I wanted to create a perfect gaming universe, a universe where any campaign can take place. To potentially have any level of technology, I timed it to our future. To present you my view of the future, we will start from today and journey into the future. After reading this you should have an image in your head, of a universe where any imaginalbe world can be found, with anykind of creatures on it, maybe even pointy-eared immortal humanoids who are in war, a sword-and-apparent-sorcery-war, with pig-faced green humanoids. And who's to say that even the sorcery could not be real, it's just not generally known in the universe.
It is now the year two-thousand-something. Some time in the next few hundred years a group of people, somewhere on this planet, invent a machine that finally enables interstellar travel. They develope it in secrecy, simultaneously assembling a group of people to journey with them to a new home, whrere they can start over.
Earth is a hugely overpopulated, overpolluted corporate hell. Our own solar system is fully colonized. In some distant corner of this expanded human world, our group starts to build a ship equipped with their "jump drive". Everyone who knows about the project wants in on it, and funds are easily razed in Gatesian amounts. In fact funds are razed in such amounts that the whole economy of the solar system is shaken. Word brakes out of what's going on and everyone with enough power to be noticed wants in on it. Wars are waged when corporations start competing against each other, and when ordinary little people rebel against the injustice of a selected few being able to escape the now hellish planet. Any one part needed to build the ship is manufactured in a thousand factories, and donated to the project for free, in hopes of earning a place on the to be journey. Suddenly, the group of people who intend leave it all behind, controls most of the economy of the whole known universe.
With so much money and power, the group manages to protect it's secret device. A huge military space fortress defends their shipyard. The ship, when finished is the ultimate pinnacle of human achievement. At this point, planet earth lives a nuclear winter, and people survive on stone-age means. Out in space, all industry is geared to evolve the ship, and to build sisters for it. The known universe becomes an oppressive dictature ruled by the now biomechanically near-immortal group. All the people who ruined their world competing for a place aboard the ship are now dead due to war or just old age.
Through the horror, the vision of the group stays somewhat pure, though. When the two ships are finished, they integrate themselves into the ships, and fill them to capacity with propably almost genetically natural human beings. Then they leave. For thousands of years the earth is forgotten.
The ships quickly travel through space, first to alpha centauri, and then onwards to the far reaches of space, until they find a planet like earth, but apparently younger. They find lots of dinosaur-like species, but none sentient. This planet will become the core of the empire. The ships land, and the people start building a technological, ecological and social utopia. Centuries pass, people breed, but people don't die much. New smaller and more advanced ships are built to enable tribes of people to go find a planets of their own from all directions. This is how the empire is formed. There is no way of transferring data faster than jump speed, so small robotic databank ships start travelling back and forth through the imperium. Data storageroom is almost infinite, but travel speed is limited. The empire reaches it's limits because of this communication problem. Exploration stops for thousands of earth years, which again could be measured, as some explorers have reached all the way back to our original home. A nobility is formed to rule the corners of the empire. Life becomes dictated by those in power retaining status quo, and others quietly or aggressively opposing them. Tecnology, although developed into and unbelievable level, is the right of only few.
Then, at the core, another scientific break through is reached. Propably by the same group of people who invented the jump drive, but now evolved into a city-sized supercomputer, develope a new means of travelling great distances, but this time not to find new, but to control the old. The empire is no longer separated by such great travel times. The hyperdrive will revolutionize trade, and make the worlds closer to the core forever dominant of the not as developed worlds further away. Again thousands of years later, the universe is colse to how it is at the time when your game begins, propably at least five or ten thousand earth years into the future from where we begun.
The core, once a planet is now a structure as large as the star it now revolves around it. The only sentience living there is the original group of scientists, they are now a collective, and the core is their physical body. All other metahuman entities have, in time, drifted away from the core, most assigned lordship of some corner of imperial space. A billion robotic entities of different shapes and sizes serve the purposes of the core.
The most notable section of this army of robots, is, well, the army. Robotic vessels of all shapes and sizes patrolling imperial space, enforcing the imperial rule between the planets.
