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Part One: "Where do we go from here?"
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![]() | The North Atlantic Alliance (European Confederation and North American United States) |
![]() | The Highlander Federation (pretty much everything else). |
Three other, much smaller countries also survived:
![]() | The Israeli state (Israel + Lebanon + Syrian coast, up to Turkish border + Sinai + Cyprus) |
![]() | The Free City of Singapore (a large commercial power) |
![]() | The Free City of Copacabana (an "Art" city and Mutants' Heaven). |
Then, humanity began to look towards the stars, having more than a hunch that they were awaited (some of the extraterrestrial folks weren't very stealthy as they visited the planet some years before). Following a space race which looked more like a scientific and geopolitical demolition derby, they eventually discovered hyperspace drive by 2101, joining the Sphere Economic, Military and Politic Council (SEMPC), a sort of large interplanetary United Nations ("Sphere" is the name used to call all of known space).
Expansionists to the core, the Highlander Federation started to get on everyone's nerves by picking a few leftover planets. Then, they invaded some backwater place called Alt, sort of a jungle planet where lived the Talvarids, ursoid creatures with medieval tech-level. Easy? Not so. Can you spell "Vietnam"?.. What's more, the planet was actually protected by the SEMPC. Can you spell "trouble"?.. Start of Expansion War Number Two, which isn't ended in 2290 by the way.
After some major troubles, the same Highlander Federation decided to take a poke at the Sphere's largest military power, the Karlan High-Command, a really huge militarchy not even really in the Sphere. Sort of good ol' Eastern Block of the 60es. Start of Expansion War Number Three. Then the SEMPC decided to react a bit and created the Interposition Force, just like the UN Blue Helmets, but with guns, ammo, armor and authorization to use all necessary force to bring peace back. End of EWIII by 2170.
The Borderline State Federation is a loose political coalition of about 40 planets, set on the fringe between the Karlan High-Command and what used to be the Arlaurientur. For centuries uncounting, this place had a bad reputation: pirates and the Scum of the Galaxy(TM) are said to live here. It's not entirely untrue, but that's not the point.
The point is, in 2207, the Highlander Federation (again!) invaded the third planet in importance of the Borderline. Having no army to speak of, the BSF called upon some mercenary and pirate companies for help. Which they got. Among those, the infamous Iron Lady, a large band of weirdos, who already had words (and bombs, and missiles, etc.) in the past with the Highlanders, and the Flying Tigers, officially a cargo company, but which also does some mercenary operations when need -- and money -- arises.
The situation decayed quite fast and, as if it wasn't complicated enough, a Corporate War broke out in the Borderline States, as several transport companies tried some particularly physical and aggressive forms of takeover on each other. The war lasted some thirty years, utterly ruining the whole Borderline economics, which never were very brilliant, to begin with. In the process, and after a go for invasion by the Highlander Federation (always the same), the administrative capital of the Borderline is nuked by the Mercenary Coalition (oops...).
(And the SEMPC Interposition Force couldn't intervene: after their first mission during EWIII, they impressed so much political powers that these powers devised a few thousand laws and regulation to tie the IF tight; what's more, the SEMPC is notoriously very good at learning what happens in the Sphere... by reading newspapers.)
The Borderline is trying to rise again from the years of chaos, helped by the Mercenary Coalition. The Highlander Federation tries to stand VERY still on the military front, but is diplomatically very active, trying to "convert" independent planets to their "cause". The rest of the Sphere is merely watching.
And worrying.