For almost a thousand years, the four Great States (Empire of Necross, the Quadrill Concorde, The Federation of Sentients, and the Orspham Alliance) held each other in stalemate. Between the four of them, it is said that they controlled 7/8ths of the stars in the Galaxy. They were perfectly poised against each other, the constant prescense of rivalry and aggression driving each Empire or Federation to strive for new technology and better, happier populations on their thousands of worlds. The twenty eight spacefaring races of the Galaxy spread and mingled through most of the States. The only exception was the Empire of Necross, inhabited solely by the Necrotti and their slave races.

Trade and travel were commonplace, facilitated by the ancient artifacts of the Collapsars. These ancient relics are the most prevalent evidence of what has come to be known as the Geheimzinnig. Very little else is left in the Galaxy of this first race, only the Collapsars and a few extremely rare relics mark that the Geheimzinnig ever even existed. What happened to them was one of the greatest mysteries, at least until the apperance of the Nattozerei.

These invaders from across the impassable gulfs of intergalactic space first struck Coalition space, and within just a few standard weeks had carved a bloody path of devastation through the combined Jenar and Etherian worlds. In the span of less than a galactic year their main fleet arrived, seeming to have encircled the galaxy and began pressing inwards to the core. The Four States met at the homeworld of the Drac Ferral, near the core of the galaxy, to decide on a course of action. No weapon they had been able to field had significantly damaged the Nattozerei craft, no shield could block their weapons, and no ship could outrun them. Where ever they landed they slaughtered millions, and the size of all of the States were rapidly decreasing. The only thing known to be comparable was the rare technology of the Geheimzinnig.

After long deliberation it was decided to utilize a newly discovered Geheimzinnig device. It's exact effects were unknown, but the incomplete data file that had accompanied it from the secret Illisadoom research base indicated that it would disable their ships and weaken their shields to the point that normal weapons would work against them. Evidence to explain why the Geheimzinnig never used it was non-existant, so the leaders of the day elected to trigger the device.

At first nothing seemed to happen, but then with a ripple of power reality itself was twisted and changed by the device, starting on the Drac Ferral homeworld and churning outwards to the edge of the galaxy. Suddenly the Collapsars winked out of existence, and most of the Nattozerei assaults ground to a halt as their ships began trapped and vulnerable in the systems they had been attacking. The wheels of Galactic commerce ground to a rapid halt and over the next twenty years all of the Four States collapsed in on themselves as well, no longer able to support themselves without the interstellar economy they had developed. The darkness and death of the Isolation fell upon the Galaxy.

During the Isolation each system was stranded, able to receive sporadic communications from other systems, but cut off from any and all forms of aid. In most cases, civilization in those systems retreated to the one or two most inhabitable planets in the system. Scientific endeavors into non-Collapsar driven interstellar trips continued, but there always seemed to be something that would stymie the research, small tweaks made to the fabric of reality by the Geheimzinnig Device that kept every system to itself. The Isolation lasted for 500 standard years, and resulted in the collapse of the Four States and untold death and hardship.

Only 1 standard years have passed since the Isolation finally ended with the reappearance of the Collapsars, and the reactivation of all the ancient relics that stop working under the effects of the device. This also meant that the Nattozerei warships returned to full power. Fortunately for the crippled and weakened races of the Galaxy during the Isolation two pivotal events had occured. The first was the integration of the Nattozerei , and their bio mechanical slave race the Mach Xi Van, into the surviving cultures of the systems they had become stranded in. The Nattozerei even went so far as to rename their race the Natto in an attempt to better get along with the races of this Galaxy.

The second event was the orchestration within the core of the Galaxy of a new single galactic government, known as the Planetary Cooperative. This governemental body not only helped prepare the core worlds for the eventual reappearance of the Collapsars, but also had plans in place for capturing the Nattozerei warships when they became active again. This allowed the forces of the Planetary Cooperative to seize an unprecedented degree of control among the newly reconnected systems. For the most part the Planetary Cooperative plays a handsoff role and only becomes directly invovled in the defense of PC worlds and the persecution of known criminals. The current scope of the PC is all systems roughly 1000 light-years from the galactic core.