- Introduction to Terra Nova 

The story begins in A.D. 6132 on a distant planet called Terra Nova, a world
colonized by Earth during the 52nd century by Terrans from Earth. Terra Nova
is one of the nine inhabitable planets discovered by Mankind during its
dynamic renaissance after a terrible ice age. While the new world resembles
Earth in many respects, it features indigenous life forms (of no more than
animal intelligence) that represent an all-too-real threat to the unprepared
colonist. Still, much of the Terranovan flora and fauna are edible and make
survival of the human race in this inhospitable world possible. After so many
centuries on this world, part of Mankind has indeed found a new home.

Despite its similarities to Earth, the former colony has a very different
calendar. Days last 36 hours, not 24, and a complete year (called a "cycle" on
Terra Nova) is around 168 days. One Terran year is equal to roughly 1.4 cycles.
Tougher living conditions have slightly shortened the average Terranovan
lifespan and forced people to mature much faster than on Earth. The term
teenager, while referring to someone younger on Terra Nova than on Earth, is
still someone between 12 and 18, but in cycles rather than in years. An young
adult is still someone between 20 and 30. An elderly person is still someone
above 70. 

 - Leagues of Terra Nova 

Terra Nova is also far more arid than Earth. There are no continents; most of
the water is hidden in a series of underground tunnels called the MacAllen
Network. The planet is divided into three regions: the mountainous and
temperate northern hemisphere, the luxuriant and tropical southern hemisphere;
and the Badlands, which stretch out as a thick desert band about 1000
kilometers north and south of the equator.  The city-states from the North
have united into three leagues (the Northern Lights Confederacy, the United
Mercantile Federation and the Western Frontier Protectorate), which together
compose the Confederated Northern City-States (CNCS). The Southern city-states
form four leagues (the Southern Republic, the Mekong Dominion, the Eastern Sun
Emirates and the Humanist Alliance) united under the flag of the Allied
Southern Territories (AST). The CNCS and the AST have radical cultural and
political differences which often put them at different ends of the spectrum.
Conflicts between North and South are frequent.

 - The Badlands

The Badlands, unlike the polar confederations, are fractious, and form no
political entities to speak of.  Only one city-state in the Badlands is truly
respected by the polar confederation for its power and prestige: Peace River, a
city built around Paxton Arms, the planet's most important weapons
manufacturer. Paxton Arms remains neutral in the North-South conflicts,
providing weapons and equipment to everyone indiscriminately. Almost on the
other side of the planet, around the equator, a new coalition (NuCoal) of
small city-states has recently been formed around Port Arthur and Prince Gable,
the seat of the NuCoal Council of Trade. While NuCoal does not have a military
component, the Arthurian Korps ensures that it comes to no harm and that its
territory is respected by the polar confederations. Both Paxton Arms and the
NuCoal are forces to be reckoned with, and while they have no formal alliance,
political experts have advanced that they would likely coordinate a defense
effort for the Badlands in the event of an interpolar war.

There are several other city-states in the Badlands, most of which serve as
refuge for renegade soldiers or simple civilians fleeing the constraints of
life in the hemispheres. Notorious among those cities, Khayr ad-Din - often
referred to as the "Trash City" because it was built in the middle of a trash
dumping area in the Badlands - has become the city where ex-Gear pilots go to
become Duelists in the arenas. The rest of the Badlands is either populated by
nomad bands of traders, by bandits known as rovers, by hard-boiled
homesteaders, or by the mysterious Sand Riders, who live in the acidic sands
of the Great White Desert.

 - The War of the Alliance

In TN 1454 (A.D. 5790), an Earth-first government pulled back all its
resources from the various colonies, leaving them to fend for themselves. In
TN 1913 (A.D. 6118), it returned in force with the Colonial Expeditionary
Force, strong with 400,000 highly trained men and supersoldiers (the GRELs),
with the intent of reconquering those colonies. The CEF expected little
resistance, having assumed that Terra Nova would have been devastated by the
departure of Earth many centuries ago. It never expected a planet with a
strong technological civilization, and it certainly did not expect to
encounter Gears, the characteristic humanoid combat units of Terra Nova. In TN
1917, after four cycles of warfare, the CEF retreated to another colony world,
defeated. Thus ended the War of the Alliance, so named because it allied North
and South against the invaders.

After fifteen cycles of détente following the war, the power brokers of Terra
Nova are restless once again. The ever-present border wars between the two
superpowers are escalating at an alarming rate.  Politicians and generals are
feeding the public inflammatory rhetoric. Rumors of hidden nuclear arsenals
being mobilized are spreading like wildfire. The inhabitants of the planet hold
their breath as the two political juggernauts lock horns with each other once
again.

