The Fringe Worlds are burning in the flames of a war the Syndicate did not start. The Hegemony above all wants to have the control over more resources to build an even greater army.
Nobody knows what will be of the Syndicate, if they'll once more rise from the dust and succeed at defending their land or if they'll fall into the command of the enemy.
But that's a story for another time, nobody can tell the future, but the past is a whole other story...
A long time ago, when the Domain began exploring and colonizing the sector, they found a particular region filled with quite interesting planets. Most of them didn't need terraforming at all, and some had incredible materials and artifacts so rare they weren't found by the Domain anywhere else.
The highest ranks of the Domain quickly hid the existence of this area, using it to test new equipment and to conduct questionable research, the worst resulting in the extermination of life in the planet Sascillo. Resources were not the only thing coming from the gates, millions of "test subjects" were brought in secret to the Fringe over the years and everybody lived happily with their lives, as nobody knew experiments were being conducted on humans. The rest of the sector simply enjoyed their brand new terraformed planets...
One day, the unthinkable happened...
The gates suddenly closed, and nobody knew whether they would open ever again.
Scientists of the Domain of Man living in the Fringe had all sorts of ideas and theories, but they all had the hope the gates would reopen again, soon.
Time passed... The gates did not open again.
Despair of those waiting at the gates for a sign of the Domain caused them all to fall, all while the Fringe remained silent.
Without the Domain's watchful eye, some scientists went mad. Some ordered the armed forces under their command to annihilate entire populations for their amusement, some wandered off into the unknown with crazy schemes to find the Domain once more, and others disappeared without leaving a trace.
Many felt betrayed by the Domain and swore vengeance should the gates ever reopen again. They were the founders of the Empire, a group whose goal was the preparation to war with the Domain. To make their ultimate goal a reality, they increased their military power, designed new ships. They had blank production chips, a very valuable commodity after the Collapse, and combined them with the plentiful resources available throughout the Fringe to build a fleet capable of fulfilling this goal.
Some of the Fringe's secrets stopped being so after an accident. The population was not pleased and rebelled, trying to free themselves from the chains of the Empire, the "New Domain". It started a long war that wore both sides down, and all this time they remained oblivious to the rest of the sector...
... That is, until someone found them...
A rebel ship jumped to hyperspace in a desperate attempt to escape certain death, only to become stranded and drifting away as the ship had been severely damaged from the combat.
Eventually, the ship was found, by none other than the Hegemony. They salvaged the ship and interrogated its crew. Soon they found out about the existence of the Fringe Worlds and all the riches in it.
They quickly saw an opportunity to gather enough resources to build a military force so great it would finally allow them to take control over all of the sector.
All they had to do was get rid of the unknown remnants of the former Domain. This should be an easy task. After all, nobody knew of the existence of anything in that region, any attack could easily go unnoticed and nobody would suspect a thing.
And so it was. The Hegemony sent a massive fleet to conquer the Fringe, and they did manage to take one of their planets, devastating those who had little interest to the Hegemony.
The Empire held as best they could, but the fleets were weak and displaced by the war, they did not expect a foreign attack this soon, not by this enemy...
They had to give in to the situation and call for an emergency council with the rebels, offering them the chance to join forces in order to fend off the invaders.
The rebels reluctantly accepted but made some demands, one of them being the ceasing of all experiments being conducted in the population of the Fringe.
And so they formed the Fringe Defence Syndicate, having the single common goal of defending their land.