto. Though due to the considerable distances involved and the enormous task of transporting mining equipment and crews to these sites were uneconomical for the ISC that was until the invention of wormhole technology.

The wormholes had been an experimental FTL technology sometime before the discovery of Eezo and despite the Eezo FTL engines being produced first, the technology was still under development until 2066 when a stable test connection from Nevada to Port Evergreen on the moon was established allowing the transportation of personnel and equipment in a fraction of the time it took space elevators and connecting shuttle flights to the Lunar Orbital Station, which had been operating for fifteen years by the test date. Once the trial was complete, the ISC transport minister commissioned the construction of a wormhole network for Earth, dubbed the Trans-Earth Loop.

Furthermore, permission was given for a wormhole to be built that would connect Berlin to the MA, despite the projected power usage needing half of all nuclear plants in Old Europe to power, though it was already theorised that a zero width wormhole could be produced that could feed energy from planned solar farms in orbit of the Sun back to Earth to power the entire planet and furthermore all human settlements in the Sol system. These programs and the research needed would take decades to complete, but the optimism behind the plans was so great the go-ahead for the Earth-Mars Link was approved immediately, though it took fifteen years to get the system in place, once it was activated personnel and equipment freely moved between Earth and Mars which meant data and research flowed at a phenomenal rate due to the reliance on relay stations and long ship deployments being redundant.

As the new year dawned of 2069, the 50th anniversary of the UA saw the Intersolar Commonwealth make its first landfall in a foreign solar system, Alpha Centauri the closest stellar neighbour to Sol had been reached. Of course, the message had taken twelve years to reach Earth and the original crew who had ventured forth had long since passed away leaving their children who were now leading the mission, to set up a preliminary colony on a planet of their choice providing no habitable planet being present.

This, fortunately, was not necessary, as after one month's worth of transmissions streamed in, it was announced that the ISCS Pavilion had landed on the fourth planet from Alpha Centauri. The planet was roughly the same size as Earth with two small moons which thankfully showed rich deposits of Eezo on both which would allow the Pavilion to conduct an extensive survey of the system while the rest of the forty-five-crew established their new base of operations until the next scheduled flight to the planet was ready, which would be sped up enormously due to the discovery of the H-congruous world.

The planet was named Terra Nova mostly due to the rich array of continents and vast oceans the world boasted, the settlements first residents despite being a mix of scientists from all fields quickly set about creating the first generation of Terra Novans. So much so that when the ISCS Cradle, housing twenty thousand eager settlers from all works of life arrived in 2086, thanks to the much-improved FTL engines afforded to the Cradle, the local population of Terra Nova was nearing one hundred.

Within a month of the Cradle touching down on Terra Nova, an Eezo mining vessel departing from Pluto reported a FTL engine malfunction as it crossed close the moon of Charon, the vessel couldn't evacuate the crew in time before the engine imploded within an FTL bubble, leaving a cascading wake of ultra-hard and thermal radiation hurtling towards the small moon. What followed next caused the whole system to erupt into panic, the moon exploded, revealing a large alien machine where once the moon's core would have been; The centre of this machine emitted trace amounts of Element Zero which would later be theorised as the cause of the mining vessels FTL malfunction due to a surge in electromagnetic radiation caused by the spooling up of the vessels engine.

Despite the initial panic the moon's destruction and the revealing of an alien machine brought, once the images of the survey ships sent to investigate, at a safe distance, arrived at the MA the scientists quickly reassured the system that it was a Prothean machine used by their Empire to traverse the galaxy. This statement only made the situation worse for most in the system as they now feared that the activation of one of the aliens' transportation machines would cause the Prothean's too soon be back, despite the Commonwealth government assuring the populace that this was highly improbable since Prothean remains were discovered on Mars.

Although many saw the logic, that if the Prothean's were still around, they wouldn't have left nearly a hundred of their own kind to starve on a barren world, there were still those who called for the immediate creation of a Navy to be ready for any eventuality. The ISC knew that even if a Navy were created, it would be of little effect against a truly intersolar empire, though plans were put in motion to commission fifteen orbital shipyards around Venus for the sole purpose of constructing military ships. The biggest worry for the ISC was the fact that the Prothean device had caused such a devastating impact on their own FTL engines, so it was decreed that no ship would venture near the machine for fears that another malfunction could destroy Pluto and the people who live there, not to mention the vast reserves of Eezo that lay within.

Although the conventional FTL engine was tried and tested on almost all ships, private ship manufactories began to pressure the ISC transport ministry to invest in shipboard wormhole technology as many now did not trust the use of Eezo or alien-based technology. This mindset spread to such an extent that a new law was written stating that all technology of alien origin must be thoroughly analysed and reverse engineered so that all traces of foreign origin were removed and nothing but human-based technology remained to ensure that nothing was unknown nor unbuildable.

