United Powers League

Following a period of social anarchy and the "fall of Western civilization", a new world-government is re-asserted over Earth: the United Powers League (UPL). A police-state, it encompasses all but a few politically unstable South American countries. Rounding up "undesirables" &mdash;cyborgs, genetically "impure" individuals, hackers, policital dissidents&mdash; "Project Purification" was instituted: a campaign of mass genocide in which millions died.

The Exile and the Long Sleep
However, the young scientist Doran Routhe wanted to explore deep space. It was very risky, but he had no problem with sending political prisoner "lab rats" to their possible deaths. Forty thousand prisoners were loaded into four sleeper-ships, called the Nagglfar, Argo, Reagan and Sarengo and loaded for a 1 year journey into deep space to the outlying planet, Gantris VI. The lead ship, the Nagglfar, was also equipped with an artificial intelligence called ATLAS.

ATLAS scanned the prisoners, and discovered something unusual about them - a high proportion of them had a mutation leading to psionic potential. While currently weak, it would manifest in only a few generations. This information was logged and sent back to Earth. This may explain how the United Powers League came to know of this experiment.

However, the guidance computer failed, and they traveled at faster than light speeds for 30 years. When they awoke, the survivors had no idea where they were or where Earth was: all hope of making contact again was lost. One of the spaceships (the Sarengo) crashed on Umoja killing all aboard, another, the Reagan, founded the colony of Umoja, the Argo founded the colony of Moria, and the Nagglfar built the main Terran colony in the sector: Tarsonis. The Terrans of Tarsonis eventually re-built the warp drive and created an interstellar Terran Confederacy. There were roughly a dozen Terran colony planets in the sector by the end of the 25th century. However, war broke out with the Zerg invasion and subsequent clashes with the Protoss.

First Contact
As was later revealed, the UPL had been observing the Terran breakaway colonies for some time. By this time, Earth had developed its own interstellar empire that was far larger than the combined colonies of the Koprulu Sector, though (oddly enough) their technology and weapons of war were almost exactly identical and very similar to those created by the Confederacy. NOTE: This could be a result of the UPL's keen observation of the various colonies...? Shocked by the appearance of two alien races in the Terran sector, the UPL reformed into the United Earth Directorate; now it encompassed all nations of Earth.