The Neshaten have a long history, filled with conflict in the early one thousand years that temper off into a Great War that nearly eradicates their civilization, only for them to survive and rebuild later on.

The Neshaten originated in the far northern sector of space, they were known for having highly advanced technology, and many colonized worlds and having a fledgling federation. They were a nation of both Shukaren, and My'leke, a four legged tiger that evolved alongside the original Shukaren. The My'leke were discovered during the medieval ages, when the Shukaren people were exploring a continent on their world, a race of tigers that could speak fluently and had a society. The Neshaten folded the My'leke into their culture nearly a hundred years after they met, but initially things didn't go to well with the fold as people feared these four legged beasts, due to myths and legends of children disappearing in the night being eaten by the beasts. These rumors quickly began to disappear into obscurity as time went on.

Their nation wasn't always so peaceful, hundreds of years before they established their federation, their nation had spread amongst their solar system, colonizing thread additional planets, but the sense of peace was fragile and paranoia rampant.

Back then, four different factions of the Neshaten existed and each one felt they were better than the other, more intelligent or just generally more technologically advanced. The unstable peace existed between these four separate factions for nearly three hundred years, but the peace ended when one of them started the K'sten Civil War, named after a massive civilian colony that orbited a moon. This colony was ruthlessly destroyed, with all hands lost and no survivors.

Paranoia began to run rampant through all four factions, one faction began to blame another and soon, after only four years, a full blown war erupted between the factions. This war went on for only ten years, the first faction to be eliminated was the Lasce Faction, the smallest and thus weakest of the four factions. Their world was overrun, their people killed off and their ships utterly destroyed.

Four years after the destruction of the Lasce Faction, the second faction to fall was the Civaze. The Civaze didn't reside on a planet, but rather inhabited a large cluster of asteroids that orbited the outer areas of the star system, however despite their defensible area they still fell after their colony asteroids were destroyed.

After the collapse of the Civaze, the last two remaining factions, known as the Neshaten and Nasece. This two sided war lasted for six years, until the Neshaten gained the upper hand and destroyed the Civaze home world, obliterating it from existence. With the war over, the Neshaten realized after sifting through intelligence gained that the war had been started by the Lasce Faction, who were hoping to pit the three faction against one another so that they could move in and mop up

With the realization that the entire war was started just for greed, the Neshaten decided to progress on a path of peace and technological progress. They established the Neshaten Federation, and elected people from member’s worlds to have a voice in the progress of their culture and people.

Their culture expanded and over the course of nearly one thousand years they colonized upward of a hundred and twenty eight planets, always preferring to colonize a single world first fully and terraforming it before moving on to the next world. In order to find life out in the universe, ships of scientific nature were deployed into the vastness of space and were designed to go many years without refits, with hydroponics labs and repair labs built in to help maintain the ships during their long voyages; their mission was to search for extraterrestrial life.

One such ship, known as the Mura, ventured beyond the Neshaten's borders - discovering anomalies and strange formations of Nebula. Then, in its four hundredth year of operation, just after it got through with a major refit, the ship ventured back out into deep space.

This ship soon ran into a system of planets, which would later be known as the Shara system. At first, the crew of the Mura stayed on the outer rim of the system of worlds, scanning each planet using a series of sensor probes and their own onboard survey array.

Then, two weeks into the surveying, they discovered life on one of the worlds. Intrigued, the ship moved into orbit of the planet, they observed what appeared to be a race in early to late renaissance period. They were intrigued, however, by how this race looked and for nearly sixty years they stayed in orbit of the planet - only too occasionally drift away to investigate other anomalies before returning.

Other ships were soon dispatched; some smaller science ships that were AI controlled that could go into the planet’s atmosphere and observe this strange race without the risk of putting a Shukaren in danger. These small, automated ships, acted only at night and hardly during the day except during heavy cloud cover in order to keep themselves masked. However, the small ships also employed highly advanced cloaking technology which would've allowed them to operate during clear days but the Neshaten Scientific Community felt it was too dangerous and they didn't want to risk the people finding out they were being observed, or worse, running the risk of influencing their cultural development if for some reason or another one of the probes crashed.

