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"Eastern" border of Telrosian Dominion - Morningstar Coalition Fleet
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To later historians, it would come to be known as "The Great Sorrow"; but to those who had just came out of the nightmare, it had no name, it simply was. A little under a month ago, the fleet had entered space claimed by the Telrosian Dominion, people known to TRIAD and people the Admiralty had hoped would be friends. Sadly, the fleet's passage had attracted the attention of several pirate clans; who had themselves just been driven out of Dominion space. While the Fleet was large, most of it's number were poorly armed transports and industrial vessels, hastily built in Raysian shipyards. The fleet must have seemed a choice target to the pirates, desperate for plunder and willing to band together to overwhelm the limited military presence within the Coalition.
Starting first with a devastating ambush, then in the following weeks, the pirates had managed to cripple or destroy a large number of Coalition ships. Worse yet was the loss of three of the great Sleeper ships. Massive transports each housing half a million citizens in stasis. In the initial attacks which had claimed the three great transports, almost two million lives had been extinguished. By the time the fleet reached the relative safety of space heavily patrolled by the Telrosians, over three million had perished. To a people who had started this exodus with just over five million, the loss was profound, and only just now starting to truly sink in.
Originally the plan had been to stop briefly among the Telrosians, to foster diplomatic ties to their Dominion, and to barter technologies they would later need. With a full fifth of the fleet destroyed, and another third badly damaged; their stay had been longer than anticipated. Unfortunately this had not been the end of the nightmare for the Coalition survivors. After finally making their way through Telrosian space with the aid of escorts, the fleet once again blindly stumbled into dangerous space while en-route to their old allies.
This is the story of the Great Sorrow...