Ruins of Iearth

Ruins of Iearth

Designations
Alternative names	Human homeworld

The Ruins of Iearth are the remains of the planet Iearth, the Human homeworld, which was destroyed in an overspace disaster in 3 BHT. Once the fifth planet in the Estrella System, humans colonized the nearby planet of Eirus in 762 BHT (or 2022 AD), marking the start of their expansion to other worlds and the era known as Human Expansion. Since its destruction, the ruins have created a gravity-centered asteroid field. The destruction of Iearth led to the Human Expansion spiraling in political turmoil and cultural upheaval, and directly led to the signing of the Human Admission Treaty. Every year since, marking the date of the disaster, human pilgrims travel to the asteroid field to pay respects to their fallen home-world.

Disaster

Overspace collision

A Human transport ship, the Orion's Spell, was traveling through overspace along a well-established overspace route when disaster struck. The ship's captain had just resumed control of the bridge from his first officer, when the navigator alerted her to an obstacle that had suddenly appeared in the middle of the overspace lane, with only seconds to impact. Unbeknownst to the starship's crew, the obstacle was an unregistered smuggler ship traversing an unregistered overspace route. Although the captain was startled, as the lane was well-traveled enough that such a thing should have been extraordinarily unlikely, he took control of the Orion's Spell and sought to pilot it out of way to avoid a collision. He nearly succeeded, but the ship tore itself apart in the maneuver. Parts of the Orion's Spell were propelled throughout overspace and eventually back into realspace as a result, causing widespread disruption.

Evacuation attempts

The Estrella star system came under particular threat from enormous numbers of overspace anomalies. The anomalies were first detected entering the system by a monitoring station on the outer reaches of the system. Confused as to what was happening, the station's crew sent out a system-wide alert, but were killed when their station was destroyed by debris ejected from overspace, preventing them from further explaining what they had observed.

The signal caused confusion throughout the Estrella system, as no one knew the reason for the alert. On Iearth's Governance Center, Director Irvroy Croscage and his advisors attempted to figure out what was happening. Eventually, the Overspace Advisory Ministry was able to pull together a map showing the debris and the havoc it was already causing in the system, which prompted Croscage to issue a system-wide evacuation order. The order caused panic, as there were not enough starships to evacuate the sixty billion-strong population of the system, and most people still did not know what was going on. Some residents of the system chose to ignore the order, assuming it was a hoax. Croscage and his government also sent out a distress signal, although they believed that no one from the other systems in the Human Expansion were close enough to offer aid in time.

Destruction of Iearth

Within minutes of the alert from the monitoring station, overspace debris slammed into Iearth at lightspeed. Multiple strikes into the planet's atmosphere ignited fires across the surface, and larger strikes into the crust broke through to the core, pushing a large portion of Iearth's mass into overspace, resulting in the catastrophic breakup of the planet. The incident resulted in the complete annihilation of Iearth and the death of all inhabitants on the surface.

Other destruction

Fragments of the Orion's Spell continued to exit overspace at seemingly random points, beginning a series of crisis. The danger was such that the Premier of the Galactic Union ordered an interdiction on overspace travel through large swathes of the Outer Band while a task force worked to contain the situation.

Entire civilizations were lost to the disaster. The Seranns system was affected by the disaster when lightspeed debris destroyed its moon, sending fragments onto Seranns itself.

Aftermath of the disaster

The destruction of Iearth sent shockwaves through the Human Expansion. The evisceration of the Expansion's central government, homeworld, and the sheer immediacy of the disaster created a cultural shift as Human beings throughout the galaxy suddenly found themselves without a physical homeworld. Politically, the Expansion stumbled and fractured as regional governors scrambled to retain order, and some tried to officiate their own vestiges of power.

The civil crisis that unfolded throughout the Human Expansion as a result of the disaster prompted immense outpouring of care from the Galactic Union. Massive humanitarian efforts were immediately launched by the Union to help affected systems and survivors of Iearth. Three years after the disaster, the Human Admission Treaty was signed, allowing the Human Expansion to become a protectorate of the Union in the year 0. In 800 AHT, the Human Expansion officially merged with the Union.