G.C.S.

G. C.S. - Galactic Calendar Standard - is the name given to the common calendar that is employed by the entire galactic community as a means of providing a base for dating reference. Back-dated to the events which saw the Human race venture into the Great Spiral, it is now the standard year reference used by all major galactic powers. When the Galactic Consilium was founded, it similarly back-dated its calendars to that point.

The common date - known as Synchronization - which is the "start" of the G.C.S. calendar is the destruction of the world known simply as The Nexus. Situated in an unremarkable star system near the crux of the territories of the Namarian, Kushan, Mostoli and Covellan people, the third planet - which was habitable with no technological assistence - had become a neutral meeting place for the galactic powers to gather under a flag of truce and parley.

Synchronization refers tothe "Destruction of Nexus", which occurred in the same time period as the Third World War on Old Earth, during that world's early 23rd century. Around ten years before the event, a scientific monitoring station established on the world's northern pole had begun seeing signs of instability within the star that Nexus orbited, known as Tel. Several attempts were made to stabilize the star using stellar engineering methods. When no effort proved successful, those personnel maintained on Nexus were evacuated. As time progressed, Tel began to blast the worlds orbiting it with intensive waves of high-powered gamma radiation. Eventually, this massive disturbance permanently sterilized every planet in the system, rendering them lifeless as their atmospheres were stripped away by the intensive radiation.

Future efforts of parley and diplomacy would be conducted on more individual levels, though summits continue to be established on neutral or non-capital worlds. The loss of Nexus was made the common point on the galactic calendar shortly after the world was lost.