Apollo Sector

Significant Sentient Population

2 million

Allegiance

Heavily leaning towards Ajaxian.

Hazards

In combination with gravitational effects, unpredictable local Galactic Council policy may require alterations to weapons status in order to comply with most recent directives.

History

After their rapid mastery of space flight, the Ajaxians took only a short time to discover two hypergates leading out of their home sector and in 2057 sent the exploration ships "Virtuous" and "Righteous", one through each gate, loaded with teams of diplomats, lawyers, missionaries and a few scientists. The ship "Righteous" arrived in the new sector with the diplomats, lawyers and missionaries drooling over the thought of encountering a new race of intelligent beings to 'enlighten'. They were disappointed to find nothing of any significant sentience in the sector. With much grumbling and talk of lawsuits in the air most of the passengers fell to bickering about policy for the sector, and how the current law could be interpreted and applied. Naming the sector Apollo after their primary god, the Ajaxians set about creating the first draft of the Ajaxian Space Treaty, a document which over the years grew into a massive, and almost completely decipherable set of guidelines for Ajaxian behaviour and law in space. Ajaxians expect everyone in the galaxy to abide by the Ajaxian Space Treaty, but with more contradictions than pages no one takes them seriously.

Orbiting around a giant orange sun, 5 medium to large planets comprise the sector. Whilst not the largest, a dark red planet, now named "GC Central", with it's tiny moons, well formed atmosphere and primitive life, is by far the most interesting. One of the first rules created by Ajaxians for their AST was that all primitive alien life may be observed but not interfered with. Alien civilizations must be allowed to evolve and develop as the gods intended without external mortal meddling. However, upon discovering that the planet possessed massive quantities of precious metals, the gods spoke, deciding to reward their children for their years of loyal servitude and thus a clause was written into the treaty allowing Ajaxians to send huge quantities of mining equipment to the planet and brutally strip mine it with the majority of the proceeds naturally going to the most loyal upper echelons of the Church.

In 2102 after mining more precious metal than they possibly knew what to do with and polluting the planet enormously, it was declared a "Galactic Heritage Site" in accordance with the Ajaxian Space Treaty (and thus not allowed to be mined anymore) and dutifully left to rot.

For decades Apollo remained just another sector on the Nav Com. Whilst there was plenty of mining potential in the sector, any legion that tried to set up mining equipment had it promptly destroyed by Ajaxian forces who insisted on enforcing their ridiculous treaty and preventing the heritage site from being "vandalized by barbarians". It was the same story for colonies, so Apollo simply continued to rot.

Then in 2204, with the formation of the Galactic Council, the need was seen for a home sector to be provided for the council, a neutral sector where it could operate as it should. A study was commenced of all available sectors in order to find the most suitable site for basing the headquarters of the Galactic Council. The Ajaxians, hearing the voices of the gods, immediately removed the heritage status of Apollo and made sure to discreetly point out the benefits it had on offer. The new Galactic Council took the bait and selected the sector for their new HQ, setting up a large administrative centre on the red planet and renaming it GC Central, and also setting up a mining camp in order to 'cover their costs'.

Pretty much seeing themselves as galactic Avatars, the Ajaxians thought it most fitting that an organisation for managing standardised rules and ethics for the entire known universe should exist nice and close to their homeworld where they could offer it plenty of advice. As it turns out, to this very day, the pushy Ajaxians still dominate the makeup of the supposedly neutral Galactic Council.

All ship flying in the sector today are subject to local Galactic Council Law which unfortunately due to the constant bickering and shifting of the balance of power within the council, causes the rules to change almost daily. Sometimes the anti weapons mob are in charge and it is compulsory for all ships to reduce power to their weapons systems, thereby making it very difficult to be effective when attacking and repairing. Other days the speed limit folks have the floor and all ships must reduce power to their drives making it much easier to be effective with attacks and repairs because attacked ships can't manoeuvre as well. Sometimes they will even send out inspection craft to make sure all ships are adhering to Galactic Law and somehow the bumbling fools manage to damage craft a little in the process. It would be nice to be able to avoid these unpredictable effects, but unfortunately it's not possible because all ships are manufactured according to Galactic Council Standards, a requirement of which includes the carriage of an automatic energy flow limiting device activated by encrypted codes only the Galactic Council knows.