Much of the history of humans before space flight has been lost or relegated to the status of legend. What can be reconstructed of the times is unreliable at best. However, several independent sources suggest that humanity first developed crude warp engines after a global war forced governments to look elsewhere to house their increasingly destitute population.
These were not the powerful drives of our time. They were barely sufficient for travel faster than the speed of light, and unreliable. Through an excessive expenditure of raw energy, a ship was able to breach the barrier into low-energy hyperspace and travel faster than light. It was crude, but it worked.
Many systems were charted which had reasonable chances of having habitable planets. The call was made for volunteers, and the volunteers came. They were packed aboard the ships, sometimes little more than metal shells built upon these massive drive systems, and sent off to space. None of them would return to their homeworld.
Most ships equipped with these primitive drives never arrived at their destination, either suffering catastrophic failure of the engines, or navigation errors that left them drifting in space for all eternity. Some few made it to their destinations, habitable planets within reach of the homeworld, and humanity eagerly began to multiply and be fruitful.
Exactly what happened to these earliest colonies is not recorded, except for one.
The ship arrived intact after a travel time of more than a hundred years. They discovered on their arrival the alien technology that we now know as the jump gate. The creators of the gate were not in evidence, and it appeared at the time that the system was deserted.
Their ship was designed to be converted on arrival to an orbital station. It was parked in orbit around a habitable planet, and the search for resources began. In the end it was a year or more before the colonists were able to begin investigating the technology that they had found.
They discovered the secret of opening a conduit into High Energy Hyperspace, but were reluctant to test their theories by sending a ship through the gate to an unknown destination.
In the end no colonist had to risk his or her life in this way, because a few decades after they arrived, a mrashan scout craft emerged through the gate and discovered the fledgling colony. The mrashans were a peaceful race at the time, and we humans had no idea of their tragic future. With the help of the mrashans, the technology of the jump gate was opened up.
Although at first only this one colony had access to the jump gate, word soon spread to other colonies and the world now designated Bonanza became a trade gateway, and the major hub of human civilisation in the galaxy.
With the discovery of the jump gate and the friendship of the mrashans, humanity was able to expand its influence to many other inhabited worlds. However, we were not yet able to construct our own jump gates, and colonisation of uninhabited (and un-jump gated) worlds still progressed slowly.
Humanity quickly expanded on the industrial and commerce worlds that were linked by jump technology, and built a trading empire to rival that of the slorel. Great wealth was brought to Bonanza, and it came to be the primary hub of human society and culture in the galaxy. However, in the councils of the alien races there was unease. Humans being resilient and resourceful (and thoroughly ignorant of galactic politics) were beginning to encroach upon long-standing treaties and trade agreements. Several races agreed to withhold higher hyperspace technology from humanity, in order that they may better control our expansion. Foremost among these were the tal, the crelos and of course the consummate galactic politicians and manipulators the khalroth.
Humans knew that there was technology that they did not have, and many attempts were made to acquire that technology. Some of these attempts were subtle, some were not. Every attempt at industrial espionage on the part of the humans was ruthlessly opposed by the crelos, and for a hundred years humans operated their businesses only through the existing jump gates and the very few that humans were now able to construct on their own worlds.
This did not stop many human families from becoming very rich from the trade they brought back to Bonanza. The Administrator of Bonanza, Rainu Fleming, was arguably the richest human in the galaxy at the time. So in a way it was not surprising that he was finally able to acquire from the mrashans the secret of low-energy hyperspace and the warp drive.
A foreshadowing of later events happened when the khalroth found out that they had been betrayed by the mrashans. The mrashans were a peaceful trading race, and by this time close friends of humanity. The crelos, allies of the khalroth, were warlike and ruthless. The mrashan homeworld was bombarded from orbit and the mrashans forbidden from ever entering space again, on penalty of genocide. Their ships were hunted down and destroyed one by one.
Such an extreme overreaction shocked humanity to the core. We had underestimated the lengths to which the khalroth would go to protect their interests. But we now had the technology now to expand faster than ever before. Hundreds of new worlds were colonised in directions away from the khalroth - crelos hegemony. This was the time now known as humanity's First Golden Age.
In retrospect it was inevitable that the khalroth would move against humanity. However, it took our ancestors somewhat by surprise at the time. The first assault came at Bonanza and completely wiped the colony off the galactic map. Hundreds of tal and crelos battleships poured into the system under khalroth orders, destroying everything in their path. Few humans escaped. The battlefleet moved on, destroying the colonies of Tiber, Atlantis, Morgai, Mu and all those nearby.
In their zeal for destruction, the khalroth battleplan suffered from insufficient intelligence. The humans had spread so far and so fast that many established colonies escaped the pogrom entirely. Human planets on the outer rim of civilised space in particular were spared the tragedy. The industrial colonies of Faraway, Grant, Impossible and Karlon's Drift were all spared. The battlefleets finally withdrew, and humans started to plot revenge.
During this time it was Faraway that emerged as the centre of human activity. The industrial spaceports in that system were quickly controlled by military hawks and a great battlefleet was planned. This fleet would be LEH-capable and armed to the teeth. Their intention was to show the crelos that we humans were not to be trifled with! When humans finally returned to galactic affairs, it was to a scene of chaos. It turned out that the tal and the crelos had disagreed over the necessity of the pogrom of humans, and were now at war. The khalroth of course were directing the crelos, as they always did, but the tal this time were giving them a run for their money, being strong and technologically sophisticated.
