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Your vessel was in orbit around one of these undeveloped planets before crashing in an unspecified accident. Some ascended to become super-advanced "transcendent worlds" that appear utterly alien, while others regressed to a pre-industrial state. While small interstellar empires may occasionally form in highly-dense stellar regions such as star clusters or nearer to the galactic core, many of the isolated colonies bomb themselves back into the Stone Age, resulting in a wide technological gap. Thus, each colonized planet has largely been left to its own devices worlds develop at their own pace with limited contact between them.
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One obstacle has proven to be insurmountable-the light barrier. About three and a half thousand years in the future, humanity has spread itself across the galaxy, colonizing thousands of worlds and developing new technologies.
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