Local Space

Translations by Circe of extraterrestrial communications signals suggests that the local sector around Earth is an unusually violent place. The immediate vicinity is considered something of a barren wasteland, which gives humanity some breathing room, but beyond that are a large number of aggressive, expansionistic species.

Most of the neighboring species are psychic, some are machine intelligences. Humanity seems to have a higher than average proportion of supers, some ten to fifteen times that of other species.

At Amber's bidding, Circe has been building up defenses around the Solar system.