A/N: So this is a DRASTICALLY different AU than in the games. Humanity gets to spaceflight much quicker, suffers from genetic degradation, and utilizes some interesting theories and ship-building technology due to those darned meddling Protheans. Just a quick note, humanity will be making contact with the Council as the Rachni wars are heating up, but before the Krogan Uplift. As with all AU stories, there will be a lot of canon changes, both to the planets, and to the timeline, obviously.

Humanity always found the hard road. It wasn't that they chose the hard road. No, it was misfortune that found humanity. But they strived. They fought and overcame their challenges, their own inner demons. And their external ones.

The sun is the source of life. It provides heat and energy. It symbolizes life itself. When Sol began to die, academics theorized on why it was happening. But it wasn't the why that the majority of humanity was focused. It was how to survive.

Gradually, the planet cooled. The humans, the Children of Gaia, dug deep. Tapping into the geothermal reserves of heat, they built massive underground cities that housed hundreds of thousands of people. Crammed into close quarters, tensions ran high. The governments of the day were overwhelmed with trying to keep the embers from flaring into an uncontainable inferno.

New sources of energy were created. Cold fusion allowed for the development of more efficient generators and cheap energy.

These discoveries came just as humanity needed them. The oceans had begun to freeze, with the majority of the surface being inhospitable. Genetic engineering was pursued feverishly, enabling humans to survive much lower temperatures than before.

But the side effects of such tampering nearly spelled the end of humanity. Almost complete sterilization resulted, plunging birthrates to unsustainable levels. Cloning or artificial wombs were needed.

Cloning was the procedure that expanded and saw the most success in the early months of what came to be known as the Twilight Years, one hundred years after the discovery of Sol's slow death.

Nearly two hundred years of barely surviving, with a diminishing population, cloning succeeded. With it came a new technology. Mind transference. Taking a copy of a human's mind and then implanting it in a newly grown clone. The dying race eagerly embraced this last chance at survival. Artificial growth was costly and slow, with cloning only marginally better. Genetic degradation from humanity's early forays had yet to be fixed, and the human lifespan was reduced to a mere sixty years.

With a mind transference and the slow cloning of the remaining population, humanity became a race of experts, able to learn lifetimes of knowledge with a simple mental procedure.

Two hundred and fifteen years after the learning of Sol's Death (SD is calendar shorthand), humanity enters the era of the Long Night. A census reveals that the human population had finally reversed its terminal decline, with a stable population of 110 million souls. Nearly 36 million were clones.

The Long Night was coined because Earth's rotation had slowed to an imperceptible crawl, leading to nights on the surface that lasted for weeks. Even with its genetic enhancements and suits, the surface was a no-go zone for any exposure outside of a sealed vehicle.

The remaining governments, reduced to the leaders of a variety of city-states, agreed to a meeting after the two hundred and fiftieth year SD. The result of the meeting, dubbed the White-Black Concordat because of the colors of the environmental suits worn, was a return to space exploration. It was additionally decided that the governments would form a coalition, called the Aeterna Glacies Foedus, (Latin for League of Eternal Ice) or AGF for short.

Five years after the meeting, the joint effort of the AGF member city-states launched the first of the Aegis Explorator-class vessels to investigate the planet of Mars, and to test the new

drive systems relying on cold fusion reactors for power.

Anomalous readings from the south pole prompted the vessel's crew to take a close look. The discovery of alien ruins electrified the human community. A massive build up of vessels to carry researchers and scientists to salvage the data banks of the ruins before the extreme cold possibly damaged the systems.

It took nearly a year for the ruins to be completely salvaged. The knowledge gained was startlingly, to say the least. In the records, it was discovered that the species was known as Protheans, and that they had been studying humanity and trying to shape their development before being mysteriously wiped out.

It wasn't just the sociologists and biologists that discovered a windfall on the planet though. The engineers recovered a derelict vessel utilizing an unknown element to attain what was theorized to enable FTL travel. The element, lacking a predicted place on the Periodic Table, was quickly dubbed 'Element Zero', and work was started on synthesizing the element to develop drive cores for their own ships.