Planets near the core very much like it, only smaller. They are robotic collectives, with only a few biological brains built into any part of the structure. Further away of the core, "people" start to be larger in numbers, but are sill immortal and extremely nonbiological. "People" have built their physical aspects to best suit their environment and personal preferences by combining cybernetics and biotechnics. Even futher away, where this evolution towards metahumanism was still unfinished when the empire became stagnant, only the nobility are "lucky" enough to be cybernetic biotechnical superbeings. Planet after planet is full of beings biologically very much like people were back in earth. Ironically, the further away from the "core of humanity" we move, the more human things seem. Near the edge of the empire, even the nobility wants to look biologically human because of the varying levels of fear and hatered towards apparent evolutional supremacy. Still, almost no person of noble origins or of corporate power is a biological human. Even at the very edge of the universe, where biologically born people live in a feodal society without even electricity, their king, if not immortal, will be overthrown by some otherworldly stranger who is.
This full spectrum of technological levels, form stone age to ultra science, is made possible by human greed. If your subjects can mine the coal you sell without living in a house with electricity or running water, you don't want to waste the money to buy them a generator or a water pump. What you will do, is buy robots to do the mining, and leave the people to live in their hut village on their own. Some one will propably rise to be their king, make them do slavework, and eventually replace them with machines, again.
Everyone is not this "evil", no. Some societies live in a utopia, where machines do the work an people live lives of research and philosophy. Any world, with any social situation, any technical level can be found. And on any planet, there can exist a myriad of different "worlds" side by side, much like our earth in the current time. Life in Finland is very different from life in the Amazon. Similar, and greater, differences can be found on planets in the future. Some planets maybe literally full of people, on others may live a total of five hundred people, or less, globally. And on all these surroundings, these people may or mey not be biologically like us.
Generally, the further away from the core, the more people are like us, and the larger they are in numbers, and the lower the technological level of their general everyday life.
Any technological creation can be taken to any planet, and the creation needed to maintain and repair this creation can be brought with it. The ability of a human society to produce these creations determines the technological level of that society. An apparently medieval village can support a supercomputer, but if it stolen, cannot build a new one. That's what makes them medieval, instead of "supercomputerian".
There are no generally known records of alien intelligence. It's very likely that "mankind" has encountered beings of as much biological potential as us, but the art of genetics has been mastered for thousands of years, and the "concept of biological originality" has been lost. What would make a wolf-like humanoid a discovery worth preserving, or even mentioning, if we can build one just like it anywhere any time? The metahuman entities who have done all the discovering, when the empire was young, did not feel that a naturally evolved being would be any more or any less "valuable" than an engineered being. So, that being said, no record exists of an encounter with a truly alien form of intelligence. Everything thus far has apparently been based on the kind of DNA that metahumanity masters fully.
On any given planet where nonsentient beings can be found, no records remain wich could confirm wether they are natural creatures or creatures engineered for special tasks. A farm animal can be found on a planet, then domesticated, maybe genetically altered if needed, and then possibly sold to other planets near or far. Any animal imaginable can be made if needed, and then, again, spread throughout the galaxy. The same can be said of the flora they help people farm, and this is in the outskirts of the empire, where farm animals might be used. Most planets do not have great biodiversity, which implies that most planets have ecosystems altered or created by metahumanity. Nearer to the core, robotics do everything, and there is no biodiversity to speak of, not even with metahumans living there.
The diversity of sentient beings, on the other hand, is huge, at least in the worlds both far from the core, and far from the edge. It's very propable that earth is the only planet where truly biologically unaltered people live, but many worlds far from the core are full of people who were born like you and me. For historical reasons, the more unlike me and you a being is, the more likely it has no reproductive organs. The more coreward a world is, the more propable it is to find beings like this. Depending on the task he was created for, he might have alot of "broters", or very few, if he has some unique task. Many engineered creatures have separate life support systems for the brain the rest of the body. This way a large, muscular being, full of adrenaline and similar hormones, can have a kind temper and a "clear brain". A figurative sheep in a wolf's clothes. The opposite is also possible, but very rare. Similar gimmicks can also be used when creating nonsentient (or semi-sentient) beings.
Nearer to the core, cyborgs of different shapes, sizes, and steel-to-flesh-ratios can be found. Nearer to the edge, "people" tend to be more human-like, and use machines istead of building themselves into one. Some worlds in the middle, between core and edge, have humans like us, who use machines and maybe hostile towards metahuman beings. Other planets may have societies where every being is purosefully created to do one job, and to like doing it. Less machines are used, because they are not needed.
