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And here it is, my hundredth scenario. Naturally, I have decided to make my hundredth scenario a crossover of my three big timelines in the ASB forum of AH.com.
It is the 31st century, and the galaxy is at war. The nations of man fight aliens, heretics and, most often, one another. Terrible weapons, mundane and preternatural, are used with reckless abandon against soldier and civilian alike. Millions die every day in the battlefields of the Milky Way, as they have for three centuries. The struggle for dominance will not end until one victor emerges, and with the titanic resources available to the warring powers, such a victory is far from sight for all of the players. Twas ever thus, and ever thus shall be.
Long ago, the galaxy was a peaceful place. Few species advanced far enough to become interstellar societies, as in their technological advance they inevitably gained the attention of forces beyond the ken of any mortal mind. There were ancient alien civilizations, to be sure, and some even managed to dominate the Milky Way. But they always fell, for one reason or another, and for most of its history the Milky Way was a cold, empty place.
The Sol System changed that. The centrality of the Sol System to galactic history is truly amazing, as it produced not one, but two spacefaring civilizations that came to dominate the galaxy: the humans and the sarmaks. The sarmaks were the older species, inheriting the technological advances of the w'lkar before them. But they lived on a dying planet, ravaged by millennia of industry and solar radiation. And so the sarmaks sought a new home for themselves, and they found one on their more primitive neighbor: Earth.
The sarmak invasion occurred during the middle of the Earth's 19th century. Two great civil wars raged on opposite sides of the planet, while the powerful nations of Europe enjoyed a precarious peace. The sarmak invasion quickly united the peoples of Earth under the banner of global resistance, as they needed to set aside their differences in order to triumph over their technologically superior foe. Fighting on Earth raged from 1861 to 1866, when the sarmaks and the humans finally entered a tentative peace agreement whereby the sarmaks could retain their gains at the time of ceasefire and recognized humanity's claim to the rest of Earth.
The sarmak invasion advanced humanity's knowledge of the universe around them. Not only was there proof that they were not alone, but the sarmaks also brought with them many wonderful and terrible technologies that the humans sought to replicate at all costs. The heat-ray, the aetheric reactor, the analytical engine, the cavorite engine and the mass driver transformed human society. The Industrial Revolution was kicked into overdrive, and both men and nations became extremely rich. By the 1900s, humanity had almost matched the more conservative sarmaks in technological prowess, laying claim to Luna in 1903. Meanwhile, the sarmaks were content with their territorial gains and stagnated on Earth has they did on Mars.
With the sarmak threat declining, humanity returned to their old ways of bickering amongst themselves. The Concord of Mankind, established to unite humanity's defense, broke down as the great powers attempted to use it to further their own conflicting interests. Instead, two alliances emerged among the European great powers: the Entente of Britain, France and Russia, and the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy and the Ottoman Empire. The other great powers of the world, the United States, Confederate State, Japan and China, stayed out of the conflict, though they did favor one side or the other. Most surprisingly, the Sarmak Empire made an agreement with the Central Powers to seize Entente colonial holdings.
War broke out in 1913, after some damn fool thing in the Balkans kicked Europe's alliance system online. The sarmaks sent an expeditionary force to assist their German allies, as the British did to the French. In the West, the war became a trench war, with occasional breakthroughs by tripods and land ironclads. In the East, the war was more mobile, although the Germans and sarmaks utterly annihilated the Russian military. The Russians surrendered to the Central Powers in 1917, after a series of revolutions forced the Tsar to abdicate, and shortly after the provisional Russian government fell to the Bolsheviks. The Central Powers seemed triumphant, before the Entente unleashed an engineered plague among their sarmak allies that killed the sarmak leadership on Mars and, in parallel to the Russian situation, sparked a Salvatonist revolution there. Germany's earthly allies also broke down into ethnic strife as their governments buckled from the stresses of the war. After several American spacecraft, delivering supplies to the Entente, were shot down by German mass drivers, the Americans entered the war on the Entente's side. This influx of American manpower gave the Entente the edge it needed to triumph over Germany, and by 1919 the Great War was over.
