This investigation is sponsored by Paradox Interactive.
On thousands of worlds across the galaxy, crumbling ruins tell the tale of a fallen
empire that once ruled over an age of wonders.
The remnants of vast cities, where hundreds of millions worked and lived, are overgrown
with exotic wildlife.
The highest halls of learning, where the collective wisdom of all civilization was preserved,
have been ransacked and plundered.
And in remote outposts, where the greatest secrets and treasures of the universe were
harbored, the vaults have been forgotten and now lay open and unguarded.
It is a time of re-discovery, of immense opportunity and terrible danger, a time that would have
seemed impossible during the height of the Star Union.
It was the discovery of naturally occurring spatial rifts that first allowed humanity
to reach and colonize distant worlds.
Once stabilized, these rare, cosmic tethers provided a safe and reliable means of faster-than-light
travel and sparked a new era of interstellar expansionism.
The earliest history of what was then known as the Federal Star Union gradually took on
the character of heroic mythology.
Its founders and leaders became known as the Star Holders, elevated to an almost saintly
status in an emergent national cult.
It was the Star Holders who established peace and cooperation amongst the rival colonies,
who united mankind’s varied cultures and nations and developed the first ships and
techniques for travelling across the void.
Amongst their greatest achievements was the development of an interstellar network of
supply stations, communication arrays and anchorages that would become known as The
Nexus.
The Nexus represented the territorial extent of the Star Union, the whole of human civilization.
When the last of the most stable rifts had been charted, the Nexus seemed to have reached
its natural limit.
Expansion gave way to consolidation.
The Star Union could not be content with a meager few dozen colonies however, and eventually,
the means of creating artificial spatial rifts was discovered.
Enormous Gravity Bombs deployed to remote star systems by sub-light ships expanded the
Nexus beyond what was naturally possible.
These artificial bridgeheads led to the discovery of further natural rifts and the Union’s
expansion efforts skyrocketed.
Each day brought the detonation of new artificial rifts and the further exploration of natural
ones.
The Star Union’s rapid spread across the galaxy brought it into conflict with other
forms of sentient life.
The first of these were the Kir’ko, an alien hive mind that was later broken and subjugated
by the Union’s military might.
The burden of governing the Kir’ko, alongside the Union’s hundreds and later thousands
of other worlds was too much for the nation’s bureaucracy however.
To solve the challenges of galactic governance, the Union deployed the Conscientious Omnipresent
Regency Engine or CORE.
Upon the election or appointment of a new Star Holder, this individual would be directly
connected into CORE, opening their mind to an immense, interstellar flow of data.
The earliest iterations of CORE were relatively primitive, and some Star Holders were unable
to process the scope of available data.
As technology advanced, each successive Star Holder was eventually able to process an unfathomable
number of decisions each second.
It quickly became impossible to discern which administrative processes were being directed
by the Star Holders, and which were delegated to CORE’s supporting artificial intelligences.
With their apparent ascension into the immense dataflow of CORE and superhuman abilities
it bestowed; Star Holders were elevated to the status of Emperors.
The earliest governing bodies and institutions were replaced by a cabal of human advisors
known as The Circle.
Each member of the Circle was entrusted with a certain aspect of human life and at first,
were appointed as emissaries from individual colonies or prominent religions.
Megacorporations had flourished under the rule of CORE, and with their ever-growing
influence, ultimately overtook every position in the Circle.
Paragon Augmentation Laboratories benefitted the most from this new arrangement, using
its status to seize key positions through most of the Star Union.
The company’s achievements in extensive bionic implants and genetic enhancements allowed
its executives and top-tier customers to be connected to CORE.
These new societal elites gained an immense edge in their intelligence, efficiency, and
even beauty or life expectancy.
Compared to this new generation of super-humans, the majority who remained unmodified were
reduced to second-class citizens and ultimately, insignificance.
Some found escape in the drug Black Nex, with those who grew addicted to the ecstatic dreamlike
state it created becoming known as Spacers.
While technically illegal, Black Nex was tolerated by the Star Union as an effective means of
keeping its undervalued citizens docile.
Degradation and corruption within the Star Union’s society was reflected in the state
of the Nexus itself.
The gravity bombs which had made up the foundation of the expansion efforts began creating increasingly
unpredictable effects as more and more were detonated across the galaxy.
The delicate cosmic tethers on which all faster than light travel rested had grown erratic
and predicting their currents became impossible.
Controlled detonations of further gravity bombs in carefully calculated locations were
intended to reverse these effects but proved to be only stopgap solutions.
The Star Union had relied upon a steady influx of exploitable new worlds to maintain its
economy but with the Universe slowly slipping out of reach, its civilization fell into stagnation
and decay.
The weakest segments of the Nexus were consumed by Void Storms where ships were stranded or
simply disappeared with frightening regularity.
These borderlands became havens for criminals, adventurers, freedom fighters and all manner
of outlanders, but it was the Psionics who truly seemed to thrive there.
While humans with the ability to communicate telepathically and manipulate matter with
the power of their mind had appeared sporadically throughout the history of the Star Union,
their numbers swelled in the unstable environments of the so-called Outworlds.
The final era of the Star Union was marked by extreme imperialism and militarism.
Secessionist movements, be it rebelling Outlanders or uprising Kir'Ko, were answered with overwhelming
force.
Entire worlds burned in Promethean fire, while vast arsenals of experimental Gravity Bombs
were readied for potential pre-emptive strikes.
Even the Emperors themselves became victims of this new barbarism.
Their terms were limited to 100 years, after which time, each Emperor would undergo a procedure
known as the Merging, where their consciousness was absorbed into CORE.
Officially, the Merging promised to make the Emperors immortal, advisors who could continue
to guide humanity for all of time.
Privately however, many Emperors became wary of the true nature of the Merging and sought
to escape this fate.
Under Carminia, the last Empress, the Star Union finally collapsed in a devastating event
that would become known as the Cataclysm.
In a single instant, a cosmic detonation of unprecedented scope tore the Nexus apart.
Some blamed the Outlanders, others CORE, but as a dark age fell across the galaxy, survival
took priority over any quest for the truth.
For two centuries the galaxy persisted in squalor as meager tyrants and rival groups
scrambled over the remnants of the Star Union, cut off from one-another and isolated from
the rest of the galaxy.
Recently however, the Void Storms unleashed by the Cataclysm have begun to subside.
A new network of spatial rifts has formed with the epicenter of the Cataclysm at its
heart.
Factions once confined to their corners of the galaxy are now unbound, free to explore
the strange new universe they find themselves within.
Many are twisted evolutions of Star Union society, corrupted or transformed to be almost
unrecognizable.
Others have emerged from the Cataclysm remarkably unchanged, while the origin of some, is best
left forgotten.
As these new powers begin to stir, each has their own understanding of what caused the
corruption and collapse of civilization, and each is committed to building a new galaxy
in their image.
Yet whatever rises from the ashes of the Star Union will remain bound to its memory, and
its secrets.
Thanks to Paradox Interactive for sponsoring this investigation across the ruined worlds
of the Star Union.
Age of Wonders: Planetfall is the latest turn-based strategy game in the critically acclaimed
Age of Wonders series.
If you’re planning to buy Age of Wonders: Planetfall so you can lead your people out
of the cosmic dark age that has fallen across the galaxy, use our affiliate link in the
description.
And if you’d like to watch the Templin Institute fight over the remains of the Star Union,
be sure to check out twitch.tv/templininstitute one hour after this video goes live for a
special launch day live-stream of Age of Wonders :Planetfall.