Human colonies: Difference between revisions

{{Status|Canon}}

{{Series/Species/Human}}

Under the administration of the [[Unified Earth Government]], [[human]]ity has surveyed and colonized several hundred [[planet|worlds]] across a portion of the [[Orion Arm]] of the [[Milky Way]] galaxy over 200 years of [[Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine|superluminal travel]] via [[slipstream space]], following nearly three centuries of expansion across the [[Sol system]]. The planets under the jurisdiction of the UEG, together with [[Earth|humanity's homeworld]], are collectively referred to as '''"Earth and Her Colonies"'''.{{Ref/Level|[[Halo 3]]|[[Halo (Halo 3 level)#Eulogy|Halo]]}}{{Ref/Novel|Halo: The Fall of Chapter|Chapter=??}} Human space is divided into three regions: the Sol system itself, the Inner Colonies, and the Outer Colonies.

===Domus Diaspora===

{{Main|Domus Diaspora|Inner Colonies|Outer Colonies}}

As faster-than-light travel was still new and highly expensive, potential colonists were subjected to rigorous physical and mental testing to determine their suitability for the extrasolar colonization programs. As such, the colonists who formed the basis for the 210 first-wave colonies settled before [[2390]] formed humanity's elite; these worlds would later be known as the Inner Colonies. Earth and the Inner Colonies soon became the political and economic basis of the UNSC as humanity began expanding to the Outer Colonies.{{Ref/Reuse|xboxhalo}} For humanity at large, this was a time of unparalleled prosperity and optimism which has later come to be referred to as the "Golden Age" of human colonization,<ref>''Halo: Evolutions'', "The Impossible Life and the Possible Death of Preston J. Cole", p. 415-416</ref> a period which would eventually come to a violent end in the later years of the 25th century.{{Ref/Reuse|cole}}

On April 20, [[2525]], contact with the Outer Colony, [[Harvest]], was lost. After failing to re-establish contact with Harvest, the [[Colonial Military Authority]] sent a scout ship, the {{CMAShip|Argo}}, to investigate. Contact with the Argo was subsequently lost after the ship arrived in the Harvest system, plunging humanity into a deadly war with an alien hegemony known as the [[Covenant]]. Harvest was [[orbital bombardment|bombarded from orbit]] in a process which would come to be known as [[glassing]], marking the beginning of a 28-year war with the Covenant. During the war, hundreds of human colonies were destroyed and billions of human civilians and military personnel were killed by the Covenant. The conflict would see the near-annihilation of the Outer Colonies by the mid-2530s, with the Covenant flooding into the Inner Colonies until they destroyed humanity's military stronghold of [[Reach]] in 2552. At that point, humanity only had a few dozen colonies remaining in total.<ref>''[[Halo Mythos]]'', p. 85</ref> The Inner Colonies narrowly avoided annihilation before the UNSC finally achieved victory against the Covenant in the same year, but communication and unity among Earth's surviving colonies had been utterly compromised amidst the galaxy-wide devastation.

===Post-war===

{{Expand-section}}