Necron War

The Necron War, also known as The Zombie War, or The Great War, is a major intergalactic war from 2258 UD to 2263 UD. The war was between the United Worlds and the Necron Conscious. The war resulted in 700 trillion casualties, being the most deadly war in all of United Worlds history. The war also saw the biggest battle in United Worlds history at its conclusion.

Background
At sometime in the 2180s, an unknown nation in the Trian Galaxy developed the Necron as a bio-weapon in an unknown war, which resulted in the destruction of both sides as the Necron gained consciousness and started to consume all life in the Trian Galaxy.

The Necrons were a hive-mind that consisted of an unknown number of individuals, as said individuals could be absorbed when their job was done and created when they were needed, therefore, the Necrons consisted of an equally unknown number of "species".Their technology were all bio-mechanical, with weapons and ships "grown" from massive spawning oceans on production worlds. Their only purpose was the consumption of all living matter in the universe, with the Necrons invading worlds although they were also known to use a form of agriculture, creating worlds full of fast growing bio-matter before consuming it, although this system was only used to supplement their primary method of consuming bio-matter. Although they were a hive mind, they could only communicate through a hive node, which were usually found in landers and Distribution Hubs, which lead to a tactic where landers were to be destroyed in any way possible to stop communication with the hive mind.

The Necrons used the following methods to consume bio-matter on worlds without any civilisations that could be a threat: On worlds with civilisations that could fight back, the Necrons used the following method: In the 2210s, the Necrons reached the Ecop Galaxy and its actions caused hundreds of nations to form the Plants Union in a bid to stop them. In the 2230s, the Necrons reached the Epla Galaxy and caused such fear and panic that multiple states collapsed into anarchy, leading to quick Necron expansion.
 * 1) Crash asteroid-sized landers onto worlds with life.
 * 2) Flood the world with digestive juices until all life has been digested.
 * 3) Reabsorb the digestive juices until the landers are full
 * 4) The landers would then return to a distribution hub and emptied.
 * 1) Send fleets to accompany the landers (as they were quite vulnerable)
 * 2) The fleets would fight any resistance in space or on the planet itself, they might also deploy "ground troops" to overwhelm any resistance
 * 3) When all resistance has been defeated, flood the world with digestive juices until all life has been digested.
 * 4) Reabsorb the digestive juices until the landers are full
 * 5) The landers would then return to a distribution hub and emptied.

Starting in 2245 UD, huge technological advances in FTL technology in the United Worlds has let to faster ships with longer range, capable of reaching nearby galaxies within weeks or days instead of years. Starting from 2245 UD with the Extra Galactic Initiative, the first UW ships started to rapidly explore new galaxies. However, public opinion was mixed, with the fear that exploring the unknown might result in the discovery of things best left undiscovered.

Prelude
Throughout 2246.11 UD, UW starships detected an unusual amount of barren worlds in the Trian and Epla Galaxies, with some worlds looking as if they were recently stripped of life. In the following years, contact was made with the nations in these galaxies and they warned of a threat to all life from the Trian Galaxy. Starships sent to the Trian Galaxy went missing and search parties also went missing until a FUS Wing of 20 ships were attacked by unknown starships, confirming the warnings by the civilisations inhabiting these galaxies. In 2247 UD, first contact was made with the Plants Union, a federation of species that banned together to stop the threat, which was named by the Plants Union as the Necron, a name which the United Worlds used officially. The Necron Conscious refuses all contact, with their only objective being the consumption of all living matter in the universe. According to the Plants Union, the Necron was a recent development, probably the result of a rogue bioweapon only decades prior and had already wiped out all life in the Trian Galaxy and was beginning to consume life in other galaxies as well. Eventually, in 2248 UD, the UW Council banned all travel to the region inhabited by the Necron Conscious, with the Plants Union and nations affected by the Necron forming closer ties to the UW. The UW public were terrified by the Necron, with widespread panic ensuing when the gravity of the new set in, however, the UW tried to reassure the public that they could defeat or at least curb the Necrons. For the next decade, the UW started to help the Plants Union through funding and the provisions of weapons and research aid.