 - What Has Come Before...

Terra Nova's past is our future, a long tale of Humanity's quest to find a
home in the stars. This quest began when the home world seemed to do its best
to eliminate humans from its face. Around A.D. 2400, six thousand years of
civilization were about to be swallowed by a blanket of ice descending toward
the equator. After a frantic (and fruitless) race to counter the coming Ice
Age through technological solutions, and after several near-miss ecological
disasters, everyone on the planet realized the fight was pointless and moved
toward the warmer climates of the equatorial countries to wait out the new Ice
Age.

Cultures were born and died during the rush toward the equator and old racial
differences were largely broken down by global mixing. Millions died in the
Emigration Wars, as overburdened equatorial countries did their best to keep
refugee convoys from entering their borders, and still the ice continued to
creep forward. Brutal warlords sprung up with frightening regularity, but this
period also saw some great social experiments. The socialist utopia of Greater
Samarkand stood as the pearl of Earth until it collapsed under its own weight. 

Great technological advances were made, especially in the field of genetic
engineering, resulting in the design of the fabled Prime Knight warriors in
Kir Arya, a small country nested between warring giants.  That success,
however, was short lived and Prime Knights were killed to the last during the
24th Crusade that also destroyed the fledging Kir Aryan society. Ultimately
the population of Earth could only wait, one generation after the other, for
the ice to retreat. It finally did in the 44th century, and brought a new
hope with it.

 - A New Age of Discovery

In A.D. 4318, Professor Markus Tannhauser wrote his masterpiece, "Principia
Universalis." His Unified Theory explained time-space discontinuities and
their potential as gateways to the stars. Suddenly, this opened a wealth of
new possibilities. As the Ice Age came to an end, a Second Renaissance on
Earth marked the beginning of Humanity's return to space. A few centuries
later, an exploration ship discovered Caprice, an Earth-like planet that
could (barely) support human life. Almost a century later, Terra Nova was
discovered and a colonization effort began soon after.

The first colonists were sent by corporations and worked for the duration of
their contract before returning home. Over time, however, many among them were
enthralled by the beauty of this new world and chose not to leave Terra Nova
when their contracts expired. They instead settled down on a piece of land,
sometimes given resources by the corporation that hired them to help them out.
After two centuries, many corporations put together support programs to help
the new colonists get organized - it was advantageous for them since they had
become "locals" and were no longer eligible for the outrageous wages paid to
imported labor. An increasing number of workers built their homes all over
Terra Nova, and over the course of the following centuries, the planet became
one of the more successful colonies established by Earth.

 - The Colonization Effort

While the corporations contributed a fair share to the colonization effort, it
was the Earth government itself that absorbed the lion's share of the expense.
After centuries of investments, Earth's population was split on the topic of
colonization. Some believed that investing in the colonies was a smart move in
the long run, since the colonies would some day repay Earth tenfold for its
initial investment. Others felt that the colonies would never show any
gratitude and claim their independence as soon as they were self-sufficient. In
the end, Earth leaned towards that second option and decided to abandon all the
colonies. By the end of the 58th century, the home world had pulled all its
ships and resources away from the colonies and left them to fend for
themselves. Thus began what would be called the Age of Isolation.

The period that immediately followed Earth's departure became known as the
Reconstruction. The remaining Terranovans scrounged through what Earth had
left behind to find the resources to survive and rebuild some semblance of
society. The resources being limited, several brutal confrontations erupted
over territories and scavenging sites. In the midst of this chaos, Yuri
Gropius rose and fought to unite several neighboring towns into one city-state.
By late TN 1479, Gropius was elected mayor of the city-state which was to
later bear his name. In TN 1482, he spearheaded the effort to unite several
neighboring city-states into the first Terranovan league, the Humanist
Alliance.

During those times, elsewhere in the Badlands desert, a pacifist named Mamoud
Khodaverdi rose and laid the foundations of what would later become
Revisionism, the most important religion on Terra Nova.  In his later years, he
moved to Massada with his trusted companion, Nathani Reiss. After Mamoud's
death, his son Jakob and Nathani disagreed on the principles behind
Revisionism. Jakob remained in Massada to continue his father's work while
Nathani moved to Sorrento in the North and founded his own branch of
Revisionism. The schism between both branches remains to this day.

