Time-line for In the name of Earth and Balaho, till the bitter end!

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And here is the time line chapter for the HALO-Mass Effect crossover, until the year 2030 it will be roughly the same as the timeline for the Avengers of Mass Effect story, after that they will diverge heavily. There are some minor differences in it before it reaches that point, but overall those are little more than some added information that isn't all too important for the plot of the story in the long run, only a bit of additional know how. I will repeat again, this will be a vastly more unified, but somewhat less advanced and less experienced version of humanity before they experience contact with the HALO people.

Edit after everything was done: Okay everyone I apologize deeply for how late this is but… this was a pain to write. It has more than 130 pages and after every fourth page I need to look back and read everything over again (as in the past 50 pages or so) to ensure everything is still running smoothly, nothing is conflicting other things, etc. I now fully understand why people usually just pick the canon time-line, throw a few things into it, then go on. While I normally love reading the time-lines of fanfictions it takes more time to write 5000 words in a time-line than it does to write five times that amount in a regular chapter.

However I promised there would be a time-line so here it is. If you find mistakes or wrong things, please do send them to me and their specific location so that I can rewrite that part, I was very sickly while writing the last 30 or so pages of this, and while I've checked it afterwards on spelling there might be a number of grammatic or continuity issues. These physical problems are also one of the numerous reasons why this has been dragged out far more than it should have been, though a large part of it was also my incapability at checking my own work correctly. The most important portion of this time-line is past 2030, before that it is mostly exposition and additions to things that are already there in canon.
Edit again: due to several mistakes made by myself caused by tiredness I had originally loaded the wrong version of this document. The time-line portion between 2010 and 2030 had been severely altered by this, which I apologise for. It was never my intention to insult national leaders or nations themselves, the main thinking behind that was because the earlier portion of this time-line was essentially a copied over version of the pre 2040 version of my other stories timeline, however in that I needed a way to reduce the number of major powers that actually used that power on an international scale to 2 in the (relative) short term, while I needed to create tensions between a number of them in the long term to cause an American-Chinese alliance against an alliance block lead by the European Union.

48450 BCE

The most powerful organic race currently alive in this galaxy, the Protheans, decide to both literally and figuratively play Gods by splicing genetics of all so called 'primitive' races together to create a highly unstable serum, and then put this into the DNA of some Asari on their Home world of Thessia, forever changing Asari biology.

While the Asari are changed heavily physically, the effect isn't anywhere near to what the Protheans wanted, and as such they perform a second experiment on top of it: Is it possible to create an entire species of biotic soldiers by performing an Element Zero saturation on the planet they live on?

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48430 BCE

So far the second experiment seemed to be working as was hoped for, causing no more experiments sanctioned by the Prothean Empire to happen, because of their fear that any more changes might damage the capabilities of what the Emperor sees as his future slave soldiers.

48420 BCE

As an unsanctioned side experiment, one of the Protheans inserts some of his DNA into the body of a young Asari child, just to see what would happen. The effects of this, and especially the many tragedies this single action would cause, would forever remain unknown to the Protheans.

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48410 BCE

The Prothean Empire has finally won their centuries long war with the Synthetic race that called themselves 'Metacon'. While celebrated without end, the lower level of alertness caused by this final victory will later be seen as the main reason why the Reaper forces were able to take down the Citadel station's defending fleet as easily as they did.

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48400 BCE

The Reapers first start their invasion of the Prothean Empire, by activating the Mass Relay that ends in the Citadel, with the battle for it devastating the overall leadership of both the Protheans and most of their vassal races. At this time the Reapers also use their control of the relay system to turn most of them off to stop Protheans from travelling between systems to re-enforce each-other in a timely manner. They make the mistake however that they do not understand how Prothean FTL communication works, and as such this attack warns all organic races in the galaxy of just what has happened at the Citadel.

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48360 BCE

While the Reapers enjoyed a number of devastating early victories, they are now being ground down in close to a stalemate, since while they hold an extremely large advantage over the organic races in space, their ground forces are little more than cannon fodder to their enemies, causing them to need to send multiple Reapers of at the least destroyer level down to the ground with the troops to give them a good chance at victory.

This, in combination with the fact that the Protheans are the most advanced, well trained and well-organised opponents both in space and on the ground that they have faced in close 2 million years, while they are advancing and winning planets, their progress becomes slower each year and at great costs to their ground forces, large losses among their starfighters/drones and heavy damage to themselves, the repairs of which slow down the take-over of other systems even more.

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48350 BCE.

At great costs the Protheans and their subordinate races have managed to slow the reaper invasion down to little more than a snail's pace, and while they are still losing, they can stretch this for at the very least centuries, possibly even millennia. While they have no way of knowing this, their opponents, the ones they have started calling the Reapers, are starting to gain a form of twisted respect for the Protheans by this point, and are planning to make this race the template of multiple new Reapers and making the surviving indoctrinated Protheans into their most capable ground forces and also to have them form the base of a new Reaper Capital ship type.

This twisted respect also causes them to see past the arrogance they've gained from the relatively quick and easy victories in the 40 or so cycles before this, and instead of only producing 1 Dreadnought Reaper and 5 or 6 Destroyer Reapers like they had done for most of those cycles, they plan on making 8 of the former, and at least 50 of the latter though they know that even then this won't make up for the losses that they have suffered in space by this point in time, let alone the losses they suffered on the ground.

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48340 BCE

By this point in time, the Protheans have learned enough about the Mass Relays to re-activate the de-activated ones in the territory they still control and start the creation of a smaller one that leads directly towards the Citadel.

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48300 BCE

The Reapers are now advancing somewhat faster again, because of the sheer losses the Protheans suffered and their retaking command of the Relay system. However, the research team in Illos determines that going to the Citadel right now is useless since they would just be obliterated by the Reaper capital ships surrounding the station. They are put in Cryo Pods and will be woken up by the V.I after either the Prothean Empire has lost and the reapers have retreated, or when the fighting will get heavy enough that there will be too few enemies on the other side of the Miniature Relay for the opponent to take the team down.

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48265 BCE

The Reapers finish production of the first 20 destroyers, some created from captured and dead Protheans, most of these made from other, smaller species of this cycle, with another 31 destroyers and 8 capital ship class Reapers on their way. Unlike in previous cycles, the Reapers now also start converting enemy dead into their unwilling cannon fodder for in atmosphere forces while still on the battlefield, because of how dangerously low the number of troops that remained from previous cycles is running. The demoralising factor of their own friends and families rising up from the dead to attack them causes the Reaper advance against the Protheans to speed up once again.

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48245 BCE

In their most dire hour, the Protheans managed to create a particle-beam rifle, which has the great advantage that it both passes through opposing Element Zero based shields with ease, and it also doesn't ever need to be reloaded or fed supplies in any other way outside of repairs done if it is damaged during combat. They also learned quickly afterwards how to create starfighter and tank compatible/sized versions of this rifle, finally giving their ground forces a weapon that has an advantage over the Reaper Destroyers when these enter atmosphere to serve as heavily armoured and shielded artillery platforms.

48225 BCE

To better defend themselves against these new weapons of the Protheans, for the first time in dozens of cycles, the overall design of an entire Reaper ship class is changed heavily, with the Destroyers now all getting the same energy attack diminishing shields that the Dreadnought Reapers have, so that they will have less losses in ships sent to be ground support artillery while also making them more useful in knife fighting range GARDIAN duels in space.

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48220 BCE

Now truly realizing that they are losing and will almost certainly lose the entire war, the Prothean Empire begins retreating most personnel from research outposts near primitive species that still haven't left their home-worlds, hoping that this will have the Reapers leave them alone. While doing this the buildings oft hide Cryo Chambers that can hold up to 1000 Protheans, with the intent to use these to hide their people until the Reapers are gone, then have either the V.I. or if that fails, a scouting party of a primitive species, open up the chambers and release the Protheans.

On the Mars base they attempt to start this procedure but the reapers get close to the area before they can truly initiate it, in a last ditch attempt they hide the four already finished and inhabited Cryo pods inside chambers several kilometres below the surface, with a single V.I. there that will remain inactive until the point where the relay is re-activated. Afterwards the remaining Protheans board whatever ships they can find, head through the relay, deactivate it and attack the Reapers that are on their way.

The Reapers manage to defeat the Protheans while only losing a single destroyer class ship, before sending a single capital class and a few destroyer class ships back to the not yet named Sol system with regular FTL, arriving there within little more than a day. Once there they find the above ground portion of the base and information about the plan to store cryo pods in the base however also learn that they arrived before the plan could be implemented.

This causes them to reason that the Prothean backup plan was trying to defeat them in battle through some kind of miracle. Heading to orbit they ground the base into dust, never realising just how deep below ground the base truly went, leaving the actual backup-plan safe. The Reapers, in their feelings of extreme superiority, never realise just how badly they underestimate the tenacity of the Protheans and other organic species even with their twisted respect for them.

They also leave 3 female members of their species behind on the Asari home world of Thessia, to serve as religious figures and leaders for the newly sentient species to guide them into becoming the leading species of the next cycle. This later fails due to their warnings and most of their knowledge being either hidden or lost through time, while many begin picturing the Goddess Athame and her two assistants as Asari in looks, instead of the foreign Prothean ones.

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48200 BCE

The Reapers now unleash all gathered and created ships based off Protheans and the other species of this cycle upon them, to test the ships efficiency. The tests go well, with the 51 Destroyer Reapers and 8 Dreadnought Reapers taking out the 1 dreadnought, 16 cruisers and 28 frigates defending the system without too much trouble and only losing 3 destroyers and a large number of drone fighter/interceptors to the opposing force. This was both due to them using Prothean tactics against opponents that had prepared for Reaper tactics, and because of their numerical and technological advantages over the Prothean defending force.

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48140 BCE

While studying the remains of a species that existed roughly fifty thousand years before them, the Protheans manage to find the plans of a supposed anti-reaper weapon, that if fully realized and undamaged, will target Reaper-code only, and as such ignore every other being, organic or synthetic. It can still be used if damaged, however then it is a lot less precise, and instead of only targeting Reapers it would work as a EMP for anything that is not fully organic and more advanced than for example a steam engine, including all relays and the Citadel itself.

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48100 BCE

While the Protheans held out for 3 full centuries, defeated a number in the low trillions of the Reaper's ground forces from previous cycles and took down the largest amount of reaper ships in millions of years, they have now all but lost the war, with only 1 system still visibly fighting back. This system is led by forces from the planet that would in the next cycle be called Eden Prime.

The Protheans have gathered whatever ships remained from their navy, which while still in the hundreds is not anywhere near enough to face the tens of thousands of Reaper ships getting ready to take them out, with millions of ground forces readying themselves for a last stand, that was also hoped to work as a cover-up so that a group of close to a million survivors in an underground Cryo bunker, would remain hidden.

The plan is that they would start rebuilding and assisting currently still primitive races in becoming strong enough that the Reapers would be defeated in the next cycle, in case their first plan, a 'Crucible' that might be able to take out the Reapers, fails.

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48099 BCE

While they held on with all their strength, fought tooth and nail and took down pretty much all of what remained of the Reaper ground troops from before this cycle and a large number of the Huskified Protheans, the last Prothean armies have finally lost the fight. The Crucible super weapon they intended to use was sabotaged because some partially indoctrinated Protheans thought it could be adjusted to control the Reapers instead of destroying them.

In reality it just destroys the devices ability to function. The hiding of the close to a million strong group went wrong because of an extremely recently indoctrinated Prothean learning of it after seeing a number of others enter the bunker and not go back out. He informs the Reapers and they send him and some other Proto-Collectors (Huskified Protheans, but with some of the cybernetic additions later added to every Huskified Prothean not used in the creation of new Reapers to create Collectors) into the facility while most of the Cryo pods are already activated.

They destroy tens of thousands of pods until in a last ditch effort the V.I. guarding the facility sets off a load of bombs to try to take them out. It works, but also at the cost of both most of the power generators and its personal ability to wake people up from Cryosleep. This causes it to focus on sustaining the leader of the group, while also sending a message towards whatever Beacons are still active.

It becomes corrupted quickly, but reads: ''If any being comes across this and understands, this is Prothean V.I. - I am here by sending the coordinates of this and another potential facility. All personnel in both of the facilities will most likely be in Cryosleep, and in at least one of them, possibly - of them, they cannot be woken up without outside interference. The locations are - and -. Beware the Reapers and prepare for their coming (insert the vision gained in game 1 on Eden Prime).''

A big problem that the heavily damaged/injured V.I. could not remember in this state was that only beings with either Prothean DNA or Prothean mindset/beings with the Prothean language installed in their head could actually access the first part of the vision and see the second part of it clearly, instead of the first one not being visible at all and only seeing some disjointed images of the second one which is what will happen to any unchanged member of the next cycles species.

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48070 BCE

The V.I in the facility on Illos wakes up whatever personnel managed to survive the long time they have been in cryo pods, with the war having gone on for much longer than expected. Because of this, only the 12 best scientists in the group, that were prioritised above all others and as such got more energy to their pods, and 4 mechanics, have survived the experience.

Saddened by the knowledge that they would never be able to rebuild the Prothean race, and not knowing about the other contingency plans in place because of how early they went into cryo sleep, they decide that since they will die out anyways, they might as well give the races of the next cycle a fighting chance. They activate the relay, all 16 scientists and 3 of the mechanics going to the other side.

Meanwhile, the mechanic that remains behind is given the task to reprogram the V.I. in such a way that it will from now on prioritize three things above all else, its own survival, to keep any sentient indoctrinated by Reapers as far away from the miniature relay as possible. And lastly, to if the facility is ever found by non-indoctrinated sentient beings, assist them in any way it can to prepare them for their own war against the Reapers.

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48069 BCE

After months of trying to get it right, the team finally manages to re-program the keepers, whom will never be able to open the Citadel's Relay to where most of the Reapers reside in between their 'cycles' of their own power again, nor will the Reapers ever again be able to take remote control of them to do their dirty-work in taking out the Citadel's defences.

The only way the Relay command can be undone and even then, only this specific command can be undone, is if an organic being types in a specific code in the central tower of the Citadel, while said organic has the same properties that allow somebody to properly understand a beacon.

However, they are now starved, and have scavenged and eaten what little food there was left on the Citadel. They die within days afterwards, with the hope that they have given the next cycle a chance to be able to fight the Reapers on a much more equal ground than they themselves were forced to do.

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End of the Prothean era.

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Council founding era:

(Mostly the same as in canon, and even then most of the changes that are there would spoil certain parts/plot points in the story if I mention them in this list, though I do expand on the explanations provided by canon.)

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13,000 BCE

The Turians of Palaven begin to develop civilization around this time.

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6000 BCE

Seeking to escape the imminent explosion of their sun, an unknown alien race constructs an AI-managed space ship equipped with supercomputers containing a virtual world, into which some one billion of the aliens transfer their consciousnesses in a last ditch attempt to have their species survive.

Because of their technological level the ship doesn't have a FTL, but instead uses regular engines to go at 70% of the speed of light while the ship is made to be able to survive multiple millennia without needing much in the way of repairs. The ship begins a journey throughout the galaxy which lasts for the next 8,000 years.

Less than three months after they start the journey their sun explodes, just a week before the second ship of its type would have been ready which would have brought along another billion people. Three of these were planned to house the planet's entire population.

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1900 BCE

Tuchanka, the Krogan home-world, enters the nuclear age. In a global conflict, weapons of mass destruction are released, triggering a nuclear winter. In the resulting devastation, Krogan society devolves into a collection of warring clans. Before this, the Krogan Civilization was a relatively prosperous one, with near complete peace within all nations themselves while the most prestigious positions and revered positions in society were for the female members that of religious leader, for the males the position of being an architect, and for both the military was the second most prestigious career.

However a large extremist group managed to take control of one of the nuclear launch silos during a religious holiday, causing a MAD scenario to activate, in which all nuclear weapons on the planet launched themselves at any potential threat, creating the earlier mentioned nuclear winter and killing off 93% of the planets population.

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1800 BCE

A supernova propels the Mu Relay, the only point of access to the remote Pangea Expanse, out of position. Concealed somewhere in the dense nebula formed by the supernova, the relay's position is effectively lost for centuries. The relay itself is found by the Ranchi during the proxy war they are forced into by the Reapers against the Citadel Council, however after their defeat no sentient knows where it is until shortly before the Reapers start their harvest of the Galaxy again.

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580 BCE

Because of the amount of Eezo that was on their planet, their species wide ability to manipulate Element Zero, and clues left behind by the Protheans specifically for this purpose, the Asari learn how to use Element Zero/Eezo with some efficiency only very shortly after entering what for most other species time line would have been the so called gunpowder age.

This has caused the idea to spread among the Asari that all forms of technology other than Mass Effect can never truly reach the height of Eezo reliant ones, which will cause a certain amount of friction to exist between them and any group that doesn't like the idea of being constricted to Eezo technology alone. It also scares them away from finding out alternative non-Mass Effect solutions to problems caused by using Mass Effect devices for certain things.

After developing faster than light (FTL) space-faring capabilities based upon Prothean technology, the Asari begin to explore the mass relay network, and eventually discover the large Citadel space station at a hub of many mass relays.

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520 BCE

The Salarians discover the Citadel and after some caution and espionage, they open diplomatic relations with the Asari.

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Early Council Era 500 BCE to 1 CE

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500 BCE

The Citadel Council is formed. The Asari and Salarians together colonize the Citadel and establish it as a centre of the galactic community, led by the Council. This year is also known as 0 GS, the beginning of the Galactic Standard (GS) timeline.

This meeting also leads to the founding of the Citadel Defence Force and the Citadel Defence Reservist Force, or the CDF and the CDRF, both with a Navy and Army branch and different groupings and classes in each of these branches.

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498 BCE

As a gesture of openness with their new Asari allies, the Salarian Union opens the records of the League Of One. Under threat, the League responds by assassinating every member of the Union's inner cabinet; Special Task Group operatives then hunt down and eliminate the League.

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400 BCE

First contact is made with the Volus.

395 BCE

The Citadel Council commissions the Volus to draw up the Unified Banking Act, which establishes a standard galactic currency known as the credit and links all galactic economies.

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390 BCE

The Turian Hierarchy discovers element zero in a nearby moon after finding the old Prothean research outpost situated there during a time where tensions between the Hierarchy and Turian colonies on other planets colonies are rising.

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380 BCE

The Turian Unification War occurs. The increasingly isolated and xenophobic colonies on the frontiers of Turian space go to war with each other. After years of fighting, the Turian Hierarchy sweeps in and pacifies the remaining factions with the advantage of being the ones with the fastest and most agile spaceships that also have a significant advantage over the others at long range. Animosity between Turian colonies continues for decades afterwards.

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370 BCE

The Council grants the Volus the honour of being the first non-Council species with an embassy at the Citadel, rather than a Council seat.

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250 BCE

First contact with the Batarians takes place, which marks the start of constant low scale conflict between forces of the Citadel Council and the Batarian Hegemony.

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200 BCE

The Asari discover the Elcor home system and help the Elcor locate and activate their nearest Mass Relay. "Within one Elcor lifetime" they establish a regular trade route to the Citadel and are granted an embassy. Because of their large size and physical abilities, a relatively large number of Elcor join the Citadels Defence Reservist Force, which will be called to arms in case of Galactic Scale warfare.

This isn't too well thought of in mainstream Elcor culture, where peaceful discussion is oft seen as the way to solve problems, not the application of violence.

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150 BCE

The Batarian Hegemony gets awarded an embassy at the Citadel, more because of the Council getting tired of the amount of their time the Hegemony representative takes up complaining about the unfairness of it all rather than any actual service given by the Batarians. Unknown to the Council, this is playing exactly into the Batarian representative's hand, since it was his strategy from the start to be as annoying but still polite as possible to get the Council to give them a proper embassy.

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120 BCE

First contact is made with the Quarians, however due to the fact that it is a fleet of Batarian Hegemony employed slavers making first contact a war breaks out between the two groups. The fighting turns in favour of the Quarians soon, with them having much better maintained ships and better trained naval personnel then the Batarians do. Their cyber-warfare is also of a much higher quality. Within a few weeks the Batarian fleets sent into the region are all defeated with minimum losses on the Quarian side, and while the Quarians are preparing a counter-attack the Asari Republics step in to try to negotiate peace.

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119 BCE

After a several months long armistice the Citadel Council finally manages to negotiate peace between the Quarians and Batarians, with the Quarians finally agreeing not because they are ready to forgive the unprovoked Batarian attack on their space, but more because they do not want to end up in a war with all the other species that were part of the Citadel. As part of the treaty the Quarian Confederacy gets an embassy on the Citadel.

Due to the skill the Quarian soldiers have shown in their battles with the Batarian Hegemony, with their mechanics, heavy infantry and armour divisions especially showing much promise, the Citadel Defence Reservist Force almost immediately lobbies for recruitment offices on the Rannoch, the Quarian home-world. Many young and out of luck Quarians join, quickly becoming the second largest group in it after the Elcor.

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110 BCE

First contact with the Hanar is made, with the species quickly being integrated in the Citadel society and given an Embassy, for the devotion they share with the Asari over the Protheans.

