Welcome to an alien galaxy. If you're curious, it's the Black Eye Galaxy, but this fact is unknown to the characters in this universe. The knowledge was either never gained or lost in the calamity of the galaxies' un- timely separation. The setting is meant to be a more or less standard Cepheus Engine setting. A primary dis- tinction is that there is no over-arching imperial polity whose rule stretches over entire subsectors, but rather many different smaller empires vying for one. The cold war between these interstellar empires is sup- posed to be a prominent theme.

While only one sector is mentioned and only one subsector is fully developed, the worlds of this galaxy were coveted and therefore the galaxy is well populated. The Milky Way galaxy had few habitable worlds, and ter- raforming proved to be more difficult and even more expensive than previously thought. When the worm- hole was discovered and proved to be traversable (lending to many theories that it couldn't be a natural phe- nomenon) scouting ships immediately followed the probes. What we discovered was both highly disturbing and exciting. Past the wormhole were hundreds of habitable worlds – an easy solution to the overpopulation crises on Earth and the few other worlds that we'd managed to wrest from the void. What was on those worlds were fossils and remnants of the alien civilization that, in many cases, had constructed those worlds. Swiftly the flood colony ships passed through. Nations claimed entire worlds. Humanity boldly stepped into this alien galaxy and staked its claim. Technologies left by the prior inhabitants was reverse engineered and spectacular advances were achieved within a generation. The field of gravitics was opened. The methods of terrestrial sculpting were gleaned. We improved the jump drives of our ships from analyzing the occasional derelict vessel we'd discovered. Humanity had stood tall as an intergalactic race.

Something happened. It all fell apart. The road we used was destroyed. Whether it was natural is still up for debate. All that's known is that we are now alone in this alien place. Our ancestors were driven wild by this truth.

What We Believe Happened

The rough consensus of how we arrived at these stars is that there was a wormhole stable enough to allow transport. The nations of the galaxy we’d come from sent through their vessels and discovered the many stars in this region. The stars had habitable planets, either naturally occurring or obvious products of terrestrial sculpting. Whoever had produced the occasional ruins in our adopted galaxy are unknown, likely extinct. The only information to be gleaned about these aliens are from their disturbingly durable constructions and their fossils.

With these worlds at hand, the nations colonized the worlds. Each nation grabbed their own worlds, establishing self-sufficient colonies. What happened next is a matter of fruitless speculation. Somehow interstellar order evaporated and the wormhole linking our galaxies collapsed. Worlds that once belonged to intergalactic polities were reduced to balkanized warzones. Some worlds descended into barbarism. Without the infrastructure to support the world’s populations and technical levels, many of the planets regressed into a primitive existence. Very few worlds were able to maintain contact with each other and coalesce into some kind of interstellar state – the infants of the galaxy’s first empires.

See Unknown for rules for creating your character 🙃