Starlancer is a space simulation game developed by Warthog Games and Digital Anvil, and first published by Microsoft Games in Europe on April 28, 2000. Its premise serves as the backstory for Freelancer.
Background[]
Starlancer[]
Starlancer is set in the year 2160 AD, in the middle of a massive system-wide human war taking place in the Solar System. The belligerents were the Coalition and the Alliance. For decades, both powers fought each other for the various resources of the system, as well as control of Earth, at the cost of millions of lives. Eventually, after almost 100 years of fighting, the Coalition gained the upper hand and took over the inner planets, pushing the Alliance past the asteroid belt and towards the outer planets.
Freelancer[]
In a desperate response to the Coalition breaking the stalemate and gaining the upper hand in the war, the Alliance constructed and launched sleeper ships—massive vessels designed to house several generations of humans in cryosleep as they left the Solar System entirely to seek a separate part of the universe to resettle.
From the Federation dockyards in Pluto, the Alliance built a total of eight sleeper ships. The first three sleeper ships were launched after they were constructed, while the other five were moved to Jupiter. The Coalition intercepted the first three sleeper ships that were launched and destroyed them before they could jump out of the system. Soon after that, the Coalition started advancing on Jupiter, where the remaining five sleeper ships—the Bretonia, Rheinland, Hispania, Kusari, and Liberty—were being prepared for launch. The five sleeper ships launched with a small fighter escort—just as the Coalition began an orbital bombardment of the planet—and charged the Coalition fleet that had gathered above Jupiter. In the ensuing escape, the Bretonia sustained damage to its starboard engine array, however all five sleeper ships miraculously broke through the Coalition blockade and jumped to the Sirius Sector.
The year that the Liberty arrived in the New York system, being the first of the sleeper ships to arrive in Sirius, is marked as 1 A.S., with the present-day Freelancer setting and Single Player Campaign taking place 800 years later.
- Extended Background
Despite failing to stop the Alliance's last five sleeper ships from escaping, the Coalition pushed on and captured the remaining planets until the only base the Alliance had was on the dwarf planet Pluto. The Alliance deployed their remaining forces to meet the massive Coalition armada that had gathered above Pluto, but just before both sides engaged each other, they were interrupted by a massive alien ship that suddenly appeared in the middle of the battlefield. The alien ship took aim at the Sun and fired a massive shot at it before disappearing entirely.
The alien ship's projectile struck the Sun and caused it to go supernova, destroying all the inner planets, as well as both the Coalition and Alliance fleets in Pluto's orbit. However, Pluto was located far enough from the Sun that it was not destroyed by the supernova. As such, an Alliance general named Atticus Rockford survived the supernova on the dark side of the dwarf planet. Once the supernova had completely passed over, he departed Pluto in a jump-capable vessel and travelled to Sirius to warn the colonists that the aliens, known as the Nomads, were hunting humanity down.
Rockford would live for 800 years to the present-day, making sure that humanity in the Sirius Sector was ready to take on the Nomads when the time comes.