Era: The Consortium was designed to offer every sub-genre of Sci-Fi!
It allows you to choose when in the 500 years of playable history gives the feel you want your game to have, then hop to another for a different type of game.
This summary of the entire history gives you an idea of all of the possibilities!
Humanity has left Earth far behind.
The Kurmaja carried humans across space for over 1000 years, making its slow way to a new world.
It’s not known whether this ship was the first, the only, or the last.
It eventually found a planet called Taranis, which became the first planet that humanity colonised. The crew and passengers dismantled the Kurmaja to build Kurma City.
Over the century that followed, humanity expanded to fill that solar system. The Consortium became a corporate meritocracy: the top seven companies decided what was needed, and then a Senate of the top 200 would ratify these decisions. However, in practise, the Senate squabbled so extensively, the “Big Seven” made the choices. Despite facing threats from organised pirate groups, separatists and political intrigue in their solar system, the Consortium thrived.
108 years after the founding of the Consortium, a remote mining party discovered a wormhole. This led to a new solar system which became known as Damara. Scouting parties were sent to explore the new region of space, looking for resources. They found the impossible: alien life.
The Eulutians are a squid-like alien race who quickly realised that humanity is incredibly xenophobic. They quickly decided to create human-shaped suits to better interact with the Consortium. While some might argue that in the centuries since, they’ve lost a lot of their culture, they integrated very quickly and easily with the Consortium.
There were various other mysteries and confusions about exploring the space, as well as a huge political shift from the introduction of an alien race. Technology leapt forward thanks to Eulutian input and integration continued.
The Consortium united like never before and a massive ship was designed, not so different from the Kurmaja or the Zeelaay, which brought Eulutians to Damara. Its mission was to seek out life elsewhere. Construction would take 13 years.
The Orion demanded new technologies, new industries and new sacrifices. The crew of 1000 knew that only their children would return to the Consortium – their mission was to explore Albiorix, a system that was 40 years away under ideal circumstances. Nevertheless, every effort become focused on creating this ship to explore new planets.
After the Orion’s launch, no-one expected to hear from it so quickly. But it halted only a month away from the Damara system – it had found another wormhole that led to a third solar system. Leaving a science ship monitoring this, the exploration ship departed properly on its mission, leaving the Consortium to explore “Icaunus”.
It didn’t take long for the atmosphere-bearing world of Arawn to become a source of interest… and the intelligent species they found there was even more so. The burst of technological advancement that brought the Orion continued, building enormous “Jump Gates” which allowed moving wormhole locations and shortening the travel distances between the solar systems of the Consortium.
First contact with the insectoid Ximians, however, did not go to plan: it was a massacre of many senior members of the Consortium, and led to almost three decades of war.
The conflict was long and bloody with huge losses on both sides. The Ximians fought hard on the ground, in the air and in space. Although they seemed to have an initial advantage, eventually they were pushed back to their colony world of Essus on the outskirts of the system.
Unable to negotiate, the Consortium sent in a group in war mechs to force the Ximians to listen. Against orders, the commander burned the egg chamber of the Ximians, causing the aliens to surrender as they realised that their foe will wipe out children to win.
What followed was 50 years of slavery for many Ximians, a very dark time known as “The Time of Sorrow”. While public efforts were made to integrate them, some Big Seven companies enslaved the strong, versatile workers for their own profit.
Eventually, the truth was discovered and the Ximians were freed, but their integration into Consortium society was not easy. It took many more decades to accept them as equals.
By now, the Orion had returned with the fruits of exploration – no sentient animal life, but many plant samples in stasis. Interest in these was enormous and several of the samples went missing. Albiorix was too far away to be a viable colony, so the Orion was reduced to a show piece – the “flagship of the fleet”, a deterrent more than a true asset.
It was a shock to most when, 100 years after the Orion’s return, troops on exercises on Arawn discovered a civilisation in an uninhabited region. It turned out that some of the “samples” had been non-intelligent, mobile plants. The radiation from an alien sun had changed them into sentient beings. The Consortium decided to uplift the “Vilithii” and integrate them into society, as the advanced civilisation could not deny responsibility.
However, the idealism did not last. An ousted CEO of one of the Big Seven formed an alliance of pirates to try to seize power in the Consortium. Shaun Hardcastle’s fleet bombarded planets, demanding their surrender and defeated the forces sent against his armada. Unable to force a surrender, he led his fleet to the heart of the Consortium: Taranis. That was when it was discovered that Smertios Security, the peacekeepers of the Consortium, had an enormous secret fleet. Defeated, Shaun Hardcastle vanished.
The people of the Consortium proved their resilience: they rebuilt, stronger and better than before, working together to help their civilisation survive. Technology surged again, and Elliot Draigon, a soldier who had lost an arm in the war with Shaun Hardcastle, invented true interface technology for all races of the Consortium. This and his forward thinking catapulted him to the position of CEO in Open Technology, one of the Big Seven.
However, power breeds fear of losing it, and when a Eulutian-led company exceeded the profit level of Open Technology, Elliot Draigon began to fear that his company would be replaced in the Big Seven by it.
In desperation, a plot was formed with other members of the Big Seven to use a new weapon on the Orion to stage a natural disaster, eliminating all life in the Icaunus system and ending the threat of this Eulutian company, Gaia Adaptation and Adjustment.
Such things do not remain a secret. A Resistance movement formed to discover the details and stop this plot. This culminated in what is known as “The Battle of the Orion”, an event which the Consortium denies, where the Resistance fleet attacked, boarded the Orion and prevented the destruction of 14 billion lives. Many Resistance members were lost. The movement continued to grow, hoping to change the Consortium for the better.
The Big Seven became the Big Eight as Gaia Adaptation and Adjustment was included, and society took a step forward. In the five years since, Technology has improved, a new alien race, the Pliangrathilon, has entered the region of space with a warning about “the Titans” and there is a rise of Psionics and created species.
However, the conflict continues between the Resistance and the Consortium…
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Era: The Consortium follows the Consortium through 450 years of history after this point, through First Contact with aliens, exploration, wars and eventual stability. The below stories are intended to give an idea of the universe.
Races
“Our diversity has made us stronger. The addition of ‘aliens’ to our society has pushed our social and scientific development in ways no-one could have expected. What the Consortium hasn’t realised and doesn’t value is that Humanity is stronger for its alien cousins!”
– Steve Adams, Excerpt from a speech, May 446CE
Organisations
“The organisations of the Consortium are many and varied – this is what brings us our strength, flexibility and will. We will not only defeat this challenge, but we will seek out the next also – and we will do it together!”
– Georgina Fruehauf, Head of PR for Smertios Security, 15th November 187CE
Alternate Universe Companies
This “Alternate Universe” group are organisations which ceased to exist in the main Consortium timeline but exist in the timeline created by the time travellers in the Time Travel Campaign!
Story
“It is the people in the Consortium that matter, not the organisation. If they don’t have protection from the intentions of Big Seven, they won’t be people any more. They will be controlled, or they will be corpses. The Consortium fear us because they know that people can change the universe if they need to.”
Excerpt from a speech by Steve Adams, December 23rd 446CE
Places
People
“A History in Profiles” by Amy Allworden and Ed Jowett