Start of the war
Unknown to the UW, the Necrons sent 4 distribution hubs across the intergalactic void to the Tripod, Andromeda, Unknown Regions and Collid Galaxies, which were galaxies that comprised most of the United Worlds and also had the most bio-matter. As the distribution hubs were planet-sized, they took a decade to get to their positions, with the intention to arrive at the same time. In 2258.12 23rd, UW sensors detected the first distribution hub arrive at the Galactic Core of the Tripod Galaxy. UW starships were quickly scrambled to fight in the disastrous, Battle of Caldor 4, the first battle of the war. Although UW starships had engaged the Distribution Hub while it was still travelling, they could not stop it and underestimated its ability to mass produce starships at a moments notice. After 3 days of futile fighting, the fleet had to disengage and the Distribution Hub sent its first lander to the world of Caldor 4, a world that had a civilisation that had barely achieved spaceflight, which therefore made it under the Non-interference Policies' protection, so ships could not legally engage the lander. However, given the severity of the situation, the UW went ahead and tried to engage the lander in full view of Caldor 4, which were confused by the situation. The battle proved to be a failure as the Necrons managed to land on the planet and filled it with digestive juices, killing all life immediately. Simultaneously, 50 more landers were launched to various planets at the Galactic Core, signalling the start of the Necron War.

First year: Defeats and Losses
Following the disastrous Battle of Caldor 4, the Necrons had a foothold in the Tripod Galaxy, occupying multiple star systems and were constantly sending more landers to various locations throughout the Galaxy. In 2259.04 5th, as the UW Council were discussing how to defeat the Necron threat, a Necron lander and fleet was spotted heading for DSA, the capital of UFSR. UFSR and the UW, along with FUS and UFE scrambled to fight the lander and its fleet as it neared UFSR. The Battle of DSA resulted in millions of starships fighting over DSA as the Necrons started a land invasion of the planet, with literal tsunamis of Necrons overwhelming cities and defenses. The lander crashed onto the planet but just as it was about the flood the planet, a rash decision by a UFSR Admiral led to the UW fleet firing on the orifices were the digestive juices would flood out, leading to the destruction of the lander at the last minute. With the lander destroyed, the Necron fleet lost its connection with the hive mind and were picked off by the surviving fleet. This victory was short lived however as Birdlandia reported that a Necron distribution hub had arrived in the Andromeda Galaxy. Shortly afterwards, Salome and the Islamic Union also reported Necron incursions into their galaxies. For the rest of the year, UW forces were slowly pushed back, despite the newly found tactic, with huge swaths of the galaxy occupied, depopulated or invaded. The nations close to the Necrons quickly descended into anarchy, with waves of refugees overwhelming neighboring nations until they too collapsed. This accelerated the Necrons' expansion due to the lack of resistance.

Second year: Slow Retreats
In 2260.03 27th, the Necrons stopped focusing on the Core Regions of the invaded galaxies and started turning their attention to the arms of the Galaxies, with the invasion of UFSR being the first indication of that. In the months following that, FUS, UFE, the Matcha Confederacy, the Furby Technocracy, the Seeder Union and the Palms High Kingdom were all invaded. Although there were victories, or even stalemates, such as the attempts by UFSR to prevent an invasion of the Zill SSR, they were far more losses as all these nations started retreating. Research teams in the UW frantically tried to find more weaknesses in the Necrons but came up empty. In 2260.08 17th, in the face of desperation, the UW lifted all bans on dangerous technology research, with anything that can be used against the Necrons to be used. This resulted in suicide ramming attacks by starships travelling at FTL, capturing Necron Species when possible for experimentation and the use of bio-weapons. Although these methods did slow down the Necrons, they left great devestation and destruction in their wake, with invaded worlds being destroyed of all life anyways. Several nations even purposely killed all life on a world in a bid to starve out the Necrons to some success. Massive assaults were made on occupied territory to some success although the Necrons quickly retook lost territory.

Third Year: Turning the Tide
In 2261.01 28th, scientists announced that they had found a weakness to the Necrons. Due to the Necrons absurdly high rate of production, defects were known to happen but did not make a difference as there were a lot more more perfect Necrons out there. Using previously banned bio-neural viruses, the team announced that by injecting the lander with the virus, it would start to churn out Necrons with many defects, making them unusable. With this, the tide started to turn, with the virus being distributed throughout the UW. The Necrons started to lose territory. Although most worlds in Necron territory were not occupied, some worlds were used as production hubs, which produced ships and Necrons. These worlds were harder to take and the only way to rid the world of Necrons were to use weapons of mass destruction. By the end of the year, the Necrons were pushed back to the core of the galaxy. However, the Necrons developed an immunity to the bio-neural virus, which lead to an arms race between the two sides as the UW tried to develop more powerful viruses. In 2261.12 16th, the Necrons attempted to invade The Amulet, the space station capital of the UW, with a lander sent from the Trian Galaxy but the battle was won with the virus, although with severe damage to The Amulet.

