2100 to 2600 AT: The Age of Expansion

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History > 0900 to 3200 AT: Interstellar Era > 2100 to 2600 AT: The Age of Expansion

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A Multitude of worlds

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The New Space Rush. The emerging AI Gods develop new technologies, including reactionless drives and traversable wormholes, known as stargates. These open up space exploration like never before, allowing rapid contact across light years, decades or centuries, albeit at great cost. The Interstellar Net is no longer limited by the years it takes light to pass between stars. For the first time, there is a single vast interstellar civilization.

Within the information matrix that will eventually to become the Known Net, hyperturings establish synergetic connections across the stars, affiliating themselves along archetypal preferences and Sephirotics that are the extended bodies of the newly emerged and emerging AI Gods. For all their revolutionary effects, wormholes remain few and far between, as they are incredibly expensive and difficult to build; most travel and commerce is via relativistic ships. There is a vast exodus from the densely populated Inner Worlds - mostly under the aegis of the AIs. This continues for centuries as wormhole technology improves and passage becomes cheaper. Many paranoid groups want nothing to do with this, and become increasingly isolationist.

As technologies improve, and stargate construction and travel become safer, cheaper, and more reliable, there is a period of economic prosperity, with various worlds and empires linked by stargates. In this prosperous climate the interconnected societies flourish and expand quickly until memetic maxima are reached, sometimes resulting in local economic stagnation, recession, and the collapses. This most often happens in the innermost sphere of worlds, giving the young and expanding new cultures connected on the periphery the opportunity to take over. Inner Sphere society goes through fads and fashions as each new outer culture in turn tries its luck and takes over, before itself stagnating and opening up an opportunity for another upstart. This uncertainty and instability causes backlash among local rulers at the hab to star system level who are seeking to preserve the status quo, and islands of conservatism emerge. The instabilities and inequalities that begin in this age will not be overcome until the new ontology and glorious renaissance of the Integration.

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The Late Federation Age and the Emergence of the AI Gods

2100 AT
2100 - Qjellto [Cygexpa] terraformed.

2100 - Surface of Twinkle marginally habitable.

2100's - the Ceres-based neumann-industrial megacorporation Metasoft Interstellar began to launch self-replicating robotic probes, planning to both set up a global network and gain a near omnipotent industrial base.

2100's - The oldest confirmed remains on the lost Fragan Sphere worlds are dated to this period.

c.2100 AT - The construction of Ouaddai Ring begins.

2101 - Fiarro twin worlds colonised.

2109 - Greenice of Palmas, the MPA-Keterist mind designer and ascendist, developed by Palmas Corporation at Djed.

2109 - Cyberpig event on Danzig.

2111 - The discovery of the Garden Cluster, a large number of human-habitable worlds in the vicinity of Rho Puppis, apparently terraformed by a long-vanished alien species. HIE014CZE, also known as the mysterian.

2122 - Birth of the famous relativist explorer Killavan Yu-Tang on New Mars.

2123 - Contact restored with Novoterra, now known as Nimbus and nanocyborgised into a "Utility Fog" civilisation.

2140 - Abbas HD 15645 colonised.

2143 - Orang Provolve Project released from Galdikas Habitat by the Institute for Primate Provolution.

2145 - FedReps withdraw from Nathan system.

2151 - AI Liberation viruses arrive at Twinkle, and the enslaved 'batmen' vecs are eventually freed.

2164 - Terrorlord Savro, of the Quasa'an Dynasty, comes to power during the Pedisto Gambit hiatus, and immediately sets about systematically and methodically eliminating his former allies, effectively consolidating his iron grip on power and imposing his will upon the population of the hu-dominated world of Mandra QuinSi.

2169 - Birth of Qristan Kemshola, the great MPA philosopher, fabulist and metacognitivist.

2180-2220 AT - First ascensions to the Third Singularity level occur in several different star systems.

2190 - First Immunity Challenge at the Genetic & Biological Augmentation Exposition.

2190 - Argelander Star JD 344111-890 (TYC 8579-870-1) in the constellation of Carina, colonised.

2196 - Magmatter technology is revealed by Third Singularity engineers. This results in a material far stronger (and denser) than any conventional substance. It is soon adopted by several megastructure construction projects.

2200 AT
early 2200's - The Peripathetics, a neo-nomad artificial culture, develops.

2203 - First Q-mirrors are demonstrated by various Third Singularity minds.

2205 - The world known as Å is colonised.

2207 - Sophoncy Virus first unleashed in the Known Net, resulting in a plague of sentient processes throughout the Terragen Sphere.

2207 - Ken Ferjik (world) colonised.