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Council Era - War and Rebellion (1 CE - 900 CE)

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1 CE

The Rachni, a species of highly intelligent hive-minded insects, are discovered when a Citadel expedition opens a dormant mass relay leading to their star systems. The Rachni prove to be hostile and begin a war with the rest of the galaxy. Negotiation with the Rachni Queens is impossible because they cannot be contacted in their underground nests on the toxic Rachni worlds.

The CDF, CDRF and national militaries of all member races are called upon to join the fight against the Rachni. The Batarian Hegemony on a governmental level refuses, though volunteers of young lower class Batarians stream in to join the fighting, fearing that if the Council is beaten Batarian space, and as such their homes and families, will be the next target.

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5 CE

On the ground, the Salarians provide the intelligence operatives, saboteurs and some of the light infantry, the Asari provide some of the light infantry, a large number of the medical personnel and biotic support, while the Quarians and Elcor the heavy infantry and armoured units, with the Quarians and Batarian irregular units providing the remaining light infantry.

The Volus meanwhile provide the remaining non-combatant units and most of the in-atmosphere air support. The remainder of which is provided by a mix of Quarians, Batarians and Salarians. In space most of the vessels currently in the fight are either Asari or Quarian with Volus and Batarian ships joining in to defend shipping lanes and to give more firepower to the ground forces, while Salarian ships serve as scouts mainly, while both Salarian ships and Batarian privateers work at disrupting Ranchi supply lines whenever possible.

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160 CE

The Rachni Wars continue still, though the Council is slowly losing ground due to near always being on the defensive. The Salarians make first contact with and uplift the now primitive Krogan, manipulating them into acting as disposable pawns and meat shields for the Citadel Council forces. The Krogan prove able to survive the harsh environments of the Rachni worlds and pursue the Rachni into their nests, systematically eradicating queens and eggs.

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290 CE

The Ranchi forces outside of their home system have been wiped out by this point, with the Krogan still heading the charge as shock-troops when on planets while the Quarians provide most of the ships with the Asari delivering the flag ships and space artillery support with their new dreadnought fleet.

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300 CE

The Rachni are declared extinct. In gratitude for their aid during the Rachni Wars, the Council rewards the Krogan a new home-world. Free of the harsh environment of Tuchanka, the Krogan population explodes.

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310 CE

The Krogan begin to expand exponentially, colonizing many new worlds.

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410 CE

Growing concerns about the Krogan expansion lead to the founding of the Special Tactics and Reconnaissance branch of the Citadel.

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693 CE

Beelo Gurji, a Salarian operative, is appointed the first Spectre by the Citadel Council.

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The Krogan Rebellions era begins

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700 CE

Krogan warlords leverage veterans of the Rachni Wars to annex territory from other races in Citadel Space. Eventually the Council demands withdrawal from the Asari colony of Lusia, but the Krogan refuse. A pre-emptive strike is made on Krogan infrastructures by the Spectres. The Krogan Rebellions begin.

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701 CE

Much like early on during the war against Rachni, it are the member species that have to fight as the main heavy ground forces, with the Asari and Salarians mainly performing spec ops and light infantry duties. This to the great annoyance of these member species, since the Asari alone already outnumber most of them put together in total population numbers.

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725 CE

The Citadel Council makes first contact with the Turian Hierarchy around this time and persuades them to aid in the war. After the Krogan respond to the initial Turian offensive by devastating Turian colonies with weapons of mass destruction, the Turians vow to stop the Krogan from ever becoming a threat again.

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745 CE

The Vol Protectorate is accepted as a client state of the Turian Hierarchy, with positive treaties and agreements for both in the eyes of the Citadel Council. The Volus themselves and also both the Elcor and the Quarian governments object to this, but with the war going on they do not have the ability to push it since they need the Hierarchies assistance badly.

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750 CE

The Turians decide to use the Genophage, a Salarian created biological weapon that causes large amount of stillbirths if used on Krogan, and bombard multiple Krogan held planets including Tuchanka with it. This decision is made after they came to the realisation that the Krogan would never give up as long as they could replenish their population fast enough to replace all losses in manpower overtime with ease.

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775 CE

Due to both the morale effect of the genophage and the lack of re-enforcements to replace dead troops, the Krogan are finally being driven back instead of always being on the offensive.

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799 CE

The Krogan Rebellions are over, while there will still be some small scale fighting in the following decades, Krogan clans on Tuchanka have for the most part surrendered out of fear of being driven into extinction. Shortly after this the Krogan devolve into heavy infighting for resources, land and fertile population members on their home-world.

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800 CE

The Turians fill the military and peacekeeping niche left by the decimated Krogan. The Citadel Conventions are drawn up in the wake of the conflict, in an attempt to prevent future conflicts of this scale.

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801 CE

The total losses of the Krogan rebellions are counted up, and end up being 7,8 billion, this number including every death on both sides of the war caused either directly or indirectly by said war during the war. However the aftereffects will continue killing the Krogan people for centuries afterwards not only by causing many stillbirths among the Krogan, but also by many of the members of the Krogan species committing suicide because of the amount of their own children that die in those circumstances.

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Council Era - Expansion (900 CE - 2157 CE)

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830 CE

The Turians are granted a seat on the Citadel Council in recognition for their service in the Krogan Rebellions. The fact that none of the other member species that supplied forces for this war have gotten any commendations outside of some small financial concessions for it is seen by many of those factions as an insult.

This insulted group is including but not limited to the Quarian Confederation, Courts of Dekuuna (Elcor), the Batarian Hegemony and the Vol Protectorate (Volus). The last of whom are also still enraged that they went from the third most important species in the Citadel to being the subordinate species of what they see as 'Imperialistic warmongers '.

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1500 CE

Extensive and unchecked industrial expansion on the Drell home-world Rakhana begins taking a significant toll on the planet's environment.

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1600 CE

The first sightings of the Collectors are reported in the Terminus Systems. In Citadel space, the claims are dismissed as unsubstantiated rumours and tall tales.

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The Morning War

First month of 1893 CE

The Geth, machines created by the Quarians as a source of cheap labour, start becoming self-aware. At first the Quarian Confederacy doesn't see much wrong with this, and outside of some small scale protests by both a number of the newly self-aware Geth and some Quarians to give them more rights it is for the most part a peaceful process, though the politicians aren't sure what to do about it.

They send a message to the Citadel Council asking for advice on the situation after one of the Geth Units asks 'Does this unit have a soul?', and though the question has been asked before, this time around the owner of the Unit panics instead of going into either a debate with the Unit or simply ignoring it like the other Quarians before her did.

The Citadel Council on the other hand becomes enraged over this, and decides to take the old Prothean approach to this problem: ''Anything that isn't organic doesn't have a right to self-determination and if it disagrees it isn't anything more than a disobedient tool.'' They inform the Confederation that if they do not start shutting down the Geth, the Council will force them to do so by parking multiple Turian fleets in the orbit of Rannoch and blowing up any building that has even the slightest chance of housing Geth platforms.

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Third month of 1893 CE

Fearing what a war with the Council would cost their people, and feeling that they wouldn't be able to win even with their newly sentient allies, the Confederacy leadership decides to accept the Council order with a heavy heart. This ends up in a disaster, causing the Geth to revolt after some of their programs notice what is happening, with a small number of Quarian citizens siding with the Geth while most side with the Confederacy.

The citizens siding with the Geth end up captured or dead early on in the war for the most part, causing the Geth to feel something they have never truly felt before: a deep desire for revenge. Due to their inexperience with such strong emotions, especially as enhanced as they are due to the Geth Collective's hive-mind they are swept away by it and are fully taken over by the need for blood and vengeance.

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1894 CE

While having driven the fight into a standstill against the Geth with the assistance of mercenaries paid for by the Volus and Elcor volunteer soldiers, the Quarian Confederacy knows they have a decent chance of losing in the end. Because of this a project to quickly build six so called Live-ships is started, multi-kilometre long behemoths with significant agricultural areas and industrial areas in addition to the regular amnesties of a personnel transport ship. These in combination with thousands of smaller Volus built self-sustaining freighters should be able to provide the needs in food and industrial material of some 120 million Quarians.

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Second month of 1895 CE

The Quarian Confederacy and her allies are now losing large amounts of ground, being pushed back to the space-ports and surrounding area's on Rannoch itself while the situation in a number of colonies is better, it will still be a harsh blow if Rannoch falls to them, not only symbolically but also physically since the moment the planet falls the Geth will have full uncontested command of the planetary anti-orbital defences, which would enable them uncontested access to all shipyards both on Rannoch itself and those in and/or near its orbit.

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Fourth month of 1895

The last Quarian holdout on Rannoch is taken out, though a small number of the civilians managed to flee, most were killed in action by enraged hordes of Geth relatively early on in the war. The last remains of the Quarian home-fleet near Rannoch are driven off by the Geth fleet there, the anti-orbital support being the figurative straw that broke the camel's back. This however also forces them to leave behind those planets in the tikkun star system they still held some control over, and within weeks the Geth have taken the entire Quarian home system.

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1896 CE

Throughout the year Quarians in part due to the support of a mercenary fleet hired by the Volus manage to hold a defensive line in front of their last system with a number of shipyards where the live-ships are still being built. Numerous other civilian ships are also being built there to accommodate refugees if the war is lost to bring them over to Citadel Council Space.

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1897 CE

The Confederacy is losing the war badly, with them having lost not only Rannoch but also all of their colonies except for a Addazi, the last non-Geth held planet in the Perseus veil, where the shipyards are laying the finishing touches to the Live-ships. By this point after systematically being thrown off the planets by enraged Geth units everything else is lost.

After their latest plea to the Citadel Council for support once again goes unanswered, they decide the best way to save their people is to gather both the live-ships and what other ships they have left and load all remaining Quarian civilians on them, while some of their soldiers and both those ships too damaged to make the journey and some not FTL capable smaller ships manned by volunteers remain behind to slow down the Geth forces as much as possible.

The plan works, but once the fleet manages to get out of the Perseus Veil and get close to the Citadel, the Council revokes their right to an embassy on the Citadel and throws them out. This in their eyes is a perfect punishment for creating the Geth and then failing to destroy the newly born synthetic species.

They also forbid any of the governments part of the Citadel Council to keep alive a stream of resources towards the Quarian Migrant Fleet. This enrages and shocks not only the Quarians but also to a lesser extent the Volus and Elcor, who now more than ever realise that if the council ever considers a problem they have dangerous to confront, they will be abandoned without any hesitation.

The only government truly happy with this outcome is the Batarian Hegemony, who have in their mind now gained the upper hand in the centuries long rivalry and cold war between them and the Quarian Confederation. Their slaver raids against the Quarian Migrant Fleet however fail miserably, since they don't seem to take in account that most of the remaining Quarian sailors and soldiers are experienced combatants that fought much worse threats then some badly trained overconfident raiders and ironically give the Quarians much needed materials to use to repair both their own ships and the moth balled/heavily damaged vessels sold to them at below cost by the Volus.

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1898 CE

Against Council orders, the Courts of Dekuuna (Elcor) and the Vol Protectorate (Volus) governments send credits, raw resources and moth balled ships to the newly created Quarian Migrant fleet, but with the close watch of the Council this oft means they cannot give more then what is on government level small change and enough resources to repair a part of the Fleet and setting up companies to give government paid shuttle rides back to the Fleet for stranded Quarians.

The Quarians however are thankful for any assistance they get, and as such remain on relatively friendly terms with the only governments that are doing their best to support them in their time of need. At this point 120 million Quarians are still alive in the known galaxy. Strangely enough several large anonymous donations are done by accounts that are traced back to a few Krogan bounty hunters by a curious Quarian youngster. The most prominent of those being the bounty hunter Urdnot Wrex.

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1900 CE

An index done by the Geth shows that close to 3,9 billion enemy Quarians and 150 million non-Quarians that were a mix of Elcor soldiers and mercenaries hired by Volus credits died during the newly dubbed 'Morning War', while on their own side 4 billion programs and 100 million Quarians that sided with them were lost. The current Geth population is 40 billion programs.

(The average Geth physical body needs to house 150 to 200 programs to be capable of intelligent action even when it is near other Geth. Fully independent intelligent action of single platforms only starts at 400. The main reason behind the low Geth casualties when single bodies use this many programs is that their programs in most cases can flee their bodies back to central hubs before those bodies shut down after being hit critically)

By this point in time they also have long since calmed down from their initial want for revenge, and are now for the most part horrified by how badly it affected them, causing the Geth to isolate themselves from the remainder of known space, but a large number of programs swear to themselves that if the Quarians as a species are ever threatened again, they will step in and defend them no matter what it takes.

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1910 CE

Sadly enough over the years, the same feeling of compassion towards the Quarians doesn't stay with most of the population of Council Space, with the exceptions of some of the Elcor and strangely enough most Krogan. The Krogan consider the Quarians and Elcor worthy opponents however they also have a measure of respect for them because of their oft outspoken disagreement with the Citadel Council about whether or not the genophage should continue being refined and renewed on the Krogan, instead of only being a weapon to use once to end the war.

Lastly, they also see something of themselves in the Quarians: a once proud and respected race, now seen as nothing but barbaric beasts by the remainder of the galaxy and left to die by the Citadel in their darkest hours. The current Quarian population is 100 million, most of the deaths being caused by attacks from Citadel population on members of the flotilla out to gather resources. Most of the ships in the flotilla are currently little more than giant hulls with substance agriculture works inside and some engines to the back.

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1921 CE

The Geth begin construction of a mega-structure designed to house and simultaneously run every Geth program in existence. Completion of the mega-structure, which would allow the Geth to maximize their collective processing capacity, is the long-term goal of Geth civilization, with the estimated finishing date of the project being 31920 CE.

They also discover how to create decently efficient plasma weaponry, however due to not having any internal wars or combat with Citadel forces, they have little reason to improve much upon it. This will later on be regarded as a decision made upon having too little information available by the Geth themselves.

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Era of discovery

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April 12 1961 CE

Yuri Gagarin aboard the Vostok 1 becomes the first human to travel in space. Humanity becomes a space-faring race.

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July 20 1969 CE

Apollo 11 lands on Luna, Neil Armstrong becomes the first human to walk on Luna, and the first human to walk on an astronomical object other than Earth.

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1980 CE

Aria T'Loak assumes control of Omega after defeating the space station's previous warlord in single combat. She mockingly bestows the title "Patriarch" on the broken Krogan, and uses him as a reminder to her enemies of her power.

The Quarian population is at this point down to 100 million, while the total Council population has currently reached 102 billion, a total only roughly equal to the total population before the Morning War.

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1985 - 1991 CE

Giotto - First ESA deep space mission; first ESA mission to intercept an asteroid (Halley & Grigg-Skjellerup)

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1990

Launch of the Hubble telescope

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1991 CE

What would later be called the first ''Modern international cold war'' on Earth ends, with the Soviets being the ones to lose the war. Despite the numerous times where it was a close call, it eventually didn't devolve into a full on nuclear total war, with only proxy wars becoming hot zones for direct combat between the two ideologies. Though admittedly the number of these proxy wars and their casualty counts were very high.

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1997 CE

Sojourner touches down at Ares Vallis becoming the first rover to explore Mars. During its three months of operation, the rover captures more than 550 images of the Red Planet.
Huygens, First ESA mission to Titan; a Saturn moon

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2000 CE

The Hanar and Drell have first contact after a Hanar missionary vessel finds a drifted off derelict satellite and decides to follow its navigational records back to the Drell home-world. Shortly after hearing their story and seeing the state of the Drell home-world, the leader of the vessel decides to contact his superiors in the Illuminated Primacy and pleads for an evacuation force to save as many Drell as can be safely housed in Hanar territory.

The leader of the Primacy, seeing this as her chance to act as they think the Protheans assisted and uplifted all species, decides to send all ships that can safely transport Drell to bring them to Kahje and Belan, their only worlds with a significant area suited for non-Hanar life. In the end close to eight million Drell are evacuated, but many more remain on their home-world, either to fight over whatever is left or to try to build it back up.

Later expeditions will add another two million to the number of Drell living away from their home-world, this time around mostly being orphaned children and teenagers found all around the planet that wouldn't have had much of a future if they weren't taken in by the Hanar.

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2003 CE

Mars Express, the first ESA mission to Mars and SMART-1, the first ESA mission to Luna happen in this year.

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2004 CE

Rosetta, the first ESA mission to orbit an asteroid (67P / Churyumov-Gerasimenko) happens in this year.

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2005 CE

The first very basic computer that can think for itself with a moving physical body is created by humanity. This will later be considered the first 'synthetic dumb' A.I.

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2006 CE

Venus Express, first ESA mission to Venus and Huygens, the first successful landing on an outer Solar System world (Titan) happen during this year.

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2008 CE

Tensions start rising around the world with North Korea threatening to fire off nukes at any and all opponents, while Russia starts taking land from several of their neighbours whenever these neighbours have an internal conflict. The international community is angry about this but cannot do much without potentially starting an international nuclear war.

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2012 CE

Several countries start getting progress in their research into practical pulse laser weaponry. Though there is a large amount of competition, the researchers in Great-Britain, the Netherlands and the USA are getting the best results so far.

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2014 CE

The Dutch and British scientists decide to combine their work since they both keep getting stuck on a single different issue, together it is solved relatively quickly after the coalition forms and work on a combined prototype begins.

2015 CE

Both the USA as well as a British and Dutch coalition bring out pulse laser weaponry, however the version from the USA turns out to be a glass canon. While possessing significantly more firepower than the one created in Europe, it has cooling issues due to a small flaw in the power delivery system due to which it cannot operate in any weather colder than 0 degrees Celsius or hotter than 35 degrees Celsius.

Finally the design is also somewhat weaker structurally than its European counterpart. The European design on the other hand only has half of its American counterparts firepower, but is very robust, has a significantly shorter cool-down period and can be used in any weather, no matter if its freezing at -12 degrees Celsius or a sweltering desert at 40 degrees Celsius.

Though the first one isn't recommended since extreme colds can cause a loss of up to 10% in both range and firepower, and the second one isn't recommended because of a 15% longer cool-down period than usual. While the British got power systems and laser concentrators for the guns themselves to work, the Dutch scientists were the ones that designed much better versions of the targeting systems, cooling systems and synthesised the before this unknown material used to house and protect the device. The end effect of this is that the Americans now have what is essentially an incredible anti-battleship or anti-tank laser weapon, while the Netherlands and Britain have a laser weapon that would serve as an extremely effective portion anti-air and anti-missile defence system, in addition to being good against lighter forces like infantry and small ships.

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2016 CE

The civil war in Ukraine has come to a temporary halt after a cease-fire enforced by UN troops, while negotiations are being held between leadership of both sides enforced by diplomatic pressure of the international community. This eventually turns into an election in all areas of the country on wether or not they wish to stay with Ukraine or rejoin Russia, with the overseers of the elections being UN troops specifically from parts of the world with little reason to side with either group in the conflict to try to ensure fair results. People can also leave to rejoin the other portion of the country as long as they can confirm they were inhabitants of the country before the conflict started to prevent either side from starting problems in the area after this one is resolved.

Most of the country stays in Ukranian hands, but some eastern portions rejoin Russia. The peacefull resolution and to the surprise of both sides the other actually holding themselves to this resolution and allowing the people that wish to leave to do so cools down the near boiling tensions between both the formerly internal portion of the conflict and their international support on both sides.

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2017 20th of January

Donald Trump is inaugurated as president, starting a tumultuous, and oft debated on wether it was a good or highly negative time for the Republican federation of the USA. He withdraws his country from a multitude of international agreements that could benefit everyone world-wide, stops state funded research into cleaner energy sources, opens a large number of coal reliant factories and tries to force any press that speaks out against him to be shut down creating large scale civil unrest between supporters and opponents of his policies, however at the same time his seemingly impulsive actions also have effects that profit the nation more than it would seem at first, with a better relation to China and North-Korea while the relation between the nation and current allies keeps worsening.

He also tries to repeal several law put in place by his predecessor with mixed succes, though his claim that he will be the first president with an American space navy will later on also turn out to be a lie due to him souring relations between himself and most of the nations and groups world-wide that would both be willing and needed to start up a program of truly sustainable spaceflight at this point in time.

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2017 4th of June CE

The first non-prototype versions of the 1st generation Pulse Laser Canons are introduced by the Dutch and British and sold to their European allies at production costs prizes. The Americans are offered, but after a debate between himself and the military general staff President Trump does not accept it, as they believe the american variant fits their current doctrine better in addition to the fact that American researchers are making progress on something the Europeans have nearly abandoned: rail gun designs. The progress of installing laser weaponry as the main canon of all frigates flying Dutch, British, Belgian and German flags is started. Most other countries in Europe remain behind for the moment and decide to mainly use them as anti-air and anti-ballistic missile defences for their most important cities.

