2216 mankind has colonised nearly every part of the solar system. It was at that point the first Gate was discovered in the rings around Saturn.

Saturn, also known as the Bermudas triangle of space, was known for mysterious disapperances of ships that got too close to it.

Several missions of scientists and researchers were sent to Saturn to research the Gate. When the lead scientist Thompson Straus saw the Gate for the first time he supposedly said.

"If this is not a proof of an advanced alien civilisation, then I really do not know what is."

Straus was right in that, the Gate was a ring that hosted a stable wormhole, and as was theoreticaly proven tens of years prior, wormholes cannot occur naturally.

It was unclear whenever the wormhole was created before or after the ring was, if the ring was simply an instrument that kept it stable, or if it somehow had the ability to open the wormhole.

The first ship ever recorded to travel throught the Gate was a small reserch vessel known as The Curious Cat with 10 people aboard, 8 scientist among whom was Straus himself and 2 pilots.

Although they didnt find the alien civilisation they were hoping for, they discovered 2 new planets similar to earth. Both had oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, water in liquid state and flora capable of photosynthesis.

In adition 2 new gates were found.

Soon it was possible to travel between the new systems freely. Anyone who had a ship or the money to buy a ticket. Packed their stuff and left for the newly built colonies.

Humanity kept exploring this new region of space, which they named the Yggdrasil Expanse due to the branching connections between the star systems.

Until they ran into a problem. Fifteen gates away from the Solar system, in a system which was due to this called the Frontier, the gate was inactive.

The wormhole was still present but it was deteriorating and far too unstable for a ship to safely pass through.

All other systems around this one turned out to be dead ends, with only one gate leading back and none leading further. The Yggdrasil Expanse was cut off from the rest of space by unsurpassable distance with the only gate leading further functionaly closed.

Not only that but the gate was extremely old, even compared to the other ones, this one predated all of the gates closer to the Solar system by at least 4 millennia.

After years, by means kept secret to the public they managet to power the gate back up and stabilise the wormhole.

On the other side they were suprised to finaly find a civilisation, though not the kind they were expecting.

The aliens they've met were human. At first they thought that the gate somehow took them back to the Solar system, back to Earth. But that was not the case.

From that point on informations flooded on to humanity so quickly that they had a hard time keeping up the pace.

Apparently the civilisation they've met was only one of several civilisations in the galaxy. All of them were human or atleast humanoid in apperance.

There were, some difficulties comunicating at first but that was solved fairly quickly, because of the glaring similarities.

Apparently humanity was created and raised by a more advanced civilisations known only as the Architects.

Noone knows who these beings were, where they came from, or where and why did they disappear. The only thing known was, that it was them who created the gates, who created us and all other known civilisations.

And here we are now, as part of this huge galactic society.

It wasnt easy though, many havent trusted the newcomer civilisation, some said that we arent ready or worthy of joining the other civilisations.

Some more religious sorts believed that the gate that lead to systems humanity from Earth found empty, was closed by the Architects themselves, for a reason unknown to mortals.

There are rumours going around about an organisation that has taken it upon themselves to force humanity back to "where we belong". There were several attacks on Solan ships and even their colonies. The attacks were fast and brutal, but luckily humanity didnt stand alone.

These "Anti-Solans" didnt thought about who else would get hurt in the process, Naowia Caldians, Hyuatii and many others lost their people during the attacks as well, and they wouldn't just stand by as it was happening.

Anti-Solans were immediately branded a terrorist group and all their public assets were seized, with many of them making a very long stop on scrap worlds (1.) This forced the terroristic group to split into smaller cells some chosing more stealthy approach, like industrial sabotage and supply hijacking. However more agressive cells resort to piracy, banditry, kidnaping, murder, and many other heinous crimes.

(1.) Scrap world are planets that are unhospitable by nature or have gone through irreversible changes due to cosmic dissasters making them less desirable to live on. As such all space trash produced by planets is sent here. These planets are full of recycling facilities. However since only the most desperate of sorts would want to work here, scrap worlds soon transformed into forced labor camps for the worst criminals of the galaxy.

[As you can see when a number is in brackets like this (1.) it means that there is something to know about it or that its a name or term that could be hard to put into perspective. Some will be explained by characters of the chapter or the explanation will be at the end, as you saw above. If there is a term or a phrase you do not understand and it is not explained by either the character or at the end, dont hesitate to leave a commentary.]