As soon as humanity found out about this situation, they dispatched ambassadors to the tal and offered alliance. At first they were rebuffed, but when the tide turned against the tal, we were welcomed as friends and allies. Together we were able to rout the crelos battlefleets, and defeat the enemy resoundingly, driving them back to their homeworlds. The crelos, even with their khalroth masters, were no match for the combined might of tal and human.
As there was little left of the planet Bonanza to recover, the commander of the battlefleet retired to Faraway in triumph and created the New Capital of the Human Demarc. The war hero proclaimed himself Demarcator of all human planets amongst tumultuous support.
Thus was begun the Second Golden Age of the Human Demarc. The tal were granted unlimited freedom throughout the Demarc, and full trading rights. Such rights were not granted even to the slorel, as it was well known that they traded with crelos and khalroth during the War. Such was their wont - the slorel were traders by nature, and did not understand the need for conflict. So they were restricted from the Demarc and their place in the banks and merchant halls was taken by the tal.
This was the organisation of the government of the Demarc at the time. The Demarcator was the nominal ruler of all human domains. However, he delegated much of his power to planetary Governors, who contributed to the wealth and power of the Demarc as a whole in the form of taxes and military service. The office of the Demarcator was deemed to be hereditary, but the Governors were elected. Each Governor was given the rights to lead their planets as they deemed fit, so long as the taxes kept flowing.
If a Governor failed in his duty to the Demarc by defaulting on taxes, he could be removed by a decree from the Demarcator and the people of the planet were free to elect a new Governor. The Governors met once every five standard years on Faraway in a Grand Council under the direction of the Demarcator. At the Council, each Governor was expected to present a report on the planet under their control, and discuss and debate the policy of the Demarc as a whole. Each Grand Council lasted for over a month, and got longer and longer as more and more planets were discovered and colonised.
But the Demarcator was not always kept aware of all the little details that went on under his rule, and after a hundred years of more, the canker of corruption began to fester.
Such government that the Demarc had was well suited to corruption. The Demarcator, as sole ruler, was not aware of everything that went on in the realm, and soon most planets were pretty much left to their own devices.
In the 134th year of the Demarc, the Midgard system was governed by a crime lord named Vursace Muric. He was ruthless and oppressed the people under his control, squeezing them for taxes to line his own coffers while his secret police, known as Enforcers, terrorised and subjugated the people. However in his dealings on Faraway, he kept his face very clean of any wrongdoing or misdeed.
For years this went on. The tal were forbidden from Midgard, and word about the peoples' suffering went unheard. Until the mrashans reappeared.
The mrashans finally emerged back onto the galactic scene, hiding from the ruthless oppression of the crelos and the khalroth. In truth they needn't have hidden, as the old alliance no longer had enough power to threaten them.
It was their misfortune that the first human colony they came across was Midgard. Instead of informing the Grand Council and the Demarcator of the mrashans, Governor Muric kept the knowledge secret, intending to exploit the mrashan presence in the same way he exploited his own people.
However, during the intervening time the mrashans had become expert infiltrators and spies, and they quickly learned about the human situation. They betrayed Muric to the Demarcator, who quickly declared the position of Governor vacant. However without actually dispatching a fleet to enforce his rule, there was no way to ensure that Muric was deposed. The news never made it to the oppressed people of Midgard because the news media was controlled in its entirety by the Governor.
What's more, Muric had friends on the Grand Council. When it emerged that the Demarcator was willing to back up his rule with military force, these Governors rallied against him. Some other Governors who had previously remained neutral, and ignorant of the true situation on Midgard, supported them.
In the end, it was the influence of the mrashans that finally unseated the Governor of Midgard, and in the nick of time. The Fleet of the Demarc had assembled against the rebellion, and it was about to erupt into all-out war. The mrashans began a quiet propaganda campaign amongst the population of Midgard, and encouraged them to defy the Enforcers and overthrow their Governor. For a while it seemed that all was going to go back to normal. The fleets were stood down once it emerged that Muric was a tyrant, and many of his previous supporters recanted and resigned their Governorships.
But in the end matters were only made worse. When it was revealed that the Demarcator no longer had sufficient control over the realm to prevent a tyrant from retracing Muric's footsteps, action was taken at the highest level.
The Demarcator was assassinated by a coalition of human realms who felt that he was too weak to effectively lead the Demarc.
This effectively split the realm into two factions. There was the Demarcator that was installed at Faraway by the rebels, and there was also the assassinated Demarcator's legal heir, who was at the time enjoying a tour of the leisure planet Tuxedo Junction. Loyalty was split right down the middle. Almost as many planets followed the Rebels as followed the Heir. Most of the military followed the Rebels, but the Heir was supported by a faction of the tal, who felt that he was the legal ruler of the Demarc.
The tal would not directly take part in the conflict, but they aided the Heir to develop a fleet of his own, and the Great Civil War began, which almost destroyed human civilisation more thoroughly than the khalroth had ever hoped to do.
The war spread throughout the Demarc, and it was vicious and bloody. Human fought human. Entire planets were decimated, and human civilisation stood on the brink of destruction.
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