[2400AD] The Push Out from the Core
May. 13th, 2003 08:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldThe 23rd century was an epoch of massive colonization, dependent upon the creation in the 2150's of the first refuelling stations at Nyotekundu (Wolf 359) and Serurier (Ross 128). Early stutterwarp was an immensely expensive technology, requiring vast amounts of fuel. Consequently, stutterwarp-drive colonization efforts could be financed only by governments, and even then only by governments controlling wealthy national or confederal economies. The European Confederation and the South Atlantic Community were each quite capable of financing their own refuelling networks down their respective arms, but for most of the former member-states of the Pacific Rim Alliance the costs were prohibitive; Japan, Mexico, and Korea were the only powers capable of financing their own interstellar colonization programs, and even these countries depended heavily upon the support lent by the South Atlantic Community.
The European Arm developed rapidly because of the favourable conditions on that arm: Only two stutterwarp intervals separated Nibelungen from Sol, more than a dozen habitable worlds were known to exist within ten intervals of Nibelungen, the European Confederation was quite able to finance an ambitious colonization program, and Europeans could draw upon a huge pool of potential colonists (not just Europeans, but West Africans, South Asians, North Americans, and even Chinese). Although the European Arm colonies attracted only a fraction of the colonists that Tirane received, more than enough colonists--almost exclusively humans and incorporated AIs--arrived to settle most of these worlds by the late 23rd century. French was the main language of the European Arm and most of its worlds, but different rates of demographic growth on Earth ensured that there were exceptions--Nibelungen, Vogelheim, Hochbaden, and Dunkleheim all had Germanophone-majority populatins, while the world of Crater had an Anglophone majority, the four continents of Beta Canum were each dominated by Anglophones, Francophones, Germanophones, and Polonophones, and the worlds of Joi and Nous Voila were authentically multinational from the earliest years of their foundation. By 2300, almost a quarter-billion people lived in the colony systems of the European Arm, which extended to Eta Bootis just short of Arcturus. The 2211 discovery on Beowulf of the Rousseauvians--a sentient hexapodal species living on Beowulf's southern continent--sparked great excitement among sophontologists interested in examining the culture of another sentient species that had developed independently of human uplift programs.
Although the South Atlantic Arm received as much attention from its colonizing power as the European Arm from its colonizing confederation, the South Atlantic colonial effort was hampered by a number of factors: the five stutterwarp intervals between Sol and DM+2 3312, the sparsity of habitable worlds on the South Atlantic Arm, and the small pool of potential colonists. Nonetheless, the Community made massive investments into its arm. At DM+2 3312, for example, [King] was colonized by cybershells to extract tantalum from its abundant mines, while a terraforming effort was mounted at [Dawes] from orbital habitats largely populated by Colombians and Angolans. By the mid-23rd century, interesting patterns of settlement became apparent: [Kingsland] and [Botany Bay] were largely populated by Hispanophones, while [Hermes] and [Ellis] were populated mainly by Lusophones. The 2180 discovery, from Sol, of the ancient white dwarf ISO 417 established stutterwarp intervals connecting the South Atlantic Arm proper at Vega to the Beta Aquilae Sector, home to a half-dozen broadly inhabitable planets which were lightly colonized by the end of the 23rd century. The South Atlantic Arm's need for immigrants encouraged colonial authorities to recruit large numbers of immigrants from non-human populations, including plifts and non-incorporated AIs.
