New Eden Historical Overview
New Eden Historical Overview
The early human history of the New Eden cluster remains a topic of much speculation. There is little substantive evidence to guide discussion, as vanishingly few artifacts have survived to tell of times before the rise of the four modern empires. The story of those four empires, however, has been shaped by four key events – two meetings, and the two wars they precipitated.
The first, now a thousand years past, was the meeting between the Amarr and the Minmatar. The Amarr, by this time already an expansive imperial theocracy controlling dozens of star systems, stumbled across the Minmatar while the latter were still exploring their home system. Over the next century the Amarrians, in keeping with the teachings of their rigidly stabilizing priesthood, returned with increasing frequency to forcibly acquire workers from the growing Minmatar nation. These raids culminated in the wholesale invasion, annexation and enslavement of the entire Minmatar civilization some nine hundred years ago.
The second meeting begun on a more equitable footing, when the Gallente confirmed the existence of another civilization, now known as the Caldari, on a neighboring planet within their home system. Where Gallente Prime was a comfortable, temperate planet, Caldari Prime was a barely-habitable iceworld, which dictated both the relative advancement of the two peoples, and the tone of their respective cultures. The Gallente, even then approaching foreign affairs with an air of slightly overbearing indulgence, gladly welcomed the Caldari as trading partners and shared with them many enabling technologies, allowing both civilizations to grow side-by-side in an slowly-expanding coalition of disparate societies that would soon coalesce into the Gallente Federation.
As they grew together, however, these two peoples increasingly grew apart. The liberal, individualistic and easy-going Gallente had never really meshed well with the hardy, organized and communalistic Caldari, and as time progressed and their goals diverged, the strains in their relationship became chronic. Events came to a head in the brutal and protracted Gallente-Caldari War , which squandered much blood and treasure and eventually forced the Caldari to flee their ancestral homeworld. Indeed, as a society the Caldari were only saved by the substantial resources and inspired leadership of their monolithic mega-corporations, who led their people to new homes around distant stars. Eventually a fragile peace settled between the newly-founded Caldari State and the still-expanding Gallente Federation, but neither side has forgotten or forgiven.
That was the first war. The second was precipitated by the action, or inaction, of the fifth major player in cluster politics – the enigmatic Jovians, who say very little, but cast a long shadow. When their faces were still new to the four Empires, and their prowess was unmeasured, the Amarrians sought to subjugate them as they had countless other cultures since the conquest of the Minmatar. At the Battle of Vak’Atioth, a lone Jovian mothership savaged the combined Amarrian fleet. With the Amarr Empire reeling from the magnitude of their military failure, the Minmatar decided that their moment had come. All across the Amarrian slave-holdings, indentured Minmatar rose up and threw off their shackles. The Empire, unable to react promptly enough to quell the massive rebellion, were forced to withdraw from a huge swathe of worlds where Minmatar slaves had dominated the workforce. These regions of space in time became the Minmatar Republic, a Gallente-backed political experiment uniting four of the seven Minmatar Tribes under a democratic government. While both the Minmatar Republic and the Amarr Empire retreated to lick their wounds and rebuild, both feel they have unfinished business that cannot be ignored indefinitely.
In this uneasy peace, the four empires sought some measure of stability while they took stock of their situations, and eventually that stability was provided by the formation of CONCORD. With the quiet assistance of the Jovians, the empires came to agreements on trade, communication and diplomacy, and together created the CONCORD assembly and its subordinate divisions to oversee and administer interstellar relations. Today CONCORD continues to support and manage many aspects of modern life where co-operation between empires is a necessity, and its expanded mandate from the five founding empires makes its five-pointed star a familiar and respected sight all throughout the New Eden Cluster.
Report published by CONCORD
