History & Lore... in Song Form!

TL;DR: A big lore dump. Also, I sing (sorry) an Orion Skies version of Billy Joel's song "We Didn't Start the Fire".

    Life has been extra busy for me lately: my wife and I bought a home, which is tremendously exciting, but it's also time-consuming to move, make repairs, get services set up, repaint some rooms, unpack everything and decide where it all should go, buy additional furniture, etc etc...

   What that means is, I haven't had many open blocks of time to finish up the Tech Generator this month– however, I still have a rather long commute to and from work each day, and I usually spend it thinking about Orion Skies! This month, I've been thinking about worldbuilding & lore, and have actually made some great headway on that front. :)

   To celebrate this progress, I created an Orion Skies version of the history-laden rock song "We Didn't Start the Fire", describing the history behind OS's setting. Then I went ahead and recorded a karaoke-style version of this song, linked here -- though I will warn you in advance that my singing is *bad*: audio link

Lyrics Reference

• Lyrics are bold and underlined.
• Information about the lyrics' meaning is italicized.

Section 1 - Settling the Solar System

1. SpaceX, Rocket Lab: These two real-life companies are creating incredibly innovative new rockets and spacecraft, and opening up better access to space in a dramatic way. They're bringing us considerably closer to a sci-fi spacefaring future.
2. Mars is lookin’ pretty fab: There is a lot of impetus in real life to try to establish a self-sustaining colony on Mars in the 21st century; I suspect it may take longer than that to find success, but in Orion Skies I'm optimistically assuming that it will ultimately happen.
3. Shield tech: Two major limits on spacecraft and space activity are cosmic radiation, and engine heat dissipation. The shields in Orion Skies's setting not only protect a spacecraft from weaponry, but also act as radiation shielding and are capable of dissipating heat away from the spacecraft at a prodigious and controlled rate.
4. fusion ships, we can really go: Modern rocket engines are very limited in how fast they can move a ship, in comparison to the distances involved in flying around a solar system. If we are ever able to have fusion-based engine systems, it'll dramatically boost our ability to get around in space.
5. Lucrative enterprise, space-based corporations thrive / Astromines, factories: Space launch is already an incredibly lucrative industry, and I imagine that the opportunities for making profit will dramatically expand as access to the solar system improves over time.
6. homes on Callisto: Many of Jupiter's moons are actually quite large, nearly as large as rocky planets; if people find reasons and means to live there, they could be home to many many people.
7. Ice stations, Saturn rings: Saturn's rings are, in some ways, like a small ice-asteroid belt, and mining them would be similar to asteroid-mining.
8. system war’s a brand new thing / Governments lose their rights, megacorporations rise: In Orion Skies's history, as space corporations grow in wealth and power, they start to have more and more political influence over the trajectories of nations -- especially in space. Ultimately the competition around this escalates into the System War, which results in a treaty that further limits governmental rights in space and grants space corporations more power, paving the way for further dramatic growth.
9. Takahashi, Armstrong, Proxima Corp.: The big three megacorporations that arise in the aftermath of the System War.
10. ’s view is long / Builds a ship, invents a drive, dreaming of Centauri skies: Proxima Corp. was named after our nearest star, Proxima Centauri, and was founded with the explicit goal of developing interstellar travel and exploring whatever resources may be available in our nearest neighbor system. They spent an extraordinary effort to invent the Ark Drive, a faster-than-light ship drive that requires an enormous mass to create the necessary spacetime warping; ships using this drive are truly colossal, hence the name "ark ship".

Chorus

1. We didn’t start Orion: Just a lyrical tie-in to "We didn't start the fire". :)
2. There’s been plasma storming since the cloud was forming: Nebulae such as the Orion Nebula are clouds of plasma, the fourth phase of matter in addition to solids, liquids, and gasses. Plasma is often very misportrayed in science fiction. In real life, it shares many properties with gasses, but its electrons are disassociated with its atomic nuclei; amongst other things, this gives it complex electromagnetic behaviors. It also glows in pretty colors!
3. Ni mahali kali, lakini usijali: Orion Skies is focused on a future East African society, and Swahili is one of the main languages. This line translates to English as "It's a harsh place, but don't worry."