The Pacific Arm's development was delayed sharply by the collapse of the Pacific Rim Alliance and the extension of Earthly tensions into the stars. All six of the former first-tier PRA member-states had maintained an interstellar capability, but only four (Australasia, Japan, Korea, Mexico) were able to sustain colonial efforts on Tirane, while only Japan, Korea, and Mexico were able to mount colonial efforts on their alloted arm. Cold Mountain (Delta Pavonis a) was the only colony world jointly mainted by all three colonial powers, as a necessary way station; Japan, wealthy, populous, and quite willing to recruit incorporated AIs as colonists, predominated on the worlds extending from Beta Hydri (Daikoku) to Komoran (82 Eridani), while Korea managed to plant a colony at Zeta Tucanae and to gain exclusive rights to [Chengdu] at Epsilon Indi. Mexico mounted a surprisingly successful long-range program of its own on the Mexican Finger, thanks to its willingness to elicit aid from other countries--China and Thailand willingly financed Mexican efforts in exchange for sovereign enclave rights at Tau Ceti (Kwantung) and Procyon (Paulo), while other North American states--from Mexico's central American satellites to Canada to Santo Domingo--were given immigration quotas to Mexican worlds in exchange for their financial and industrial support. Mexico also took the lead in organizing the Procyon Coalition, enlisting the other former Pacific Rim Alliance first-tier members-states in a multinational project to ecopoeticize Paulo, establishing a stable ecosystem incorporating species from the biospheres of Earth, Tirane, and other worlds.
Tirane developed quickly. The six colonies that survived the Pacific Rim Alliance--Korea's at [New Canberra], Japan's Amaterasu colony, the Mexican colony of [Tirania and Wellon], the South American colony at [Provincia do Brasil], and the European colony on Tirane's Primary Continent--all prospered, as did the joint Chinese/TIOC colony on Enfer founded in 2231. The fact that Tirane, and the rest of the Alpha Centauri system, could be reached directly from Sol System made immigration to this particularly Earth-like world quite easily. Even second-rank interstellar powers were able to maintain outposts in the A/B binary and at Proxima--Persia, West Africa, Thailand, Tamilnad, Maharashtra, and Canada all maintained outposts of varying sizes. By 2300, almost a billion people (mostly human beings and incorporated AIs) lived on Tirane, making it the second world of humanity, while a further ten million lived elsewhere in the Alpha Centauri trinary--the Cerean colonies in the systems of the A/B binary's outer jovian planets were particularly prosperous. Gradually, Tirane emerged as a force in interplanetary affairs--the growth of a common Tiranean identity in the seven colonies (a phenomenon known as the tiranista movement) led directly to the foundation in 2256 of the Conseil planétaire du Tirane, a de facto Tiranean confederation of the seven colonies on Tirane's surface that established a pan-colonial customs union and practically demilitarized the Tiranean planetary surface. By 2300, Tirane's influence was beginning to expand into its hinterland in the Alpha Cntauri trinary, with a multicolonial terraforming effort at Limbes orbiting Alpha Centauri B and the active recruitment of the Cerean diaspora to mine and settle the A/B asteroid belt; the discovery of tantalum resources in this asteroid belt allowed Tiranean colonies and even private corporations to build their own stutterwarp ships, establishing mining and research outposts at Proxima Centauri and Barnard's Star.
The starfaring powers of the Pacific Rim Arm were soon introduced to the different sentient species concentrated in that arm. First contact with the Eber on Komoran at 82 Eridani was made in 2251 by a Japanese survey team; later, Mexico, the South Atlantic Community, and Korea established research outposts alongside the Japanese. By human standards, the Eber were technologically primitive, possessing an early modern level of technology and divided between mutually hostile sedentary and nomadic populations. Nonetheless, genetic research into the Eber and local lifeforms on Komoran revealed that the Eber were not native to this world, while archeological research into the ruins discovered contemporaneously at [Heidelsheimat (Rho Eridani) and Daikoku (Beta Hydri) proved beyond doubt that civilizations of the Eber species were once present on those worlds. The question of Eber origins was pressing, although most researchers on Komoran were more concerned with the state of present-day Eber culture. Some visionary researchers suggested that Eber origins could be found at Zeta Reticuli, located just beyond the current range of human-built stutterwarp drives where a garden planet was known to exist orbiting Zeta 2 Reticuli. Investigation of this possibility would only begin at the beginning of the 24th century, though.
