The Grand Orrery's illustrious history began approximately three centuries ago, when it was founded as the spiritual and academic zenith of the Elegara System. Conceived as a physical manifestation of The Great Inquiry, it served not only as a university but also as a sacred temple to The Axiom. This magnificent institution housed the departments of Astro Navigation and Theoretical History, fostering an environment of profound learning and discovery. Its central chamber, a kilometer-wide geodesic dome, was home to a real-time holographic simulation of the entire Spiral, continuously updated by the galaxy's most sensitive deep space telescopes.
For generations, the Orrery thrived as a beacon of open debate and radical transparency, dedicated to peaceful exploration and the expansion of knowledge. However, this era of enlightenment came to an abrupt end with the Diplomatic Annexation, which occurred approximately twenty-five years ago. The victorious Red Sun Dominion, recognizing its lack of raw cognitive processing power for ancient Terran Maltech encryption keys, seized control of the revered institution. The Grand Orrery was swiftly converted from a place of learning into a high-security research prison.
Under Dominion rule, the once-respected faculty and brightest students were forcibly reassigned, becoming compulsory cryptographers for their new overlords. The Great Hall, which once charted peaceful exploration routes, was transformed into the war room for General Kaelen Thorne. This monumental shift marked the beginning of a dark chapter for the Orrery, its noble purpose twisted to serve a military agenda.
In its current state, The Grand Orrery operates under a severe martial law, suffering an intellectual siege. The Dominion now uses the Orrery's massive computational array for sinister purposes, including hunting for signature anomalies of forbidden technology, specifically remnants of the GH-23 AI Core. Furthermore, it systematically scrubs historical data to erase any evidence of the Dominion's involvement in the cloning experiments of the Fat System. The university is no longer a place of learning; it is a crime scene where vital evidence is being meticulously calculated out of existence.
