Earth

Earth was the human homeworld and the center of all human activity in colonized space, the most populated planet in the settled galaxy. Its long history ran from an energy crisis and environmental collapse through the rise of two world governments to the discovery of the Black Marker, and it stood as the final target of the Brethren Moons.

Early history and the energy crisis#

The 21st century on Earth was marked by a worldwide energy crisis and by armed conflicts such as the Battle of the Bering Sea between the United States and the Soviet Union. It also saw the first permanent colony beyond the planet: the New Horizons colony, built on the Moon in 2045 as a joint Sino-US mining base. By the 23rd century, Earth was divided into numerous semi-independent nation-states called Sectors, bound together under a single world government, the Sovereign Colonies. To escape the environmental collapse and shortages of a resource-starved planet, bold pioneers and wealthy corporations began settling new worlds under military supervision.

Throughout these centuries the polluted planet suffered a worsening environmental emergency. A "Global Warming Epidemic" flooded coastal cultural and economic hubs such as New York City and Venice, driving mass migration inland and deepening the pollution and disasters that followed.

The Black Marker#

In 2214, the Gulf of Mexico was found to hold the Black Marker, an alien artifact that had landed on Earth roughly 65 million years earlier and was tied to the mass extinction of the dinosaurs. The artifact was quite likely responsible for influencing humanity's own evolution into an intelligent species. The geophysicist Michael Altman revealed its existence to the world in 2215 and was later canonized as the founder of Unitology.

The Resource Wars and Planet Cracking#

Space exploration did not relieve the strain. Earth and its colonies consumed new resources faster than they could be mined, and the Resource Wars broke out over what remained, bringing a race already on the brink even closer to extinction. The wars ended only after the Sovereign Colonies' efforts to harness the Markers' energy had collapsed and the new EarthGov administration worked to ease the pressure, when the Concordance Extraction Corporation developed the revolutionary mining process of Planet Cracking in the 25th century.

The change of governments#

The Sovereign Colonies governed Earth and its off-world territories through the 23rd century, but it did not survive the Resource Wars era. By 2311, drained of resources and public support, the Sovereign Colonies Council launched a covert expedition to Tau Volantis in the hope of harnessing the Markers' energy. What was found there forced the Council to invoke Scenario Five across all human space, purging every trace of Marker material and personnel and bringing about the total collapse of the government.

The Secession War, an Earth civil war fueled by dissatisfaction with the Sovereign Colonies and by resource shortages, ran through this same period. A Secessionist faction seized power in the vacuum left by the collapse and established the Earth Government Colonial Alliance, or EarthGov, in 2314, a centralized regime with Earth at its core. EarthGov oversaw further expansion and the end of the Resource Wars, and in the early 26th century it tried to restart efforts to harness the Markers after the USG Ishimura incident on Aegis VII uncovered a long-buried Red Marker.

Unrest and the fall#

EarthGov's reign was marked by internal strife. The Mars independence riots flared in the Martian capital of Mars Capita in the late 25th century, failed but violent struggles for secession. After the Titan Station incident of 2511, Unitology redoubled its efforts to weaken EarthGov's military and its standing with the public. The Circle, a Unitologist group led by Jacob Danik, waged a more extreme campaign against EarthGov for experimenting on the Markers, which it regarded as heresy, and caused multiple colonies to go dark after attacks breached their Marker containment facilities.

In 2514, after Isaac Clarke and John Carver destroyed the Tau Volantis Moon, a large number of Brethren Moons arrived in Earth's orbit to necromorphize the human race and trigger a Convergence Event. No authority on Earth or its moon answered the CMS Terra Nova's hails as it entered the system; Isaac and Carver heard only gurgles and snarls over the radio, a sign that Earth's population was already being slaughtered.