Contact with the Sung and Xiang in the DM+4 123 planetary system, meanwhile, was made in 2258 by the Korean-flagged (but largely Dongbei Chinese-crewed) deep-space explorer [], which had been dispatched to investigate the two habitable worlds (one a planet, the other a gas giant moon) known to exist there. By the mid-23rd century, the Sung had been an interplanetary culture for more than a millennium, with a highly-refined ion-drive propulsion technology. Despite this technology, however, the Sung had traditionally limited themselves to coloies and outposts established in the system's asteroid and Kuiper belts; the habitable gas-giant moon was not particularly interesting to Sung nation-states and corporations, despite its indigenous sentient species, the Xiang. Few Sung cared about the Xiang and their world, known to the Xiang as Home of the Mother; the belt colonies and outposts were more profitable, and the highly-competitive geopolitical structure already established on the Sung homeworld of Stark was quite diverting. Over centuries, however, a small Sung nation-state formed as stranded spacecraft crews and voluntary migrants established a colony just off of the coast of the Xiang homeworld's primary continent. In the mid-21st century, the colony developed into the nation-state of Kasiiknoot and was drawn into Stark's geopolitical struggles for the first time, eventually being subdued by the triumphant nation-state of Akcheektoon. Kasiiknoot was too weak to subdue the Xiang; Akcheektoon, though, was both able and willing to incorporate the Xiang at the periphery of the Sung social system as a sign of its prowess, mainly as forced mine labourers on their homeworld.
When the fact of Xiang slavery became known to the League in 2259, the Slaver War was set into motion, as Korea, Mexico, and Japan contributed military forces. The war to liberate the Xiang, however, was only one element of a broader anti-Akcheektoon struggle. To a considerable extent, the Slaver War was simply the space-based component of what Sung observers called with "War Against the Akcheektoon." The main elements of the peace treaty that ended the war in 2261 were aimed at diminishing Akcheektoon's power; the independence of Kasiiknoot and the recognition of a League protectorate over the remainder of Home of the Mther were minor provisions.
The generation after the war was dominated by the human state's struggles to understand the Sung. The Sung geopolitical system was quite hierarchical, in which technologically- and organizationally-superior states were allowedto subdue their weaker counterparts at the price of helping these weaker states ascend to equality, in a system known as Soon-Atkacharr. The evident technological superiority of the human states--as demonstrated by the utter defeat of Akcheektoon space forces by minimal human forces drawn from Delta Pavonis--established these states (Japan, Korea, and Mexico) at the top of this hierarchy. However, these states were initially unaware of their obligations; even after learning of Soon-Atkacharr, they were reluctant to transfer their advanced technologies to the Sung. This changed, however, when Sung diplomats dispatched to colonies elsewhere in the Pacific Arm returned to their homeworld with the news that while the Sung might be technologically primitive relative to the human states, in terms of population, gross economic output, and potential for growth Stark was far superior to any of the human nation-states present in DM+4 123; indeed, by some measures (population, for example) Stark was even superior to Earth. This prompted the Sung nation-states to dispatch a joint diplomatic mission to Earth in 2287, where upon arrival in the mission formally deposited applications from the 17 different Sung nation-states for membership in the League of Nations. Much to their benefit, the Japanese, Korean, and Mexican governments were quick to support this application, and the Sung nation-states gained membership in 2290. Once the Sung were opened to interstellar commerce, trade missions from across human space began to arrive, and the Sung assimilated these technologies with surprising speed. In 2293, Korea aided the Sung in establishing a multinational colony on Doris (DM+20 5046 b), while the Sung World Council entered into negotiations with the South Atlantic Community for colony rights on some of the worlds in the Beta Aquilae sector.