These kinds of observations lasted for many years, but during this time things back in the core worlds were starting to unravel, because of their past, they choose to abandon the use of weapons originally, their ships largely unarmed but heavily armored and shielded.

That changed in their seven hundredth and eight second year of the federation when they began to see destabilization in their people, with small pockets branching off and forming gangs and pirate factions. People began to grow tired of the peace, some wanted action while others didn't like the charter that they had to live under.

The research into weapons had begun, because their technological progression had already begun to slow after only four hundred years, this was a welcome change to their scientists who found themselves taking ideas from famous movies and books written by their people and actually making what was considered science fiction into science fact.

This kind of technological progression angered many in the pacifist community, who saw the research into weapons an insult to what their culture and species had strived for so many years to accomplish. Because of this, the community of pacifists, comprised of nearly forty eight percent of the Neshaten Federation and made up entirely of Shukaren-Laibe, broke off their ties and left the Federation to form their own faction. This didn't sit well with the Neshaten leadership, many of whom felt the pacifists were overreacting and turning a blind eye to pirate and raider activity that was killing tens of thousands of their people.

The breaking of the federation caused a rippling effect, an effect that quickly, after only eight years, resulted in a massive civil war. This war pitted the Neshaten Federation against the Pacifists, many of which had clearly abandoned their pacifist nature and taken up arms against the Federation. This action, like many others that would occur during the war, would baffle many in the Neshaten into asking how a group of people can be pacifists when they are so willing to fight.

At first, only skirmishes broke out in the core worlds, small skirmishes that revolved around fighters and gunships but also frigates. That changed, quickly, after only four years when massive capital ships such as battle cruisers and dreadnaught and battle dreadnaughters started to appear on the scene in some of the outer rim worlds. The Neshaten were caught unprepared, because of their own small pacifist nature they had restricted themselves to constructing only small scale ships such as fighters, bombers, and corvettes and gunboats. They were at all ready to take on the type of ships the Pacifists were fielding, not to mention, the kind of weapons that were being deployed.

These weapons, unheard of by the Neshaten, were designed to level entire cities - wiping them clean off the surface of a planet and leaving no trace except a small crater that looked to be more like an asteroid impact. The pacifists used these large weapons, obliterating much of the outer rim worlds; they took their time over, spending over a hundred and seventy eight years to accomplish the complete destruction of thirty eight worlds. The Neshaten, having been forced on the defensive, had also used this time to develop their technology into the realm of larger ships such as capital class vessels.

Both sides quickly deployed their large ships in massive fleet battles that occurred over the skies of many of the core worlds, because of the type of weapons technology both possessed, each world that had a battle that occurred in it also resulted in the loss of that world. Trillions died as the war raged, with both sides losing their worlds at an equal rate, the use of quantum based weaponry only hastened the destruction of their once might federation.

The war would last for nearly five hundred years, with interspersed periods when the war progressed at a slow pace, however the Neshaten were quick to realize that with the way the war was actually going, no one would survive. Both sides were making certain that every vestige of the others existence was being wiped out, so that reclaiming a world and the cities and technology on them, would be impossible. Because of this, the Neshaten embarked on a bold project, an effort to save what was left of their race. Four massive colony ships along with four smaller ships were build in the Neshatens only secret system, a system that they had hidden from their own people and used as a place for weapons testing and research.

These ships were built using the latest in technology, the most powerful of power generation systems, armor plating, weapons, and shielding along with cryogenic suspension systems. Each ship was nearly nine thousand meters long and almost a thousand meters wide, able to carry many people. Their large holds would be filled with the equipment, materials, and supplies needed to start a whole new civilization.

While the smaller ships were a mere two thousand meters long and eight hundred meters wide, they were intended to still carry a large number of civilians along with the same technology that the much larger ships carried.

Large numbers of resources were used in the construction of these ships, harvested from worlds and asteroids that the Pacifists had left bare and destroyed. The Neshaten also used the massive wealth of the rich and powerful in order to get what was needed, during this construction however the Rich had only donated their wealth for the promise that they would be the only ones to use these ships. In order to save their people, the leadership agreed to this. However, this promise was 'not' upheld. The leadership, believing that no one was special or superior to another, broke the news of these ships after they were completed nearly sixty years later.

