Editing Setting:Star*Finder (section)

==Setting==

[[Image:Alternity_Stellar_Ring.jpeg|right|200px|thumb|The Stellar Ring]]

It is the summer of a era.  Five hundred years have passed since the Fraal revealed themselves to the denizens of Golarion, bringing about the discovery of drift travel through their combined knowledge.  Waves of colonization soon followed, the myriad peoples of Golarion charging forth into the void in search of new worlds, new life, and new opportunities.  As the boundaries of known space expanded the central power of Golarion waned, and it was not long before the growing settlements aspired to control their own destinies, free from taxation and oversight.  

The First Galactic War was a brief affair which pitted the combined forces of the colonies against the fledgling Golarian defense forces, and the outcome was never in doubt.  The so-called and much reviled "Golarian Empire" existed mostly in the minds of the colonial secessionists; there was little popular support for war in the core worlds.  The peace treaty recognized the sovereignty of roughly two dozen stellar nations and established the Union of Gol as the stellar nation of the core worlds.   

For a time there was peace.  The stellar nations grew, encountering dozens of races and sending expeditions to the nearby globular clusters such as Far Reach, Orion Frontier, and the Verge.  But peace feeds complacency and complacency invites catastrophe.  A series of bloody mutant riots on Tau Ceti spiraled into accusations, standoffs, and war as defense treaties were invoked and nations picked sides.

The Second Galactic War was a ruthless and tortuously protracted conflict which lasted nearly a century.  Hundreds of worlds and trillions of lives would be lost before the combatants would exhaust their will to fight.  More than twenty nations went into the war and only a dozen survived it, largely due to the great alliances.

Most historians pin blame for the war on the belligerence of the '''Expansion Pentad''', led by the Thuldan Empire and VoidCorp.  The Thuldans made no effort to conceal their aspirations of human dominance over all of space, and their alliance with VoidCorp amounted to an agreement to divide known space between themselves and then fight each other last.  

Opposing them was the '''FreeSpace Alliance''', anchored by the twin states of the Orion League and the Orlamu Theocracy.  While not as powerful as the combined Pentad forces, they were more than a match for either the Thuldans or VoidCorp alone, and they had the advantage of not sharing a border with either.

Caught between them were the nations of the '''Profit Confederation''', a motley assortment led by the Rigunmor Star Consortium.  The Profit nations would see much of the worst fighting; the Thuldan navy would ultimately be crushed in StarMech space by a combined Profit-FreeSpace force at the Battle of Songham, while the savagery of the Austrin-Nariac front is without match in history.  

For much of the war a "gentlemen's agreement" existed between the Profit Confederation and the FreeSpace Alliance to defeat the Pentad.  However, there was mistrust and resentment to go around; anytime the Pentad threat was checked the two would engage in petty bickering over territory.  

The conclusion of the war saw the establishment of a new entity, the '''Galactic Concord'''.  Created as a neutral party to govern the border regions of the most contested areas and prevent another war, Concord is half stellar nation and half peacekeeping force.