Old Wars

Several hundred years before the Union Era (UE) humanity enjoyed a golden age of civilization until making a disastrous first contact with the Ancient Sylvassi. The previously unknown species launched an allegedly unprovoked attack against the infrastructure and home worlds of mankind which began the Old Wars.

Ancient Sylvassi
Sylvassi of the pre-war era thought of themselves as intergalactic peacekeepers, an ideology which may have led them to war. Their culture held that cataclysmic threats should be resisted by force. However, no records exist to indicate what threat humanity may have posed.

Human Militia
Human survivors of the initial Sylvassi offensive organized into a militia to resist, and eventually retaliate against, the Sylvassi.

Early Conflicts
Although the motives for the Sylvassi offensive have been lost to history, their targets and methods are known. Sylvassi forces prioritized destruction of human orbital facilities called "Archives" before switching to planet rending weapons that targeted any human-occupied worlds. Survivors of this first attack rallied to form a militia, and adapted previously peaceful technologies into an arsenal of war.

At the start of the conflicts, the Sylvassi ignored all attempts at diplomatic contact. Given their weapons and technology greatly surpassed that of their human opponents, they may not have seen any need for diplomacy.

Galactic Wars
The Human-Sylvassi conflicts spread to dozens of galaxies and lasted hundreds of years. Through continued perseverance humanity shifted the balance of the war to their favor. Finally on the offensive, the human militia chose to deal to the Sylvassi the same damage which had been inflicted upon them: they targeted Sylvassi home worlds with planet rending weapons and killed billions of Sylvassi in their counteroffensive. Mankind's strategies proved effective, the wars ended and scattered the remaining Sylvassi as refugees.

Resolution & Aftermath
The Old Wars ended with the human race victorious, though it was a pyrrhic victory at best. The human coalition that led the militia did not persist beyond the conclusion of the Old Wars, and humanity fell into a dark age defined by corruption and division. Politics, technology, and social services all suffered millennia of lost progress in the post-war chaos. Sylvassi refugees had nowhere to go, their home worlds and governments destroyed. Instead, they were captured and enslaved with the majority ending up as workers for the W.D. Corporation.

In the aftermath of this unprecedented conflict, war hero Admiral Wilber Adame set out to reunite the remaining human colonies, and established the Colonial Union. As the Union grew and flourished, its goals shifted from survival to those of exploration and discovery. These new ideals appealed to many peoples beyond the humans who initially founded it, and within the first millennia several sentient species applied for entry to the Union. Today the Union is a multi-species administration spread across multiple galaxies. The Union instituted a new calendar, with year 0 marking their founding and referring to all years after this as Union Era (UE).

A great deal of information from during and before the Old War had been lost as a consequence of the widespread damage it caused. Tisa, a Sylvassi researcher at Outpost 448, believes that through cooperation between humans and Sylvassi the Colonial Union will be able to uncover what forgotten dispute caused the war.

Archives
The Archives were orbital information storage facilities placed around human home worlds before the Old Wars. They were the primary target of the Sylvassi invasion force, and no Archives were known to have survived the Wars. Although their exact contents are unknown now, scholars and historians agree these projects were considered mankind's crowning achievement. The complete loss of these priceless reserves of knowledge may well have contributed to the dark age that followed the Old Wars.

Planet Rending Ships
Doomsday weapons poorly adapted for ship-to-ship combat, these vessels served the express function of annihilating enemy worlds. Planet renders allegedly destroyed hundreds of Sylvassi home worlds in the final battles of the Old Wars. Despite several attempts to recreate vessels of this class, all have failed and Planet Renders are thankfully lost to time. Still, technology of this nature poses a special concern to the Colonial Union who have outlawed the application of Planet Rending technologies.

Sentinels
Massive Old Wars era drone platforms deployed to support human fleets. The Sentinels were purchased from an unknown third-party organization. This group provided them to humanity as a defensive measure against the Sylvassi invasion, but after humanity used the Sentinels to support their own campaign of planet rending their access to the devices was threatened by their creators. Rather than comply with the restrictions, humanity employed a pair of weapons engineers to disassemble and reproduce the technology. These engineers, Banks C. Wolden and Rudinius Dorf, went on to found the Wolden-Dorf Corporation in 5UE. After humanity disregarded the warnings about using Sentinels to support their planet rending, it caused their creators to withdraw the devices from the war, reprogram them to reject human commands, and activate their self-defense operations to prevent capture. Over the centuries, the location of these mobile platforms have been lost, though at least one Ancient Sentry remains in this galaxy.

Warships
Fleets of heavily fortified vessels were built and deployed across the galaxies during the Old Wars, but most were destroyed in the fighting, and few if any survive to the current day intact. Most were scrapped for parts to build newer vessels, though many remain as "graveyards" scattered across this galaxy and others.

List of known Old Wars era ship classes :


 * Interceptor
 * Sylvassi Swordship

Trivia

 * According to a post by leafygamesdev, Tricorp featured in earlier drafts of the story as the manufacturer of Sentinels used during the Old Wars.