The Core worlds are, at once, a bastion of high civilization and a den of evil. The economy is almost totally automated - from production and services to mining, farming, and maintenance. Even science and coding are automated to some degree. The end result is that work and money have become obsolete. Any necessary economic transactions result in bartering.

Sounds like utopia right?

Wrong. Having nothing worthwhile to do with their lives, the people have wholly devoted themselves to the pursuit of pleasure. Alcohol, drugs, games, and especially sex are popular pastimes, and all manner of historic depravities occur on these worlds. The more conscientious members of society devote themselves to the pursuit of science and the arts. The military used to be an outlet for their energies until the end of the Conquest War.

The outer worlds, however, are a rather different animal. More on that later.
__________

The outer worlds are more or less postmodern, which is to say, considerably less advanced. Most of them can't even get a craft in orbit, let alone out of their solar system. And unfortunately, those that *used* to have spacefaring abilities were bombed back to the stone age duing the Conquest War. Over the last few years, some have regained some degree interstellar travel, but they're nowhere near as advanced as their conquerors. Our game will start with one of their emmisaries returning a batch of starship crew to their post around Crescent Prime.