Editing TNE:GreatExpedition (section)

==== Potted History ====
The third Terran Commonwealth collapsed into regional infighting approximiatey 450 years ago. Out of this arose a more feudal system, the Imperial States – a reversion to the most primitive power structure on a stellar scale. While there were variants and splinter empires, the core of the Trailing Cluster became integrated into the greater Imperium in the mid-late 800s. 

Three centuries of Imperial expansion followed, resulting in an odd, codified noble class that pervaded all interstellar movement. This was the classic "Imperial" phase, with precise and lengthy qualifications for Imperial standard coding in all aspects of interstellar life.

By the 1100s the system was collapsing from within. When the Emperor died without issue in a tense political climate, the existing slow cold war declined into civil rebellion, with no clear candidate for the Imperial throne.

It was 25 years into this slow conflict when the Others came.

Humaniti had encountered many intelligent races already. The Vargr, Orca, and Delphines had all been uplifted from original Terran species, though someone else had done the work on the Vargr. Same with the Aslan, though it's hard to get them to admit it. Of true aliens, there were the Droyne, Bwaps, Oost Urda, and half a dozen other sentients. 

The Others were different. They were cybernetic life, switching and changing their bodies as we switch and change clothes or vehicles. Their technology was as alien as their approach. They ''processed'' the worlds they captured, adapting them on a worldwide scale to obscure and odd purposes. They incorporated Imperial technologies into their own, changed their approaches, modified their forms… 

On top of civil war, the Terran sphere now struggled to meet an entirely new menace. Worlds and fleets died, desperate measures were taken, old knowledge unearthed, black ops research dug up. When the last grand fleet met the Others' massive push into the Core systems, they released a viral code through their own data streams, knowing the Others would intercept it. The virus was designed to destroy their ability to collectively communicate; in theory, this complete isolation would cause the individual "units" of the others to suicide. 

This code was intercepted at the same time that the Others transmitted something new of their own: an AI adapted to Imperial computer technology, designed to infiltrate and alter Imperial systems to give itself life within them. These two systems met on the battlefield and created a synergistic loop. Within a year, the effects had completely destroyed the Others and devastated Imperial civilization.