The discovery of hyperspace travel changed everything for humanity.  It introduced the possibility of deep-space exploration, scientific study and gathering of rare resources.  Most important of all however, it allowed humans to leave the boundaries of our solar system, Sol.

Humanity reached hungrily for the stars, and began establishing colonies and outposts throughout known space.  We found evidence of ancient civilizations on distant worlds, and the remains of life we had only imagined in fiction were discovered to be long extinct on alien worlds.  We slowly realized that our galaxy is a cold, inhospitable place, and hope for meeting other advanced forms of life seemed to dwindle with each passing light-year we traversed.

Habitable regions of space, and life-supporting planets were extremely rare, but humankind was able to lay claim to thousands of planets with the potential to support human life.  Not all of these planets were habitable to begin with however, so massive terraforming efforts were begun throughout the galaxy.  Every possible planet was colonized, and each of these colonies was referred to as a “Seed.”  These colonies were given the task of making their new home-world into a paradise…like Earth during its prime.  Efforts proceeded quickly, and within a few centuries many of the worlds were capable of supporting human life..even though very few worlds were anywhere near finished.  Many were deserts, some frozen tundra, others littered with volcanic activity and even stranger combinations were known.  But the work was beginning to pay off, and even in these relatively extreme environments, humans could finally step outside of their self-contained habitat modules and (usually) breathe the atmosphere.  Our sense of hope and optimism began to return, ever so slowly.  Then we made First Contact.

Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that First Contact was made, and we had the misfortune to be involved.  However you choose to phrase it, the results were nothing short of disastrous for humankind.  Massive, alien vessels emerged from hyperspace without so much as a whisper over the com channels, and began to exterminate every human colony they came in contact with.  We never saw the faces of our attackers, nor did we hear their voices..in fact, all we knew of them came from telemetry and records which survived their vicious attacks; whenever they appeared, all methods of communication were cut off by some sort of jamming technology, so the victims were unable to even call for help.   All we knew of them is the damage caused by the terrible weapons they unleashed upon us from orbit, and that our defensive technologies were completely useless against them.  In a matter of months they had eradicated half of our colonies, and it was only a matter of time before they would finish the job.  Many called for surrender, hoping to preserve humanity as some form of slave or servant race.  But our leaders were unwilling to bend to these invaders, who obviously cared nothing for our well-being and thought so little of us that they hadn’t even sent us a single message..unless you count orbital bombardments killing billions of people to be a form of communication.

So our leaders worked together and devised a plan.  They had discovered that while the aliens were far more advanced technologically, they were using the same form of hyperspace travel as we were.  The operation was dangerous and would cripple humanities efforts to remain united, but it was the only way to halt the invaders onslaught and preserve our species.  Amazingly, over ninety percent of the colonial governments agreed to the proposal, knowing it would be their only hope for survival.  Each colony had one vessel which was capable of hyperspace travel, and these ships were ordered to enter hyperspace simultaneously and overload their engines.  In normal space, this would merely result in a large explosion and massive amounts of deadly radiation being released into the immediate area, but in hyperspace the effect was much more extensive.  Each system was completely cut off from all hyperspace routes simultaneously, and our scientists theorized that the effect would be much greater than just that.  Since the explosions happened at nearly the exact same second, in thousands of different systems, the ‘shockwave’ in hyperspace was believed to have cause a massive amount of damage to the fabric of reality there, making travel through hyperspace utterly impossible…perhaps forever.  Unfortunately, there was no way to know for certain if the plan had worked, since all long-range communications also relied upon hyperspace technology.  So we waited for hours.  Days.  Weeks.  After a year, we were confident the plan had succeeded, since the invaders would have completed our extermination within two months at their previous pace.

That was over one thousand years ago.  Without supplies, shared technology or the ability to trade surplus items such as minerals, food and water, to say life has been difficult would be insulting.  And yet in spite of these hardships, your people have managed to survive and have created their own thriving civilization.  In fact, you have recently made a marvelous technological breakthrough: the invention of a new form of faster-than-light propulsion!  This new form is much slower than travel through hyperspace, and is quite expensive to perform due to fuel and equipment costs, but your people have made their wishes clear: They wish to re-take their place in the galaxy as the dominant form of life, and if possible to take revenge on what remains of the most hated enemy of mankind, referred to now only as the Omegans, due to their part in ending humanity’s greatest age.