In every conflict there is a moment, a turning point, a decision that leaves one on a precipice. To continue the course is to cross a line from which there is no turning back, to turn away might mean the end of life as one knows it. These decisions, and the agony of the weight that must accompany them, is often glossed over in the harsh light of hindsight. King Leonidas and his 300 holding against the Persian army, knowing death was inevitable; George Washington escaping the north and surrounding Cornwallis; Harry Truman weighing the horror of nuclear weapons and the bloodbath of a traditional invasion of Japan; for better or worse no decision made in the heat of necessity escapes the judgment of posterity.
When humanity finally achieved the means by which to explore the galaxy beyond their own solar system and investigate the star systems nearest to Sol, they did so not with the interest of exploration for the sake of discovery, but with the interest of expanding humanity’s sphere of influence. Earth prided itself on overcoming its history of division based on physical differences, sexual orientation, national origin, and the myriad other lines upon which they segregated themselves. However, when proof that humanity did not inhabit the Milky Way alone, when first contact with a truly alien species occurred, humanity fell immediately back into its xenophobic norm. Early in the 23rd century, a human exploration vessel encountered a small mining vessel in the ort cloud of a solar system surrounding the star Tau Ceti. Records from the initial meeting are difficult to piece together, as the meeting ended badly. Whether it was clear and unbridled aggression, as the final transmission of the Earth vessel indicates, or a tragic miscommunication as the crew of the mining vessel maintained, is a point lost to history. What is not lost to history is the response of Earth. Instead of sending a fleet of ambassadors and researchers to the small moon orbiting the fourth planet in the Tau Ceti system, called Orlesia, Earth sent a fleet of warships in response to what they considered an aggressive action against a scientific research vessel. Thus began a war that would last over a century, one whose death toll would reach the billions.
After over a century of bitter conflict and violent upheaval, humanity found itself standing on that precipice of history which they had found themselves so many times. In a series of attacks that cost tens of thousands of human lives, the One Earth Federation finally secured several small Orlesian outposts in the Orlesian home system of Tau Ceti. Desperate to end the expensive and unpopular war, the One Earth Council turned to a man willing to do anything to protect his species. When Rear Admiral Greyson Hollister presented his plan, the Council wavered, insisting there had to be another way. When their indecision nearly cost the advances Hollister’s forces had made in Orlesian space, Hollister pressed the issue. And humanity stepped off the precipice.
As a massive space battle unfolded in the heart of Orlesian space, Hollister oversaw Operation Ellie, named for Hollister’s daughter, Elise, and for its darker nickname, Operation ELE – Extinction Level Event. Over the course of several weeks, Hollister used mining freighters to move six large asteroids out of the system’s asteroid belt. Using the battle as cover, Hollister’s squadron pushed the asteroids into a decaying orbit above Orlesia. Orlesian Expeditionary Forces could only watch, in horror, as the asteroids slammed with devastating force into the planet's surface. The impacts set off a chain reaction of seismic activity; earthquakes leveled every major city and destroyed Orlesian infrastructure. As the planet’s crust destabilized, massive simultaneous volcanic eruptions spewed columns of smoke, gas, ash, and lava into the atmosphere that could be seen from orbit. Nearly half the population was killed in the initial impacts and earthquakes. A third of those who remained died choking on the fine ash that fell like snow for months. When the final refugees were loaded onto transports headed for Earth, nearly nine billion Orlesians were dead and the remaining two billion found themselves not just homeless, but world-less. It was an event devastating enough to create a cultural trauma imprint on the psyche of every Orlesian who survived and for generations to come.
Earth was not prepared. Just over two billion Orlesian refugees took a planet already struggling to support its own booming population and pushed it past the breaking point. Scarce resources dwindled and tensions rose. Whether out of some sense of guilt, or simple expedience, all Orlesian refugees were granted Special Citizenship status that allowed them to work and live on Earth indefinitely but did not allow them some civil liberties such as voting rights. Three members of Orlesia’s ruling council had survived the destruction and were installed as Representatives Pro Tem, giving Orlesians representation in the One Earth Government. Initially it seemed as though, despite tension and xenophobia, the two species might be able to coexist.
There is some debate amongst historians as to why humans and Orlesians could not live peacefully, or even indifferently, with each other. The obvious and widely accepted theory is that there is no way to live peacefully at the mercy of the species that just destroyed your planet. While Earth is no stranger to genocide, never had it been accomplished on this scale. Another theory however, while far less readily accepted, may pinpoint humanity’s attitude toward their guests far more accurately. Perhaps, according to the theory, the transition would have been easier if Orlesians were an exotic and definitively non-humanlike species. If they’d been little green men with oval heads and thin bodies, or had tentacles and looked like octopi, or anything else on the wide spectrum of evolutionary possibility. Perhaps then humans could have accepted them, or at least been tolerant. However, the physical and even genetic similarities between humans and Orlesians was unsettling. The likelihood of Orlesian physiology being carbon based and using DNA structures is well within the realm of probability - though certainly not a given – but the similarities only start with the mundane. Orlesians are mammals, which is interesting but makes evolutionary sense – warm-blood is expensive energy-wise but affords huge advantages, as does nursing. The similarities become startling as they become less likely – but that Orlesians are descended from great primates is a similarity so astronomical that it pushes the limits of biological possibility. Human and Orlesian body structure are nearly identical; arms, legs, hands, feet, fingers and toes all in the right places and quantities. Like humans, Orlesians are largely hairless and, like humans, wear the hair they have styled according to cultural tradition and fashion. It is only in the skin that the differences are readily apparent. Orlesians have blood that is bright pink when oxygenated and runs extremely close to the skin, giving them a deep, pink-hued flush all over their bodies. Their skin is bioluminescent, but as Orlesian children reach maturity, they learn control over their skin’s brightness. In adults this typically results in a glittery sheen on the skin, though scared or angry Orlesian children have been known to glow like a beacon until they can be calmed. Humans are xenophobic about other humans, often using physical, cultural, or religious differences to justify murdering each other. Add the eerily similar biology of another species, one with a real and present grievance against your own, and it was not long before alien invasion conspiracies and fears about humanity’s safety began to circulate.
