Burke, however, saw that the Seraphim's Way was the only path to peace in the Universe, and stayed behind with many of the other colonists to form the Aeon Illuminate. Smith's scientists engineered a virus which quickly infected every member of the venerable race, dooming them to death. The Seraphim, however, were destined to fall.

Despite this, the Seraphim were incredibly technologically advanced, and when Smith began a campaign of genocide against the planet's inhabitants, the Earth forces encountered stiff resistance. Smith favoured oppression and subjugation over dialogue with the inhabitants of the planet, although members of the expedition - led by Dr Jane Burke - were able to secretly befriend the Seraphim, and were taught about The Way, the overarching philosophy of love and peace embraced by the aliens. Smith ordered the planet quarantined and communications with Earth cut - so as not to give away the position of humankind's home planet. The expedition was led by Commander Trent Smith, and on Seraphim II contact was made with intelligent alien life. The events at Seraphim II were amongst the most regrettable in the entire expansion of humankind into the dark reaches of space. The same thing happened once again with the second expedition in 2590, but many years were to go by before the Earth Command found out what happened. All that, however, was set to change when a 2557 survey expedition to Seraphim II failed to re-establish contact with Earth. Despite this epic proliferation of humankind, no intelligent life had yet been discovered on other planets. In 2525 another massive expansion began, as more than 110 colonies colonised new planets and systems. Surprisingly large force just to take out the Love Boat, but hey. This enabled order to be maintained across the vast reaches of space with less humans involved, and was seen by games journalists around the world to be very convenient for the RTS genre. In 2316 the colonies began their own colonisation efforts, and with the empire expanding so rapidly, the Earth government found its forces spread too thin, so introduced a system of using military units with limited AI that were controlled by a human commander. By 2284, sixteen colonies had been established in a galaxy not all that far away, and were still governed by the Earth, with law, order and adherence to the various programs enforced by the Earth Command, the military arm of the Earth Empire. And for a while it did - three 'alpha' colonies were established, technology was developed and populations expanded. The resulting humans were raised by AI, and as everyone who has ever read a sci-fi novel knows, being an engineered super human that's raised by simulants can only lead to good things. As opposed to the old, energy-heavy forms of transportation, key advancements in AI, nano-technology and biological engineering enabled ships to be sent with 'seed populations' aboard - 1000 bio-engineered human DNA patterns, along with nano-fabricators which used material gathered at the destination to create the seed population. Shortly after, Earth was united under a single government, and a huge shift in the methodology of colonising other systems took place. By 2108 humankind had spread beyond the solar system, establishing a colony on a planet in the Alpha Centauri system. From the initial breakthrough in 2018, it took until 2061 for a human to be transported to Neptune's moon Triton using the technology, and all of. What was needed was a revolution in technology, and this came along in the form of Quantum Tunnels. Conventional rocket technology got the species onto the Martian surface by 2010, but the journey was slow, and colonisation difficult. Once upon a time visiting the moon was seen as a lofty goal, both figuratively and literally, but it wasn't long until humans had their sites set on Mars and beyond. A voracious raptor bounding through the jungle of space exploration.

Aeon supreme commander