This all but ended the use of the Prothean FTL engine technology for humanity, despite the field receiving trivial funds to expand the knowledge base, efforts and resources shifted to promoting wormholes and reverse engineering to such an extent that most modern technologies and devices produced since the flood of alien knowledge, were recalled, and recycled with the seal of approval stating that it was all human made. The boost for wormhole production led to the first intersolar wormhole portal being produced in 2090 which could reach four light years enabling the fledgeling Terra Nova colony to receive much-needed equipment and colonists directly from Hong Kong.

Despite the clamour to enter the new colony world in a fresh system, there were still many people who wanted to emigrate to the Martian colony of New London. The colony had been steadily growing ever since it was first established as an outpost for the scientific teams working on the Archives to the point its population was now at fifty million with plans from the Martian government to build five more cities within twenty-five miles South of New London. There were already two cities under construction but the inhabitants were growing tired of bio domes and habitats and wanted to freely walk upon their planet, so in 2091 a wormhole was opened within Jupiter and Mars to pull through millions of tonnes of gasses to thicken the atmosphere of Mars, while greenhouse power plants were constructed to aid the thickening process and melt the frozen water trapped within the soil. All gases that could be converted to oxygen or water would be with purpose built facilities to aid the terraforming process.

Fifteen years from when the efforts of terraforming began Mars started to show signs of coming alive, as wispy clouds could be seen with ever increasing frequency flowing across the Martian sky while at the top of Olympus Mons Snow caps began to deepen while on the lower banks smalls streams started to flow. The introduction of algae to the underground water systems aided the production of oxygen, while comets from Saturn's rings were wormholed into a decaying orbit where the heat of re-entry slightly increased the temperature and brought more water to the planet. The Moon had also seen a small population growth of its own reaching a population of a twenty million by 2093, though no terraforming was planned as it was a law that the moon would be kept as pure as possible.

2100 saw Humanities population reach fifteen billion, twelve of which on Earth alone and with space on Earth growing scarce, a desperate search for new garden worlds began. The domestic use of wormhole stations made travel within a system incredibly easy but to traverse an intersolar distance was far harder, despite there being wormhole drives for ships, there were not the means of producing large enough vessels nor the technology to transport everything needed to start a new colony world and to keep the new population alive during the voyage. It was possible to reach Terra Nova with an Earth-based wormhole, but that was the current limit of range, though an idea of establishing a relay network similar to the Prothean network was proposed to allow instant transport between all planets Humanity had laid claim to.

But to bridge the gaps of further systems the range of wormholes had to increase, however, the ISC Colonial Planning Authority (CPA) broached the idea of exploring Luyten's Star by deploying a ship at the absolute max of its range and then deploy a wormhole relay to allow the ship to reach another four light years towards Luyten's Star and continuing the process until the system was reached whereby the ship could conduct a systematic survey in order to find any habitable planets, as it happened when the ship arrived in 2110 there was a colossal garden world discovered.

The planet was named Arcadia for the bountiful volume of green space there was on the globe as over ninety percent of the world was continental and most of that was perfect arable land. The only body of water was a thin tropical sea to the equatorial region of the world, and due to this tiny body of water the most complex moving life on the planet was multi-cellular amebas, while on the vast landmass, forests spread across two-thirds of the globe while the remaining third on the northern and southern hemispheres closest to the poles were arctic tundra, and deep surface scans showed that abundant metal ore deposits were found all over the planet but particularly in the tundra regions.

The world also featured very little seismic activity save for one active volcanic region were a mountain range that made the Himalayas look like a mound of rocks back on Earth, and the new largest volcano which spewed millions of tonnes of lava every hour directly into equatorial sea, from the looks of it had been doing this for millennia as the 50 miles wide stretch of water was now nearly bridged by the lava field. Due to the lava flows the forests had been kept clear of this region from years of forest fires leaving a scorched scar 3000 miles in diameter all the way around the mountain range which was named the Scorched Lands while the mountains were named the Herculaneum Mountain Range.

Colonisation was approved as soon as the findings were returned to Earth, the new colony would be founded at the far side of the planet to the Herculaneum Mountains in order to spread unimpeded in all directions to spread out onto but also to cultivate for farming once the neighbouring forests had been felled. In 2112 the megacity of New Paris was opened for habitation with a capacity of a three hundred thousand, and within a month it was full as the new planetary Government received millions of applications for residency by the minute so another four cities were immediately commissioned.

The pressure on finding new homes for Humanity only increased with increasing life spans thanks to improvements in medicines, medical technology and with thanks from a Prothean medical database complete with a full human biological examination, presumably gathered from tests on live humans many centuries previous. The improved knowledge of the human body in such detail enabled for Humanities life span naturally to reach an average of 150 years, but with medicine and healthy lifestyles that could be extended to 200 years.