The post-war peace was far from satisfactory. The Treaty of Versailles was harsh enough for the Germans to desire revenge, and not harsh enough to keep the Germans from seeking it. When the global economy collapsed in the 1930s, Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party found fertile ground in post-war Germany, and the Nazis seized power in 1934. To the east, the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin grew after a series of short wars with the Chinese and the Finns. Japan continued its rampant expansion throughout Asia, seizing the newly independent Sarmak colonies. All of the nations of Earth expanded through the stars, placing more colonies on Luna and Venus in a frantic race against one another. The Sarmak Empire fled to the outer reaches of the Sol System, while the Salvationist Republic of Malacandra tightened its iron grip on the Red Planet. By the 1940s, humanity found itself in a multi-polar competition with itself, leading to major leaps in militarization and scientific advancement.
It is in the latter that both man and Martian made terrible discoveries. What is now known as the preternatural, a set of sciences inconsistent with both the general theories on scientific law and with one another, emerged. Eldritch texts were found on both Earth and Mars, and further study revealed their secrets. Gastplasm, the energy that powers all life, was discovered and harnessed through the rediscovery of runes, complex mathematical equations powered by gastplasm that can manipulate the rules of the universe itself. More research was made into the myths of Earth and Mars, and many terrible discoveries were made. The governments of Earth and Mars took interest, and naturally used this new knowledge to bolster their arsenals.
The Second World War began with the joint German-Soviet invasion of Poland and the Japanese invasion of the Taiping Heavenly Republic. Soon enough, Europe fell to German dominance, before the Germans turned on the Soviets, while the Japanese rampaged through Asia. They were opposed by the Allies of the United States, Confederate States, United Kingdom and the Soviet Union. While the Martians stayed out of the war, the Second World War became a war across the worlds. Conventional fighting raged on until 1944, when the desperate German government used the world's first despoiler bomb on the city of Kursk. The city was annihilated, but the Soviets responded by using a despoiler bomb of their own in Königsberg. A few more despoiler bombs were thrown between the two sides, until both the Wehrmacht and the Red Army were pushed from the desolate area between them by an army of their own preternaturally twisted dead. Incursions into this despoiled zone revealed an area of warped reality, where the worst nightmares of man ruled. For fear of destroying the world, the warring sides called a truce, and so the world settled into the Long War.
The Long War would keep the Solar System at relative peace, as rival powers were too fearful of mutual annihilation to escalate conflicts any further than a proxy war. The Preternatural Containment and Regulation Association, or PCRA, was founded to fight the preternatural on behalf of all mankind, but it quickly became just another political actor. The Long War gave both mankind and the Martians a chance to expand through the stars. The invention of the Alkaev Drive, the first faster-than-light drive, in the 2040s gave humanity a head start in interstellar colonization, but their Martian rivals were not far behind. The galaxy was quickly colonized, and the nations of the Sol System built massive space fleets to defend their interests throughout the stars. Wars were even fought with extrasolar aliens (termed "xenos"), though they were primitive and easily fell to the Solar powers.
The peace of the Long War would end in 2239, when the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom collapsed into civil war and brought the Soviet Union and Japan into full-scale war. This quickly dragged in the other nations of Sol, and soon enough weapons of mass destruction were fired throughout the Solar System and the Old Colonies. The use of advanced, extremely destructive preternatural weapons turned both Earth and Mars into despoiled hells, a situation that became even worse when a "nova bomb" was thrown into Sol itself. The bomb turned the entire star into one large rift in space-time, allowing all manner of eldritch abominations to cross over into the material universe from it. Earth and Mars were quickly lost to the madness of a hellish dimension, and the Solar Anomaly was born.
But men and Martian rebuilt. Many governments fled to their outer colonies, which were untouched by the Collapse. The old United States was torn down, replaced with a short-lived empire and then finally by the Coalition of Western Republics. The French government was overthrown by a communist revolution and replaced with the Conseil of Workers' Systems, and the newer Soviet colonies seceded and formed the United Technocracies of Man. The Collapse brought a temporary end to the old rivalries, as all sides were exhausted from fighting and didn't want to destroy all civilization in the galaxy. And so the galactic powers turned inward, rebuilding and expanding. Naturally, this peace would not last. By the 26th century, the old rivalries had reemerged and the powers of the galaxy were ready for war. By the 28th century, the Galactic War began, and the three great alliances of the Milky Way have been fighting ever since.