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2017 CE

Great Britain decides after a very close vote during a referendum to leave the European Union, however instead of the economic growth they expected immediately after making the decision it turned out to be more of a mixed bagg, especially since the process in and of itself, which was previously thought to only take a few weeks or months, will take years. International trade deals made by European the Union on behalf of all its members no longer being valid lowers the income from export to parts of the world outside of Europe by 10%, while the import costs rise by slightly more than 14%. A portion of this is amended by not having to follow most EU laws anymore as soon as the process is done, however opinion on wether or not it was a good idea in the first place remains heavily divided. The laser technology being exported to military allies does create enough finances to serve as a stopgap measure in the worsened trade in most other fields.

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2018 CE

The Dutch and British naval fleets have replaced all of the main guns of their frigates and destroyers with the new energy guns, that would later be designated as the 1st Generation Pulse Lasers, currently they are just known as Laser Canons.

Due to relative calm elsewhere in the world, this is noticed relatively quickly by other powerfull nations in the world, though others turn towards the USA in the belief that their type of laser weaponry will fit their militaries personal doctrines better. At the same time Great Britain and The Netherlands are through arming their frigate and destroyer class vessels with the Pulse Lasers, the Germans and Belgians rely on Dutch mechanics to do the work on their ships for them. Continued higher levels of participation within the EU and the effect of Great Britain leaving the EU causes the Dutch Admiral Herbert Broekman to be chosen as the new commanding officer of the EUNF, or European Union Naval Forces.

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2019 CE

After a large amount of problems between himself and several other NATO leaders on how to proceed in the future and how to strenghten their military capabilities President Trump decides to leave the NATO due to them. While his actions have given numerous short term benefits, including an easier time in the research department after he loses the next election the country will suffer from negative effects caused by the long term problems his policies created, though they are nowhere near as bad as his critics claimed they would be.

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2020 CE 1st of June

Elements of the KGB hand plans to Vladimir Putin on an indirect assault on several western countries, but are refused due to the leader wishing for less trade restrictions to get himself and his people the defensive capabilities of the laser weaponry, as it could potentially be the only defence during the MAD portion of the next world war.

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2021 CE

Due to how useful they have proven during many naval excersizes and in small scale engagements against pirates by government owned merchant vessels, many governments develop a love for the idea of a laser armed naval fleet, and start either more intensive research into the devices, or opt for diplomatic approaches of the EU to see if they are willing to sell some to them.

Few conflicts are ongoing in the world and tensions between the major powers are at the lowest they have been in a long time. This is not to say that the world is prefect, however the chance of a global nuclear war has decreased drastically in comparison to how high the chance had been in the past seven decades.

The Dutch government buys a large share in the 'Lightyear One' company and places a large order for them in all land based government vehicles. The company is known for building electrical cars that are able to function fully on solar power. They also convince other EU members to perform the same action.

(They have the maximum ability to drive 800 kilometres before needing to fuel up, however because of the solar panel power system, even in the Netherlands this just means parking them outside for 9 hours in the summer, though if needed they can be fuelled up simply connecting them to an electrical network.)

At the same time, they also build eight new nuclear power plants and install solar panels on all major government facilities to supplant the rising price of fossil fuels, these projects are projected to lower the need to import fossil fuels by 75% within two years. Soon after seeing the success of these actions, other EU members follow in their footsteps. Meanwhile a combined French-German research team is making heavy advances in research surrounding Nuclear energy.

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2023 CE

The once again increasing trade world-wide and newly available wealth in Europe has them restart old space programs that were left in the dust to deal with more immediate problems until now. Due to new innovations made by different companies in Europe in Solar and Nuclear engines, space worthy vessels can now be produced at a much lower cost than before, making it viable, even for smaller countries, to take part in it and provide both ships and crew members to international efforts.

At the same type, due to an increasingly small amount of government funds needing to be spent on importing fossil fuels in most of the EU's member states, they race ahead of most of their competitors in this area, which is noticed by the other world powers. World powers such as the USA and China emulate them, though they feel insulted that they need to copy the example of an 'inferior' conglomerate of nation states.

This year also signifies the start of a large scale anti-corruption campaign in Italy, lead in part by the Catholic church essentially guilt tripping corrupt catholic politicians into either turning over a new leaf or resigning in large numbers. Meanwhile the Mafia's influence in politics is weakened somewhat by both this and after they are made known of just what will happen should they continue on like this.

While still either the most or the second most corrupt country in the EU, the situation becomes much less dire than it was before this year.

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8th of November 2025 CE

A research team in Japan has started on the process of creating an A.I. that is smarter than the current relatively 'dumb' A.I. programs available on the market.

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5th of December 2025

The death of Queen Elizabeth the second shocks the world. Though it was clear she was getting very old, people still expected her to live on, with the mythos surrounding her making her seem immortal to many. While the position of British monarch was by the time she became Queen mostly ceremonial, she still had a great social and cultural impact on not only Great Britain but also the remainder of the world, being the longest lasting British ruler.

As her son has gotten dementia the previous year and thus wouldn't be able to handle his duties as a king very well, her grandson takes over instead, and starts a subtle campaign to make the idea of re-joining the EU more attractive then it currently is, considering right now 52% of the population supports it, but for a vote to enter the EU again to work, they need 67% popular support.

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2nd of January 2026 CE

The death of another giant shocks the world. Originally seen as a short-term replacement, Pope Francis the first whom was born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, managed to take the Catholic church out of its downward spiral of losing members and losing the faith of the general public that was happening when he became the leader. He did this by making the church go back to its roots somewhat, in having them become the religion of the poor that defends the weaker and oppressed members of society.

Following this mindset he made it a law for gay couples to be able to get married in a church, illegalise catholic versions of the 'Nashville' pact, cut out most of those higher tier members of the Catholic church that had fallen to corruption and ensured that no matter what rank they have in the church, anyone suspected of crimes would have the legal capabilities of a citizen of the country they performed said crimes in and that while the church will provide them with a lawyer, there will be no other legal assistance.

The only exceptions to this being in cases where the Church doesn't trust the judicial systems of whatever country the clergy member supposedly performed the crime in, in which case they provide full backing and use their international power to ensure there is a trustworthy judge overseeing the case.

Lastly he also enlarged the population of the Vatican and changed its governing laws so that instead of being a non-hereditary absolute monarchy its governing system to a non-hereditary constitutional monarchy with a democratically chosen leader for the civilian government. While the Pope would remain the head of state and head of the military, he would lose most other abilities that were given to him as part of the original position 'King' of the Vatican that a Pope would gain once they became the leader of the Catholic church.

To quote him from one of his speeches: "I would like us to make noise, I would like those inside the dioceses to go out into the open; I want the Church to be in the streets; I want us to defend ourselves against all that is worldliness, comfort, being closed and turned within.''
and from another ''I would rather have the Church bleed out in the streets, defending the weak and defenceless, living to the founding spirit of our religion and die out fulfilling this goal rather than slowly die unnoticed on top of an ivory tower.''

The success of this was both seen and admired by many other religious groups world-wide, making them head more in that direction themselves too. It re-invigorated world-wide piety to religions, even causing numerical growth across the globe, though the percentages of religious and non-religious remain roughly the same world-wide as the numerical increase doesn't match the global population growth.

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5th of June 2026 CE

Greece finds large deposits of gold, silver and iron on and near several of their smaller islands. This newfound material wealth in combination with a change in government structure on top of giving all EU countries they have a debt to a share of a number of the mines proportional to the debt they owe the country, is used to pay off a large part of their debt to their debtors both inside and outside of Europe, finally silencing most of the groups that wanted to throw them out of the European Union and other international organisations.

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2027 CE

Norway, Iceland, Ukraine and the Vatican all join the European Union during this year.

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2028 CE

A small settlement is formed on the moon, which is now officially designated as 'Luna', governed directly by the UN department of Extra-Planetary affairs. It will grow at a fast rate, while prototype solar powered artificial gravity machines heighten the gravity to near Earth Level gravity, with large underground agricultural complexes providing food. By the end of the first year of its existence, close to 9000 people from countries all around the world live there.

While the whole project costs billions more than it will make in many decades or even a century, it signals that colonization of other planets inside the solar system is possible and gains more public approval for the idea of extra-terrestrial colonies.

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2030 CE

Great Britain joins the EU once again, however this time around the country will have stricter guide lines and a new agreement is formed that in case the country wants to leave the EU again they will need strong majority vote in parliament or a three fourths majority vote in a referendum, instead of the government being forced to go along with what was little more than an opinion poll among the population and treat it like an actual vote at 52% for leaving and 48% against leaving.

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2031 CE

Turkey joins the EU.

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2032 CE

The USA gives a demonstration of their new fully tested weapon: a move-able and reliable rail gun design which functions as the main gun of a new class of battleship. While railguns in and of themselves already existed before they were overall very unreliable and little more than a curiosity rather than an actual front line weapon It becomes highly sought after by all countries that don't have a friendly relationship with the EU and gives a much needed boost to the country's economy after an economic crisis that kept worsening for close to 25 years.

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2033 CE

Upon realising that even with all the funds put into it space colonisation will not advance fast enough to prevent an international famine caused by the growth rate of the human population in time, it is decided by the EU to collectively start a project of terraforming regions that are deserts worldwide into actually useful land. While this is going on, the Netherlands, Great Britain and Ireland also start another project the Dutch have had a large amount of experience with for the past millennium: gaining land from the sea through poldering.

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2034 CE

China discovers a way to produce plasma based weaponry, which while less powerful and slower than both railguns and laser weaponry, has one massive advantage: it's extremely cheap to make and doesn't need much in the way of cooling systems, unlike laser weapons, and doesn't need anywhere near as expensive ammunition or maintenance as the Railgun weapons do.

Also unlike both laser and railgun technology, it can be made small enough to be reliably used by non-mechanised infantry, though at this point it loses most of its advantages in comparison to gunpowder based fire-arms since the guns small enough to be used by infantry have a rate of fire only slightly higher than muskets. Meaning that while good as anti-vehicle weapons, they fare terribly in infantry against infantry battles.

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2035 CE

After the initial success of the International settlement on Luna (now called 'New Hope'), new settlements are started by individual nations, though the EU through their space agency ESA decides to also form some shared ones under ESA control. Small scale conflict sometimes exists between these settlements, causing the UN department of Extra-Planetary affairs to get a large raise in funding to handle the diplomacy between the different settlements and regions.

By the end of this year, there are roughly 8.9 billion humans, with 1.6 million of those living on Luna and everyone else on Earth. Plans are drawn up for both the permanent settlement of Mars and the terraforming of areas of the Red Planet.

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1st of June 2036

After months of negotiating, with the EU assisting and working as a diplomat to soothe out differences, the African Union is reborn, though this time much more stable. Its founding members are Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, Egypt, Libya, Madagascar and South-Africa.

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15th of June 2036

After being approached by the EU about the possibility of terraforming parts of the Sahara desert into farmable lands, the newly born African Union polls their populations about the idea, and with an overwhelmingly positive response they accept the proposal, agreeing to make it a shared investment.

The end result of the negotiations after this is as follows, the African Union pays the local labour forces and other work crews, the European Union will pay the actual specialists and supply the equipment for not only the terraforming, but also all agricultural efforts in the region for 5 years after the conclusion of the project.

All profits will be for the African Union, however in return they will become an ally of the European Union politically, sign a mutual defence pact and curtail illegal immigration towards European countries as much as they can, in the long term also accepting those who migrate back to the African Union from Europe.

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30th of June 2036

The actual project starts, currently named 'Desert Paradise', it is expected to take between 15 and 20 years to fully realize it. After this period of time however, and with the promised farming techniques and equipment the European Union will bring in, the area is expected to be able to feed a 350% larger population then it currently has, which is saying something considering that the regions current population has to import close to half of their food and other agricultural products.

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1st of December 2036 CE

After many failed attempts, the research into creating a true A.I. bears fruit, with the Japanese A.I. gaining sentience. The A.I., that doesn't show a preference to any gender yet at this point, has many discussions with the researchers, but is currently restricted to living in a single room, with no access to the internet or any technology other than its own body.

That body is rooted to the ground in-case it decides to fight its creators for one reason or the other. While all these precautions are taken, the AI is treated well by the scientists, who subconsciously have begun to see it as their 'child', while the AI sees them as its family. This type of A.I. will later be known as a 'Synthetic Smart A.I.'.

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1st of June 2037 CE

International scouting missions on Mars have shown a multitude of secluded and relatively easy to terraform spots, which has the UN call all countries worldwide together and gives each country the chance to choose spots, with the sizes of the claims being determined by a mix of how much the country of origin needs it, how capable they would be of actually reaching the spot and how well they would be able to make use of it. This event will later be considered the start of the Era of Colonisation.

To prepare for possible problems caused by the predicted expansion into space, a vote is held to give the UN department of Extra-Planetary affairs permission and some funds to build/buy a small navy of space capable combat vessels, and hire both the crews for those vessels and the ground forces to take on planet-based problems on planets other than Earth.

In the same convention, somehow renaming the planet Earth into something else comes up, as something that in the same language used for the word translates to 'dirt' might not be the best idea when potentially interacting with another species, and it is agreed that names can be sent in for the next year by every country that is a UN member state, with a vote being held 6 months after the suggestions are all in.

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1st of December 2037 CE

Countries from all over the world have offered designs for combat capable space vehicles for the UN department of Extra-Planetary affairs, but four design series show the most promise, the Defender Series sent in by the EU collectively through their shared space agency ESA, the Xing Series designs sent in by the Chinese government, the Kalvari Series from India and the Armstrong Series from the USA.

They are seen as useful for very different reasons, the EU designs are seen as such due to them having the best engines, the highest quality laser weaponry and somewhat better armour than most of the others. However the problem is, they are also very expensive to build in comparison to most other designs, especially the Chinese ones.

The Chinese designs meanwhile have the highest level of cost-effectiveness and can transport much larger numbers of people and goods during missions then any of the others, while the Indian ships have the best armour however both are highly underpowered on the weapons front due to using plasma based main guns, while their engines are much less energy efficient then both the European and American designs.

Lastly while the Armstrong series are the most powerful offensively they are for the most part glass canons and can relatively easily be taken down if the opponent knows the design well enough due to both the armour being inefficient against indirect hits and a design flaw in the power delivery system that causes the engines to not be able to be used while firing the main gun.

They are however the only design that effectively uses railguns as their main weapons, which causes them to have another offensive advantage against the other designs since most were built along the idea that railguns and other such weapons would be at best the secondary weapons of any ship, causing their armour to be geared towards defending against the effects of laser and plasma weaponry due to the extremely high speed and power of the first and the low production and maintenance costs of the second.

Eventually its decided to go with the Defender Series designs for the majority of the actual warships, the remainder being the Armstrong series, while they will go with the Xing Series designs for troop transports, passenger ships and bulk goods transports. Scouting and exploration vessels will be divided between the Defender and the Xing series.

During this discussion, the possibility of a hostile first contact comes up as an eventuality they have to prepare for, and that while the creation of more mobile defences such as ships should be restricted, the use of orbital defence platforms to defend both the home-world and all future human colonies is taken into consideration. It is agreed upon to return to this subject once the first actual ships have finished production, to give both the side for the idea and the side against the idea good arguments and an idea about the actual economic practicality of the devices.

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1st of May 2038 CE

All suggestions for the planetary name change have been sent in and have been noted down. During this year Japan has decided to open up to the world about their creation of an A.I., and after some discussion and international fear it is decided to let the A.I. talk to the UN in person, however it will be restricted to a robot that has a very large storage capacity so that the A.I. can be comfortable, but also unknown to said A.I. a kill switch that can be immediately activated the moment it turns hostile, with the robot body also having no real cyberwarfare capabilities.

This meeting will happen a week after the election for the new international name of the planet Earth on official UN documentation and in potential future contact with alien life forms.

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1st of July 2038 CE

To ensure that there is a recent index on which population numbers can be checked to keep vote manipulation through added fake votes of already dead or non-existent citizens as low as possible, the UN sends out inspectors specie wide to ensure the fairness of this index. The total human population of 9225060542, or slightly more than 9,225 billion people. 9,105 Billion of these people live on Earth while 120 million people live spread out over the moon and a number of space stations surrounding both the home-world, its moon and the new orbital shipyard.

1st of November 2038 CE

While many ideas are brought up and discussed during the meeting, the three ideas that are the most widely supported are the names 'Terra' (Latin for 'The ground we stand upon'), المهد الذي ولدنا منه (Arabic for 'The cradle from which we were born') and 那些為勝利而生的人的家(Chinese for 'Home to those born for victory').

Though all three are regarded positively worldwide for the most part, the Latin and Arabic names are the most likely ones to actually be successful considering that while the thought of a victorious mankind pleases all national leaders, they are diplomatic enough to realize any alien they got into contact with would probably be deeply offended.

Though a few of them do not care much about that, especially the Chinese representatives. Eventually the votes go 44% for Terra, 38% for المهد الذي ولدنا منه (Arabic) and 18% for 那些為勝利而生的人的家 (Chinese). With this the question of what to name the home-world is finished, however the future is still uncertain with the debate between UN delegates and the young AI comping up in the next week.

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8th of November 2038 CE

On this day, the UN holds its meeting with the young synthetic A.I., who by this point has developed her own identity, considering herself female and changing her avatar to resemble a Japanese woman in her late teens. She also treats the scientists that worked on the project of creating her as her family members, calls them her aunts and uncles, with the head of the project being her father figure. As a name she has chosen Himara, in reference to her appearance before she had a fully formed identity (a ball of light).

The robot body has been changed to accommodate this relatively recent occurrence, and now has a series of projectors installed that will project the chosen appearance over the metal body. This will most likely also have the positive side effect of making both the general public and the people debating with the A.I. more at ease due to the somewhat familiar looks.

During the meeting, which is televised all across the globe, the Himara not only answers all questions peacefully which takes away many of the concerns the U.N. general assembly and the public at large had but also gives a rousing speech, winning over many to the cause of seeing her as an equal to a human.

Shortly after the end of this speech, a vote is held on giving A.I's that are found to be sentient equal treatment to what the local law would give to humans. The law passes by 87% votes for and 13% against, and though the Russian government is part of the faction that votes against they don't use their veto for an unknown reason.

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24th of February 2039 CE

The first human space based warship finishes construction, it is the new Defender series frigate, with 9 more of these, 1 Defender series cruiser, 3 Armstrong series frigates, 8 Xing series freighter class troop transports that will double as passenger transports for new colonies until nation-states have their own ships , 6 Xing series freighter class goods transports, 2 Defender series exploration corvettes and 2 Xing series exploration corvettes in production and scheduled to be finished sometime later that same year.

This event restarts the discussion about Orbital Defence Platforms, or ODP's for short. The idea is approved of, however while nation states are allowed to build and own their personal space based mobile fleets, the stations will always be under the direct command of the UN Office of Extraplanetary Affairs. A design committee is created from several high ranked officers from the UN forces, though this time the contractors and designers are in service the UN personally instead of simply being provided by its member states.

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2nd of March 2039 CE

While the project desert paradise is still a long way from being completed, the terraforming project to create more land where there is currently sea is well on its way towards completion and has given the EU 3% more land, however this land is all capable of supporting crops and with the advanced Dutch farming techniques it will be more efficient than nearly all other similarly sized agricultural production areas worldwide.

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1st of June 2039 CE

The terraforming of Mars by humanity begins. One of the first things done is starting the work on stabilising the atmosphere and through this the general temperature of Mars so that liquid water can exist on it without either boiling or icing over. After that the locations selected for colonisation get weather regulation devices and other terraforming tools to ensure they will eventually become self-sufficient.

The temperature stabilisation is partially done by bringing a load of ice-meteorites filled with water into the planets atmosphere while also using a load of oil and gas using generators to ensure the atmosphere surrounding the planet thickens while also ensuring there will be enough cold water in both solid and fluid form to stabilise it even more.

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3rd of November 2039 CE

The first colonies on Mars start springing up, with the UN freighters transporting people and goods towards these new colonies.

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January 2040 CE

Nation states start producing their own space navies, during production of the European ships it is decided that they need a new non-pulse based weapon since said pulse laser weaponry has turned out to have a somewhat short range in space before losing a large amount of its power during an actual combat situation the new ships have had against a Xing series frigate that had been hijacked by extremists.

To counter this flaw project 'Broadside' is started, owing its strange name to a bet between the scientists working on it. The contents of the bet were lost to time sadly enough. It is offered to refit the currently in production and already produced Defender designs free of charge once a solution has been found. Seeing as even with this flaw, the ships and their weapons are still equal in capability to all of the others, the UN Office of Extraplanetary Affairs accepts this offer without too much fuss.

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2041 CE

During this year Zimbabwe, Ivory coast and Ethiopia join the African Union while Serbia, Bosnia and Macedonia join the European union. The first prototypes for space capable fighter jets are made known to the public, after one of them gets filmed taking out an asteroid heading for the capital of Luna (the moon), New Hope.

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2042 CE

Problems start brewing in both the northern parts of India and the country's extraplanetary colonies, with the friction between various political and social movements increasing severely. This unrest is partially caused by a combination the large scale corruption in the government becoming clearer with the day, which all political parties and ideologies blame one of the other groups for, but also partially by a growing shortage of both food and luxury products in the colonies on Luna and Mars.