The first human ship to visit the 61 Cygni Sector was the Japanese ship Tosa, an experimental stutterwarp tug secretly launched from Barnard's Star in November of 2298. Arriving in the 61 Cygni system in December, the Tosa confirmed that none of the stars in the 61 Cygni trinary possessed Earth-like environments, although the planet Kiyomori (61 Cygni A a) was a potential candidate for terraforming. In the next four years, Japan secretly built up its presence at 61 Cygni, establishing a permanent outpost in 2299 and preparing for further exploration within the 61 Cygni Sector--comprising 31 closely-connected worlds--when the Procyon Coalition mission to the Eber homeworld at Zeta 2 Reticuli returned with the secret of Eber stutterwarp drive. Fuel-efficient and with a maximum range of 9.35 light years, the Eber stutterwarp drive opened the 61 Cygni Sector from many different directions--61 Cygni could be reached directly from Barnard's Star with Eber stutterwarp, while Eta Cassiopiae was separated from Van Maanen's Star in the Pacific Arm by another Eber stutterwarp interval. Habitable worlds at Sigma Draconis a, Chi Draconis A c, Eta Cassiopiae A b, and Mu Cassiopeiae A a, and more marginal but potentially ecopoeticizable worlds at DM+61 366 a, DM+63 229 b, and DM+63 238 b, had been known to exist as early as the 21st century on Earth; now, in the early 24th century, it was possible to explore them.
The established interstellar powers were largely absent from the 61 Cygni Sector, although the Japanese did develop their 61 Cygni outpost into a pseudo-Cerean colony and establish refuelling and science stations at interstitial brown dwarfs. Until the end of the Second Kafer War, they were concerned by the Kafer question, while afterwards they were concerned with assimilating their new worlds. (The European Confederation, for instance, was involved in upporting its own, Chinese, and Thai colonial efforts in the Trans-Arcturus Sector, while the South Atlantic Community was concerned with the Beta Aquilae Sector, and Mexico was still consolidating its efforts in the Mexican Finger.) The 61 Cygni Sector was colonized piecemeal by those interstellar powers excluded from the first wave of expansion. For instance, the Sung easily managed to establish exclusive colonies at Eta Cassiopeiae A b and Mu Cassiopeiae A a--Eta Cassiopaiae was only two Eber stutterwarp intervals from the DM+4 123 system--and to establish sovereign enclaves on the other habitable worlds in the 61 Cygni Sector, while China (with Japanese and Thai aid) established a colony at Sigma Draconis a (Beideihe), the Conseil planétaire du Tirane marshalled the formidable resources of the Alpha Centauri system behind an expensive operation at Chi Draconis. The marginal worlds of DM+61 366 a, DM+63 229 b, and DM+63 238 b were settled by numerous agencies--Mars was quite prominent, while there were joint TIOC/Chinese efforts elsewhere, and there were even small diasporas of Eber adventurers and Xiang artists. From the 2350s, the established colonies encountered a large wave of Vilani refugees from the Nakulakak Sector, who arrived via the South Atlantic Arm at Sigma Draconis. Many of these Vilani were resettled in the hinterland of the 61 Cygni Sector--DM+61 366 a was renamed Lagash by its new Vilani majority population, while DM+63 238 b was reorganized as the TOIC/Chinese-sponsored planet-state of Dingir. The Martians also welcomed Vilani settlers to DM+63 229a (New Mars), a world that they were trying to terraform. By the end of the 24th century, the 61 Cygni Sector had become the most exciting region of the League's internal frontier, settled by more than 100 million people (League and Vilani humans, incorporated AIs, Sung, Xiang and Eber uplifts, and even some neo-squid uplifts) on more than a dozen major planetary settlements and hundreds of space-based colonies and outposts.
The settlement of the Beta Virginis cluster--largely by the Sygmani, but including the Indochinese at Krung Thep--was another interesting, if rarely noted, event.
In addition to the settlement of the so-called League cluster, the 2324 purchase of jump-1 drive by the League opened up new vistas. Stutterwarp remained in common use, not only because of the superior speed and distance of stutterwarp compared to jump, but because the structure of the arms had been determined by stutterwarp and a shift to jump drive would be economically impossible. In the first decades after the intoduction of Vilani jump drive, this technology was used to cover relatively short distances, across interplanetary ranges and into the so-called "Outback" of settled Kuiper belt objects, brown dwarf planetary systems, and superjovian systems in Sol's hinterland. On the interplanetary scale, jump drive acted in systems with multiple settledplanets--Sol with Earth and Mars, Alpha Centauri with Tirane and the assorted dependencies in the trinary, in DM +4 123 with Stark and Home of the Mother, and the Yl'ii in their home system--to create tightly-integrated system economy. The Outback was integrated into the main body of the League for the first time since its foundation, as a periphery of the Solar (and Alpha Centaurian) economy, though the Diaspora's movement outward was likewise accelerated, moving towards entirely new destinations deep in interstellar space. The dispersion of the Diaspora was a prerequisite for the broader use of jump-1 drive, as refuelling stations at interstitial bodies helped overcome--at least in part--the limitation of jump drive to 3.8 light years.