Throughout all the discoveries and revelations the Prothean Archives had brought to the ISC the one thing Humanity had failed to find was any evidence of the Prothean's destroyers, however, humanity had found the Mass Relays despite it being an accident but were still wary of using it to explore the galaxy as they were all too aware that at some point they may well be exposed to an alien race and had done their best to build an active defence fleet since the moon of Charon being destroyed, as well as building a strong diplomatic force to try and prevent warfare with aloen races. The fleet, which consisted of one hundred and fifty Frigates, one hundred Destroyers, sixty-five Battleships, fifty Cruisers, fifteen Supply ships, fifteen Carriers and five Dreadnaughts bringing naval strength to four hundred ships, although plans are made for a Juggernaut class vessel, said to be the strongest military entity ever made by man, and designed for long term independent deployments far from human settlements to act as a first line of defence.

Several years after the approval of the Juggernaut plans, the Commonwealths Colonial Planning Authority announced the discovery of seventeen habitable garden worlds within 15-45 light years of the three colonised Human worlds, and by the time the first Juggernaut was being constructed, five of the new worlds had been reached and were beginning to set up their capital megacities and wormhole links to connect them all to each other for faster development thanks to the improved generators for wormholes which increased the range to 25 light years allowing for these five to be reached much more quickly than Arcadia but also allowed for the new worlds to be staging posts for future expansions and for the next planned colonies to be accessed and open for settlement much sooner than before.

The new planets in order of colonisation were named, Harvest, Oaktier, Augusta, Velaines, and York 5 all working towards their own global wormhole connection alongside their wider Commonwealth links all located in the planet's capital cities.

Many other worlds had been independently settled but have since been absorbed into the official ISC colony count, though many of the worlds were habitable zone barren planets in desperate need of terraforming just like Mars had been. Though many of the worlds were favourable for Human growth, so by the year 2150 the Commonwealth's population was now standing steady at forty-five billion Humans most of which were on the Big 15 worlds the newest planets forming a perimeter around Sol with a varying distance of 5-10 light years, they became know as Adagaster, New Berlin, Hastings, Wessex, Salvation, Venezia, Green Hills, Harmony, Eire and Trevelyan, along with Harvest, Oaktier, Augusta, Velaines, and York 5 they together formed the 'Big 15' inner colonies. With the increase of inhabited planets and their populations growing at steady rates, the ISC navy adhering to colonial protection protocol had to expand its navy to cover the new colonies and maintain a standing fleet in case of any emergency situation.

With the military size of one hundred million troops, two hundred million sailors and fifty million pilots spread across the Commonwealth's seventy-eight colonies. Many old earthen heads of state still questioned the need for a standing military of three hundred and fifty million serving men and women, but the Commonwealth governments and colonial governments had insisted it was a necessity.

It was not until the planet of Shanxi was colonised on the very edge of Human territory, that the navy first saw a real threat action deployment. After the general arrangements for the supply of the colony's defences and necessary building materials to get the colony up to self-sufficiency had been delivered to the planet along side the first part of a five-stage defence deployment, standard colonisation protocol arrived in the settlement that the newly established sensors on the edge of the system to search the system found something out of the ordinary. They had detected an enormous amount of dark energy emanating from an unknown, presumably small moonlet on the far side of the systems only gas giant. Until the sensors came online, the outer planets of the system had been widely uncharted.

Of course, the Commonwealth Science Directorate instructed the newly arrived defence fleet to investigate the object orbiting the systems large gas giant. Upon reaching the location, the fleet discovered the largest Mass Relay ever observed in Human space, only this one was active. When the Relay in the Sol system burst from the moon of Charon the blue light identical to this ones was a fraction of the size and all but inert whereas this new one was filling the space between the rings and was pulsating violently which sent the Naval council, and the Governmental powers into disarray.

After a rushed emergency meeting with the ISC President and the Emperor of Earth, it was decided that on this occasion, they would allow one ship from the fleet to venture through the relay. As the Prothean data showed that, no ships suffered damage or harm from travelling through them and as this relay was bigger, it was theorised that this Relay may be a turntable to redirect ships to different smaller relays. It became a widely-held theory that this was the corresponding relay to all the smaller ones in human space. Therefore, once the message came through, the chosen ship the ISCS Arcturus approached the relay. Once it reached 5km from the relay, it shot through space.

When the ship reappeared, the crew immediately scanned the surrounding space and found themselves on the very far side of the Commonwealth, with a similarly large Mass Relay floating 10km aft of the ship. The ship had emerged directly parallel to where they were before, this supported the theory that this relay was a Link Relay that would have been used by the Protheans for larger spacial jumps throughout the galaxy to corresponding Link Relays before moving to travel within sectors using smaller Mass Relays. It would later become known as the simply as the Link Relay.