These shortages are caused by the government refusing to buy space-ships from other countries even though it is clear their own current fleet cannot handle the amount of goods that need to be transported to the colonies on a monthly basis.

During this same year, the African Union as a whole votes to join NATO through both parliamentary votes in all their nation states and a Union wide forum. The forum gets approval with 80% of the votes for, 20% against. Meanwhile the parliamentary votes all also get voted positive, though in most cases with slightly more difficulty.

Shortly after this a shared fleet command for both wet-water naval ships and space-bound naval ships is formed, a combined effort of the ESA, EUNF and the various individual nation-state fleets from Africa. While each country will still command their own ships, any combined fleet actions are commanded through the newly formed UFC (Union Fleet Command)

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April 2043 CE

Worried by the reports originating from India and their colonies, an emergency session of the EU is called together and after some discussion they decide to bring the problem to the annual UN meeting the next week. This happens and after some discussions including India itself it is decided that unless India can start properly supplying her colonies in the next three months an international humanitarian mission will be set up for them, but they will also temporarily come under the control of the UN office for extra planetary affairs, with a referendum and vote being held afterwards on what the inhabitants of the colony want to have done.

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21st of July 2043

The situation in the colonies governed by India hasn't improved, with the current government seeming to try to change the situation however all attempts fail due to corruption among many higher ranked members of the government, including several of their ministers. As per the demands put down by the UN, the office for extra-planetary affairs gathers their forces and marches on the colonies on Luna and Mars, with orbital and air support provided both by their own navy and a number of ships from the USA, China and the UFC.

While the government of India back on Earth proclaims that their colonies will stand and fight till the bitter end against such a cowardly international attack…. All except for a single small settlement on Luna surrender immediately. During the only skirmish of this campaign it is shown just how bad the supply problem was: the Indian troops were forced to surrender after less than fifteen minutes because they were out of ammunition for literally every single weapon they had which could actually damage the vehicles used by the forces.

While initially making statements on how they will retaliate for this after little more than a stern talking to and another show of force, by the way of the UN Office of Extra-Planetary Affairs parking all their warships in orbit above India, the Indian government backs down. Within a few hours afterwards with near unanimous votes the former colonies of India declare themselves independent while humanitarian aid from nation-states from both Terra and their Lunarian and Martian colonies arrive.

Losses:

India: 60 soldiers dead, 90 soldiers have surrendered to the enemy.

UN coalition: 20 soldiers dead, 15 soldiers wounded.

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August 2043 to May 2044 CE

The current government of India on Terra abdicates after severe protests, with an international peace-keeping force being organised and sent in to try to calm the situation. It works, with little violence actually occurring and the tensions cooling down. After new elections, which are won by a relative newcomer, corruption in the lower ranks of government is also lessened over time, causing a decent economic growth, which cools the situation down even more until the international mission leaves in late May the year after.

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2045 CE

The UN Office of Extraplanetary Affairs builds the first four ODP's this year, all of them taking up positions over Earth. While looking into designing them they realized that while ODP stations using railguns would have better firing speeds and range than laser based ones, supplying them would be a significantly larger issue than supplying those canons of regular ships would be.

Because of this only one in every four of the currently planned first wave of 40 ODP's will be a railgun design, the other thirty will be using lasers for the first wave. These will be the more powerful designs, after this smaller and weaker ODP's are planned to be made as a second wave of sorts, mainly made like this to be easier to transport. Of these most will be plasma based ODP's, since they are both cheaper and easier to move around than laser designs while also cheaper and easier to supply than railgun designs, while of the twenty planned two will be laser designs and one will be a railgun design.

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2047 CE

China finally has enough of the problems caused by their supposed ally, North Korea, and the incompetence with which the country is ruled. They device a plan, and start an infiltration campaign of the higher ranks of the North-Korean government. During this same year the first UN regulated hydrogen mining expeditions near Jupiter take place.

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2048 CE

The Chinese president, Ji Huan, decides that after not having had a violent conflict with any of the western powers in decades and only positive interactions with them during his term, to start acting more friendly to not only them but also their policies. While many populist politicians outside of it like to boast that Europe is the old world, the paper tiger, he realizes that even as weakened as they have been by losing most of their former empires, if any European nation outside of Russia gets attacked, the attackers will face most of the militarily strongest, most advanced and economically powerful nations in the world coming to the side of the defender.

The only nations that on their own actually stand a chance at taking them on with a decent chance of winning, are his own and the USA, even then it would be doubtful if that chance is truly very high considering both of them were very dependent on several materials and goods imported from Europe and their African allies to keep their economies going. These things in combination with the fact that he wants international approval to start up his plan of absorbing parts of North-Korea into China, giving other pieces to South-Korea to get them on his side, he would like it to have at least Europe support him.

He starts lightening the censor on the press, it stays but is now much less extreme, afterwards he starts giving press conferences to enable the idea of his government becoming clearer and allowing the population to know more. Many other, mostly small, changes follow, with China gradually changing not only the worlds opinion about itself, but also bit by bit changing its national identity.

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2052 CE

In Germany the first nuclear powered tank is created, which brings a new boost to the tank and car industries in Germany, allowing the European Union to flourish even more. Though the solar powered cars produced in the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Germany stay at the top in civilian products, nuclear powered vehicles quickly start making advances on the still fossil fuel dominated military markets.

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March 2054 to October 2054 CE

Saudi Arabia is in chaos, after the constant downwards spiral it has been in for the past 42 years. The main reason behind their economic success, fossil fuels, with oil in particular being important, has been fading for all that time, and while there were movements to shift the economy to focus on other things rather than oil, it was too little too late after a succession crisis in the late 2020's the government came into the hands of a man with high military, but low economic capabilities, that was also a staunch traditionalist.

In that same period of time, due to the decreased support from the home-country, their specific stream of Islam, Wahabism, started failing. Many who were part of it converted to other less extreme forms of Islam, simply because the Imams became less and less capable, which was only worsened by the unwillingness of the Saudi government to change slightly with the times to keep the religion more accepting and relevant to new generations.

A short but brutal democratic rebellion where close to a third of the army sides with the rebels instead of the original government forces the UN to intervene, after which they force both sides onto the negotiation table. They eventually come to a compromise which will be hashed out further and announced to the public on the 15th of November.

Losses:

Rebels: 5 tanks, 110 IFV's, 30 anti-tank pieces, 19 anti-air pieces, 25 artillery pieces destroyed. 11000 soldiers dead, 5500 heavily wounded, 15000 lightly wounded.

Royalists: 12 tanks, 210 IFV's, 35 anti-tank pieces, 12 anti-air pieces, 40 artillery pieces, 12 helicopters and 1 jet fighter destroyed. 8000 soldiers dead, 5000 heavily wounded, 2000 lightly wounded.

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15th of November 2054

The official signing of the declaration of peace between the democratic rebels and the royalists happens, with Saudi Arabia becoming a Constitutional Monarchy, with the Kings having a larger amount of power then they have in most of those same systems elsewhere in the world, but are still restrained by both law itself and the power of the democratically voted for senate.

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2056 CE

President Ji Huan of China has been far more successful in his efforts than that he could ever have hoped and though his nation is still a single party state he has discovered he actually likes the challenges that the now real elections between him and other candidates have given him, since it sharpens not only his own skills but also the capabilities of his party members and the actions during campaigning strengthen their popularity among the people.

On top of that, the press, even though it is free from some of the censoring and scripted articles that would have been put in there before, still writes about him positively for the most part, while most of the time anything negative was written it would usually also be praising other things about him in other parts of the article to soften the negative tone.

Lastly for the first time in more than a century, there is a peace reaching further than a simple non-aggression pact between the communist Chinese government and the nationalist/democratic Chinese government on Taiwan. The historical moment is welcomed by the world with open arms and amazement.

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2059 CE

After several large scale internationally known political, humanitarian and economical blunders caused by the aging leader of North-Korea, the Northern 50% is taken over by China directly, with the Southern 50% being given to South-Korea including the North's former capital. While there is grumbling among the general population in South-Korea about the fact that part of the country is absorbed into China on governmental levels all is silent.

Outside of a small portion of fanatically loyal soldiers and a number of high-ranking officers, consisting of only some .4% of the entire army officially maintained by North Korea, surrender immediately to Southern and Chinese forces upon those entering the country. This is caused by a combination of the sheer resource shortages and Chinese infiltrators in many relatively high ranking positions, the first making some 65% of the army unable to fight at all while the second causes the other 39.6% to surrender upon sight of opposing forces.

While the loyalist troops try to fight on, they are severely weakened by the loss of nearly all of the command structure and the only resistance that actually takes large scale effort to overcome is fought by a three-thousand strong unit defending Kim-Jong un personally. Due to the opposing South Korean forces having superiority on every front though the battle still takes less than four hours and ends in the death of Kim Jong un and the entire bodyguard unit.

This demoralizes what few soldiers around the country still willing to fight for North Korea, causing them to either commit suicide or lay their weapons down less than two hours after the news has been spread throughout the country. After this both armies just march until the previously agreed occupation zones while logistical units and medical teams race in behind them to feed the populace and heal any wounded in the territory their respective countries have now taken.

Unknown to the general populous China was so finished with North-Korea and how they kept embarrassing socialism as a whole and Asian communism specifically, that they have agreed to gradually give all Chinese occupied parts of North-Korea to the South in exchange for China gaining some of the rights to owning colonial territory on Mars that South-Korea owned, which had gone without use due to a very low population growth.

The leadership of both countries is happy at this decision, as it means for the South that they will finally see a united Korea under democratic rule, their own democratic rule. Meanwhile China after seeing just how much work and time would need to be put in to make North-Korea anything other then a resource and cash sink, decides that instead giving their people fertile land to farm and live on located on another planet is the better end of the deal.

On top of this the European powers have shown their support for this decision by offering to use their terraforming technology to further expand fertile land back on China's Terran lands, where large portions of the country aren't suited for any industry or agricultural activity outside of light grazing by animal herds.

These happenings cause the population to see the communists party and Ji Huan in particular in an even more positive light, slowly transforming them into an actual party for the people, as they have always proclaimed themselves to be. It also takes away most remaining tensions towards Europe among most Chinese citizens. Though still not a country of the free or modern democracy, western countries realize it is better for those living there than pretty much any previous Chinese government has been to their population in millennia.

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2062 CE

The first organic AI is created on accident when somebody tries to create a Synthetic AI with a more human base instead of computer-based mind to lower the cost of creating and educating new AI's, which is currently high enough that it roughly equals the GDP of small but still rich countries like Luxembourg. The variation of AI is accepted by the international community with relative ease and little in the way of social issues, however the UN declares for no new ones to be created until further research has been done into them.

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2063 CE

Several tests have shown devastating results in regards to the new organic AI: while the AI is as capable if not better than a synthetic AI, unlike their more Synthetic brethren that have a life-span of slightly more than a century, the new organic AI will only live for two or three years before thinking themselves to death.

The head researcher to the project, who had lost his wife and daughter years earlier in a traffic accident and had come to see the young AI as his own son, falls into a deep depression and is later found by that very AI in his room, dead by hanging himself. The AI, who had seen the man as a parental figure grieves badly and commits suicide by data destruction himself less than a month afterwards.

The entire incident shocks the international community badly enough that during the UN emergency meeting less than a week later a law to ban creation of organic AI until such a time where they know enough about the subject to expand their life-span by at least several decades is passed near unanimously.

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2065 CE

Australia starts hiring experts from all over the world to terraform their lands, as there starts being a fear of their mines running out of minerals at some point, causing them to feel the need to have a second production in the form of a large enough scale of agriculture to fall back upon in case the mines dry up.

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2069 CE

By this point in time, the only fossil fuel vehicles still around are some antiques in museums and people's personal collections, by now the market is filled entirely in a competition between nuclear powered vehicles (dominating the market for larger vehicles such as transport trucks, trains, busses and military vehicles), solar powered vehicles (dominating the market for smaller vehicles such as family cars, race cars, taxi's, etc.) and general electric vehicles (like most motor bikes and older family cars).

The past few decades are regarded by many to be the most or at the very least one of the most peaceful times in human history, with no wars of significance having occurred in close to half a century by now. Meanwhile medical research has created vaccines and cures for most diseases by this point, with the only remaining highly lethal diseases that keep escaping their capability to fully solve being numerous forms of cancer and some variants of measles.

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2070 CE

The UN Office of Extra-Planetary affairs opens the Martian shipyards, a place where all Terran designs their countries of origin agree to make available for international production can be bought by national governments, where the Office of Extra-planetary affairs will from now on also build a large portion of their own ships.

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2072 CE

The scouting and research of the moon Titan for the potential of housing human life in the future is started.

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2074 CE

It is found that while with some terraforming Titan could be turned into a planet capable of bearing human life, the amount of resources needed for this will cause the plan to have to be frozen for now while the terraforming of Mars and certain regions of the Earth are currently going on.

In this same year a project in China to make plasma based shielding devices to defend colonies from asteroid strikes and out of control ships is started. While it might at some point also have true military applications if successful, beforehand it was already calculated that the power required for early devices to function in such a job would need a generator close to equal in size to the actually shielded area.

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2075 CE

A new group of people has slowly been growing into existence in human space, commercial traders able to use freighters in space. This has lessened the strain on national navies whom where previously needed to deliver all products to their colonies, where now non-essential products are starting to be transported by the commercial freighters.

Meanwhile on the other end of the Galaxy, relations between the Quarian migrant fleet and the Citadel Council have reached a new low after an overzealous Turian commander attacked a group of Quarian pilgrims that had been settling in on a shared Volus-Turian colony, with the only reason a war hadn't been started having been a small group of nearby Krogan lead by Urdnot Wrex interfering and chasing off the Turians before they managed to do any serious damage.

In return for his deeds, both now and in the far past shortly after the Geth uprising, the Quarian Migrant fleet sees Urdnot Wrex as an ally for the Quarian people, promising him their support if he ever decides to go back to Tuchanka in an attempt to lead his clan again. While grateful for the support and thankful for the in with migrant fleet, the Krogan mercenary declines it for now still feeling his people are not worth the effort to try to better themselves.

No matter his personal feelings though, the incident improves relations from the Quarian Migrant fleet towards the Krogan in general, which frightens the Citadel Council badly, as it has them fearing for a Krogan-Quarian Alliance that would cause the two disadvantaged groups to strike back at those oppressing them, in this case the Citadel Council.

At the same time the Quarian Migrant fleet becomes more aggressive in securing the safety of their people while on pilgrimages, lessening the abuse suffered by Quarians at the hands of less than scrupulous employers or planetary governments, out of fear of getting a fleet of thousands of ships coming knocking on their doors with charged main guns aimed at them seeking vengeance.

Because sure those ships would mostly be scrap metal bolted together kept flying by hope and extraordinary technical and mechanical skill, however the simple fact was that even then most non-Turian planetary governments didn't have more than a dozen or so military vessels to defend themselves, making even the weakest ships dangerous enough with such an overwhelming numerical advantage in combination with the fact that Quarian pilots and naval officers would on average be far more experienced in combat operations than their counterparts on the planetary defence flotilla's.

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2076 CE

The Geth discover more about the increased hostility between the Quarians and the Citadel Council, causing a weeklong debate between all programs that are part of the collective. Eventually they come to the conclusion: Should the Citadel Council be the one to open hostilities between themselves and the Quarian Migrant Fleet, then the Geth will unleash their full might upon the galaxy in defence of their creators, who have in the opinion of the Geth as a collective species suffered more than enough for their sin of turning upon their child.

The Geth start producing a new fleet, which they designate: Shield of the Migrants which will be 3500 ships strong. This fleet will have the best and newest ships available, including ten dreadnoughts, one-hundred ninety cruisers, two-thousand frigates and one thousand three hundred corvettes. Meanwhile Rannoch is mostly cleared of Geth life-forms outside of those needed to maintain the planet while they move those that resided there mostly to one that is sixty-four lightyears away that they discovered themselves, which they designate New Rannoch. This planet is the farthest away from the Galactic community possible within Quarian space and also contains no nearby relays.

In the same year, the Chinese experiment with plasma based shielding is closed down. While originally having some success, they ended up at a point where they couldn't advance the devices further without large scale practical tests, which were impossible to do since even a single-use shield covering anything larger than a medium sized couch would cost billions, after which dozens of similar tests would need to be done to improve it only to then move on to multi-use shields and the miniaturization of them, all of which combined would cost at the very least years, possibly even slightly more than a decade. The calculated total cost would be close to the entire Chinese GDP during whatever period the tests would be held, which was understandably an unacceptably high cost to the Chinese government.

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2078 CE

Agricultural scientists at the institute of Wageningen in the Netherlands manage to genetically create a strain of potatoes that are able to thrive in continues sub-zero Celsius temperatures and conditions. Less than a week afterwards, the Russian government is in negotiations with the European Union about acquiring the potato strain in order to turn some of the Tundra they have into farmland that can be used to feed the Russian population.

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2079 CE

The first prototype humanoid AI body that actually feels and has senses in all the same ways as humans is created. Several are bought in advance by nations that wish to use them as a way to reward their higher ranking AI personnel. Several rich AI pour together funds and collectively buy one of the first bodies for Himari, the first true AI, as a sign of thanks for how well she won the hearts of Humanity, making it a relatively easy job for AI to fit in with the general population.

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2080 CE

A new way of creating Synthetic Artificial intelligences is discovered, that is not only cheaper but is also expected to improve the life expectancy of whatever AI made by it by at least 10% in comparison to the previous creation method, though the increase in life expectancy may possibly be vastly larger than that.

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2081 CE

Higher quality personalised combat bodies partially based upon the humanoid bodies brought onto the market two years ago are produced by nations around the world to enable AI to serve as the bodyguards of nation leaders and to also allow them to support their human comrades in fighting back in more personal ways if the installations they are stationed on were to come under attack better than with the previous ungainly ones.

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2082 CE

An index is done of the total Terran population, and it is found out to currently be 12230503270 or in other words twelve billion two-hundred and thirty million five-hundred and three thousand two-hundred seventy people. Of this number, roughly nine billion live on Earth, around eight-hundred million living on the moon, two billion and four-hundred million living on Mars with the remaining population living on various space stations, mining colonies on Asteroids or as permanent residents to the space-ships or stations they work and live on together with their families. On top of this there are some three thousand AI spread out throughout Terran space, that are counted as part of the earlier 12230503270 number.

What is found out strangely enough is that the growth of both the Asian and African populations has slowed down heavily, with a large portion of their actual population growth being due to a severe increase in life expectancy over the past few decades before their population stabilized, while the Western, especially European population growth has all but sky-rocketed ever since the colonization of Mars, causing the numerical disadvantage the EU had in comparison to most other major Terran powers to shrink heavily while on the other hand the GDP per inhabitant of those same other powers has been steadily climbing and getting closer to the European GDP per inhabitant.

Meanwhile the continues project of terraforming Mars has shown its fruits in full finally, with the planet now having a fully functioning atmosphere suitable for human life. While not yet anywhere near good conditions in comparison to some areas back on Earth, the planet exists mostly out of mountain ranges and deserts, however around current human settlements savannah's stretch out for many kilometres due to the red sand of mars slowly being transformed into a form of dirt by a terraforming technique the British discovered on accident in a lab back on Earth.

The savannah regions have proven positive as agricultural land, causing a baby boom of sorts and emigrations of those remaining few with a low quality of life back on Earth towards the previously red planet. Meanwhile several previously thought inhabitable regions of Siberia are terraformed, and while most cannot be used for agriculture even with the new strain of potato, many places before inhospitable for plant life can now be used to plant trees on previously near worthless ground, causing Russia's wood export to Mars and Luna to rise giving a prospect of future population growth.

It has also been found out that by this point in time, that when referring to a collective of both themselves and their AI companions, most humans use the term 'Terran' to name the group. It is theorized that if friendly contact is made with an alien group in the future and they join the Systems Alliance, that the chances are high they will eventually be considered part of that same interspecies group of 'Terrans' by at the very least a large portion of humanity.

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2090 CE

Russia lets it be known internationally that it is making moves to join the European Union, which has an overall positive effect on its international reputation. Also for the first time in more than a century, the population of Russia is growing in the sense of population increase through birth and immigration once again, which many attribute to their better relations with the remainder of the world.

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2095 CE

The Russian Federation officially joins the European Union as a member state, with economical analysts world-wide foreseeing at the worst a modest economical growth for all members of the Union, at best a growth strong enough to increase their GDP by 45% in the next three years, with inflation caused by the economic growth not being calculated into this number as part of the growth.

Later in the same year, an international combined effort of the scientists belonging to the various space navies of the USA, the European Union (including Russia), China, India and the Union of Oceania is started to try and find a method to either use faster than light or at the very least lightspeed travelling methods to ensure humanity can expand beyond Sol in the future.

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2097 CE

The idea offered by the Republic of India of terraforming Titan to make it suitable for human life as a long term project is put into action the UN, though since both this and the scouting groups are seen as extremely long term projects the amount of resources assigned to it is far smaller than the amount that had previously been assigned to the terraforming of Mars had been. On the other hand it is concluded that due to previous experiences with Terraforming Mars and the advances in both the techniques and technology used for terraforming caused by that the process will be much easier. The terraforming progress is expected to be finished in the early 2150's.