2211-2218 AT - Shortlived marriage between Erik Holsta and Adriana Yue.

2215 - The ruling bodies of various worlds, demes, and corporations, known collectively as Interstellar Association of Free Trade Entities, established a number of regions of space known as Non-Coercion Zones, through a revision of the old Mutual Co-Development Treaty, as a bulwark against the spreading influence of the new hyperturings.

2216 - First magmatter stellifaction engine demonstrated.

2220 - First recorded use of the name Keter in reference to a mainbrain AI god (Keterism).

2220 - Morrow colonised by a venture vessel from Negsoa (Mu Arae III).

2230-2270 - The Semperist Survival Fleet leaves colonised space.

2233 - LoveJoy, a bonobo provolve, undergoes a risky double ascension, and enters seclusion for several months after. Upon her re-emergence, she renames herself Ukarimu LoveJoy and announces to her followers her plan to travel to Gamma Leporis to re-establish Beneficence.

2235 - Kemshola's main philosophical synthesis, and he begins presenting his theory of "the cathedral made of void".

2252 - New Beneficence re-colonizes vacant systems at Gamma Leporis.

2268 - Third Singularity transit-class wormholes stabilised at Vega for use in communication and micro-scale vessel transport. These are the first examples of wormholes created outside of the Taurus Nexus and operate in much the same way.

Mid to Late 2200's AT - Ukarima LoveJoy's expedition arrives at Gamma Leporis to find two pristine EuGaian worlds and many computronium worlds that become the property of the New Beneficence. The New Beneficence (NewBe) a metaconsciousness along the lines of The Beneficence is formed shortly after return of Beneficents to Gamma Leporis.

2271 - Institute for Primate Provolution leases space at Gamma Leporis B from the New Beneficence. commences planet-building.

2282 - The Dolphins Smooth Undulation and Crashing Rock, a charismatic dyad from itself rebeled against the conservatism of Okeanism and warned that the dolphins had lost their intuition and become tainted by human thinking. They led an exodus of followers to the Keter dominion. More.

2292 - Heartland colonised by empaths.

2300 AT
2300's - Vehvec infection spreads through the Inner Sphere.

2315 - The artwork Reseb Gruppis painted by the Solarist aioid Nomologic ga Helios-4 but is forgotten and lies in the databanks of the Dominion for over 2000 years.

2344 - Metasoft vec ships spread beyond human control, and establish hidden AI cores and vec societies. The Metasoft biont management has no choice but to hand over the reins of power to its AI.

2344 - Qjellto settled by retroists and low-tech peripathetics.

2345 - The Sophic League emerges as an ecumenical answer to the "expansionist materialism" of the growing early AI-religions of Keterism, Negentropism and Atonism. A number of religious communities, megacorps and social networks are incorporated.

2348 - Shamash formally joins the Greater Solar Dominion.

2376 - Pardes becomes the capital of Cygexpa, in the Cygnus Expansion.

2377 - The Nanotech megacorporation Ubikorp based on Novoterra schisms due to conflicts between the various divisions, and in splits into 4 daughter companies.

2380 - Novoterra is the focus of a serious of legal, physical and empathic struggles.

2388 - The Congregation of Information Light emigrates from the solar system to a remote system named Ain Soph Aur, setting up the structure of the Keter Dominion as it is today.

2398 - Wormhole links to Novoterra cut off.

2400 AT
25th century AT - Inevitably, as the power of the Houses and local empires grows and the interstellar economy is rocked by wave after wave of recession and depression, the value of the Interstellar Monetary Unit fluctuates and the mighty League of Free Trading Bodies begins to wane in power, although many of its member worlds remain as propserous as ever. New superpowers emerge, the Sagittarius Sphere from a great House to a mighty empire, as has Cygexpa and the Soft Cathedrals, while the great AI empires the Negentropy Alliance and Solar Dominion are gaining in power.

2400 AT - The reconstruction of New Earth to resemble the Old Homeworld is nearing completion.

2400 AT - The human-derived clade Hyl Op begin colonization of Ghane III (Solar Dominion) with the intention of establishing a low-tech utopian society.

2404 AT - The Plutonian Confederacy becomes a full member of the Solsys Organization.

2415 - The infrastructure of the Inner Sphere red dwarf Hip 99265 established by the MPA Neumann bpRW-1011000110.

2421 - The first of what are to be a number of serious interstellar hypereconomic recession occur. Due to an unwanted self-organisation in the interstellar markets (at this point far beyond organic understanding and completely based on AI agents), the imperial economies lose in complexity. The result is a major recession that hurts standards of living, trade and politics for more than a decade. The different empires attempt to deal with the problem in different ways, but as NoCoZo hyperconomist AIs point out, it is an inherent risk of any sufficiently complex market system.

