HOW

During the Cold War and the Space Race, the United States became the first nation to ever land on the moon. Following this, they heavily invested into space as a frontier and developed an orbital blockade of earth, completely preventing the Soviets and the Chinese from launching objects into space. 

This blockade caused the Soviet Union to invest money into a phenomenon discovered by their top scientists known as the Arcane, a mysterious and dangerous realm filled with mysterious black crosses which cover everything like a heavy crust. Moving one meter in the arcane translates to moving hundreds of kilometers in the real world, allowing for extremely fast travel. In absolute secrecy, the Soviets teleported hundreds of thousands of assets into space and colonized the far reaches of the galaxy without anyone else on the planet knowing.

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Slowly over the years, the soviets colonized and laid claim to planets, moons, asteroids and whole solar systems never before discovered by mankind. They slowly began moving their citizens to these locations, maintaining a larger population in space than what they had on earth. Joining forces with the Chinese, Koreans and Vietnamese was the final straw for the United States, seeing it as an escalation.

The new Sino-Soviet Union struck first, sending its entire nuclear arsenal to the New World and Europe with the intent of complete annihilation. The USA and NATO struck back, hitting all of Eurasia and Africa with its arsenal in mutually-assured destruction.

The blockade orbiting earth containing military and civilian space craft and Lunar colonists could only watch in horror as the planet erupted into blooms of nuclear flashes, glassing the surface and reducing everything and everyone to ash.

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NOTAM

Thinking the Sino-Soviet Union was destroyed for good, the remnants of the Western World began to rebuild and colonize the rest of the solar system, creating NOTAM. This faction set out to expand their hold on the galaxy. They landed on new and undiscovered planets and moons only to find abandoned and derelict soviet bases. Before that, it was believed that the Soviets never sent anything more than a dog to space. 

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SOVIETS

Suddenly, and without warning, the Soviets finally found where they were in the galaxy and sent combat ships to NOTAM controlled space. This sparked a new war, one where space is a new battlefield. The soviets use the Arcane to travel faster-than-light in the form of warp drives, which open rifts to the arcane and back out. Travelling through the arcane encrusts their ships in tiny black crosses like a coarse hair. Not just ships can be teleported through the arcane, but they have also manufactured warheads which can teleport inside ships and destroy them from within, as well as the technology for humans to teleport and board enemy vessels. When a Sino-Soviet soldier warps through the arcane, they come out covered in tiny black crosses encrusted all over their space suit, which they must shatter off like ice before carrying on with their mission.

 

USA

The United States was hit the hardest out of any nation, and without the need of NATO, broke off from the rest of the survivors and formed its own isolationist faction. This faction is literally just the Colonial Marines and the Weyland-Yutani Corporation from the Alien franchise. For now at least, we'll see if we get creative. This faction was created mostly from the military personnel stationed at the blockade orbiting earth and on the Lunar colony. To this day, the Moon remains the last bastion of the United States, a "New America."

 

WHAT'S LEFT OF EARTH - GRUNDALIA

Unknown to the rest of the factions, a group of humans did survive the nuclear holocaust. They lived in bunkers and cloned themselves over the course of hundreds of years. These are known as Grundalians, and constantly fight eachother, only to die and be reborn as their clone.

 

The earth is surrounded in the hulking remains of the orbital blockade and space junk, near-encasing the entire planet with orbital debris. If in the tiny chance Grundalians stopped fighting and developed space travel, it is highly unlikely they could even leave orbit with how much debris surrounds the planet. 

 

PUC

Personal Universal Currency. A PUC is a NOTAM backed currency that is in the hands, of all those who wish to trade within the galaxy. 

 

"A trader without a PUC in his pocket is a traitor to the galaxy." 

- Stargate Merchant