V - The Age of the Singularity - Cyberpunk

We will never know what specifically caused the Moonshatter; accounts vary.

It’s clear enough why it happened. The Kigawans, left on a ball of barren ice when their alien ruins had been exhausted, found hidden secrets buried deeper. Abandoned by the megacorps who focused their exploitation on Autumn's dwindling bounty, a sickly nekomata researcher took hold of this godly ****, Resonance, an inexhaustible power source run off living emotion.

In the process, he genetically locked its activation rights to himself and his progeny, and used to it carve an empire out of the snow. Kigawa was no place for humanoid life, though. The people suffered terribly. When Allied Nations aid was withheld to break this neo-feudal regime and bring them under market control, the Holy Empire of Kigawa went on the warpath, using the hypergate...

… until it exploded, ending the first interplanetary war and crushing both fleets beneath moonrock. It even gave Autumn her own orbital asteroid belt.

This was nearly the end of all life. Ecological catastrophe **** remaining Autumnal populations completely into now-vast megacities, scraping out a meager existence. The enforcement arms of the world state were stronger than ever, but all social services withered, bringing an age of isolation even as we were packed closer. It was our wakeup call, but nobody was there to answer except fanatical, warlike imperialists on one world, and megacorporations and their sham-puppet democracies on the other.

Naturally, the only thing either side learned was they needed to develop better weapons for the rematch in twenty years. The Allied Nations Defense **** brought to bear enormous mecha-carriers and mass produced war machinery, against the absurd, reality-bending powers of the elite Kigawan Orbital Knights.

Though their initial offensive extracted a grave price against the surfacers, and all hope seemed lost, the young Princess of Kigawa emerged to side with them against her own people, and turn the tables. As the war ground on, neither side could sustain its hardships. Both war-weary, battered populations recognized their common plight. They rose against their own governments. By the time the Princess defeated her father, and declared the foundation of a new system-spanning Autumnal Republic, it was mere formality.

Though she did include something more; granting activation rights to everyone, at the expense of her own life energy. She fell down dead upon the spot, and in her wake left seven billion royal heirs to the infinite power of Resonance, rendering nuclear technology obsolete.

Using that divine light, we rebuilt, and then united to reach for the stars.