Footnote
Although merely a footnote, forty two years after the evacuation transports had started being constructed, the youth corps was formed when an aspiring young Shukaren-Daur Child proposed the plan to military leaders. Many thought it was reckless, thinking it was just a child being naive, but this proved to be the wrong thinking when this child proved just how effective children were in combat when given the chance to fight for what they believe in. This child, a ten year old named V'kaste, was killed six months after she formed the Youth Corps, but her creation of the corps ended up buying the Federation many years of relief due to the Pacifists being caught off guard and would later be honoured in Neshaten History

The breaking of this news angered the wealthy community, who proclaimed that they had been betrayed. However, the news that 'they' had only wanted to be saved while those who didn't possess the wealth were left to die had resulted in many of th wealthy being forced into hiding by riots that broke out in the many still remaining cities.

A lotto was drawn, children were chosen as being the most important for the survival of their race. On each of the Neshaten's remaining core worlds, however, a tough decision had to be made. They knew it would be impossible for their population of nearly forty seven trillion to be saved, since the eight ships built would only be able to carry a combined total of ten million people, two million each on the four large ships and only a mere five hundred thousand on the four smaller ships.

Naturally, scientists were given the priority on the ships, their numbers barely in the hundreds due to the ever constant war that had taken the lives of many in the scientific community. Each starship was designated to carry half and half, half children, half adults. Thus, on each of the remaining worlds, the lotto was indeed done and families had to decide whether they would save themselves or sacrifice their lives so that their children could survive. A child only took up a signal space, while a family would take up roughly three or more spaces. It was no surprise, that the Neshaten, being brave, courageous, and ever caring, had many of the families that drew these lots decide to save their children and the children of families not chosen in the lotto from certain death.

With the lotto done, the leadership began to move the selected secretly. However, like all secrets, this one didn't last long. With such a large movement of people cannot go unnoticed, the Pacifists soon discovered the location of these ships and the secret military sector the Neshaten had fought so hard to keep hidden.

On the eve of launch, a large Pacifist fleet comprising over nine hundred ships arrived on the systems edge and began to move in system. System defensive towers, large spheres nearly three hundred meters in diameter equipped with anti-matter and quantum torpedoes opened fire on the approaching ships. However, the Pacifists blazed on through these defenses, losing almost seventy eight percent of their entire fleet by the time they arrived at the sixth planet of the system - the one that held these evacuation transports.

This planet had an orbital ring around it, designed to serve several functions including construction and defense. When the Pacifist fleet arrived, shield generators located on the planet’s surface engaged, powered by the planets very core, they projected an energy field to buy the civilians time to board.

Defensive ships, comprised of fighters, bombers, frigates, corvettes, battle cruisers and four heavy dreadnaughters were deployed from hanger bays located on the planet’s surface and from within the ring world to engage the Pacifists. It was no surprise, however, that they only lasted half an hour - their small defensive fleet outnumbered nearly ninety one to one.

When the ships guarding the planet were destroyed, the Pacifists turned their weapons onto the ring world and quickly began to tear it apart. Parts of the ring world collided with the planetary shield and overloaded several of the shield generators, causing it to collapse.

However, the time that the defense fleet had bought was enough. The civilians had been successfully boarded and were now in cryogenic suspension. Each ship had roughly two million people on board not including the crew, as the Pacifists rained down fire onto the surface, these ships were given to launch order before the tower was racked by fighters and the people inside killed.

All eight ships launched from hidden underground hangers, the hanger doors themselves were nothing more than holographic projection, so when the ships appeared suddenly out of the ground many of the Pacifists were left stunned at their large size. Many of the fighters that were attacking the facilities were caught off guard, crashing themselves into these ships and leaving black scoring marks on the hulls.

As the ships breached the atmosphere, heading into space, they were met with an onslaught of weapons fire from the remaining Pacifist fleet which had been dwindled down just under a hundred ships. Despite the technology used in the evacuation transports, five of the ships were destroyed trying to flee the planet, two of these ships - having lost their FTL capabilities, turned their ships turned the Pacifists two large command ships and rammed them - destroying both ships entirely and leaving the remaining enemy ships without any command and control.

