A Matter of Death

by Sigil of Zion

It is well chronicled in the records of the Dominion the story of their people: the formation of an entire society from a fleet of prison ships, and the never ending conflict with the Zerg Swarm. However, in the far flung koprulu sector, the history of the struggles of earth has never been known. This is the tale of one of those struggles. The tale of a young man looking for home.

1. Prologue 1

Disclaimer: I do not own Earth or Starcraft

By the year 2220 the planet we call Earth had fallen into a state of perpetual war.

Great advances in the the technological realms of cybernetics, gene-splicing and cloning proved to be more than the governments of Earth could handle. As technology continued to advance in an excelerated rate, corporate powers began selling these technologies to the common populace. In a few short years it became common to see cybernetic implants and genetically selected children on every street corner.

Meanwhile, in random places around the globe children began showing signs of excessive mutation ranging from heightened senses to limited telepathy.

At this point, that the intense concern shown in humanist factions developed into widespread panic.

Then all hell broke loose.

Technology continued to evolve and spread over the centuries, but Earth, and humanity, lacked the ability to sustain it. Population rates soared despite the efforts of world leaders. Pollution and a lack of natural resources spurred the growing civil chaos and many international economic systems collapsed.

Popular sentiment held that the world was heading for an inevitable catastrophe. Genetic alteration meanwhile continued to spread and the tensions between the humanist factions and corporate sector erupted into horrific acts of violence and terrorism. Police action attempting to stop the conflict were equally heinous and brutal. Irresponsible media coverage focused on the injustices of the government and fueled the already rampant civil chaos. The world's power structure collapsed, and the chaos continued to spread.

On November 22, 2229, a new world order was created from the remnants of the world governments in an attempt to turn mankind's course. Known as the United Powers League (UPL), it replaced the defunct United Nations to work as its reincarnation as defender of humanity.

Through several years of open war, the UPL brought 93% of Earth's population under its control. Only a few volatile South American countries remained outside its sphere of influence.

However, as good of a sign as it may have seemed to the future of humanity, the UPL began a direct and immediate course of action that would forever change the course of the human race.

Calling itself a enlightened socialist organization the UPL created a division called The Unitariate Commissions which started attacking religions, leading to the eventual ban of all religions in the year2231. The UPL united much of Earth under its power, essentially destroying racism through faciest methods of removing cultural differences of humans and imposing English as the primary worldwide language, resulting in the ban of many languages.

The UPL was by no means a religious organization, but firmly believed in what it called the "Divinity of Mankind." Actions of hardline members of the UPL resulted in a law being passed that led to launch of Project Purification. Its goal: to remove mutations and unnecessary cybernetics from the human population. It considered those who deviated from the standard of "humanity" to be misshapen monsters who weren't even worthy to live.

The UPL sent thousands of troops around the world, imprisoning hackers, synthetics, the cybernetically enhanced, tech-pirates, and criminals of every kind. In the process, over 400 million individuals were killed in cold blood.

The UPL's control of the media was such that the general population was completely oblivious to the appalling events occurring around them.

But, despite its atrocious acts, the UPL successfully developed new advanced forms of technology. Many fields of science that had been largely ignored for centuries, such as space exploration, were reopened under the jurisdiction of UPL. Warp drive and cryonic technologies were developed, opening the frontiers of space; within forty years the UPL had founded colonies on moons and numerous planets in the Solar System. They had even begun the early pioneering of the Alpha Centauri and Tau Ceti systems.

But then, in 2231 a great political plot emerged from the underbelly of society, centered on a well known and praised scientist by the name of Doran Routhe. Routhe had previously become famous for his incredible advances in the fields of interstellar space technology that had allowed for the establishment of so many colonies.

Routhe, dedicated to his dreams of deep space colonization and backed by the UPL, secretly built six huge carriers dubbed: the Nagglfar, Seraph, Sarengo, Reagan, Argo, and Arc Crescent. The carriers were equipped with experimental warp engines, and loaded with enough supplies, rations, and hardware to help the colonists once they awoke.

For the colonists themselves, Routhe procured over 84,000 prisoners from Project Purification through his backing by the UPL. The ATLAS, or Artificial Tele-empathic Logistics Analysis System, studied the prisoners and selected 60,000 as capable of surviving the journey. The fate of the remaining 24,000 prisoners is unknown, but like the rest from Project Purification they had been slated for execution before being acquired by Routhe.

Before the ships were launched, the ATLAS was installed on Nagglfar and the navigational computer was programmed to navigate all six ships one year through warp space to the star system Gantris VI.

During the journey, ATLAS cataloged the various mutations in the gene pool, and discovered that some of the genes the prisoners carried would augment the latent psionic potential of the human brain. ATLAS sent this information back to Doran Routhe's databanks on Earth.

Unfortunately for Routhe, the ships encountered a large proton storm that somehow disconnected the navigational computer from ATLAS, causing ATLAS to lose control of the Seraph and Arc Crescent which deviated from course and were never heard from again.

The last four ships barreled blindly through warp space for years, before dropping out of warp space and crash landing in 2259.

The survivors of these remaining four ships would colonize what is known as the Koprulu sector and would found the Kel-Morian, Umojian and Confederate Governments that we are so familiar with today.

In years to come, scholars would come to think of Project Purification as a clean cut made by a surgeon's scalpel, quickly and efficiently cutting away "dead" tissue and then sending it out into the darkness of space.

But the tragedy to come a few years later could only be compared to the jagged and raw wound left as a body is torn in half.