Dordonia was created as a research and development lab for the Union, a collective government of the nations of Earth, though separate and more effective than the United Nations using its authority. The Earth had started a war with the Alterans in 2527, after settling in a star system they claimed ownership of. Not knowing about this claim or the Alterans themselves, militarized Human colonists settled on a small Earthlike Moon in this system. The paranoid Alterans thinking it was the start of a push into their territory exterminated all the colonies on the moon with an oversized invasion fleet. The overkill the Alterans had used on the colonists enraged nearly everyone on Earth, putting them on a bad footing with the Alterans for their first encounter. After 3 more years of contact with no signs of improvement, a similar invasion fleet attacked a large ship taking a detour through the edges of Alteran territory, on board was the entire population of colonists including a major Union Senator who were fleeing a meteor strike on their colony. This was the last straw, and soon after the Earth had its first inter planetary war. By 2534 the war was going poorly and edges of Union space had dwindled. Despite this, the Union had acquired a lot of Alteran technology that was far superior to what humans had. Dordonia was planed originally as a set of 3 planetoids circling around the sun, they would help the Union by attempting to reverse engineer Alteran Technology. Dordonia was built on the far reaches of Union territory and was very discrete about it’s existence, unknown even to citizens of the Union. It was constructed around a red dwarf, extremely small compared to the Earth’s Sun, this made the star itself hard to spot and undesirable for other alien colonists because it had few habitable worlds making it unlikely to be stumbled upon accidently. Though the colony was meant to be an extension of the Union it was populated with scientists who were mostly forced to be there. Many feared that if the war could be won, the weapons they would be creating could do more harm than good and split the Union back into individual warring nations. Despite this, the three original Planetoids grew into 37. The Planetoids were built with Singularity technology. Difficult to imagine today, the Singularity is a point at which technology is advancing impossibly quickly. Individual atoms were like bricks and mortar, most the materials needed were found in the brown dwarfs circling the red dwarf. Construction of a single Planetoid took under a month, with all the wiring, plumbing, and life support all installed. Each planetoid by itself was able to sustain itself through small-scale hydroponics and live of solar energy, but as the Union wanted Dordonia to produce more and more, they needed materials at a faster rate and it was becoming harder and harder to transport them secretly so far away. It made sense for the planetoids themselves to become more and more self-sufficient.
In 2539, the war that had been going on for almost 20 years ended. Despite the massive advantages given to them by Dordonians the Union was unable to hold back the Alterans. Dordonia however had surpassed the Alteran technology in some areas and had been unwilling to part with some of the more potent technologies. Having a population almost entirely of scientists, the Dordonians were worried about how the Union military would handle these technologies in peacetime. Though they had handed over many new types of engines, weapons, and one notable scientist created a Human-Alien Hybrid, they were unwilling to part with their most advanced weapon. The Phase Shield takes matter out of phase with normal matter, uses a colossal amount of power to push every atom in an object towards a parallel universe, usually the next one down in the universal stack. This causes the object not only to become invisible, but intangible as well. Though this could be the greatest defense the Union could have mounted, the Dordonians were fiercely against it, if mishandled, it could create a rip in space-time, or displace large areas into another universe. Though it was the Dordonians’ fault that Earth was lost, costing billions of lives and losing the history of an entire species, it showed how large the divide between them and the Union had become. The Hybrids, who had been given similar technology to Dordonia and were meant to be kept under the thumb of the Union more than Dordonia was, ran, taking the entire moon of Io with them. Earth’s defenses failed on December 17th 2539, small Alteran ships slipped through, dropping warheads on Washington DC, London, Paris, and Beijing first, the rest of the world would follow in the next few hours. Dordonia watched as the Earth burned, the torch of humanity had just been dimmed down to something the size of a candle.
Dordonia is the “nation” and homeland that two of the main characters come from, and several other locations have a parallel version of it or something equivalent to it. The Nation of Dordonia from which Daniel and Red are from is made of 37 artificial planetoids, each approaching the size of New York City, however they maximize living space by instead of building laterally they build upwards. Think of it like this, any city will have large stretches of buildings several stories high, however a city such as New York cannot expand laterally any further, they’re nowhere else to build. However there are two other options, building up into the sky, or down into the ground. Like the major cites that existed in the time they were made, the living space of these planetoids take full advantage of space and build up extremely high with a wide base. These have upwards of 300 floors and are cities within a city, containing places for businesses, housing, and each planetoids specialized work to take place, such as Hydroponics, Engineering, as well as manufacturing of basic materials such as glass and metals.