The last three remaining evacuation transports successfully made it to the systems edge and initiated FTL jumps out of their system, heading south in what many hoped would be peace.

With the evacuation transports away, the Pacifists turned their attention to eradicating what remained of the Neshaten. It would take another eighty two years before both sides meet in the last remaining system, the only system left of their people, with every other destroyed in the war. However, their progress ended when the Neshaten launched one final desperete attack, targetting the Pacifist Homeworld.

With their homeworld lost, the Pacifists launched a full scale attack on the Neshaten homeworld. Surface to spacial batteries fired on any enemy ship that got in range, but during the closing of the war, the Neshaten leadership realized that there was no one left, all of their planets had been destroyed, including all of their outposts and asteriod colonies, they were truly the last Neshaten left standing. Except for the evacuation transports, which the leadership realized would be the next target after the Pacifists were doen with them. In an effort to prevent this, they deployed one final weapon - one that would destroy both sides.

This weapon was a nova bomb; only one was created by the Neshaten and left in reserve for us only as a last resort. The leadership had hoped to never use this weapon, since doing so meant that many innocent lives would be taken. When the weapon was originally developed early on in the war, all blueprints and technical details surrounding it were destroyed so no one else could design another which is why only one existed.

Placed onto a corvette, and crewed by the last remaining military which comprised of the elderly and wounded who wanted to give their lives taking out their enemy. The Pacifists were caught completely off guard when this corvette flew by them and headed for the sun, the leadership on board the command ship, the only command ship left in their military, choose not to pursue it since it was only one ship - this proved to be a fatal mistake.

When the corvette slammed into the systems sun, the sun exploded, ripping itself apart and destroying the planets closest to it. A shockwave ripped outward, spreading across in all directions. Ships caught in its wake were pulverized and planets split in half before being engulfed in fire.

The Neshaten home world, which was the eighth planet from the sun, watched as the shockwave approached. It took a mere ten minutes for it to arrive, destroying the planet along with what was left of the Pacifists, erasing both from the universe and leaving nothing behind but a system full of destroyed planets, not even ships were left, their hulls obliterated in the explosion.

All that remained of their civilization were ruins, mostly outposts, scattered on obscure planets. The only other ship that remained was the science ship that was in the Shara system, when it arrived at the Neshaten system almost eighty years later, all it found were the remains of planets, destroyed with the sun no longer around. The crew onboard, many of which knowing that they no longer had a place to return to, flew off into deep space to find a planet to settle down on - to live out the reminder of their days.

It would be another seven hundred years before the Neshaten rose from the ashes, the three evacuation transports that had fled their dying federation had arrived. Unfortunately, neither ship faired very well in the trip, during the battle with the Pacifists both ships had suffered considerable damage to their FTL drives, so they were only in FTL for a mere few weeks before being forced onto sub light engines. It is for this reason that it took the evacuees so long to arrive at their destination, a garden world prime for their picking.

However, the damage to their ships was too much. Their hulls broken due to the hundred years in deep space and the neglect of maintenance and repair, the first ship to arrive was already dead. Its hull exposed to the elements of space, the onboard reactor finally gave out after so many years and detonated, destroying the entire ship and the crew onboard.

The second ship, it's command crew having not been awakened due to a failure in the computer AI systems, was destroyed when it entered the upper atmosphere and began to break apart, crashing into the ocean. Its hull ruptured, and everyone onboard were killed.

With the smaller evacuation transport being left alive, with only a mere five hundred thousand on board, it faired much better. It's smaller size allowed it to survive the elements of deep space and because of a dedicated crew, the ship was maintained much more through the years than the other two ships. However, the years that had gone by had taken its toll on this dedicated crew and by the time that ship 'had' arrived, none of them were alive. Only the onboard AI was still able to bring the command crew out of hibernation, but only the captain and his XO survived the trip out of the fourteen officer list.

These two officers were able to stop their ship before it would enter the atmosphere, but they also bore witness to the destruction of their two sister ships.

Four million people, all evacuees, had been killed in these two separate incidents. However, it wouldn't be the last. Despite all of the maintenance on the last ship, they knew it wouldn't be long before it too would cease to function. The worst part about it was the failure of some of the cryogenic pods; these pods comprised the scientists and technical expertise in order to still use the technology they had salvaged. With their loss, so to was the loss of many years of technological growth.

