Colonial

Introduction
Colonials are a species that originated from Helios-system, and are descended from the Kobolian branches of Humanity. As such they are cousins to the Hiigarans and distantly related to Humans.

It is generally accepted that the Colonials originally emigrated from a single planet, Kobol, modern day Hiigara.

Mythology
Read More: Colonial Religion

Colonial religion is centered on the Lords of Kobol, twelve dieties that both shaped and guided the Colonial civilization throughout history.

It is taught that believers will go to Fields of Elysium after death if they led a good life, pending the judgement of all Twelve Lords.

Family Life
In marriages between only one man and only one woman, there are examples of both partners retaining their surnames and of the woman taking the surname of her husband.

However, the common surname of group marriages derived from one member. The standard practice for two-person homosexual marriages surnames follow much like their heterosexual counterparts.

Society
Each colony has their own laws as part of their autonomy from the federal government. For example, on Gemenon, children are legally owned by their parents until they are 18 years of age.

Their is an absence of a federal criminal code. The lack of a comprehensive law library of all colonies, may have resulted in the use of Caprican law.

History
Read More: Ancient Human History

Settlement Era
How long the Exodus lasted is unknown but before and even during settlment on their new homes, the Twelve Tribes regularly fought amongst themselves during what is now called the Settlement Era. The first vessel to arrive was the Gemoni Galleon, who founded Gemenon around 2000 BCE.

Aquarus Betrayl
When the Aquarus Galleon, Aeries Galleon and Leonis Galleon arrived in the system they moved towards the Helios Beta-system, intent on settling one of the habitable worlds of the system, while mining the rich mineral resources of the area. However as the trio were just passing through the Helios Delta-system, the Artemis followers opened fire on the Demeter and Hermes followers.

The Aquarus Galleon knew that the second world of the Helios Beta-system contained uranium, which was required to make nuclear weapons. They were sure that controlling a primary source of uranium would give them great standing in the Colonies. They forced the Aquarus and Aeries Galleons down onto two of the habitable worlds in the Helios Delta-system and stuck their claim to their new home of Leonis. This sparked terrible hatred and blood feuds between the the two moons and Leonis, who felt the Leonids were backstabbing monsters for endangering a fellow tribe.

Taura Bombing
Similar conditions occurred to the tribe abroad the Taura Galleon, who settled Tauron. The ancient Taurons were extremely proud of their standing as the first among the Twelve Colonies. In the early days, they flaunted that position and took credit for much of the Colonies' early successes. The Taurons' superiority eventually wore thin, and when the Taurons challenged the Gemenese interpretation of the Sacred Scrolls fighting started immediately after.

Despite instigating much of the tension in the early years, the Taurons eventually withdrew, preferring to further the technology aboard the Hephaestus Galleon, the only surviving one as the others had been scrapped or lost to time. This however ended when Gemenon fundamentalists detonated a nuclear warhead aboard the ship, destroying it completely and plunge Tauron into a veritable dark age, an isolation of the Colony from the rest of the system for over half a millennium. This resulted in the destruction of much of the knowledge base of the twelve worlds and sent the Colonies into a dark age.

Interbellum
For nearly a thousand years no tribe could sustain a space capable fleet and most planets lost contact to the other settlements not directly adjacent to them.

Colony Wars
After their return to space, the Colonies established many observatories, listening posts, research stations and armories in their system, primarily among their moons. Inequity and war were common between the Colonies for most of this time period as each colony behaved more as sovereign nations instead of brother tribes.

This lead to the Colony Wars, five conflicts that pitted the Colonies against one another.

Virgon-Leonis Dominance
The Cyrannus Sector were dominated by the two major colonies of the Helios Beta-system, Virgon and Leonis. The two rival imperial powers conquered and dominated each of the colonies of the Helios Alpha and Helios Gamma-systems at one time or another. Particularly long and bloody struggles were fought for control of their colony-worlds Picon and Tauron (in Helios Alpha), and Sagittaron (in Helios Beta), which frequently changed hands, along with its lightly-populated neighboring colonies Scorpia and Libran.

