Introduction And Colonial Era (~2155-2696)

The history of the UCR is long and complex, spanning a period of over fifteen-thousand years, during which close to fourteen different nations have risen and fallen in the area of space now controlled by the UCR. Because of this extensive history, the history of the UCR is broken up into numerous Eras. These Eras have been set up in such a way that each one corresponds to the rise/fall of that Era's respective nations, or in cases where there were multiple nations in existence, the date of the first fall of a nation. For ease of reading purposes, this section has been divided up into the before-mentioned Eras, along with accompanying dates.

Note On Dates: All dates in this text are in the Universal Standard Format of Common Era (CE). This was done to ensure that persons from any nation could relate these dates to their own frame of reference. The UCR currently uses a calendar that places Year 0 at the founding of the current Third Federation. The current date in UCR-Format is 8960 ATF.

Colonial Era (~2155-2696)
The recorded history of the UCR begins around 2155, when close to eight million humans, all selected as part of a "species preservation program", departed from a dying homeworld (known only as Home) aboard eight massive generation ships. These massive vessels are estimated to have been close to ten miles in length each, and are believed to have held around one million people each. In addition, each ship carried a full terraforming system, along with cryogenically preserved cloning-ready cell samples from every plant and animal known to man. Plus, somewhat controversially, each ship also carried cryogenically preserved human eggs and sperm samples.

The first passengers that boarded knew that they would die out long before the ships arrived at their destination, and that many generations after theirs would die out as well. It is universally agreed upon that the chief reason for this was the lack of destination for the generations ships, and the uncertainty that came from this lack of a tangible goal. The eight ships, rather than heading for any one place, were instead simply linked together via gravitational tethers which held the vessels in a loose rhombus formation. Their mission was to cruise along through space in a wide, meandering and aimless path, while the generation that was alive at that given time would spend time making repairs, building upgrades, and searching for a planet or system that could support eight million humans.

The eight ships were named for ideals of freedom, salvation, and unity. The Providence, Fortuna, Ceres, Valhalla, Sanctuary, Elysium, Liberty, Columbia, and were all run like direct democracies, with the inhabitants of each ship voting for their captain and his legislature-esque Council Of Advisers. In order to ensure that all subsequent generations would remember their mission (as vague as it was), each ship was required to submit yearly data-file of stories, poems, written works, news articles, photos and other such things, which were all compiled into a single central file known as the "Chronicle". An updated copy of the Chronicle was sent to each ship every year, so that even if only one single ship made it, the future generations would have the complete history of the ships and their passenger's ordeals. It was hoped that the Chronicle would serve as a sort of guiding beacon for whatever generation found a new home, and much of the Chronicle espouses civil liberties, joy, and optimism. And for four and a half generations, the mission went flawlessly.

In 2689, the self-christened "Flotilla" faced its first major disaster. Under circumstances that are to this day unknown, the Liberty vanished. No specific records exist that explain what occurred, but it is hypothesised that the gravity tethers aboard the Liberty were destroyed or render inoperable, at which point the vessel probably drifted into a sun or blackhole. It is know that after several months of waiting for the ship to reappear the seven remaining ships once again set off, though the assumed death of a million of their own had broken the spirits of many inhabitants.

In a sort of bitter irony, only one year after the loss of the Liberty, the Flotilla came upon their new home; a massive solar system, with over sixteen planets, ten of which were deemed terraform-ready. The people of the Flotilla were desperate to escape the memories of their lost comrades and quickly set about making the planets ready for colonization. Each ship took charge of one planet, and set up a provisional government system to oversee the whole operation. This provisional government was set up by combining the Council of Advisers from each ship and turning them into a single Colonial Administration Oversight Committee (CAOC), and allowing the seven captains to form a collective head of state that was known as the Colonial Executive Council (CEC). For five years, the ten planets were subjected to terraforming and huge amounts of construction, all of which was done with an almost serene sense of cooperation. Paramount among the preparation projects was the construction of a series of supraluminal communication relays and satellites that would allow the planets to talk to each other instantly and without delay.

By 2694 the majority of the terraforming was done, cities and infrastructure were completed, and people were already moving down to their new terrestrial homes. As the cities began to fill up and as people began to get to work, it was quickly realized that the CAOC and CEC, while still sufficient to govern the relatively low population, would soon be overwhelmed by the inevitable population and industrial growth. It was then decided that the two entities should be expanded out to form a more 'complete' government. To accomplish this, the CAOC first voted to scrap the CEC and replace it with a new body, which was at that point called the Ten Colony Executive Council. After that, the CAOC changed itself, dividing into a bicameral legislature; the upper house was known as the Planetary Council, while the lower house was called the Stellar Congress, and together they formed the Decaplanetary Assembly.

The citizens of the eight planets (named Outreach, Nova Columbia, Dawn, Sanctuary, Solitude, Libertas, and Grand Arcadia) watched all this with growing excitement, as they were anticipating electing new civilian officials. The Assembly, however, had other ideas. In 2695 resolution was quickly passed through the Assembly which appointed the eight captains as the members of the new Central Executive Council. This infuriated the colonists, who felt cheated out of the democracy that they had thought they had been promised. At the time the chairman of the Ten Colony Executive Council was Victor Reical, who had been captain of the Ceres. Chairman Reical attempted to head off any sort of protests by having the Assembly pass the Colonial Political Rights Bill, which guaranteed that in five years new elections would be held, in theory giving the colonists a chance to replace every single government official.

This was not, however,sufficient for the colonists, who feared that the Executive Council would simply re-appoint themselves and then promise new elections later on. Leading the opposition to the government was a William Fontaine, a colonist from the planet Nova Columbia. He threatened full out resistance unless the government held immediate elections and guaranteed that none of the current officials would be eligible for re-election, something that the Executive Council (who had grown very accustomed to power) was loathe to do. Chairman Reical knew, however, that a civil war could potentially spell the end of humanity and begrudgingly gave in to William's demands. The entire government resigned, and the colonists each sent one representative to Nova Columbia (considered the most well-off planet) to act as an election oversight committee.

The first elections were held in the first few months of 2696. Having established himself as something of a folk hero, and to the surprise of no one, William Fontaine was nearly unanimously elected to serve as the first holder the newly created position of Chief Magistrate Of The Seven Colonies. Before legislative elections went forwards, now-Chief Magistrate Fontaine used his executive powers to restructure the legislature into a unicameral system called the Federal Assembly. Legislative elections went ahead without a single problem, and the new legislature soon afterwords got to work on setting up a true system of representation for the planets. The Foundation Resolutions, the first resolutions taken up by the new legislature, were all passed unanimously shortly thereafter. They allowed the seven planets to set up their own locally elected planetary governments, moved all branches of the federal government to Columbia City on Nova Columbia, and established a militia style military for defense of the colonies.

Without slowing down even for a second, in May of 2696, the federal government proposed the foundation of a new nation that was meant to solidify the bonds between the planets. On September 1st, after months of deliberation, Resolution 45 was passed by a vote of 69 to 31, officially establishingthe Nova Columbian Hegemony.