Earth was blasted. Ruined. The tensions between nations had boiled over and weapons of unprecedented scale had been tossed in swarms of death. People still survived in fashions, some eking out lives on the surface while others survived in cramped shelters. Eventually disparate people became small groups, those groups became regional factions, and those factions became things to rival old nations. One group following an ideology of single world society and a dream of a post-national humanity rose over the others. It was known as the Shared Prosperity Sphere and it ended up fulfilling the goal of becoming the society of all the earth.

A century after humanity had been reunited under the banner of the SPS, and once again took to space. People went to mars to see what had become of the ancient colony there which had been lost to earth during the upheaval. Mars was a tomb, with the explorers from earth finding ruins and people of the old times long dead, but deep inside the old structures there was something else. Something that forever altered humanity’s course. The colonists of the past had discovered buried subterranean alien ruins. This monumental find had been partially excavated and researched by the humans of mars and among the many details of importance, there was one relic of singular importance. A never before seen type of crystal, which was named in the colony records as aeternite. It could not be drilled into, chipped, or cracked with any known tool. It was a mystery, but with research of the alien structure that had housed it, the colonists had begun to uncover its power, and the researchers of the SPS continued to learn that the crystal, if subjected to specific energies, would create a field around itself which could be used as the heart of an engine for instantaneous interstellar travel. The peoples of earth found several more aeternite crystals in more alien structures buried under the martian surface, and with them constructed a fleet of ships capable of traveling truly to the stars. The act of traveling was simply called lightjumping by laypeople. The lightjumping was not completely freeform, there was an underlying set of variables which were sometimes esoteric which had to be learned in order to chart paths. Humanity did learn how to traverse space and there was no shortage of people willing to boldly go out into the void. Some people were naturally adventurous while others had secretly chafed under the society of the SPS and were looking for a chance to create what they thought would be a superior path. As the early small fleet of ships spread out, the explorers would occasionally discover more aeternite crystals. Often the crystals were merely small slivers, often appearing to perplexingly be broken shards of a larger whole, yet humanity had yet discovered a way to crack them. That was a mystery for academics though. On the frontier, what mattered was the leverage that having crystals provided. Ambitious leaders on some colonies revived the ancient concept of private companies. They created their own currencies, backed by reserves of aeternite. Eventually the most successful of these companies came to an agreement with each other and created the Uniform Commercial Council as a way of mediating. A single currency was adopted among them, and contract and territory rules were created and even sometimes followed.

Not all colonies went the way of becoming UCC members, and instead retained independence in some form. Some colonies were only merely above being vassals to a UCC members, others had some resource or location near a lightjump location that allowed them some level of leverage, and others simply found ways to become self sufficient and isolated.

Alien races, both sapient and feral were encountered on the frontier. While a new race was always a change to the social landscape, the people of the frontier were not like the shocked early people finding alien ruins on mars, and instead priding themselves on taking new alien contact in stride.

While the frontier of humanity was expanding and much to the dismay of the central academics of the SPS, growing wildly away from the comfortable social structure found on earth and mars, research into aeternite continued and scienticians eventually discovered a way to tap the field created but aeternite for power generation rather than travel. The amount of energy output from the field was massively higher by many orders of magnitude than what the aeternite was subjected to when creating the field. This curious effect, while baffling, was nevertheless something that changed the thinking of people on earth. While the SPS had up to that point created an improved standard of living, the possibility of functional energy post-scarcity was looked at as way to build a true utopia. Using the crystals for power generation meant they would not longer be installed on starships. The SPS was faced with a choice between continuing to explore into the unknown or the changes that such power generation would provide. They chose to stop exploring. To the people who had stayed inside the solar system, the stories of the frontier had scared them greatly. Many people, and the academic thought leaders agreed. The remaining crystals still inside the solar system were repurposed and the SPS turned inward 200 years after it had first traveled to mars.

On the frontier the UCC barely noticed. The member companies, now all megacorporations were more concerned with their own power and influence over the colonies and each other. The colonies spread and eventually the alien species called the arweli were encountered. Arweli were human sized, and though vaguely humanoid had a strong resemblance to earthy amphibians. The members of the race which were encountered were all part of the main interstellar nation which was highly militarized. Although the arweli territory constantly expanded, often bringing other alien races under their rule, they saw themselves as liberators rather than conquerors. The early encounters with humanity were polite but cold as the arweli tried to gauge if human territory would be possible and advantageous to liberate. That contemplation was cut short by the outbreak of all out war between the arweli and an alien cyborg race which became a struggle that devasated both of them, and drew much of humanity into a fight it wasn’t prepared for.