The Helios Delta-system — containing agrarian Aerilon, poor and overpopulated Canceron, and barely-populated Aquaria — was regarded as a backwater, and largely ignored by the imperial powers of Virgon and Leonis.

First Colony War
As Tauron started to recover from the lose of their Galleon and much of their technological knowledge 800 years ago, their civilization was conquered by rival colonies Virgon and Leonis in the First Colony War. Leonis quickly lost interest in maintaining control of Tauron and withdrew its forces after eleven years, but Virgon continued to hold control of the planet. After a long, hard struggle over another fifty-years, the people of Tauron liberated themselves, and this is celebrated as the Our Day holiday until modern day on Tauron.

Virgonese Piracy
To supplement the lose of their pillages and tribute from Tauron, the Virgon monarchy began to support privateers, state legal pirates that would pillage the commercial shipping of other Colonies. The Western Brothers, one of the largest and bloodiest pirate groups, were a personal favorite of the Virgon King for the results they produced and fear they generated among the enemies of the monarchy. The Brothers were well-known to brand and then kill the crews of the ships they took.

Second Colony War
To counter the Virgon's increasing power in the Cyrannus Sector, the Leonids built elaborate stations, hoping to become the hub for shipping operations in the system. Unfortunately, the uranium ran out but the Leonids continued to fight for their place at the head of the proverbial table but it only got them into trouble with the other Colonies.

The centuries-long rivalry between Virgon and Leonis eventually led to the exhaustion of the planet's uranium supplies and both powers began to decline, starting roughly 850 years ago, when Tauron successfully fought a war of independence against them, and culminating roughly 200 years ago, around the time Picon achieved independence.

Third Colony War
The end result was a serious attack by a joint Caprica-Tauron-Picon fleet, which halved Leonis' population and destroyed the entire military arsenal. Leonan government changed to a democracy, and the royal family did not continue. In order to recover Leonis enacted strict environmental protection policies and until this day burning wood has been considered a serious offense among their court systems.

Leonis was largely subservient to Caprica after that. Politically, it was a non-entity.

Tauron-Caprica Cold War
Leonis and Virgon were replaced by rising Caprica and Tauron as the superpowers dominating the politics of the Twelve Colonies. The allegiances of the other colonies shifted from the old Virgon-Leonis rivalry to fit into new power-blocs centered on the Caprica-Tauron rivalry. This was the state of affairs for the next two centuries, up until the time of the Cylon War.

Various shifting alliances and attempts at unified government came out of these conflicts, which would later form the bedrock of the Articles of Colonization, but it would still be some time before a practical Colonies-wide government was established. Among the most critical conventions established almost unanimously among the Colonies was the Cyrannus Eight Treaty, which barred the use of nuclear weapons being used on civilian targets. Signatories included Caprica, Picon, Gemenon, Virgon, Aerilon, Tauron, Aquaria and Scorpia.

Fourth Colony War
The Fourth Colony War began when Picon soon developed bitter rivalries with its fellow Colonies of Caprica and Scorpia. At first, it looked as if Caprica would have the upper hand, controlling the largest stockpile of iron ore. Then, it ran out, leveling the playing field.

Through its strong ties with Virgon, Scopria delegates convinced the Caprican government that Picon was responsible for a few key battles in which Capricans died and suddenly the Piconese were at war with the Capricans.

By the time the dust settled and each party agreed to end the Fourth Colony War, Scorpia had managed to deplete the military forces and economic budgets of Picon and Caprica, while securing themselves not only a sizable defensive force, thanks to acting as a neutral trading partner with Caprica and Picon after the war. This ensured that Caprica and Picon could no longer afford to mount any major offensive for the foreseeable century while Scorpia was able to defend itself for the first time in its history.

Gamoray Settlement
Nearly a century later the Colonies began to launch the first exo-solar missions, seeking to understand their surrounding space as most of their Galleons had not stopped to investigate their region while on the way to Cyrannus.

