The Mu Arae Entente was a crown jewel in the accomplishments of man: a great interstellar government that managed wisely, fairly and with a light hand. The Entente inaugurated a golden age that lasted hundreds of years, and oversaw the colonization of thousands of planets.

The strength of the Entente came from three sources. The first was a simple social contract that insured the fundamental rights of man, the second was the non-conscript Entente Elements (The combined police, military and aid organizations of the Entente), and the third was the flotilla of great LiveShips of the trading houses. These three elements bound the Entente together in a shared culture spread across thousands of light years.

 

But, like all things created by man, it began to decay at the core, as lesser men of limited vision came to the helm and excessive regulation, corruption, and lust for power began to erode the simple foundations of the Entente.

With the coming of the decay, there was a trickle, then a flood, of colonization beyond the Entente’s boundaries, places where the Entente played no part in the founding or support of the colonies, places where the Entente was not welcome.

The trading houses moved some of their operations to the new rim of colonized worlds, sensing a chance at greater profit in newer, rawer places. The great LiveShips were modified, and their templates changed, so that the ships became mobile factories along with the bulk cargo that they could carry, bringing the advanced technology of the Entente to the new Rim worlds.

Conflicts arose between the worlds of the Rim, and the traders did quite well in selling arms and manufacturing capacity to the Rim World engaged in conflicts. As the LiveShips of the traders manufactured a seemingly endless stream of war machines, these conflicts became increasingly violent.

The Entente was alarmed at the conflicts raging on their borders, and decided to try to stop the violence by assimilating the rim worlds into the Entente by force.
The Rim Worlds handily rebuffed their first few attempts, having known war in the raw for a generation. Casualties were heavy as the experienced Rim Worlders mowed down the green flower of the Entente Integrators.

The Entente recovered, of course, but in the recovery, had to rely on conscription to fill its ranks. During the sixth offensive, the Entente's goal shifted to extermination of the LiveShips, since they were a major logistical component of the Rim Worlds’ war making ability and relatively vulnerable.

The trader crews were outraged and fearful. Some decided to withdraw from the conflict, a LiveShip being unsuitable for the fire of combat (there were some attempts to grow a combat LiveShip, but all failed, none of the attempts being able to balance energy requirements with combat effectiveness.) Some decided to stay with the Rim Worlds, and some were outright seized by the Rim Worlds, their captains held hostage, to prevent the departure of critical war manufacturing capability.

Of the Liveships who stayed, the last were destroyed in the 14th campaign, which culminated in the burning of Landis 3, a recalcitrant world that refused to be assimilated into the Entente, by the Mad Admiral Stannis ("Integration of the dead is a hell of a lot easier than Integration of the living.") of the 39th Integration fleet.

With the destruction of the defenseless Landis, the last of the Rim worlds surrendered in the conflict and agreed to become part of the Entente.

The conflict was over, but the Entente was exhausted and its moral contract had been shattered by the conflict with the Rim Worlds. The LiveShips were gone and its battle-hardened fleet was now looking for loot, both conscripts and regulars having given up on the moral rightness of its cause.

The fleets turned on the Entente, under command of the Mad Admiral Stannis, and attempted to seize control of the Entente by force. The Entente itself fell into a civil war that lasted generations, ripping away the veil of civilization. Eventually, easy interstellar travel was lost with the destruction of the interstellar antimatter fueling stations, and much high technology fell into disuse. Perhaps the greatest blow was the devastation of humanity's birthplace and at the time the greatest concentration of humans in the universe.

The LiveShips and traders that fled the Rim conflict to hide in the small dark places where no one goes had a rough time of it. Their LiveShips grew old, budded new generations, and knowledge was gradually lost, until only very basic things were retained by the LiveShips nanofacture plants. (Knowledge transfer had been a trade secret, and not built into the budding mechanism for the new born LiveShips.)

The traders themselves split into factions and organized into feudal kingdoms based on clan affinities. Living was hard on resource poor worlds, and though they survived, they never became accustomed to the resource limitations of the worlds where they were hiding.

More time passed, and a powerful, hard man arose amongst the descendants of the traders, to lead several trader kingdoms back into contact with the waiting LiveShips. Ties of blood were renewed and he took the LiveShip Nielle back to the Rim Worlds and into history. After the failure of the first attempts to trade in the old way (most of the high technology and manufacturing capability having been lost over the generations) the man, Captain James Roberts, asked, "Why should we trade, when we can take?" Even the young LiveShips had retained the templates for manufacture of the simpler weapons from past wars. His raid was successful and profitable. Upon his return, his younger brother, who wanted control of the family LiveShip Nielle, assassinated him. The Space Vikings, and their way of life, was born in blood.

Now the descendants of traders have returned in great numbers to The Rim with their mysterious LiveShips, having honed their military lifestyle of raid and plunder into a disciplined science. Though most knowledge and higher technology is lost, their LiveShips endlessly manufacture the basic machines of war and carry the raiders between the worlds of the Rim in search of the resources needed to sustain life (both human and ship.) They prey on the scattered remnants of Entente colonies throughout The Rim, and often on one another. Some see themselves as the rightful heirs to the former glory of The Entente, forging new civilization from the ruins of the past. Others simply lust for power and whatever wealth they can scrape from the charred corpses of colonies left in their path.

The culture of the Space Viking is feudal and is centered squarely on the LiveShip that defines his life. The clan is the LiveShip and the LiveShip is the clan. The captain of each LiveShip, in essence a feudal warlord, guides his people across the stars to victory or defeat, and he trusts no other captain.

The best of the clan are its warriors. They are professional soldiers who fight with courageous, disciplined, highly trained rigor. They are the lifeblood of the LiveShip and the clan, dropping onto the surfaces of alien worlds in order to conquer and wrest the raw resources of life from whoever holds them. Their elite military units, the DropTeam™'s, are the most fearsome soldiers ever known in the galaxy. Though they are limited to the relatively crude war machines remembered by their LiveShips, they fight with skill, cunning, and audacity.

Some in The Rim look into the distant heart of the galaxy, toward the stars of The Entente from whence their ancestors came, where civil war still rages with weapons of incredible technology, so advanced that the colonist-descendants of The Rim would perceive it as magic. Some of them wait for the return of Integration fleets, bringing the law, order, and technology that past generations knew. But for most of them such things are the stuff of ancient legend, and they long only to survive the next raid by plundering Vikings from the stars.