What Came Before

To begin, a brief history up to the time of the game, ca. 3349 A.D. (Gregorian Calendar)/ 999 (Nyams Gsosian Calendar).

The historical eras as utilized by historians are as follows, give or take a few decades of overlap and hindsight:

POST-MODERN: 2000-2100
SUBJUGATORY: 2100-2250
LATE SUBJUGATORY: 2250-2350
EARLY NYAMS GSOSIAN:2350-2600
NYAMS GSOSIAN: 2600-3000
RGYASIAN: 3000-Present

In the late-post-modern period, a war errupted between most of the European Security Forces, about half of the African Union, the North American Conederation, Austrailia, the Sino Compact and the Moslem Union against the world's artificially enhanced humans (those equipped with endo-cranial processors) led by Guy Stienberg, allied with factions of the ESF, the AU, Japan, the South American States, the East African Union, and India. Steinberg believed himself to be the Second Coming, and his followers--enhanced with psionic, pysical and electronic abilities--were effectively supermen who were the reborn souls of his fallen followers (when an old tech guy died, he was reborn in one of the new, suped-up bodies). Stienberg died early on, killed by ESF forces as he sacraficed himself, only to have his consciousness transferred to all of his followers.

Successful, they set about creating the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth and they began by subjugating all those who had opposed them. After quickly determining that Earth's environment was spirling out of control, they resolved to leave the solar system as the only way of surviving and carrying on; between 2100 and 2250, massive stripmining and exploitation of resources was undertaken to finance crash space research programs. By 2150, they'd developed the hyperspace catapult, which could fling a ship pretty damn far, and by 2250, they'd found the heliosystem and began to build both a Gate there and to colonize the three planets that here hapitable: Nike, Tyche and Hera.

Again, this was done using most of their subjugated, expendible labour that continued to refuse to be reborn in the better bodies. Amongst the humans, there was great debate over whether these captors were just evil, actually Evil (and this was teh End Times), or just crazy for believing they were divine. Around 2350 (the date is not set), the colonists rebelled, at the same time as those on Earth in a highly coordinated, well planned effort. They destoryed the Helios Gate, as well as the Solar Gate. Those left behind are assumed to have died and, as the Solar system had been effectively destoryed in a one-off to leave as soon as possible, it was assumed that the Terrans would 1) not have the resources to build a new Gate and 2) likely wouldn't survive that long.

For the next 250 years, rebuilding and growth took place, with the 2 billion survivors growing across the different planets. Theologically, people at large had had quite enough of "christianity". Most people embraced science as an epistmology, and Tibetan buddhism as their ontology. Christianity fundamentally schismed around this time, between those that believed that their arrival in the Heliosystem was, in fact, the beginning of the thousand years of peace (and whatever theological ramifications would follow with that), and those that beleived that they must still await the End Times (a la Hot Protestantism) and demanded a return to the Solar System to observe the Levant (that position didn't take off, as it was worried that any new gate that was built and used would signal to any surviving Terrans that there was a return trip posible, and could result in their paying the Heliosystem a visit... for revenge!)

Now, it's nearing the year 3350; society is flourishing, infrastructure exists, buddhism is the basis behind most academic and political thought, Christianity exists but the former sect dominates (by far), as does Judaism and Islam. Pilgrimages for all three religions are made to the moon Olympia, also called Nai Yisroel, جديد مكة المكرمة, and Nova Syria. The most "conservative" of all three religions have set up permanant settlements there, and have isoltaed themselves from the outside community, save for pilgrims.