The past centuries saw first an explosion in the construction of orbital habitats in Earth's orbit, as anyone with the necessary means tried to escape an increasingly uninhabitable planet. The band of orbital habitats became known as the Bracelet, its denizens as Bracers.

Life on the artificial Bracer colonies was good for those who could afford it. However, as it is with most hyper-wealthy people these Bracers had their various interests spread out far and wide across human-settled space. It was only a matter of time before they would end up pitched one against the other. And so a tense web of conflicts began to unfold across the Bracer and its many gleaming stations. Over the course of several decades corporate hit squads, saboteurs, and spies operated across the Bracelet, with one Bracer clan trying to outmaneuver others.

Whether it was an act of sabotage or a mere accident, an explosion seventy-two years ago resulted the disintegration of the mid-sized Lagrange Point habitat Trafalgar Station. The explosion of Trafalgar Station was in turn read by allied factions of the space habitat's most influential interests as an act of open war by their respective enemies. These factions then engaged in swift retaliations.

It would later turn out that the destruction of Trafalgar Station caused a game theory cascade: many of the influential factions in orbit had their weapons trained on whoever they deemed a threat. The Trafalgar Incident then resulted in most factions to believe that an enemy faction would believe themselves the attacker, and strike against them in revenge. So to prevent a revenge strike, many factions simply started wiping out each other, which in turn caused other interests to engage in similar behavior.

Before the day was over, the Bracer was in a process of cascading destruction, a runaway Kessler syndrome, leaving behind few surviving habitats and a cloud of space debris that made artificial satellites almost impossible and landing spaceships on Earth very difficult for the coming generations.

The isolation of Earth would last fifty seven years.