The European Arm developed rapidly because of the favourable conditions on that arm: Only two stutterwarp intervals separated Nibelungen from Sol, more than a dozen habitable worlds were known to exist within ten intervals of Nibelungen, the European Confederation was quite able to finance an ambitious colonization program, and Europeans could draw upon a huge pool of potential colonists (not just Europeans, but West Africans, South Asians, North Americans, and even Chinese). Although the European Arm colonies attracted only a fraction of the colonists that Tirane received, more than enough colonists--almost exclusively humans and incorporated AIs--arrived to settle most of these worlds by the late 23rd century. French was the main language of the European Arm and most of its worlds, but different rates of demographic growth on Earth ensured that there were exceptions--Nibelungen, Vogelheim, Hochbaden, and Dunkleheim all had Germanophone-majority populatins, while the world of Crater had an Anglophone majority, the four continents of Beta Canum were each dominated by Anglophones, Francophones, Germanophones, and Polonophones, and the worlds of Joi and Nous Voila were authentically multinational from the earliest years of their foundation. By 2300, almost a quarter-billion people lived in the colony systems of the European Arm, which extended to Eta Bootis just short of Arcturus. The 2211 discovery on Beowulf of the Rousseauvians--a sentient hexapodal species living on Beowulf's southern continent--sparked great excitement among sophontologists interested in examining the culture of another sentient species that had developed independently of human uplift programs.
Although the South Atlantic Arm received as much attention from its colonizing power as the European Arm from its colonizing confederation, the South Atlantic colonial effort was hampered by a number of factors: the five stutterwarp intervals between Sol and DM+2 3312, the sparsity of habitable worlds on the South Atlantic Arm, and the small pool of potential colonists. Nonetheless, the Community made massive investments into its arm. At DM+2 3312, for example, [King] was colonized by cybershells to extract tantalum from its abundant mines, while a terraforming effort was mounted at [Dawes] from orbital habitats largely populated by Colombians and Angolans. By the mid-23rd century, interesting patterns of settlement became apparent: [Kingsland] and [Botany Bay] were largely populated by Hispanophones, while [Hermes] and [Ellis] were populated mainly by Lusophones. The 2180 discovery, from Sol, of the ancient white dwarf ISO 417 established stutterwarp intervals connecting the South Atlantic Arm proper at Vega to the Beta Aquilae Sector, home to a half-dozen broadly inhabitable planets which were lightly colonized by the end of the 23rd century. The South Atlantic Arm's need for immigrants encouraged colonial authorities to recruit large numbers of immigrants from non-human populations, including plifts and non-incorporated AIs.
The Pacific Arm's development was delayed sharply by the collapse of the Pacific Rim Alliance and the extension of Earthly tensions into the stars. All six of the former first-tier PRA member-states had maintained an interstellar capability, but only four (Australasia, Japan, Korea, Mexico) were able to sustain colonial efforts on Tirane, while only Japan, Korea, and Mexico were able to mount colonial efforts on their alloted arm. Cold Mountain (Delta Pavonis a) was the only colony world jointly mainted by all three colonial powers, as a necessary way station; Japan, wealthy, populous, and quite willing to recruit incorporated AIs as colonists, predominated on the worlds extending from Beta Hydri (Daikoku) to Komoran (82 Eridani), while Korea managed to plant a colony at Zeta Tucanae and to gain exclusive rights to [Chengdu] at Epsilon Indi. Mexico mounted a surprisingly successful long-range program of its own on the Mexican Finger, thanks to its willingness to elicit aid from other countries--China and Thailand willingly financed Mexican efforts in exchange for sovereign enclave rights at Tau Ceti (Kwantung) and Procyon (Paulo), while other North American states--from Mexico's central American satellites to Canada to Santo Domingo--were given immigration quotas to Mexican worlds in exchange for their financial and industrial support. Mexico also took the lead in organizing the Procyon Coalition, enlisting the other former Pacific Rim Alliance first-tier members-states in a multinational project to ecopoeticize Paulo, establishing a stable ecosystem incorporating species from the biospheres of Earth, Tirane, and other worlds.