Unlike all the films of the 20th and 21st century flying cars are impractical and are an extreme hazard to civilians and property. A drunk driver could cause unrepeatable damage to essential parts of any highly specialized equipment or kill dozens of people if they crashed into a housing area. Small quick ships do inter-Planetoid transport but they are restricted to docking bays at all times. People are transported from Planetoid to Planetoid and even between buildings via Gateways. Unoriginally named, Gateways are indistinguishable from regular doorways except that they link one area to another by pinching the space between them closer together. Doing this causes substantial heat and causes the edges to glow red-hot and thick casing is put around their edges for safety. Also they look nothing like doorways. Gateways to different parts of Dordonia are easily accessible, nearly every apartment, floor, or office has one and with a nearby kiosk any two gateways can be linked provided the person has clearance to go into that area.
Being a closed off community the Dordonians would have had a major problem with population if it were not regulated, if a generation had too few their gene pool would gradually shallow and too high would tax their food production system. After the first generation of scientists realized this after the Earth had been destroyed, they started a contingency plan. They had received a massive file containing every human being registered in the Union it had been used to simulate Alteran bio weapons on a virtual city called the World. Every detail had been accurate down to the inhabitant’s DNA and now that DNA would be repurposed. The Alterans reproduced through cloning; they had created machinery to create several sequences that were perfect for specific roles. For example they had one hundred different warrior clones, each was able to pass on its memories to the next clone if the brain was recovered. This meant the Alterans could have hundreds of commanders who lived through the same exact life and could flawlessly work as a single unit. The Dordonians however used this cloning for a different function. They used two desirable strands of DNA to create an embryo, as it would have been if it had been created between the two naturally. This embryo would grow into a baby that would be “born” and would be raised by a couple existing in Dordonia. Though the first few generations were rocky at best, by 2600 it was becoming “normal.”
These synthetic humans were also extensively modified to extend their ware in the artificial environment they were placed in. Their blood contained medical Nanites, nearly microscopic machines that could work seamlessly to correct problems in the body. They acted mostly as a faster alternative to the natural immune system, however they also were able to more complicated things such as quickening healing rates from broken bones, cuts, as well as destroying cancers and other disorders.
Though Dordonia had been founded under the Union’s command and had a Democratic Republic government, this quickly fell apart under the test of extreme isolation. The Dordonians had a system that had become the standard in nearly every civilized world in the 21st century. While it worked with the union it had worked well, but showed signs of weakness. Solar panel workers and workers who did more intensive labor were given less than those working on the highest level experiments. Though these high level workers were much more knowledgeable than the more labor-intensive workers they were not risking their lives sitting outside the Planetoid shell. Eventually this led to the first Dordonian Class War. Though the conflict was minor with only seven casualties among the most radical on each side, the conflict led to sweeping reforms in the government. Socialism and Communism had utterly failed on Earth because it highly alienated the upper class workers because there were places where they could be making more money and the only pressure put on them to do extremely hard work for less pay was that it was helping the homeland. However having a small community divided along class lines was just as ineffective. As the Class Wars concluded large scale improvements were made to the government. Autocratic governments allow fast quick decisions to be made but at the cost of liberty to its citizens. Dordonia would have a combination of two conflicting ideals, the electoral government remained, however with a short term equal to almost one year, meaning officials had to constantly produce results to remain in office. Each “Sanctuary” as the planetoids became known, had two Senators and a number of Congressmen dependant on the population similar to the United States system. However, it copied off of the Roman’s system of government, in a time of crisis the two major heads of the two political parties would together work for the benefit of the nation, with their decisions able to overturn any other order and bypass any part of their constitution if necessary. This however had a time limit, if in 6 months the problem wasn’t resolved an election would be held by the people to place a new duo in office. Before the Class War some senators had given themselves entire floors of buildings they were meant only to have a medium sized apartment. Though members in government had somewhat larger housing than everyone else as well as a few other perks, they were not as significant as they had been. Credits were distributed evenly and slowly as memory of the Union life faded, strong nationalism and xenophobia emerged. Rejection of the old world’s ideas came into practice; they were not hated, just held as an example. The Union was archaic and it had been foolish to attack the obviously superior Alterans out of anger, even if it was the noble thing to do. They were proud of who they were, the last of humanity, the best of humanity, some even went as far as to say it was some kind of divine test, that their destiny was to someday recreate the human race better than it had been. This attitude remained from 2650 to 2781. In 2781 they met a civilization of almost equal power and ambition. The Hybrids had found Dordonia.
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