Design Monologue 21: History of the World, Part 2

Let's try out that history again.

Five colony ships left Earth in 2088. Several years into their journey, at least four of them suddenly transported to a far-flung corner of the galaxy.

Over the next few years, three ships made their way toward what would become the first Homeworlds. The first ship to land founded the colony that would come to be known as Karma; the next, Koruun, and the last, Abel.

From the Karma colony came a diaspora, as various groups sought worlds of their own, when colonizing space became easier than reconciling differences of opinion. The core colony grew the fastest, and advanced quickly. The young state soon found herself in conflict with her own splinter states, and the need for survival clashed with the need to maintain the values of a free society.

A great war came to an end when Karman settlers made first contact with a seemingly alien race--in fact, their own lost cousins from a sister ship. The Abelites had established their own Homeworld, and had been seeking survivors of the other ships. They had sent probes to many systems, and when they found life on the Karman worlds, they sent a ship to greet them. In the centuries since they founded their Homeworld, they had developed the technology to cross vast distances at faster-than-light speed.

The two races worked hand-in-hand, united in their goal of reestablishing contact with Earth and the other lost colony ships. It seemed more likely now that all of the ships had gone astray, not just either of theirs.

They soon got their wish. They made contact with the Korrunites in 2338, and were not sure, at first, if they were truly human. Their lost brethren had changed; they believed they were the original inhabitants of their world, not settlers from Earth, and their DNA was substantially different than that of normal humans. However, Abelite geneticists insisted that they were the original human settlers from the 2088 expedition and that, somehow, their DNA had been altered.

The lush worlds and advanced technology of Karma and Abel soon proved too tempting, and the Korrunites invaded both worlds through the jumpgates the Abelites had built for them. The first invasion was brutal, messy, and unorganized. The Korrunites had plenty of military ships, but a poor grasp of true warfare; they were more raiders than conquerers. Still, the grevious damage they inflicted soon provoked a bitter counterattack. After years of enduring the invasion, the two Homeworlds surged into Korrunite space and put down their fleet and armies with vastly superior technology. The war ended with the occupation of Koruun by Abelite automatons.

Koruun lived under an occupation for generations. At first, the Abelites claimed they were rehabilitating their wayward brethren. They forced them to acknowledge that they were, in fact, humans from Earth, and that a biological weapon left behind by an ancient civilization had changed their genetic code to make them continue the legacy of a dead race.

Decades of forced peace sapped much of the Koruunite spirit, but a resistance movement grew, and soon gained the support of the sympathetic Karmans, who accused the Abelite occupation of descending into tyranny and oppression for its own sake.

The revolution was swift and mostly bloodless, as the Abelites' drone army and fleet had little trouble withdrawing. It was, in fact, almost too swift, as the power vacuum it created threatened to destabilize the entire Koruunite civilization. However, with the aid of the Karman army and fleet, newly bolstered by their previous epic warfare with their now allies, Koruun was stabilized under the rule of a new supreme clan.

By the 25th century, the three Homeworlds had spawned hundreds of colonies, none more so than the Karmans. Their space was not unified, though the core world owned more than half the systems settled by descendants of the original Karma colony. They had defensive pacts with most of their immediate neighbors, and a standing alliance with Abel, somewhat strained after the Korrunite occupation.

Koruun began to suffer great strife, as their various colonies, each ruled by a different clan, rejected the right of the supreme clan of their Homeworld to rule when it had failed to defend against the initial invasion. However