History

At the height of its space exploration efforts, Earth was collapsing under the strain of a deteriorating atmosphere and dwindling resources. While the planet’s great leaders scrambled to collect enough capital and nourishment to sustain their nations, they reassigned rising populations by settling habitable new worlds. Funded as much by private entities as failing governments, colonization was known to be the only hope for their people. Thaeta was one of many answers to the question of humanity's survival.

97 Before Landing
The first human shuttles landed on Thaeta and began terraforming.

43 Before Landing
The governments of Earth sent a proportional demographic of citizens alongside select representatives on the first live expedition to Thaeta. Private corporations soon followed, transporting collections of wealthy and sponsored families to establish their own colonies.

0 After Landing
Government ships began to colonize the moon’s surface, the first of which was dubbed the Nexus. They received direct answers and orders from the Council of Nations, an Earth-based correspondence organization based around keeping order in the settled worlds of outer space.

Over the years, more ships came to populate the new world, both incorporating into old cities and settling new ones. Some groups even chose to live off the land, forsaking the technology of old for the young wilds created by their predecessors. Most all successful settlements began somewhere near the Nexus, obeying its laws in exchange for access to the shipments of major resources that were delivered there.

65 After Landing
The Nexus received its final correspondence from Earth. The planet had been devastated by a biological war that left 13 billion people on the Earth and its moon dead or dying in less than a year. The First system was quarantined, and the Thaeta was left to fend for itself.

The elected individuals that ruled the Nexus, known as the Conclave, was honest with its people. They told the world what had happened and quickly established representatives to fill the holes that the Earth’s governments had left. They proclaimed themselves the ruling body of Thaeta and, for nearly a decade, kept peace among the cities.

73 After Landing
As word spread of Earth’s downfall, so did doubt in the role of the Nexus as a world leader. Without their distant ancestors to act the watchful parent, cities began to balkanize. Mourier was the first to pronounce its autonomy, and in 73 AL they waged war against the Nexus in what would later be called the First Rebellion. The ensuing battles resulted in something of a stalemate, comprising mostly of assassinations and database infiltrations.

74 After Landing
When Laures and Singh were convinced to join in an assault, the Nexus panicked. The Conclave resorted to a choice that had once been illegal: fearing defeat, whole streets of Mourier's allying cities were obliterated by the offensive turrets installed on orbiting ships, vessels that had brought many of them to their new homes. Mourier itself was saved by the Nexus's dependence on its raw materials and similar culture, a fact which indebts them to the capital to this day.

While many Thaetans were appalled by the attack, the Conclave excused it as a necessary evil. The rebellion continued for some months in the form of mutinous rumors and sabotage, but was ultimately quelled by the knowledge of the Conclave’s power. Having realized their own strength, the Nexus expanded its reach in the form of military occupation under the looming threat of annihilation.

Assimilation
With the cities of Thaeta suffering a government-sanctioned time of peace, the Conclave turned to matters of state. Citizen ownership of firearms was outlawed and an armed police force called the Authority was established in every recognized city, taking orders through a chain of command that ended with the Conclave’s own General Marc Mathis. Authorities were allowed to use any means necessary to keep order in their assigned cities, not excepting murder.

Mathis’s true rise to power is a poorly documented mystery, as were most meetings of Conclave after the First Rebellion. It was in this year that he was first seen announcing the Conclave’s decisions personally and individually; soon after that, it was apparent that he was the only one making them. The Conclave had become all but ceremonial, and Mathis ruled with the power of fear and the Authority. By the end of the year, he had announced his new plan for Thaeta: complete assimilation.

Integration of synthetic parts was a small price to pay for peace, especially as the Nexus offered grants and even incentives to do so. Those who did not assimilate were only harassed at first, by both the Authorities and the propagandized populace, but eventually a growing number of transplants became required by law. When many still refused assimilation, they were dubbed outlaws and forced to flee the Nexus and its allies. The cities that supported these outlaws became enemies of the Nexus, and so the Second Rebellion began.

Not every so-called rebel city held malicious intent toward those allied to the Nexus. Many families were split by their choices to stay or leave, and many people wanted simply to be left alone to rule themselves. Unfortunately, the face of the outlaws was the men and women who planned attacks against Thaeta’s ruling body. Many unorganized factions of rebels sabotaged Nexus equipment, infiltrated its ranks, and even laid waste to outlying districts. When the Authority retaliated, they were allowed to call their violence defensive.

94 After Landing
The war itself lasted a matter of weeks. Barricades and skirmishes rose and persisted in the outlying wetlands around the Nexus and the foothills of the Laures Mountains, but as with the First Rebellion, much of the fighting occurred in the form of silent deaths and technological sabotage.

By the end of 94 AL, nearly 60% of the capital was off the grid and without power and four high-ranking officials of the Authority had been replaced. The city was all but defenseless to the troops that had begun to surround it: Laurean soldiers and militant outlaws alike. The Nexus was left with no choice but to repeat history by orienting the orbiting guns above its enemies and, this time, itself. The threat of incineration kept the troops at bay, but so was their presence slowly starving out the city. Even as the dusk of the year came and went, neither force stepped up or backed down.

95 After Landing
On January 2, 95 AL, the Conclave instructed the garrisons to lower their guns and open their gates. Mathis’s known right hand, Joseph Aguilar, announced on the repaired grid that he was assuming control of the city. His first order of business was to issue an official apology to those who had been oppressed and killed by Mathis’s regime, and to promise a change in Thaeta’s government. But he and the Conclave would not tolerate the Rebellion. As the orbiting vessels departed from Nexus skies, he gave them an ultimatum: leave the city, or watch their homes disintegrate.

112 After Landing
Aguilar's Thaeta is not unlike the world under Mathis's rule. The goal of assimilation is no less pertinent, and some consider him just as despotic. The few differences are more important than the similarities between them. Unlike Mathis, Aguilar believes that order is paramount, even above complete and total assimilation, and order cannot be achieved through harassment. Military occupation and intimidation is not the Nexus's first order or business, though the Authority remains a presence in every major city. Laws requiring synthetic parts have been abolished and replaced with monetary incentives. The progress to complete assimilation has slowed, but so has the world's morale improved, even providing for the development of arts and technology in some areas.

Unfortunately, when Laures officials offered to discuss the terms of autonomy, they were refused. Though the city technically remains under Nexus rule, it operates with little direct support from the capital and many of its citizens do not consider themselves Nexans. Both sides understand the value of peace, and hostilities are contained for the time being.