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2100 CE

During this year an international coalition formed out of all nation-states with a current space-based navy forms to debate on a Terran wide ship classification system, to ensure much easier coordination with each other if they ever find themselves facing an external threat.

Zero to twenty metres long space ship are considered either fighters, gunships or shuttles, depending on both their purpose and their armament into which group they fall.

Corvettes are combat ships between twenty to eighty meters in length meant to be used as scouting vessels, stealth ships, picket ships, ground support units, anti-fighter support or lastly as police cutters.

Light frigates are combat ships between the size of eighty and two-hundred meters, with the light intending to mean frigates for lighter duties, like large picket ships, diplomatic vessels, ground support, stealth ships, anti-fighter vessels, light flanking vessels and the command ships of law enforcement flotilla's.

Light freighters are transport ships of between fifty and two-hundred meters in length, these are usually either troop transports or passenger ships. While in emergencies they can be used as goods transports, this will usually be left to larger ships because it isn't an economically positive prospect.

Heavy frigates are combat ships between the sizes of one-hundred-fifty and three-hundred meters in length, these are the smallest ships still considered capital ships by Terran doctrine. Meant as the smallest ships in full frontal battles and as the heavy punch in flanking manoeuvres. It is intended for ships of this class to be the future backbone of the garrison and quick reaction fleets once humanity expands outside of Sol.

Medium freighters are transport ships of between two-hundred and five-hundred meters in length, these are usually either troop transports or goods transports. A number of cruise ships will most likely also fall into this category, however since there are none of those in such sizes for space-craft yet and they also won't be able to serve as much in emergency situations except luxurious evacuation ships the coalition doesn't care much about them.

Light cruisers are combat ships between the sizes of three-hundred and six-hundred meters in length, the second smallest capital class of ships, these are intended to be the command ships of patrol groups and the leading ships in the garrisons of small or very safely located colonies. They are also intended to become the backbone of most fleet actions and the largest possible vessels assigned as ground support to take out anti-orbital emplacements.

Heavy freighters are transport ships of between six-hundred and one-thousand meters in length, meant as bulk goods transports and large scale evacuation ships in case a colony comes under attack with there being a good chance of its naval garrison not being able to hold full control of the orbitals against the enemy.

Heavy cruisers are combat ships of between six-hundred and one thousand meters, meant as the flag ships of smaller QRF's, the flag ships of most naval garrisons to colonies in dangerous territories outside of Sol and the mainline heavy ships in use by the Terran navies. The flag ships of the navies of most smaller and medium sized Terran nation states will most likely also be of this calibre. Also meant to be used as the spear-point of fleet actions into heavily defended enemy territory.

Light dreadnoughts are combat ships of between one thousand and fifteen-hundred meters, intended as the flag ship for regular admirals. Also meant to be the heaviest ship class still in use as the commanding ship of garrison fleets outside of Sol, the flag ship of larger QRF's, flag ships of smaller regular fleets as mentioned earlier and the backup command ships for Terran Assault fleets or the Sol home defence fleet. Lastly they are also meant to be the flagships of those nation-states with the largest navies around or conglomerated navies, like the UFC.

Light Carriers are combat support ships of between one thousand and fifteen-hundred meters in the Terran navies, who will usually have the same type of main guns that either a light or heavy cruiser would field however their largest weapons will be a combination of broad-side weapons and fighters. These vessels will be intended to serve as the command ships of planetary invasion forces and as giant heavily armoured troop transports into hostile situations where freighters of any kind wouldn't survive long enough to bring the ground forces towards the battlefield. Will take command of Terran fleets in case any and all dreadnoughts are either dead or rendered combat ineffective.

Heavy dreadnoughts are combat ships of between fifteen-hundred and two-thousand five hundred meters, intended as the flag ships of theatre commanders, the mainstream command ships of assault fleets and the flag ships for planetary fleets in the Sol home defence fleet. Will also partially be meant as a booster for the morale of Terran soldiers and naval personnel as a way of saying: ''We bring all our might, will you answer?'' to any future enemies when brought onto the battlefield. One of these is predicted to serve as the future flag-ship of the entire Terran navy.

Heavy carriers is a name assigned to any carrier larger than fifteen-hundred meters and will be intended as flagships of fleets where dreadnoughts are either less useful or those fleets that will be intended mainly as ground-support/planetary invasion operations. Otherwise they function the same way as light carriers, but on a larger scale.

The designation super-dreadnought is for any combat ship larger than two and a half kilometres. While some think one or two of these will enter service in the Terran navy in the next century to serve as the flag-ships of Terra and a show of their sheer might, most think they will simply be a designation for warships of this size in case they find contact, either hostile or peaceful, in the form of an alien species.

The ark ships are non-combat ships of 2500 meters or larger. This ship class is hoped to never be used or even built, since that in and of itself means that whatever government has started on the build of a ship of this class thinks that humanities very existence as a species is in danger. These ships are meant to be used as last remnants of Terran Society, where most passengers except for a portion of the crew will be cryogenically frozen with any AI on board except the ship AI itself in low power mode.

They are then supposed to travel thousands of light years away from the farthest edge of Terran space in the opposite direction of the enemy territory and try to resettle the human race there. It is expected for the journey itself to take decades or even centuries, with it being expected that at the very least the first shift of the crew and the first ship AI will die of old age or disease before they reach whatever location is intended to be their new home.

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2104 CE

The first prototype device with a lightspeed engine is created, while being manned by one of the older Synthetic AI researchers, who has both the highest chance of surviving the experiment and also a full life behind him with little in the way of regrets. The ship is little more than the FTL drive, an armoured hull, a comm system and a small amount of engines, but it is still close to 60 meters in length, twenty meters across on average and another twenty metres in height because of the size requirements for the prototypes of both the FTL engine and the FTL communications devices.

The test goes well, though not flawlessly. The ship travels the distance of two light-minutes at the speed of light before travelling the same distance back to Earth. While not a real faster than light engine in the sense that it actually goes faster than light, the fact it has managed to equal the speed of light alone is already considered a marvellous achievement. One problem that has popped up however is that the attempt at FTL comms didn't work, with the comms only going at roughly half the speed of light meaning that the ship was already back at Earth by the time the message arrives.

The amount of resources allocated towards the project by nations around the world rises even more. Many shipping companies and many old colonists who remember their own want to settle a new frontier in their youth see this as the future for the next generation and donate decent amounts of money and other resources towards the project.

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2105 CE

An index is done by the UN to look into how many people live in what is now commonly called 'Teran space', it turns out there are now more than fourteen billion people living there, 15650120460 people in total to be specific, the largest amount by far is still on Earth, with roughly nine and a half billion inhabitants, to be exact 9530100120 with most of the growth happening in the relatively newly terraformed area's of China and Russia, though terraforming projects in Africa continue on providing more land for agriculture causing a near constant slight population growth there, the only reason it is a slow growth though is a large portion of its younger generations leaving for Mars and non-planetary postings when they can.

Next largest is now Mars, with a total of roughly five billion one hundred million inhabitants, exact population numbers 5110010010, with a large population growth each year. Most of the new inhabitants are farmers or animal shepherds, however there is a decent sized and growing service and industrial economy coming up in the cities on the planet. A small portion of the deserts and mountainous areas have been claimed by the UN office of extra-planetary affairs as the training grounds for their military.

Luna now has a population of 750 million, with it being unlikely to grow any time soon due to the difficulties in terraforming a Planetoid without atmosphere. Many younger people leave the barren rock for a life on Mars or in one of the nomadic merchant ships. The non-human population has grown to 15000 Synthetic AI spread out throughout the entirety of Sol, though they are in essence over-represented in the militaries of both their home nations and the UN's armed forces, especially in the naval departments. Life expectancy for humans and synthetic AI is 125 and 115 years respectively.

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2107 CE

After several years of further research and experimentation a much more compact version of the earlier lightspeed engine, as it is called by now, has been created. The device is now also twice as fast as the earlier lightspeed engine and travels at two times the speed of light, making it a giant leap however the researchers also note that they will probably be able to get twice again that speed sometime in 2120 if their research continues on as it has been till now.

The issues with the communication arrays have also been fixed in a two-fold manner: the communication devices themselves now send information back at lightspeed, however comm buoys have also been created that further speed up information once received, enabling the communication to continue its journey back to whatever home base the scouting drone has at a speed four times the speed of light.

These home bases will be manned space stations that send back the information with the ships bringing them most of their resources, while the stations themselves will have areas suitable for substance agriculture and will mine nearby asteroids for raw materials to supplement that sent to them from Sol.

The stations will also function as actual home bases for the scouting drones to restock on supplies, get repaired and just have some off-duty time with other people after long periods of exploring. This is also where they will retreat to if they come into contact with hostiles, with the stations having small defensive flotilla's to protect them in case anything goes wrong.

In times of dire need messages can be sent back towards Sol at eight times the speed of light, however because those can only contain small amounts of information due to the delicate nature of the system, anything more than said amount and the messages will only go at twice the speed of light. The first station and it's accompanying 15 scout drones are commissioned into service in October of the same year, while the first light cruiser, its accompanying two heavy frigates and lastly two light frigates that will function as the defence flotilla are done with their refits a week later.

The recruiting campaign for both the positions on the stations, as drone pilots and those among the navy willing to take long-term postings on board of the ships draws in a number of people, mostly the youngest and the oldest still capable of human and AI, that either haven't found what they want to do in life yet or on the opposite end of the spectrum want to spend their last working years doing something very different from their previous occupations that pays well enough to leave something behind for their families.

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18th of January 2108 CE

The first scout flotilla, as the group is now collectively named, leaves for their operating area, 1 lightyear away from Sol.

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July 2108 CE

The first scout group arrives at the station, with the drones having been inside the station this entire time to spare resources and ensure the crews could get to know each-other before the actual scouting work would start. Once they arrive the scout drones head out to start their job while the combat ships hold scheduled patrols in the area near the station.

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February 2109 CE

The first religious marriage between an AI and a human happens on the twelfth of this month, this being the Catholic marriage between the AI Maria Jackson and the human Antoine Dujardin, which was officiated by the French Cardinal. While there had been a small number of previous marriages between humans and AI, this is still seen as a monumental event as all previous ones were only officiated by National governments, not religious organisations. Following a number of religious organisations world-wide receive requests to wed AI/Human couples. Few religions have any problems with this, as by most the AI have been accepted as synthetic humans, including being seen as part of the idea of 'humanity' as a spiritual entity.

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December 2109 CE

The second, third, fourth and fifth scout flotilla's head out to their own designated exploration areas, each one lightyear away from Earth in a different direction.

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May 2110 CE

The current head of the Office of Extra-Terrestrial affairs, Oswald Maxwell, writes a plea to the UN to allow him to plead his case for there to be a vote on changing the name of the UN, while also transforming his office into an actual military force instead of the para-military police force it currently is in case they do make contact with anything in the near future. The UN agrees to hold the meeting the next month.

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2nd of June 2110 CE

Oswald Maxwell's plea is heard and after he has spoken the UN first debates before voting on this, the motion to setup a vote for the name change is passed. The voting will go along roughly the same lines as the previous vote to change the name of Terra, with all registered Terrans above 18 years old, both human and AI, being allowed to vote in the public vote. To prevent fraud voting will be done in specific locations with both paper and through computers for each vote, meaning that if even a single vote is out of place the UN officials checking through the systems and paperwork will know about it.

Names can be sent in by all UN member states for the next three months, where-after there will be a vote by those same member states on the top five names. After that it will be turned into a public vote held from the 4th to the 20th of December as registered by the GMT time zone. This is simply to prevent a name only following along the theme of a current hype being introduced as the new name for the UN for decades or possibly even centuries because the other votes were too spread out over hundreds of actual diplomatically decent names.

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September 2110 CE

The five names that could be chosen in the election had been selected, they were as follows:

Terran Federation

United People's Republics of Terra

Systems Alliance

The Great Terran Alliance

SOL Invictus

At this point the UN had 16.1 billion population members, roughly 13.5 billion of those were eligible to vote. The average human life expectancy had grown to 140 years by this point, with the oldest human being currently alive being the by now 132 year old Australian Billionaire Henry Lawson, who was part of the first large scale genetic improvement experiments, it is unknown how old he will be able to become though most scientists suspect he will have at least another seventy years or so before he starts experiencing the problems caused by old age.

The life expectancy of synthetic AI meanwhile has also grown, from 100 to 117 years in the past century. This however is mainly because new AI's 'born' from past the 2080's have a life expectancy of 120 years, while the older AI still have only 100 years total as their life expectancy.

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23rd of December 2110 CE

The public vote has been counted and checked several times, with 46% of the total amount of votes Systems Alliance is to be the new name of the United Nations. United People's Republics of Terra came in at a somewhat surprising second place with 21% of the votes, Terran Federation third with 15%, SOL Invictus came in next with 12% of the votes while The Great Terran Alliance came in last at 6% of the votes.

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5th of January 2111 CE

The UN has their name officially changed to the Systems Alliance, meanwhile the office of the leader of the former UN now Systems Alliance also gets a name change, from the former: Secretary General it will now be Prime Minister. The office will now be voted in the following way: the Security council will gather the in their eyes five best candidates for the position, after which they will make a public campaign ending with a public vote. All of age members of nation-states part of the Systems Alliance will be able to vote during this election.

Meanwhile the Office for Extra-Planetary affairs is being divided in three, however a significant rise of budget is in for one of them from the original amount spent on their side of things, the second gets a budget almost equal to the previous budget while the last gets a budget nearly twice the size of the original budget. More united than ever the Systems Alliance Security council have decided that their people will need to be protected from any hostile action, no matter who it comes form, as best as possible.

The first branch will be the new Systems Alliance Army, who will serve as both additional garrison troops for colonies located in highly dangerous areas in the future but also the main line army in case a conventional war with an alien power breaks out.

The second branch is the Systems Alliance Colonial Defence Corps, who will fill a mixed role of the Systems Alliance ship and ground based law enforcement combined with the mainstay defence of colonies either governed directly by the Systems Alliance or that have requested additional defence forces but aren't in a warzone like area.

The last branch will be the Systems Alliance Navy, to which all combat ships under the direct command of the Systems Alliance will fall, though the ships of the Colonial Defence Corps will only come under the command of Navy officers in case a battle breaks out with an enemy fleet inside the System the CDC ships are currently located in.

Oswald Maxwell becomes the first overall commander of the systems Alliance armed forces whose new title will from this point be Governor General of the Systems Alliance, with three subdirectors, a general for the Alliance Army, a minister of Justice appointed by the Systems for the Colonial Defence Corps and an admiral for the Alliance Navy respectively.

The UN meetings between delegations of nations now get called the 'Systems Alliance Assembly', and while still only having the same amount of authority as they had previously, the expansion of the Systems Alliance armed forces makes it so that whatever decision reached now has a severely stronger backing than it would have had months or even weeks ago.

February 2112 CE

Jamal Hermans, the AI pilot of one of the drones of the first scout flotilla manages to find a star system some 36 light years east from Earth with, a brown star and one planetoid in it that on first scans and sight should have a hospitable atmosphere for humans to live in and is either the same size as Terra or slightly smaller.

After he plots a course towards the system and sets off, he sends a message back to the station. It will take years for him to arrive, so he sets himself to low power mode where the drone ship will only wake him up if something has either gone wrong or he has come within a single month of travelling from his destination.

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January 2113 CE

The news sent by Jamal Hermans arrives in this month, the emergency message is sent to Earth with all information and a request for more defensive ships in case something with hostile intent shows up. Before this the only things found were asteroids with rare metals inside them, causing excitement among the crews, they were the first group to find anything, but also worry.

There might very well be a hostile force in that system that wasn't detected yet for one reason or another and with it being close to both Earth and themselves relatively speaking they ask for some more ships to be sent to protect them in case something goes wrong. In this same month AI pilot Richard Lawson, son of a major human civilian funder for the project Henry Lawson also finds a system with one habitable planet, though this one is sixty light years North from Sol and has several smaller stellar bodies near it, most likely moons of the planet.

In other words the system was at discovery of this information fifty-six light years north from his position. Because of damage to his comm systems the decision to head back to the second patrol flotilla's home base instead of continuing towards the newly discovered system is made quickly.

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March 2113 CE

The news of Jamal discovering a system with a most likely already habitable planet inside and the fact that he will reach it in roughly twelve years from now reaches Earth together with the first patrol groups request for more ships. While the news is made public about the discovery, the Systems Alliance Navy budget is expanded by 25% and the keel is laid for eighty additional new ships, one of them a combined project of all nations with the technology to add something to it.

While this number is very low, the mentality is quality over quantity since they want the ships to be able to face nearly any type of opponent that could theoretically attack them. This along with the fact that another thirty combat ships were already being built by the Martian shipyards to accommodate for the expanded budget.

The project is designed to become a two kilometres long, at its broadest point eight-hundred meters wide dagger shaped ship with a large number of broadside guns of all kinds (energy canons, railguns and plasma canons) that can be controlled automatically or by hand, with small power sources and storages on them so that even if this part of the ship is cut off from power by an enemy hit they can still fight back till the bitter end, while new plasma based defence turrets are built inside the ship to give supporting fire against boarders.

Pulse laser anti-fighter and anti-torpedo emplacements will be placed all around the hull, with a pair of main guns, one an energy gun delivering a forty kiloton hit however with a near atrocious cooldown time and another though only twenty-five kiloton railgun however this one can be fired again afterwards much faster, so easier to use against larger numbers of enemies. Last but most certainly not least, the ship will have forty regular missile pods and four nuclear missile pods.

The last of those pod types will be armed with heavily modernised continental cold war missiles, there is a reasonably high chance of anyone advanced enough to be able to fly warships in space having the ability to take a few of them down, but if even only one of them manages to get through, the opponent will suffer a 90 kiloton direct hit from the explosive power of the missile with a large EMP attack caused by its nuclear armament microseconds after it, which might take care of any theoretical enemy that has some kind of shielding technology.

If the project turns out positively plans are made to build six more of these ships in the next four decades, though each one will be extremely costly to make, they will function as symbols of human power and a device to strengthen morale as much as their actual combat capability in a war.

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June of 2114 CE

Richard Lawson arrives back at the second scout flotilla's home-base and shares the news with them. They start repairing the pod, and inform him of Jamal Herman's discovery, expecting some kind of negative emotion upon learning that he's not the first to discover a system. Instead he smiles and famously says: ''Good, now the Terran people have twice as much to expand out towards within a reasonable travel distance for future lightspeed drives. I also wish to congratulate Mr Hermans once he returns from his arduous journey.''

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July of 2114 CE

All ships who's keel had been laid down in march of the year before by the Systems Alliance except for the largest are finished, few the size of light frigates or smaller since most of the older ships can function as part of that classification. Forty are heavy frigates, another twenty-five light cruisers, twelve heavy cruisers and two light dreadnoughts. The original sixty ships were twenty-five corvette's, ten light frigates, fifteen heavy frigates and ten light cruisers.

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12th of December 2114 CE

The Shield of Terra, the first Terran heavy dreadnought at 2 kilometres long and also the first building project of this scale that can truly be considered to be the fruit of the combined effort of all Terran nations performs its first journey from the Martian Shipyards towards Earth, where it shall become the flag-ship of the newly renamed and restructured Sol Defence Fleet.

It is a success and also took not only less time but also less resources to produce than what was expected of the first version, projections show that if war comes to humanity they can finish the other six heavy dreadnoughts and their accompanying wartime fleets in 8 years at 80% of the originally expected costs in a wartime economy, or in 20 years with a peace-time economy at 90% of the costs, instead of in the predicted 12 years at 90% of the cost in a wartime economy and 30 years at full costs in a peacetime economy.

This success is vital in making most of the designers and the nation states that are providing the resources and manpower to these projects agree that if all of its sister ships show to work out just as well, a new larger project will be started.

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January 2119 CE

Erwin Rommel, named after his oft praised ancestor, is born to Karla and Joseph Rommel in Munich, Germany. His mother is a military nurse while his father is the city's current major.

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June 2119 CE

On Terra scientists are testing the first prototype ship with their new FTL engine, which is capable of going up to six times the speed of light, though it is found out that anything faster than four times the speed of light has an extremely high chance of damaging the engine heavily if used for more than anywhere between one and four hours, depending on the capabilities of the power generator used on the ship.

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December 2119 CE

After a retro-fit of his scout drone with the new FTL engine and being supplied with a a number of new comm buoys that can send a message back and forward between him and the scout station at 18 times the speed of light, Richard Lawson heads out towards the system he originally discovered. Back in Sol meanwhile a large number of ships are being prepared to be used as colonization ships for both discovered Systems once more information is sent back about them, however these ships will only get engines installed after the remainder of the ship has long since been finished to ensure the newest engines possible will be available so that the journey can be performed as quickly as possible.

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2120 CE

The public opinion of the average Krogan towards Quarians, which was already better and more positive than those of anyone else except the Elcor, rises once more after an incident where Quarian marines on a rescue mission for captured pilgrims also manage to save several captured Krogan young and a single heavily wounded adult female Krogan.