Of the three sides, the Springfield Pact is the most powerful. An alliance of nationalist, human supremacist dictatorships, the Springfield Pact is led by the Coalition of Western Republics. Consciously modeling itself off the ancient Roman Empire and the old Nazi Germany, the Coalition is an autocratic one-party dictatorship that seeks to ensure American dominance throughout the stars. The definition of "American" is not a racial one, but cultural, and so the Coalition spends a lot of effort "Americanizing" conquered peoples, no matter what. The Coalition, unlike its allies, is not absolutely xenophobic, and is willing to accept "subservient species" into its fold. Their allies, the British, have a different view. Historically the target of Sarmak invasions, the British are devoted to the extermination of all non-human sapients. Although historically a democracy, the Humanist Party took control of the British government after the Collapse and has been ruling it with an iron fist ever since. And then there is the German Reich. Under the rule of the Nazi Party since the 1940s, Germany's autocracy has waxed and waned throughout the centuries, but by the time of the Galactic War the Führers of Germany had as much power as they did during the beginning of the Third Reich. The Germans are the vanguard of the Springfield Pact's invasion of the communist bloc, a role they take much pride in.
The second most powerful side is the Communist International, an organization that seeks to spread the red revolution throughout the entire galaxy. The communists are officially led by the Soviet Union, which presents itself as just a century away from true communism (and has done so for the past five centuries). Over the years, the Soviet system has come to resemble its Tsarist predecessor in many ways: a massive, backwards autocracy. However, they don't have an actual monarchy. This is not true for their allies, the Conseil Systems. Under the "People's Dynasty," the family of Dijon, the Conseil Systems has taken the Soviet model to an illogical extreme. The Conseil's propaganda portrays the ruling family as gods, sent by the prophet Marx to lead all sapients to the blessings of communist utopia. The Salvationist Republic of Malacandra, the third major communist power, is very similar, although their theology is a mix Christianity, communism and the old religions of Mars. Although aligned with humans, the Salvationists officially believe that humans are incapable of true communism, and so do not give humans citizenship within the republic. The "prophets" that rule the Salvationist Republic are naturally seen as figures blessed by the Maleldil, the one true god, and thus are incapable of error.
The third major faction is the Tripartite Pact, an alliance of convenience if there ever was one. Each of the Tripartite Pact's members make no secret of their dislike for one another, and instead define their alliance as an opposition to the other two blocs. There is no leader of the Tripartite Pact, but the Sarmak Empire is definitely the most powerful. Centuries of propaganda have made the Sarmaks determined to regain their past glories and take vengeance on their foes, particularly the Salvationists and the human race in general. The old monarchy of Mars persists in New Barsoom, and unlike its moribund past incarnation it has learned the lessons of totalitarianism and applies them with terrifying efficiency. The Japanese are the second most powerful Tripartite power, and their primary goal is to weaken Coalition power in order to dominate their sector of the galaxy. The Imperial family was lost during the Collapse, but this has not stopped the Japanese from revering them as gods; indeed, the Collapse is seen as their ascent into the heavens. The Japanese military rules the country, as it has for centuries, and relies on fanaticism and strong anti-Western sentiment to keep its power. This has not stopped the Japanese from being allies with the Confederate States. A more traditional military junta masquerading as a democracy, the Confederates want revenge against the damnyankees for destroying most of their colonies during the Collapse. They also perceive the Coalition to be a group of race traitors that have diluted Americanism by allowing anyone to participate in it.
The enigmatic United Technocracies has not joined the Galactic War, and generally stays away from galactic affairs. Ruled by an organization only calling itself "The Party," not much is known about the United Technocracies because it almost never communicates with the greater galaxy. What is known is that the United Technocracies is one of the most total dictatorships in the galaxy, as every citizen is monitored heavily, even members of the Party itself. The Technocracies' military capabilities are generally unknown, and the three sides fear a Technocracies entering the war on their rival's side.
The PCRA has survived the Collapse, but by the 31st century it is barely worth talking about. The PCRA is built on cooperation between the human powers, and since the human powers have spent the past three centuries at war with one another, it has all but disappeared. A handful of dedicated staff fight the good fight against the preternatural and the various cults that infest the galaxy, but most of these responsibilities have been delegated to national organizations. Most of the PCRA is dedicated to watching the various anomalies throughout the galaxy and ensuring that a theopotent entity doesn't emerge from it to destroy all life in the galaxy or something similarly terrible. However, a sense of defeatism permeates the entire organization, as if such a threat were to emerge, the galactic powers are more concerned about their wars. Any existential threat is likely to go ignored until it's too late.
