Leon originally comes from a world in the multiverse where humans have attained FTL travel and begun exploring the stars. The fact that their drives require refined He-3 means they can’t just drive off into the galaxy, Exploration is a slower process of expanding, setting up fueling depots, and repeating. This has created the central Settled Systems and a few filaments of explored corridors leading further out into the galaxy.

There exist some mysterious beings with supernatural powers, not precisely magic, instead more like tapping into the cosmos itself. Little is known about original Creators of these powers, other than that they were some manner of celestial entities. By gaining these powers, humans can become lesser celestials themselves.

Leon was born in 2296, on one of the habitable worlds of the Alpha Centauri system, under the control of the United Colonies. Throughout his childhood, he was always trying to be helpful, and did well in school. When he was 6 (2302), his family moved to a new colony to take advantage of the generous homesteader incentives the UC was handing out as part of their efforts to expand their reach.

Frontier life was much more difficult than he'd been lead to believe by the movies and stories he'd heard. He was part of a small settlement and got most of his learning from an AI program designed to tailor the curriculum to each student. He still got to socialize plenty, but it wasn't the same as having a large group of peers like he'd have in a proper city. To make matters worse, the distant rumblings of war were never too far out of earshot. The news had daily reports of violence from the proxy wars raging throughout settled space.

It wasn't long before the war came knocking. At age 10 (2306), he saw an armada of ships arriving out of FTL above his planet, landing troops and overpowering their local militia. The colonists were all captured and put in prisoner of war camps. Leon was still allowed to learn, but had to have a heavily edited and propagandized version of his curriculum for a year until he was split from his family and taken to a new camp where they started giving him combat training, expecting to use him as a press ganged conscript. Even at age 12, he was already learning to shoot to kill.

He hadn't quite finished training when the Colony War broke out and the superpowers of the United Colonies and the Confederacy faced off. Fortunately for Leon, he was repatriated to the United Colonies as part of a POW exchange. He'd never see his family again though.

Leon was placed in foster care, and kept his head down to finish school. He graduated with exceptional marks, and immediately enlisted in the UC to go back to the war (2314). His past experience made basic training a breeze, but he had something else he wanted to do. He became a combat paramedic, and made the cut to become a recon paramedic, part of a special forces unit that reinforced troops at or beyond the front lines.

In hindsight, he probably wouldn't do that again. The recon special forces unit he was part of saw some of the most brutal fighting of the final years of the war. He fought both with and against xenoweapons, alien monsters from the darkest parts of space weaponized to shock the front lines. He went toe to toe with AI mechs, cold calculating machines told to get results no matter the cost. He saw whole cities smashed to rubble by orbital strikes. In the Second Battle of Narion, the Confederacy threw everything it had into the fight to try and repulse the UC and Alliance of Sol. Many compared this to the Battle of the Bulge in ancient World War II.

But they won. Pushing past Narion to Polvo, the Confederate lines collapsed and the war was over. Leon served the remainder of his 5 year tour (to 2319), more or less doing clean-up of holdouts and serving as a medic for those who were wounded. He chose not to enlist for another tour, having had his fill of war.

Civilian life in peacetime was… an adjustment for Leon. He went to college to get a degree, and his exceptional service had guaranteed him lifetime benefits in the UC. Having spent so much time in the black, he took up a degree in astrodynamic engineering, which basically covers all parts of running a ship in some depth, from jump calculations to plumbing the life support to basic nutrition. His ambition was to serve aboard a ship and eventually get his own.

And serve he did. Leon signed up for a crew aboard an exploration vessel surveying worlds around distant stars. It was mercifully peaceful work, apart from the occasional attack by pirates or the Unbound zealots. By 2328, he could afford his own small survey ship, the Silent Cartographer.

The Silent Cartographer was an older ship, but built sturdily. Running it was a one-man show. For the next couple years, he did survey missions out in the black, which paid well enough to make him fairly wealthy, but ultimately he stuck with the Silent Cartographer as his ship, upgrading her repeatedly on his trips back to civilization. He even managed to fight off space pirates on a few occasions.

He started contracting with Starpath, a renowned yet somewhat mysterious explorers guild. They only worked with the best, so it was considered quite prestigious to even be considered for some of their survey missions.