The AGF, pessimistically adopting the stance that the Protheans were wiped out by a hostile race, began drawing up plans for a space navy. Working within the limitations of the small population and slow growth of the clone labs, the newly formed Space Commission put together blueprints relying on the creation of superior quality, rather than quantity.

The first warship class was the Reaper-Class Dreadnought. The original design called for a length of nearly three kilometers, but with the realization of the power cost in the drive core, the design was downgraded to one kilometers, at least until orbital facilities could be constructed.

The vessel was armed with seven rotating turrets on the 'top', with three mass-accelerator cannons mounted to each turret, the ship resembled the old battleships of the 20th century, right down to the citadel in the middle of the vessel. Three of the top turrets were mounted in a 'stepped' formation, with a fourth turret mounted at the bow of the vessel. The last three turrets mounted a similar configuration, minus the bow mounted turret. The 'bottom' of the vessel had two three-gun turrets, one bow and one stern-mounted. Along the sides of the hull were smaller gun and flak emplacements for the relatively close range fighting that could occur in needing to fend off frigates and fighters. The hull itself was made of a novel discovery by one of the engineers working on Element Zero. One of the after-products of cold fusion was a previously unusable material. However, when alloyed and forged with Element Zero, the result was an incredibly durable metal that was also nearly weightless, making it perfect for the in-atmo construction of the ships and future orbital docks.

The other designs followed traditional wet-navy doctrine. Carriers were planned to be introduced with drones, destroyers armed with torpedoes, and cruisers for support roles as anti aircraft, electronic warfare, and command-and-control duties.

With the feverish construction of the orbital docks, coupled with the equally breakneck pace of reverse engineering the Prothean ship, humanity finally had a chance to escape their once inevitable fate. Within the vast amounts of data being translated, the location of Charon, an ice moon, was found. The discovery was initially disregarded, until a graduate student realized that there were no other mentions of any coordinates matching one of the many moons in the solar system.

The original vessel that had found the Prothean Ruins, the Aracadia, was dispatched to Charon, to investigate once again.

What was found changed future colonization and construction plans.

The moon, it turned out, was not a moon, but instead a mass relay, briefly mentioned in the logs of the Prothean base.

The Aracadia was given permission to go through the relay for a brief scouting mission. The relay flung the ship far enough to leave the sensor arrays of the AGF. When the ship returned, it was reported that they had reached a nexus of relays in the space between systems. There were five others, leading to other, unknown destinations.

The newly christened Formidable dreadnought with an escort of first generation Explorator-class vessels, hastily retrofitted with mass accelerator cannons left the earth-side docks and made its way to what was soon termed the Arcturus Crossroads.

Soon after the departure of the Formidable, the AGF decided on an even more ambitious undertaking. A large battle-station would be constructed at the nexus, protecting the highway into the heart of humanity. Although the plans for the station were approved, priority was given to creating the orbital docks necessary to build and support the fleet of ships necessary to build and maintain the large station.

It was in the this unprecedented expansion of human ambitions that a breakthrough in cloning was made. By using Element Zero generators, the cost and time in 'breeding' new clone bodies was drastically reduced. Humanity's growth rate, a steady 1.2%, suddenly jumped to 5%, with scientists confidently predicting that the rate could be doubled if further room and resources could be allocated to their efforts.

270 SD was an auspicious year for the AGF. The successful deployment of the orbital facilities accelerated the construction of the fledgling human fleet. Within five years, the number of deployed Reaper-class dreadnoughts had reached five, including the Formidable, three of which were constructed in-atmosphere, with an escorting contingent of eight cruisers, one carrier, and eleven destroyers. Further raising the hopes of the military was a breakthrough in Element Zero synthesization. With a clear lack of the material in the solar system, the development of the fleet relied on fusion power and the small store of the element that the base on Mars had held.

The AGF, confident that their military power was sufficient to deal with most possible threats, and the knowledge that Earth was likely well hidden, ordered that one of the relays to be opened and to begin exploring the other side.