Tirane developed quickly. The six colonies that survived the Pacific Rim Alliance--Korea's at [New Canberra], Japan's Amaterasu colony, the Mexican colony of [Tirania and Wellon], the South American colony at [Provincia do Brasil], and the European colony on Tirane's Primary Continent--all prospered, as did the joint Chinese/TIOC colony on Enfer founded in 2231. The fact that Tirane, and the rest of the Alpha Centauri system, could be reached directly from Sol System made immigration to this particularly Earth-like world quite easily. Even second-rank interstellar powers were able to maintain outposts in the A/B binary and at Proxima--Persia, West Africa, Thailand, Tamilnad, Maharashtra, and Canada all maintained outposts of varying sizes. By 2300, almost a billion people (mostly human beings and incorporated AIs) lived on Tirane, making it the second world of humanity, while a further ten million lived elsewhere in the Alpha Centauri trinary--the Cerean colonies in the systems of the A/B binary's outer jovian planets were particularly prosperous. Gradually, Tirane emerged as a force in interplanetary affairs--the growth of a common Tiranean identity in the seven colonies (a phenomenon known as the tiranista movement) led directly to the foundation in 2256 of the Conseil planétaire du Tirane, a de facto Tiranean confederation of the seven colonies on Tirane's surface that established a pan-colonial customs union and practically demilitarized the Tiranean planetary surface. By 2300, Tirane's influence was beginning to expand into its hinterland in the Alpha Cntauri trinary, with a multicolonial terraforming effort at Limbes orbiting Alpha Centauri B and the active recruitment of the Cerean diaspora to mine and settle the A/B asteroid belt; the discovery of tantalum resources in this asteroid belt allowed Tiranean colonies and even private corporations to build their own stutterwarp ships, establishing mining and research outposts at Proxima Centauri and Barnard's Star.
The starfaring powers of the Pacific Rim Arm were soon introduced to the different sentient species concentrated in that arm. First contact with the Eber on Komoran at 82 Eridani was made in 2251 by a Japanese survey team; later, Mexico, the South Atlantic Community, and Korea established research outposts alongside the Japanese. By human standards, the Eber were technologically primitive, possessing an early modern level of technology and divided between mutually hostile sedentary and nomadic populations. Nonetheless, genetic research into the Eber and local lifeforms on Komoran revealed that the Eber were not native to this world, while archeological research into the ruins discovered contemporaneously at [Heidelsheimat (Rho Eridani) and Daikoku (Beta Hydri) proved beyond doubt that civilizations of the Eber species were once present on those worlds. The question of Eber origins was pressing, although most researchers on Komoran were more concerned with the state of present-day Eber culture. Some visionary researchers suggested that Eber origins could be found at Zeta Reticuli, located just beyond the current range of human-built stutterwarp drives where a garden planet was known to exist orbiting Zeta 2 Reticuli. Investigation of this possibility would only begin at the beginning of the 24th century, though.