It was in 2330 when everything changed. Leon was asked to rendezvous with one of the senior members of Starpath, one Clifford “Cliff” Hamilton. They were to investigate a gravitational anomaly picked up by Starpath's Deep Space Observatory beyond the frontier of settled space. The only problem is, it wasn't totally unsettled- a group of bandits (known as Spacers) was hanging out in the area and had heard that Starpath ships were loaded with secret artifacts.

They attacked Cliff's ship, and he was barely holding his own when Leon jumped in. Leon sprang to action to take out the spacers, but Cliff's ship was mortally damaged in the fight. Leon put his rescue training to use and managed to save Cliff and an actual piece of secret cargo: An instance of Starpath's JASON AI. JASON was a beyond-cutting-edge sapient AI that had originally identified the anomaly, and after the war, sapient AIs were regarded with distrust. Rescuing JASON's computational core black box meant that he could interface with the Silent Cartographer.

With Cliff and JASON rescued, they still had a mission to complete. JASON used the Silent Cartographer's sensor suite to locate the entrance to an underground complex of unknown origin. They would later refer to whoever made this as the “Creators,” and they're not certain if the Creators were aliens or humans or something else entirely.

Upon reaching the center of the complex, Cliff and Leon were suddenly shown a dizzying vision as some kind of unidentified energy suffused them. The things the two agreed was consistent was circles within circles, the stars arrayed in a fractal pattern, and blaring horns that sounded almost like music. After they came to, a fragment of some kind of circular artifact was raised before them, like it was being offered to them. After some debate, they agreed to take it back to Starpath's headquarters.

Their story generated quite a stir among the full members. To this point, sapient alien life had never even been hinted at. Now they were staring at undeniable proof of something beyond current humanity. They couldn't even identify what material the artifact was made of. This was quite possibly the biggest discovery in history.

However, until they knew what they were dealing with, Starpath chose to play it close to the chest. They didn't want to potentially discredit themselves, and a benefit of being a private organization meant that they didn't have to disclose anything. The instance of JASON was merged to the main branch operating aboard Starpath's flagship, the Argo. With the new data from their expedition as well as the extensive scans Cliff and Leon had taken, JASON knew what to look for now.

Cliff asked that Leon officially join Starpath as a full time explorer. Leon said yes, this mystery was too enticing to leave unsolved. The Silent Cartographer got some cutting edge upgrades, including an experimental wormhole-on-a-chip data uplink to JASON. To this point, FTL communication besides sneakernets had been a pipe dream, but advances in physics had produced the first micro-wormholes just a few years before, and Starpath had invested heavily into producing this new technology.

Leon and the rest of Starpath began to chase down further anomalies. They found more of these artifacts, but then something else happened- they found a structure, hidden underground, that was different from the ones they'd found before. This one wasn't as big, but they identified numerous gravitational anomalies all over the planet that seemed to have this structure at the center. Another member had investigated it, but with no luck. Leon was chosen to go next, and when he got close, the structure seemed to come to life. Doors opened as he approached, and lights like stars guided him to the center of the structure, where gravity itself seemed to simply… not function.

Shining lights started to blink in sequence, and Leon felt as though he were being beckoned towards them. Carefully navigating the gravity free area, he followed the sequence of stars. As he got close, there was a sound like trumpets blaring. A trio of rings arose from the ground, with symbols and stars covering the outside, and started spinning. Leon couldn't help but be reminded of early depictions of angels as he followed the sequence of lights, and at the last one in the sequence, a deafening blaring of horns shook him as the rings aligned into some sort of gateway. Leon, urged by some spirit of exploration, passed through.

A tremendous amount of energy flowed into Leon, overwhelming his senses. He felt as if he could see the whole universe arrayed before him, and suddenly he understood.

When Leon came to some hours later, he found he was outside the facility, and now he had some kind of connection to… everything. By reaching through that connection, he found he could manipulate gravity, albeit in a rudimentary fashion.

His fellow members of Starpath didn't believe him until he demonstrated his newfound power. The fact that it was compatible with humans had uncountable implications.

Eager to strengthen his connection to the Cosmos, Leon took the lead in hunting down more artifacts and facilities. Each complex they found increased his connection to the Cosmos, and he gained more powers over matter, space, time, energy, even life.

