A Brief History of the Duranium Legion to the Year 4000
Scraps of ancient records suggest that scientific minds of the XX and XXI centuries believed that whatever weapons the third world war was fought with, the fourth world war would be fought with primeval technology. Unfortunately for humanity, these scientific minds were incorrect. From the latter half of the XXI century on, not one but a series of apocalyptic world wars were fought. While surviving records are scarce, modern scholarly consensus indicates that the final of these wars, fought in the late XXIII century, culminated in a cataclysmic release of ionizing radiation which disabled nearly all planetary communications, causing the disintegration of civilization and the beginning of a new Dark Age.
Records from this period are scarce, but it is generally accepted that by the XXVI century a patchwork of reconstructed nation states had emerged, broadly clustered near the equator indicating that a nuclear ice age was occurring at the time. From then until the early XXXIII century, few records exist, but the nations which were well-established by this time once again began to practice formal archiving of records. From these archives it is apparent that any post-nuclear ice age had largely ended by this time, as the major nations of Earth had once again expanded north and south. The following centuries were broadly characterized by endless series of local wars for control of the remaining resource-rich areas of the planet, and by the dawn of the XXXVI century the world was dominated by roughly twenty regional powers which competed for domination over the human species.
As regional wars and complex alliances increasingly intertwined, the nation states of Earth transformed from economic and military unions to fanatical ideological blocs, likely in an effort to maintain war fervor amongst their populations. A series of interlocking regional wars in the late XXXVIII century finally exploded into a full-fledged world war, equally as devastating as those of the early XX centuries though fortunately stopping short of the complete collapse of civilization. Regardless, some two-thirds of the regional hegemonies were brought to ruin by the end of this world war, and out of their ashes rose many new nations.
Among these was a race of humans then known as the Iron Legion. Driven by pure ideology and hardened aggression, the Legion struggled for its survival like many others of these new nations, but rather than scraping together what subsistence economy they could, the Legion instead chose to ensure its own survival at the expense of the other nations. The first recorded war of conquest by the Iron Legion began in the year 3812, and these wars would continue unabated for most of that century, during which the Legion would expand to become the largest regional power in the world.. Finally, in the year 3897, Legion scientists made a discovery that would change the face of the Earth forever.
Spurred on by the newly-discovered Trans-Newtonian elements (TNEs, named after one of the few ancient scientists whose memory had survived through the millennia), the Iron Legion fought the last and greatest war in the history of Planet Earth - the Trans-Newtonian War. Standing alone against the combined might of all other nations, their unrivaled technology and aggression ultimately delivered hard-fought victory into the hands of the Legion after over two decades of global conflict. In the end, for the first time in history the peoples of Earth stood united under one banner - the banner of the Duranium Legion, now so-named by decree of the Emperor in honor of the TNEs which had won the war as well as in recognition that the Legion had evolved to become a new, all-encompassing race of mankind.
In the following decades, even the warlike Legion largely busied itself with the work of rebuilding global civilization, introducing the economic wonders of TNEs to the rest of mankind. Even so, various small states in remote regions as well as occasional organized revolts provided the aggressive soldiers of the Legion with sufficient opportunities to hone their combat prowess. Finally, in the last decade of the XL century, the Emperor decreed the construction of a fleet of space-borne warships, partly as a vehicle for continued economic recovery but more so to continue the inexorable expansion of the Legion through the vast reaches of the final frontier…
Campaign Details
- Known systems, 30% ruins chance
- Two billion pop, 200k instant RP, 160k instant BP
- 3x NPR at 25-50 LY, all spoilers active
- Rerolling and slight tonnage tweaking of shipyards to support a suitable set of starting classes
Mostly this campaign is intended to be a “quick” 1.12 campaign as I wanted to start writing something without a lot of narrative fuss while waiting for 1.13 to come out, at which point I have a few different ideas. I suspect these may be famous last words, but the Invaders are on so this just might be a quick one.