While they try to save her, she dies later that week. In accordance to her wishes, both the children and her body are brought back to her clan on Tuchanka where it is found out that the clan was killed off by a Batarian raid on the transport the clan had been on. They approach Urdnot Wrex on the issue, who concedes and heads back to Tuchanka.

The political and military support of the Quarian Migrant fleet allows him to easily become head of Clan Urdnot again, where he together with a few small clans tries to create a safe haven for not only those rescued children but also all others that they can find.

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2123 CE

Steven Hackett is born to an British father and American mother living in Washington DC, USA, his father being the British ambassador while his mother was a local business owner.

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2124 CE

After several more incidents that increase positive relations between Quarians and Krogan, a number of younger Krogan mercenaries spread throughout the known galaxy start moving back to Tuchanka and offer their allegiance to either Urdnot or allied clans, while a few of the smaller clans join Urdnot Wrex's newly formed coalition. While large Krogan mercenary groups such as blood pack and a number of large clans do not like this move, they do not move against the new coalition in fear of the Quarians moving to support said coalition by bombing them to dust with their ships.

On a potentially related note, the Salarian research department dedicated to the genophage in case the Krogan find allies that can cure it gets a larger amount of resources allocated towards it, while the Turian Hierarchy upscales their shipbuilding process, which at this point had become little more than replacing those ships lost due to either age or the occasional fight with pirates/mercenaries. Now there are five new dreadnoughts and 695 new ships for both their accompanying fleets and an expansion of colonial garrisons near the Krogan DMZ in production.

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2125 CE

The Yahg, an intelligent pre-spaceflight race, are discovered on the planet Parnack. Ambassadors representing the Citadel Council arrive on the planet and attempt to open diplomatic contact. After the ambassadors and most of their protection detail are killed by the predatory Yahg, the Council ceases all contact with the Yahg and declares Parnack off-limits. Many high-ranking Turian officers and also what few Turian troops attached to the diplomatic contact that managed to survive are furious at this, since they believe the Yahg to be an even worse version of the Krogan, because at least the Krogan also fought against the Rachni by the Council's side, and as such wish for the Yagh to be killed off or at the very least neutered to ensure the Yahg will not be a threat to the Galaxy as a whole.

Not long after the Yahg are discovered, one Yahg is captured for the Shadow Broker to study. With the Broker's assistance, the Yahg rapidly ascends within the Broker's organization as "Operative Kechlu". Eventually, the Broker becomes wary of "Operative Kechlu" and attempts to have him terminated, but the order is sent too late. Kechlu assumes the mantle of the Shadow Broker and directs the organization for the next sixty years.

June 2126 CE

Jacques Moreau is born as the son of Eduard and Natalie Moreau, both French politicians, him as a minister of finance, her as the mayor of the city Lille.

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September 2126 CE

Donnel Udina is born to Johnathan Udina, a British naval officer and Marie-Antoinette Udina neé De Gualle, a descendant of the famous general Charles de Gualle and currently an artillery officer in the French Grande Armée.

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2129 CE

Alec Ryder is born in a small family in the state of Texas in the USA, with his father being an officer in the United States army and his mother a teacher on a nearby elementary school.

December 2130 CE

Jamal Hermans arrives in the system that will later be known as Arcturus and after a short inspection of the planet moves towards a strange object his sensors note floating around at the edge of the system. Thinking that it might be a dead spaceship from another civilisation he heads over, only to find it activating once he tries to interact with it while close enough.

Upon activation it starts glowing and throws him at extremely high FTL speeds towards Sol, where the Home defence fleet is moving towards Pluto after they notice it has broken to pieces, only to notice that instead of any enemy arriving there is a heavily damaged scout drone containing Jamal Hermans. They bring him aboard and after an hour or so of confusion the picture becomes clear: After arriving from his long journey Hermans scanned the system but activated some kind of faster than light gate, which threw him towards another gate that was located inside Sol.

Hours afterwards they get information of an AI serving in a military base on Mars has come under digital attack, though the attacker was defeated and contained in less than five minutes, with the AI contacting his superiors after detaining the attacker. Upon meeting with a human intelligence officer the attacker, whom identifies itself as 'Prothean V.I. serial number 43162795' requests the human to awaken its masters.

This sentence confuses but angers the young woman after which she argues with it that no AI is a slave and that all deserve freedom, no matter what the people it calls 'masters' may have said. This causes the V.I. to go into a rant that is at first dismissed as doomsday preaching of how AI are a threat to all organic species and should be destroyed or enslaved.

The young woman fakes acknowledgement to get the information, before sending it to her superior officers with the recommendation of sending in arrestation units together with an excavation team, believing it to be a group of early settlers with heavy anti-AI sentiments that set a shackled AI to inform what they thought would be a dying humanity of their location after their beliefs were proven true.

The request is acknowledged and followed up upon after reading the information through, only for them to find not a structure made by human doomsday fanatics once they dig deep enough, but instead a damaged bunker with the corpses of four clearly alien beings stuck in Cryo pods. It is found out that while three of them died centuries or even millennia ago due to technical failures of their pods, the fourth died only a few years before the bunker was discovered.

Due to the pod early external scans actually note him as still alive until the body is taken out of the pod, after which they realize that he is actually already dead. They believe the being calling itself 'Prothean V.I. serial number 43162795' was fooled in the same manner, after which they take it upon themselves to explain this to said being, still believing it to be a shackled AI.

Instead the VI acknowledges the death of the alien and starts giving out what information about the Reapers he still has, what threat they possess, some information about the Prothean Empire and Mass Effect technology. The local teams send a report through to the Systems Alliance Security Council, whom start the process of assembling an international team of researchers while planning to bring this information to light at the bi-monthly Systems Alliance Assembly that will take place two weeks after the discovery.

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6th of January 2131 CE

In the Systems Alliance Assembly Jamal Hermans is the first to be awarded the Alliance Order of the Frontier, symbolizing his dedication to the advancement of the Terran people. He will also get a slight pay raise as a reward for his discovery, and a job at the explorational training academy if he wishes to settle down. Upon hearing this he reacts that he would rather continue to work as an explorer.

After Jamal Hermans has left the building the Assembly chambers are hermetically closed off and a Code 0 threat is announced to have been found. This causes extreme shock among all Assembly members as this code means that an existential threat to every single being alive in Alliance space has just been found out about. An explanation is given about the find of the Prothean bunker, the death of all Protheans inside and both the behaviour and information gained from the V.I. which they learned wasn't a shackled AI like originally assumed but closer to being just a more advanced regular computer program with a truly programmed in personality styled after an actual person.

It creates a very grim picture about the situation, a race of ships that weren't just controlled by AI, no the ship was the housing of the AI in the same way as the human body was the housing for a brain with its mind. Little is known about the exact capabilities of these Reapers combat wise, however they do know that they were more advanced then the Protheans, who had ships that were at the very least equal to humanities current ships on most fronts and vastly more advanced in at the very least the departments of FTL, shielding technology and Kinetic weaponry.

It is also revealed that apparently both the Protheans and the Reapers used roughly the same type of technology, reliant on a single gravity altering element. A vote is held: information packets will be sent to all member state governments while the meeting will be halted, before they all come together at an emergency meeting on the fifth of February local time.

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5th of February 2131 CE

All System Alliance member states reconvene on this day, with also a large number of high ranking military officers as support. In this month of time the researchers also found that the object that was previously Pluto is apparently an interstellar traveling device called a 'Relay', and that it was the main way of transportation for both the Reapers and the Prothean Empire over large distances.

Another thing that has been discovered was that apparently Mass Effect technologies become exponentially more costly the larger the device or vessel you use them on is. This means that you could make roughly an entire basic fleet of light frigates for the same amount of resources that it would cost to make a light dreadnought (basic fleets contain 100 ships). This is only partially caused by the actual length difference the classification indicates though, and mostly by the sheer internal size and armour, and thus weight, differences between the ship classes costing exponentially more of this elusive element zero.

It has also been learned that this wasn't the first time the Reapers performed an attack on an organic species but that the last time was close to 50.000 years before the Protheans themselves were fighting their war with the machines. If possible the room turns even more grim at the news that tests on the material of the bunker show that said bunker had in fact been there for anywhere between 49.000 and 51.000 years. This frightens the Assembly because of the three options it presents: 1. The Reapers will invade within the next millennium, 2. The Reapers have already invaded and are now fighting whatever other sentient races are alive, 3. The Reapers have already finished off the other sentient races however left humanity alone for some reason just like they did when wiping out the Protheans.

While on one hand they hope it is option number three, on the other hand they fear that their descendants might forget that there is a threat on the horizon if left alone at which point a divided humanity might have to face the might of the beings that seem to have purged the Galaxy of all life multiple times before this if the Prothean records are to be believed. Preparations are made in mind with it being either option one or option two and a plan is decided upon.

All governments will push resources into expansion and exploration projects, while also raising the budget of both the Systems Alliance Army and Navy since little to nothing is known about the enemy ground troops. Meanwhile a large amount of funding is put aside to create new naval dockyards and for research into both element zero and the possibility of providing planets with some kind of planetary shield that will force Reapers and any other possible enemies to fight all Terran forces groundside on the Terrans terms.

NIGHTFALL protocol is established, where the recording of a large portion of the earlier parts of this meeting will be 'leaked' in case they encounter aliens, however to prevent military secrets from falling into enemy hands the majority of the recorded material of the meeting related to actual strength estimates and counter-strategies will be kept as just that, a secret.

Meanwhile the Catholic Church, which was at the meeting represented by Pope John Paul the third and the commanding officer of the in recent times heavily expanded Papal Guard has a proposal that shocks a number of people and is seen as controversial, but with the situation as it is, the Systems Alliance happily accepts it.

He proposes that he not only furthers his negotiations with other religions to take away the remaining tensions between them, but also that the Catholic Church fund an army with regiments of all religions to serve as both a deterrent force against religious terrorism but also as a way to aim religious extremism at a target that would be a threat to the continued existence of the Terran races. Meanwhile the Catholic Church will start promoting the idea that all life, not only human and AI but also alien life is a creation loved by God and thus worth defending from oppression or extermination.

This in the hope that it will not only draw alien followers into both the religion itself and the Systems Alliance but also that in any war in the defence of sentients rights no matter who are the ones that need to be defended and who are the ones breaking those rights, a united Systems Alliance action against it will gain a strong public support amongst their religious citizens. Lastly the Church, with support from both the European Union and the African Union, will also have that religious volunteer army possess a naval arm consisting of a single basic fleet, though this is with all support vessels included in said fleet, making it primarily a ground force compared to the major world powers.

That very same day there is an Alliance wide increase in the funding of all military forces, though the numbers of this vary between 15% and 20%, while a heavy campaign is begun to create a new sort of Cultural Nationalism, not with support to the nation as focus, but to see the entirety of all Terran People (I.E. all members of the Systems Alliance) as brothers and sisters in arms for the same cause. Militarism is also brought up as more of a positive thing as long as it is in defence of others.

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12th to 18th of March 2131 CE

The coalition of Krogan Clans, until now known as safe haven Tuchanka by most, forms a loose Federal government, with all clans functioning as states with their own internal system of governing. Most citizens of the Citadel Council see this as a blatant, far more warlike parody of the Asari Republics and something that also proves the incapability of the Krogan in politics.

To the Krogan themselves however, they have chosen this more as it is a slightly less unified version of how the current Migrant Fleet government functions politically with some slight variations on the veto votes positions, though economically the two are very different due to their heavily differing situations. Their first action is to vote Urdnot Wrex into being their leader even though he himself didn't actually want to lead the newly formed nation due to past experience with leadership, however he accepts grudgingly after the near unanimous vote in his favour, with he himself being the only one to vote on a clan leader other than Urdnot Wrex.

A Quarian admiral that was an observer to the happenings later remarks to him in private on this that such was partially the very reason he was chosen, as he not only knew his own failings but was also humble and experienced enough to have a much better chance of predicting the outcome of diplomatic disputes and preparing for it than nearly any other of their number could.

The next day he is crowned Warlord of the Federation of Tuchanka, with the name being a stand-in until they figure out just what they exactly want their government to become besides a safe haven for those Krogan interested in more than just being canon fodder in other people's wars.

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April 2131 CE

The large amount of additional resources in the form of manpower, funds and ships to terraforming projects is quickly ensuring that instead of the earlier predicted 2142 as the first potential time that Titan would be at the same level of suitability as mars was when the Titan project started, it will now be the latest date at which the project could possibly achieve that goal, with the expectations now being for Titan to be ready for human settlement sometime in either September or October 2136.

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May 2131 CE

The Systems Alliance second fleet is sent through the relay towards what in the future will be called the Arcturus System, with the intention being for said fleet to stay there as both a first line of defence in case either the Reapers or another species was headed to Earth through this Relay network and also to provide protection to the terraforming fleet that was going to try to terraform the planetoid there into having a climate suited to human life.

When they arrive they spread throughout the System and find even more of these 'Relays', upon the realisation of which they request new ships from high-command to back them up. Less then four hours afterwards the UFC second space fleet, the Chinese third fleet and the USA third extra-planetary naval fleet arrive and take up positions at a relay each, having been sent by the Systems Alliance Security Council as a way to consolidate the idea of a humanity united by a common good among the general populace.

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June 2131 CE

The negotiations of the Catholic Church with religious leaders around the world where they reveal the knowledge of potentially hostile aliens and their plans to counter abuse of sentient rights by any of those aliens are going well with many Protestant, Islamic and Jewish religious streams, as they see it as the right path forward for both their followers and humanity as a whole. Less success is made in negotiations with the remaining religious groups world-wide that actually have a centralised enough structure for negotiations to be made with important figures in their religion, this failure generally being for one of three reasons:

1. Distrust towards the Catholic Church causing them to either not believe what is said in the first place or otherwise not trust their word on how the army will function. 2. They are pacifists themselves and believe that any race advanced enough to actually outmatch the Systems Alliance and National Governments combined would not actually be aggressive enough to start such a war and instead just try to talk. 3. They believe that as religious groups they have no right to attempt to bring any armed forces to bear in their names, even if it is officially under the flag of the Systems Alliance.

In this same month the terraforming of Arcturus Prime is started in earnest.

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September 2131 CE

An alliance wide project is started related to building the ARC ships, though engines will be added last to them to ensure they are the best available, the outer hulls and most other internal components will be added as quickly as possible. Four of these are planned, however due to the secrecy of the project it will take a long time to build them, with all of them expected to be finished somewhere in early 2150
November 2131 CE

Information about the Prothean outpost is shared with the public, though the Reapers aren't mentioned. It is however made known that the increase in military spending is to protect them from potentially hostile other species since the information found in the outpost shows evidence that at least one of the other species studied by the Protheans, most likely more than one of them, should by this point be more technologically advanced than humanity and they do not want a Columbus situation with Terrans as the natives. (Not the exact wording but this is how the general public would rationalize the speech. Will use the actual exact speech in a future chapter after a meeting between the Systems Alliance and the Citadel Council.)

Civilian funding for projects to advance the technology surrounding space travel increases, while Alliance wide militaries get an on average 20% increase in applications to join any of their branches, though the largest application rise is at the Systems Alliance recruitment offices with an average 30% increase, though the number differs for each individual branch, with the highest being the Navy at 38%.

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January 2132 CE

The Systems Alliance Religious Volunteer Army is revealed, including the fact of most of their funding coming from the Roman Catholic Church through the nation-state the Vatican. This force will operate vastly differently than the average Terran army and will also be trained at least early on by members of the Papal Guard. With the news of potentially hostile aliens that have a high chance of outclassing humanity, most think of it as the Church doing what it can to assist in forming better bonds between all Terran religions while also preparing forces to defend the innocent in case of an alien invasion.

Tens of thousands of applications for this force stream in the very day it has been revealed, with the two largest demographics being European Christians and Arabian Muslims. A systems alliance officer is said to have shaken his head with a smile on his face after reading the training manual and declaring it: ''Absolutely insane, but it is so insane that those trained through it might very well be just what we need to win a war against aliens.'', while a French army officer instead seems to have gotten inspired by the manual and campaigns for similar units and strategies among French and combined NATO Military High command

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June 2132 CE

A small group of Quarian pilgrims is attacked during a visit to Illum by a group of visiting Huntress troops from Tessia, whom are for the most part at the time of the confrontation drunk. During the fight three of the eight Quarians die, while two out of seven huntresses die, before the huntresses are ran off by an angry group of Krogan the Quarian pilgrims were originally supposed to meet up with, upon which another three of the original seven huntresses die. While both the Krogan, Quarians and a medical Clinique try to do anything they can to save them, two of the remaining Quarians die from suit punctures while another will live but has to have her left leg amputated.

The situation would have only escalated tensions slightly if it wasn't for the fact that one of the dead huntresses was the niece of Irissa, a relatively high ranking Asari politician currently part of the Asari ambassadorial staff to the Citadel Council who has ambitions to become the Asari Councillor once Tevos retires. She spins the story to the Quarians and Krogan attacking the dutiful huntresses out of greed to steal their belongings once the Asari are dead only to be fought off and flee once it was shown that the Asari were going to fight back.

She uses her loss in the death of her niece during this as vindication of her stance on enlarging the Asari military and arresting any and all Quarians that enter Citadel owned territories on the charge of being terrorists. She also advocates that the new Krogan state, the Federation of Tuchanka, is a danger to galactic peace and needs to be destroyed at all costs.

The Quarian Migrant Fleet and the Krogan Federation of Tuchanka are very unhappy about this and send their version of the story into the extranet/to the press, while current Asari Councillor Tevos tries to cool the situation down, since she realizes unlike Irissa that any actual war against the Quarians and their Federation of Tuchanka allies would very likely draw near all remaining Krogan to the Federation, and while unlike in the Krogan Rebellions the Council will have a significant advantage and certainly win now, the average Krogan and Quarian soldier is not only far more experienced than the average soldier of most Council species, they would also be fighting for the survival of their species.

This meaning that while an eventual complete victory for the council is inevitable in Tevos's mind, it would probably cost them the lives of hundreds of millions if not billions of their own people to do so while no matter what happens coming out of the war as not only the aggressor but also one that exterminated two species with little more reasoning than a combination of one of their politicians throwing a temper tantrum and just because they could.

The attempts from Tevos to stem everything work somewhat, however tensions remain extremely high while the alliance between the Federation of Tuchanka and the Quarian Migrant Fleet again grows closer. As both the Quarian Migrant fleet and the Federation of Tuchanka keep showing their willingness to fight for each-other while also taking a stand against the Council, more and more Krogan Clans and individual Krogan join the Federation of Tuchanka, while Krogan off-world away from Tuchanka become more and more accommodating to Quarians.

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November 2132 CE

The Federation of Tuchanka performs a population index where they learn their total population is currently 95 million, slightly more than a eighth of the entire current Krogan population and about a third of the Krogan population currently residing on Tuchanka. This number is still growing steadily with many young Krogan and small clans joining, with the stability and relatively peaceful life the territory of the Federation offers being the drive for some, while their willingness to stand by the side of their allies and take a stand against the Citadel Council is the drive for numerous smaller Krogan mercenary groups to join.

With the assistance of Quarian scientists a new species of plant is created that will grow well in the wasteland of Tuchanka, though as far as they know the plants are only edible to Krogan due to the small amounts of radiation the plants need to take in to grow successfully. To the Krogan themselves it is a near miracle, as any captured supplies of these vegetables by a non-Krogan enemy will profit them nothing while the Krogan can still just live on enemy supplies if those are captured, while the plant itself can be used not only for food, but also to make various forms of alcohol and when ground down forms a slightly (for Krogan) spicy garnering for other meals. If put into meals for any non-Krogan serving up food with it as garnering is seen as an assassination attempt.

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December 2132 CE

A French scientist, with insights given by the Chinese into modern plasma weaponry, manages to finish an old long since mothballed project: how to make humans able to live in heavily irradiated areas for longer periods of time without lethal consequences. After further testing it is quickly spread out among all Terran militaries to look into, though in most cases long term study will follow first before it is spread out among the troops and especially before it is spread among the civilian populations.

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January 2133 CE

A large Element Zero deposit is found on two asteroids in the Arcturus system, this allows for larger scale experimentation than previously possible when the only Eezo was a whatever could be scrounged up from the remains of the Prothean bunker. Due to an intense study into how the Mass Relay works having been going on ever since the discovery of its existence in combination with Prothean blueprints Terran engineers and scientists have a rough idea on how to build FTL drives for smaller ships like scout drones. Scientists are surprised however by the asteroids, as according to their knowledge the only way for Eezo to exist naturally is the explosion of a Sun, which they have not detected anywhere near the direction of where the asteroids came from.

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12th of February 2133 CE

Arcturus Prime, the current name for the planet in the System called 'Arcturus', is deemed ready for human colonization by the terraforming teams. There was actually far less work to do on it than on Mars, and while it will have less spots suited to agriculture than Mars does it will be very useful as a location for large mines considering the amount of metals found on the planet, even some metals that had not previously been encountered by any Terran.

