Stellar Journey Human space in the 29th century, nothing more, nothing less.

4.6.2876 CE

Created by

MadToxin

The relatively small volume of human inhabitation is no lesser for its size. Inside this bubble there are man-made structures, wrapped around entire worlds, others so plentiful they shine like diamonds in the sky. Planets both with endless desert and frozen wastes, and ever stranger lifeforms within them, or none at all. Nations stretching centuries in history and incomprehensible scales in influence, and ones that have no impact on anything but themselves. Many forgotten by time, others still in recent memory, their ruins fought over by the survivors, and yet more thriving through a harsh universe. Wars both inconsequential and apocalyptic in scale have raged and still rage on.
People, more than any man could count, all with lives and histories of their own. Two standing at the apex of martial skill and prowess, ever rivalled by the other. A second-in-command very easily angered, a cruel, brutal warrior, an assassin with a mind shattered, and a man more machine than flesh. There's a king resplendent in his panoply, and a man stuck in the past of a vessel long-dead, a gunslinging, ambitious traitor, mechanical abominations that should never have been made, a long thought dead ruler, a strange collector of wildlife, one declared prophet by her people.
A long-retired veteran with a new life on the frontier, a brilliant scientist of the Core with a taste for combat, a grudge-bearing descendant of a people wronged, and of course, a certain nobody, from a backwater world, merely looking for excitement, unaware of the journey that awaits him.

It is midway through the year 2876, in the Gregorian Calendar of Earth, by the reckoning of one species born of that planet. The species is humanity, and it has, over the millenia of its existence expanded to a rough bubble, some 300 light-years in radius, centered around its home star system of Sol. Human space itself consists of some seven hundred thousand stars, of which about half are inhabited, usually very minimally. The people within are endlessly varied, composed about 30% of synthetics, self-aware robotic people, as well as many, many divisions and subcategories within. Summarizing much of anything within human space is a fool's errand.
And humanity is alone. There are no cosmic intellegences in the galaxy, seemingly no alien civilizations to call friend or enemy, and no great divine entity to worship. It is only man, and thus man is free to make its way through the universe as it wills. And so it has, over the many millenia of its existence, humanity has changed, spread, and continued to exist, ever divided, yet with an overarching, subtle, unity within. From scratch, it has forged this interstellar civilization in an uncaring universe, and it is not ceasing any time soon.
Stellar Journey is, at its very core, simply the future. An exploration of what might be, and what perhaps will be, grounded in reality and modern scientific understanding and hypotheses. It is especially focused on technology and various organizations and initiatives and the like, though there is usually a bit of everything. With a select few minor exceptions, it is entirely grounded in fact, theory, and hypothesis, to the best of my ability.
For a more comprehensive overview:

State of the world

Generic article | Feb 17, 2026

An overview of the story's world

A very simplified map of human space:

Human space is a vaguely spherical region, about 320 light-years in average radius, which contains within approximately 700 000 star systems, millions of nations, and 72 trillion people. It is a vast space, filled with all sorts of interesting locales, societies, and phenomena, be those natural or man-made. The map itself works as follows: When regarded as a 3-dimensional Cartesian (x,y,z)-coordinate system the circle at the base of a line is the (x,y)-position on the galactic plane, while the line denotes the z-axis.