Fermi's Universe

    This is my efforts to create a replacement for FFE's 3I setting. I hope to create something that is uniquely mine while still allowing the use of Classic Traveller adventures and other support material. I am calling it Fermi's Universe as I don't plan on setting out any alien interstellar empires like those in the OTU. There is no doubt in my mind that those are the creation of FFE (or at least owned by them) and to use them would be ungrateful at best.
   
Long ago an unknown entity spread humanity throughout this region of space. This was far enough in the past that even now the best that science can give is an estimate of time with a window of 1000 years plus or minus from 30,000. Not every world had man introduced at the same time or even at all but there has been evidence found on at least 3400 worlds of a supervised human habitation established from 30,000 to 25,000 years ago. Then a series of violent events occurred between 25,000 and 20,000 years ago that completely devastated those who had been ruling over the stars at that time. Debate rages as to what could completely wipe out all higher technological civilizations and leave any kind of survivors. The general consensus has settled on the Precursors, or in popular terminology Forerunners, battling each other into oblivion leaving their human pets/slaves to inherit what was left. Over the intervening thousands of years the various human worlds progressed back toward the stars although this progress was uneven. Evidence suggests that there where numerous different Forerunner races as the surviving ruins and artifacts seem to varied to have come from one race however there is one common artifact on all colony worlds. Near every one of the ancient cradles of human civilization is a black obelisk or tower, 20 meters on a side and 75 meters high. So far even the brightest scientists and most advanced technology can not determine what they are made of or what their function is. Two things about them are known however, any human approaching within 10 meters is compelled to place their bare hand on it if they have not touched that particular one before and in some cases patterns appear on the obelisk when touched by certain individuals. What characteristics cause the obelisks to activate for some people has so far eluded science even though it is perhaps the most widely studied field in biology.

Mostly the patterns make no sense but in other cases the contain the basics of physical sciences. Each person always cause the same pattern to appear even on different obelisks and it was almost universal that those individuals where accorded a special significance and became known as nobles. The colony worlds with nobles that provided the most useful and or complete knowledge of science gained the largest technological edge and returned to the stars before those worlds with a more limited bootstrap. Five worlds gained the knowledge of starflight and came to dominate the region. Two grew as imperial powers and were the first to encounter each other and in the ensuing war the Patriarchy of Domicile conquered the Kingdom of Kent and settled into a period of retrenchment to consolidate it's territory and integrate the two peoples as one. The Enlightened Order progressed in a methodical fashion investigating it's neighbors using gifted psionicists to evaluate them and then formulating a strategy to bring them into it's sphere of influence. 600 years ago the Patriarchy and Enlightenment finally encountered each other and the method of the Enlightenment's growth provoked an intense and paranoid backlash against espers. Elsewhere a particularly despotic group gave rise to Inheritors who espoused autocratic rule based on the nobility granted by the Obelisks. After several centuries of expansion and staggering cruelty the general population of it's worlds had had enough and overthrew and slaughtered all humans the obelisks responded to calling themselves the Real Men. They do not conquer other worlds but have expanded to uninhabited ones. Contact with the Enlightenment and Patriarchy was established some 300 years ago. The are quite paranoid toward societies that grant authority to those the Obelisks respond to. The final group is the Republic which only grants full citizenship to nobles. However the beta citizens have every right except a voice in the affairs of the government.  The Republic contacted the Real Men 400 years ago which resulted in a war as expected however it accomplished little and after 20 years a peace was settled on. The Republic and the Enlightenment opened relations some 200 years ago and the Patriarchy and Republic exchanged their first ambassadors some 100 years ago.