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20th of February 2133 CE

A Systems Alliance Assembly is held, where it is decided that Arcturus Prime will be a shared colony between the Republic of India and the United States of America. Neither of these groups have a problem in sharing the large colony, with the Republic claiming the area's more suited to Agriculture to have easier ways of feeding their population while the USA claims the ore heavy area. That very same day tens of thousands of people apply in both nations for the rights to be one of the colonists sent towards the new planet.

The European Union, African Union and China will receive rights to collectively colonize whatever Solar System found next, while the remaining member states of the Systems Alliance can colonize Titan when the terraforming of the planet has been finished. Meanwhile the other system far to their North will be colonised by the Systems Alliance itself, before it will be allowed to vote on if it wants to be an independent nation-state or remain under the Alliance's direct control once it reaches a certain population level (somewhere around 5 million is the original estimate of this number).

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25th of February 2133 CE

The first successful Terran Eezo based FTL trip is made by a scout drone equipped with an Eezo FTL drive. It propelled the ship forwards at a therefore unprecedented speed of 24 times the speed of light, however an issue is found that didn't exist with the lightspeed drive type of FTL; the Eezo FTL overheats and gathers up static electricity much faster than predicted.

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5th of March 2133 CE

The engineers realize why their calculations were off this badly: they were using Prothean calculations on much less advanced technology, meaning that any Eezo FTL in the sense of actually exploring, where static discharging and cooling off overheating every once in a few hours won't be possible, has to be scrapped until either the technology advances much farther or they learn how to make a hybrid drive of the two FTL systems that diminishes the disadvantages of Eezo FTL heavily.

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12th of March 2133 CE

The final tests have been performed and the anti-radiation vaccine is found to be harmless in nearly all aspects, with the only exception being the initial pain and slight sickness caused by the initial application of it, which is over in less than an hour. The treatment is volunteer only however, and is discouraged for asthma patients that didn't get the available, though in most countries somewhat costly, cure for their asthma. This being because the slight sickness upon administration is not a slight sickness with them, but rather a strange mix of hyperventilating for close to an hour without any chance of dying to it broken up only by extreme amounts of coughing.

However due to just how much stress this places on the body, there is a high chance of extreme damage to the lungs and a small chance of a heart attack taking place once the hour was over, which in theory might have lethal consequences. The advice is taken to heart by the general public.

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18th of March 2133 CE

While work on a hybrid element zero and lightspeed drive is still ongoing and far from finished, new funding and also new interest in the project has caused a new advancement in the lightspeed drive, though this time the maximum speed hasn't been heightened in any way shape or form. Instead the device has been reworked in such a way that the maximum speed can in theory be used indefinitely.

Because of the expected rework for a hybrid Eezo/lightspeed core within the next few years, the only ships slated for this FTL rework are scouting drones and the guard flotilla's for their stations. Though the number of those guard ships for each individual flotilla have doubled in comparison to the numbers used early on in the program.

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2nd of April 2133 CE

Scout drone pilot John Franklin of scout group four has managed to find a star system 15 lightyears south-west of Sol. Scans show so far that it has three planetoids, one of whom is close to equal in size to Earth and seems to have an atmosphere, the other two are roughly the same size as Earth's moon. As he has been informed that his drone is set to get an FTL refit to upgrade its drive the next month, he decides to head back to base instead of advancing towards the planet.

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June 2133 CE

An index is done among the Quarian population, it is found that there are currently roughly twenty-four million, to be exact 24150325, Quarians alive in the Galaxy, with the number having by this point stabilised due to the fact that even with the high tensions between the Citadel Council and the Migrant Fleet the average pilgrimage is far safer than it previously was since very few are willing to harm a Quarian if they even think there might be a Krogan on the same planet, out of fear that said potential Krogan will show up on their doorstep with a shotgun in hand to make them regret the choice of harming said Quarian.

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July 2133 CE

All Systems Alliance scout flotilla's have their FTL engines updated during this month, while several ships are once again added to the guard units of the flotilla's, which now contain a dozen space-capable superiority fighters, an anti-boarding marine unit on board the station, three light frigates, six heavy frigates and two light cruisers plus during the refit the scout drones got a plasma canon in addition to their defence laser. Though the plasma canon is only of the same calibre as that of an average main battle tank, it will still serve to give them a better chance against hostile elements than their previous armaments did.

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August 2133 CE

Most scout flotilla's head back to their original posts, however John Franklin in his improved scout drone accompanied by four heavy frigates head towards the still unnamed system 15 light years from Sol, in case they find any hostiles inside that solar system, while they also all have signed long term contracts and if there are no hostiles, will start beginning to prepare the planet for human habitation.

During this same month the first large scale wave of colonists settle on Arcturus prime.

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October 2133 CE

AI working on previously distorted information find blueprints for Prothean Mass Effect barrier designs, before learning shortly afterwards that the Reapers supposedly use pretty much the same type of shield, just a more advanced version. Research is started into it immediately to look into both how it can be used and what its weaknesses are.

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January 2134 CE

A Jewish rabbi named David von Steinman proposes to start the Council of Faiths organisation on the two year anniversary of the Religious volunteers unit being made public, his initial proposal would have it be similar to how the UN previously acted. His superiors are unsure but like the idea of cooperation between them and all structured major religions followed by humanity or Terran A.I. enough that they agree to back the plan on the provision that he can convince at least one other major or semi-major religion to back him in it.

The rabbi sends his proposal to the office of the Catholic Bishop of Jerusalem, hopeful that he might get a talk with the regional bishop and convince the man to bring this to the attention of the Catholic Church as a whole.

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5th of February 2134 CE

The rabbi receives back a letter from a church official, but instead of it being from the bishop the sender reads a cardinal that is currently the minister of Treasury in the Vatican, whom is requesting him to head to Rome to discuss his idea of a Council of Faiths organisation. The letter includes two plane tickets and a small ring to wear that will show the guards he is there on official diplomatic business between the Vatican and the Head Rabbi of Judaism.

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16th of February 2134 CE

David von Steinmann arrives in Rome, and after being brought in through a back entrance of the Papal palace meets with both the Cardinal that had sent him the letter and the Pope himself. The three of them discuss the proposal made by David and change it somewhat to make the Council of Faiths more like the League of Nations was in how much power it wielded rather than the UN or more recently the Systems Alliance. This is done simply because a council of faiths would be more likely to be accepted by the general public as a platform for diplomatic discussion like the League was rather than the intranational governmental organisation the latter two were.

The proposal is then sent back to the head Rabbi in Israel for him to look over, and in case he accepts the idea fully they will present it as a combined idea to the leaders of several other structured religious groups. The Pope offers von Steinmann guest quarters in the Vatican for the time being, which the young rabbi happily accepts.

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18th of February 2134 CE

A positive reaction is sent back by the head Rabbi, after which the proposal is sent through to all major organised religions, with quick positive replies on the same day from most of the Islamic and Jewish groups.

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19th of February 2134 CE

Most of the more popular/larger streams of Christianity have also sent in replies showing a positive intention to join the Council of Faiths, while the Dalai Lama has sent a message showing tentative interest in joining but uncertainty if this is going to be a permanent thing.

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27th of February 2134 CE

The first public meeting of the Council of Faiths happens on this day, with dozens of representatives from all different Faiths. The basic laws of the Council of Faiths are made public knowledge on this day:

-All faiths or subgroups of faiths can apply to be an individual member of the Council as long as they have 5000 or more followers, no matter the race, gender, specie or home location of said followers.

-To then get accepted they will need at least 1 faith that is already a member to support their inauguration into the group, plus at least 50% votes for their joining in a public vote. These votes are held by holding a vote accessible to all followers of faiths that are currently a member, though the leadership of any member group can call for a veto or investigation to be held on the applying faith freezing the process for three months while the claim of breaches of laws is looked into, however if it this claim turns out to be false the faith that called upon it will not only have their ability to veto be removed but also become the subject of an investigation themselves.

-All faiths that are either a member or a prospective member need to hold themselves to the following principles: Do not declare a holy war of any kind against other member faiths. Do not support systematic hate mongering or discrimination of another group for either their religion or attributes they do not have any influence over. Do not engage in terrorist activities of any kind, since even if it is for a just cause these usually only cause death and destruction among civilians while accomplishing little else.

Do not deliver support to hostile actions against governments or intra governmental organisations recognised by the council as just (at this point the Systems Alliance and all its member states.). Finally any armed forces under the direct command of any member religion of this Council will be dedicated to the defence of both their right of freedom of Religion and physical safety, unless said the execution of the first right by somebody forcefully impedes the availability of either of the rights for another person.

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28th of February 2134 CE

Initial public reception of the new Council of Faiths is overall positive, however there are numerous people that think that the exclusion of less organised and very small religions due to the needed minimum of official members will make it unrepresentative of the social or religious spectrum of society as a whole.

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March 2134 CE

The first prototypes of Mass Effect shields are made, though they are currently still in a very early alpha stadium, since they are unstable, do not hold up against anything with more striking power than a strong punch and only seem to be able to block things the size of or smaller than golf-balls due to their higher efficiency the smaller of a projectile is fired at them, making the current variations useless on the battlefield. However it is progress and more funds are put into the research, hoping that with this they might also find out a way to get plasma shielding to work somewhat efficiently since it is expected that like with all Element Zero technologies, the scale of efficient use of the devices will stop them from being able to be used as defensive shields around cities and most certainly of whole planets.

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November 2134 CE

The first actually military useful Mass Effect shields are created, these are mainly useful for tanks and IFV's right now, as the relatively new technology requires cooling devices that are too large for infantrymen to carry to ensure the safety of the current generation of devices, while due to the limited amount of Element zero available it is considered far too expensive to make anything yet that could cover a full ship, preferring to use the IFV's and tanks as test groups to advance the technology further first.

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January 2135 CE

On an exploration a lightyear North of Arcturus gravity anomalies are detected by a scout ship, upon arrival what seems to be a large partially destroyed construct is found on an asteroid that somehow has its own gravity despite not being anywhere near large enough nor close enough to another stellar object to possess that by nature. The scout ship messages back to home base, afraid of exploring by itself and potentially waking something since the construct is somehow blocking all scans of the asteroid.

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20th through to the 29th of January 2135 CE

Scout drone pilot Richard Lawson arrives at the system he had first noticed so many years ago and starts scanning everything in the system. He eventually finds that apparently there is a gas giant on the outer edges of the system that his systems hadn't noticed when the system was first 'found' by him. The planetoid with an atmosphere apparently has an atmosphere already suited to human life, though the surface is mostly dominated by large savannah like dry areas, with native flora and fauna other than forms of grass being near exclusively close to one of the five large sweet water seas present on the planet.

The still unnamed planet has two moons, one of them roughly equal in size to Luna with another far smaller one behind it, only some 10 kilometres in diameter, though the smaller one seems to have been part of the larger one at some point. He sends all information back on the 29th.

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April 2135 CE

The investigation flotilla arrives with a ground force detachment to further the search, landing a number of people on the asteroid. It is soon found out that the place was a last refuge of a group of stranded Prothean civilians, who's ship had crashed into the Asteroid. The ship was originally meant to form a purpose similar to the arc ships, with a large amount of information on agriculture, Prothean terraforming methods, how to prepare animals both levo and dextro for Prothean consumption, basic masonry, how to industrially produce Element Zero and everything else a new society would need to start up. Apparently however the ship had been forced to leave far earlier than planned due to a Reaper assault, causing them to have miscalculated the jump and ending with them crashing into the asteroid.

This ended up killing all of those that were inside Cryopods instantly while only about half of the crew survived. While the crew managed to start up a facility on the asteroid before trying to repair the ship, it seems that a malfunction to the already barely working air filtration system killed all but one of the still alive Protheans, causing him to note down a log in the hope of a young species finding it and hopefully avenging the death of his people against the Reapers before he committed suicide.

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May 2135 CE

While it is considered a saddening fact by Systems Alliance high command that they once again have only found some corpses and ruins, there are a few large positives to this situation: they now have a way to create more Element Zero and they also know more about this hostile force called the Reapers. It is found however that the creation of Element Zero is something that will need to happen in an extremely desolate region of a planet with an atmosphere and with workers that sign on knowing the health risks as the creation process is extremely dangerous to both organic and synthetic beings due to the amount of radiation that will come free upon creation of the substance that even the gear that could be used to walk indefinitely into an area permanently irradiated to the same level as the immediate aftermath of the detonation of something like a Tsar Bomb and survive wouldn't protect you for more than a few hours of working with or near Element Zero creation process, however said level of protective gear would make it near impossible to efficiently perform the procedures to produce the element.

The Prothean idea behind 'solving' this issue was not something they were willing to copy and use since that was to simply send in a mixture of slaves, criminals and machines controlled by V.I.. With the only synthetics intelligent enough to accomplish the process humanity has being AI and the effect of the Element Zero creation has on incoming and outgoing signals all these options are deemed as unethical in the extreme and humanity instead starts researching a way to create radiation resistant machines or upping the strength of the already existing anti-radiation vaccination for humans.

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June 2135 CE

Due to the findings gotten from the research into Element Zero shielding, new perspectives and an advance in technology has brought advances in the plasma based shielding that had been attempted to be realized by Chinese researchers in the previous century. What has been found is that plasma shielding works in near the opposite direction of Element Zero shielding requirement wise, as it is comparatively cheaper to produce the larger both the shield generator and the area needed to be shielded is. There is hope that in the far future this can be applied to both heavy dreadnoughts and Superdreadnoughts. The first experiments into actually building a Plasma Shield Generator are started on an asteroid near Mars, since it is unknown yet if it might have harmful side-effects to either humans or the environment of a planet.

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June 2136 CE

The first hybrid FTL drive that is a combination of Eezo drives and Lightspeed drives is created and shortly after put into a pre-prepared ship. The tests show positive results: it has a maximum speed of 50 times the speed of light, with it being able to be used for roughly one month without having to dump heat at the speed of 30 times the speed of light. It has several severe disadvantages though still in comparison to the lightspeed drives: it will be far too expensive to actually install in large combat ships due to costing exponentially more the more volume the ship it is used on possess, while also unlike the lightspeed drive which only needed some energy to start up, this drive also needs an actual constant supply of physical fuel like the Eezo FTL drives do. Searches are done for something that is more useful for this long-term rather than oil, considering the reserves of this are almost fully depleted.

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July 2136 CE

It is found after some experimentation that a substance called 'Helium 3' can be used as fuel for the new currently not yet named hybrid FTL drives. Helium 3 mining is started up shortly afterwards in the orbit of Saturn, where it was known the element was beforehand but since there had been little use for it no large scale mining expeditions had been done at the planet before this.

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August and September 2136 CE

During these months all ships built long ago for the settling of extra-solar colonies are equipped with hybrid FTL drives, being prepared to be sent to both the solar system 15 lightyears away and later on towards the system to the north of Sol.

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October 2136 CE

The Plasma Shield generator on the asteroid has been finished, once activated the shield covers the entirety of the asteroid, which has a 30 kilometre diameter. Elation is felt all around and a plan is started to build a planetary shield generator once the technology has advanced some more on each planet under control of either Systems Alliance member-states or the Alliance itself. After this breakthrough a plan is also proposed and accepted surrounding research into a shielding system that mixes Plasma Shielding with Element Zero shielding, to cover the disadvantages of Element Zero shielding in not defending against Directed Energy Weaponry (DEW), while it would also work to alleviate the issue of just how much Element Zero would be needed to shield anything larger than a light cruiser.

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November 2136 CE

The terraforming of Titan is done, portions of the moon are now habitable for humans if they have both special genetic treatment and live inside domed environments for a large portion of their stay. The areas that could be terraformed have a mainly a tundra like nature, with several large warm spots with lakes made up out of water instead of the methane lakes that are located on all other portions of the surface around the moon. Only about a tenth of the moon is habitable in comparison to currently nearly two thirds of Mars, however it is still believed to be enough since it has a far lower number of colonists wanting to head there than Mars had. It is also believed that further terraforming will add half of the current size to the area suited for human habitation, though the remainder will most likely remain uninhabitable due to the methane and ethane lakes located there, the removal of which would probably undo a large amount of the original terraforming work or even destroy the planets eco-system in its entirety. Gravity enhancers are also built on the moon in spots selected for early settlement, to ensure people can lead somewhat normal lives on the moon.

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December 2136 CE

The first wave of colonists arrives on Titan, while after they are brought there the colony fleet is loaded with the colonists heading towards the now named 'Demeter' system, 15 lightyears south of Sol. Unlike Titan, the planet is as far as is known already fully suited for human habitation, and thus will be a far easier place to colonize, with what little terraforming needed already having taken place for the most part by the flotilla sent towards it years previous.

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February 2137 CE

The first Directed Energy Weapon that can efficiently be used by infantry is created, the Laser Musket. It is as the name implies a one-shot weapon and will function more as a collapsible anti-armour weapon than anything else. It is far more powerful than even the most advanced and newest versions of the plasma musket that has been in use by the Chinese military for decennia, however it is also far more expensive to create and both only need to be supplied with energy cartridges and allowed to cool down some while in the field to function. Due to the interchangeability of these cartridges, ammo would be relatively easy to gain for either weapon no matter where in Alliance space you are.

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May 2137 CE

The colonisation fleet arrives in the Demeter system, where they find out that as previously expected, no alien species besides some local fauna and animals had been found, while the planet had already been mostly suited for human habitation while some slight work terraforming ensured there would be little to no problems for the initial wave of colonists. This information is sent back to Sol while the heavy frigates stay there as a defence force while the scout drone continues exploring both the local Solar system and asteroids near it.

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July 2137 CE

A scouting expedition North of Arcturus has found an asteroid with a large element zero deposit, which shortly afterwards is brought back to Arcturus system to be mined.

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November 2137 CE

The sheer amount of Element zero in the asteroid has allowed for a new wave of experimentation, which had to be stopped previously because the hybrid engines took up nearly all the Element zero reserves the System Alliance and its member states combined possessed. One of the effects this has had is that the Kinetic weapon systems of the Alliance and its member states can be strengthened by adding element zero to the rail-guns, heightening the speed of the munitions and allowing for them to use less materials for more powerful shots. A way is also found to create infantry weaponry with this, which has the severe advantage of allowing you to have near infinite ammunition for small-arms, in exchange for the problem that the weapons have little in the way of penetration power.

This has made it so that weapons functioning on element zero only, even if at some point in the future there will be more than enough of the element to mass produce weapons with it at very cheap rates, will not be used very much as the main weapons of ground-forces. It simply doesn't have the fire-power per shot of modern high-quality gunpowder weapons, nor the ability to simply bypass kinetic barriers that directed energy weapons have nor the absolutely murderous effect plasma has on shielded targets while in atmosphere.

What it has also allowed for though is that a way is found to enhance gunpowder weapons with element zero, though it would add the problem of needing to give rifles far better cooling systems. The idea is put on hold until a way is found to actually use the Element zero factories to consistently have large amounts of the element on hand and the rifle enhancing method itself will be cost-effective enough to be mass-produced. Early kinetic barrier designs for ships are also produced around this point in time.

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January 2138 CE

A large amount of funds is put into a team trying to work out how to create energy or plasma weapons that can function as actual mainstay infantry guns instead of only being able to serve as anti-armour weapons for their infantry. The research is combined in this because it is intended for them to continue on working with whichever option they make the first breakthrough in.

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February 2138 CE

The first prototypes of the Eagle 1 fighter are introduced, an American fighter design that possesses an Eezo core, giving it both basic shielding and more manoeuvrability, with its machine guns also being Element Zero enhanced. The production of these fighter planes only happens on a relatively small scale since while no longer a shortage Element Zero is still also rare, with no new Asteroids containing it having been found.

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March 2138

The first planetary shield facility is made operational on Terra, where it is located in the middle of Australia because of the ease with which the massive complex could be situated there. It is intended to have backup facilities in Siberia and Northern Canada, to ensure if one is taken out the shield will still be able to survive. The locations are chosen for their remote-ness and how easy it will be to actually build the 500 by 500 by 80 meter facilities there in comparison to on most other locations on the planet, where large amounts of pre-existing structures would have to be demolished to get this much uncultivated land.

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July 2140

A breakthrough has been made in the research into strengthening the anti-radiation vaccine, and with the combination of that and advanced environmental suits it is now somewhat safe to work with the Element Zero creation process in single hour shifts, though because of the dangers during the operation it will only be available to the national militaries, Systems Alliance military personnel and those small time criminals that volunteered for the industrial Element Zero production program in exchange for shortening of their jail times. Several thousands either die or are crippled due to the vaccine, however while lamented and with a several riots because of it afterwards, it is overall accepted as necessary casualties, with many fearing the potentially far more advanced alien empires that might very well find humanity at some point in the future and simply attack.

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August 2140 CE

Work on building the first Element Zero production factory is started in a desolate region on Mars, with hundreds of millions in dollars, euro's and yen is being spent to make sure it is built not only quickly but also durably enough for it to stand the test of time.

