A timeline of Alpha Centauri B’s colonization

• The discovery of technology within ancient ruins orbiting Jupiter allows for the creation of the first nearlight drives and kickstarts a third space race for the construction of space stations surrounding Jupiter.
• Earnhardt-Discovery Surveyors Firm reaches out and touches Alpha Centauri B with lots and lots of government funding backed by the wealth and resources the already extant and long established space colonies brought to the Solar Hegemonies, and make and execute a long term plan to terraform the first viable seeming exoplanet mankind could reach due to the surprising discovery of water on its surface, settling a skeleton crew on it who have no real hope of return who are promised great wealth and the chance to participate in a glorious future.
• Earnhardt-Discovery Surveyors Firm eventually goes bankrupt due to unrelated political and financial losses, and the roots of outer earth colonial nationalism are sown by a political and aid movement organized by the various space colonies pressuring the various governments of earth to not abandon their distant brethren despite the lack of clear returns. 
• Technological improvements bumps the travel time down to something closer to a decade in real time before plateuing at somewhere around two or three years per trip.
• An International organization led by the Solar Hegemonies is established to manage the continued settlement and terraforming of Alpha Centauri B along with managing investment by private interests and handling any future profits from this endeavor. 
• Decades pass, immigration onto the planet continues, and the terraforming project matures enough to create a narrow but growing band of fertile soil dotted with plants that slowly enrich the atmosphere with enough oxygen to breathe without a suit on, allowing for the steady development of factories and mines and refineries and farms that culminate in the establishment of the planet’s first intentional and wholly self sustainable city. 
• Propaganda commemorating the city’s founding, and celebrating the lives of the pioneers and their descendants along with showcasing the city itself are sent back to earth and the solar colonies, presenting a harsh but fair life in a land full of opportunities and ripe for the taking in an obvious bid to attract immigration and continued investment.
• The maturation and self sustainability of even the most distant of solar colonies collapses the economies of nations too poor to directly participate in the space race and thus reap its rewards, as they were largely economically dependent on supplying raw material and food and water to the first world nations to build and maintain said now self expanding and sustaining colonies. Many are left without economic prospects in ecologically damaged regions while the colonial powers enjoy their seemingly eternal dividends and hungrily eye their future earthbound protectorates. Resentment gives way to extremism, and after succesive failures to negotiate, the Red Queen alliance declares war on the Solar Hegemonies and earth’s biosphere starts to collapse under the weight of open chemical, biological, and nuclear warfare.
• Unable to cope with the influx of refugees seeking to flee from the destruction of earth and the abandoment of its less sustainable planetary colonies, and complete their transition into complete self sustainability, the new government presiding over the unified solar colonies decide to commit to exile, commissioning the preexisting shipyards to create massive, theoretically self sustaining ark ships intended to send the refugees further and further into the fringes of human civilization, with some being exiled all the way to Alpha Centauri.
  
  Some do not make it, but the constant contact between the various ships, the trauma of earth’s destruction and their rejection by their stellar bretheren, and the harshness of the trek creates an almost religious fervor and belief in the utopian idyllism of their new home and mourning for the loss of earth.
  
  The new settlers are invariably disappointed to learn about the still small size of the inhabitable zone and the harshness of life ‘out in the civilized frontier’ still, and many either end up dying or struggling to live in poorly planned and ill conceived shanty towns built around the now overcrowded cities, or spend decades trapped in limbo within makeshift space stations created from the conglomeration of the various arks while they await the construction of new homes on the surface, some never make it down.
• In response to societal upheaval and a loss of continuity with Earth, Alpha Centauri’s weak colonial administration is convinced by the already defacto independent members of its corporate advisory council: Dilmun Concern, Allbetter Group, The Good Store, and MedEx with an offer to devolve more of its powers and grant their CEOs legislative and voting powers in exchange for their help with reestablishing control over the planet and massively increasing its infrastructure.
  