---
It is the 31st century, and the galaxy is at war. The nations of man fight aliens, heretics and, most often, one another. Terrible weapons, mundane and preternatural, are used with reckless abandon against soldier and civilian alike. Millions die every day in the battlefields of the Milky Way, as they have for three centuries. The struggle for dominance will not end until one victor emerges, and with the titanic resources available to the warring powers, such a victory is far from sight for all of the players. Twas ever thus, and ever thus shall be.
Long ago, the galaxy was a peaceful place. Few species advanced far enough to become interstellar societies, as in their technological advance they inevitably gained the attention of forces beyond the ken of any mortal mind. There were ancient alien civilizations, to be sure, and some even managed to dominate the Milky Way. But they always fell, for one reason or another, and for most of its history the Milky Way was a cold, empty place.
The Sol System changed that. The centrality of the Sol System to galactic history is truly amazing, as it produced not one, but two spacefaring civilizations that came to dominate the galaxy: the humans and the sarmaks. The sarmaks were the older species, inheriting the technological advances of the w'lkar before them. But they lived on a dying planet, ravaged by millennia of industry and solar radiation. And so the sarmaks sought a new home for themselves, and they found one on their more primitive neighbor: Earth.
The sarmak invasion occurred during the middle of the Earth's 19th century. Two great civil wars raged on opposite sides of the planet, while the powerful nations of Europe enjoyed a precarious peace. The sarmak invasion quickly united the peoples of Earth under the banner of global resistance, as they needed to set aside their differences in order to triumph over their technologically superior foe. Fighting on Earth raged from 1861 to 1866, when the sarmaks and the humans finally entered a tentative peace agreement whereby the sarmaks could retain their gains at the time of ceasefire and recognized humanity's claim to the rest of Earth.
The sarmak invasion advanced humanity's knowledge of the universe around them. Not only was there proof that they were not alone, but the sarmaks also brought with them many wonderful and terrible technologies that the humans sought to replicate at all costs. The heat-ray, the aetheric reactor, the analytical engine, the cavorite engine and the mass driver transformed human society. The Industrial Revolution was kicked into overdrive, and both men and nations became extremely rich. By the 1900s, humanity had almost matched the more conservative sarmaks in technological prowess, laying claim to Luna in 1903. Meanwhile, the sarmaks were content with their territorial gains and stagnated on Earth has they did on Mars.
With the sarmak threat declining, humanity returned to their old ways of bickering amongst themselves. The Concord of Mankind, established to unite humanity's defense, broke down as the great powers attempted to use it to further their own conflicting interests. Instead, two alliances emerged among the European great powers: the Entente of Britain, France and Russia, and the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy and the Ottoman Empire. The other great powers of the world, the United States, Confederate State, Japan and China, stayed out of the conflict, though they did favor one side or the other. Most surprisingly, the Sarmak Empire made an agreement with the Central Powers to seize Entente colonial holdings.
War broke out in 1913, after some damn fool thing in the Balkans kicked Europe's alliance system online. The sarmaks sent an expeditionary force to assist their German allies, as the British did to the French. In the West, the war became a trench war, with occasional breakthroughs by tripods and land ironclads. In the East, the war was more mobile, although the Germans and sarmaks utterly annihilated the Russian military. The Russians surrendered to the Central Powers in 1917, after a series of revolutions forced the Tsar to abdicate, and shortly after the provisional Russian government fell to the Bolsheviks. The Central Powers seemed triumphant, before the Entente unleashed an engineered plague among their sarmak allies that killed the sarmak leadership on Mars and, in parallel to the Russian situation, sparked a Salvatonist revolution there. Germany's earthly allies also broke down into ethnic strife as their governments buckled from the stresses of the war. After several American spacecraft, delivering supplies to the Entente, were shot down by German mass drivers, the Americans entered the war on the Entente's side. This influx of American manpower gave the Entente the edge it needed to triumph over Germany, and by 1919 the Great War was over.
