ATU -- Into the Night

[daryen]

Jumping in late ...

One other thought, if you want to go in the opposite direction of "unified Terra" is to do this:

As Terra expands rimward, they tend to be in pockets of nationally unified worlds (i.e. China-controlled, US-Controlled, etc., with interesting combinations sometimes) centered on garden worlds. This means that the nationalism of Terra is exported to the stars. Then, at some convenient point in time (convenient for the author, not the setting) things go down and everyone tries to unify Terra under their banner. The result would be a burned home world (optional as to how much is left and who "rules" the graveyard) with multiple hostile pocket empires. Then, into *this* environment you can inject the Dingir League and the Vegans.

So, now instead of "Terrans vs Dingir" or some other rehash, it is a multi-sided war where the various Terran groups are at various disadvantages. Dingir doesn't have to be an enemy or "heavy". Instead, they could be the object of everyone's attentions in order to gain advantage over each other. Some could even be dumb enough to try to expand into Dingir (probably to their detriment).

Honestly, watching what I have the past 10 years especially, I find the idea of a unified Terra utopan. And if there is to be one, it will probably not be a pleasant place to live. In that light, you get multiple Terran-derived pocket empires set to conflict. And, again, Dingir isn't to give them a common enemy. Rather, Dingir becomes a common object of fascination. Some will want to eliminate Dingir; some will want to dominate them; some will want to ally with them; some might want to just join them. But, this sets up an extremely volatile and highly diplomatic environment.