A summary:
Near core, biological sentients are just brains integrated into machine cities. Further away from the core, the brains are integrated into mechanical structures, smaller and smaller (and more mobile), the further away from core we are. Near edge, people are more and more like us. In the middle preferences can be towards biological or mechanical forms.
Near core, biological sentients are few, most everything has artificial intelligence, which is way "smarter" than any biological brain, but pre-programmed to a degree where it cannot be said to be "sentient". Near edge, there are alot of sentient beings who use tools and machines themselves instead of building robots with AI. In the middle, preferences towards humanity and metahumanity vary, as do population sizes.
Economy is a major force in the universe. Large imperially supported trade fleets create profits for corporations and noble families. The imperial fleet of robotic war ships supports this trade cartel. On the edges of the empire, though, the robot ships are almost never seen. Local corporations and rulers support their own war fleets, sometimes almost fully consisting of ships with a crew. The core would never even concider putting biological sentients into a war ship. AI is so much more skilled and more expendable.
There are a few scientific borders yet unbroken. Most regarding the biological brain. Metahumanity knows exactly how brains work, they know where and "how" thoughts are, but they cannot plant thoughts into brains. So, for example, "backups" cannot be made of thoughts (or more accurately, cannot be put back into brains). In a similar way that you can take a picture of a storm, but can't take a storm from a picture, you can take a "picture" of a thought, but cannot make a thought out of this "picture". The content of a brain is in constant change, and any "snap shot" is a moment stopped in time, the continuity is lost. Scientists have tried to have two brains, as similar as possible, side by side, and with different means, get them to "sychronize", but whenever they are close, the self-awerenessess in the brain interfere with the process. Basically, two brains can be made brain dead in exactly the same way, but no ongoing process can be copied.
The other problem with brains is that they cannot be controlled well by outside forces, no matter how special a coctail of hormones, brains still "think what they want", that's why the core uses AI instead. Super intelligent brains can, in theory, be built, but since you cannot copy your "self" into that super brain, it is of no use to your "self awareness". All known experiments involving beings with "super brains" have led to unconttrollable personalities, including unbelievably mocking sarcasm, overly insane comic booky super-villainism and most often, into very deep existentialist nihilism. Usually all of these and more. If no one ended their lives, they'd do it themselves sooner or later.
Like everything the core does, current exploration of space is automated. Robotic ships controlled by AI were launched to 100,000 different directions from the core thousands of earth years ago, they travel beyond the known universe, replicating themselves whenever they find resources to do so. They and their "children" continue jumping to their respective directions away from the core, analyzing all solar systems they find. If they determine that any solar system is interesting enough, they calculate a hyper space address for an arrival zone in that solar system, and send a databank back to a special zone near the core. These databanks tell a supercomputer working at the core, who sent the databank, and what they found and where they think they are now, and, of course, the hyper space address calculated.
Currently there are propably millions of these explorers, and more are being made far away in space. It's not clear how far these explorers have reached, or what they have found. What is sure is that the core has a lot of addresses. The core apparently doesn't care much about what these probes find, but send exploration teams to some addresses. These teams are fully AI, too. The core also uses the addresses they find as a trading item. The core can reward different noble families or corporations with potentially valuable destinations.
The jump drive, using one additional dimension, can take a ship multiple parsecs away in an earth month. Time and distance vary according to vessel mass and jump distance. This is the original technique developed back in earth. The only changes are made to the power source, the device itself has remained similar.
The hyperdrive, using all additional dimensions, is not understood well by others than the core. That doesn't stop everyone who can from using it. Through the multidimensional hyperspace one can travel anywhere in the whole universe, maybe even beyond, in the time jumping takes you "only" parsecs away. What's the catch? Well, you have to know where you are going, exactly. And I mean exactly. Before you can travel to any one spot in space, an "address" must be calculated for that exact point. These addresses are valuable information, very valuable information.
These addresses are so complicated that they are impossible to calculate anywhere else but at the very spot where the address points to. Impossible means that it is impossible even for the core, a supercomputer the size of a star. Triyng to guess a point which doesn't send you drifting forever between realities is like trying to guess a lottery number. Even if you would win the lottery and end up, alive, in the same universe you left from, you still would not know where you are. You'd then jump back to where you came from and tell everybody "Hey guys, I was somewhere and I didn't die".