Section 2 - Settling Local Star Systems

1. Ark ships: Proxima Corp is ultimately successful in developing these colossal ships that use the ark drive-- humanity's first interstellar spacecraft.
2. Centauri, race to set up colonies: Proxima Corp. uses its first ark ships to explore Centauri; Takahashi and Armstrong, not wanting to be left behind, immediately set out to develop their own ark ships and a new space race begins, vying for access and control in the Centauri system.
3. Land grabs, skirmishes, private armed ships: There is no legal authority capable of enforcing order in Centauri, and conflict is rife.
4. Too crowded, branch out more: Competition for Centauri is so fierce, it soon becomes more optimal to seek profit-opportunities in other nearby star systems instead.
5. in Sirius mine a star’s core: The Sirius system has two stars; Sirius B is a white dwarf. White dwarves' interiors are comprised of electron degenerate matter, an exotic state of matter that is so crushed down by gravity that the empty space between atoms is lost and the atoms' electrons are the only force preventing them from all collapsing into each other. It is far denser than any substance on Earth or in our solar system, and in Orion Skies's universe, it is a very valuable resource.
6. Hyperdrives, all can fly, on local star trips: Electron degenerate matter, mined from Sirius B, is the key to creating hyperdrives, which work in all the ways we are familiar with from the Escape Velocity series. They are much smaller and less prohibitively expensive than ark drives, and open up interstellar access to the masses of ordinary independent people, who could not afford their own ark ships.
7. Barnard’s Star, Wolf 359, Lalande and Procyon shine: A mass settling event occurs in nearby star systems, including these four.
8. Takahashi and Armstrong struggling to get along / Opposition, competition, economic strangleholds: All three of the major megacorporations are in competition, but these two, having gotten a late interstellar start after Proxima Corp., have to compete particularly fiercely to try to keep up; their conflict with each other grows more and more belligerent over time until...
9. Who shot first? No-one knows; interstellar war unfolds!: The Interstellar War is a major conflict between forces aligned with Takahashi Inc. vs those aligned with Armstrong Ltd. It is a proving grounds for many interstellar-war tactics and technologies. Ultimately Armstrong Ltd. comes out on top and buys out a defeated Takahashi Inc. The combined company is better able to compete with Proxima Corp. than its two constituents could previously do independently.

Section 3 -  Reaching Out Farther

1. Better navs, travel far, ark ships visit distant stars: A major difference between hyperdrives vs ark drives is range. Hyperdrives inherently can only jump a few light-years at a time, whereas ark drives can theoretically jump much greater distances if a viable route can be plotted. Over time, as navigational technology improves, ark ships gain greater and greater effective jump range, and people begin to branch out far beyond our local stellar neighborhood.
2. East African survey, looking for a home away: The two galactic megacorporations (Armstrong Ltd. and Proxima Corp.) have firm control over nearby stars -- but with ark ship ranges increasing and so many new star systems becoming accessible, there's more room for myriad factions to find spaces for themselves out in the galaxy. An East African coalition is one such entity, and searches for an unclaimed settle-able world.
3. Orion, settle a, planet in the nebula / New home, here to stay: The East African Survey Corps finds a promising Earth-like planet on the edge of the Orion Nebula, and their government decides to settle it.
4. name it after Nyerere: Julius Nyerere was Tanzania's first president; he did a lot of nationbuilding work and is highly regarded for it. The East African coalition names their new world in Orion after him.
5. New program, TUMAINI, goal to prep for settling: A large project called TUMAINI ("HOPE") is created to support settling on Nyerere and other nearby worlds in the Orion Nebula. This is a massive program with numerous ships and tremendous resources.
6. Make maps: One of TUMAINI's major activities is exploring the nebula and making hyperspace maps to facilitate local travel.
7. terraform: Another major activity is terraforming -- primarily of Nyerere itself, but also to some degree of other nearby planets in the nebula. This process varies from world to world, but often starts with creating genetically-engineered bacteria and other microorganisms that can reproduce across the planet's surface, consuming toxic or unwanted materials and producing desired ones like oxygen, water, greenhouse gases on cold planets, etc.
8. eco-engineering swarms: Once the basic chemistry of a planet is balanced out, the next phase is "ecological engineering", introducing a stable and human-friendly biome of Earth species. Drone swarms that can do things like distribute seeds and monitor environments are very helpful in this sort of planet-wide, human-directed activity.
9. Research the plasma zone: The Orion Nebula is the first nebula to be explored in-person by humans, and one of TUMAINI's major directives is to learn about the nebula and its properties.
10. learn to navigate this home: The ambient plasma in the nebula obstructs sensors, disrupts hyperspace jump-links, and even introduces some aerodynamic drag on spacecraft; these make it much trickier to travel within the nebula than out in open space. TUMAINI does a lot of research and development work to make intra-nebula travel more viable.
11. Finally the rock’s reformed, come on down the climate’s warm: After time, Nyerere is ready to be settled; as that process begins, TUMAINI shifts the focus of its operations to other nearby worlds in the nebula.

