The Hellfire Expansion
The Verifex Explosion in the M50 cluster in Monoceros left numerous systems scourged and devoid of life;
the reclamation of this volume is generally known as the Hellfire Expansion
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The Hellfire ExpansionThe Verifex Explosion in the M50 cluster in Monoceros left numerous systems scourged and devoid of life; the reclamation of this volume is generally known as the Hellfire Expansion |
Also known as the Monoceros Reclamation Frontier, or Gehenna
Resettlement Sphere, the Hellfire Expansion is the popular name amongst
the NoCoZo
pioneers streaming into the area affected by the Gehenna
Incident. The Gehenna Incident and
its aftermath left many worlds scourged, and devoid of life,
but left behind the wormholes and most of the high-tech worlds that
didn't reside too close to the incident. This caused a rush of pioneers
and entrepreneurs which used the still standing wormholes to quickly
get into the catastrophe area behind the radiation wavefront, and
resettle the systems which had been rendered devoid of life. While most
of the pioneers origin from NoCoZo, there are also a large number of
pioneers from the Version Tree,
Sophic
League and Orion
Federation, as well as a smaller inrush of
pioneers from almost anywhere else.
The result is a huge mix of cultures. Sophic Monks of the Solitude can
be found in the same system as memestrong version tree neumann.
Asteroid herders from NoCoZo rub elbows with Orion propagandists.
Conflicts are common, but so is unusual cooperations.
Different from most other mobile frontiers, is also the fact that many
of the pioneers have moved into the area for profit rather than
solitude. Whether that profit is economical, territorial or spiritual,
there is an enormous amount of interaction between the various systems
and clades, as well as the high tech systems and wormholes, which
provide information and high tech goods to the center of the cooking
pot.
However, the fact is that the Hellfire Expansion has no true frontier.
Enclosed on all sides, and seeded throughout its volume with wormholes,
the mobile frontier will be consumed sooner or later as the empires
around it gobble up the territory, with nowhere for the pioneers to go.
During the 3100 years since the Gehenna Incident, the Orion Federation
as well as NoCoZo has steadily annexed worlds, with a dribble falling
to the Version Tree, Sophic League and polities farther away. Though
the Hellfire Expansion still seems to be going strong, it is the truth
that it is on its last legs. Many of the worlds that seem the most
frontier-like have actually already signed treaties with the NoCoZo,
and the pioneers there moved on to more open frontiers.
