Background
The fictional background story for EVE Online explains that long ago, humankind, having used up most of the Earth's resources, had started colonizing the rest of the Milky Way to sustain itself. Eventually, humans had expanded to most of the galaxy, resources became contested and war broke out. However, one day, a stable natural wormhole was discovered. Unfortunately, after several years the EVE wormhole collapsed completely destroying the wormhole and the star system of New Eden, wherein most of the government of the new galaxy had been based. With the wormhole closed, the colonists were completely cut off from their previous homes and much needed supplies. Only five known colonies would ever return to any kind of prominence again, eventually rebuilding society together. These make up the five major empires in EVE: the Amarr Empire, the Gallente Federation, the Minmatar Republic, the Caldari State and the Jovian Empire. Players may choose from four of these races (Amarr, Gallente, Caldari, Minmatar) when creating a new character. The fifth race (Jove) are not currently playable, though CCP have said they intend to use the race within the EVE storyline.
Races
An EVE portrait showing a Caldari character.
The Amarr, a group descendant from a fundamentalist group called the Conformists, were the first of the playable races to rediscover interstellar and faster-than-light travel. Armed with this new technology, they set about expanding their empire, enslaving several races in the process, focusing heavily on the primitive Minmatar race who had only just invented space flight for themselves. The Amarr Empire found its expansionist vigor through the Reclaiming, a crusade to bring their vaunted ideals to the galaxy. This was swiftly ended after their confrontations with the Gallente and, most notably, the Jove. After the destruction of the Imperial Navy in conflict with a single Jovian mothership, the Minmatar rebelled against their masters and broke off to form their own faction in the EVE universe. The Minmatar are the downtrodden of the galaxy, holding the least number of star systems while much of their populace are still enslaved in the Amarr Empire or refugee members of the Gallente Federation.
An EVE portrait showing a Jove character.
The Gallente and the Caldari homeworlds were situated in the same star system. The Gallente homeworld was originally settled by French colonists from Tau Ceti, while the planet that would later become Caldari Prime was purchased by a mega-corporation, which began to terraform it. However, the process was incomplete at the time of the gate collapse, and Caldari Prime remained environmentally inhospitable for millennia, delaying the rise of advanced society. The Gallente, with a more hospitable homeworld, restored a working civilization some hundred years before the Caldari, building the first democratic republic of the new era. However, the Caldari were able to reverse-engineer the terraforming equipment, giving their technology a substantial boost.
The Jovians (currently a non-playable race) themselves had been a human colony, or group of colonies located in the Curse region, far from the EVE Gate. After the collapse of the gate and the crumbling of interstellar trade and travel-ways, the Jovians were able to revive their civilization almost immediately, losing very little time and very little information thanks to the shortness of their relative "Dark Age". For years they expanded outward and explored their sector of space as the other races still huddled, overcrowded in their isolated home systems. Eventually, the Jovians turned to wide-spread genetic engineering in order to mold themselves into a people more suited to deep space life and long range interstellar exploration.
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