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Virginis Combine, The

An early interstellar empire

Virginis Combine
Image from Steve Bowers

In 1590 AT a number of technorat clades in the Beta Virginis system founded the Virginis Combine colonisation group, building it up with the reources available in the outer part of that system and with local and Federation know-how.

While the remaining elements of the old traditional New America society in the orbital habitats were becoming the near baseline "poor relatives" in that system, and the population of the terraformed planet Pacifica was enjoying a life of pampered tropical luxury, the Beta Virginis technorats decided to embark on an ambitious program of colonisation, with the first ships ready to depart in 1625.

The Virginis Combine quickly gained in economic and industrial power, and Pacifica and its orbitals joined the colonisation effort soon after. The NA remnants were ambivalent. Some of the Franklin orbitals joined, chiefly the powerful Thomas Jefferson and Lyndon Johnson Orbitals and their allies, while the hardliners remained independent.

Being a major technological power quite far from Sol, the combine become a rather influential local power during the Later Federation and Early Expansion periods, establishing major outposts on a all of nearby star-systems, including the sparsely populated red dwarf systems Luyten 901-10: (7 light-years distance) , BD +0.2989: (9 light-years), Ross 948 (10.5 light-years), BD +9.2636 and Wolf 437 (12 light-years), Wolf 461, DT Virginis, and Gliese 403 (13 light-years), and Ross 695 (14 Light-years); the white dwarves Eggen/Greenstein 74 (11 LY) and McCook & Sion 1126+185 (12 LY), where some of the original Sun Mines were first established; the M'Buto Confederacy (K class star BD -9.3413, 10.7 light-years), a loose solar system alliance of diverse habitats, clades, corporations, and Houses, was easily subverted and annexed by the combine, and the young bright A class star Denebola (8 light-years) which became an important amat-farm center for the Combine.

The star Denebola later underwent an over-complexity collapse (see the Denebola Incident).

While the distances were large, careful memetic engineering, ideological loyalty, technological dependence, and local quasi-autonomy ensured that the whole thing held together with remarkable coherence. Indeed, at its height the Combine was far more unified than the Federation of Sophonts ever was. Soon a number of technorat subclades were developing in these outposts, and a sophisticated particle stream, amat, and laser sail shuttle service was established linking them all together

The Virginis Combine was taken over by the Conver Ambi following the Denebola Incident, and was eventually broken up between Metasoft and the Solar Dominion, while Pacifica eventually joined the Utopia Sphere.

 
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Appears in Topics
1500 to 2100 AT: Late Federation / AI EmergenceHistorical PolitiesInner Sphere
Interstellar Colonization
 
Development Notes
Text by Anders Sandberg
amended by Steve Bowers
Initially published on 03 January 2001.

 
 
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