Section 4 - The Great Evacuation

1. Hypermining tunnel’s wrong / matter falls, begins to throng: Mining the interior of a white dwarf star is done by creating a hypertunnel between the star's core and an external point where the outfalling matter can be collected; in the binary Sirius system, an incorrect hypertunnel forms that instead dumps matter from the main sequence star (Sirius A) onto the surface of the white dwarf (Sirius B). It's unkown if this was an act of sabotage, or an accident, or the result of an unknown emergent effect of this sort of hyperspace manipulation. In any case, it's very bad...
2. Sirius B boils over, suddenly a supernova!: If enough additional material accumulates on a white dwarf, it can grow hot enough for the carbon it is made of to achieve fusion; this causes the entire star to detonate in a supernova. Unfortunately, that happens to Sirius B. The supernova is powerful enough to destroy everything in the Sirius system, and to burn off all life in any nearby star systems -- including on Earth. The supernova's blast travels at the speed of light, giving people in other systems time to flee based on how many light-years away they are.
3. Great flight, evacuate / refugees from every state: Faster-than-light news of Sirius B's detonation provokes a mass evacuation from Earth and every other nearby settled world. Everyone must leave within the several-years' timeframe before the supernova blast arrives.
4. Ark ship rides to distant worlds: For the most part, people escape on ark ships, which are able to take them far away out of the supernova's danger zone.
5. chaos and disorder swirls: People are desperate to escape, no infrastructure is in place to coordinate such an evacuation, and many people do not have dedicated worlds to escape to. Oftentimes, seats on ark ships are only available to the highest bidder, or those who are able to take them by force. Meanwhile, opportunistic piracy increases dramatically, with so many vulnerable targets now available.
6. Corporate sponsors run it all: Almost all of the ark ships, and a majority of distant planets, are owned and operated by the two megacorporations -- Armstrong Ltd. and Proxima Corp. These two companies "sponsor" many of the evacuations...
7. keeping refugees in thrall, Overlords, taking more: ...in exchange for promises of long-term subservience and tribute on the new worlds, in a neo-feudal system. The politics of gaining influence over as many evacuation worlds as possible becomes a new arena of cutthroat competition between the two megacorporations, and tensions rise...
8. Second Interstellar War!: ...ultimately resulting in a new, massive interstellar war, waged across vast distances of interstellar space.

Section 5 - Second Interstellar War

1. Evac arks all sent to fight / carriers with range and might: The ark ships are ideal carrier craft for interstellar strike forces. Armstrong Ltd. and Proxima Corp. own most of the ark ships, and press most of them into service in this military capacity, ending their evacuation operations.
2. Armstrong and Proxima brawl / superpowers want it all: The war escalates into a "total war", each corporation seeking to end the other and gain a monopoly on power in the settled galaxy.
3. Nova’s blast hits Earth / destroyed: Eight and a half years after Sirius B goes supernova, the blast reaches our solar system, destroying all life there-- including on Earth, our birthplace.
4. war continues in the void / Battles raging on all sides: For Armstrong Ltd. and Proxima Corp., control of the new worlds is critical, and their vast war continues without pause even as Earth is burned out.
5. even in Orion skies: Armstrong Ltd. sends an invasion force to the Orion Nebula, seeking to establish control there.
6. TUMAINI dropped, need defense / fighting for independence: The Nyerere planetary government, now managing all governmental operations in the nebula, must suddenly abandon the TUMAINI project and pivot to military defense operations to survive the invasion. TUMAINI's sudden collapse leaves many planets partway terraformed, abandons many stations and partially-built complexes, and strands a lot of people in remote areas without support.
7. Aerofighters mass-produced / head off the attacking troops: Given the unique features of the nebula, with ambient plasma and limited sensor range, the Nyerere government had previously developed a basic aerodynamic space fighter; in the face of Armstrong Ltd.'s invasion, these "Orion Fighters" are mass-produced and former TUMAINI pilots take them to war.
8. Warships built for open space / fall to fighters in this place: Within the unique nebula environment, the locally-built Orion Fighters prove to be highly effective against the more traditional open-space warships sent by Armstrong Ltd. to invade; battle after battle goes in the Nyerere military's favor, shocking leaders on both sides.
9. Invaders driven out and gone: After an unexpectedly quick campaign by the Nyerere military, Armstrong Ltd.'s forces are driven back out of the nebula.
10. pick up the pieces, we move on: The peoples of the Orion Nebula maintain a defensive military force at the nebula's edge, while looking to re-establish travel and contact with remote settlements within the nebula. Over the years to come, the Nyerere government will have many tough decisions to make, including lines of negotiation initiated by Proxima Corp...