Fourth Year: The Push
In early 2262 UD, the UW Council entertained the idea that the Necrons needed to be extinct, with no other options available. More developments on the virus was made, with variants that allowed the Necrons to be "controlled" by hijacking their localised hive mind, although a large amounts of doses were needed. With the Necron now quarantined to the cores of the galaxies and any attempted breakout could be stopped with the virus, the UW approved Operation Extinction, the invasion of the Trian Galaxy to wipe out the Necrons. At this point in the war, the front at the Plants Union remained stable but with the Bio-neural virus, they too started to make advances. With Operation Extinction, the largest fleet mobilisation in history occurred, with ships all pouring to the Plants Union and Epla Galaxy. In 2262.04 UD, Operation Extinction officially started, with the largest invasion in history happening on both sides of Necron Territory. Operation Extinction was helped by a new variant of the virus, that allowed the virus to be uploaded to the hive-mind, which started to weaken the Necrons. By the end of the year, with extreme losses, the Necron had been wiped off the Epla and Ecop Galaxies and were pushed back to the Trian Galaxy.

Fifth year: Wave of Death
In 2263.04 UD, the Necrons had gotten desperate,with their territory only encompassing 60% of the Trian Galaxy and their territory a shadow of its former self. The viruses developed by the UW were getting stronger and more potent, making it harder for the Necron to adapt to it. Their distribution hubs had not been destroyed before, for fear of them being infected and so they were all retreated into the Trian Galaxy. In the other galaxies, Necron territory had been reduced to only a dozen systems. In 2263.04 15th, the Necrons launched a desperate invasion of Earth. With 30 landers pushing their way through the blockade and through the galaxy until they reached Earth itself. The Battle of Earth was a barely won victory, with 4 of the landers landing on the planet itself but they were all defeated. In 2263.04 23rd, the Necrons tried an attempted invasion of Salome but that too also was a failure, resulting in the destruction of their distribution hub afterwards. In 2263.05 7th, they tried invading Birdland but it ended with the same outcome as Salome. Although, the wave of battles had dealt a huge loss of life to all these nations and were very damaging, resulting in some fleets being recalled back to the Tripod Galaxy which did relieve some pressure off the assault. In 2263.05 28th, the Necron sent their Tripod Distribution Hub at Terun, the capital of FUS. The resulting battle became involved billions of ships, some sent back from the front-lines battled the Necrons over Terun. A few landers made it but were destroyed. The distribution hub, which was close enough to Terun to cause gravitational problems, was injected with thousands of doses of the virus and was sent away from Terun into the Sola, the star of the system. These series of victories heartened the UW forces and pushed even harder into Necron territory until in 2263.12, they were confined to a few star systems, at the world where they first emerged. In 2263.12 3rd, the Battle of Themo, the biggest and last battle of the war occurred, with billions of starships pouring into the enclave. Several heads of states from several nations personally oversaw the battle. Using tactics learned from the destruction of the Distribution Hubs, the remaining hubs were all destroyed. In 2263.12 15th, the Necron War was officially declared over.

Aftermath
The Necron War had resulted in the greatest loss of life in history, with 700 trillion casualties across the United Worlds. The invasion of the galaxies led to massive depopulation of invaded areas, with no life found in these regions. Billions of species had been rendered extinct on invaded worlds.

Planets that had invasions that were repelled still suffered major damage to the environment, infrastructure and population loss. These effects would take decades to recover and even in the present day, some systems still have not been fully recovered.

Hundreds of nations had been totally destroyed, with their native populations either all killed or displaced throughout the UW. This caused a major power vacuum in invaded areas as pirates and rebels started to take over these voided regions, along with the UW attempting to restore these former states. In the Epla Galaxy, with the help of the UW, former nations had been restored while new ones were created to fill in the void left by states when they collapsed into anarchy.

The Seeder Union had begun seeding for the first time in billions of years in the invaded regions, with former Necron territory being used by the UW to research what little remains of Necron technology that survived. As a result, in 2265 UD, the Dark Matter Drive was invented, with some Necron technology being used to help develop the drive.

During the Necron War, public opinion on the Extra Galactic Initiative had been mixed, with people accusing the Initiative for inviting the Necrons to invade and that without it, the Necrons would never have invaded. However, after the war, the public realised the Necron would have invaded anyways and that they would have been more unprepared without the Initiative and that it might have led to the end of the UW.

Legacy
The actions of the United Worlds during the Necron War had caused a surge in membership, with thousands of nations joining the UW following the war's conclusion, with thousands more grateful for the UW's efforts in the war.

The years after the war sparked a period of rapid economic growth as part of the recovery process, called The Revival which would continue until Galactic War 5 broke out in 2279 UD.