The Formidable and her escorts passed through what was dubbed Relay One, being the first humans to enter another solar system.

After nearly three hundred years on a planet whose sole identifying quality was its cold, humanity was pleased to find a terrestrial planet whose surface temperature was negative thirty degrees Fahrenheit in the daytime. To them, it was a tropical summer retreat. Within the system was found another relay that was inactive, similar to the others that resided at the Arcturus Crossroad.

The decision was made to begin harvesting the rich asteroid belt in the newly named Utopia System. In order to support mining operations, a colony was established on what was ironically termed Eden Prime.

The Explorator-class vessels once again proved their worth as incredibly flexible and modular ships. The ships operated in whatever capacity was needed. Freighters, mining vessels, gunboats and patrol ships, and the ubiquitous science/research vessels were the most common of the modifications. The ships were even more easily constructed with the new orbital facilities above Earth.

Humanity left behind the Long Night, and entered into the New Dawn.

Mankind slowly expanded, only opening another two of the five total Arcturus relays. In one of the systems, they found a garden world, but its atmosphere was methane-based, making it far too hot for humans to settle, although they did conduct extensive strip mining of some rare earth minerals where they were found, unconcerned with wrecking the biosphere.

The other system was more interesting for humanity. An asteroid belt was originally flagged for more extensive scanning when the exploring fleet discovered an anomalous gravity reading from one of the larger asteroids. Further investigation revealed naturally occurring deposits of Element Zero. The strategic value of the system was immediately apparent, and the Third Fleet was put on permanent station keeping while several mining corporations were ordered by the government to begin extraction and refinement of the element.

The synthesis of the material was extraordinarily slow. With increased strategic reserves, the fleet could finally begin an all-out expansion of vessels, and afford the increased power costs of the planned upgrades.

The Formidable would receive the most attention in the fleet retrofit. The Dreadnought with the longest service record, the ship saw an extension of its hull, stretching the length to 1.3 kilometers, adding another three turrets, one on the stern of the vessel, the other two being placed on the 'bottom'. The increased drive core size enabled greater speed of its FTL, and the heatsinks of the venerable ship were improved, enabling a much longer engagement time. The old flak guns were replaced with the GARDIAN system, a grid of networked lasers that could quickly target and shoot down fighters. With the extensive research into Element Zero, kinetic barriers were developed and the first iterations were placed on the Formidable. The ship also saw numerous over improvements, including a small manned-fighter complement of five craft.

The rest of the fleet saw similar improvements, with the focus being on improving the speed and striking power of the ships. The destroyers were equipped with the experimental new disruptor torpedoes, which utilized small mass effect cores to tear space around their targets. The weapons were fairly ineffective against the alloyed hulls of the human fleet, so they were designed mainly to overwhelm fighter and bomber craft, whose armor was insufficient to resist the powerful forces unleashed by the torpedoes.

The Formidable's escorting contingent was designated as the First Fleet. Their headquarters was formally assigned as Arcturus Battlestation, whose completion was arranged to be finished at the same time as the First Fleet's retrofitting. Making a lavish spectacle of how far the AGF had brought humanity, as well as the 50th anniversary of the founding of the AGF, the First Fleet's commander was officially appointed to the position. Steven Hackett was promoted to the rank of First Admiral, giving him seniority of all the other fleet admirals.

The commissioning of the Arcturus Battlestation and the formal creation of the First Fleet was a major milestone in humanity's expansion into space. The Battlestation was widely considered to be indestructible, with more firepower than the entirety of the human fleet put together, and with thicker armor.

It was perhaps auspicious that a year later, first contact was made.

A/N: I hope this wasn't TOO boring to read. But I felt it necessary. I may have to resort to this formula in the future, so please let me know what you think, where I can improve in my exposition dumps. The next chapter should be posted shortly. I am trying to write these ahead of time so that way I am less likely to abandon this without getting pretty far with the story.

For a visual of what the Formidable looks like, just think of a battleship like the Yamato except much bigger, more rounded, and with guns mounted on the bottom.