A New Age – Part Deux
The Respublican pioneers expanding the domain of Santi Maria in the Phyr Dead Zone did not truly know what to expect from the endeavor. The comms buoys were rife with rumors. The fabled Amoneth were never far from the proverbial mill. Neither were the dreaded Turanei, whose destruction of the Phyr from a century ago still elicited fear and wonderment in those who saw the ruins of that civilization first-hand. But, as the months wore on, no ships disappeared mysteriously. There were no unexplained sightings and no energy sources that required intense investigation by foolhardy Space officers and their well armed escorts. Rather, the exploitation of the Dead Zone was going smoothly, comfortably and even – strangely enough for a government project – remained on schedule! Everything was going very well. That is to say, it was all going very well, right up until the point when Respublican settlers stumbled upon a war in early 375AU.
The identity of the combatants was revealed quickly enough, and it proved itself to be quite a revelation, indeed. On the one side, there was a Phyr state, based around a small cluster of worlds (including a surviving splinter colony from the time before the large-scale annihilation of the Phyr nation at the hands of the Turanei) deep in the Zone. Though Codexian historians and policy planners knew that the significant Phyr refugee population in human space had left the Respublica for destinations unknown more than half a century ago, in order to escape perceived persecution at the hands of the rising Marianite movement, the scale of this resurgent state still took them by complete surprise. There were now quite obviously millions of Phyr living. Their population had exploded, since the immediate aftermath of their near-extinction. Further, it was apparent that they had been developing their small patch of space furiously, since the exodus from the old Republic.
The foe they were grappling with, however, was even more unsettling. They were humans! Well, they were humans in some capacity, at least. Their story - unraveled over several months of low-level, tentative contact with Respublican settlers and explorers - was bizarre. Back in the late 2nd century AU, when bio-mods and gen-mods were outlawed by various government regulations, tens of thousands of highly and irreversibly modified trans-humans were left in the lurch. Though some elected to stay and take their chances with increasingly discriminatory public and private behavior with regard to the visibly modified, tens of thousands fled government space. Since this was during the heyday of the colonial movement, a number of worlds were open to small communities of such individuals, who collectively bought land and settled it, thereafter. At some point, however, a plurality decided to go one step further, and left human space entirely. Since the Phyr Dead Zone promised vacant (if damaged), habitable worlds, that’s where they ended up, sometime between 225-250AU.
The deepest reaches of the Zone were settled, escaping the Codexian survey effort of the 260s by the closest of margins. Over the next century, the nascent Free Association of Independent Trans-Humanity (FAITH) developed rapidly. An industrial base was laboriously established, and a number of worlds settled by this ambitious collection of transhuman communities. While the rest of the human race was wracked by terrible civil conflict, they flourished. Cloning programs increased the population substantially, across the proceeding generations, and FAITH’s economy virtually exploded. When Adam-2 (True AI) schematics were smuggled in during the late 270s, the FAITH project experienced another quantum leap in development. The Free Association would continue to grow quickly, and by the Age of the Respublica, had come to represent a wholly different and fully realized notion of humanity. It was a society of the mind and of ideas, in which form had little import. As such, when the reborn ‘New’ Phyr Dominion came upon a FAITH settlement in the 360s – and after formal contact was established – the ursine aliens quickly realized their predicament.
This was a competitor in the Dead Zone, and not a minor neighbor to be overlooked and, perhaps, absorbed. Though relations stayed cool but correct for some time, their breakdown was almost inevitable. In late 368AU, as the general conflict known to many as the Hin’in War died down across the rest of the stellar region, a limited, but brutal conflict began between the New Phyr Dominion and the FAITH over the ownership of a formerly Phyr-inhabited world. Neither had serious warfighting resources or extensive armed forces, but they used small vessels, raiding forces and sheer bloody mindedness to inflict great damage upon one another. By the time the Respublican flotilla began making its way across the Zone, the fighting had reached its seventh year. It was an inconclusive, exhausting contest between foes that could not decisively damage one another. The immediate question is obvious: what action should the Respublican government take, with regard to these peoples?
Do you... ignore the conflict? Let us continue to colonize the Dead Zone. We have the forces on hand to protect our interests against any potential aggression by either the Phyr or the transhumans. They are minor annoyances, at best. We do not need to expend resources on such non-entities. Instead, let us continue to focus on our own concerns.
OR
Do you... assist our human brethren? The Phyr make war against our brothers. We must show them the error of their ways. They are weak; we are strong. This is a mismatch. The xeno must not be given the impression that he can attack humans without consequence or repercussion.
OR
Do you... assist the Phyr? We have lived alongside the ursine xeno. They are misguided, but not beyond comprehension. These transhumans, however... they are scum. Look what they do to their God-given bodies! Let us smash this FAITH. The heathen is salvageable; the heretic is not!
OR
Do you... suppress both? The Dead Zone is ours. Why would we share it? Did we not spend bucketloads of blood and treasure on achieving supremacy in our space? Let us teach these fools an object lesson.