Contact with the Sung and Xiang in the DM+4 123 planetary system, meanwhile, was made in 2258 by the Korean-flagged (but largely Dongbei Chinese-crewed) deep-space explorer [], which had been dispatched to investigate the two habitable worlds (one a planet, the other a gas giant moon) known to exist there. By the mid-23rd century, the Sung had been an interplanetary culture for more than a millennium, with a highly-refined ion-drive propulsion technology. Despite this technology, however, the Sung had traditionally limited themselves to coloies and outposts established in the system's asteroid and Kuiper belts; the habitable gas-giant moon was not particularly interesting to Sung nation-states and corporations, despite its indigenous sentient species, the Xiang. Few Sung cared about the Xiang and their world, known to the Xiang as Home of the Mother; the belt colonies and outposts were more profitable, and the highly-competitive geopolitical structure already established on the Sung homeworld of Stark was quite diverting. Over centuries, however, a small Sung nation-state formed as stranded spacecraft crews and voluntary migrants established a colony just off of the coast of the Xiang homeworld's primary continent. In the mid-21st century, the colony developed into the nation-state of Kasiiknoot and was drawn into Stark's geopolitical struggles for the first time, eventually being subdued by the triumphant nation-state of Akcheektoon. Kasiiknoot was too weak to subdue the Xiang; Akcheektoon, though, was both able and willing to incorporate the Xiang at the periphery of the Sung social system as a sign of its prowess, mainly as forced mine labourers on their homeworld.
When the fact of Xiang slavery became known to the League in 2259, the Slaver War was set into motion, as Korea, Mexico, and Japan contributed military forces. The war to liberate the Xiang, however, was only one element of a broader anti-Akcheektoon struggle. To a considerable extent, the Slaver War was simply the space-based component of what Sung observers called with "War Against the Akcheektoon." The main elements of the peace treaty that ended the war in 2261 were aimed at diminishing Akcheektoon's power; the independence of Kasiiknoot and the recognition of a League protectorate over the remainder of Home of the Mther were minor provisions.
The generation after the war was dominated by the human state's struggles to understand the Sung. The Sung geopolitical system was quite hierarchical, in which technologically- and organizationally-superior states were allowedto subdue their weaker counterparts at the price of helping these weaker states ascend to equality, in a system known as Soon-Atkacharr. The evident technological superiority of the human states--as demonstrated by the utter defeat of Akcheektoon space forces by minimal human forces drawn from Delta Pavonis--established these states (Japan, Korea, and Mexico) at the top of this hierarchy. However, these states were initially unaware of their obligations; even after learning of Soon-Atkacharr, they were reluctant to transfer their advanced technologies to the Sung. This changed, however, when Sung diplomats dispatched to colonies elsewhere in the Pacific Arm returned to their homeworld with the news that while the Sung might be technologically primitive relative to the human states, in terms of population, gross economic output, and potential for growth Stark was far superior to any of the human nation-states present in DM+4 123; indeed, by some measures (population, for example) Stark was even superior to Earth. This prompted the Sung nation-states to dispatch a joint diplomatic mission to Earth in 2287, where upon arrival in the mission formally deposited applications from the 17 different Sung nation-states for membership in the League of Nations. Much to their benefit, the Japanese, Korean, and Mexican governments were quick to support this application, and the Sung nation-states gained membership in 2290. Once the Sung were opened to interstellar commerce, trade missions from across human space began to arrive, and the Sung assimilated these technologies with surprising speed. In 2293, Korea aided the Sung in establishing a multinational colony on Doris (DM+20 5046 b), while the Sung World Council entered into negotiations with the South Atlantic Community for colony rights on some of the worlds in the Beta Aquilae sector.
The first human ship to visit the 61 Cygni Sector was the Japanese ship Tosa, an experimental stutterwarp tug secretly launched from Barnard's Star in November of 2298. Arriving in the 61 Cygni system in December, the Tosa confirmed that none of the stars in the 61 Cygni trinary possessed Earth-like environments, although the planet Kiyomori (61 Cygni A a) was a potential candidate for terraforming. In the next four years, Japan secretly built up its presence at 61 Cygni, establishing a permanent outpost in 2299 and preparing for further exploration within the 61 Cygni Sector--comprising 31 closely-connected worlds--when the Procyon Coalition mission to the Eber homeworld at Zeta 2 Reticuli returned with the secret of Eber stutterwarp drive. Fuel-efficient and with a maximum range of 9.35 light years, the Eber stutterwarp drive opened the 61 Cygni Sector from many different directions--61 Cygni could be reached directly from Barnard's Star with Eber stutterwarp, while Eta Cassiopiae was separated from Van Maanen's Star in the Pacific Arm by another Eber stutterwarp interval. Habitable worlds at Sigma Draconis a, Chi Draconis A c, Eta Cassiopiae A b, and Mu Cassiopeiae A a, and more marginal but potentially ecopoeticizable worlds at DM+61 366 a, DM+63 229 b, and DM+63 238 b, had been known to exist as early as the 21st century on Earth; now, in the early 24th century, it was possible to explore them.
