Mission

The missions were originally a series of exploratory projects to send probes to, and later colonize and otherwise inhabit, the nearest stars. Only Alpha Centauri, among them, was ever host to a significant human population. The rest were either too difficult to terraform or too recently colonized in the short period that humanity had control.

The missions began first with probes to appraise the nearby systems, often rocketing past them at a notable fraction of the speed of light. Then a series of constructors were launched, which assembled coil arrays in the target star system. In this manner, ships were accelerated to about half the speed of light, transporting materials and eventually people to the neighboring system. As technology progressed, the stargates came under construction.

All of these were prepared in the 22nd century, though the later ones had only just activated their stargates when the Purge came crashing down on the children of Earth. Since then, the Missions have evolved into a different duty. Eighty-eight now exist, one for every constellation, seeking Lost Sol.

The First Missions

All in all, there were sixteen original missions to other stars, eventually reaching a total of seventeen stars besides the Sun before the Purge came. Most of these had a considerable amount of organization and planning behind them when the war began, and so formed the model for the remaining missions afterwards.

• The Centaurus Mission was the first, largest, and most fractured of the missions, as many had their eyes on the nearest star to Sol. The the Centurions developed out of this mission, and today are one of the most militaristic branches of mankind.
• The Sirius Mission was the second to be launched. Its primary purpose was to build stronger links to a few of the neighboring stars than was possible on Earth, and to function as the main link to Omicron Eridani. After the purge, the mission evolved into the Canis Mission. Another group formed the Sirian Legate, which tries to keep the various factions of humanity from violently competing, with varying levels of success.
• The development of Procyon was not launched by humans, but instead those artificial sapiences who, for one reason or another, wished to leave the yoke of mankind. The official order - the Procyon Concord - still exists to this day, and maintains those systems that came under the yoke of humanity as its own. Two subgroups, Concordance and Holocene, have nearly diametrically opposed views on humanity and quarrel in the background. Some of those humans who aided this effort now head the Canis Minor Mission.
• The Eridanus Mission originally headed for Epsilon Eridani.
• The Cygnus Mission settled 61 Cygni.
• The Indus Mission colonized Epsilon Indi.
• The Cetus Mission explored Tau Ceti.
• The Omicron Mission was an extension of the Sirius and Eridanus missions, opening the stargate to Omicron Eridani. The Omicron Foundation came from their members after the Purge. The mission proper is now defunct, since it only had a single star for its goal.
• The Groombridge Mission is another AS-led mission. It is essentially the exploratory, development, and infiltration arm of the Concord. Humans also worked on this mission, but are now part of the Ursa Mission.
• The Altair Mission and the remaining opened their stargates only shortly before the Purge. It has evolved into the Altairan Society and the Canis Minor League.
• The Alsafi Mission has spawned the Draco League and the Alsafi Brotherhood.
• The Cassiopeia Mission visited Eta Cassiopei.
• The Ophiuchus Mission visited 70 Ophiuchi and 36 Ophiuchi.
• The Pavo Mission explored Delta Pavonis.
• The Sagittarius Mission opened Gliese 783.
• The Libra Mission found the way to Gliese 570.

The Current Missions

The missions described above became fifteen of the modern missions, and their organization was used to form the remaining seventy-three. These eighty-eight groups work under the guidance of Mission Control to divine the location of humanity's lost star - Sol.

Since it no longer adds its light to the Milky Way, Lost Sol blends in with the cosmic background radiation. It is rumored that Eve also suppressed its gravitational effects, as well as modifying the surrounding dyson swarm to permit starlight to pass through. Since the latter would be trivial for her, and the former not much more so, those who believe the home of man still exists are fairly certain that it has to be physically run into.

For her part, Eve interferes with the project only sparingly, though more so now than in the past. At first, it was to send humans on useless wild goose chases, focusing their time uselessly on one empty area of the sky. Now, she has a fairly even-handed approach to interfering, but she does not put such a weight on the project that humans abandon it. If she did that, humans would turn entirely to technological progress and industry, and anything that slows humanity down in this regard is a good thing.

Mission work is, usually, the most boring project a person can subject themselves to. The standards of the mission are grueling - every cubic AU has to be visited by at least three probes, and the management, though simple, is tedious. False data, false positives, ensuring that plots are at least triply redundant while maintaining a semblance of progress, and direct interference from the being that is responsible for the search in the first place make it a rather large helping of ennui.

That's not to say that this overly methodical combing of the Galaxy has not borne fruit. Many exotic relics of the Renlai and Sorenen lie in human hands, along with many technological secrets. Eve, of course, would rather this not occur, but organizations like Ouranos and Concordance see to mankind's dominance of patterns anyway.

Most diasporic humans have participated in at least one mission at one point or another in there lives. Very few think Earth has been destroyed, and rarer still is the person who is certain. However, it is always a part-time fancy. There are more interesting things roaming the Silver River, and more concrete goals with more immediate rewards than simply finding humanity's birthplace.