Among the first systems surveyed was Gamoray, which was found to have an outstandingly high concentration of tylium throughout its numerous moons. Hoping to break the Virgon-Aquarian monopoly on tylium fuel, a joint Caprica-Gemeonon-Tauron mining facility was built on Gamoray IV, which due to some ancient explosion had shattered an entire hemisphere of the moon yet had merely left a sizable hole that exposed the rich tylium core. Using this sizable crevice Molecay Station was constructed.

The colonization of Gamoray marked the first and only Colonial expansion outside their home system, along with a crippling blow to the former dominance Virgon enjoyed as supplier of the fuel needed to run much of the Colony's shipping industry and military fleets.

Tauron Civil War
93-years prior to modern times, the Tauron Civil War occurred, causing the displacement of many of its people to Caprica. Most migrated back afterwards but several large enclaves remain on Caprica, Gemenon and Virgon.

Sagittaron Fiscal Crisis
In fear their government could soon topple like neighboring Tauron, Sagittaron sought to eliminate its massive fiscal debt, a problem that had long plagued their society and was starting to drive the people towards a similar resentment that sparked the Tauron Civil War. However this was attempted by giving individual politicians near unlimited power to solve the debt crisis by any means. It was not long before those politicians and lawmakers turn the colony's output from necessity into profiteering. Under this, agricultural workers and laborers became slaves, as Sagittaron was turned into a work camp where once those duties were supervised by armed guards doling out punishment for underachievement, the morale of Sagittaron's laboring citizens faded and then vanished completely. These changes did not occur overnight, as they took many generations of slow and steady erosion.

Many Colonies took advantage of this corruption, sapping the planet for most of its production. On many occasions, they simply stole what they could not take.

Cylon Creation
60 years before modern times, the first AI driven android prototypes was created on Caprica by Graystone Industries. Called Cylon, the machines were designed to do work which the Colonials found unpleasant, including industrial work and soldiers in their wars.

Many Colonies jumped at the chance for a robotic workforce and Caprica was happy to provide, at a price. However they maintained control over all military models.

Tauron Economic Rise
To counter the damage done by the civil war Tauron's government began to establish liberal business laws, allowing for massive mega-corporations to be founded in her space. Non-resistrive technological development, open strip-mining of its resources and highly competitive practices made Tauron a powerful world among its fellow colonies and its industrial greed caused this planet to use a substantial number of Cylons as workers as compared to the other colonies.

Sagittaron Depression
Because of the increase in industrial reliance on Tauron goods, Sagittarron markets plummeted and many former merchants turned to pirating. Formed on its western continent who, unregulated by corrupt Sagittaron authorities, pirates raided lucrative trade routes that ran nearby from Caprica to Picon. This threat, and the governments inability to stop it, enraged several other Colonies, notably Picon.

Fifth Colony War
A major trading partner to all of the Colonies and primary shipper of Tauron merchandise, Picon found the pirates to be a major problem to their trading routes, and consequently demonstrated the Piscean military might by successfully invaded and captured Sagittaron 57 years ago in the Fifth Colony War.

Picon reacted firmly in order to rid the planet of its corrupt government and criminal network. This heavy-handed approach by the Pisceans created hate and resentment from the indigenous populace. Insurrectionists continued to terrorize the puppet government of Sagittaron instilled by the Pisceans, eventually leading Picon pulled its forces off the Colony when it became too costly to continue the occupation.

Sagittaron Rise
And without the chance of pirating or recovery, Sagittaron's economy sunk even lower then the pre-occupation levels. It was only by the efforts of Graystone Industries, who relocated three of their Cylon production facilities to the Colony to avoid rising anti-AI sentiments from nearby Gemenon, that the world began to recover by leaps and bounds.

With the aid of the Cylons, Sagittaron soon rivalled Caprica as the most powerful world in the solar-system. Where Caprica was known for its political prowess and immensely rich resources, Sagittaron was an industrial and military juggernaut, able to out-produce goods faster than any other Colony could muster. With the invention of the first Cylons, their people had been eager to jump at the chance to improve their industrial power and overnight Sagittaron's markets skyrocketed.

Cylon War
Read More: Cylon War