Final Wars

The Final Wars were a series of apocalyptic interstellar conflicts preceding and causing the Interstellar Dark Ages, commencing about a thousand years before the Unified Era. Most of the Nexus was devastated during this time period, causing a general breakdown in civilization.

/*
The conflicts which caused this existential disaster started small, as skirmishes and scuffles between the great powers of the Second Interstellar Period, such as the Columbian Federation and Amarantine Conformity. Most parties involved possessed strategic deterrence arsenals based on relativistic weapon systems and other means of planetary bombardment, which they threatened each other with in a policy of mutual assured destruction.

From this, it was perhaps inevitable that threats gave way to actual destruction, when the first uses of strategic weapons triggered a chain-cascade where every power fired theirs off in turn. This triggered a slow-moving apocalypse which swept over inhabited space and devastated star systems until little in the way of interstellar civilization remained. Precise details, especially regarding its instigation, remain unknown due to degregation of records in the intervening millennium.
*/

The conflict acquired its current name in the Unified Era, due to its unsurpassed destruction and the Commonality's ideological commitment to avoiding any future wars of similar magnitude.