The established interstellar powers were largely absent from the 61 Cygni Sector, although the Japanese did develop their 61 Cygni outpost into a pseudo-Cerean colony and establish refuelling and science stations at interstitial brown dwarfs. Until the end of the Second Kafer War, they were concerned by the Kafer question, while afterwards they were concerned with assimilating their new worlds. (The European Confederation, for instance, was involved in upporting its own, Chinese, and Thai colonial efforts in the Trans-Arcturus Sector, while the South Atlantic Community was concerned with the Beta Aquilae Sector, and Mexico was still consolidating its efforts in the Mexican Finger.) The 61 Cygni Sector was colonized piecemeal by those interstellar powers excluded from the first wave of expansion. For instance, the Sung easily managed to establish exclusive colonies at Eta Cassiopeiae A b and Mu Cassiopeiae A a--Eta Cassiopaiae was only two Eber stutterwarp intervals from the DM+4 123 system--and to establish sovereign enclaves on the other habitable worlds in the 61 Cygni Sector, while China (with Japanese and Thai aid) established a colony at Sigma Draconis a (Beideihe), the Conseil planétaire du Tirane marshalled the formidable resources of the Alpha Centauri system behind an expensive operation at Chi Draconis. The marginal worlds of DM+61 366 a, DM+63 229 b, and DM+63 238 b were settled by numerous agencies--Mars was quite prominent, while there were joint TIOC/Chinese efforts elsewhere, and there were even small diasporas of Eber adventurers and Xiang artists. From the 2350s, the established colonies encountered a large wave of Vilani refugees from the Nakulakak Sector, who arrived via the South Atlantic Arm at Sigma Draconis. Many of these Vilani were resettled in the hinterland of the 61 Cygni Sector--DM+61 366 a was renamed Lagash by its new Vilani majority population, while DM+63 238 b was reorganized as the TOIC/Chinese-sponsored planet-state of Dingir. The Martians also welcomed Vilani settlers to DM+63 229a (New Mars), a world that they were trying to terraform. By the end of the 24th century, the 61 Cygni Sector had become the most exciting region of the League's internal frontier, settled by more than 100 million people (League and Vilani humans, incorporated AIs, Sung, Xiang and Eber uplifts, and even some neo-squid uplifts) on more than a dozen major planetary settlements and hundreds of space-based colonies and outposts.
The settlement of the Beta Virginis cluster--largely by the Sygmani, but including the Indochinese at Krung Thep--was another interesting, if rarely noted, event.
In addition to the settlement of the so-called League cluster, the 2324 purchase of jump-1 drive by the League opened up new vistas. Stutterwarp remained in common use, not only because of the superior speed and distance of stutterwarp compared to jump, but because the structure of the arms had been determined by stutterwarp and a shift to jump drive would be economically impossible. In the first decades after the intoduction of Vilani jump drive, this technology was used to cover relatively short distances, across interplanetary ranges and into the so-called "Outback" of settled Kuiper belt objects, brown dwarf planetary systems, and superjovian systems in Sol's hinterland. On the interplanetary scale, jump drive acted in systems with multiple settledplanets--Sol with Earth and Mars, Alpha Centauri with Tirane and the assorted dependencies in the trinary, in DM +4 123 with Stark and Home of the Mother, and the Yl'ii in their home system--to create tightly-integrated system economy. The Outback was integrated into the main body of the League for the first time since its foundation, as a periphery of the Solar (and Alpha Centaurian) economy, though the Diaspora's movement outward was likewise accelerated, moving towards entirely new destinations deep in interstellar space. The dispersion of the Diaspora was a prerequisite for the broader use of jump-1 drive, as refuelling stations at interstitial bodies helped overcome--at least in part--the limitation of jump drive to 3.8 light years.
