HUMANS

Earth Alliance

Government:

Besides Earth, there are approximately 30 worlds in 14 solar systems in the EA including Proxima 3, Orion 7, Ganymede and Europa (Mars became independent in 2262). There are about ten billion inhabitants on Earth itself and two million on Mars, which is the largest colony.

During the 23rd century the Earth Alliance Presidents have included Elizabeth Levy (c.2243-?), Luis Santiago (?-2258), Morgan William Clark (2259-2261) and Susanna Luchenko (2261-?).

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History:

In 2085, a year after the end of World War III, the United Nations was replaced by the Earth Alliance. Still, it took over ten years for the space explorations to be resumed when in 2101 a series of small military and scientific bases were established on Mars. Humans were again back on the track towards the stars even though no proof of extra-terrestrial life had been found.

In 2115 scientist discovered that although there might not be aliens out here, there certainly were ones among humans when the first certifiable telepaths were discovered. After two years of fear, mistrust and bloodshed the Metasensory Regulation Authority (MRA) was founded in 2117 to control and protect the telepaths. A few decades later in 2155 the first permanent Mars colony was founded. Still, the outer space was nothing more than an unreachable dream. The only thing humans could do was to send out ships with cryogenically frozen crews, hoping that they would find life and perhaps even intelligence among the stars.

These ships had hardly left Earth's solar system when the Centauri decided to make themselves known to humans in mid 22nd century. At first this superior race claimed that humans were merely a lost and isolated Centauri colony, but scientific research and some quite distinct physiological differences soon proved this to be a lie. The rocky start didn't prevent economical arrangements between the two races, though, and the Centauri soon sold humans the technology needed to build jumpgates thus opening them a doorway to outer space.

Still, acquiring interstellar spaceflight did not make humans any more peaceful. Hostilities between normals and telepaths led to the founding of the Psi Corps in 2161 and in 2157 a group of terrorists destroyed San Diego with a nuclear weapon turning the city into an uninhabitable wasteland. Twenty years later the first Mars colony was also destroyed in a terrorist attack that caused almost five-hundred fatalities. It is then no wonder that in the midst of all the wars and new technology some people grew tired of the modern way of living and in 2177 a small separatist group moved to a planet called Regula 4 embracing technology-free agrarian lifestyle.

In 2230 Earth became involved in its first major war of the worlds when a race called Dilgar attacked several members of the League of Non-Aligned Worlds. By helping the League defeat the Dilgar Earth proved its military strength and became one of the more powerful races. The following years also saw wars in the African Block, New Jerusalem and Cyrus 3, but nothing could prepare humanity to the bloodbath ahead.

In 2245, despite the warnings of the Centauri, EarthGov decided to make contact with the isolated and highly evolved Minbari. EAS Prometheus, commanded by Captain Jankowski made contact with a Minbari ship that carried the Minbari ruling body, the Grey Council. The friendly encounter failed when Jankowski misinterpreted the ship's open gunports - a sign of respect - as a hostile gesture and opened fire. Due to the element of surprise Prometheus survived the following firefight victorious managing to damage the Minbari vessel and killing the Minbari leader Dukhat. Enraged by the death of their revered leader the Minbari declared a holy war that would not end until all of humanity was destroyed.

The war that followed was uneven because the Minbari civilization was thousands of years older than humans. In fact, Earth scored only one true victory during the war when EAS Lexington under the command of John Sheridan destroyed the Minbari flagship Drala Fi (Black Star). One by one the Minbari brought down human colonies and outposts hitting military targets first and moving then to civilian targets. By 2247 they had already reached Earth's solar system and as a last resort EA moved all available firepower between Earth and the closing enemy fleet hoping to buy enough time to evacuate as much people as possible to neutral territories. Twenty-thousand soldiers formed the last line of defence in this battle which would later be called the Battle of the Line. Only 200 came back alive. The Minbari went through Earth's feeble line of defence without any effort - then suddenly the fighting ceased and the Minbari surrendered. What humans didn't know was that the Grey Council had come to believe that the Minbari were reborn as humans and - as a Minbari was not allowed to kill another Minbari - surrender was the only option.

After the war EA focused on solving its inner conflicts as Mars continued its fight of independence. Food riots and open freedom activity turned the relationship between Earth and Mars into a powder cake ready to go off. Relations with other races, on the other hand, were good and in order to prevent future wars the Babylon Project - funded not only by humans but also by the Centauri, the Minbari and the League of Non-Aligned Worlds - was founded. Work for the Babylon Station began in 2250's, but the first three stations were destroyed during construction. The fourth and biggest of the Babylon Stations, Babylon 4, was finished in 2254, but it vanished with its skeleton crew soon after. Despite all the misfortune Earth gave Babylon Project one more try. Babylon 5 was finished in 2256 and was opened for business with Commander Jeffrey Sinclair (the only man the Minbari had accepted) as its military governor. The next two years saw many small and quite a few bigger crises, but in all the station was still considered useful.

