The Hegemon of a Thousand Empires is a powerful interstellar confederacy of diverse human nations that united through prominent mercantile families almost a thousand fiscal-cycles ago. Originating in the Orion Spur, a constellation of several hundred star systems, the Hegemon now directly controls thousands of lightcycles stretching outward from its primary world of Protea. Despite its relative youth, the Hegemon has bested many older human nations whose histories had stretched back in an unbroken chain to previous epochs of stellar expansion, some as far back as the First Exodus.