When the combined fleet of colonial and rebel Cylon forces landed on earth they found devastation. The final five could only reminisce about a world that had ceased to be. What if though the world had not been destroyed ? With less radiation poisoning and the quick thinking of the last remnants the thirteenth tribe chose to endure and ultimately prosper in the rough conditions of earth. Renaming it Helghan in a testament to the hell of the first decades of rebuilding and simply surviving the nuclear winter that followed the war. The nations that had stood before the war passed into history along with their nationalities, there were too few left to fight any sort of war.
Ellen Tigh had secretly been spied upon and the fruits of her research alongside those of her conspirators was in the hands of the government of the new nation of Helghan. Once the tools of their ancestors had been uncovered they embraced resurrection alongside cloning and mandating large families requiring females to for the first time in generation sit home to care for the young.
After one hundred years of constant breeding,resurrection and cloning, the Helghast population stood at 2.5 million. While small compared to the large urban populaces of the prewar era, this was an historic achievement for the nearly destroyed machine race. Alongside the flesh and blood Helghast though stood the metal workers and sometimes soldiers who had once fought against their organic siblings, the zaku.
Once referred to as centaurs, these machines had undergone an evolution in design. spiked shoulder armor pads, they resembled their organic Helghast counter parts with what appeared to be a air filters and two air tubes coming around either side of the lower half of its head to connect to what one could in fact call a mouth. The dome like head had a single red eye that moved back and forth to scan the area. They were impressive and many had a single horn adorning their heads, appearing all the more menacing.
The helghast for many centuries lived in subterranean and even space based platforms, the effects of radiation and genetic engineering combined with evolution caused the race of the helghast to truly change. A people nearly wiped out by war sought unity, every organic and metal helghast was a free citizen, no one was considered second class. That all being said, political dissent was often crushed and few care given the disaster that had befallen them. A world that once held billions held only a few million and the wreckage of this fact reminded the helghast to pour all energy into rebuilding their civilization rather then fighting pointless skirmishes over politics.
In the exodus from Kobol and the destruction of the helghast war for independence, tens of thousands of humans joined with the helghast in a journey to find earth. The twelve tribes for whatever reason, perhaps to spite the helghast in one last desperate act, chose to whitewash the existence of the machine race they had created. Only the human sympathizers were mentioned as having left Kobol, the war and the circumstances that caused the 14 groups to leave Kobol also were ignored in the scriptures of the people that would create the twelve colonies.
In the thousand year span it took the final five Cylons, known to helghast as the five saviors to reach the colonies, the helghast nation and Terran federation on the world of Ferose had become formidable powers. The helghast nation boasted 2.6 billion citizens, the Terran federation boast 15.2 billion citizens. In terms of real estate, the restraints of the helghast home world made colonizing other planets a necessity, first orbital bases, shipyards and finally colony worlds came into being. These were shanxi and Vekta, smaller worlds were also explored but considered fully developed, being more akin to territories then part of a nation.
The humans likewise moved to colonization of whole worlds, but at an accelerated pace. While the helghast had the problem of too low a population after what they termed judgment day, the humans of Feros had the opposite. The population had already been stretched at nearly 3 billion and rationing was becoming a staple of ferosian life. To counter this, the ferosian's poured untold sums of credits, the common currency of the helghan and ferosian nations into ambitious projects aimed at leaving ferosian space for other worlds.
After nearly ten years of exploration, they had stumbled upon massive mineral encased in asteroids and eventually 4 habitable worlds, They christened these worlds Orlos, New Feros, Panjea and Britania. After about 600 hundred years, the helghast also endeavored to search their segment of the galaxy which despite lacking in an abundance of worlds or raw materials none the less wielded Shanxi and Vekta.
After the discovery and light settlement of Shanxi and then Vekta, which was furthest from Helghan, a new threat challenged both helghast and the Terran Federation.
A deep space exploration mission was launched in the year known to helghast as 1002 AJ, or 1002 years after judgment day. This is the story of that encounter and the war that would rage continuously forty years.