On New Year's Eve 2258 everything changed as Earth Alliance President Luis Santiago was killed in an explosion and Vice-President Morgan William Clark took over. The explosion (which was officially declared as an accident) had been a part of Clark's plan to take over Earth and one of his first orders as president was to replace Sinclair with Captain John Sheridan (who despised by the Minbari due to his actions in the Earth-Minbari War) in order to lessen the power aliens had over B5. By 2260 Clark had turned Earth into a totalitarian state by creating Ministries of Peace and Truth and an organisation called Nightwach that hunted down possible traitors to Earth (i.e. people who opposed Clark's politics). To gain more power Clark also allied himself with the Psi Corps, the Shadows and the Centauri (the Earth-Centauri Non-Aggression Treaty was signed in December 2259). In early 2260 Sheridan, who was involved with a faction within the military trying to prove Clark's involvement in Santiago's death, found the proof he needed and with few other seditious officers came public with it demanding Clark to be impeached. By April Clark had been driven into corner and the President was forced to use the last weapon in his arsenal. By using the Shadows as a fake enemy he declared Martial Law and then dismantled the Senate before it had time to react. Clark also closed down the main news channel ISN and turned it into his own propaganda machine. With the Martial Law Clark then transferred all security outside Earth to his own dear Nightwatch and when Mars refused to co-operate, he gave the order to bomb civilian targets on the red planet. As a protest to these unconstitutional actions Babylon 5, Orion 7 and Proxima 3 declared independence.

Then next year went by with all the power firmly in Clark's grip. With the propaganda on ISN he managed to keep most of the population on Earth happy while at the same time there were battles fought in Mars and outside Earth's solar system. Still, the resistance movements were also gathering their forces. After their victory in the Shadow War Sheridan and his allies turned their attention to Earth and started organising the liberation of their now totalitarian homeworld. Babylon 5 became the center of operation for the resistance and it even had its own news channel, "The Voice of Resistance" (VoR) to fight the ISN propaganda. Still, it wasn't until August 2261 - after Clark ordered a strike against ships carrying refugees - that Sheridan's forces began to take an offensive against Earth. With the prestige and power he had gained in the Shadow War the Captain declared all pacts of mutual assistance Earth had with other races null and void. He then started the liberation strikes using a fleet consisting of Earth ships that had defected to the resistance and whitestars that had been left over from the Shadow War.

Sheridan's forces liberated Earth colonies and outposts one by one starting from Proxima 3 and moving towards Earth itself. Even though at one point of the war Sheridan himself was captured and tortured, and his second in command Susan Ivanova was fatally wounded, the resistance did not surrender and eventually freed Mars and neutralised most of the ships guarding Earth. Most of the other races had by then announced their loyalty to Sheridan and joined the fight as well. Realising his defeat Clark, in a final act of spite, turned the planetary defence system against Earth itself and then committed suicide. It was only the joined effort of all factions involved that saved Earth from total destruction. With Clark dead and the Civil War over, Susanna Luchenko from the Russian Consortium became the president of Earth Alliance.

After the war Sheridan was forced to resign from Earth Force in exchange for amnesty to the members of the resistance. Unfortunately what had been meant as a punishment for mutiny turned out to be a mere joke when the League of Non-Aligned Worlds announced that Sheridan had been elected as the president of the newly formed Interstellar Alliance (ISA). Earth joined the new Alliance when the Minbari promised them the technology required for artificial gravity. One of the conditions of the membership was independence for Mars and reluctantly Earth gave in, though it did try later to suffocate the new state into red tape and bureaucracy. Still, not all of the internal problems were solved. Clark had given Psi Corps power and they did not want to give it back. An unfortunate chain of events on B5 lead to an uprising of rogue telepaths and terrorism against the Corps. The result was the so-called Telepath Crisis after which the Senate dismantled the Psi Corps.

In 2266 the Drakh, former allies to the Shadows decided to revenge Sheridan's victory in the Shadow War. With leftover Shadow technology they then attempted to destroy Earth and all of the humankind. Thanks to a warning from a techno-mage Sheridan managed to stop their primary weapon - a death cloud filled with nuclear missiles capable of destroyng the entire planet - but before retreating the Drakh managed to infect the entire planet with a bio-genetic plague. Shortly after the attack 850 people died of a new mutation of the Ebola-virus. Forty-eight hours later hundreds of people were killed by an epidemic of a new form of Hepatitis B. Similar epidemics went on for a while. Ironically it was this what would become the salvation of humanity - the Drakh had not had time to adjust the virus for human biology and the virus had to find a suitable mutation before would become lethal to all humans. This gave Earth five years to find a cure. Still, to prevent people from infecting other races and planets Earth was put under quarantine and when people despite this tried to escape Earth and were stopped, sometimes with deadly force, riots erupted all over the planet. Doomsday cults became popular once again and the end of interstellar commerce resulted recession in many Terran nations. The time of quarantine was hard for humankind, but eventually Earth pulled through.

Interstellar Alliance was never fully accepted on Earth. No more than a hundred years after its founding, the academic opinion on Earth was that ISA had been originally nothing more than an attempt to boost the political power of its founders, namely Sheridan and Delenn. Four hundred years later, in 2762, Earth was once again on the brink of a civil war as two factions fought for power. One faction wanted to sustain good interstellar relations while the other one tried to defame ISA by rewriting history so that Earth could resign from the Alliance and begin expansionism. The resulting war was eventually called "The Great Burn" as it sent human civilization and technology back into the Middle Ages and thus once again isolated humans from other races and planets. By 3262 technology was considered a curse and Rangers, ISA and its founders had became mere legends; stories passed on from generation to generation. Still, at the same time the legendary Rangers were operating in the shadows trying to restore the former glory of Earth.

A million more years went by before humans finally took the next step in their evolution evolving into bodiless beings of light, not unlike the First Ones. When Earth's Sun went prematurely nova, the reborn humanity, led by the Rangers, left its homeworld behind to create "New Earth".

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