The Realm was, no doubt, a genuine attempt to centralise control over the colonies after they were set up. For a while, it worked. The trouble started when it started to become corrupted. With such a wide rule, with so much to do, the monitoring of such things as corruption tended to be taken as read, and so people took advantage. Old rivalries and politics started up again, starting on Terra where Communists, Americanists, Fascists and plain old profiteers found the necessary loopholes and exploited them. It was only a matter of time before the trouble spread to the colonies. Some split away from the Realm, forming alliances of their own; some took on specified political ideals, and lived or died by them. This was until Alterr Kavana took power. He was a ruthless opportunist, using every means to gain power, then eliminating the opposition. Slowly, the Realm changed into his organ - totalitarian, conquering, debasing. Just like him. By 2933, the Realm had started warring against the breakaway factions, putting all its efforts into destruction and domination. It was about this time that the first 'war-cyborgs' came into being. It started with Terran convicts, but ended in horror. As planets were conquered, so the young (about 10 years old onward) were taken out of society and surgically mutated into cyborgs. At first they were unreliable; it was in 3004 that the first mind-controlled cyborg entered the battlefield. It was then that such planets as Girinar, Farol, Bason, Kerryp and Danda were first colonised by the Realm. We are concerned with Farol in this story, but Farol was only one of many planets to become experimental planets or EP's.
The Realm was overwhelmed, finally, by the combined forces of the Altairan, Betelgeuse and Denebian armies in GY3822 (adopting the Terran count of years). The last thing that swung the battle in favour of the revolutionaries was the first appearance of a force from Betelgeuse, as explained later. From then, the three forces set up a governing body on Altair IV. The EP's, however, remained operational since it was discerned by the new Federation that such planets provided valuable knowledge to them regarding wars that still went on, and with planets and rebel alliances that refused (often violently) the right of the Federation of Three Planets to exist, mostly citing the fact that they were not consulted about the policy, constitution and political basis of the Federation. They were simply ignored and they resented it.
By the time of Marini's birth, the FTP had been in existance for over four thousand years (though only for 2210 years in the Farolian area, one of the last Realm strongholds to collapse). Farol was a valuable find for FTP's science and weapons industries. Farol had been the most advanced of the EP's but, like all EP's, it was a business. It took control, gave FTP rights to its citizens (nominally, of course), signed a few deals and left, happy that they were now able to boast Farol as one of its EP's.
Marini came to Garona late in life, around GY7946, or cycle 2281, about 20 years before Minissa and Laneta first arrived. She took over as Controller and Planet Guardian, though she was killed in cycle 2302 by Controller Pleris. It was cycle 2308 that things started to happen.