The ship was brought down onto the planet and landed, the people were slowly thawed. Because of the loss of their scientists, the people knew they would have to reinvent much of their technology, this became a certainty when - only a month later when the colony was still in the process of being constructed - the evacuation ship suffered a catastrophic systems failure and its reactor blew. Only sixty thousand people had been awoken from cryogenic sleep, the explosion had killed the rest.

With the only thing left of their once fledgling federation now gone, the evacuees decided to rebuild their civilization from the ground up, starting over, a clean slate. They choose to not make the same mistakes their ancestors had made; they build the capital of their new civilization and then expanded outward.

Weapons research was their main priority, but because they had lost the knowledge to design the weapons they once held, they were forced to start over - from scratch. They had to reinvent FTL and STL drives, everything. It was a tall order for a race that was once a technologically advanced empire to suddenly be reduced to a race of merely five hundred thousand people with only industrial era technology. However, it was a chance to rebuild, and improve upon their culture and fix the mistakes that they had made in the past and perhaps create a culture, a civilization, which was better than the previous.

For the next seven hundred years, they progressed at a slow pace. Rediscovering FTL technology in ER¹⁾ 623, however, this discovery made them discover something about their system. They hadn't discovered this in their initial arrival, because their ships had dead FTL drives.

In ER 629, their first attempt at FTL jumping was a complete failure when the ship couldn't even establish a pathway out of the system. At first, scientists thought they had missed something, perhaps an error in their calculations. Later that year they tried again, but it to failed.

A young scientist, a child prodigy, wondered if perhaps FTL was useless in their system and that the only way to find out would be to send the ship to the edge of the system. Many of the scientists in the newly created community balked at this, believing that a child couldn't possibly possess the answer, but one FTL test pilot decided to test that theory and set a course for the star systems edge, it would take him four years on sunlight engines.

This shuttle arrived at the star systems edge in ER 633, the pilot had spent that time in cryo-stasis and spent several days just relaxing before undergoing the test. With his ship being beyond the system now, he initiated an FTL jump and succeeded. This ship disappeared into FTL space, only to reappear a short distance later.

When he turned this ship around, he punched in the coordinates for the home world and initiated a jump. His ship entered FTL space, but during the flight he encountered a series of problems that eventually forced his ship out of FTL. When he attempted to re-engage the system it failed, indicating that the navigational computer couldn't establish a pathway into FTL space. With his test done, and unable to continue, the pilot set a course for the homeworld and re-entered cryostasis.

His ship returned in ER 637, when the pilot came out of cryo-stasis he realized that the eight years he had spent away from his world had done good for his people. Technology had progressed to the point where a large space station was being constructed in orbit of the home world.

Shield Generators had been rediscovered along with the surface to orbital batteries. Although the Neshaten had lost the knowledge of tapping into the planet's core, they were forced to rely on surface power generators instead.

The pilot, upon landing, briefed the scientists on his discovery and showed them the data. This allowed one scientist, a man named Madron Caste to realize that their entire star system was bathed in some form of a dead zone, an area where FTL travel was impossible due to the ever changing properties of FTL space, basically making it impossible for someone to establish travel.

However, though Madron figured out the cause, he couldnt' figure out the solution. The solution came from Haru'ka Se'verem, who designed the first trans-orbital acceleration gate in ER 698. A second gate was constructed in 710, around Levia.

Additional, much smaller gates were set up around the Nesha Star System, including at Fu'kro, Sar'vro, Nam'cre and Li'creo.

In ER 744²⁾, The Neshaten constructed their first combat ship, a frigate that would serve to protect their home world and in ER 755, the first orbital based battery was created for orbital defense.

Toward the end of ER 776³⁾, and the beginning of the Era of Exploration, the Neshaten turned thier eyes into deep-space, with the goal of finding life beyond their system and perhaps to discover whatever became of thier ancestors. But knowing full well, that with the loss of navigational data, they had no idea where to even begin looking, so for now - they concentrated on just discovering what was out there.

The Great War (Neshaten) evacuation_backstory