JASON managed to surmise what the artifacts were building. It was a map to the center of, as far as they could tell, Everything. That doesn't quite describe it, especially in a geometric sense, but it is the gist of what this point of Unity was. If they could finish constructing this map, they could use their FTL tech to cross into the multiverse.

With their task clear, these explorers were eager to have the chance to explore infinity itself. They located and recovered the remaining artifacts, and soon enough, the map was complete. Some members of Starpath stayed behind to document and publish their findings, but the senior explorers including Leon could not be dissuaded.

Leon, of course, volunteered to go first. He would take the Silent Cartographer to the Unity, and the Argo would follow later. With the path locked in, he powered up his FTL drive, and his vision went dark.

Leon found himself outside his ship, standing on something and nothing. Before him, a burning ring of light, like an event horizon. As he approached, he could hear a voice talking to him. His own voice. Here, outside of space and time, he saw that he had always been destined to reach this point. He Understood fully now. To enter Unity, he would become one with reality and the multiverse, leaving his indelible mark on Creation. And then he would be reborn of star-stuff, a Starborn he heard the voice saying, in a new universe similar to his own.

Leon took the final leap.

He saw his own universe, and fell away from it, seeing the whole fractal pattern of stars each forming a universe, more stars that could be counted. The beauty of the Cosmos, of the Multiverse.

As he fell towards another universe, he could feel the truest power yet: creation. He approached the new universe, and wielded the power of Creation itself to forge a body, a space suit, even a ship for himself. And while he could only accomplish that level of creation from outside a universe, he kept a bit of the light of Creation with him as he entered the new universe as a Starborn.

Leon has since found his way back to the Unity a dozen times from a dozen universes. Each time his understanding and power grows, and his connection becomes stronger. He is constantly chasing that deeper understanding.

2138: After discovery of new high energy physics, the Grav Drive is invented, allowing humanity to use technology to bend space and gravity, allowing for faster-than-light (FTL) travel. This is limited by the requirement for refined Helium-3, so a limitation not unlike the rocket equation prevents humanity from just going as far as they want even with the near-instant jumps.

2145: NASA, Roskosmos, ESA, ISRO, and CNSA all announce a collaborative push for united colonization of space. NASA is the primary contributor, followed by CNSA, ESA, ISRO, and Roskosmos. The discovery of two habitable worlds in the Alpha Centauri system leads to the development of a new wave of treaties and laws by the UN, culminating in the Centaurus Proclamation.

2150: An explosion of available space and materials beyond the Solar System begins an inexorable decline of Earth, as brain-drain and demographic collapse lead to a decades-long depression.

2158: The planetary governments of Mars, Alpha Centauri, Titan, and Sirius declare their independence from the faltering nations of Earth and form the United Colonies. The capital is the city of New Atlantis in the Alpha Centauri system.

2159-2164: A series of resource wars on Earth accelerate its decline, and Space comes to be seen as the future of Humanity

2168: More humans are living off of Earth than on it.

2179: By this point several new factions have formed under the recognition of the Centaurus Proclamation, but several coalesce into a new rising star: The Confederacy of Free Worlds (The Confederacy for short). The United Colonies were trying to build an equitable utopia for humanity, but many found their way of life suffocating. Despite their best efforts, there still were the haves and have-nots. The Confederacy promised freedom and social mobility for the have-nots, but in truth was a more libertarian nation that only widened the divide. Still, they built a strong national identity on the concept of freedom from the stifling United Colonies or the destitute Earth.

2194: Tensions between the UC and Confederacy begin to escalate, and skirmishes start to break out in unclaimed star systems.

2195: The UC moves to establish a claim in 70 Ophiuchi (Also known as Narion) by building a large hospital spacedock to encourage settlement. The few existing settlers of Narion demand its removal and turn to the Confederacy for aid, voting to join it before they can be outnumbered by new UC colonists.

2196: Tensions rise to the breaking point in the Narion system, when a terrorist destroys the UC hospital spacedock with a nuclear weapon, killing all 1582 souls aboard. The Narion War is declared.

2196-2214: The Narion War rages, but nobody has really established real doctrines for FTL space battles and planetary defenses at this point, leading to a massive stagnation of the front lines. Neither side has truly effective space battleships at first. As the war drags on, the UC begins to gain the upper-hand, but public support wanes sharply towards the end, forcing both sides to the negotiating table. The Narion treaty sharply limits space colonialism for both sides.