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Orlesian culture, wildly different from human cultures, was the most prominent reason Orlesians found assimilation difficult. Learning English – the common One Earth Federation language – and dressing like humans was superficial, Orlesians found their most basic social norms were at odds with human norms. Orlesians rarely paired for longer than it took to procreate, and there was no institution even remotely like human marriage. Young Orlesians often lived alone, preferring solitude to socialization, and those who did not nearly always lived with their fathers. In Orlesian society, male children are raised by their mother for the first nine years of their lives and by their fathers from ten on. Female children experience the opposite. The belief is that the formative years should be spent with the parent of the opposite gender, then learn adult customs from the other parent. Like human children, Orlesians are born helpless infants. Unlike human children, Orlesian children are fully self-sufficient by age one. In fact, Orlesians reach full adult maturity at six, and are considered adults of legal standing at 10. Orlesian refugees were required to follow Earth law for ages of consent and adulthood, creating a point of tension for adult Orlesians, who were suddenly adolescents in Earth society.
As tensions mounted, a small but vocal group of legislators began pushing the idea that Orlesians might be better suited to the Moon colonies, which were still lightly populated even after The One Earth Federation had finished terraforming the Moon. The small forest planet that Earth had created on the surface of its only satellite was nearly ideally suited to Orlesian physiology. Earth’s moon was only about a tenth smaller than Orlesia – a moon itself – had been. Initially the idea was rejected out of hand, until a growing number of councilmembers saw the benefits of moving the Orlesian population off planet. In 2431, The One Earth Federation Council approved the Orlesian Relocation Act by a margin of 736-112. The act, which would eventually become the Orlesian Relocation and Exclusion Act, forced all Orlesians to relocate to the moon colonies, created an Orlesian passport database, and enacted laws preventing Orlesian travel to Earth except on official business. The moon colonies were reestablished as the Orlesian Reservation Area, though millions of humans still lived in the colony. Day-to-day control was left to the New Orlesian Council, though the council operated as a client to the One Earth government. Eventually, tensions began to ease between Earth and the Orlesians – until a chance altercation between human and Orlesian workers ended in a three-day riot that was immediately spun as an uprising.
Earth’s response was swift and cruel. All Orlesian workers involved in the “uprising” were executed, and a restriction was placed on the hiring of Orlesians. Predictably, The Orlesians staged an actual revolt - a twenty-four-day explosion of violent skirmishes that killed sixty-four humans and 136 Orlesians. Another three hundred Orlesian “dissidents” were executed by military tribunals. Earth and the moon colony fell into a tense and uneasy peace that lasted nearly fifty years. The third and fourth Orlesian uprisings were only weeks apart, the initial attack of the fourth followed the signing of a treaty ending the third by seventeen days. The attack was sudden, unexpected, and devastating. Orlesian operatives set a mining freighter the size of a small city on a collision course with Earth. A miscalculation in the entry angle caused a huge portion of the ship to disintegrate on reentry, but a section over six square kilometers slammed into the southern part of Central America, killing nearly 200,000 people as it obliterated San Salvador. After the attack, Earth agreed to grant Orlesians complete autonomy and control of the moon. In 2628, the last human colonists returned to Earth and the New Orlesian government took control.
The Orlesian small council style of rule quickly devolved into totalitarian oligarchy, and Earth and New Orlesia fell into a cold war arms race. Orlesian law dictated that, for the good of its citizens, only the official state history of Orlesia could be taught to students. For nearly two hundred years, Orlesian school children learned and believed the propagandized history that said the moon was the original home world of the Orlesian race, and that humans were a less evolved species of Orlesian. The State controlled media and education were largely successful and, despite a general lack of personal freedom, Orlesia was a peaceful place whose citizens were generally successful. Until Morvex Ecthelion came to power.
Morvex Ecthelion was a prodigy in a family of prodigious ancestors. His innate ability to use logic and calculate outcomes made him a natural leader and tactician. The eight-times great grandson of Zevereth Ecthelion, Orlesia’s last Chancellor, Morvex was educated by his father and grandfather. Both members of the Orlesian Expeditionary force, his father and grandfather had been gifted, but Morvex stood out even amongst them. Having finished Primary education and Orlesian Expeditionary Forces Academy by his seventeenth birthday, Morvex had earned the field promotion commonly given to the top cadet in each class and began his officer career as a Junior Commander. By his 21st birthday, Morvex had been pinned colonel and given command of a deep cover mission on Earth.
When he returned from his mission, Morvex was no longer the ardent, proper Orlesian patriot he had been when he left. Morvex returned sullen and angry, he began questioning orders and taking initiative in situations that required him to be obedient. Instead of being reprimanded, Morvex was promoted and, three days after his 28th birthday, he was given the rank of General and the command of OEF’s Special Tactics Command, a special operations commando unit specializing in guerrilla and urban warfare.
In 2818, Morvex Ecthelion led a coup that toppled the authoritarian Council and installed him as the Chancellor of New Orlesia. Morvex’s first act as chancellor was to order an attack on Earth, using small tactical nuclear devices to destroy New York City, Tokyo, and San Francisco, killing hundreds of millions and launching a second war between humans and Orlesians. A war that would test the limits of both worlds’ resolve.