 - Age of Alliances

Some forty cycles after the foundation of the Humanist Alliance, several
northern city-states followed suit and formed the Northern Lights Confederacy
(TN 1525). Almost on cue, several more alliances were formed in the following
cycles: in the north, the Western Frontier Protectorate (TN 1527) and the
United Mercantile Federation (TN 1551); and in the south, other leagues were
forming: the Southern Republic (TN 1545), the Mekong Dominion (TN 1562) and the
Eastern Sun Emirates (TN 1492). On the interstellar scale, limited contact was
maintained with the other colonies. Unfortunately, each colony had its own
problems and was largely unable to help its neighbors. Over time, most
Terranovans began to ignore the other colonies' existence in their day-to-day
lives.

In the South, in view of the Southern Republic's recent expansionist history,
the Mekong Dominion signed an alliance with its neighbor to avoid unnecessary
(and unprofitable) bloodshed. The Southern Republic, its western borders
secure, unleashed its armies onto the Humanist Alliance and the Eastern Sun
Emirates.  In TN 1681, the Allied Southern Territories - mostly a facade
confederation controlled by the Southern Republic - united the hemisphere.

In the North, unity came more slowly. In TN 1669, the NLC and the WFP attempted
to invade Pioneer (in the UMF), only to be repelled by a regular military
force complemented by makeshift combat walker units built from construction
vehicles. The UMF victory demonstrated the validity of combat walkers and led
to the design and production of the first Gear, the Hunter, in TN 1678. The
expansionism of the South and its sudden unification became a great concern for
the northern leagues. In the NLC, discussions began about the unification of
the northern hemisphere, but the United Mercantile Federation resisted the
idea. When the UMF lost its Merchant War to the AST in TN 1688, unification
finally became a possibility; it became a fact in TN 1692 with the foundation
of the Confederated Northern City-States.

 - St. Vincent's War

A cold war began between the polar confederations soon after the formation of
the CNCS. While there was no outright conflict, both Northern and Southern
forces clashed on a regular basis in the Badlands, fighting over resources,
territory and allegiance. Caught in the middle with no military power to
protect themselves, Badlanders were the helpless victims of the two giant
superpowers. Tensions grew between North, South and the Badlands, and the stage
was set for the first interpolar conflict, St. Vincent's War.  While fighting
over the wreckage of a pharmaceutical cargo ship (the St. Vincent), Northern
and Southern forces unwittingly released a virus into the atmosphere which
caused the St. Vincent's Plague and killed 5% of the children on Terra Nova.
The resulting conflict lasted six cycles before the economies of both
confederacies collapsed and an uneasy peace was restored. With their economies
at an all-time low, all borders were closed while the confederations attempted
to rebuild their resources.

More than helping the development of Gears and warfare in general on Terra
Nova, the St. Vincent's War also cemented the polar confederacies and
strengthened their respective patriotic sentiments. A sense of national
identity emerged and contributed to the embitterment which has since then
plagued North-South relations.

 - The War of the Alliance

The 18th and 19th centuries were mostly a period of cold war that gave some
measure of peace to the Badlanders. There were several bloody skirmishes both
internal and external to the polar confederacies, but in comparison to the St.
Vincent's War, it had very little effect on the Badlands themselves. New
rivalries emerged, however, and several factions working on either side were
about to sell out their own.  The stage was set for a new interpolar war.

In TN 1913, Earth resurfaced after centuries of silence. When 400,000 soldiers
and GREL supersoldiers were dropped on the surface of Terra Nova, the former
colony realized that Earth had come to reestablish its hold on the planet. In
a historic move, both polar confederations put their quarrels aside and joined
forces to repel the Colonial Expeditionary Force (CEF). This union between
North and South gave the conflict its name: the War of the Alliance. After four
cycles of intense warfare and destruction, the intervention of Paxton Arms -
which had remained neutral in the conflict - turned the tide in favor of the
Terranovans with its Peace River Army and sent the invaders back to Caprice,
where they had a base of operations. The cooperation between North and South
helped forge some friendships between high officials. Despite their cooperation
during the War of the Alliance, however, old rivalries resurfaced and the
interpolar relationship cooled down once more.

In the Badlands, Paxton Arms established the Paxton Protectorate, a "safe zone"
where Peace River's new Defense Force would protect residents from bandits and
marauding polar armies. While the AST and CNCS largely respected these new
boundaries during the early cycles of detente, it is now more theory than fact.
Paxton Arms does not have the resources to forcefully maintain this zone and
Northern and Southern forces no longer hesitate to take up "strategic
positions" in the region. Nonetheless, many in Peace River feel it is Paxton's
responsibility to protect the whole of the Badlands.