2215: The nations of Earth manage to stabilize their economies thanks to being neutral parties in the Narion war. Earth's population begins to grow again. The development of rudimentary terraforming technologies has helped restore the ecological damage done to Earth.

2219: The United Nations of Earth build the Singapore Space Elevator, massively improving Earth's potential as a hub of industry. Its construction is compared to the establishment of the intercontinental railroad. This becomes the primary point of space traffic around Earth, since most nations don't like people just landing randomly in their territory.

2222: A large colony ship sets out from Earth carrying almost 3000 colonists for a distant star system. Officially it suffered a Grav-jump anomaly, but everyone aboard claimed to have felt the presence of a great mind, beyond comprehension. This is the first known interaction of the Vortex, the space between universes, with grav drive technology. Some of the colonists commit suicide, but most band together to form a religious movement based on what they perceived as a “Great Serpent encircling the universe.” No subsequent anomalies have reproduced this exact result.

2228: The Confederacy, struggling to keep itself a cohesive state, establishes the Confederate Rangers, a specialist force that exercises near limitless authority within its territory. This mollifies the people who had been clamouring for action about the rampant crime within the Confederacy, but the Rangers numbers are kept deliberately small so very little is actually accomplished. Each Ranger becomes something of a celebrity, and the Confederate Media paints them like a superhero team, convincing the populace that something is being done.

2231: The cult of the Great Serpent reveals itself to the galaxy, as the new faction called the Serpent's Pact. Its adherents are the Bound (They typically wear bindings on their arms to signify this). They begin sending out evangelizing missionaries to every corner of the settled systems, and their numbers swell but often they are met with resistance and scorn. (Take at least 30 years before the crusade)

2235: The explorer's guild known as Starpath is founded.

2237: Betelguese goes supernova. Fortunately nobody had colonized its system, but several systems within 100 light-years have to be hastily evacuated before they are destroyed. Starpath plays a huge role in the early warning and evacuation effort, earning them substantial clout. Meanwhile the UC struggles to cut through its own red tape quickly enough, and the Confederacy simply lacks the will and means to mobilize any sort of external aid. The Serpent's Pact also benefits greatly from this event, claiming to have predicted it and gaining a substantial new following. The prediction is... somewhat stretched to interpret it that way, but many of the evacuees join the Bound.

2240-2245: In the next UC election, the UC's failure to address the Betelguese evacuation is a major topic of contention. Something akin to a constitutional convention is called, sweeping out much of the cobwebs of red tape and forming the Colonial Parliament.

Meanwhile, Earth continues to recover and grow into a major power again. It reasserts its claim on the Sol System, and while the UC is in this restructuring, widespread support to create the Alliance of Sol gathers on Mars, Titan, Ganymede, and the other major bodies of the Sol system. Each of these worlds considers itself reasonably able to sue for independence, and the UC's grasp on the sol system slips away in just 3 months. The Alliance of Sol is formed, with each world having substantial political independence. Many compare the new alliance to NATO or the Warsaw Pact.

2251: A prison riot at a UC supermax prison manages to take over a minimally inhabitable world and spacedock. The UC dispatches the problem quickly with a long range missile strike.

2253: The Confederacy declares the Serpent's Pact to be a rogue state based on lawless behavior towards those who are not of the Bound. The Pact responds that their god grants them authority to attack non-believers, and that all they need to do is to convert to enjoy peace. A year later, the UC joins in recognizing the Serpent's Pact as a rogue state. The Alliance of Sol doesn't go that far, but does condemn their behavior and authorizes civilian vessels to equip heavier weaponry.


2263-2270: The Pact of the Serpent declares a holy crusade against the non-believers, beginning widespread hit-and-run attacks, kidnapping whole frontier towns. This starts off slow, and ramps up over the course of a year before the Confederacy, Alliance, and UC all declare war against the religious state after the Good Friday massacre, where Bound soldiers infiltrated and openly attacked the Vatican, killing thousands of worshippers, along with coordinated attacks against hundreds of other major religious sites.

The Crusade, like all crusades, almost doesn't fail. Facing attacks on all sides, the Pact tries to instigate the other factions against each other and is met with very limited success, but those embers will burn for a while. In 2270, the Apostles are killed in a rare nuclear strike, and their replacements sue for peace and withdraw from the settled systems, becoming a pariah state.

