Welcome to Firestorm: The Terran Alliance

Continuing on with the Welcome to Firestorm series it’s time to take a look at the 6 main races of firestorm, starting with the Terran Alliance. This post will focus on their background, military strength and how they are currently positioned in the Firestorm lore, Enjoy. 

The Terran Empire Symbol

In the Firestorm universe humanity had colonised all the planets in earth’s home system (referred to as the Sol system) by the end of the 22nd century and the governments of earth had united into one, mainly in order to pool each countries resources which were rapidly dwindling. With the stars open to them humanity’s innate drive to explore kicked back into life and many thousands of human colonists flocked to sign up for these expeditions, which were referred to as extra solar expeditions. It took 3 centuries for the first wave of colony ships to settle and another 2 for these newly founded colonies to thrive.

It was around this time that Tannhauser system was discovered. On the outer edge of the system explorers found what would later be confirmed as a Wormhole gate. This discovery was to have a massive impact on humanity as this gate lead to another system, which would become known as Fortress. In this system there were another 5 wormhole gates that each lead to a different part of the galaxy. As human explorers flooded through these gates humanist scientists were hard at work trying to duplicate the technology of the gates in order for humanity to be able to build their own gates. And 70 years after the Tannhauser Anomaly, the name given to the first gate, was discovered scientists were able to duplicate the technology. Now humanity knew exploration like never before with journeys that would have taken years now only taking months, on top of this the wormhole technology was adapted to that it would allow tight beam communications to be sent via wormhole, rely stations were built throughout the rapidly expanding human domain to allow messages to be sent further and further afield. With the discovery, duplication and adaptation of wormhole tech humanity expanded out though the starts like never before, this grand endeavour was to become known as the Terran Satellite charter with earth adopting its old Latin name. 

Terran Ships

During this time humanity had its first encounter with alien life. The species was called the Saurians and first contact with them was remarkably peaceful. The Saurians were a peaceful trading species, who were content to trade with the human colonists they encountered; to this day they are Terra’s oldest allies among the stars. It also turned out they were the original builders of the wormhole gates.

The next two alien spices that humanity encountered were not as friendly at first, both for different reasons. Humanity first encountered the Aquan Sebrutan and the Sorylians 2 centuries after encountering the Saurians. In the case of the Aquans hostilities began because the Aquans claimed the San Kuo Fan cluster, the system that where human colonists first encounter them, as their own and demanded that humans leave. Fighting broke out soon after as the colonists under the command of Admiral Ter’Qai and others refused this demand. In the case of the Sorylian’s human colonists mistook them for Saurians, both species looking like bipedal lizards. Human colonists attempted to communicate with the Sorylians using Saurian language which the Sorylians mistook for hostile gestures and soon fighting broke out. These were known as the Wars of First Contact and were relatively bloodless compared to the usual fare for wars, both alien races didn’t seem eager to commit to huge conflicts and soon a diplomatic solution bought peace between the humans and aliens. This became even more beneficial for the Terrans when it was relieved that the Aquans and the Sorylians were rivals, and that humans could act as the intermediaries between the two species. 

Aquan Ships

Sorylian ships

40 years after peace was declared Terran and Sorylian scientists began working on projects together in the area of power generation and space travel. This yielded the Fold Space Drive (or FSD for short) and space travel was revolutionized the galaxy over. No longer would fast space travel be limited to the wormhole gates. Now captains that knew the galactic co-ordinates of their destination could simply plot them in and jump from one point in space to another, the journey still took time but that time was drastically reduced.

Some of the key terms covered in the peace talks that followed the Wars of First Contact were terms regarding the defined boarders of each of the 3 empires. There was an area known as the Storm Zone that had acted as a buffer between the Sorylians and the Aquans, with the Terrans at peace with both empires they were allowed to colonize the Storm Zone which had the added bonus of giving the Terrans access to the Outer Reach and Fathoms Reach areas of space which were 2 vast areas of space to the east of the Terran empire. Now humanity had even more space to explore and a means to get there, on top of the means to speed up space travel. As colonists flooded into the Outer Reach and Astrocartograhpy corporations started to spring up ,eager to secure mapping contract in the vast tract on unexplored space, the Terran government collectively patted itself on the back, they had secured a lasting place for humanity in the stars and cemented their place in human history. However it didn’t last.

Several centuries after they first got access to the Outer Reach the Terran government named the colonies there the Terran Commonwealth and placed on the colonies the burden of having to self-fund with the systems on the other side of the Strom Zone turning their resources to funding their own systems. On the face of it this wasn’t a big issue, the Outer Reach was abundant in natural resources and so self-funding wasn’t really a issue. However perception is everything and now the people of the Commonwealth saw the Terran Government as far off rulers who gave no benefit to their distant colonies but still ruled them, in other words all of the negatives but none of the positives of being a colony. In addition to this the Commonwealth had fought the Relthoza, another Outer Reach alien race with a resemblance to spiders, often enough to harden their attitude to non-human species which caused them to resent them more open and liberal Terrans. There was also dissent growing amongst the companies of the Outer Reach, who saw their much of their profits go to taxes for the Terran empire. 

The situation came to a head when Ignatius Rense, CEO of RenseCorp and Governor of the Commonwealths capital Dramos, began to impose a series of harsh taxes on other Satellite charter systems in a attempt to wage economic wear on the Terrans. This quickly moved from Economic war to actual war and soon fighting broke out between the Commonwealth and the rest of the Terran Empire. The rebellion was short lived with the end result being Ignatius and RenseCorp being exiled rather than killed. The final foot note on the First Secession War was for a large amount of Outer Reach Corporations to bail the Terrans out of financial woes incurred by mobilisation their fleets to attack the Commonwealth. These corporations, soon to the known as the Directorate, gave the bought their freedom from Terra and became automatous, they would play a major role in the 2nd war of secession.

The sequel to the first secession war eclipsed the first in terms of length and violence. I won’t cover it in-depth here as it is key to the Dindrenzi story but it climaxed with the destruction of Dramos, which lead to the Dindrenzi fighting all the harder and eventually winning their independence. And with that the great Terran Empire was split in two. In the place of one human empire there were 2, and the were mortal enemies. After the 2nd war of Secession the Terrans formed the Kurak Alliance with various alien and human empires in order to defend against Dindrenzi, and other enemies, aggression.

While the Terran empire is currently far smaller than it once was it is in no way dying. It now has a dedicated enemy to focus its military attention on and is now more determined to keep hold of its systems. The Terran empire’s military strength is nothing to be sniffed at either with well shielded warships capable of delivering dead nuclear torpedoes deep into enemy ships. Overall Terra is still a major power in the galaxy and will not go down easily. With the members of the Kurak Alliance at its back the Terrans stand ready to meet the oncoming war whatever it brings. 

The Terran Empire as it currently stands

That concludes my background post for the Terran Empire. If anyone has any feedback please feel free to comment. The majority of the material used in this post was taken from the Kurak Alliance source book, however I didn’t use everything and the book contains more than is in this post. The book has lore pieces for each Terran warship (as well as the other 2 main races in the alliance) it also has lore pieces on famous Terran, Aquan and Sorylian fleets so if you are interested in finding out more feel free to check out Spartans store and get it. Until next time.

Rex