Two hundred years from now, a Republic will form. And Earth will be its center. For five centuries, the galaxy will be at peace (mostly) and, for the most part, successful. From the hallowed halls of Earth's great temples and shrines, the Great Republic will stretch out across the whole of the galaxy, and things will be good. Well, as good as anything is when humans are involved. Mostly, the galaxy is humanoid, or descended from the humans that we will send to its farthest reaches. Other species will grow and develop, but all of them owe something to the Earth at its center.

Then, overnight, the government disappears, removing itself to faraway Deklahn, a planet on the other side of the galaxy and strategically located so that no one could reach it undetected. The officials had grown afraid, and wanted more power for themselves. They wanted to change the galaxy to better fit their preferences, and believed that Deklahn would allow them the seclusion and the safety to do what they wanted. No longer did they trust the people. No longer did they believe themselves to be accountable to anyone. They began a series of conquests, horrible bloody affairs to the farthest reaches of space that nevertheless brought much wealth and much stability to their galaxy. And so the government changed, and was no longer a Republic.

The people of Earth, enraged by this move that they saw as cowardice and corruption, rose up against the new Empire. They gave everything they had, the great center of the one-time Republic, and carried the hopes of the galaxy with them (those that didn't support the Empire, in any case).

And they were crushed.

Deklahn left them in the care of Omega, their not-so-secret police, who turned the planet into a police state. Time froze on Earth, which saw no great advances from then on out, and for five-hundred more years, they lived under the thumb of a tyrannical agency keen on destroying whatever spirit Earthlings may have possessed. To them they sent the Surgeons, their master torturers, and the Dentists, their information extractors. And they sent the worst, too: the Doctors, whose horrific experiments have turned them into a lesson for any child. Misbehave and the Doctors will get you...

But Earth's spirit is not gone. It isn't even diminished. A rebellion is growing, and it is strengthening. And even if they are vastly out-armed, out-manned, and desperately alone in the universe, that will not stop them from trying.

Earth is rising once more, and they damn well mean to win this one.