The post-war peace was far from satisfactory. The Treaty of Versailles was harsh enough for the Germans to desire revenge, and not harsh enough to keep the Germans from seeking it. When the global economy collapsed in the 1930s, Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party found fertile ground in post-war Germany, and the Nazis seized power in 1934. To the east, the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin grew after a series of short wars with the Chinese and the Finns. Japan continued its rampant expansion throughout Asia, seizing the newly independent Sarmak colonies. All of the nations of Earth expanded through the stars, placing more colonies on Luna and Venus in a frantic race against one another. The Sarmak Empire fled to the outer reaches of the Sol System, while the Salvationist Republic of Malacandra tightened its iron grip on the Red Planet. By the 1940s, humanity found itself in a multi-polar competition with itself, leading to major leaps in militarization and scientific advancement.
It is in the latter that both man and Martian made terrible discoveries. What is now known as the preternatural, a set of sciences inconsistent with both the general theories on scientific law and with one another, emerged. Eldritch texts were found on both Earth and Mars, and further study revealed their secrets. Gastplasm, the energy that powers all life, was discovered and harnessed through the rediscovery of runes, complex mathematical equations powered by gastplasm that can manipulate the rules of the universe itself. More research was made into the myths of Earth and Mars, and many terrible discoveries were made. The governments of Earth and Mars took interest, and naturally used this new knowledge to bolster their arsenals.
The Second World War began with the joint German-Soviet invasion of Poland and the Japanese invasion of the Taiping Heavenly Republic. Soon enough, Europe fell to German dominance, before the Germans turned on the Soviets, while the Japanese rampaged through Asia. They were opposed by the Allies of the United States, Confederate States, United Kingdom and the Soviet Union. While the Martians stayed out of the war, the Second World War became a war across the worlds. Conventional fighting raged on until 1944, when the desperate German government used the world's first despoiler bomb on the city of Kursk. The city was annihilated, but the Soviets responded by using a despoiler bomb of their own in Königsberg. A few more despoiler bombs were thrown between the two sides, until both the Wehrmacht and the Red Army were pushed from the desolate area between them by an army of their own preternaturally twisted dead. Incursions into this despoiled zone revealed an area of warped reality, where the worst nightmares of man ruled. For fear of destroying the world, the warring sides called a truce, and so the world settled into the Long War.
The Long War would keep the Solar System at relative peace, as rival powers were too fearful of mutual annihilation to escalate conflicts any further than a proxy war. The Preternatural Containment and Regulation Association, or PCRA, was founded to fight the preternatural on behalf of all mankind, but it quickly became just another political actor. The Long War gave both mankind and the Martians a chance to expand through the stars. The invention of the Alkaev Drive, the first faster-than-light drive, in the 2040s gave humanity a head start in interstellar colonization, but their Martian rivals were not far behind. The galaxy was quickly colonized, and the nations of the Sol System built massive space fleets to defend their interests throughout the stars. Wars were even fought with extrasolar aliens (termed "xenos"), though they were primitive and easily fell to the Solar powers.
The peace of the Long War would end in 2239, when the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom collapsed into civil war and brought the Soviet Union and Japan into full-scale war. This quickly dragged in the other nations of Sol, and soon enough weapons of mass destruction were fired throughout the Solar System and the Old Colonies. The use of advanced, extremely destructive preternatural weapons turned both Earth and Mars into despoiled hells, a situation that became even worse when a "nova bomb" was thrown into Sol itself. The bomb turned the entire star into one large rift in space-time, allowing all manner of eldritch abominations to cross over into the material universe from it. Earth and Mars were quickly lost to the madness of a hellish dimension, and the Solar Anomaly was born.
But men and Martian rebuilt. Many governments fled to their outer colonies, which were untouched by the Collapse. The old United States was torn down, replaced with a short-lived empire and then finally by the Coalition of Western Republics. The French government was overthrown by a communist revolution and replaced with the Conseil of Workers' Systems, and the newer Soviet colonies seceded and formed the United Technocracies of Man. The Collapse brought a temporary end to the old rivalries, as all sides were exhausted from fighting and didn't want to destroy all civilization in the galaxy. And so the galactic powers turned inward, rebuilding and expanding. Naturally, this peace would not last. By the 26th century, the old rivalries had reemerged and the powers of the galaxy were ready for war. By the 28th century, the Galactic War began, and the three great alliances of the Milky Way have been fighting ever since.
