Not pictured are the other alien species wearing similar armor and equipment. Let me put up a bit of fiction about Exoshift's "human" based faction:
Humanity received its first hints to the larger galactic society when its first FTL equipped ships ventured beyond the local cluster. There, they began picking up the equivalent to FTL slow band communications, the contents of which were undecipherable.
As humanity progressed outwards, they began finding the smallest traces of extraterrestrial life, leftover outposts, discarded trash at landing sites, and other detritus. This culminated in a landmark event in Sol history, the finding of the alien refugee fleet.
Having fled from aggressors years before, they were stranded and running out of supplies. The aliens were wary when the unidentified human ships approached bearing none of the markings of any known galactic civilization, but also saw an opportunity.
A deal was struck, the details of which lost to time, but what is known is that the population of the fleet was eventually allowed to settle on Earth and its colonies, in exchange, Humanity confiscated all the ships, technologies, and information present in the fleet.
This influx of people and cultures jump started the fledgling empire, but it was not without problems. Decades of xenophobia, political and cultural unrest wracked the combined populations. As generations passed, some species began to see these worlds as their home too, and desired a place within. The struggle was difficult, but many eventually won a position in society, government, and other institutions. But it would take much more to make them equal…
As this new society dealt with those issues, scientific progress raced on. Humanity had gained access to a treasure trove of technology. New or scavenged advances in energy production, weaponry, materials, waste management, entertainment, all fields of science and commerce benefited. However, the most influential finding was also the least extraordinary, they discovered the primary economical method of FTL for the galactic community: the exoshift.
It opened up a new world of space exploration and travel, no longer was space travel limited to large government or corporate funded expeditions. Instead, a well off person could buy his own ship to find his place in the stars.
In the rush to expand, new colonies formed and new civilizations were discovered. Sol began its first forays into becoming an space faring nation.
However, the people of Sol were not the only ones expanding. The activity began attracting forces from beyond Sol's reach. It began with raids and piracy from unknown aggressors, each attack becoming more brazen than the last. Each attack also spreading word amongst the galactic community of a new people's rise, ripe for the picking. It was then that the criminal known as the Warlord knew his next target for conquest.
He was the epitome of the dangerous regimes that had formed in the power vacuum after the old order's collapse. Driven from his home sector, he commanded a massive fleet of powerful warships, and an army capable of taking an entire planet. Gathering other opportunistic groups in his wake, his armies drove towards Sol.
He attacked Sol Space with a ferocity unseen to Humanity, and conquered much of Earth and its colonies in short order. For a time, Sol is an occupied nation. All species felt the heel of oppression, and in this crucible the people bound together in suffering, and waited.
As the years pass, people believe that their civilization is doomed until the first stirrings of rebellion became a liberation. Secret agreements are made with distant civilizations, and long silent Sol colonies that went dark after the invasion return to activity, their new factories producing weapons and warships to take back their homes.
In a massive uprising, coordinated attacks from outside and within Sol Space break the back of the Warlord's forces, killing most outright, and forcing many others to flee. The Warlord himself is killed in the fighting, but all at such a terrible cost
In victory, the people Sol are left to wonder at their smashed homeworlds. Nations were erased, entire peoples destroyed. The people of Sol, and Humanity with it, had discovered the hard way that the galaxy is a dangerous place.
The first draft of a new constitution is made, and a new government is formed. All were to be given citizenship, all would work towards a common goal of the security they so desperately desired. The Republic of Sol was formed.
The Sol of today is an integrated multi-species civilization that, culturally, is almost unrivaled in galactic society. Their emergence after the Warlord's occupation has thrown the local politics into a stir, a state that Sol has exploited to secure its borders as best it can. With the looming threat of The Combine to its Spinward reaches, where the most dangerous fugitives from the Warlord's armies fled, to the vast and powerful political juggernaut of The Remnant Order hovering ominously along its Coreward border; The people of Sol know their position is as precarious as it is a precious shining beacon in a dark and cold galaxy, and they will fight to protect it.
