About the Dark Diaspora

The Diaspora has no King, no Emperor, no President. There is no single Government or Authority that rules over all of humanity. No universal laws. No common tongue. The only institutions that could claim an element of ubiquity in the Diaspora are the merchants of the Coalition or perhaps the proselytizing deacons of Tarvan Covenant. And even these groups can only legitimately claim a presence on the major independent worlds or the planets of the more significant regional power blocks like the Tyson Sector Compact.   Instead, the Diaspora is simply the name for a region of space some 10,000 light years across encompassing almost 400,000 stars. This is the extent of the Scattering; where the remnants of the human species were dispersed over half a millennia ago. And at the very centre of the Diaspora, surrounding by the sphere of human influence in the galaxy, is Old Sol. All who survived, who fled from a Lost Earth now call the Diaspora home, struggling to persevere in a seemingly malevolent existence.   For the vast majority of humanity now desperately cling to the surface of barren worlds or blighted moons, forever at the edge of calamity and demise. Small outposts, communities, settlements and colonies count in the thousands – seeded by the original scatter pods. Yet the isolation of most of settlements is almost absolute, the residents of which may never see a ship or pod from the wider Diaspora during their lifetimes.   Home in the Diaspora is limited to artificial environs and a small number of marginally habitable planets.   Planets such as Kaanara and Janfar are little more than global deserts, irradiated by the energized rays of volatile young stars and stripped of their precious moisture. Aners, Vicinity and Galadur are giant ice worlds, where biting cold and grasping gravity seek to bring the local populace to their knees. Primodial and aquatic worlds such as Ozovin and Somayaji inflict upon their human residents the constant threat of deluge, flood and inundation; be it by global storm or errant tsunami. Even those planets with life – like Corrix and Somayaji – have birthed horrors unlike anything in the long history of life on Earth. Dense carnivorous jungles or rampantly enveloping slime threaten wayward individuals and entire settlements alike.   Life in the Diaspora is defined by a neverending grinding battle against unimaginable horros and inconceivable dreads. And yet, despite all this, humanity lingers. Trade flows between more developed systems of automated scatters pods, ferrying raw materials and manufactured goods between nascent economies. Regional power blocks have coalesced, their authority projected beyond their natural borders to the surrounding stars, often by force. Treaties of all manner and kind have been signed by representatives of settled systems, while more tangible and practical commitments loosely hold together hundreds of smaller settlements in the bonds of mutual assistance. Yet such treaties and bonds are rarely honored, though not out of contempt or disregard for obligations. For the harsh reality of the Diaspora is that one’s own survival, one’s very existence in the Universe, must always be the utmost priority.   And that whatever sense of fraternity exists in the Disapora is embodied only in a shared hope for mutual survival; that we can all repel, for another day, the countless nightmares made real by a vindicative and barbarous universe.