Primori Expansion Era

The Primori - an ancient civilisation emerges and develops space travel.They establish an intergalactic empire followed by a great expansion. In an effort to maintain cohesiveness in an empire that it might take half a lifetime to travel across, the Primori begin research into longevity and genetic engineering, massively increasing their lifespans into the hundreds of years, but in the process cause the empire to stagnate, with power structures cementing themselves in the older generations.

Younger generations emigrate outwards towards the fringes of the empire, looking for better opportunities - leading to labour shortages that are eventually filled by AIs and automation. This in turn leads to a significant drop in the population and reproduction rate within the empire proper.

Primori Stagnation Era

As genetically engineered longevity becomes the norm within the empire, Primori society tends more and more towards artificial reproduction in order to extend the effective fertility span of their species. As individuals Primori become increasingly physically and socially isolated.

It is during this period that the Hyperia system is discovered by the Primori, and a genetic research station is established on a planet’s moon - Luna. During the same time, the Primori discovered the Sol system and situated within the habitable zone, Earth is the primary testbed, while the nearby moon is set up as an isolated complex for development and study.

Primori technology is now extremely advanced, with a combination of gravitational, genetic and nanite tech that to a human eye would be indistinguishable from magic.

The Era of Primori Decline

Social cohesion within the empire begins to break down over the course of several hundred years. Individual Primori now artificially create their successors, generally tending towards single, genetically improved clones of themselves. The reproduction rate drops below 1.

Isolated, surrounded by robot servants, and harnessing technology so advanced that they can no longer fully comprehend all of it, many Primori begin to think of themselves as gods, erecting structures in their own honour and seeking to reach immortality.

Many different organic entities are created on Earth as well as Hyperia’s Luna. Following the conclusion of some of the primary experiments, the Earth is allowed to develop naturally as a long-term experiment, and, the Primori in charge of the Luna facility vanishes into a deep subterranean facility.

The Qu’nesh Exploration Age (30,000 Years Ago, Approx.)

The Qu’nesh civilisation forms and travels to space. Initially unable to develop the technologies required for rapid space flight, huge colony or “hive” ships are dispatched on extremely long journeys to promising-looking planets. The presence of Primori artefacts on one of these planets advances Qu’nesh spacefaring technology by several decades, if not centuries. Suddenly able to expand much faster, the Qu’nesh launch a massive colonisation drive, expanding outwards in search of new habitable planets as well as other traces of the Primori civilisation.

It is during this expansion phase that the Qu’nesh encounter the Bresshk homeworld, conquering it in the process.

The Age of Conflict (20,000 Years Ago, Approx.)

The Qu’nesh expansion adds several new systems to their empire, several of which turn out to contain Primori ruins. The expansion begins to stall due to the limitations of the communication technology available, and the Qu’nesh as a race are communal to the extent of being almost hive-like in their mentality (though individuality exists), and they do not function well in isolation. Intense focus is placed on further exploring the Primori technology within their domain, as well as on independent research.

The sudden increased excavation and dissection of Primori technology angers the Bresshk, who have partially integrated into the Qu’nesh empire, but regard Primori artefacts as holy.

Bresshk rebels start a guerrilla war against the Qu’nesh, sabotaging research and eventually succeeding in colonising planets around the ragged rim of the Qu’nesh empire. The Qu’nesh discovered Earth and Luna in early human history (over 70,000 years BC). Several attempts were made to establish contact with early human civilisations, but eventually the war with the Bresshk led to the abandonment of Luna.

Aliens do not interfere directly with human history, but Qu’nesh attempts to communicate with early humans leads to some shared symbolism between otherwise isolated cultures.

The Age of Humans

In the outer regions of the Qu’nesh empire, humans emerge and begin to explore space. They reach up from Earth to eventually explore the Hyperia system and Luna. As part of the initial settling, large quantities of the highly magnetic lunar dust is excavated and removed to protect sensitive electronics and machinery in the new facilities. In doing so, the settlers begin to unearth the old Primori structures, as well as previously undiscovered natural resources within easy reach of the surface.

This discovery fuelled a boom in Lunar exploration and settlement. In an attempt to prevent conflict over highly prized resources, the Dark Frontiers Corporation was created to oversee resource extraction from Luna, with Earth’s governments as its shareholders and board members.

As part of these early explorations, humans stumble over the abandoned Qu’nesh research facilities. Different to the deeper Primori structures, Qu’neshi remains allow humans to disassemble and study technology that is at times still functional.

Some time during the early exploration of Primori and Qu’nesh structures on Luna, a small research team accidentally activates an ancient graviton generator located in the core of the moon, which begins to power various facilities across the lunar surface and increases the Moon’s gravity, allowing it to sustain a thicker atmosphere.

At present, the human settlers use a large number of robots and AIs for menial tasks. Due to previous issues and a fear of an AI rebellion, only non-combat AI are actually capable of true self-awareness. Combat droids are effectively robots running on complex algorithms, which makes them quite dumb and unimaginative.