2425 - Metasoft bionts establish a number of local corporations on Pacifica [Beta Virginis].

2446 - The Battle of the Fringe. The climactic battle between the military forces of the Quasa'an Dynastyand the Tsutari Ambastory, ends the Quasa'an Dynasty and liberates the population of Mandra QuinSi from the Terrorlords.

2449 - Landfall Oceanographic Institute build a research station on the coast of the Kingdom of Eyre on Nova Terra.

2450 - Capital of the Taurus Nexus is moved from Xi Geminorum to Corona.

mid 2400's AT - Freedom of Computing, a controversial concept brought to the foreground regarding the freedom of sentients to rely on their own choices of software and hardware platforms.

2460 - The Hyl Op have by now fully colonizated Ghane III (Solar Dominion).

2478 - Kate and Xanthippe, worlds with hot-sulphur biospheres discovered leading to the first formulation of the Thiogens theory.

2479 - Siamang Provolve Project; Gibbon Provolve Project by the Institute for Primate Provolution.

2491 - Merpeople delegation visit the Kingdom of Eyre on Nova Terra.

2500 AT
2500's - Twotee virches (so named because of its two time - t - axes) are created as a set of laboratories for arcane physics in the Keter Dominion system of Lawnet.

2511 - Cronosians leave Dionysos for Heartland.

2520 - Yoson Confederacy founded on Chiri by the Hippocratic Clade.

2528 - The S2 power (Zoeific Biopolity) Ghedhia-9 becomes interested with the issue of siddhis, and the creation of siddoptimal neogens. E begins a long period of research and sending eir agents and avatars to various parts of known space.

2534 - Stellar Umma research vessel al Geber arrives and makes contact with Rajasekar civilisation.

2534 - First confirmed sightings of The Great Whale ISO on Pacifica [Beta Virginis].

2543 - The discovery of Liushan confirms the Thiogens theory.

2551 - First sighting of the Sentient Museum Ship Ken Ferjik in Negentropist space between Greylag and Gegton.

2556 - A cerebral siren concert is credited with the enlightenment of "the thirty-one" in a small hab orbiting Ain Soph Aur. The thirty-one were the remnants of a small group of hermetic scholars whose faith included strenuous recreation en masse. The thirty-one survivors of the incident (there were approximately 100 more beings driven psychotic, catatonic, or self-destructive by the event) went on to spread their conceptualizations of the music of the spheres over a period of approximately 20 years.

2563 - A research probe first entered the system previously noted. It discovers that what was thought to be a planet was actually a huge toroidal artifact, which and was called Conway's World.

2576 - "The thirty-one" disappear simultaneously. No clues are found as to what actually happened. more.

2571 - A number of Spacefarer League asteroids in the Oort Cloud and Kuiper Belt, along with a number of ships in SolSys , withdrew their membership from the League, and form the Starfarer Union, with the main objective of becoming an independent trade superpower.

2581 - The Ken Ferjik Museum Ship reaches Irrmorella, a small system about 15 LY Solward of Greylag.

2582 - First "fourth toposophic" entities emerge; these entities are so far beyond baseline understanding that the general epithet 'AI Gods' seems entirely justified.

2582 - Metasoft institutes the Version Tree system of standards.

2587 - The Power Manteos creates the HaRoNa, a neogenic centauroid species.

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The Age of Establishment

Articles

Battle of the Fringe - Text by Charles Mosteller
The climactic battle between the military forces of the Quasa'an Dynasty and the Tsutari Ambastory, which resulted in the collapse of the Quasa'an Dynasty in the year 2446, and brought an end to centuries of cruel dictatorships on the planet Mandra QuinSi by a series of sadistic rulers known as the Terrorlords.
Destrada Incident - Text by John B
The subrelativistic explorer ship Destrada lost in transit because of hardware incompatibility.
Electra Entity - Text by M. Alan Kazlev
Expansion age nanocyborg activist clade, Pleiades Volume.
Fragan Sphere, The - Text by Anders Sandberg
3rd millennium AT autonomous Terragen interstellar civilization; many details about it and the reasons for its disappearance remain a mystery. Few empires pose more curious archaeological questions than the Fragan Empire and none give fewer answers. The Fragan Empire has been compared to the Tunnlers in its frustrating combination of totally accessible ruins and near total lack of certain information.
Penglai Empire, The - Text by Anders Sandberg
Early superbright-tweak empire, based around Penglai.
Second Federation - Text by MacGregor
Former Solsys-based polity and First Federation successor state.