2272: The Confederacy, UC, and Alliance remain at fairly high tensions, thanks in part to provocation by Bound saboteurs and covert agents. Many of those covert cells believed the call for peace was a trick, and continue waging a war in secret, guided by their faith. They become known to the settled systems as the Unbound after a declaration by the New Apostles. This only strengthens their resolve however, and they become a pervasive threat.

2275: The Indigo Freeport is established, which would be the first of several color-themed freeports. Each freeport is individually recognized under the Centaurus Proclamation, and together they're referred to as the Bifrost Coalition. They don't form an official state, but do agree to mutual defense. Unfortunately, they come to be known as hives of scum and villainy. However, they're too useful to be put down by the other major states, and they put on enough of a front about lawfulness that they at least don't become rogue states. Bandits known as Spacers make heavy use of this coalition, and in keeping with the Bifrost theme, take on Viking themes.
- Crimson Fleet, ostensibly trade and defense of the Bifrost Coalition, often cited for Piracy though. They don't have a planet they call home, but instead a series of stations and stardocks.
- City of Amber, a hub of shady financial deals and drugs and debauchery.
- The Gold Rush, a major site for mining rare materials on a desolate planet.
- Viridian City, located on a world rife with biodiversity and source of a lot of food, named after the ancient pokemon franchise.
- Sapphire-station, a ring-station built with massive transparent alumina ceilings (Think Orbis Starport). Was an abandoned colony experiment given new life by the Bifrost Coalition. Most of the living space is underground, the stuff under the windows exposed to sunlight is mostly parks and farms.
- Indigo Freeport, the first of the batch, located along the Indigo Sound, a highly defensible location yet still has easy access to the planet's oceans, allowing for easy transport of goods to distant industrial towns that would be established around that planet.

2296: The Confederacy is straining under internal tensions and moves to violate the Treaty of Narion, beginning an aggressive colonial push.

2297-2308: Diplomacy, sanctions, and other pressures by the UC try to bring the Confederacy back to alignment with the Treaty of Narion. The Confederacy agrees to renounce its claims to its new colonies, but rather openly continues to support new “independent” colonists. The UC responds in kind, openly sponsoring dozens of new colonies. A series of proxy wars rattle these nascent colonies until one goes too far, dragging the UC and Confederacy into direct conflict.

2308-2317: A brutal war rages on for almost a decade. The resources of multiple worlds are brought to bear against each other. Massive industrialization and expansion efforts begin on both sides. Billions die. New technologies such as Sapient Mechs and Xenowarfare are developed and brought to the front, causing untold damage. Unlike the Narion War and the Crusade, new technologies make the front line highly dynamic. In 2311, Earth joins the war on the side of the UC, tipping the balance against the Confederacy. The massive industrial power concentrated in the relatively untouched Sol system definitively puts the Confederacy on the back foot. In 2316, the front lines reach Polvo, one of the most productive systems of the confederacy, and the planet capitulates before it's bombed to the stone age. WIth that loss, the Confederacy surrenders and the war is over.

2330: Current Day.

Through his adventures, Leon has gained some understanding of the nature of the multiverse. He is always seeking to continue to expand it. This will be his first time in a Nexus universe.

OOCly, I want to use him to explore the nature of the setting's multiverse a bit.

In Leon's last universe, the Starborn engaged in a lot more interference that he'd seen before, revealing themselves and the full extent of their powers to the major governments, in the hopes of gaining power that they could use to their own ends. This caused a series of major wars as the balance of power was dramatically tossed and turned about. Celestials fought each other and mortals were caught in the crossfire. It was a disaster by any measure.

After the fighting was over, Leon and 11 other starborn proposed an oath to prevent further starborn interference in mortal affairs, and devised a method to bind it to themselves when starborn entered Unity. They and a decent number of other starborn agreed to this and would stand against celestials who would devastate mortal societies for their own whims.

In practical terms, they won't use their powers of creation to create advanced tech for mortals, but can still use it for themselves. They won’t use their powers to obtain any real political clout in a society. They will try and avoid talking about Unity and the Creators with mortals, but this one is less hard and fast. The gist of the idea is that “Everyone must walk their own path.”