  While nominally only put into place to ensure continuity of government and a steady stream of successors for the still relevant post of appointed colonial governor until recontact with Earth is achieved, the Gang of Four have generally refused to recognize the suzerainty of post collapse successors such as the USC and TAU over what each claims to be their rightful colony/inheritance.
• Tensions between the original colonists and the refugees slowly wind down as new cities are built, the habitable zone is expanded and less ramshackle stations are built to handle the influx of refugees, and both groups slowly come together in a shared mourning of earth and a working relationship with their last remaining link to home - the solar colonies that remain and continue to send what little aid they could spare, cultural artifacts, and technological advances alongside any new colonists. 
• The flow of refugees eventually stop entirely, as the descendants of the original refugees are surprised to learn that earth yet still lives, and that the colonies are in contact with small pockets of survivors dotted throughout the ravaged earth who are working alongside them to utilize techniques and technologies mastered in the colonies to render most of it inhabitable once more in time.
• The Post Collapse Era begins and the calendar is reset at year 1 PCE
• Most of the first century passes without the interruption of aid or the sharing of technological discoveries, but growing beligerence in missives sent by the USC, and the sudden ceasing of immigration raises alarm bells in a people unused to war and surprised by the USC’s remarkably sudden demands for some form of reparation or acknowledgement of subjugation, only for all communication to suddenly cease for uncomfortable decades. 
• Unbeknownst to the people of Alpha Centauri, the growing tension between the the earthbound Transatlantic Union and the USC over land rights, the expansion of colonies by the former, the seeming lack of repayment for their salvation, and the former’s open ambition to reassert control over what its leadership viewed as its rightful colonies led to open and disastrous conflict, ending with the USC’s defeat and the intentional scuttling of their former capital of New Troy and its shipyards as the remnants left for the presumably open arms of their one grateful former colony and ideological bretheren.
• New refugee ships arrive on Alpha Centauri in successive waves, hailing from the remnants of the USC’s leadership, military and the populace fleeing the ravages of war and the collapse of the chain of interlinked space stations that the TAU had tried and failed to seize by force. While they are allowed to settle on the planet’s surface and construct new stations on the planet’s orbit, the previously strained relations between the USC and the Alpha Centauri colonists causes many to initially refuse to believe that the descendants of earth’s barely averted destruction would ever do something as stupid as launch an open assault on the USC’s territories. Nonetheless, their relative technological advancement, edited wartime footage and propagandizing, political ideology, and military expertise allows many to join hands with the colony’s upper classes and academia.
• Alexander Tzeitman is born as the future sucessor of the Dilmun Concern, one of the great four. Named after his great ancestor and one of Alpha Centauri’s first colonists. The untimely death of his parents at a young age leaves him stranded in the care of his uncle who grow increasingly comfortable in his role as the young man’s possibly eternal regent and obvious heir apparent.
• Seeking to solve the inherent contradictions between the life she wants and the increasing powerlessness and precariousness of her actual life, and emboldened by many years anonymously attending counterculture and fringe political events, Alexander Tzeitman reclaims control over his father’s company through a highly succesful smear campaign that uncovers a genuine conspiracy that leaves his uncle to mysteriously die in jail, before renaming herself and fully transitioning into Salome Tzeitman, a powerful heiress and councilwoman who is the first to espouse explicitly reformist views through her controversial patronage of certain members of the Mental Sovereignty political/art movement (which splintered in reaction to her support) which calls for the creation of a new transnational, transcultural identity through the active, total, and participatory rejection of earthbound traditions, history, ancestry, and meanings in order to boldly chart a new and uniquely Centaurian path into the future that is unmoored by the mental limitations imposed upon us by their burden.
  
  Which is understandably one of those niche ideologies the media barely covered except to laugh at outside of incidentaly mentioning it while covering the various clubs and restaurants its members run.
• A routine prospecting expedition run by the Dilmun Concern discovers a lump of indestructable metal that turns out to be one of the two horns of a massive and disturbingly well preserved and untarnished humanoid head buried under the rock, this triggers a rush by the MS movement loyal to Salome to search the surrounding area for further artifacts, uncovering very little save for what appears to be the fragments of similar metal and what can only be described as an ancient motorcycle.
• An exhibition is ‘hastily’ organized and announced for the discovery of the century, most in attendance believe they are simply witnessing what is a truly inspired performance about the sheer absurdity of the largely unpracticed field of archeology and the pointlessness of finding meaning in history through the inspired gag of ‘the true original of humanity uncovered?’ 
• Duke Jim of Planet Fleet, the God of Forward-thinking and loyal servant to the King of the West discovers the presence of a dormant Imago/Mechacampus while vaguely passing by the area of Alpha Centauri, and makes a detour to investigate after finding signs of a somewhat advanced civilization there.
• Typh-Ea awakens and claims a groggy festival goer by the name of Holly Bashur as her wielder, and nothing will ever be the same.

Calendar Year

It is currently the year 99 PCE (Post Collapse Era).

The planet orbits the stars roughly every 28 days,