Now let me tell y’all a story before you make up your minds whether or not you want to be a Browncoat:

Long time ago, in a far-away galaxy, there was a rebellion. It’s hard to find any details on this war, bein’ as it happened so long ago, but it started when, as usual, some people got unhappy with the government and decided to do somethin’ about it.

Why were they unhappy with the government? You gotta ask, son?

See, the Empire (that’s what the government was called then) had a real tight grip on everything. They wanted to control every little bit of people’s lives – how they thought, how they dressed, what they read, what kind of art they made -so naturally they passed all sorts of laws, taxed the hell out of everyone to support those laws, and then punished them as wouldn’t fall in line.”

Sound familiar, don’t it?

And they had this huge army – some say it was an army of robots, others say it was just armoured men of flesh-and-blood - that swept through the galaxy, tryin’ to force everyone to live life the way the Empire thought it should be lived. That included restrictin’ trade, keepin’ poor planets poor and makin’ rich planets richer, tryin’ to keep down people who were different, makin’ some people slaves. When it was just gettin’ started, the Empire even wiped out an entire religious group because it was considered a “threat” to what they were tryin’ to build.

What? Where you from, son? Shadow? Never heard of it – what do they teach y’all kids out there? No, ain’t no such thing as aliens. Ain’t never been no furry creatures seven foot tall that’d just as soon tear your arms off as look at you.

Anyway, so these people were real displeased with the way things were bein’ run. So a small group of ‘em began to fight. Guerrilla stuff at first – hackin’ into computers, messin’ with the wiring on ships, blowin’ up communication arrays, that sort of thing. And you know what them rebels found out? They weren’t the only ones unhappy with the government – there was lots of people on lots