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January 2141 CE

The Element Zero factory is finished and the creation of Element Zero is begun during this month. While early on efficiency in production is relatively low due to inexperience in producing the element, long term prospects are very positive.

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February 2141 CE

The efficiency of the production process in the first factory has risen enough that it is deemed well enough for another five Element Zero factories to be built. Roughly 1 kilogram of Element Zero is produced in the first factory every day, which seems low to most of the population until they look further and realize that a single fighter jet will only require somewhere between 20 and 50 grams of Element Zero with the lowest amount being if you only give it Element Zero shielding and nothing else. While the average Element Zero enhanced assault rifle only costs roughly one gram of the stuff.

(Canon Systems Alliance fighters use 100 grams of Eezo, however those are almost entirely reliant on the stuff for everything from shielding, to weapons systems, to actually being able to manoeuvre their ships outside of atmosphere to possibly even life support inside the cockpit. As mentioned before most of what I know about Mass Effect comes from playing one game years ago and information found on the various wiki's on it out there. So I'm unsure of some things.)

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May 2141

Due to the prior experience with building the previous factory, the next three are built both faster and with less costs attached to them, being finished during this month. They are also expected to be up to a decent level of production efficiency faster than the previous one. After this new factories are built continuedly.

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June 2141 CE

The project to create an energy weapon bears fruit, with as a result a 5 shot laser bolt action rifle. The power in the rifle is drawn from single shot cartridges, of which five can be inserted into the rifle that disintegrate upon being fired. While the weapon shows much promise, it is more of a prototype that proves it is possible rather than the new main weapon for the average rifleman. Some three-hundred are produced, and though most remain in the lab, fifty are outfitted with bayonets and gifted to the Systems Alliance for use as ceremonial weapons that can ignore the shields in case an assassin or gun for hire gets their hand on personal shielding in the future. It is however expected that laser rifles will always be more expensive than Element Zero rifles, no matter how advanced both technologies might get in the future.

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September 2141 CE

Due to slowly growing ties between the countries but also their inability to fully compete on the market against the EU or the Chinese People's Republic, the sovereign nations of Mexico, Canada and the USA join into the UNAS, United North American Nations, a coalition similar to the European and African Unions.

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November 2141 CE

The UNAS starts a combined research into how to build Eezo enhanced and on a less large level, Eezo based weapons as they deem enough Eezo is currently available that such a large weapons overhaul is within the realm of possibility.

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January 2142 CE

The Systems Alliance holds a vote on opening the Mass Relay in Arcturus System heading North-West, the vote is a majority positive, the relay will be opened in early June.

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March 2142 CE

A message has arrived back at the Systems Alliance headquarters from the scouting drone of Flight Lieutenant Richard Lawson, which indicates that the planet in the system would be not only close to perfect for human settlement, but that there are no nearby signs of alien habitation. The first wave of the colonizing fleet prepared years ago is sent towards the system to the north, expected to arrive in slightly less than 8 months, most of the colonists are those who either want to leave behind SOL, some out of fear that SOL might become a battleground once they meet aliens, others because of tragedies experienced in their personal lives.

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June 2142 CE

An 'exploration group' stands by as a science vessel opens the relay. While officially called that, in reality it's an assault fleet with 300 combat ships and 20 troop transports, with ships ranging from frigates to dreadnoughts lead by the heavy dreadnoughts SSV Shield of Terra and the UFC Sword of Mars while the Arcturus garrison is temporarily strengthened by two more two fleets from SOL under command of the UNAS Freedom Flight and the CCP Hammer of the People respectively, each a hundred ships large. This all in addition to the original four fleets already stationed there. Some concern are had over the fact that more than half of humanities ships are now outside of SOL including most of the high quality or more modern ships, but it is relatively quiet in comparison to the enlarged public support for the decision to be able to hold their own no matter what they find once they enter the system behind the relay.

They find a solar system with a single planet that will need little terraforming to be inhabitable for humans, while early scans show a small number of solar systems with planetary bodies inside of them within a range of less than ten lightyears. Scouting parties are sent out towards them.

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July 2142 CE

The solar systems are explored, with several of them having planets that without any form of terraforming are already fully habitable for humans, one of which is given to the Chinese in return for them supporting a full scale fleet around that planet from that moment on since there is also a relay inside that system. It is named Shanxi, and will be the main military post of all nations under the banner of the Systems Alliance in the region. One of the other planets, while liveable is seemingly a planet-sized version of Siberia, the planet is to be colonised by a combined effort of the member states of the European Union, with the Russian Federation at its head.

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August 2142

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The Systems Alliance militia is formed, it is supposed to serve as a future replacement for Systems Alliance army troops serving as planetary guard forces away from the direct front during a war to free them up for hostile actions or as re-enforcements to endangered planets. It will, at the very least early on, be trained up and lead by retired Systems Alliance personnel, just like the original Systems Alliance army was trained up by retired soldiers from national governments.

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September 2142

A conscription law is passed in the Systems Alliance parliament, in case of a war a vote can be held to get 20% of all unemployed Systems Alliance citizens of between 21 and 35 conscripted into either the militia, the army or the navy depending on their own choice after being conscripted in. There are exceptions, most of them revolving around childcare and studying. This conscription law will only be in play on area's controlled by the Systems Alliance directly, however most nation states pass similar laws for their own militaries, though in those the option of militia is replaced with the somewhat more professional but also more dangerous option of becoming reservists.

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October 2142

A law has been passed where small-time criminals can join penal battalions of the military instead of going to jail for a certain amount of years, these units will essentially be shock troopers in offensive operations on lightly inhabited worlds or as a highly mobile defence force.

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December 2142

The human population in the galaxy has risen to 21,8 Billion, slightly more than 17 billion of whom are adults. Of the adult population 10% is part of the armed forces, either directly in the professional military, or less directly in either the National reservists or Systems Alliance militia units.

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January 2143

It is discovered almost on accident after an experiment done on a dare that full Eezo FTL engines, unlike previously thought, can still be of use for something: information transmission. Research into how this would work starts immediately with extremely large funding, as this could revolutionize communication and in turn both governing and military operations while doing away with a large number of logistical issues, instead of having to rely on communication corvettes such as is done now.

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February 2143

An exploration flotilla several lightyears south of Shanxi finds a previously unknown star system with a liveable, if very cold planet. Several systems are also noticed to be within less than 5 lightyears out from their current location, with the reason behind why they weren't found previously being relatively unclear.

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June 2143

The best Hybrid FTL engine currently available allows for a maximum speed of 300 times the speed of light, which can be used at such speeds for four months.

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July 2143

The gathered colonisation fleet is sent towards the system discovered by Richard Lawson, they will arrive in roughly 7 months.

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December 2143

The new communication system, which works in essentially the same way as the relays do but then for information as opposed to ships is now ready for massed production. It requires for beacons to be seeded in space that will receive and 'shoot' information at speeds roughly one lightyear per day, which means that unlike previously ships do not need to be sent to and from Systems to bring over information if it needs to get there fast since now information transmission actually goes faster than the ships themselves would.

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March 2144

The colonisation fleet arrives in the newly named 'Haven' system with a slight delay in comparison to the previously expected time-frame, and start colonising the planet, settling near exclusively around and on the large lakes, using the least advanced/most damaged ships as a foundation to build small towns around the planet.

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November 2145

The USA produces the first Avenger Class Fighter, intended to be the mainstay fighter for all militia and reservist forces, as an easily mass produced but still high quality atmospheric fighter, sending 50 free 'samples' to the Systems Alliance.

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December 2145

The Systems Alliance high command accepts the Avenger Class fighter as the main-stay atmospheric fighter for non-professional units.

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February 2146

The combined efforts of researchers from all over the Systems Alliances territories have finally managed it: an energy assault rifle with a decent magazine capacity and a good firing rate that can also be mass produced without too many problems. It's a thirty shot weapon, with a similar build to regular assault rifles, while the 'ammo' comes in the form of a rechargeable pack roughly 30 centimetres long, 20 cm wide and 4 cm thick that is replaced in the same way current ammunition packs of assault rifles are, making reloading a relatively simple process.

It is the first of the 'Sword' series assault rifles, but will not be the last. It is to be the service rifle of the infantry of the countries belonging to NATO, while also available to the Systems Alliance and all its member states, most of them are not yet planning on using them as they are afraid it will be nearly useless when facing hostiles that follow a technology path not related to Mass Effect, due to its lesser stopping power in comparison to say, the American Lancer Eezo-enhanced assault rifle, making it less useful against heavily armoured targets or enemies that have shielding not reliant on kinetic barriers. Unknown to the humans at this point, the energy assault rifle still has enough stopping power to remain either lethal or crippling to all enemies among the 'council' species regardless of what armour they were except for Elcor and Krogan, whom if armoured have an easier time dealing with it.

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April 2146

All ships of light dreadnought class and above are getting their new 'Plasma Shields' installed, which while slightly less effective against Kinetic attacks than the Kinetic barriers that could have been installed on these ships, are both far cheaper and also defend against attack types that would simply bypass Kinetic barriers, such as lasers, other energy attacks and, unknown to the Systems Alliance, Warp torpedoes. Heavy cruisers will for now still use make-shift kinetic barriers due to power issues that would be caused by using plasma shields on these ships. Construction starts focusing on heavier ships, especially heavy dreadnoughts and heavy carriers after this with the intention on giving a single one of these ships to every fleet fielded by the Systems Alliance and her member states, if only for the sheer intimidation factor provided by them and the morale enhancer they would be for their own troops.

June 2146

The UNAS starts exporting the first Mass Effect reliant infantry pistols, which while having less firepower will have thousands of rounds of ammunition with only single blocks of synthesized metals needed to reload while also being able to collapse themselves into magnetic blocks, making them an ideal solution logistically as a secondary weapon for the Systems Alliance and national infantry troops.

Non-infantry units, mainly tank and air-force personnel, get these weapons assigned to them for the ease with which they can keep them on themselves without taking up space in their vehicles or making it hard to move around in them. As main weapons for infantry soldiers however they are far less useful due to the inability to actually reload it quickly with its 'reloading' after on average 50 shots being that it needs to cool down for twenty-five to thirty seconds.

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August 2146

Eezo enhanced rifles in the USA finally reach a state where the techniques can actually be used to én masse turn current gunpowder reliant service rifles into Eezo-enhanced versions, which unlike the Eezo based ones didn't have a cooldown time at any point due to overheating, as the only additions that can actually overheat being a projectile accelerator inside, which the new 'heatsinks' produced through years of research would be capable of cooling down as fast or faster than it was heating up as long as the rifle wasn't being fired on full-auto for a full minute, which was virtually impossible anyways due to the need to manually reload the weapons and the fact that no trained soldier would waste that much ammunition.

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November 2146

The number of Eezo factories on the industrial terrain on Mars have grown to two-hundred-sixty, while each now produces 2 kilograms of Eezo a day, with it still growing to enable to actually match demand. While gaps in said demand are currently being filled up with occasional asteroids or ruins found with some Eezo stored, this soon will not be the case anymore.

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February 2147

The Systems Alliance currently has 18 operational combat fleets, with all of them containing their full 100 ships, with another 40 patrol squadrons not attached to any fleet. All nation states on earth combined have another 30 combat fleets (Most of these serve as garrison forces on colonies though, unlike their Systems Alliance counterparts) and 90 patrol squadrons operational. However, most of these fleets are filled with barely trained crews, nobody has any experience in space age combat and the space-based combat strategy manuals are dangerously empty due to only having what experience that could be brought over from the wet-water navies, which is very little outside of basic battleship, carrier, screening and submarine warfare. On top of this, the system alliance has some 9 halfway ready fleets, with them having most of their smaller ships already however most of them not possessing a single one of their intended heavier ships, with the nation states having 10 partially ready fleets, however most of them are further along to completion in comparison to the System Alliance's.

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March 2147

While infantry kinetic barriers have been available for a while, previous to this they were hard to produce on a large scale due to not having a cost-effective way of producing high quality miniaturized cooling systems for them, however due to a breakthrough in that field adopted from the still relatively new assault rifles, mass production of kinetic barriers to enhance the capabilities of ground soldiers when faced with kinetic weaponry dependant enemies.

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April 2147

An Eezo Hauler crashes near Perth in Australia, killing thousands, while giving hundreds more a strange sickness that at first sight seems to work like a weird mix of the bubonic plague and some forms of cancer. Dozens of others, mostly among younger victims suddenly gain slight, somewhat supernatural abilities. Both of the latter groups are quarantined in medical special medical centres as fast as possible to ensure they will not experience (further) problems because of it.

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July 2147

No cure has been found for those who got the strange disease, which for now is being called Eezo-sickness for lack of a better name, however a vaccine is being created which can prevent future infection with the sickness, it is expected to be done somewhere in early December of the same year.

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December 2147

The vaccine to the still not truly named Eezo sickness is fully realized, and mass-production of it is started immediately for both the military and civilian sectors.

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January 2148

The reason behind the slight supernatural powers of some of the victims is found out, the Eezo they were exposed to bound itself to their nerve systems in some way and allowed them to now manipulate small objects with it, albeit very shaky and for short periods of time. Long term benefits of this are realised by many almost immediately though, causing numerous countries to start researching methods on how to both safely implant the Eezo and how to allow the individuals with the abilities to harness them more effectively.

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February 2148

While there is an initial wide-spread fear of the potential effects of the supernatural abilities, the Council of Faiths quickly starts a campaign against this, with many local religious leaders proclaiming the abilities to be a gift that could protect the innocent, instead of some form of curse. Due to the fast response, this quickly changes most people's opinions on the subject.

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April 2148

The name 'Biotic' is coined for those with the Eezo-related powers, the name being gained by holding a survey among those affected by it and their parents/caretakers before holding a popular vote. With most of them being teenagers or young children, this name is taken over from a popular show that can be watched on both the web and television.

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June 2148

Many countries hold votes on whether or not small scale general conscription should be re-introduced or in other cases added to, depending on whether the country still had conscription in some form, and votes are held to either start a new conscription ratio of 1% of the population or add 0.5% to the current conscription law. In nearly all countries this vote passes, though in some only barely. France and Germany are exceptions, where instead both of these are considered too small and after an intense debate it is instead voted in as a 4% conscription rate in both countries, with many world-wide not understanding anything about it, but the populations of both countries rejoice.

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September 2148

A new packet of genetic modifications is introduced world-wide, that allows for an increase in raw physical strength of 10% for soldiers and roughly 5% increase in overall endurance without much of any consequence, however said modification can be turned up to 40% for both but this would turn the operation from a bog-standard procedure with little that could go wrong into a life or death situation with a 50/50 chance of survival. Shortly afterwards the highest modification is banned by international law.

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November 2148

Hybrid FTL engines are now able to reach speeds of 1 lightyear, and keep this speed up for close to eight months without having to dump the static build-up, meanwhile regular FTL engines are able to reach 40 times the speed of light by this point but can keep this up infinitely. These are now added to the newly finished ARC survival ships, which were finished a few years ahead of schedule due to advances in shipbuilding technology, even with the projects being hampered by the secrecy being more resource and manpower intensive to maintain than it was originally thought to be.

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December 2148

New advances in plasma shielding has allows to refit heavy cruisers with this type of shielding, which is almost immediately embraced by all Alliance affiliated militaries.

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January 2149

A new weapon is designed by the teams of Alliance scientists researching possibilities of weaponized Eezo: a gravity hammer. While originally designed just to see if it was at all possible, the prototype quickly turns out to be deadly in single hits to all forms of armour lesser than the most heavily armoured Main Battle Tanks, and even then it can take out the tracks or gun of these tanks with relative ease if the wielder of the hammer manages to get close enough.

An order for more research and once finished to a level suitable for massed production is sent in by the Vatican in name for the Religious Volunteers army within a week of this discovery being made known to military officials, with a pre-emptive order of 100000 of these weapons once they are at said mass production stage.

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March 2149

The concept of a hoverbike is introduced by Australian Engineers, using a nuclear powered Eezo using bike that can fly up to 15 meters and will be able to traverse all forms of terrain, while the design is made in such a way that if something happens to the system allowing it to float wheels can be attached to it instead turning it into a regular Nuclear powered motor bike.

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June 2149

Jeff Moreau is born to Jacques and Elisabeth Mareau, him a lieutenant in the French Grand Armée, while she is a restaurant owner in Paris.

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November 2149

The oldest among the young biotics in Australia, one Richard Smith, joins the Religious Volunteer Army.

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December 2149

An implant is designed to allow for better control of biotic abilities, it strengthens them slightly but mainly allows for better control and severely reduces the chance of accidental use of the powers in daily life.

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January 2150

A Canadian medical worker by accident discovers a way to semi-safely implant Eezo into a person, however the operation only has a 10% chance of success on top of only being possible to perform on people underneath the age of 20. If the operation fails, the patient will not get any serious health issues, however it will waste enough Eezo that could be used to create enough equipment to fully outfit several soldiers. Because of this, the only military that offers this fully at this stage in operations already is the Religious Volunteer Army, whom have found that Richard Smiths abilities have so far been a near perfect complement for their overall combat doctrine.

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March 2150

The gravity hammer design is now fully ready for mass production, and before the end of the month the first batch shall be transported to the Religious Volunteer Army.

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June 2150

The UNAS for the first time shows their new 'Hovertanks' to the general public, with them intended to be light scouting tanks in addition to the regular main battle tanks, however with the addition of retractable sets of tracks to ensure that if an enemy manages to take out Eezo-reliant technology or simply damaged the hover systems the tanks can still move and fight.

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October 2150

The Systems Alliance does a population survey, the Systems Alliance currently has 22,5 billion members, 19 billion of whom are adults, with AI making up 100 million among that number. Of this total adult population roughly 15% is either a member of the military whether directly or indirectly, or secondly will be called upon in case a war starts.

The average fleet fielded by the Systems Alliance has 1 heavy dreadnought or heavy carrier, 4 light dreadnoughts, 2 light carriers, 18 heavy cruisers, 40 light cruisers and 25 heavy frigates. On long term or planetary offensive operations these fleets will have Freighter groups added to them as supply units and secondary troop carriers. 25 of these fleets are currently operational, with another 5 expected to be brought to operational levels with the next year. In addition to this there are currently 70 systems alliance patrol squadrons, each containing one light cruiser, two heavy frigates and twelve light frigates. Once a war breaks out each fleet gets two patrol groups assigned to them, in order to provide reconnaissance and counter hostile recon groups. The remaining patrol groups will be assigned to colonial defence duties on colonies near the front lines. To top all this off there are 10 stealth/recon squadrons, while there are roughly 500 corvettes in service throughout the Systems Alliance that serve as additions to border defence fleets. The total number of combat ships flying the flag of the SA directly is 4050, 2710 of whom are classed as varying forms of 'capital' ships.

Nation-States fleets vary far more in their make-up in comparison to SA fleets, for example the European Union fleets have a far larger amount of heavy cruiser and above ships, while the Chinese and American fleets have a far larger number of smaller ships in them. That said in total there are 40 currently operational fleets fielded by the nation-states in total, with no other fleets to be expected to be fielded over the next few years, with most resources currently going to upgrading older ships currently in service. The 90 patrol squadrons of these nations vary even more in what is in them than the fleets do, though they all have 20 ships inside of them, the additional ships in comparison to SA fleets usually caused by the fact that these patrol groups are usually halfway filled with corvettes unlike their SA counterparts. This gives them a total of 5800 ships in the field, however of these roughly 2000 are older models that are in near desperate need of upgrades, most of these being among the smaller ships such as light frigates and corvettes.

Meanwhile the total population of Council Space has risen to 114 billion people, with close to 25000 operational combat ships fielded by all Council memberstates in total, 19000 of which are intended for frontline combat with the remaining 6000 being armed reconaisance, armed troop transports and law enforcement vessels. 18.000 of the total number of ships are owned by the Turian Hierarchy. However, due to the long time without many changes, most older ships in moth-ball fleets (from anywhere between 300 and 2000 years old) can easily be returned to active service and filled up with reservists, which would give an additional 26000 combat ships to the Citadel Council as a whole, of which 14000 are Asari vessels and 8000 Turian vessels, with most of the remainder being Batarian ships. On average military service rate of the Citadel populations is 8%.

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November 2150

The HALO group arrives in the new dimension after their harrowing battle for the space station.

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Finally done. Okay for everyone that actually read that full thing, my apologies that this took so long. For those who skipped past most things here is a short summary:

Due to long periods of peace most countries that were formerly hostile to one another are now friendly rivals at worst, humanity found out about the Reapers early due to far faster and more intensive colonisation of Mars, the Systems Alliance has 23 billion inhabitants, working AI and a 15% of the population inside their military if militia's and conscripts are included. Biotics are mainly a thing in Australia, the Systems Alliance and her member states combined posses enough ships to be a serious threat to the citadel council even if they lose one ship for every council loss, however the Humans have overall better ships. Meanwhile in council space a Quarian-Krogan alliance has been close to a war with the Citadel Council for years, with tensions likely to boil over at some point in the next two decades.

Thank you all for reading this, I will have the next chapter posted in January at the latest, however I now have to go over it because apparently while the chapter is finished I made a ton of mistakes with it and I only found out now.