Of the three sides, the Springfield Pact is the most powerful. An alliance of nationalist, human supremacist dictatorships, the Springfield Pact is led by the Coalition of Western Republics. Consciously modeling itself off the ancient Roman Empire and the old Nazi Germany, the Coalition is an autocratic one-party dictatorship that seeks to ensure American dominance throughout the stars. The definition of "American" is not a racial one, but cultural, and so the Coalition spends a lot of effort "Americanizing" conquered peoples, no matter what. The Coalition, unlike its allies, is not absolutely xenophobic, and is willing to accept "subservient species" into its fold. Their allies, the British, have a different view. Historically the target of Sarmak invasions, the British are devoted to the extermination of all non-human sapients. Although historically a democracy, the Humanist Party took control of the British government after the Collapse and has been ruling it with an iron fist ever since. And then there is the German Reich. Under the rule of the Nazi Party since the 1940s, Germany's autocracy has waxed and waned throughout the centuries, but by the time of the Galactic War the Führers of Germany had as much power as they did during the beginning of the Third Reich. The Germans are the vanguard of the Springfield Pact's invasion of the communist bloc, a role they take much pride in.
The second most powerful side is the Communist International, an organization that seeks to spread the red revolution throughout the entire galaxy. The communists are officially led by the Soviet Union, which presents itself as just a century away from true communism (and has done so for the past five centuries). Over the years, the Soviet system has come to resemble its Tsarist predecessor in many ways: a massive, backwards autocracy. However, they don't have an actual monarchy. This is not true for their allies, the Conseil Systems. Under the "People's Dynasty," the family of Dijon, the Conseil Systems has taken the Soviet model to an illogical extreme. The Conseil's propaganda portrays the ruling family as gods, sent by the prophet Marx to lead all sapients to the blessings of communist utopia. The Salvationist Republic of Malacandra, the third major communist power, is very similar, although their theology is a mix Christianity, communism and the old religions of Mars. Although aligned with humans, the Salvationists officially believe that humans are incapable of true communism, and so do not give humans citizenship within the republic. The "prophets" that rule the Salvationist Republic are naturally seen as figures blessed by the Maleldil, the one true god, and thus are incapable of error.
The third major faction is the Tripartite Pact, an alliance of convenience if there ever was one. Each of the Tripartite Pact's members make no secret of their dislike for one another, and instead define their alliance as an opposition to the other two blocs. There is no leader of the Tripartite Pact, but the Sarmak Empire is definitely the most powerful. Centuries of propaganda have made the Sarmaks determined to regain their past glories and take vengeance on their foes, particularly the Salvationists and the human race in general. The old monarchy of Mars persists in New Barsoom, and unlike its moribund past incarnation it has learned the lessons of totalitarianism and applies them with terrifying efficiency. The Japanese are the second most powerful Tripartite power, and their primary goal is to weaken Coalition power in order to dominate their sector of the galaxy. The Imperial family was lost during the Collapse, but this has not stopped the Japanese from revering them as gods; indeed, the Collapse is seen as their ascent into the heavens. The Japanese military rules the country, as it has for centuries, and relies on fanaticism and strong anti-Western sentiment to keep its power. This has not stopped the Japanese from being allies with the Confederate States. A more traditional military junta masquerading as a democracy, the Confederates want revenge against the damnyankees for destroying most of their colonies during the Collapse. They also perceive the Coalition to be a group of race traitors that have diluted Americanism by allowing anyone to participate in it.
The enigmatic United Technocracies has not joined the Galactic War, and generally stays away from galactic affairs. Ruled by an organization only calling itself "The Party," not much is known about the United Technocracies because it almost never communicates with the greater galaxy. What is known is that the United Technocracies is one of the most total dictatorships in the galaxy, as every citizen is monitored heavily, even members of the Party itself. The Technocracies' military capabilities are generally unknown, and the three sides fear a Technocracies entering the war on their rival's side.
The PCRA has survived the Collapse, but by the 31st century it is barely worth talking about. The PCRA is built on cooperation between the human powers, and since the human powers have spent the past three centuries at war with one another, it has all but disappeared. A handful of dedicated staff fight the good fight against the preternatural and the various cults that infest the galaxy, but most of these responsibilities have been delegated to national organizations. Most of the PCRA is dedicated to watching the various anomalies throughout the galaxy and ensuring that a theopotent entity doesn't emerge from it to destroy all life in the galaxy or something similarly terrible. However, a sense of defeatism permeates the entire organization, as if such a threat were to emerge, the galactic powers are more concerned about their wars. Any existential threat is likely to go ignored until it's too late.
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