The French Arm is heavily dominated by the European Space Agency, which includes Azania (the former South Africa). Two subarms (known as fingers) have been colonised by Canada and many of the South American nations. It is now known that the Eber, contacted in 2259 had several colonies around other stars, but a war devastated these and destroyed their technology. Initial clues to their existence came in the form of ruins of a starfaring culture. A third race was discovered along the Chinese Arm at almost the same time. The reasons for the enslavement were not as clear cut as they were portrayed at the time, but the Sung were very easily defeated and now look to man for new information. The discovery of a second race, the Xiang, in the same star system by the Canadians led to war with the Sung when it became apparent that the Sung had enslaved them. A Manchurian survey ship discovered the Sung in 2248. It was along the Chinese Arm that the first contact with another intelligent race was discovered. The American Arm, shared with Australia remains the least explored and the smallest. Beyond that there lie three arms along which colonies have been discovered and settled. At the core there are two worlds, Earth and Tirane, the site of Man's first colony which orbits Alpha Centauri. The drive requires the rare metal 'tantalum', over which nations have gone to war, and ridden the rockets into space and riches. The 'Stutter Warp' allows a ship to travel a maximum of 7.7 lightyears before having to discharge within the gravity well of a planetary system. The discovery in 2136 of the 'Stutter Warp', a working method of faster than light travel has enabled man to spread himself throughout 55 colonies on 29 'garden' worlds and various outposts on another 100 worlds within a few weeks travel from Earth. In the Far East, Japan has become a powerful trading nation, as has Australia, which remained untouched by the war. Likewise the out of the shattered People's Republic of China, a new nation of Manchuria has arisen. Out of Russia, the old nation of the Ukraine become the leading nation. The fallout from the War of German Reunification saw the fall of the twelfth Republic and the auguration of the fourth empire. Until recently France has kept Germany as a number of small states, but the reunification came about in a war with strong parallels to the one of 1870. Many departments of France now lie throughout Africa. It grew to become a superpower as never before and its influence became to be felt around the globe, but nowhere more so than in Africa. In Europe only France survived the war in any fit state.
A much reduced America has once again become a power in the world. Only Texas would liberate itself as it had before, and then to become an independent nation. North of them, Mexico moved to occupy all of the isthmus between North and South, as well as the South-Western quarter of the now shattered United States of America.
Theirs was a rivalry that would flare into war several times in the following centuries, both on and off Earth. In South America, Argentina and Brazil rose to dominate the continent as they had never before.
The 'Twilight War' saw a breaking of the old order and in the aftermath, many new nations arose, several of them based upon the very same nationalist and ethnic lines that had shattered the old nations. Never again were nuclear weapons to be used as they were then. At the dawn of the 24th century man has travelled far from the precipice at the end of the twentieth century.
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